Destined

by Gail Cleare

  “Wise man,” I said, and went out the door.

  That day I was such a total zombie at work that Siri and Bella were concerned about me, and finally they asked if I was ill.

  “No, just a little, um, hung over, I guess,” I admitted, rubbing my sore temples.

  They looked at each other, then back at me, expectantly.

  “OK, so I got loaded last night and slept with Tony! Though sleeping isn’t exactly what we were doing…” I caved in and confessed.

  “How was it?” Bella demanded.

  “Let me tell you after I’ve had a nap,” I replied, and we all giggled.

  “That good, eh?” Bella wisecracked, winking.

  “He’s a very remarkable man,” I said, holding my head in my hand. “Did I tell you he’s got a house over behind the park?”

  They exchanged glances again, and then looked back at me. I told them about the Victorian, the walk through the park, the cat in the window being Tree. They loved it.

  “Wow,” said Siri, rolling her eyes. “What a romantic story!”

  She looked down at the simple gold wedding band on her left hand.

  “I still remember the first time I made love with Tom,” she said. “I knew immediately that we would be together forever.”

  “Yeah?” said Bella, “Well I didn’t. I thought I was just going to have a fun little summer fling, and be on my way to college in the fall. Then look what happened!”

  I broke into a huge yawn and both my ears crackled.

  “Wow,” I said, “I am wasted.”

  Bella looked at me sympathetically.

  “Why don’t you go grab a few winks and I’ll stay for the rest of the day,” she suggested. “I still remember what it was like, though things have calmed down with us a lot by now, especially since the baby came!”

  “Oh yes,” Siri said, her eyes big and serious, “It makes a huge difference.”

  I was having trouble focusing and felt my consciousness begin to slide downhill. I thanked Bella and snuck out to my car, kind of glad not to run into Henry today. I would have felt a trifle embarrassed. I went back to my apartment and let myself in, missing Tree at first and then remembering he was still over at Tony’s house. With my luggage, it turned out, and my shampoo and my toothpaste, and everything else that I used on a daily basis. Too exhausted to care, I kicked my shoes off across the room and flung myself down on the bed, falling into a deep sleep immediately.

  I awoke at dusk to the sound of my telephone ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello! Have you been taking a sick day?” asked Tony’s voice.

  “No, I’ve been taking a dead-to-the-world day. How about you?”

  “I’ve been happy, happy, joy, joy. Just like the cartoon beagle.”

  “You mean, Snoopy?”

  “Yes, I’ve been dancing for joy, like Snoopy.”

  I smiled fondly at the image. He was just too cute for words.

  “Aren’t you coming back home soon, Emily? I’ve been waiting all day!”

  “I am home, Tony.”

  “No, you are not!”

  “OK, all my stuff is over there anyhow.”

  “I have your dinner here for you, too,” he said. I heard a soprano tone in the background. “And, your cat. This is a hostage situation!”

  “I’ll be right over,” I yawned, and after I showered and changed, I was.

  When I walked in the front door, he was dressed comfortably in sweats and a white T-shirt, lying on the couch with Tree curled up on his lap and reading the National Geographic from my coffee table, back at my apartment. I could smell something wonderful cooking in the kitchen and there was some quiet, classical music playing.

  “My cat, my magazine, what’s next?” I demanded.

  “Pardon me?” he inquired politely, looking up from his reading and flashing me a brilliant smile. There he was again, so damned good-looking that it swept me right off my feet.

  “Nothing. Keep the cat, who cares?” I smiled, as he got up off the couch and came over to kiss me hello. And kiss me again. And then, to pull me down onto the brown leather couch to kiss me yet again, with that extreme thoroughness that I had recently come to know and love, oh so well.

  A few minutes later we rolled onto the floor, and then a while after that, I was sitting on the edge of the granite island in the kitchen wearing Tony’s white T-shirt and nothing else, chewing on a chicken drumstick.

  “So what did you do today?” I asked.

  He was wearing boxer shorts, and nothing else. And it looked very good on him, I must say. Tony is very fit, without being muscle-bound, with a naturally long and lean body type. He continued to attack the roast chicken, which had shown considerable resistance, with a carving knife.

  “Oh, I installed the new stereo system and took a nap, then I went shopping and cooked dinner for you and your scruffy little cat,” he answered, carefully slicing the breast meat. “I mean,” he said with a frown, “Your very handsome, brave, ferocious cat!” He fed a piece of chicken skin to Tree, who was sitting on the island beside me paying close attention to the proceedings.

  “And then what happened?”

  “And then the most beautiful girl in the world walked into my house,” he said, serving the sliced chicken onto two plates.

  This sounded good! “And then what?” I persisted.

  “And, then the most beautiful girl in the world took off all of her clothes, and I ravished her,” he said, carefully spooning freshly shelled peas and chopped carrots onto the plates.

  “Really?” I said, crossing one long, bare leg over the other. He glanced at me once, and then glanced again. “You’ve had an awfully good day, haven’t you?” I asked, gazing at him from under my lashes.

  Tony abandoned the food and slid his hands up under the white T-shirt along my thighs, my hips, my waist. Soon I was lying naked on the cool granite, smooth and hard against my skin, spinning off into space as he took me on another quick tour of the galaxy. This time, when I came back to full rational awareness, we were sitting on the kitchen floor next to each other in the dark, leaning back against the island and surrounded by an arc of flickering votive candles. We were eating dinner, our plates in our laps.

  “More wine?” he asked, offering to pour.

  “No, thank you,” I replied absently, putting my empty plate on the floor next to me and sighing.

  “What’s the matter?” he said, concerned.

  “I’m just tired, aren’t you?” I asked, suddenly exhausted.

  Without a word, he put our dishes in the sink and took me by the hand, leading me up the stairs. He tucked me into bed and disappeared for a few minutes to turn things off downstairs, where I heard him moving around the house. When it was dark and quiet inside, he came back to the bed and slipped in between the cool sheets with me. A thump and a “Mmrrr?” told me someone else had joined us, too.

  Tony pulled me back against his chest and snuggled me. As I started to drift off to sleep, I realized it felt now just exactly like it had in my dream, when I’d hovered over him and lay down next to him on the bed.

  Had my dream actually created this moment, made it happen? According to the theories described by Henry in our recent conversation, this could be true. Henry had said that Tony believed he could control his future with his thoughts. Henry called it being a “visionary.” Maybe I was a visionary, too. Maybe I shaped the future with my dreams, instead of my waking thoughts. I smiled into the darkness of the big empty room where we lay nested together in perfect alignment, curled blissfully in a loving embrace.

  I dreamed that Tony and I were in Paris. There was a lot of traffic and little cars zipping around, and lots of tourists in the streets. We wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower, but though we could see it easily in the distance, we couldn’t figure out how to get there. Every cab or bus we took brought us back to where we had originally started.

  Then suddenly we arrived at the tower, and I was looking up at it. The sky had f
illed with dark clouds and it seemed like it was going to rain. A jagged fork of lightning came out of the clouds and struck the tower, breaking it in some way. People screamed, and dangerous things started to fall down from the sky. It was terrible!

  I woke up shaking in the darkness, with Tony still sleeping peacefully beside me. A summer storm had blown up outside and it was raining hard. I got up and drank some water in the bathroom, then I went back to bed and slept dreamlessly until morning.

  Those first few days after Tony and I got together were what we always referred to later as The Lost Weekend. We dropped off the face of the world for a while. He wasn’t kidding about it being a hostage situation, but Tree and I were willing prisoners.

  We holed up at Tony’s house, going out only to get provisions and clean clothes for me. And there was one short trip to the Mall where Tony bought a big flat screen TV with a DVD player, and a bunch of movies. His taste ran to classic films from the forties and fifties, and contemporary action thrillers. We both loved the old mysteries, like the Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone, and the Charlie Chan movies.

  Tony installed the TV in the built-in shelves in the master bedroom, and I made real popcorn like we do in Iowa, which is an entirely different food from the tough yellow stuff they sell at movie theaters. We turned on the ceiling fan and spent two whole days in bed watching movies, having lots of great sex and talking.

  When Tuesday morning finally rolled around I was totally satiated and felt as relaxed as though I had been at some fabulous resort for a month.

  Sometimes it’s like that when you let out all the stops. It might be overindulgent, it might even be dangerous, but it’s also very satisfying to express your desires, passions and obsessions. It completely diffused the tension between Tony and me and cemented our relationship.

  That weekend was like an intensive crash course on each other, we talked about so many different things, openly and trustingly, and touched each other’s most secret places. I had wanted things out in the open between us, and now they were. My entire world had changed in a critically important way, and the path I saw ahead now was shimmering and beautiful, leading us into the future side by side.

  The Lightning-Struck Tower

  VIOLENT UPHEAVAL, DISASTER

  Description: A castle tower is struck by lighting coming from dark clouds, flames shooting out of the windows and raining down from the sky. People fall toward the ground, which cracks open beneath them.

  Meaning: Violent upheaval, disaster and crisis.

  The telephone call from Sarah Bennet came early Tuesday morning while I was still in the kitchen baking scones. She wanted me to come to a special meeting with the Main Street merchants that afternoon to discuss merging our forces for the upcoming promotion. The key players in town had already been approached, and everyone was in favor of the collaboration. Plans were moving forward, and we needed to confirm the budget.

  Sarah offered to organize a team of volunteers to work the event, with herself as the head of the stage crew. She had a lot of experience with lighting and sound systems for open air events, having organized several arts festivals and fundraising concerts. I was relieved to have access to her skills and good advice. She took a big burden off my shoulders, and now I could concentrate on hiring the performers and getting the merchants to agree on our cooperative marketing campaign.

  When Henry came downstairs for his breakfast, he poked his head around the corner for a quick peek before entering the room. I caught him doing it. When he saw that I was smiling at him, he ventured hesitantly across the threshold.

  “Good morning, Emily! Did you have, um, a good weekend?” he inquired timidly.

  I nodded, a huge smile on my face. He brightened up and smiled back at me.

  “Really?” he asked eagerly. “How marvelous!” He chuckled in a satisfied way, and looked very pleased.

  “Thank you, Henry,” I said earnestly.

  He blushed and looked bashful, lowering his head and muttering, “Hmph! Don’t know what you mean!”

  “Tony told me that you helped to set up the house, lit the candles for me, all that.”

  “Did it work?” he asked, looking up with a glint of mischief in his eye.

  “I loved it! And I felt very appreciated, by both of you.”

  “You are, my dear, you are! “ he said emphatically.

  “Well, I appreciate you too, Henry,” I said, turning to put a warm scone on a plate for him, placing it on the kitchen table. “And after this weekend, I appreciate Tony in ways I never would have dreamed of!”

  We both chuckled. Henry sat down and settled in for a chat. I poured a cup of coffee and served it to him. He watched me chop celery for a minute or two while he ate and drank.

  “So, things are going well between you two, I gather?” he inquired curiously.

  “Yes, Henry, you were right.”

  “I was? Most gratifying. What was I right about this time?”

  “About the path ahead. I shouldn’t have been so afraid. I’ve seen it too, now.”

  He considered this rather seriously for a moment.

  “And what does Tony say?” he asked.

  “He says…exactly what I want to hear, whenever I want to hear it. And the rest of the time, he listens. He is the perfect man! He even cooks.”

  Henry laughed wheezily, slapping his knee.

  “Oh Emily,” he panted, wiping his eyes, “That was a good one!”

  “I’m not joking, Henry,” I protested. “He is the perfect man, for me, anyhow. I waited a long time to finally meet him. I can’t believe how lucky I was the day I knocked on your door!”

  “We were the lucky ones, Emily.”

  “We all are, Henry.”

  We smiled at each other with mutual affection. Giving me a pat on the shoulder, he went back upstairs to check on his eBay auctions.

  Life floated along like a dream for me over the days and nights that followed. I was surrounded by a pink bubble of happiness, and my creativity was spinning along full tilt. All the merchants were buying ads in the special newspaper insert that was planned to cover the downtown promotion. This was now going to feature an illustrated map of downtown in the centerfold, plus a schedule of the entertainment events. Several of the stores, including mine, were being spotlighted in short written profiles, each with a photo.

  I networked with the local arts organizations to find performers, and it looked like our grant money would be coming through. We were keeping it simple, with just six performances under the tent between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. One was a story-telling session for kids early on Saturday morning, and the rest were various types of live music.

  I booked street performers to work the weekend as well, organized in shifts to cover both the Main Street and Market Street shopping areas. I hired several clowns, a juggler on stilts, a woman who made animals out of balloons, folk singers, guitar players, a drummer, an accordion player, three magicians, and a man with a pair of trained dogs who did acrobatic tricks. It was shaping up to be a fun, lighthearted, family event.

  Now the only thing I really had to worry about was the weather, which is always a huge gamble with an outdoor festival. I sent positive, sunny thoughts out into the universe, picturing crowds of happy shoppers enjoying perfect summer weather with a slight breeze, not too hot, under clear skies.

  I went over to Sorrentino’s to talk to Josie about the plans. Rocco was already there, sitting at the table in her kitchen.

  “We’re gonna set up a freezer chest outside and sell gelato, Italian ice cream in little cups,” she said. “I was thinkin’ about cold drinks too, people are going to be hot and thirsty, I bet!”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I agreed. “But they’ll be hungry, too.”

  “Yeah,” Rocco said, “We can sell pizza by the slice on the sidewalk, too. I got it covered.”

  He was leaning back against the wall with his feet stretched out, his fingers laced across his stomach. />
  “How about you?” he asked me, “What are you guys planning?”

  “Henry has a bunch of books picked out to sell for just a dollar,” I said, “And we’re digging through all this great stuff down in the basement to see what we can mark way down. It has to be a real bargain to get people excited, according to what they said at the last DBA meeting. That won’t be a problem, though. You should see what I’ve been finding down there!”

  “Like what?” Josie wanted to know.

  “Like, a big stack of that blue and white Chinese porcelain, rice bowls, I think they are. They’re beautiful, but Henry said they were incredibly cheap when he bought them twenty years ago, so it’s a perfect sale item. I’m only halfway done unpacking the shipping crate, there may be something else good in there too.”

  Bella had been down in the basement with me when I finally opened the crate under the stairs. Frankly, I was a little nervous about doing it by myself. I was tempted to tell her about our resident spirit, but there were no more signs of a ghostly presence and I didn’t want to spook her so I kept it to myself.

  “We’re going to have two tables, one for books and one for the other stuff,” I told Josie and Rocco.

  “You’re a good girl, Emily.” Josie patted my hand where it lay on the table. “You do a good job for that old man. He’s lucky he found you. You know, when his wife died, we thought he was never comin’ out that door again.” She shook her head dramatically.

  “Yeah,” said Rocco, “It was pretty sad. But Henry sure seems to be taking an interest in things again now!”

  “I knew her, you know,” said Josie. “We used to have coffee every morning.”

  “You and Margaret were girlfriends?” I asked, realizing they would have been close to the same age.

  She nodded sadly. “Yeah, sure we were. She used to help me take care of the boys when they were little,” she said. “God never gave her any babies of her own, you know. But she sure did love kids.”

  Rocco excused himself and said he had to get back next door to stir the sauce. That left me alone with Josie in the kitchen.