by Anita Higman
After a few more rounds of singing and lotions and primping and jewelry, she gazed into her full-length mirror at all her efforts. Okay, not bad. “Well, what do you think, Igor? Do I look pretty?”
“Pretty,” Igor’s one word was just enough.
“Thank you, Igor.”
“Thank you, Igor.”
Lark laughed and glanced at herself in the mirror again. Like Cinderella stepping into her coach, all was in readiness. She just hoped the evening would go better for her than it had for the fairytale heroine.
Well, now she could just sit down, twiddle her thumbs, and look over a coffee table book until Everett arrived. She eased down on the couch so as not to pull too hard on the bodice or crumple the silk. She flipped nonchalantly through a book on European castles. Yes. Spectacular. It even comes with a moat. Calli would certainly enjoy selling it. She’d say, “Your own unique security system.” She thumped her finger on what was left of the castle’s turret and then looked at the time. A little after six o’clock.
Moving right along. The castles of England. Okay. She looked more closely at the photo of a big, brooding castle on a hill. Lark slammed the book shut. She’d never been good at killing time. It was much too valuable to waste. She just wasn’t used to getting ready for a date so early or fussing over anything.
In fact, so much of her career had come so easily, she’d let herself slide into a blithe approach to life. She wondered if the ease also allowed her to slip into foolhardiness when she wasn’t paying attention.
But this evening’s preparations had been anything but careless. She’d taken great pains in getting ready for what she hoped would be a perfect date with Everett. Like in a fairy tale, a classic evening they would never forget.
Ten
The phone rang, making her jump. Again. That’s it. I’m going to turn down the volume on that thing.
She decided not to rush to the phone but instead let the answering machine pick it up. But when she heard Skelly’s panic-stricken voice, she jumped up from the couch and sped to the phone. In doing so, her left heel caught on the hem of her gown. She knew she could either let it rip or fall hard on her hands and face. In a split second decision, she righted herself, letting the silk rip. What an unhappy sound. Lark cringed.
By the time she’d gotten to the phone, Skelly had hung up. But she’d heard enough of the dilemma. Her beloved pet, Picasso, was out on the loose again, like a fugitive duck, nourishing Skelly’s garden without his permission. Picasso was a true escape artist. She should have named him Houdini. Okay, so what could she do now?
Better assess the damage on my dress first. Not bad. Fortunately, she had some tiny safety pins to fix it with. As she reached into the kitchen junk drawer she got an idea. Just a little idea. But it had potential. I could just lift up my gown, go out on my driveway, and call to Picasso. I’ll bet I can get him to come back in with just a gentle reprimand.
Since she’d once shamed Picasso back into his pen with a shake of her finger and a scowl, she felt confident of her plan. She swung open the front door, and sure enough, there was Picasso happily scurrying away from Skelly as he tried to coax him in the other direction.
Okay, I can do this. Lark raised her skirts and headed outside, scuttling like a crab in her high heels. No need for a coat. She’d only be out for a minute.
Even though it was already dark outside, the streetlights illuminated the whole area. Once she’d made it to the end of her driveway, she decided to try the soft approach first. “Picassooo. Sweeety. Come on in now. You’ve had your fun outing.”
Picasso got one glance at Lark and headed toward Timbuktu. He quacked and waddled down the street so swiftly, he’d be out of sight before long. And just when I’m about to have the date of my life. Oh well, it can’t get any worse.
“Oh, all dressed up,” Skelly hollered. “Hate to get your pretty duds all messed up. I can chase after him.”
Skelly’s face appeared flushed as if he’d been trying to corral Picasso for some time.
“No, please don’t. You know what the doctor said about your heart.”
But in spite of her cautions to him, Skelly marched down the middle of the street, his elbows swinging as he called out Picasso’s name.
Then she remembered a trick she’d used with her first pet duck. Yes. She needed the convincing boom of the megaphone she’d used in her college cheerleading days. It was at least worth a try. She clattered on her heels back up to the house, found the megaphone on the bottom shelf of the entry closet, and clopped back down the driveway. Lark flipped the switch on the horn, and it squeaked to life. Suddenly like magic, she remembered the roar of the crowd from high school—the students she’d revved up to a feverish pitch. The rush of winning. She wondered if she still had it in her. She lifted the megaphone to her mouth and announced, “Okay. Picasso. This is Lark speaking. Let’s bring yourself on home now. You can do this, Picasso. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go!”
As if on some unexplainable cue, Picasso stopped in mid-waddle in the center of the street. He turned around, lowered his head, and began his descent from rapture. Skelly turned around, shrugging his shoulders at her. Then he laughed until his whole body quaked.
Hey. Kind of fun, but I hope Everett isn’t watching. Probably wouldn’t come off too romantic, all gussied up in velvet and rhinestones while hollering at a duck through a megaphone.
When Picasso toddled up to her, she reached down to stroke his neck. He felt as soft as her velvet. “Okay, little guy. Come on. I don’t know how you got out of your cage again, but you have got to stop this. Your home is so nice and woodsy.” Lark continued to murmur soft assurances as she lured him into the backyard. “It’s full of your favorite treats. Isn’t that right?” She reached inside the backdoor and flipped on all the backyard lights.
Picasso looked back at her with a darling expression. Ducks are so cute. She was such a sucker. But Picasso knew the fun ride was over. “Yes, sweetie. Time to go home.” She closed the gate and secured it with extra heavy wire. There. Mission accomplished.
But somewhere in leading Picasso to the backyard, she’d forgotten to keep the flowing silk of her skirt draped over her arm. She hesitated, but knew she’d have to make an assessment. Slowly she moved her gaze downward. Some of the trim of her gown was splattered with muddy snow and white gooey duck drippings. “Picasso! You scalawag! You have ruined my first, and now probably my last, date with Everett.”
As if knowing his guilt, Picasso began quacking anxiously around in his home.
“It’s okay,” Lark said. “Well, no, it isn’t.” She lowered her head, wondering how things could have gone so wrong so quickly.
The wind had picked up, and as always she had no coat on. She shivered as she trudged back toward the house. She could always put on another gown and shoes. But it wouldn’t match her jewelry and eye shadow. Get a grip, Lark. You’ve never cared about that sort of thing in your life. Guess I need to call Calli and have her slap me around to knock some sense into me. It’s what friends are for after all.
Okay. Focus. Another gown? What time is it? With lightning speed, she hurried into the kitchen and looked at the clock. Six twenty-nine. She had sixty seconds. Oh dear.
The doorbell rang. She popped in the powder room to look in the mirror. Yikes. She winced. Her hair looked like she’d been riding on the back of Jeremy’s motorbike. For hours. She slogged to the door, opened it, and waited to hear how many creative excuses Everett could come up with as to why their date should be postponed. . .forever.
Eleven
Everett tried hard not to stare. But Lark stood there with her hair departing in several directions, none of which seemed to be the right ones. And her dress appeared soiled. A lone tear rolled down her cheek. He couldn’t stand her distress a moment longer.
Within an instant, Everett came through the doorway and stood in front of her. He was close enough to feel Lark’s breath on his face. I barely know her. Would she want me to comfo
rt her? She didn’t seem to object to his nearness, so he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped away her tears. Her skin felt so soft and her expression so appealing and feminine, he wanted to kiss her. But he didn’t want to ruin the moment. “You must really love your duck,” Everett said.
“You saw that?” Lark took a step back.
Everett slowly nodded.
“So what did you see, exactly?”
“Only what happened in your backyard. I heard you yell, ‘Picasso! You scalawag!’ And then something about him ruining your date with me.’”
Lark let out a tiny moan. “You could hear that?”
“Well, I was in my office, and I looked down when I heard a commotion.” He smiled.
“Oh, well.” Lark shrugged. “What can I say?”
“I would have come to your aid, but you already had him secured in his pen,” Everett said. “Hey, you know, I thought I heard a megaphone earlier, too. Did you actually use one of those things to call him in?”
Lark nodded.
“I guess it worked.” Everett noticed her blush again. He wouldn’t want to take advantage of her in such a fragile moment, so he stepped back. “Would you still like to go to the party?”
Lark blew her nose into his handkerchief, sounding like a dainty foghorn. “If you don’t mind me cleaning up and changing.”
“Everyone’s always late to these things.” Everett hoped to make her feel at ease.
Lark sniffled. “I guess we could come in fashionably late then.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Lark started to hand him his handkerchief back and then stopped. “Guess I’d better wash this first.” She hurried off into another part of the house. After a few seconds, she peeked back around the corner. “Please, make yourself at home.”
Everett could feel his Palm Pilot in the pocket of his tux, even though he’d promised himself to keep it at home. Must have picked it up without thinking. Surely he could have disengaged himself from his world for a few hours. Guess not.
He glanced around the room at all the paintings. Lark had her signature at the bottom of many of them. Everett studied a wedding scene, which appeared to be set in the Ozark Mountains. A bride and her groom kissed in front of a quaint chapel with all the wedding party gazing on in delight. He was amazed at how much joy and laughter filled her paintings.
Then he took note of a still life of fruit. Incredible! It looked so visually accurate, it seemed as if he could reach in and remove one of the apples. Lark had an amazing talent. It made him think of his sister, Greta. He shook his head and moved on.
Lark had some prints of the masters on display as well as her own. He recognized the Mona Lisa. The woman certainly had an interesting expression. In fact, it reminded him just a bit of Larkspur’s winsome smile.
The living room was also full of family photos. He walked over to the fireplace and picked up a framed photo off the mantle. In the picture Lark seemed to be in her late teens, and she stood between an older couple. Had to be her parents. She had her mother’s eyes and her father’s light, olive skin. Lark appeared cheery then, as well. Maybe even more so. Her parents held her in a close hug as if she were a treasure. Anyone could tell they loved each other very much. He wondered if Lark’s parents lived in Eureka Springs and if she visited with them a lot.
Everett looked at his watch. He thought it was a shame on one of his rare evenings out he’d be forced to share his date with a crowd of people, some of whom would be strangers. The minute they’d see the dazzling Lark, they’d be slinking over for introductions. And then Zeta would want to have her chunk of Lark’s time.
Funny how life changes. Only a few days ago, he would have cooked up ways to avoid Lark and, well, all of humanity in general. But something felt different inside him. Something had willingly shifted, yet he also felt the uneasy kind of mental jostling that tends to drive a numbers-junkie toward the edge. But then maybe he’d forgotten that the view outside his precise perimeters was far more interesting. Without thinking, his hand went to his heart. He just hoped Lark came with a survival guide.
Everett puttered around a bookshelf, noting the dust on the shelves and the rows of children’s books. He pulled a few books out until he found one Lark had illustrated. In a Giddy Pickle. Intriguing title. He studied the cover and then the drawings inside. There could be no doubt; she had a God-given talent.
Lark stepped out from her bedroom and sort of swished toward him in a long dress.
Everett’s hand went right back to his heart. “Oh, wow.”
Once in front of him, Lark grasped the sides of her dress and swirled around in a circle.
She is a vision as they say. A beautiful apparition in blue. He wasn’t even sure he could describe the radiance of the color of her dress, so he just stared for a moment as he tried to think of what to say. “Your gown. It looks like the wings of a butterfly. You know the iridescent. . .dust stuff?” Oh brother. Maybe I should have just used an old standby. “You look beautiful,” Everett said with all the sincerity he could surrender. It must have been the right words because a lovely smile started on Lark’s lips and then lit up her whole face.
“And you look very handsome in your tux,” Lark said.
“Thank you. I rarely use it.” He held up Lark’s book in his hands. “This is brilliant.”
“Thanks.” She bit her lower lip and said no more.
“Do you have a coat?”
“Yes. It would be nice to wear it for a change.” Lark opened the hall closet, and she handed him a black, velvet cape. Once he’d wrapped the softness around her shoulders, he wanted to hold her close, but he kept telling himself timing was everything. He stepped away to safer ground and cleared his throat again. At this rate, his throat would be sore in ten minutes.
There would be a hug and maybe a kiss or two if all went well. He hoped it would. Not just for the kiss, but because he could already feel some kind of emotional free fall coming on by just looking into those gloriously impish, brown eyes of hers. He couldn’t tell for sure what he felt, but if he had any hopes of a parachute nearby with the words common sense written on it, he was hopelessly out of luck.
With his hand guiding Lark at the small of her back, he walked her out to his new sedan.
“Thanks for having your car right here and all warmed up,” Lark said. “That’s nice.”
Hmm. She noticed. As he tucked her and her frothy gown into the passenger side of his sedan, he noticed her perfume again. What police squad would ever need tear gas? They could just hose the criminals down with this stuff, and every last one of them would be incapacitated. Should I say that? Naw.
Everett scooted in under the wheel and settled into the leather seat. He gazed at her and smiled. She was such a pleasure to look at it was hard to stop himself from staring.
“I was noticing your CD selection,” Lark said. “I love piano jazz. Maybe it’s the kind of music you should take up if you start taking piano lessons.”
“Piano lessons?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I took a few when I was a kid. But I don’t play.”
Lark turned toward him. “But did you like it?”
Everett couldn’t remember ever thinking about it. At least not for a long time. He’d locked those experiences away with his other family memories. “It was all right.” He recalled his teacher, Mrs. Musgrove, bragging on how fast he’d caught on. “No, I guess it was more than just all right. My mind enjoyed figuring out the mystery of it.” He laughed. “That’s the way I saw all those black and white keys. Like a grand puzzle to be mastered. And when I did, people seemed to enjoy it.”
Lark touched his arm. “So you took pleasure in it.”
Everett thought again for a moment. “I did. But I guess my approach didn’t have much bravura.” He backed out onto Whispering Lane and headed toward downtown.
“Oh, but people who are good at math can also be wonderful musicians.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere before.” Oh, y
eah. Mrs. Musgrove. Everett flipped on his signal light. “So do you feel the same way about the guitar? Like it’s a brainteaser?” He couldn’t believe he was talking music. Pretty artsy for a left-brain guy like me.
“No, not really.” Lark shook her head. “I thought it was a good way to communicate what I felt in here.” She pointed to her heart.
Everett liked the way she expressed herself. “So do you like all kinds of music?” he asked as he maneuvered through the winding streets, still marveling at the way the homes hugged the sides of the cliffs.
“Yes,” Lark said. “But mostly I love Christian rock.”
“So I noticed.” Everett grinned at her.
Lark’s head went down in a cute act of contrition. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Well, my music was just as loud,” Everett said. “By the way, you have talent. Why didn’t you pursue a music career?”
“I would have loved to, but I decided long ago there were only so many hours in a life. There just wasn’t enough time to do everything well. Or even two things well enough to do them professionally.”
“You’re right about life having a limited number of hours.” Perhaps it’s why he guarded his time so cautiously. Or rabidly as he overheard someone say at a meeting once. “Thank you for sharing some of those hours with me.” Everett saw Lark do the lighting up thing again, and it energized him. With other women, he’d never said anything charming, but then again, maybe he just hadn’t been motivated. Until now. He slipped a CD into the player. Piano music swirled around them like a soft breeze. “I can tell you like art,” Everett said. “I guess you chose well. How did you get started?”
“Well, I got an assignment right after I graduated from the University of Arkansas, and the book became so successful, I kept getting more and more work. They were all in watercolors, which I enjoy. And then I’ve also supplemented my income with a trust fund as well as some of my other investments. It’s worked well. . .so far.”
