A hand brushed his shoulder. Daisy smiled at him as she passed, trim and pretty in a silver-grey down jacket. “Goodnight, Fish. See you tomorrow.”
“Night, Dais,” he said, turning in his seat, watching her walk out the auditorium doors. Pleased she had learned and used his nickname. Bereft she was gone.
He turned back in his seat, and now David was coming up the aisle. “Fishy, fishy in the brook,” he sang to the ceiling, “into Fish, she put her hook.”
An hour later, Erik was up on the ladder rearranging one of the booms, when, once again, a soft touch settled on his calf, but this time she called his name. He twisted around and from the foot of the ladder she gazed up at him, holding a paper bag.
“I brought you a snack.”
“I still owe you for the sandwich,” he said, his heart splashing against the wall of his chest.
“Oh, and coffee, do you drink coffee?”
He was actually a tea drinker but he would’ve gladly accepted a cup of warm piss from her. “Thank you,” he said.
Her eyes and nose crinkled, then she set the bag at the base of the boom. “Don’t tell David.”
“Entre nous,” he said.
Every Good Boy Does Fine
Tuesday, he was due at the theater at four. His accounting class let out at three, and he decided to just grab something at the campus center and kill time at the theater. Possibly he could sit in a back row and power nap for twenty minutes.
He was at one of the condiment stations, getting napkins and packets of mustard when someone nudged him in the ribs. He looked left, as the trickster ducked around to his right, but by then he’d already smelled her sugar-soap perfume.
“Hey,” he said happily. In her grey jacket and purple scarf, Daisy looked criminally pretty. Her hair was down, something he’d not seen before today. It fell down her back in rippling waves, a bit of it caught beneath the straps of her dance bag.
“Going over to Mallory?” she asked.
“I am. Come with?”
They were the only ones there. The auditorium was quiet and dim with a hallowed feeling, like an empty church. Erik went to the circuit panel in the wings and flicked on a few of the stage lights. Daisy plopped down by the leg of the grand piano and from her capacious bag drew a pair of pointe shoes and a sewing kit. It seemed the ballet girls were always working on their shoes, sewing or re-sewing ribbons, bending them in half, banging them on the floor. And then lamenting they wore out too quickly.
Hopping down from the apron of the stage, Erik did a double-take as Daisy threaded a needle. “You sew them with dental floss?”
Breaking off a length with her teeth, she smiled up at him. “It’s stronger than thread, and you only need a few stitches per ribbon. Goes faster.”
“I am learning something new every day from you dancers.” Impulsively he opened the piano bench to see if there was any sheet music. There was, including a book of Bach.
He closed the bench and sat, thumbing through the pages. Let’s see how big an ass I can make of myself.
“You play?” Daisy said.
“I used to. You might want to back up a little, this could get ugly.” He settled on the Prelude in C Major, the friendliest key. He shook out his suddenly cold fingers. “Let’s see, every good boy does fine…”
She laughed. “It’s more than I know.”
He dug deep, shrugged off his nerves. He was a good sight reader. At least, he’d been told he was a good sight reader way back when. And he knew how the Prelude was supposed to sound, which made it easier. Still, he was clumsy, and stopped after a few plunking measures, embarrassed. “God, I haven’t used this part of my brain in years.”
“Try again. And go slower, it’s a lullaby.”
He started over, played slower. Upstairs his brain finally realized he was serious about this, and quickly sorted out the staffs. Bass clef, treble clef, the notes began to tell him their names. Little by little it came back to him, came together. His shoulders relaxed, his foot sought out the pedal. He stopped, flexed his fingers.