The Man I Love

by Suanne Laqueur

  Erik looked at him a moment, then opened the lid.

  “I can’t take this,” he said, staring down at the Purple Heart.

  “You can,” Joe said. “I am giving it to you.”

  Erik shook his head, bewildered. “Why?”

  “Because, Erique, this is what you do for the boy who looks a killer in the eye and calls him by name. The boy who crawls through broken glass to get to your daughter. The boy who stares down her wounds and is there when the thunder wakes her up in the night. Technically speaking, a Purple Heart is not the right medal for this situation. But it’s my medal. And I would like you to have it.”

  Erik couldn’t speak.

  “And one other thing,” Joe said. “If you cross paths with your old man someday, and he has nothing good to say to you? You show him your medal. And you tell him Joe Bianco is proud to call you his son.”

  If Joe had smacked him in the chest with a two-by-four, Erik could not have been more felled. “You’re killing me,” he whispered, clutching his decoration.

  “You and me both, mon pote.”

  * * *

  He had come to the Biancos for Thanksgiving. They had all come. Will was free because Canadian Thanksgiving is in October. Lucky waved the Bianco’s invitation at her mother and conveniently forgot to mention her boyfriend’s inclusion. And David came because wherever they went, he followed.

  Now the four of them were plonked down at the long farmhouse table in Francine’s kitchen, making gnocchi. By intense principle, Francine never made turkey on Thanksgiving, a notion which struck Erik, Lucky and David as bizarre. Almost on the verge of treasonous.

  “Turkey is vile,” Francine said. “You wait. I’m going to convert each and every one of you tonight.”

  She and Daisy had prepped one batch of plain gnocchi dough, another with butternut squash, and a third with spinach. Watching Daisy in the kitchen, working side-by-side with Francine, ricing potatoes, kneading dough, laughing, joking, Erik was so happy and so in love, he was practically choking up.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He didn’t know how he’d missed it before, but the shape of Daisy’s physique had completely changed. The training of the summer and fall was evident in her lean muscles and athletic curves. Nothing near Lucky Dare’s hourglass figure, but still, quite a respectable pair of boobs was up high in her tight sweater. And what she did to a pair of jeans, in Erik’s opinion, should have been illegal. She was gorgeous. Moving confidently and competently around the kitchen. Chattering French. And smiling.

  A few weeks ago she was given the all-clear to go back to class. And just before they broke for the holiday, she put her left foot into a pointe shoe and went up on her toes. The pain was there—a sharp bite in her inner thigh, an ache in her calf and shin, and a morbid complaint from her ankle. One way or another, those pains would always be there. But now Daisy was back up on pointe, her leg straight and true. Erik always marked it as the day Daisy’s smile came back.

  She sat down at Francine’s kitchen table, kissed him carelessly, then joined the others in rolling out snakes of gnocchi dough, yellow, orange and green. They cut the snakes crosswise and rolled the knuckles off the tines of forks, dropping them onto floured wax paper. Daisy could make two dozen in a minute. Will soon got the knack. Lucky, David and Erik just made a mosh of their gnocchi, but Francine walked among them like a nursery school teacher, praising, coaching, ruffling heads. Joe poured wine with a lavish hand. Then he sat quietly, rolling perfect, ridged gnocchi off the tines of his fork. Three yellow, three orange, three green. Each one precisely the same size.

  “Erique, darling, tell me,” Francine said. “At boarding school I had a friend who was Swedish, and at Christmastime her mother would always send her these wonderful cookies. They had orange zest in them, and black pepper. I loved them, but I forgot what they are called. Do you know these cookies?”

  Erik was about to shrug apologetically when his memory nudged him in the side and he heard himself say, “Pepparkakor.”

  “Yes,” Francine said, her face lighting up.

  Erik laughed as if he’d sunk a half-court shot at the buzzer. “I totally pulled that out of my ass,” he said. “Pepparkakor. They were the Christmas cookies.”

  Daisy was smiling at him. “Who made them?”

  “My grandmother. She sent them in the mail. She made one batch without pepper for me and my brother, and another with just a little pepper for my mom. Then my dad would get his own little box and they’d have both pepper in them and pepper sprinkled on top. He liked them really hot.”

  “Is she alive?” Francine asked, with wide, hopeful eyes. Mentally she was already tying on an apron and zesting oranges.

  “No, she passed away. I’m not really in touch with my father’s family. It’s all distant cousins. But maybe there’s someone I could ask…”

  Francine touched his wrist. “No, no, darling, don’t go to any trouble. I’m just happy you remembered the name. Pepparkakor,” she said, as if it were a private joke. Then she clapped her hands and surveyed the efforts of her many slaves. “Are we done here? Yes? Let’s eat, then.”

  The gnocchi were thrown into boiling water then divided up into two giant bowls, one tossed with butter and sage, the other with a light tomato sauce. A wooden bowl had an arugula salad, and a platter held a mountain of roasted asparagus. They took plates and served buffet style, then sat at the kitchen table. No candles, no china or silver, no formal place settings. Bread, parmesan cheese and wine bottles went hand to hand, up and down the table. Francine pressed seconds on them. Then thirds. Joe went up an impressive fourth time, sat back down with a tiny portion and ate it in the admiration of his stuffed company.

  “Where do you put it all?” David asked, regarding Joe’s trim physique. “Do you have a third leg or something?”

  Joe smiled conspiratorially at him. “Beaucoup de place dans la bitte.”

  Francine threw her napkin down the length of the table at him, as the boys let out a yell of laughter. Even Erik, who needed no translation.

  “He said there’s room in his cock,” Daisy mumbled to Lucky.

  Lucky threw up her hands. “Cock? How can you even say ‘cock’ at the same table with your parents? How do you even acknowledge your father has a cock?”

  Will choked on his wine and turned away. Francine shrieked with laughter and even Joe, normally so deadpan, had his face in a hand, shoulders quaking.

  Lucky patted Daisy, who was sprawled on her, laughing. “Francine, can I come live here?” she asked. “Please? Just let me come live here and eat, curse, make lewd jokes and screw in peace. Honestly…”

  “I love you,” Daisy said, gasping, running her knuckle along her streaming eyes. “Oh my God, I love you.” She toppled onto Erik now, giggling. “I love everybody so much…”

  Yuletide Carol

  Without fail, the Biancos always cut down their Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving.

  Snow was in the forecast. Already a cold snap had moved in with a nasty wind chill. Daisy decided to bail. Being outdoors on such a day would make her leg miserable. If she weren’t going, Erik didn’t want to either. Francine, with a mysterious expression, said she had errands to run. Everyone else bundled up, piled into Joe’s truck and headed out. The tree farm was by Sadsbury, which meant they’d be driving through the infamous village of Intercourse. David was beside himself and Joe promised to pull over by the signpost so a picture could be taken.

  Daisy went into the kitchen to wash up the lunch dishes. Erik sidled up behind her, slid his arms around her waist, hugging her.

  “You’re such a mush,” she said, rubbing her cheek on his head.

  “I am,” he said. He moved her hair, kissed her neck, hugged her against him again. He was only having a moment, wanting to hold her, but then Daisy started unbuttoning her shirt. She tilted her head, giving him more of her neck, her fingers finishing the last button and parting the lapels. He slid his palms over her soft skin, unhooki
ng her bra. She turned in his arms and they kissed, groaning open-mouthed with their hands everywhere, seizing it.

  She unbuckled and unzipped him, put a hand down his pants. Those strangely disconnected wires came together with a sizzle and he was hard, closed up tight in her fist and wanting. His fingers yanked her jeans open, slid deep and found she was wet, spreading for him, ready.

  They kissed and clutched, writhing in a fevered celebration. It hadn’t been this way in a long time. This was good. Possibly this could be great.

  Holding their clothes together, they ran through the cold to the carriage house. The little rooms were frigid, so they went into the shower and steamed the hell out of the place. Erik’s hands ran in soapy strokes all over Daisy’s body, with its new weight and the hard curves under wet, silken skin. Within the grappling passion they were relaxed, completely turned on, turned further and further into each other. They were themselves again. Finally.

  Erik picked her up, pressed her up against the tiles, her butt resting on the soap ledge and her toes braced on the other wall. He pinned her high so he could lick her breasts. He moved in her. Out of her. Water and desire crashing on his skin. Perfect.

  “Oh God, that’s good,” Daisy said. A little hitch in her voice as he thrust deeper. She held his wet head, turned his face this way and that as she kissed him. She touched his mouth and he sucked on her fingertips.

  “You’re so tight,” he whispered.

  “It’s so good.” The air was falling out of her voice. She was going somewhere. He could feel it. Her eyes were filled with green.

  “Come,” he said against her mouth. “I want to see you come.”

  “I feel you,” she whispered. “I can feel you again.”

  He was pure grace. A master of her body again. It was like throwing a line out, feeling the hook catch the edge of her climax and reeling it in. Poised on the lip of his own desire, he pushed further into her as he slowly wound the line tighter. Listening for it, feeling for it, waiting for her edge to touch his. It was almost there. Just right there.

  “Erik…”

  “Come, Dais. Come to me.”

  Through her mouth like a distant wind blew the sweet sound of no sound. Usually Erik jumped, following it. Now he just let their joined edges crumble away from his feet, let himself dissolve and come with an exquisite slowness. Hard and loud he moaned into her neck as she clung to his shoulders, riding out the tremors.

  “Jesus,” he said between the aftershocks.

  Her fingers dug deep in his wet hair and she kissed him, laughing deep in her throat. “Now that was us.”

  “Totally us.” His arms were spent and he set her down. She took the bar of soap and started working a lather over his body, her hands warm and slippery along his chest and stomach and limbs. He soaped her, then, and they wound arms around each other, sliding and kissing, sending tiny iridescent bubbles through the damp air.

  “Now I don’t feel bad missing the trip to Intercourse,” Erik said as they dried off. Daisy laughed and popped him with the towel.

  Sleepy and sated, they peeled open the covers of their bed and slid in. They lay on their sides, Daisy up against Erik’s back, her hand on his chest.

  “Oh, look,” she said. Outside the window, it had started to snow, little icy flakes like glitter, not yet sticking.

  Perfect peace. No anxiety. Not a wolf in sight. Pressed tight between Daisy’s body and the palm of her hand, Erik felt his bones melt away. A sweet sleep, sweeter than he’d known in months, began to creep over the crown of his head. It laid soothing fingers on his eyes, wove a gorgeous warmth through his muscles.

  This, was his last wakeful thought. This moment. Right here.

  Right now.

  This is my life.

  * * *

  They napped a long time. Everyone zonked out in the snowy afternoon, and eventually wandered back into the kitchen for another laughing, boozy dinner.

  “Can’t we just stay here,” Lucky said yet again. She sighed happily, tucked in Will’s arms and peeling one of the little clementine oranges from a bowl on the table. His chin rested on her shoulder as he ate the sections she fed him.

  “I’m in,” David said. “Screw the theater, I’ll raise chickens.”

  They joked around, elaborating the fantasy, but Erik felt serious about it. Still high from sex and refreshed by good sleep, he was firmly under the spell of this wonderful house. He was shaping a dream, a sweet vista unfolding before him. A house like this, a kitchen like this, dinners like this with friends like these. A lifetime of fuck-the-turkey Thanksgivings.

  With Daisy.

  After dinner they set up the tree. Will built a fire and Joe put on Christmas music. He had an ironclad rule forbidding any holiday songs produced after 1959. The living room filled up with the scent of pine and all the vintage, old school standards. Daisy sang and smiled as she passed ornaments up to Erik on the ladder. When Nat King Cole came on, David serenaded them with his version of the Christmas Song:

  Roast nuts chesting on an open fire.

  Nipfrost jacking off your nose.

  Yuletide Carol getting laid by the choir…

  The smell of baking began to waft as well. “You remember the errand I ran today?” Francine said. With a flourish, she brought a book out from behind her back and showed the title to Erik—Lights of the North: Swedish Christmas Traditions.

  “Does it have pepparkakor?” he asked, flipping the pages.

  It did, and they were in the oven. Before anyone else was allowed, Francine and Erik tasted them carefully.

  “Yes,” Francine said.

  “I remember these,” Erik said. “Wait. Something else. You’re supposed to break them. Everybody take one, don’t eat it yet.”

  He remembered. You held the cookie in the palm of your hand, made a wish and pressed down on the center. “If it breaks in three pieces,” he said, “your wish will come true.”

  “What if it doesn’t break in three?” David asked.

  “You still have cookies.” Erik looked around the room at his circle of loved ones, then down at the treat in his palm. Happiness pulled his chest apart. He threw it onto his growing vision of the future. How every Christmas, Francine Bianco would make pepparkakor for him, a tin of rounds flecked with citrus and heat, golden and crisp with memory.

  This, he wished, and pressed his finger onto the cookie, which broke cleanly into three pieces. Daisy moved by his side, eyes shining as she held up her hand and showed him her own triumphant thirds.

  Later he lay in bed, Daisy’s head pillowed on his heart, his hand resting on her cheek. They had made love again and it was gorgeous. Sweet and spicy like the cookie flavors lingering in their mouths. The night was gentle around their spent bodies. And Erik whispered, “Do you ever think about marrying me?”

  The curve of Daisy’s smile filled his palm. “If I marry anyone, it’ll be you,” she said.

  He scooped up a handful of her hair and held it to his face. He smiled into its damp softness, his tongue tingling with orange zest and pepper and Daisy.

  No Heroics

  “I want to dance ‘The Man I Love’ again,” Daisy said.

  Erik was startled, thinking it was the last thing she’d want. “Why?”

  A ripple of defiance along Daisy’s jaw and her eyes flared. “Because fuck him. That’s why.”

  It was early January, the beginning of another semester. The two couples were at Jay Street, having pizza and discussing the advent of the spring dance concert.

  Will stopped chewing, looking at Daisy. Then he slowly swallowed his food, nodding his head. “Three months,” he said. “We have three months.”

  “You’re physically ready?” Erik asked.

  Daisy nodded. “I can do it.”

  Lucky was only picking at her dinner. She didn’t seem to be feeling well. “Are you mentally ready?” she asked.

  “I am.” Daisy looked at Will. “I need to dance it. Otherwise, it’s…”

&nbs
p; Will put his hand on her head. “I’m in,” he said. “I want this. And you’re right. Fuck him.”

  “What does Kees say?” Erik asked.

  “He’s on board with the idea,” Daisy said. “But he has to get permission from the trust.”

  Who Cares? was copyrighted and could not be performed anywhere without express permission of the Balanchine Trust. Marie Del’Amici had gone to great lengths to secure permission last year. All Kees could do was ask again.

  “We got it,” Daisy told Erik a few days later, coming down to the basement set shops to jump in his arms. “The trust will let us do it. Kees had a meeting with Michael Kantz and it’s final, we’ll dance it.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “For me? No. It’s enough. No heroics, just the one pas de deux with Will.”

  “Well, I call it pretty heroic,” Erik said.

  He was busy with his own project: an art student wanted to present his senior portfolio in the Black Box Theater, making an interactive, multi-medium experience of art, poetry, music and light. Erik was commissioned as lead designer. It felt good to be immersed in the creative process, getting his hands dirty, getting his mind dirty, helping someone build a dream.

  Class. Rehearsals. He worked, and Daisy worked. They came home at night to Jay Street where the two couples were living all the time. David came over almost every evening. John Quillis was a regular visitor. They took care of each other.

  “Lucky’s pregnant,” Daisy whispered in bed, one night toward the end of January.

  “I know, Will told me. Said the condom broke over Thanksgiving.”

  “Lucky doesn’t want to have it.”

  “And Will does.”

  “It’s the exact opposite of what I expected. I thought she’d be the one to…”

  “So did I.”

  She sighed, moved closer up against Erik’s back. Her fingers played with the charms on his necklace. “I guess it’s one of those things where you think you’ll feel one way, and then it happens, and it’s all different.”