“What are you doing walking around barefoot? Marie will kill you.”
Erik glanced down. Her tights were rolled up and her feet were indeed bare, every single toe encased neatly in what looked like surgical tape. Guiltily, she hooked one foot behind the other calf. Her legs were thin, but lusciously curved, a strong saber of quadriceps in front, and a smaller arc of hamstring opposite, both lines disappearing up under the hem of her sweatshirt. Erik swallowed and looked away, looked up at her face. Too late he remembered David’s warning.
Jesus.
Her eyes were astonishing. No other word sufficed. A blue he had never seen in eyes before. A blue iris shot through with green and rimmed with an even darker blue. Her lashes were a black fringe, her eyebrows two chiseled bows. Eyes like those were impossible, they just didn’t happen in real life. But there they were. There she was. She was looking at him. As if she knew him.
“This is Daisy Bianco,” David said. “Rising star and bringer of sustenance. Dais, this is Erik. He’s running your follow spot so be nice to him.”
Daisy looked at David, then took the bag and the soda from his hands and handed them to Erik.
“Shit,” David said.
Clutching his prize, Erik felt his face widen. She smiled back at him. Neither of them had said so much as hello yet she was looking at him with those eyes. Deep in the cathedral of his young being, Erik felt a bell toll, a peal of recognition. And for the rest of his life, he would swear, he would swear to anyone who asked, although nothing was said aloud, he heard Daisy Bianco speak to him. She said it with her eyes, he heard it clearly in his head, and it wasn’t hello.
It was, “Well, here you are.”
Here I am, he thought.
Her expression grew expansive. The green in her eyes deepened.
David cleared his throat. “Go put some shoes on, honey. Nails are all over the damn place.”
“See ya,” she said, looking at Erik. Her voice was soft, a secret meant only for his ears.
“Bye.” His mouth formed the word with barely a sound. It rose like a shimmering bubble and followed Daisy out the door.
Pointedly David retrieved his lunch. Erik surrendered it, and through the glass of the lighting booth he watched Daisy walk back down the aisle of the auditorium. Sat and watched her as the atoms in his body slowly rearranged themselves.
The Modern Neanderthal
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”
The glass of the lighting booth was no match for the vocal power of Michael Kantz. Straight through it came, clear and resonant.
“He’s got some set of pipes,” Erik said.
“Double degree dance and voice,” David said around a mouthful of sandwich.
“With the usual opening festivities concluded,” Michael said, “let’s get this show on the road.”
“Foul,” someone yelled, at the same time the bald-headed Cornelis Justi stood up and bellowed, “Illegal.”
Erik looked at David, eyebrows wrinkled.
David chewed and swallowed. “I told you,” he said. “It’s a concert, not a show.”
The theater had erupted in hoots and catcalls, shouts of “Dollar, that’s a dollar…”
“I didn’t realize they were so touchy about it,” Erik said.
“You learn to carry a lot of singles during Tech Week.”
Michael tucked his clipboard under his arm and reached for his wallet, extricating a dollar. He waved it about until one of the dancers plucked it from his fingers.
“Buy yourself a Snickers. All right, all right, indentured servants to the stage, please, let’s get this concert on the road.”