Jill Barnett – New Beginnings (страница 3)
By midnight the Fillmore’s lightshow rose up from behind the band in those vibrant, poster-colored hues, pulsing with the ragged voice of Janis singing a spiritual turned into hard rock by Big Brother and the Holding Company. Near the stage rim, March danced in a circle, barefooted, her sandals stashed in the deep pockets of her long velvet dress, her arms raised high in the air and five inches of mismatched bangle bracelets rattling down toward her elbows.
Freedom rang through the notes of the music and the words of songs: there was nothing left to lose, something that felt more true lately than ever. Her loose, uncut hair hung freely, and beneath the heavy velvet dress she wore nothing—free after being held captive and rubbed raw for too many high school years of elastic garter and Kotex belts.
Even the apples in a copper pot by the Fillmore stage were free for the taking, but probably laced with something to make your mood all too free.
When she looked up, he was standing in front of her, his hand out as if they’d known each other forever. But she kept dancing, shouting over the music: “What do you want?”
“You.”
His eyes weren’t drug-shot, but clear, his manner too confident and too knowing for her. He’d caught her off-guard and she didn’t know how to react, so she shook her head and turned her back to him, cutting him dead and feeling surprisingly calm about doing so.
Earlier, in a ballroom filled with people she had looked at him and felt something she couldn’t name, then an odd sense of regret when he’d melted into the crowd. When she had thought about it a little later, she told herself the moment had been silly and Hollywood, the kind of moment that called for elevator music playing in the background.
A numb second or two passed before she felt his breath above her, the heat of his body as he came closer. Guys came on to girls all the time; three, four or more times a night someone would hit on her. But they gave up easily when she always hesitated. You couldn’t go two blocks without seeing a sign that said: make love not war; love was as free as thought, as free as speech, and as free as most girls nowadays.
But he hadn’t moved on to some other girl who would give him what he wanted. He stayed by her, but didn’t touch her, a good thing since she might have incinerated right there.
The music stopped with a loud end note from the band. In that first heartbeat of silence, he leaned in and said in her ear, “You’re a fraud.”
She faced him. “What?”
“I see a barefoot girl, dancing alone, dressed in velvet, and with ribbons in her hair. If I stand close enough, when she moves, her jewelry sounds like tambourines.” He touched the necklace she wore. “Tell me those are love beads.”
She stepped back and pulled the necklace with her. “Do I know you?”
“No. But I’m trying to fix that mistake.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You called me a fraud first. Let’s stay strangers for now and deal with that.”
He shrugged. “You disappointed me, sunshine.”
“March. My name is March.”
“That’s different.” He sounded surprised. “I like the name March.”
“My mother will be thrilled.”
“Good. You can take me home to meet her. Mothers love me. My own can talk about me for hours.”
“I don’t live at home.”
“Even better. Where do you live?”
“I’m not going to tell you where I live.” She laughed then. “I don’t even know your name.”
“I’m Michael Cantrell. Don’t disappoint me, sunshine.”
Sunshine? She ignored that he called her that out of self-protection. “Okay, Michael. Look, you don’t know me so how can I disappoint you?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but studied her thoughtfully, seeming to find his words with care.
She knew she was giving him a hard time, and she had the awful thought that the word he might say next would be “Goodbye.” He could turn around and leave, when secretly that was last thing she wanted him to do.
“You look to me like the kind of girl who chooses to walk in the rain. Who stands on the breakwater, arms spread wide and laughing as a storm rages in. A girl who sings, even when there’s no music playing. And quotes poetry. Who’ll eat raw oysters and drink ouzo. The rare girl who will easily jump out of a plane or into my arms. Someone who’ll love me so long and hard I can’t stand up in the morning.”
It took a minute for his words to sink in. His words? God…his words. So far from what she’d expected. She had always thought in a visual sense, her artist’s side, believing life for her was most powerful if spoken through the eyes. Through vision, life had volume and depth, color and impression. The things you saw, you could always remember in color.
But his words came with more feeling than any first visual impression she could ever paint in her mind. She understood clearly at that moment the color of words.
What he said to her was so different from anything anyone had ever said to her. Until that moment, standing in front of this one guy, she would have never believed a minute of conversation could affect her so completely.
She heard his voice over again in her head saying those things about her. Is that who she was? A free spirit. Or was that only who she wanted to be?
This stranger was suddenly something else altogether, and he watched her as if her reaction were the most important in his life. He was perfectly serious, waiting, and a little on edge. The way he looked at her made her feel exposed, film out in the noonday sun; vulnerable, like he could see her past and into her future; and sexually charged, naked and out of control.
The music started again, loud and vibrant, and the crowd closed in. She felt the hard edge of the stage against her shoulder. Only a few inches separated her from him—they were breathing each other’s air—like a helium balloon she felt as if she needed to be anchored to earth. The poetry of what he had just said to her, the images it created, his honesty, all deserved more than her usual smart comebacks and flip comments.
Clearly this was one of those seminal times in her life when a new door opened wide. She could choose to walk right by it, or through it. There was still enough of a good girl in her to make her pause. Her sister May would not understand and would run in the other direction. Her friends might see open possibility. But did anyone else really matter?
In a crowd of almost a thousand, at that single moment, there was only the two of them. Michael Cantrell stood in front of her and asked her to love him. So, without a word, she took his hand and left.
For the six months after that night at the Fillmore, Mike Cantrell had kept a secret part of himself from March. Some days more than others, it was easier to believe the right time to tell her just never came. He told himself she was worried about making the rent when her shift at the bookstore was cut; or about a difficult project for a final exam; a friend from school who couldn’t find his muse without psychedelic drugs. Why worry her?
And those times when they were having fun—so often now—he would think, why screw it up? Other times, in his head, he couldn’t find the exact right words he could say aloud. Funny that he could find the words for justification; he could find the words for his excuses.
To hide one passion while another consumed him was not an easy existence, like straddling life between two worlds. His life was great with her in it. So great he wanted to stand on a mountain and shout. Amazing! Righteous!
But the truth was that March was fast becoming the best part of him. Yet she didn’t know one of the biggest parts of who he was; she didn’t know his dream. Some wounds just ran deeper than love and trust, and got all mixed up in his head when he tried to believe in all of it at once. Families could so simply and unknowingly cut the deepest wounds on one another.
Don Cantrell, his father, was an executive with Spreckles, the sugar company, a success, a man of few words and many expectations. Mike and his older brother, Brad, had grown up at a dinner table with only their mother on most nights, except Sundays when, in the formal dining room, his dad would sit at the head of the table set with china and dominated by a standing rib roast, smoked ham or leg of lamb, knife in hand as he tried and failed to carve some kind of relationship with his sons on one night a week during an awkward, too formal meal; being a father was the single thing at which Don Cantrell failed.
His success was a matter of Cantrell pride, driven by some hungry, innate gene that battled with the few cells his dad inherited that were gentle and understanding. He was self-made, the son of a farmer, grandson of a Swiss immigrant who relocated to America near the turn of the century to save his sons from being conscripted.
Last year Brad had torn up his draft card, stuck the pieces to the refrigerator along with his draft notice, and was now somewhere in Canada, a subject handled in whispers by the family and friends and anyone who knew the truth about his older brother. That their ancestors had come here to escape the draft was almost as ironic to Mike as the idea that his father worked for a company that produced sugar.