Erik liked Mindy Meredith, one of the drama club starlets. And he liked the sound of behind the scenes. It seemed the defense of the performing arts team. Curious, he loped into the auditorium, took a good look around at the pandemonium and immediately dialed into the current of purposeful action beneath it, and the big picture around it. Things had to get done here. The show was on the stage, true, but a second show was going on backstage, in front of the stage, even over the stage. And without those shows, there was no show.
He started low on the totem pole: manning a follow spotlight, keeping its powerful beam centered on Mindy. He caught the technical theater bug like a chronic flu. Wiring up the lanterns and organizing their light into cues was satisfying work. Building sets—immersed in the cacophony of hammering, sawing drilling—reminded him of childhood days at the legs of his father’s workbench, but not enough to hurt. Later musical theater productions appealed to both his eyes and ears. Everything about being a stagehand felt right to him.
He returned to basketball his junior year, but his ankle would always trouble him, and from compensating, he developed a dodgy knee. He would play one game then be out for two. Younger and fitter players soon eclipsed him, yet Erik didn’t mourn the glory days too badly. By that time, Mrs. Jerome had entrusted him with the keys to the auditorium and he had the run of the place.
Until he graduated, he owned the same bit of square inch real estate in every program of every school production: Erik Fiskare, stage manager. The greatest tree houses of the world had nothing on the small concrete bunker built into the balcony, his command central, his crows’ nest, his throne. From this perch he ran the lights and called the shows. With his privileged keys he let himself in during off hours. He hung there alone. He hung there with friends. He even got laid there once, with Mindy. And though it wasn’t anything close to true love, or even false love, the encounter seemed to fix the coordinates for Erik’s place in the universe.
His relationships with girls weren’t meaningless, yet they were always brief, and none left him deeply hurt or changed. Like most his age, he was rabidly curious about sex and sought it out in the juvenile way of boys who yearn to find what it means for them, rather than thinking of themselves as lovers intent on someone else’s pleasure. He was usually taken on as the pet project of older girls who were feeling their own wings. Nice girls, all of them, but not one moved him to make plans. He wasn’t sure why. Whether out of shyness or idealized romanticism, he didn’t get scrappy with love, and rarely applied any of his mechanical curiosity to the inner workings of women. Some in the know would say this was the inevitable result of his father’s abandonment, impressing love’s cruel nature upon the young Erik Fiskare. Giving your heart only made you more vulnerable to pain. Anyone you loved could and would only hurt you in the end, likely without explanation. It was best you figured out an escape plan from the get-go, and always eject first.
Erik was indeed a guarded boy, struggling to grow into a guarded man. His father had scarred him. He pushed the experience into a far corner of his heart and made every attempt to forget about it. Still, he was young, with his moments of uncontrollable rage, inconsolable despair and forsaken agony.
Young, but not jaded. He was neither cagey, nor unapproachable, but what he gave forth was carefully chosen to give, and what he kept back was off limits. Girls were drawn to his good looks and his sunny nature. They grew quickly frustrated with him because he always seemed slightly aloof, holding back some essential key to the workings of his heart.
Yet Erik Fiskare’s heart was good, and it secretly yearned to be told so. He thought a lot about love, dissected and deconstructed it as a concept to the best of his abilities. And with these dismantled parts he tinkered, constructing dreams of a girl for him. Somewhere out there was a girl who would know him inside-out. A girl who would never leave. Watching a performance of Guys and Dolls, he rather agreed with Sky Masterson—he would leave things to chance and chemistry, and when the girl came along, he would simply know.
Until then, he would wait.
The Girl With The Wrong Name