by Gail Cleare
This was my favorite place to sit. I loved the sound of the falling water, it was very serene. I sat down and immediately relaxed. I ate my sandwich slowly, staring at the fountain and letting my vision go out of focus, my mind wandering.
In a minute or two, my eyes drifted shut. The sun on my face was warm and hypnotic. I fell into a sort of meditative state. My mind floated in the here and now. It was a Zen moment.
I let go and sank deeper into my thought body, losing more and more awareness of the physical. Then I distinctly felt my consciousness rise up along my spine and flow out through the top of my head as I left my body through the seventh chakra.
I saw myself sitting on the bench from overhead, looking down from a bird’s eye view. The bronze fish was spitting water up towards the new disembodied me as I hovered above it. Something like a shining filament of spider’s silk gleamed in the sunshine, hanging down from where I floated effortlessly right above the treetops. It was leading to the top of my physical head, where my body sat on the bench, eyes closed and not moving. I looked like I was sleeping, sitting up. Then I saw a person coming toward my body across the grass. He was not scary or threatening. The figure bent over me solicitously.
Something brushed my nose. With a slightly nauseating rush, I was suddenly inside my body again.
A fly. I heard it buzz. Relaxed, I kept my eyes shut, one with the fly.
A foot crunched stones in the path. Then, only the sound of water falling. Warm sun on my forehead, my eyelids, my cheeks.
Something brushed my nose again.
I opened my eyes and looked directly into those of Anton Novak. They were amber brown with little flecks of gold in the irises. The lashes were impossibly long and lush, the kind that women struggle to achieve with expensive cosmetics. One lock of his straight dark brown hair fell casually across his forehead. He squatted in the path directly in front of me, regarding me with curiosity.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello.” His voice had a serious tone. He reached out and gently tucked a little strand of hair behind my left ear. His expression was unguarded, concerned.
“Are you OK?” he asked gently, obviously ready to catch me if I fell over.
“Fine, I’m fine, just fine,” I stammered, snapping out of it. “Thank you, really, I’ll be just fine.”
I stood up and grabbed clumsily for my lunch bag and purse, my face flushed with embarrassment. He stood up gracefully and took me by the elbow, holding on despite my ridiculous attempts to gather my belongings, which kept falling out of my fumbling hands.
“You’re sure? All right, you’re sure now?” he said, not letting go. His warm hand embraced my arm, helping me up.
“Yes! Oh yes, very sure!” I staggered and grabbed onto him, shocked by a buzzing tingle that started in my core then swelled into a rush of pure pleasure that swept over me, leaving behind a rash of dizzy goosebumps. “I was just, um, really, I am perfectly, perfectly…fine. I’m OK.” I was more than OK, I was swelling open like a ripe red rosebud in the afternoon sun. I let go of him but I couldn’t stop staring, and he looked back at me with a little smile behind his eyes, like he knew what I was feeling.
He released my elbow and allowed me to stand on my own. “What were you doing?” he demanded, “Sleeping?”
I finally got a grip on my things, and we started to walk down the path.
“No, not sleeping. Not exactly, that is.” I said, “More like, kind of…meditating.”
He seemed relieved to hear it.
“Ahhh…” he commented, nodding his head, “Meditating! I see.”
He was wearing gray slacks and a white shirt with short sleeves, opened at the throat. Some very nice black curly hairs showed on his upper chest. He thrust his hands into his pants pockets and strode along next to me.
He smiled approvingly. He had extremely white teeth. I wondered if he had used the bleaching strips. That would make him a bit vain. I wondered if he was. Or maybe his teeth were natural. Maybe they just looked so white because of his tan. He did have a great tan. I wondered whether he had been at the beach. Probably some fabulous resort somewhere. Probably cruising on someone’s yacht. In the blue-blue-blue Mediterranean. Probably with some incredibly wealthy woman with huge breasts who looked like the young Elizabeth Taylor in “Cleopatra,” wearing white flowing clothes made out of gauze…I sighed, and frowned.
“Do you meditate often?” he asked politely.
“Well yes, every day when I have the time,” I replied. “It helps to clear my head. Makes me feel centered, focused.”
“I agree,” he said. “I too meditate. I learned how at the Buddhist Temple on Martha’s Vineyard, of all places.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded as if to confirm an amazing fact.
I chuckled, and he grinned delightedly.
He launched into a long, rambling story about Buddhist monks on the island off the coast of Massachusetts, meditating inside the Great Pyramid in Egypt at midnight on the Winter Solstice, having a vision of his grandfather that tapped him on the shoulder during a ceremony in a Lakota Sioux sweat lodge, and spending the night in a haunted chateau while doing a wine tour of the Loire Valley.
By then, we were all the way back at the store.
And most of the way toward becoming friends, surprisingly. He was a wonderful storyteller. I was completely charmed by him. I stopped feeling self-conscious and laughed out loud at his jokes. He treated me with a flattering gentlemanly courtesy that made me feel like a cherished and beautiful creature. I liked it very much. I actually envisioned myself touring those vineyards with him. His descriptions were vivid, enchanting.
It was my day for being hypnotized. First by the sun god, and next by this god of a man! I realized that today he was completely different from how I had perceived him when we first met, at the party. Then, he seemed like a slick European playboy on the make. Now he seemed like the nicest guy on earth. A little too good to be true, maybe. I reminded myself that caution was the safest path with handsome men, for sure.
I asked him why he had happened to be in the park.
“Actually, I came to look for you,” he said, smoothing back his straight, dark hair with a quick nervous gesture. “I was here to see Henry, then Siri told me where you probably went.”
“Why were you looking for me?”
“Well, to ask you out.”
“Out?”
“Yes, out, to ask you out.”
“You mean like, out to dinner?”
“Yes, out to dinner.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, are you going to ask me now?”
“Yes, yes, I am asking you now.”
“Oh, good.”
“And, will you? Have dinner with me?”
“Dinner? Hmm…When?”
“Well, I have to leave town tomorrow, for a couple of weeks.”
“So, like, tonight, do you mean?”
“Yes, certainly. Dinner tonight. You and me.”
He reached down and gently tucked that wandering piece of hair back behind my ear again.
“What do you say?” He looked into my eyes.
“Sure,” I said, breathlessly. “What time? When I get off work?”
“Sure,” he said, “When you get off work. I’ll drive you home first if you want to…feed your cat or something.”
“Why do you think I have a cat?”
“Because, you just seem like the kind of girl who has a cat.”
“How do you know what kind of girl I am?” I demanded indignantly.
“Maybe you just seem like a nice, friendly, kind of beautiful girl who would like little soft furry animals, I don’t know!” He threw his hands up in the air helplessly, then he grinned at me.
I frowned and walked slowly past him, starting up the steps towards the front door.
“What’s your cat’s name?” he asked as I passed.
“Tree,” I admitted.
“Tree? You have a cat named
Tree?”
“Uh huh.”
“Why is he named Tree?”
“He likes to climb them. He likes to sit in them. He likes to rub up against them and scratch his back.”
“OK, we will go and feed the Tree. All right?”
“OK,” I said, over my shoulder.
I turned around and looked back. He was still standing there watching me. He was showing me those pretty white teeth again. I showed him mine back. The tingling was starting again, and we weren’t even touching.
“See you soon,” he said cheerily, with a brief wave.
“See you,” I replied, opening the door and stepping inside.
I waved back and shut the door, resisting the temptation to pop it back open again and see if he was still out there.
So, my good fortune of recent times was going to continue. I was really on a roll of good luck. New job, new friends, and now even my love life was looking up! Or, looking down from up, I thought, remembering my out-of-body experience in the park. Now I just had to try not to ruin everything by getting too deeply involved.
If I believed what Henry had taught me, this wasn’t really good luck at all but rather a predictable series of logical events. It was the right season for me to find a new life and attract a new man. The time of endings, loss, devastation and mourning was over and spring was finally here. The seed of my new life was planted when I picked this fertile moment to make a change. The instant I turned onto the path that took me away from my old, unhappy life, a whole new configuration of people and events had appeared on my future horizon. It was like pushing the first tile in a line of dominoes, I saw that, the steps were all connected. But, could I work magic, as Henry had suggested? Could I steer the direction of change and actually shape my destiny?
My mother always said that if I really wanted something, all I had to do was concentrate on it. Just visualize what I wanted to have happen, keep thinking about it, and eventually the path toward making it come true would appear.
“Thoughts are things,” Henry said.
Fine with me! Perfectly, perfectly fine.
That afternoon I ventured down into the cellar while Siri watched the shop. Henry had briefly described his subterranean storeroom, but this was the first time I had felt brave enough to tackle the task of dealing with the contents. Ever since the incident of the ghostly Chinese man floating on the back porch I had been a little afraid to descend the stairs. It was spooky and dark, and there was a weird energy down here.
Many years’ accumulation of cobwebs festooned the shadowy space, hanging down from the asbestos-covered pipes that traversed the ceiling. An ancient pile of coal occupied the rear next to the hulking corpse of the old heating system, now defunct. A rusted electric hot water heater was still in residence as well, though the shiny new system nearby was obviously what we were now using. It hummed with internal activity.
I gradually made my way around the room, examining the forest of shipping containers and metal shelves filled with merchandise. I vacuumed, then dusted, and then vacuumed again. After the first few minutes, I had to come upstairs and find a dishtowel to tie around my face like a mask so I could breathe. Right at the foot of the stairs, an open carton was blocking the way. It was filled with framed photographs. They looked personal, so I brought the box upstairs when I finished cleaning to give it to my employer.
I found him in the book room pulling various volumes off the shelves and packing them into a large Fed Ex box. A printout in his left hand contained the shipping list. When he saw what I carried, a bemused expression crossed his face and he sat down on the wooden chair in the middle of the aisle.
“Oh my,” Henry said, “Haven’t thought of these in years. I must have forgotten they were down there.” He flipped through the photos. He pulled one out and showed it to me.
The black and white print showed a man and a woman standing on the tarmac in front of an airplane with “Pan Am” written on the tail. They had either just arrived, or were about to take off. A staircase on wheels was pulled up to the open door of the plane. The man wore a business suit, overcoat and hat. He was portly, clean-shaven and looked successful. He carried a large briefcase and wore sunglasses with heavy black frames. The woman had neatly coiffed short dark hair, and wore a black coat with large white buttons over a plaid suit. She wore sunglasses with thick, white rectangular frames. They were both smiling, but in a stiff formal way. It looked like the shot had been taken in the 1950’s. It reminded me of the old Doris Day movies I used to watch with my mother on late-night TV.
“There she is,” he said, “My Margaret.”
I realized the man in the picture was Mr. Paradis, forty or fifty years ago. I looked at the woman again. She was very chic and looked carefully coordinated with matching shiny patent leather purse and heels.
“That was in 1959, in Japan,” he commented, flipping to the next photo.
“Here it is, this is the best one,” he said.
It was a portrait done in a photographer’s studio. She was posed against a plain background, turned slightly for a three-quarters view. Her dark hair was shoulder length in this shot, turned under on the ends, with bangs across her forehead. She wore a plain white blouse with pearl buttons, and a gardenia was pinned at her throat. She was very beautiful, with dramatic arching eyebrows.
“She’s gorgeous!” I said.
“Yes, isn’t she? This was taken when we first planned to be married.”
“Her engagement picture?”
“Yes, they put it in all the newspapers. Her mother was big on that kind of thing.”
“She was proud of her daughter.”
“Yes, and rightly so. Margaret was an amazing woman.”
“Oh?”
“She graduated from Vassar, you know. One of the few women I knew back then who finished college. Margaret was a true scholar.”
“Did she like books?” I looked around the room.
“Oh yes, we shared that passion. And many others,” he mused. “She was the great love of my life.”
He flipped past a few more photos in the box and pulled out another one. It was a color shot and showed him, recognizable now with very long hair, a goatee and mustache, and Margaret, with two long braids and a Native-American-style leather headband across her forehead. They both wore Indian print shirts and bell-bottomed blue jeans. They were standing on a beach in front of a large palm tree. She was holding a green coconut and he held a machete.
“Hawaii, 1971,” he identified the scene. He flipped again. “Aha, you’ll be interested in this one,” he said, showing it to me. “1999, Hong Kong.”
This one was an unframed color snapshot, faded to a greenish hue with the edges curling. It showed three people standing in front of a giant statue of Buddha. I recognized Henry and Margaret, but not the younger man, who had long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a very full beard.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“That’s our friend Mr. Novak, don’t you recognize him?”
“Ohmigosh.”
“Pretty scruffy, eh?”
“He looks so…different.”
“Well, it was a long time ago.”
“Was this taken when you first met?”
“Yes, I think it was from that trip. He was still in college then, studying languages.”
“You’ve been friends a long time, haven’t you?”
“Oh yes. Margaret adored him. Most women do, you know.” He looked at me over the top of his reading glasses. “That was taken after we opened the shop here. Business was booming, of course. Margaret had a real flair for that kind of thing! We were on a tour of Asia looking for unusual merchandise. She fell ill soon after we returned.”
“I’m surprised you never had children. Was it because of all the traveling?”
“No, not because of that. Margaret wanted children very much. I was more ambivalent, though willing to do whatever would make her happy.”
“What was it then?”
“Ironically, we could not conceive,” he stated the fact as though still it still amazed him. “We tried everything within reason, to no avail. She miscarried a dozen times. It was very difficult, physically and emotionally.
“That must have been so hard for her.”
“Margaret was a trooper,” he corrected me proudly, shaking his head. “She was stalwart through even the darkest moments. She never complained. She always wanted to seize the day. And she was great fun. Fun to be with. Fun just to have her around.”
“She sounds like a wonderful woman. I wish I had met her.”
“She would have liked you, Emily.”
“Oh, I hope so.”
“You and she are a lot alike, in many ways.”
“Really? I think I’m flattered. How are we alike?”
“Your passion for business, for one thing. Your flair for marketing,” he said. “She was like that too, always dreaming up some new promotion. We did very well, financially. It was all Margaret’s doing!”
“Well, I’m sure you had something to do with it. At least, I certainly hope so!” I said, raising one eyebrow. He just smiled and shook his head.
“You and Margaret also share an interest in our friend Mr. Novak, “ he said with a grin, teasing me. “She always said he had great depth of character.”
“And how do you know that I have any interest in him whatsoever?”
He looked over his glasses at me again.
“My dear, one does have one’s ways of knowing things,” he said. “You women aren’t the only people with intuition!”
“Oh I see. So you have intuited this?”
He simply smiled.
He flipped through the photos again and stopped at a very old black and white print, brown with age and quite blurry. “Ah ha. You’ll be interested in this one, Emily. Do you recognize this fellow?”
He handed me the print and I squinted to see the young version of Henry I had glimpsed in my vision of him at the docks in Asia. He stood in a warehouse with two Chinese gentlemen, one quite old and white haired, the other younger and with a mischievous expression. The memory of his giggle echoed in my ears.
