“I don’t know.” He had no answers. He could not help her, could not save her from the wolves plucking her apart, petal by petal.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. They clung to each other, shaking it out, trying to beat it back with jokes.
“Gotta love the afterglow.”
“Most people have a cigarette. We have a panic attack.”
They were both free-falling, gripped with a terrible foreboding they could not explain. Shivering, freezing cold, pulling their clothes on and seizing extra blankets.
“Let me spoon you,” she whispered.
“Please.”
She pressed up against his back, knees behind his, her hand flat against his knocking heart. Laying this way, with Erik sandwiched between her hand and her body, pressure from both sides, seemed to be the only calming remedy.
“At least we’re both feeling it,” he said.
“We’re in it together.”
“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have a nervous breakdown with than you.”
“Oh, honey. You say the sweetest things to me.”
“I’m trying to be funny about it. I don’t know else what to do.”
“I love you. We’ll get through it.”
“I love you.”
“We just have to get each other through it and…fuck sex.”
He laughed. “Fuck sex.”
“Fuck this.”
“Fuck this fucking fucked-up world. Jesus Christ, what the fuck.”
“I love you. You’re fucked-up and I love you.”
“I love your fucked-upness.”
They were trying so hard but they were so young. Unskilled and powerless at three o’clock in the morning when they ought to be consumed with each other. Instead they were being eaten alive.
Pepparkakor
Erik wondered how many important conversations had taken place while he was either up a ladder or holding one.
He was holding one now for Joe Bianco, who was replacing a section of Christmas lights on the porch of La Tarasque.
“You having nightmares?” Joe asked.
“Sometimes.”
“How often?”
“Few times a week,” Erik said.
Joe grunted, yanking at the strand of lights which was caught on a nail. “Every night for me when I came home from Vietnam.”
Erik pictured a younger version of Joe, maybe longer hair and a moustache. Bolting out of bed, gasping and sweating, waking up from the war.
“For how long?”
“How long every night? Years. The bad dreams. Jumping at loud noises. Always looking for danger. Years, it took.”
Still holding the ladder, a foot on the first rung, Erik looked out over the property, at the last light of day turning the horizon pink and orange. The leaves were dead on the Japanese maples. Francine’s gardens were neatly wrapped up for the coming winter. Shrubs encased in burlap, the mulch piled high. Wood smoke hovered on the air.
“Was it different dreams?” he asked. “Or just the same one over and over?”
“A handful of different ones.”
“And you still have them?”
“Sometimes. Some things still have an effect. The sound of a helicopter. Not something I hear often but if I do, it makes me nervous. And thunder. I still hate thunder. Catch.”
Erik caught the string of dead lights and handed up the new one, then the hammer, which Joe hooked through a belt loop. “For me it’s always the same dream. Just the one.”
“What about Daisy?” Joe’s accent always seemed stronger when he was speaking names. Daisy’s name, especially, which softened and slurred into Dézi.
“What about her?”
“Is she having nightmares?” He glanced down at Erik and raised an eyebrow. “I never pretended you weren’t sleeping with her. You want me to start now?”