Полина Саймонс – The Tiger Catcher (страница 14)

As he was thinking of something less idiotic to say (frankly, anything would be less idiotic to say), there was a rock in his way, and he tripped over it. She was too fast for him. He could barely keep up, while she was practically sprinting through the peppergrass. It was hard to flirt walking up a steep hill on uneven terrain in a single file. He tried (not very hard) to keep his eyes off the smooth white backs of her slender thighs. His gaze kept traveling to her lower back, bared above the waist of her shorts. He wanted to dazzle her with his knowledge of blessed thistle and golden fleece, of Indian milkweed and fragrant everlasting, of the perennial live-forevers, but he couldn’t breathe and dazzle at the same time.

She returned to him, fanning herself with the red beret. “Julian Cruz,” Josephine said, one hand on her hip, “come on, a little more hell for leather. We have less than fifteen minutes.”

Hell for leather? “I didn’t know there was a deadline.”

“There’s always a deadline. You should know that, Professor Daily Newsletter. I know you’re a novice at walking …”

“I’m not a novice at walking.”

“We have until noon,” she said. “And then it will be gone.”

“What will? The sun? The mountains?”

“You think you’re clever, but you’ll see. If we miss it, that’s it. Tomorrow you’ll have a million things to do, and I have my Mountain Dew shoot. Yeah, they called while I was at the Greek. If I get this Dante gig, that’ll be two for two. I don’t know what’s happening,” she said. “I haven’t gotten two jobs in a row in like never.” The beret went back on her head.

“Maybe I’m your good luck charm,” he said. “Lucky hat, lucky Julian.”

“No time for chit-chat, Mr. Talisman—spit-spot.” In her combat boots, she disappeared up ahead, around a cottonwood.

“If we miss it, we could definitely come back another day,” he said after her. “I’m not saying we’re going to miss it—”

“We’re going to keep coming back day after day because you can’t hurry up today?” she called back. “What makes you think you’re going to be able to hurry up tomorrow?”

“I’m hurrying. I’m running uphill.”

“What you’re doing is called self-paced running,” Josephine said. “That’s another phrase for walking.” Ahead of him, she continued to scoff and mutter. “I can tell you work from home. People who work from home have absolutely no sense of urgency. They never have to be anywhere. It’s always dope-dee-doe.”

“I’m not dope-dee-doeing.” Julian huffed, wanting to tell her he didn’t only work from home, he also worked out. And drove all around L.A., loading and unloading trucks full of heavy things, and taught a class. Suddenly he wanted to tell her everything.

Josephine was barely flushed when they made it to the crest. “How you doing, cowboy? Hanging in there?” She smiled. She was flushed enough.

All he could do was pant. “Where are you taking me?”

“To show you magic.”

Pushing through the brush, they went off trail until they reached some scrubby silver dollar gums and a lonely laurel fig. She was happy, open-mouthed, panting, wiping her wavy hair away from her damp forehead. “It’s going to be amazing today, I can feel it,” she said. “Look how sunny it is.”

He saw. It was blindingly sunny. They swirled around in a 360, taking in the view. Miles of Los Angeles valley simmered below. They were high in the hills, floating in the shivering air, soaring above the vast spaces where people lived. The ocean in the westerly distance was in a mist, downtown L.A. a haze of matchbox towers. All the roads with a million white houses and a million palm trees led to the sea. Up here, the air was thinner, the oxygen weaker. It was time for nosebleeds and birds of paradise and whispering bells. The summer flora was blooming, the mustang mint and golden currant vivid in the high noon sun. There was a smile on her lips and thunder in his heart. He knew there was magic in these hills. All he wanted to do was kiss her.

She sucked in her breath, a bird of paradise herself, a whispering bell. “We’re standing above the fault in the earth called Benedict Canyon,” she said, rummaging in her hold-all until she pulled out a clear stone on a thin rawhide rope. Silver wire was braided and wrapped around the stone like a basket. She placed it in the palm of her hand. It was a chunky rough teardrop with sharp multi-faceted edges, translucent in part, occluded in part.

“What’s that?” He studied it with mild curiosity at first. But the stone tweaked something inside him, peaked his interest. Stirred some indefinable emotion. He felt an electric buzz through his body as he stared at it. The buzz wasn’t entirely pleasant.

“A quartz crystal.” Josephine lifted her arm to the sky. The crystal sparkled in the sunshine.

“Not a diamond?” Julian smiled.

“Ha. No. I’ve had it appraised, believe me.” She brushed her hair away from her face. “My grandmother gave it to me. It belonged to her cousin in the old country.”

“Old country where?”

“Not sure. Near Blackpool, maybe. Or Scotland.” As if the two were interchangeable. They walked a little farther until they reached a clearing, a hidden mesa in the sun encircled by chest-level exposed rock, a stony enclosure. “Jules, you’re standing in a cave of quartz!”

“Do I want to be standing in a cave of quartz?”

“Aha. Mr. Know-it-All doesn’t know everything. Yes, at certain times of the day, the quartz glitters like diamond dust. If you’re lucky, you might find yourself inside a rainbow.”

What man wouldn’t think himself lucky to stand next to beauty in girl form, rhapsodizing about magic diamond dust inside rainbows. He was motionless, catching his breath, interested, bedazzled, open to her, open to anything.

Their eyes flickered between the crystal in her hand and each other, the sandy desert hills falling away below them. In the valley, the outlines of Beverly Hills and Century City gleamed, farther west the yawning maw of the Pacific. Her flushed face was so near, all Julian had to do was move his head half a foot forward and kiss her open lips. His head slowly tilted sideways.

“How long till noon?” she asked.

He rocked back to check his Tag Heuer. “A minute.”

“Excellent.” Her palm faced up. “If you can think on your feet, you can make a wish. At noon, for a brief moment, the stars and the earth and the whole of creation will be so perfectly aligned that any wish asked for in faith can be granted.”

Clearly Julian wasn’t quick enough on his feet, or he’d be kissing her. “Why are you holding the crystal like that?”

“Trying to catch the sun with it.”

“You’re a sun catcher.” He gazed at her.

“I’m a wish catcher,” she murmured. “Around us are the oldest rocks in the Santa Monicas. Like forty million years old. You’re standing inside stone as old as time itself. You can touch time with your hands.” She took a breath. “Do you want to touch time with your hands, Julian?”

I want to touch you with my hands, he thought. His wish must have been apparent in his eyes. She blushed.

“What happens to the crystal when the sun hits it?” he asked. “Does it get hot?”

“Julian, I’ve led you up a mountain,” she said. “This is no time to be a cynic. We’re standing inside a volcano. The river beds below us have dried up, the land looks stern from here and is sometimes cruel, even ruthless, to weakness.”

“I know that all too well,” he said.

“Man, despite his fire and chaos, has made barely a ripple in these hills.”

With slight shame Julian thought that you could tell a lot about how he had chosen to live by his languor in the land of palm trees and summer, by how he had breezed through a decade of his chill life in which he made barely a ripple, and which had made barely a ripple on him.

“Is that what you’re going to do, Julian Cruz?” Josephine asked. “Be carried unfulfilled to the grave?”

Not anymore.

“All the colors of your world are about to disappear,” the ephemeral girl whispered.

A bright flash stopped Julian from speaking. The sun reached zenith. The rays hit the lucid gem in her hands. The light flared and dispersed through the prism, sparks of fire bounced off the glittering quartz of the cave. A moment earlier Julian and Josephine had stood amid green and sepia. Now they were dancing inside a kaleidoscope of purples and yellows, a phantasmagoria of color, an electrical unstoppable aurora. The hills vanished, so did the trees, and the valley below, and the sky. Everything was drowned out. Everything else was drowned out. Julian could barely see even her, and she stood right next to him. It almost looked as if she herself had dispersed, had broken into a million moving shards of the deepest scarlet. For half an inhale, the blinding red blanched his pupils, and she was gone.

He blinked, and she was gone.

In the reflection of the vanished world, with flames exploding in his eyes, Julian couldn’t say what he saw, but he felt so intensely that it took the breath away from him. He felt love, and pain that doubled him over, he felt crushing fear, and desperate longing, and deepest regret. He felt terror. He felt profound suffering. It hurt so much he groaned.