The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(4)
Erik smiled. “I’d be in the wrong business, wouldn’t I?”
The noise level in the theater was rising as more and more dancers arrived. Erik hadn’t encountered them much within Mallory, for the studios were all on the third floor while the tech theater students roamed like rats in the building’s basement. Bumping occasional shoulders in the student lounge had been the extent of his contact with the dance students. Pensively he watched the full gathered company. They stretched in the aisles, limbered up at the edge of the stage or hanging on the grand piano. Girls in leotards, long-legged and sleek, their hair pulled up revealing slender necks and sculpted shoulders. The boys were just as sleek, some prettier than the girls, loud and flamboyant, indiscriminately touchy-feely.
Coming from an insular small town in upstate New York, Erik had little to no contact with gay men. Even with all his involvement in the drama club productions, he found his classmates’ sexual orientations remained veiled and vague. Nobody discussed it openly. There were hints, allusions and implications. Looks askance, rolled eyes, muttered jeers out of sheer self-protection. Being gay was an accusation, not a lifestyle, and Erik didn’t know anyone who was definitively out.
Here, half the male student body of the conservatory was out. Not just out but confidently out and accepted. Erik was still getting used to it. It evoked in him a confusing blend of fascination and defensiveness, which he approached the way he would anything unfamiliar: he hung back and observed until he could figure out how to take it apart and put it back together in some way that made sense.
“How long is this show?”
“Concert,” David said. “It’s a concert. They’ll fine you a dollar if you call it a show or a recital.”
“Concert,” Erik said, pretending to write it on the palm of his hand.
“It’s two acts. First act is for the ballet company, second for the contemporary dance theater. Some dancers have a foot in both camps. You’ll see them here all day.” David swiveled in his chair, looking out at the activity in the theater. “All right, a few faces you should know. Guy standing on the apron with Leo is Michael Kantz, the director of the whole department. He’s God. Woman in the long purple sweater, standing in that group over there—Marie Del'Amici. She heads the ballet division. She’s from Milan, you can barely understand a word she says but she’s a ton of fun. Then see the tall, black guy with the bald head? That’s Cornelis Justi, he runs the contemporary dance division. He’s from Amsterdam. And he’s crazy…”
Erik’s eyes had been flicking around the auditorium, following David’s brisk narrative, recording names and quick impressions on mental index cards. But then a wind was blowing through his mind, scattering the cards, drowning out David’s patter. A girl in black tights and a navy Lancaster hoodie, the neck cut into a deep V, was coming up the aisle. Her hair was pulled up loosely, a couple of thin, spiral curls dangled across one eye. She carried a paper bag in one hand and a Coke in the other.
“Who is that,” Erik said.
David looked. “That’s Daisy.”
Daisy, Erik thought. Seriously? A daisy was a sunny little flower. A girl named Daisy should be pert and blonde, shades of yellow and white and pink. A girl named Daisy was a cheerleader, athletic and peppy. Daisy was the screwed-up chick in The Great Gatsby. Daisy was a stupid cartoon duck, for crying out loud.
The girl coming up the aisle, however, was none of those things. She was dark-haired and exuded a cool sexiness, moving along with the lithe grace of a cat. Waving to the left. Smiling at someone to the right. Nothing was sunny or pert about her errant curls, her dangling earrings or dark lipstick. This was not a screwed-up cartoon. Whoever this girl was, she was coming up the aisle and coming, it seemed, right toward the lighting booth.
“She your girlfriend?” Erik asked, dry-mouthed.
“I wish,” David said. “Took her on a couple dates but—” He threw out an arm, palm flat to Erik. “—she gave me the Heisman. If I’m nice she brings me lunch sometimes.” He got up from his chair and patted Erik on the shoulder. “Try not to look her in the eye. We got a lot of work to do today. Yo, baby, what’s up?”
Erik spun in his own chair, too far and banged his elbow against the console. The girl with the wrong name was in the door of the booth. He should get up. He couldn’t move. She had come in and was standing by him. He smelled her skin, a light, clean candied scent, like sugared soap. If you tasted her she would be sweet.
He abruptly spun his chair the other way, as if trying to reverse something, direction, polarity. Now his mouth was watering, imagining the sweetness of this girl so vividly, he felt his face flare with heated blood.
Daisy was handing the bag and soda over to David. “They didn’t have the chicken parm. I got you a meatball sub.”
“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.