by Jane Heller
I wasn’t listening. Not really. I was focusing on the horrendous case of dry mouth I had suddenly developed, wondering how on earth I would be able to pry my lips apart when it came time to speak, trying frantically to rehearse the response I would deliver when Terry finally took a good look at me and realized with whom he’d be sharing his Jeep.
Why was I so undone at the sight of him if I had been so quick to dump him, you ask? For starters, it was a shock having him show up the way he did—a stunner, a heart-stopper, a coincidence of major proportions. Think about it: Would you expect to bump into your ex-husband after nearly twenty years of total estrangement? There ought to be some kind of statute of limitations on such things.
Then, there was the matter of Terry’s appearance, which was a shock and a stick in the eye. He was still a handsome guy at forty-three. Entirely too handsome, it seemed to me. His shaggy brown hair had always been glossy, even when he’d worn it short, jock-style. But now that it was long, down his back, in a loose ponytail, it was positively gleaming—and not that moussed-up, Fabio-ish, stud-muffin type of hair, either. His face was new and improved, too, and I’m not talking about nips and tucks here and there. Just the opposite. His skin was lined—from spending so much time in the Arizona sun, I guessed—and while the lines did age him, they also gave him a cragginess, a character, a lived-in look, erasing his smooth, almost pudgy youthfulness and turning the boy I’d remembered into a man. At least, on the surface. As for his body, well, it hadn’t gone to seed in the slightest, what with all that hiking and climbing and shlepping tourists from power spot to power spot. In fact, as I noted earlier, he was thinner than when I’d known him, leaner, harder, in better shape. Or so it appeared at first glance.
And then, there was the situation itself, which was bizarre at best. How are people who used to be married to each other supposed to behave when they’re thrown together after nearly two decades? Particularly when they’re thrown together, not for a college reunion, or a family funeral, or something equally run-of-the mill, but for a five-day vortex tour? I mean, this sort of stuff isn’t covered in etiquette books or advice columns.
Of course, as Terry continued to yammer on about the places he would be taking us that day, I couldn’t help thinking, just a little smugly, Okay, Crystal. You were right about him after all. You dumped him because you thought he would never get a real job, never behave like a responsible adult, never amount to anything, and, sure enough, here he is: a driver for Sacred Earth Jeep Tours, chauffeuring Tranquility’s well-heeled guests around Sedona for whatever pittance he makes in tips. Not exactly a candidate for the cover of Business Week, I mused, reminded that the magazine had recently done a brief article about Steven. My Steven. The man who earned a very respectable living. The man who wanted to marry me.
I chuckled to myself, hoping that my feeling of superiority would mask the feeling of insecurity I was also experiencing. How would he react, I wondered, when it dawned on him that the woman who’d divorced him was standing within a few feet of him? Would he be pissed off that he was stuck squiring me around for almost a week, waiting on me hand and foot, serving me boxed lunches, having to take my money? Or would he act glad to see me again, still find me attractive after all these years, decide that I had held up well?
Yeah, sure, Crystal, I thought ruefully. You’ve held up so well that you flew all the way across the country so you could have your aura cleansed.
Wait a minute, I said to myself. Why should you care about this guy’s opinion of you? He’s a jerk, remember? That’s why you booted him out of your life.
I snuck a quick peek at myself in the mirror of my compact while Terry was asking for everybody’s name and suggesting that we form a little line next to the Jeep, sort of the way you’re told to board an airplane.
“I’m Amanda Reid,” said Amanda with a sugary, flirtatious smile as Terry took her hand and helped her into the backseat of the Jeep. “But then you probably knew that.”
“Sorry, Amanda. I didn’t,” said Terry. “We’ve got our share of psychics here in Sedona, but I’ll tell you up front so you won’t be disappointed—I’m not one of them.”
“No, no, no. I didn’t mean it that way,” Amanda said, irritated that she had been misunderstood, the sugar turning to boric acid. “I assumed you had seen my photograph somewhere. That’s all.”
“On the wall at the post office maybe?” Terry teased, not the least bit intimidated by her high-and-mighty nonsense.
“Mrs. Reid is married to the novelist Harrison Reid,” Tina said morosely, then took a long drag on her cigarette and flicked it onto the ground. “I’m Tina Barton, Mrs. Reid’s assistant.”
“Well, that explains it,” he said with a touch of sarcasm. “Thanks for filling me in.” Terry offered Tina a hand into the Jeep. “I’m a big fan of Mr. Reid’s novels, so this is a real honor.” A big fan of Harrison Reid’s novels, I thought? How strange. When I’d been married to Terry, the only printed matter I’d ever seen him read were classified ads. “But there’s something you need to know, Tina. I can call you Tina, right?” She nodded glumly. “Well, Tina, the name written on both sides of the Jeep you’re sitting in is the ‘Sacred Earth Jeep Tour.’ That’s Sacred Earth, get it? What I’m saying is that when you sign up for this tour, you don’t toss your cigarette butts—lit or otherwise—anywhere but in an ashtray. Clear?”
“Sure,” she shrugged, then began biting the nail on her right pinky.
“The name’s Billy Braddick,” said Amanda’s personal trainer, brushing off Terry’s attempt to help him into the vehicle. Billy was a manly man, apparently, and manly men never let other men help them do anything. Amanda shoved over, making room for him on the seat next to her so he could be right there in case she suffered a torn hamstring.
“Bonjour. I am Marie Poussant,” Amanda’s chef said louder than was necessary. She waddled unsteadily over to Terry, who grabbed her fleshy arm just as she was about to hurl herself into the Jeep and land on her head.
“Hey. Hey. Easy does it now, Marie,” he said, guiding her carefully up onto the seat across from Amanda, Billy, and Tina. The back of the Jeep consisted of two bench seats facing each other, with roll bars providing hand supports for the passengers, should the terrain get bumpy.
“Terry! Great to meet you!” Jennifer Sibley enthused after identifying herself as Amanda’s “media architect.” I caught Terry stifling a smirk.
“Great to meet you, too!” he said, an amazing mimic, matching Jennifer’s perkiness perk for perk.
“It’s incredible to be here, totally exciting!” she said, bouncing onto the backseat, jostling Marie. She smiled at Terry and gave him the thumbs-up sign. “All set, Mission Control!” She sounded like a goddam space shuttle astronaut.
“I’m Michael Mandell,” the journalist told Terry as he climbed into the Jeep, occupying the last spot in the back of the car.
As Terry made small talk with Michael, who confided that he was chronicling Mrs. Reid’s trek through the vortexes for Personal Life magazine, I inched forward, the only one left in line now, fighting the urge to flee—into the lobby of the hotel, into a hole in the ground, anywhere. Within seconds, I knew I would be forced to deal with what was sure to be an icky, embarrassing scene, in front of complete strangers. My mouth was so dry by this time that swallowing was a near impossibility.
Eventually, Terry finished his chat with Michael and turned casually in my direction.
I had wanted to be the one to speak first—to establish a certain dominance, I suppose—but I couldn’t speak at all because my lips were sealed shut. I just stood there passively, waiting for Terry to recognize me, waiting to see if he would recognize me. If you’ve never found yourself in this predicament, you’re lucky. It is not empowering.
I watched as the realization of who I was finally hit him. In stages. First, he removed his dark sunglasses. Then, he blinked. Then, he squinted. Then, he stroked his chin. And then, he broke out into a raucous belly lau
gh that I found really unnerving.
“Well, well,” he said between chuckles. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
It was the famous line from Casablanca, of course, and I immediately attached major significance to the fact that Terry had used it. Was he horribly in love with me after all these years, the way Bogie was with Ingrid? Did he think I was horribly in love with him after all these years, the way Ingrid was with Bogie? Would he and I have a torrid, rapturous affair, only to have me toddle off with Steven in the end, the way Ingrid toddled off with Paul Henreid? Was I nuts to even be having these thoughts, leaping to conclusions about a person I knew another lifetime ago?
“Crystal?” Terry said, shaking my elbow. “It’s you, right?”
“Right,” I said, managing to part the lips. “Your one and only ex-wife.” I paused, aware that I had just made a ridiculous assumption. “Or have there been several ex-wives by now?” Probably as many ex-wives as there have been jobs, I thought.
Terry didn’t answer. Instead, he smiled, shook his head and said, “Crystal Goldstein. Here in Sedona. I can’t believe it. You look—”
“I look what?” I jumped in, in case he started in about my dirty aura.
“You look great,” he said instead. “A little tired, maybe. But great. As great as I remember.”
Before I could respond to the compliment, he grabbed me around the waist and hugged me, twirling me around and around in circles in a move worthy of Torvill and Dean. The gesture was unexpected, obviously, and so I didn’t hug Terry back at first; I let my arms dangle next to his body, giving them nothing to do and no place to go. But after a while, I got caught up in the spirit of things—Terry wasn’t an ax murderer, after all—and allowed myself to hold him. Briefly.
He still smells the same, I thought as my face burrowed into the curve of his neck and I was instantly transported back in time. A person’s smell can do that. Terry’s wasn’t a fragrance from a particular cologne or after-shave lotion, nor did it hint of a brand of soap. It was his own scent, a musky odor I had always found intoxicating and extremely difficult to resist.
I resisted, pulling away. I wasn’t a dewy-eyed twenty-two-year-old anymore.
“Crystal Goldstein,” he said again, appearing to marvel at the fact that he and I had landed in the same part of the world. “I can’t get over it. What are you doing in Sedona?”
“You mean, other than taking this Sacred Earth Jeep Tour?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. Don’t tell me you’ve abandoned New York—or given up accounting?”
“No. I’m a partner at Duboff Spector, working out of the firm’s Manhattan headquarters.” Unless Otis Tool had made other arrangements.
“I’m impressed. Duboff Spector is a big outfit.”
“Huge.”
“So you’re on vacation?”
“In a sense.” I wasn’t about to tell him I was on a quest for Meaning.
“Alone?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?” He laughed again. “Crystal, you’re being a little evasive. I’m not with the CIA if that’s what’s on your mind.”
“Sorry. The truth is, my boyfriend—excuse me, my fiancé—is planning to fly out any day. He should have been here by now, but he’s a very successful lawyer and his practice keeps him busy busy busy. How about you?” I asked Terry. “Are you just passing through Sedona? Working your way across the country? A job here, a job there?”
“I’ve lived in Sedona for eleven years,” he said. “Long before you ever heard of the town.”
“Eleven years?” I said, arching an eyebrow. The Terry Hollenbeck I knew couldn’t stay in one place for eleven seconds.
“Yup,” he nodded. “And I’ve owned the Jeep tour company for seven of those years, as well as a bunch of real estate in the area.”
“You own the company?” I said, not even addressing the “bunch” of real estate.
Terry smiled wryly. “You can close your mouth now, Crystal. I know you never thought I’d own anything but my underwear, but the tour company does great business, especially during our high season. Sedona’s the ‘in’ place these days and everybody and their sister wants to do the vortex thing. Like you, for example.”
I wasn’t buying it. “If you own the tour company, what are you doing here at the hotel? As our driver?”
“The driver who was supposed to take your group out today came down with the flu,” Terry explained. “I’m the emergency backup. That’s why I didn’t have the list of passengers’ names with me. The guy called in sick about ten minutes before he was scheduled to pick you all up.”
It was possible that Terry was telling the truth. He may have been a deadbeat when we were married but he was never a liar as far as I knew. Everything happens for a reason. Wasn’t that what Jazeem had said during my attunement? Had I been led to Sedona so I could be reunited with Terry? I wondered. And if so, who needed it? I was searching for inner peace, not my ex-husband.
I was about to ask him how he came to live in Sedona in the first place when somebody in the Jeep honked the horn. Insistently.
“What in the world are you two talking about out there?” Amanda whined. “You’re keeping us waiting and it’s very rude.”
“She’s right,” I said. “She’s not paying five hundred bucks for herself and her serfs to sit and listen to us take a trip down memory lane.”
“So you’re not part of her group?” Terry asked.
“Please. Amanda’s the ‘millionaire heiress,’ in case you don’t read the tabloids. I just met her and her pals this morning.”
“Really. I would have thought that you and your fiancé moved in the same circles as someone like her. The New York monied set and all that.”
I laughed. “The New York monied set? Steven and I—”
“Steven? That’s the guy’s name?”
“Yes. Steven Roth.”
“Moth?”
“No, Terry. Roth. And you heard me the first time, didn’t you?”
He nodded, grinning mischievously.
“Steven and I are much too busy for the sort of frivolous society galas that are Amanda Reid’s whole life. She’s in a different world. Steven and I make money by working hard. Amanda Reid makes money by breathing. She was born into money. She inherited money. She married money. Except in the case of her current marriage, that is. Everyone says Harrison Reid has squandered whatever he earned from his books.”
“Lucky for him he’s got a wife who brings home the bacon,” said Terry, who, the instant he uttered the remark, realized he had just put his foot in his mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he confessed after a few uncomfortable seconds. “I didn’t mean to imply that when you and I were—”
“Forget it,” I cut him off, as if the comment hadn’t stung as much as it had.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t give it another thought,” I said.
Terry cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “I guess we’d better get the show on the road before Amanda runs us over. I left the keys in the ignition.”
He walked me to the front of the Jeep, to the seat next to his.
“Besides,” he said as he helped me inside, “you and I have plenty of time to catch up. This is day one of the tour. We’ve got four more to go.”
“Only if you keep filling in for your flu-stricken driver,” I pointed out. “The poor guy could make a miraculous recovery.”
“He won’t,” said Terry. “I own the company, remember?”
Chapter Ten
As he pulled out of Tranquility’s long, winding driveway, Terry informed us that our first stop on the tour would be Airport Mesa, one of Sedona’s most frequently visited vortexes.
“There’s a vortex at an airport?” I asked. I had never thought of JFK or LaGuardia as especially sacred sites.
“Don’t worry. You won’t be ducking planes,” he said. “There is a
makeshift airport nearby, for the small craft that take tourists over the Grand Canyon, but Airport Mesa itself is a cliff on the edge of town. You climb up to the top and get treated to a sensational view of Sedona.”
“Never mind the view. I can buy postcards for that,” Amanda snapped. “I’m more interested in the energy fields. This Airport place is a vortex, you’re sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything except death and taxes, Amanda,” Terry said matter-of-factly, glancing at her through the rearview mirror, “but if there are such things as vortexes, Airport Mesa is one of them.”
I looked over at my ex-husband, to try to determine from his expression if he was bullshitting us. Vortexes were big business now—his business now—and I wondered if he was a true believer or just a good salesman. But I couldn’t read him. It had been too long. So I just sat there in the front seat next to him, my feet resting on top of the large Styrofoam ice chest on the floor of the Jeep—the container of our bottled water and boxed lunches, I guessed. I was still amazed that I was even in the same car as the man, still reeling from the unexpectedness of it all, still searching for my real feelings about running into him. It was impossible to relate to him without remembering what had gone before, impossible to place him in this new context. I had knowledge of him—of how much I had loved him, of how much he had disappointed me—and no matter how warm and friendly and, yes, appealing, he seemed to me now, there was no forgetting about all that. How could there be?
As we chugged along in the Jeep, en route to Airport Mesa, Terry gave us a little talk about the history of Sedona.
“Legend has it that millions of years ago this entire region was covered by water,” he said, “which is ironic since the lack of water is what eventually drove settlers away. Anyhow, when these so-called ‘seas’ receded, what was left was the incredible chunk of geography you see now—the uniquely carved cliffs and mesas and spires, each with its own distinctive shape and personality. Numerous Indian tribes—the Sinagua, the Hopi, the Navajo, and even the Apache—called the area home at one time or another and designated the land as sacred. But it wasn’t until 1902 that the town became a town, if you know what I mean.”
