He was shaking now. A cold, dark wind through him, trying to blow him back from going down this road. “What’s happening to me?”
Diane got up slowly, being careful not to startle him. “Your body is trying to keep you from remembering.” She took a blanket from one of the other easy chairs and held it out to him. “It’s going to be frightening but it is not going to kill you. I promise. Let it come back to you. I’m right here. I’m not going to let you face it alone.”
It seemed a supreme act of bravery to put himself into her hands, but he did, wrapping the blanket around him like armor. “All right.”
“Try to remember when, before the shooting, you were last sexual with Daisy.”
He closed his eyes. “I don’t even know where to start rewinding.”
“Start in the aisle. When you came out of the booth into the aisle. What was before?”
“I was under the console with the broken glass. And before… I was watching the shit go down. And before that I was running lights”
“Now back up from there. Before James came in. Before the dancing even started. What were you doing?”
“Diane, I can’t breathe.”
“You can. The air is going in. You’re breathing. I promise.”
“All right.”
“Back up. Where are you?”
He visualized the action running in reverse. “It was a rehearsal. A tech run-through. And it was Daisy’s turn. They would have called her and she would have come…from the audience. No. Wait.”
Like a small bright flower, the memory rebloomed: Daisy, walking down the aisle. Tying her skirt and walking toward the stage. He had watched her. She had walked down the aisle. Away from him. Down the aisle. Which meant she had been…
“Where are you, Erik?”
Another flower unfolded its petals. In the booth. Of course. She had been in the booth with him. “It was,” he began, but his throat was bone-dry. He cleared it. “It was…”
“Stay here. I know it’s hard.”
“I feel like I’m dying.”
“Tell me.”
“The lighting booth.”
“When?”
“Before she went onstage to rehearse, Daisy was with me in the lighting booth.”
“Tell me.”
It was so strange, picking these flowers. He looked at them, sure they belonged to someone else. Then he held them closer to his face, caught their scent and he knew they were real. They were real and they were his. He remembered.
“She was sitting on my lap and…” It was flooding him now, fast and furious. Not flowers but a white-water river of memory churning up in his brain, each recollection clamoring for attention and refusing to be corralled into order. His hands came up to the sides of his head, trying to hold it all in place.
“Were you having sex in the booth?”
“Yes. I mean no, not then. It was the night before. God, I’m all over the place.”
“It’s all right. Keep backing up. Tell me about the night before.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her helplessly. “My head is spinning, I can’t even…”
“Erik look at the wall. Right there, the place where it’s blank. Take everything in your head and fling it on the wall. Like a movie. Put it there.”
He tried, stared hard at the white expanse of space and attempted to project his thoughts onto it. He even imagined a whirring clicking noise, like a projector. It worked. The tornado in his head died down to a gentle gale. “We were in her room, and we were just… God, I remember now.”
“Describe it to me, what are you feeling?”