The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(78)
Will and Daisy reached center stage. She turned on her toes, bourréeing backwards, still with the choreography, but the music was lost.
“Oh boy.” He could hear David exclaiming low in his ear. “Holy shit. Holy shit. I don’t believe this.”
Daisy kept moving, her feet lightly gathering up the inches of the stage floor, her arms liquid patterns. She turned under Will’s arm, his other twining around her waist and she fell back, languid, melting, her eyes never leaving his. Will caught her, but clumsily, he was breaking down, breaking out of the dance, his face crumpling. Instead of bringing Daisy up into the next phrase, he brought her up and crushed her to his chest. She came off pointe, stood in her flat, pedestrian feet. Her shoulders were heaving, shaking and she buried her face into Will’s shirt. The intensity of the applause rose up another level. People were yelling now, as if at a rock concert.
Erik’s hands closed up his mouth and nose as the enormity of it dropped onto his shoulders.
Kees put an arm around him. “Good Lord, I haven’t seen an ovation like this since I watched Cynthia Gregory in Swan Lake. And that was after the show, not before.” His other arm joined the first, hugging tight as Erik cried into the steeple of his fingers.
Neil Martinez, stationed stage left, called over his headset. “Dave, what do we do?”
“Kill the music. Just run it back to the start. Stand by, everyone, stand by, let’s just let this pan out.”
Erik didn’t think it could possibly last any longer, yet on and on it went. Will was whispering to Daisy, coaxing her head up off his shoulder, and finally he got her to turn around. They stood there then, clasped in each other’s arms, stood and faced it, accepted the moment as rightfully theirs. Will was shaking his head over and over, laughing, wiping his eyes. Daisy’s face had bloomed with her full, bright beautiful smile.
Erik leaned and put one hand flat on the glass of the booth, palm to the stage. He usually did this at curtain call, but tonight everything was out of order, upside-down and unbelievable. Daisy wormed one of her arms free from Will’s embrace. She touched her fingers to her mouth and turned her palm out back to Erik.
He thought his heart was going to explode. He needed no other high. This was enough.
This is my life.
A whole minute went by before David spoke again. “Erik, can you hear me?”
Erik ignored the tissue Kees held out and roughly wiped his wet face on his upper arm as he sat down. “Yeah, I can hear you.”
“Start taking the stage lights down. Leave the cyc lit.”
“Lights going down.”
As the stage dimmed, Will and Daisy retreated into silhouette, disappearing through the upstage wing. The applause petered out as the audience sat.
“One day you’ll tell your grandchildren about this moment,” Kees said.
David waited another fifteen seconds of murmured shuffling and blown noses, and then gave the cue. “Sound up.”
And they began again.
Torqued and Shadowy
Daisy could barely get out of bed after the concert.
No more driving force toward a goal, nothing to work for or look forward to. She had relentlessly pursued recovery, then rehearsal and finally performance. The curtain was down and the theater of her heart sat empty. She went around empty-eyed and depressed, wandering lost in the vast, dark cavern of her dreams. The light came back into her face when she was on cocaine, but only for interludes growing more and more fleeting and requiring more and more juice.
David brought new offerings for the coffee table altar at Jay Street. As if bestowing communion, he laid ecstasy pills in each of their palms. They locked eyes and swallowed. In a few minutes, Erik felt as though he were swimming in caramel. Everything was wonderful. He and Daisy practically floated upstairs. Her eyes filled with green swirls, her smile wide open, giggling and carefree. They kissed with laughing tongues and lips, deep in one another’s mouths. He dug his fingers into her hair, clenching his fingers through it, pulling tight then releasing.
“Do that again,” she murmured in his kiss.
He pulled on her hair, sucking gently on her tongue. She moaned in her chest. “Harder.”
All he did was kiss her and clasp the lengths of her hair hard in his fists and pull. She straddled his thigh, grinding down. He dragged her until the pain revealed itself in her liquid eyes and she came against his leg. It was gorgeous. She came like a goddess. Wild and terrible. He let go and was mesmerized by the strands wafting free. Later he was slightly disturbed. But only slightly. The intensity of Daisy’s orgasm overcame revulsion, filled his veins with a sick need to do it again.
And do it harder.
From there it spiraled out of control. With no more sweetness to be found in their sex, they delved instead into a vein of bitter gratification. They unplugged the Christmas lights and drew the curtains, pinning the edges so not a chink of light penetrated. A rolled up towel along the bottom of the door and the room went pitch black. The infinite cavern of Daisy’s nightmares. A thick, tangible darkness where they went at each other, scratching and clawing, balanced on the edge between enjoyable discomfort and outright violence. Distilling the pleasure out of pain. It felt good to hurt. It was normal to hurt. Joy was fleeting and treacherous but pain was dependable. It sucked, but you could trust it to suck.
In the dark Daisy yanked Erik’s head back and kissed him hard enough to draw blood. It should have repelled him. Instead, as soon as he tasted it, he was like a shark tracking wounded prey. He took her down to the floor and he was on her, high and crazed, torqued and shadowy. He pinned her fast and took her hard. His teeth on her bones, blood in his mouth, his weight holding her down in the endless dark.