The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(67)

“He will never get up from the place where he lies.”

“My enemy does not triumph over me. Fuck the f*cking f*ckers. Come on, Fish, we’re going in there. You’re lying down right in the aisle where it happened, and then you’re getting up again.”

“Raise me up,” Erik said, a little stronger now, caught up in the call to arms. “Raise me up, that I may repay them…”

“We’re going in.” David yanked the theater doors with both hands, threw them open wide, and they went in.

Erik sat in the aisle by row M, his back against the seat sides.

“Here?” David asked.

“Here.”

“And he was where? Like this?” David stood a little in front of Erik but Erik waved him off.

“Don’t. Don’t be him. Just…let me do this.”

David moved out of sight. Erik closed his eyes. Opened them again.

His hand went into his pocket.

He was still carrying the penny around. And every time he tried to analyze why, it was as if a garage door came down in his mind. It was easier not to think about it.

“You all right?” David crouched by him.

“I have dreams,” Erik said. “I’m sitting right here and he shoots me. Then he goes back onstage and shoots Will and Daisy. Shoots to kill. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You tried, Fish,” David said, a comforting hand on Erik’s shoulder. “It was a crazy thing to do but if anyone could have done it…”

Erik put his head down. Tears wet the knees of his jeans. David pulled him close. “It’s all right. You got him to stop. You did.”

“I didn’t mean for him to…”

“Nobody did. Nobody knew this would happen. Nobody imagined it.”

Wiping his face on the back of his hand, Erik looked around. He looked good and hard at the bloodstains. It was them or him now. He’d either get up and face it, or sit here forever.

He got up and went down the aisle, hopped on the apron of the stage. David followed and stood center, hands on hips, looking stage left.

Erik walked past him, through the black curtains of the wings. He looked down at the floor. Bloodstains here, too, but something else. A block of graffiti, roughly forming the outline of a human body. He crouched down, peering at the multi-colored words. Signatures. Messages.

RIP Trevor.

Love you, my brother. Be with God.

Trevor, angel, I miss you so much.

Trevor King, forever in our hearts.

“Trev died here,” Erik said.

The scuff of David’s work boots as he came over. “Right there, yeah. The police outlined him in tape, just like you see in the movies. People came back and filled it in.”

Erik stood up and walked further backstage. He found four more graffiti-filled outlines. Aisha. Manuel. Taylor. And Allison Pierce.

He patted his pockets. “I need a pen,” he said. “A Sharpie or something.”

“I’ll get one.”

Erik sat cross-legged by Allison’s outline, his fingers resting lightly on what would have been her shoulder. David brought him a marker. Erik laid on his stomach and found a few inches of space. “Okey-dokey, girl,” he wrote. And couldn’t think of anything else. He felt lame and useless. He signed beneath the words, then went around signing the four others.

David was back in the middle of the stage. Erik joined him. They got down low, practically put their faces on the floor, mapping the bloodstains. Here, from Will’s wounds. And over here, from Daisy’s.

“So much of it,” Erik said. “Jesus, it’s even more than I remembered.”

“This is my nightmare,” David said. “Right here. Down in the blood. Holding Daisy’s head. It’s f*cking horrid. The reality is burned on my eyelids anyway. I don’t need to dream about it.”

“I know,” Erik said, putting his arm around David’s shoulders.

“Fuck the f*cking f*ckers.”

“My enemy does not triumph over me.”

“We own this place.”

Together they stared down the blood on the stage floor.

The blood blinked first.

They shrugged, young and dismissive, full of resilient bravado. They spit their contempt for fate, rubbed it into the stage floor with their steel-toed boots, and got to work rebuilding their theater.





The Mirror Tells the Truth


Their landlord was taking the summer to give Colby Street a much-needed paint job and tend to some other maintenance issues. So Erik and David took a dorm room on campus, sharing digs with the students attending the conservatory’s summer programs. On weekends, they headed out to Bird-in-Hand. There they bunked in the Biancos’ carriage house, which had been converted into a little guest apartment. It was a sweet, homey space overlooking Francine’s rose gardens, with two bedrooms, a shared bath, galley kitchen and living room. David took one bedroom. Erik took the other and Daisy came in with him.

Erik was impressed at how openly the sleeping arrangements were made. The Biancos were astonishingly hip to their daughter’s relationship. No coy pretenses or raised eyebrows when Daisy moved her things over to the carriage house. When it was time to say goodnight, they simply said, “Goodnight, sleep well.” In the morning, they said, “Good morning, sleep well?”