The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(13)

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.

“Don’t stop,” Daisy murmured, bent over her work.

“No, I got it now, I got it.” He went back to the beginning and played it straight through with only a couple clunkers.

“Nice,” she said, as he made the last notes of the arpeggio die away. Her sewing done, she was wiggling one foot into her shoe then wrapping the ribbons around her ankle, her hands deft and sure. “Play another.” Something about her quiet composure gave him confidence. If she had been gushing praise and batting her eyes at him, he would’ve known she was full of shit, and he would have stopped.

He shuffled the sheet music around and picked through a couple Mozart minuets, then movements of the Beethoven sonatas he’d learned years ago. He found a groove, and began to enjoy it. Daisy warmed up, first stretching on the floor, then getting up and using the piano as a barre. Realizing she was timing her movements to his playing, he slowed down or sped up, following her, trying to keep a steady tempo. She smiled at him, her face growing pinker, a fine mist of sweat across her throat and chest.

“All right,” he said, flattening the spine of the Bach book with his fist. “Here’s the real test. Prelude in F Minor.”

“My prelude, really?”

“Don’t get too excited. F minor is…four flats, Jesus.” He tried a few measures and then abruptly bailed, making a mosh on the keys with his fists.

“You’re doing fine,” Daisy said. “Keep going.”

“No, forget it.” He went back to the Prelude in C, now the old friend. Daisy stretched, holding onto the piano, the other hand holding her long leg straight to twelve o’clock high. With difficulty Erik kept his eyes on the music.

“Who else is musical in your family,” she asked, breathing into the stretch.

“My mom played most of her life,” he said. “And she used to give lessons in our house. She’d put me in the playpen next to the piano, and then my brother, too.”

“How old is your brother?”

“Sixteen. He’s deaf. I mean, he’s a lot of things but, incidentally, he’s deaf.”

“Was he born deaf?” She was holding her extended leg behind her now, slowly inclining forward.