The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(5)

Her eyes were astonishing. No other word sufficed. A blue he had never seen in eyes before. A blue iris shot through with green and rimmed with an even darker blue. Her lashes were a black fringe, her eyebrows two chiseled bows. Eyes like those were impossible, they just didn’t happen in real life. But there they were. There she was. She was looking at him. As if she knew him.

“This is Daisy Bianco,” David said. “Rising star and bringer of sustenance. Dais, this is Erik. He’s running your follow spot so be nice to him.”

Daisy looked at David, then took the bag and the soda from his hands and handed them to Erik.

“Shit,” David said.

Clutching his prize, Erik felt his face widen. She smiled back at him. Neither of them had said so much as hello yet she was looking at him with those eyes. Deep in the cathedral of his young being, Erik felt a bell toll, a peal of recognition. And for the rest of his life, he would swear, he would swear to anyone who asked, although nothing was said aloud, he heard Daisy Bianco speak to him. She said it with her eyes, he heard it clearly in his head, and it wasn’t hello.

It was, “Well, here you are.”

Here I am, he thought.

Her expression grew expansive. The green in her eyes deepened.

David cleared his throat. “Go put some shoes on, honey. Nails are all over the damn place.”

“See ya,” she said, looking at Erik. Her voice was soft, a secret meant only for his ears.

“Bye.” His mouth formed the word with barely a sound. It rose like a shimmering bubble and followed Daisy out the door.

Pointedly David retrieved his lunch. Erik surrendered it, and through the glass of the lighting booth he watched Daisy walk back down the aisle of the auditorium. Sat and watched her as the atoms in his body slowly rearranged themselves.





The Modern Neanderthal


“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

The glass of the lighting booth was no match for the vocal power of Michael Kantz. Straight through it came, clear and resonant.

“He’s got some set of pipes,” Erik said.

“Double degree dance and voice,” David said around a mouthful of sandwich.

“With the usual opening festivities concluded,” Michael said, “let’s get this show on the road.”

“Foul,” someone yelled, at the same time the bald-headed Cornelis Justi stood up and bellowed, “Illegal.”

Erik looked at David, eyebrows wrinkled.

David chewed and swallowed. “I told you,” he said. “It’s a concert, not a show.”

The theater had erupted in hoots and catcalls, shouts of “Dollar, that’s a dollar…”

“I didn’t realize they were so touchy about it,” Erik said.

“You learn to carry a lot of singles during Tech Week.”

Michael tucked his clipboard under his arm and reached for his wallet, extricating a dollar. He waved it about until one of the dancers plucked it from his fingers.

“Buy yourself a Snickers. All right, all right, indentured servants to the stage, please, let’s get this concert on the road.”

His voice was laced with humor and courtesy, yet it demanded instant action, and the dancers promptly took themselves to the stage, shedding sweaters and sweatshirts and other extra layers of clothes. When finally gathered, thirty or so strong, they were silent, standing in tableau, straight, proud, attentive. Erik crammed his eyes with girls—he had never seen so many great bodies in one place in his life.

David bundled up the rest of his sub and stuffed it back into the paper bag. “Come on,” he said, belching behind a fist.

Erik followed David down the aisle and slipped into the center fifth row, sitting down behind Leo Graham. In the row ahead of Leo were Cornelis Justi, the contemporary dance director, and Marie Del'Amici, the ballet director.

“What do we do?” Erik said to his new mentor.

“Listen, observe, take notes,” David said. He had taken two clipboards from the lighting booth and now passed one to Erik. “Write down whatever Leo tells you to, or if you hear him mutter something under his breath. If you have impressions of your own, jot those down. Michael wants everyone included in the design aspects. You’ll see.”

“Hello everyone, I’m Michael.”

The dancers sang back in unison. “Hi, Michael.”

Michael turned back to his crew with a closed-mouth grin. “Aren’t they adorable? All right, my children, we have a week to turn water into wine.”

“First step is admitting we have a problem,” Cornelis said.

“For the benefit of our esteemed tech director, Sir Leo von Graham—” Wild applause from the dancers. Leo raised a fist to the ceiling. “—and his accolades, we’ll go through the program as we understand it to be.”

Erik twirled his pencil and scanned the cluster of dancers on the stage, looking for Daisy. It took a minute, but finally he found her, stage left. She had pinned back those stray curls and donned a blue headband around her hairline. Her earrings were off, as was the sweatshirt. In a purple leotard with the black tights pulled over, she stood with her arms crossed, one foot poised up on the hard block of her shoe. Erik knew ballerinas danced on their toes, but he’d never seen it in action. He leaned forward a little in his seat, squinting at the footwear and wondering how it was made.