The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(47)

He didn’t know it was James. Not right away. Someone came out of the wings as Daisy ran to Will. Stage left from the vantage point of the performers but stage right from Erik’s perspective. The lift was a lighting cue, number thirty-four: bring up the mid-shinbusters, intensifying the pink wash onstage. Erik was watching Daisy throw her leg and roll over Will’s back. He slid the levers, timing the cue to the both the choreography and the modulation in the music. In his right peripheral, he saw a third person onstage but he thought it was Trevor King, the assistant stage manager. He guessed Trevor had seen an errant screw or nail on the floor and was getting it out of the way.

Except Trevor King was black.

The guy on the stage was white.

Perhaps Erik would have paid more attention to the discrepancy if Daisy didn’t overshoot the roll and teeter a little precariously on Will’s shoulder. A moment of alarm, but then Will’s hand came up to steady her, holding her left leg. He had her. He always had her. She was good and balanced. Will let go and extended his arm again. Just as the white man who wasn’t Trevor extended his arm.

Erik had never heard live gunfire in his life. When a lick of flame erupted from the man’s sleeve and three punching bangs split the Gershwin melody, Erik continued to sit with his hands on the console. An incalculable length of time passed before he could associate sound and action. Even then his mind refused to grasp it, refused further to put a name with the face.

He heard those three shots clearly and he never forgot their rhythm. Two quick bangs. A pause. A third.

Two shots and Will jerked up, back arched, his left arm flying up into the air with a spray of red. All the weight leaning forward on his leg went straight up into the air as well, the force of his writhing body knocking Daisy off his back. Then James fired a third time and Daisy’s scream cut the theater in two.

Erik stood up, his chair rolling back and away. On the other side of the glass, Kees stood up too, coffee in hand. Marie must have jumped up. David said he and Neil both looked over the top of the set before hitting the floor. In the stage right wing, John pushed Lucky to the ground and threw himself on top of her, pinning her tight as she screamed for Will.

Will’s body imploded, crumpling down on the floor. Daisy crashed down next to him, the pastel tones of her dance clothes now stained red.

Erik only just registered she had been shot when the man with the gun jumped off the stage, firing into the orchestra seats. Three shots to the left, four to the right. Then he started coming up the aisle. Erik watched for incredulous seconds before recognizing the close-cropped hair and the gold earrings. Only then did he dive to the floor of the lighting booth with the full realization.

James.

A cacophony of screams, running footsteps, slamming doors. And more hard, sizzling pops rattling the air. Erik rolled further under the console, kicking cables and equipment aside, pulling himself in. Another series of shots, closer now. Then the windows of the lighting booth exploded. Erik cried out as shards of glass rained down on the console and spilled onto the concrete floor. He wrapped his arms around his head, a bristling ball of fright through which pierced a single thought:

My mother doesn’t know where I am.

A lull then. Near absolute quiet except for the tinkle of falling glass. And a steady whooshing noise Erik gradually recognized as his own breathing. A faint lucidity crept around his brain. He clutched it, fought to put things back in order.

What happened? What just happened? What is happening?

He was on the floor of the lighting booth with broken glass all around him. Glass James shot out. James had a gun. James was in the theater with a gun. He came onstage and fired. He shot Will.

He shot Daisy.

What Erik did next would be held up by some as heroic. He would never understand why. He felt his actions were more suicidal than anything. Daisy was shot. She could be dead. And that pulled Erik out from under the console because if Daisy were dead, his life was over as well. He didn’t go out of the booth to stop James. He went out to see if he was going to die today.

He wasn’t a hero.

He was in love.

He crawled through the broken glass and went out of the booth.

Like a crab, Erik emerged into the aisle, crouched down low to the carpeted floor, up against the side of the booth. The silence roared in his ears. He wasn’t afraid. He breathed a little shakily through his mouth, but he felt oddly calm. A little floaty, even. He looked at the stage. Will was curled up on his side. Daisy was on her back, her arms splayed out.

James was down around the tenth row. The silence shattered as he squeezed off another round. A strange squeal of impact and a chunk of plaster fell from the decorative frieze around the stage. It hit the floor with a thud and a puff of dust and Daisy turned her head toward the sound.

She moved.

She was alive.

Erik felt a pure, relieved joy. Then he was terrified. The raw fear flooded his young body, seizing his limbs and guts, twisting around him like a thick steel cable. Death’s presence loomed over him, tall and terrible. His heart was thudding so hard against the wall of his chest, it had to be audible. And his chest barely had a wall to thud against, it felt wide open, with a cold, electric wind blowing straight through. He was a core of stunned terror.

Daisy was stirring now, pushing up on one elbow, turning her head to one side, then the other.

Don’t move, Erik thought. A fleeting image of her crossed wrists in the small of her back. In his mind he seized them, held them tight, held her down. His body hard on top of hers in the dark, shielding her. Don’t move. Lie down. Stay still.