The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(106)

“Feel better?”

He nodded. His hands and feet were warm and dry, his chest open, his stomach calm. The relief of the terror having passed was indescribable. He breathed in the peace. “Thank you,” he said against her leg.

“Don’t give it a thought. You just rest. Go back to sleep.”

But he wasn’t sleepy. Melanie had laid aside her sheaf of papers and now he picked one up. As he suspected, they were printouts of archived news stories from Lancaster.

“I didn’t want to ask you too many questions so I did my own dirty work,” she said. “Miles said you were there but he didn’t say you were in the f*cking thick of it.”

Erik was skimming the blurbs. Chunks of the past on paper.

Lancaster University remains in lockdown tonight after a shooting incident at the Mallory Theater. Five students and one professor were killed and more than a dozen injured after a student opened fire on the conservatory’s spring dance concert rehearsal.

His hands turned pages. Melanie’s hand stroked his head.

The injured were taken to University Medical Center, except for three who were rushed to Philadelphia Trauma Center. Senior William Kager and junior Margarete Bianco are listed in serious but stable condition.

“Did you know them?” Melanie asked, touching the paragraph.

He nodded, eyebrows wrinkled at the misspelled names. “Will Kaeger was my roommate. And Daisy Bianco was my girlfriend.” The words were ordinary in his mouth. As if he were merely saying the sky was blue.

Melanie picked up his hand then, turned it over. “I see,” she said, tracing his tattoo. “You said daisy in the lounge this afternoon. I didn’t realize it was someone’s name.”

Instinctively he made a fist, as if to hide, then he relaxed his fingers. Relaxed into his history. It was all right. Lancaster was his past. Daisy was his past. This tattoo was part of that past. It could all be ordinary: the sky was blue, he was a Lancaster survivor and Daisy was his ex.

He turned another page. Officials said at that moment Dow, still in the aisle, lowered his weapon and was approached by Erik Fiskare, a junior.

Melanie’s fingernail, painted a deep raisin brown, made circles on the paper. “What an insane thing to do,” she said. “You fool cowboy.”

“I know.”

Fiskare attempted to speak with Dow and sometime during the exchange, Dow turned the gun on himself. Fiskare was unhurt.

“Unhurt, my ass.” Melanie’s hand caressed his head. “You weren’t just there,” she said. “You were a hero.”

Erik closed his eyes, loving her touch.

“‘Fiskare attempted to speak with Dow’,” Melanie read. “My God, baby, you could’ve been killed.”

“Yeah.”

“What in hell could it have been like? I can’t imagine.”

Nestled against her lush body, he told her. Thanks to all the work he had done in therapy, it was easy now to tell it as a concise story. And thanks to the Valium, it was easy to detach.

As he spoke, Melanie lay down, her knees touching his, holding his hands. “Go on.”

When he was done, they both lay still and quiet. Tears from Melanie’s eyes ran down into the smooth, soft pillowcases. She brought the clump of their woven fingers up to her mouth, her breath warm on his knuckles.

“You’re a hero. Why don’t any of these news stories say so?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think much about…”

Her fingertips shushed him. “You stopped him from killing more people. You saved lives.”

He started to automatically dismiss her words. Downplay his role and brush it aside. Then he stopped. Remembering the work he had done with Diane, learning to look at certain things and call them what they were.

Your loved ones were shot.

It was a horrible experience.

He moved closer into the circle of her arms. Let her look at him.

“You’re a hero,” she whispered.



*



Again he was sitting at her kitchen table, now suffused with hunger instead of fear. She had opened a bottle of wine but wouldn’t let him drink any, keeping him on the tea. It was chamomile, which he didn’t care for, but it was good to sit still and let someone fuss over him, deciding what was best. He lounged, chin propped on the heel of his hand, quietly keeping her company.

She was busy with cutting board and knife. She dipped below his field of vision then reappeared with a skillet. The rapid click of the gas burner being ignited, the swish of flame, the skillet went down. She reached over here for a decanter of olive oil, over there for a pat of butter, what she wanted never far from reach. He watched her pull apart a head of garlic and competently smash the cloves one by one, under the flat blade of her knife. The papery skins were tossed in the sink. She brushed her fingers off on the dishtowel tucked through one of her belt loops. Gathering the pale yellow spheres into a pile she began to run her knife through them, quick and crisp, the tip of the blade steady on the board, her wrist rocking the handle in a precise rhythm. Once sliced, she gathered again and began to chop crosswise. Rock and run the blade through, gather the pieces, rock and run again. In the pan, olive oil and butter began to sing.

“Was your girlfriend all right? Did she ever dance again?” she asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”