keener because they were starting to find their groove again. Sighing like a small thunderstorm, she slid out of bed. Erik let his hand run down her arm, holding onto her fingers and staying suspended in mid-air as she headed for the bathroom. His throat grew warm when she stopped to look back over her shoulder and extend her own hand.
“Is this real?” she asked, fingers reaching.
“It’s real,” he said. He curled his fist around the air and let it drop onto the blankets.
After the jingle bells on the front door rattled to stillness, he fell back asleep and dreamed he was busily sandpapering his forehead because he needed to repaint himself in different colors. He woke up to Bastet, Daisy’s cat, licking his face. He grimaced under her rough tongue and gently pushed her away. “Morning.”
Undeterred, she nudged her silver brow against him, purring. Daisy had declared the cat a standoffish bitch, but the bitch seemed to like Erik. Which he appreciated.
He got up and made some tea, moving easily around the kitchen now and finding things on the first try. Bastet perched on the counter and watched, still purring, her tail wrapped primly around her feet. He poured her a little milk into a saucer then took his mug into the living room, looking around the furnishings and fixtures with increasing familiarity.
Daisy bought a house, he marveled to himself. She had him beat—he and his wife were still renting when they separated. He couldn’t swing the rent on just his salary and it was too much square footage for a single man anyway. And too depressing. He moved back into one-bedroom digs in the business district of Brockport and spent as little time as possible there. He only unpacked a quarter of the boxes. Just the essentials. All along, it seemed something was telling him he was in a holding pattern, and he wasn’t to commit to a living space until certain decisions were made.
And a phone call placed.
He built up the fire. Straightened the couch pillows which were still lopsided and crunched from last night’s lovemaking. The memory of cries and moans echoing in his ears, he folded the two wool throw blankets and laid them across the chairs in front of the hearth. One was upholstered in rust chenille (“Edith,” Daisy called it) and the other a handsome brown leather (“Archie.”)
Daisy liked to name her world. Her car, her favorite cast-iron skillet, the washing machine. A child of European parents, she grew up in houses with names. This one was called Barbegazi, after legendary Swiss gnomes beloved to the previous owner. Erik rolled the word around his tongue like a piece of candy as he wandered the first floor, looking at and gently touching Daisy’s things. Books and music and pictures. An upright piano the previous owners had left behind. Erik sat and played a little, then got up and smelled the blossoms on the Meyer lemon tree, which, oddly, didn’t have a name. (“It hasn’t told me yet,” Daisy said.)
He put on jacket, hat and gloves and went outside. It was an unnecessary inspection—she had been taking care of herself for years, still he felt the need to take a good look at the place and make sure she was safe. He walked the property and could find no fault. The house and its two outbuildings—a detached garage and a small shed—were solid, sound and shipshape. The gardens were rock hard and barren, filled with dead branches and clumps of decaying, toppled-over foliage. But he could imagine them in their spring and summer glory. He crunched over the frosty grass to the long dock at the edge of the frozen lake and stood staring for a long time.
Inside, he made more tea. Headed upstairs to get his phone, figuring he could sit in front of the fire and make a few calls. A handful of people knew he was here and probably would want to know how it was going.
Sell everything, he imagined saying. Transfer all funds. Never coming back.
He paused in the stairwell, fascinated by the gallery of photos Daisy had hung there. Pictures of her at all stages of her career. Partnerships with men Erik didn’t recognize. Some pictures were matted and Daisy had written captions with pencil, giving provenance. Erik read things like Rakewind debut, Cleveland, 1997, with Gabriel Ostin and Primo Vere debut, New York, 1998, with Anouar Bourjini. Strange to see her partnered with someone other than Will Kaeger, who