The Fire in Starlight

by Maria Isabel Pita

  Chapter Ten

  I t was no surprise to Sofia when she awoke to an overcast day. Already she couldn't remember if the weather had affected her as much when she was living in the city as it did out here in the country. She recalls being mildly depressed on rainy days, but there was always so much to do, so much traffic to fight, deadlines to meet, classes to teach, she didn't have time to dwell on her mood. Well, if she truly intended to write some poetry of her own, being hypersensitive to her every thought and feeling is a good thing, or so she hopes.

  She lay in bed for as long as she could, but the oppressive heaviness of the atmosphere combined with that of her comforter made her feel restless rather than cozy. She had a task to perform that wasn't going to be easy, but the first thing she intended to do was find that oak tree. She had to make sure it was there, and that there really was a niche in it in which she could place the papers when she was finished with them. She knew there would be, there had to be, but a part of her she didn't admire kept dwelling between shame and skepticism on this dreary a.m. She had a pretty good idea what Steve would say about her behavior last night—he would call her a slut and declare he was glad to be rid of her. Fortunately, she was completely indifferent to what he might think. Robert might have understood, but she couldn't be sure since she had never shared this aspect of herself with him, hell, she hadn't even shared it with herself this openly and honestly until recently. The fact that a stranger seemed to understand her better than a man she had known for years ever did was hard to believe, as was the fact that she had loved it when he literally fucked her to within an inch of her life. The conventionally programmed part of her brain was worried she was turning into one of those women the police shook their head over sadly (judgmentally) secretly thinking she asked for it when they found her body. Well, technically she hadn't asked for anything; she had not said a word about her kinky fantasies to a man who read her deepest, darkest feelings like an open book. He still didn't know yet how perfectly he had made her dreams come true, but he soon would, once he read what she had to say.

  While she was eating breakfast, the sun momentarily broke through the clouds and sent a single shaft of light into the house. She stared at it gratefully, willing it to stay. She gazed entranced by the way it shown off the empty bottle of wine she had shared with John last night, illuminating the dark glass and creating a sparkling little star on the edge of the neck as she turned away and caught it in the corner of her eye. She had cleaned up the cheese and crackers but deliberately left the bottle there to remind her that last night had really happened.

  After tea and toast, she slipped on her lavender jacket and stepped outside. The dampness of the air made the cold seep into her bones almost immediately. She didn't need to watch the Weather Channel to know Clinton was experiencing record-low temperatures. She was glad; at least she was assured of a fire's company tonight. She suspected she would not see John again so soon ... John, the man she had willingly, slavishly, called “my lord” and allowed to ejaculate inside her without protection while the desire to breathe climaxed violently inside her. It was too soon for her brain to wrap itself around those moments and remember them clearly. Thinking about them made no sense at all, because whatever it was she had felt had transcended the traditional idea of pleasure. The experience had been intensely, violently erotic, frightening and yet cathartic. She could think of even more adjectives, but none of them truly captured the essence of those moments when she should have been terrified for her life but was instead overcome by entirely different feelings.

  At first (to her intense shame) she had no idea which of her many trees was an oak. She recognized the Magnolias, of course, and even the Tulip trees because of their big leaves that for some reason reminded her of a cat's face and ears with their pointed tips. She positioned herself at the center of the house and walked forward. There was only one tree it could be which was indeed growing right beside the fence, and she was able to take her first deep breath of the day when she saw the small dark hole in the trunk. She had to stand on tiptoe to see inside it, and she wasn't surprised to discover it was full of ravished acorns. A tentative exploration with one gloved hand proved the space was just deep enough to conceal folded sheets of paper. The discovery made her inordinately happy. She didn't question how he had known about this tree on her side of the fence, the important thing was it was real, which meant he was. It seemed ludicrous that she needed so much objective proof of his reality, and this concerned her somewhat, as if part of her mind questioned her own sanity. As she walked back to the house, she wondered what a therapist would say about her situation, probably that grief and loss had unhinged her in some way, and that she was suppressing her sadness by sublimating it into erotic dreams and fantasies she was dangerously projecting on a complete stranger. She was glad Robert's disdain for the psychiatric profession as a whole had rubbed off on her. As lovers of poetry (the darker and more passionate the better) psychoanalysis, he had insisted, was their mortal enemy. If she went to a psychiatrist, he or she would probably prescribe some sort of drug that would numb her into not caring about anything. Far better to live dangerously than not to feel at all.

  It took her longer than she had thought it would to write her dreams on the thick, expensive paper she found in the desk Robert had left her. It was the same paper he had written his last letter to her on, a thought that filled her with a morbid anxiety she had trouble dispelling. She had to get up and make herself a cup of Green tea—which she drank standing at the kitchen counter snacking on corn chips and Hummus—before she was able to get back to writing (as neatly as she could with a black pen) on what began to feel like sacred parchment. The paper would be coming full circle when she slipped it back in a tree. One minute she felt like a little girl playing a game with her cute neighbor, and the next like what she truly was—a beautiful, desirable woman defying reasonable safety to communicate with the dangerously exciting man she was falling in love with.

  It was difficult to write dispassionately yet descriptively about her powerfully sensual subconscious fantasies, if that's what dreams really were. Since Robert's death, events seemed to be conspiring to force her to define her beliefs. She had always considered herself an agnostic, not sure if there was a God or if the soul was truly eternal or not, but certainly not discounting the possibility. Yet lately (and her love of poetry might have clued her into this) she was wondering if perhaps she wasn't more of a mystic. After all, she was actually considering the possibility that her dreams might be memories of a past life, a concept that struck her as ridiculously New Age. Yet the first thing she had decided as she drove towards Clinton and her new life was that she didn't believe in coincidence. The choreography of events was a fact in her personal experience, which put her squarely in the mystic camp. And how could she not believe in the magic of syncHronicity when a man she had just met made her dreams come true without even trying? Although to say he had not made a considerable effort was untrue as it must have taken all the physical strength he possessed to fuck her the way he had. Every time she thought about it, she experienced a rush of heat deep between her legs where some of his virile seed might still be searching for her egg. It was a good thing she hadn't gone off the pill after she left Steve. She was still taking it because it regulated her periods and kept her PMS under control, yet if she had slept with Marcus (God forbid!) she would definitely have made him wear a condom. It wasn't safe to have unprotected sex wih strange men, but that was exactly what she had done last night, and she didn't for one second regret it.

  Sofia waited until four o'clock to put the pages with her dreams written on them into the tree trunk. She hadn't placed them their sooner just in case it rained. It made her feel good to know that her feelings had mysteriously become the heart of a tree growing so majestically on her property. She did take the precaution (even though it made the act feel less romantic) of slipping the folded pages into a plastic bag and sealing it tight, because even though she had written her dr
eams in permanent black ink, it wasn't waterproof. She wondered when he would come for them, and suspected it would be at night, when she couldn't watch him from a window. She had to suppress the thought that the pages might still be there tomorrow morning when she woke up. She had made the decision to trust him, and as a result she had experienced the most fulfilling sex of her life, it didn't matter what anybody else thought about it. Some women liked vanilla, others lived for chocolate, and some (like her, apparently) lived for extremely dark, dark chocolate indeed.

  A six o'clock it felt like midnight. She turned on the outside lights, thinking he might need them to see by when he came to pick up her dreams. Her porch lights didn't reach that far out into the yard, but she couldn't resist giving him at least a semblance of assistance, not that she thought he needed it. She was on her way to the kitchen, ostensibly to fix herself something to eat even though she wasn't all that hungry, when one of her windows caught her attention. She went and stood close to the glass and laughed out loud, thinking, Who needs TV when I've got the Discovery Channel right here? All sorts of nocturnal creatures had been attracted to the lamp shining just inside the window. The biggest were a couple of little green tree frogs that reminded her of the rubber pencil erasers she had loved so much in elementary school. They were stuck to the glass, sitting perfectly motionless except for the pulse beating in their throats as they fed on tiny microscopic insects that flew blindly into their mouths. Around them hovered moths of all different sizes, some strikingly large and lovely in a sinister way, others small enough to be in danger. She gasped in shock when one of the frogs suddenly stretched out its body, flicked its long tongue, and in a flash caught one of the moths, which kept fluttering grotesquely inside it's belly for a few seconds.

  "Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. Somehow, witnessing the ruthless drama of the food chain in real life was viscerally different from watching it on the Nature Channel. For an instant it made her want to become a vegetarian, but in the end she couldn't deny her carnivorous kinship with the adorable little stick-um frogs, as she christened them. She stood entertained by this miniature version of the Wild Kingdom for a long time. The life and death drama was riveting, and there was nonstop action to observe. She was also fascinated by the moths. She had never seen one so up close before and she couldn't believe how big and round their pitch-black eyes were. There was one pressed motionless against the glass doing absolutely nothing except soaking up the light coming from her living room, and she was able to study it at leisure. The intricacy of its wings was breathtaking, and it was a little disturbing what a clearly defined face it possessed. She felt something stirring inside her as she gazed at its fierce, scrunched up features. The sensation was strangely urgent, but it wasn't a physical need or hunger. She thought, Moths looks like the ghosts of warrior princes, and suddenly she understood the meaning of that feeling which was as subtle and yet as exciting as a light caress against her clitoris, only it wasn't emanating from a bodily organ at all—it was her soul telling her she needed to write a poem.

  She walked slowly to her desk, a little in awe of the inspiration, and very afraid it would come to nothing. She had never been pregnant, she didn't know if it felt anything like this—a kindling deep inside her, a mysterious gestation pressing against her perceptions because it was her responsibility to concentrate all her powers on it and bring it to life on a clean sheet of paper. For the second time that day, she sat curled up in her green chair writing by hand. She didn't even remember to pour herself a glass of wine she was so engrossed in the lines flowing from her. When she at last looked up, she was astonished to discover that over an hour had passed and her stomach was grumbling. Now that she had fulfilled a more subtle hunger, an obvious appetite was demanding her attention.

  She was smiling as she microwaved a container of organic meat lasagna and poured herself a glass of red wine. For over an hour she had not thought of John and the erotic confessions she had hidden in a tree trunk. She knew Robert would be proud of her. Whether the poem was good or not, it didn't matter; at least she had written one. She couldn't believe it had taken her this long, it seemed inconceivable, but better late than never, she concluded. She let the verses rest, cooling like a metaphorical pie while she ate and drank her wine in front of the fire. Then she sat cross-legged on the hearth stones, picked up the notebook, and read what she had written.

  Ode To A Moth

  Moths look like the ghosts of warrior princes,

  ashes of armor and evanescent cloaks of glory,

  burning ideals rewarded by the freedom of flight

  resting on my windows desiring the light

  determined backs to an eternal night.

  Moths have big dark penetrating eyes,

  they're much more interesting than butterflies.

  Tree frogs dine on my windowpanes at night,

  patrons at the restaurant of light,

  but even though I tap the glass in warning,

  sepia wings and lens-like eyes

  leave no imprint in the darkroom of a frog's belly.

  It's written on a moth's wings in bas-relief

  one story of all the lives composing me

  as I die for the night cocooned in violet sheets

  confident I will rise again mysteriously.

  * * * *

  I n the morning Sofia was doubly elated—she had written her first poem, and the pages she had secreted away in an oak tree were gone. It didn't matter that it hadn't rained yet and that the sky was even more brooding. The brewing storm was indistinguishable from her excitement. It was possible she might see him tonight, and this gave an almost painfully promising edge to every minute of the day. She was too restless to stay inside. Not even the anxious thought that she might miss him if he came by could keep her from slipping on her jacket and gloves and prowling the edges of her property. How unusually cold it was for this time of year energized her.

  She set out determined to find the gate linking her land with his, but in places the trees were so dense, and the ground between them so littered with fallen branches that kept snagging on her pants and hair, that she finally gave up. The exertion got her heart pumping fast, which was what she wanted. As soon as it got a little warmer she would start jogging down the gravel road. She hadn't exercised since she left BR, and her muscles were beginning to protest.

  She was heading back in the general direction of the house when she heard a sound that made her stop and listen. “What the hell was that?” She was reminded of old Hollywood dinosaur movies as she heard the astonishing noise again—a loud, braying bellow she could easily imagine emanating from the throat of a brontosaurus. She changed direction, following the escalating prehistoric cacophony. She emerged from the trees and stopped dead in her tracks again. The field adjoining her property was littered with cows, an entire herd of black, brown and white bovines, some busy spreading out across the lush grass while others were already in their self-allotted spot chewing contentedly. Where she and John had stood the night before last gazing up at the heavens, two golden calves were nudging each other playfully. For a minute she couldn't believe he hadn't even mentioned the fact that he raised cattle as well as chickens, until she remembered that she really didn't know much about him at all. The herd must have wandered here from an adjoining field, which explained why she hadn't seen them until today. What she couldn't explain was why the sight of the healthy-looking cows and big black bulls made her feel so oddly disillusioned. For some reason she was turned off by the thought that her mysterious lover raised beef cattle.

  She turned away from the depressingly bucolic sight—which was only an illusion since it probably wouldn't be long before many of those lovely, heavily sensual animals were led to the slaughterhouse—and started in the direction of her mailbox. She wasn't expecting any exciting correspondence, at least not by way of the U.S. postal service, but it was an excuse to stay outside, and it was something to do besides wait for John to suddenly show up again as she fervently ho
ped he would. She entertained the thought that he might leave a note (perhaps a written command?) in the tree for her, and even though she thought this unlikely, she knew the mere possibility would keep her looking in there regularly.

  The red jeep with the flashing lights on top was just pulling up to her box.

  "Good morning!” Kelly greeted her cheerfully.

  "Good morning!” She smiled, glad to see another human being.

  "Here you are.” Kelly handed her a small stack of envelopes, all of them bills by the look of them. “It sure is cold out!"

  "Yes! Um, excuse me, could I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "My neighbor, the one who lives somewhere back there,” she glanced over her shoulder in the general direction of the cow field, “he left a housewarming basket on my porch the other day and I'd really like to thank him. I know he lives by himself, but I don't have his address..."

  "Well, I'm not sure who you mean. Over that way's the Patrick property, Frank and Anne Marie Patrick. To the east there's Roger and Stacy Clemens, and Mark and Harriet Rogers live just north of here."

  "Oh ... okay, thanks."

  "If there's anything you need, just leave me a note in the box."

  "I will, thank you.” Her quiet voice was drowned out by crunching gravel as the jeep made a U-turn and drove off. She didn't notice the walk back to the house, the dark clouds above inseparable from the black despair in her soul. He was married! He had lied to her when he told her his name was John! His real name was Frank!