A Minute to Smile (2 page)

She gave him the sealed plastic bag of herbs. “Good thing the good Lord invented women,” she said with a wry smile. “Otherwise, who would heal you?”

“We’d figure something out,” he said.

Esther grinned. They’d met when Esther was eight, Abe almost thirteen, and had been friends ever since. “How are you, really?”

“I’m okay, Mom. Just a little stiff.”

“All right. I’m going to go check on Jeremy, then.” But as she was turning toward the back of the house, the bell rang over the door. For an instant, she listened to see if she could hear her son’s voice. It came to her faintly, full of the undertones of command he used in playing his games. Reassured, she turned to greet her new customer.

Him.

The lion man from the dojo stood just inside the door, looking no less powerful than he had last week. Instead of loose trousers and bare feet, he wore a hand-tailored cotton shirt, open at the collar, and jeans that fit his lean thighs well. Light from the windows haloed his thick, curly hair and outlined the breadth of his shoulders. In his big, brown hands he held a white Panama hat.

For an instant, all she could do was look at him in surprise, and he seemed as stunned as she. When the silence between them stretched to an almost unbearable length, Esther finally broke it.

“Hello,” she said. “Can I help you?”

Abe jumped up. “Esther, this is a friend of mine from the dojo, Alexander Stone.”

The man extended his hand. “Hello,” he said. “Abe has been telling me about your expertise with herbs.” The voice was richly textured, as deep as a summer midnight, the edges and vowels of his words clipped with a British accent. Esther felt it flow over her spine as his strong, callused hand grasped hers firmly.

Rattled, she shot Abe a glance. “He has?”

Alexander dropped her hand. “I’ve been looking for someone to help teach a summer class. Abe said you’re the most knowledgeable herbalist in Boulder.”

“He overestimates me,” Esther said with a smile. His eyes, she thought, were a very unusual shade of blue—a clear aquamarine that made her think of marbles.

“You’ve got the right woman,” Abe interjected from his seat by the tea table. “Esther is about to be modest and mild, but she’s the best there is.”

Again she was about to protest, but a single scream pierced the air, cutting through the sound of the radio and their conversation. Without an instant’s hesitation, Esther turned and ran for the backyard, her heart pounding in fear. Jeremy was, in addition to being an eccentric little daredevil, very loud, and he was known to shriek in frustration. But the scream she heard had been one of pain and fear.

As she slammed out the back door, she cursed herself inwardly. Her instincts had told her to check on Jeremy a moment ago. She should have listened—they’d proved true more than once. If anything serious had happened to him—He lay beneath the crab apple tree unmoving, flat on his back. Esther raced toward him and kneeled in the grass. “Jeremy!” she cried.

He opened his eyes and coughed, then promptly burst into tears.

“Are you all right, honey?”

“I fell!” he wailed and sat up to throw himself into his mother’s arms. The tears were as much a defense from the wrath of the scolding he knew was coming as in fear.

She hugged him for a moment, then loosened his grip around her neck to look at his face. “How many times have I told you to stay out of that tree?”

“But, Mommy—”

“Not a word, Jeremy. You could have broken your neck.” She paused to let the meaning sink in. “You can’t watch any television for the rest of the week.”

His head dropped, the dark curls tumbling forward in glossy disarray, and his plump lower lip popped out. “Okay,” he said in a tragic voice. Then he realized the consequences of his actions. “That means I can’t watch Sesame Street!” He wept, and threw himself against her chest again.

For a moment, Esther simply held him in her arms, reveling in the smell of little boy—sunshine in his hair and dust on his clothes. She felt the heat of his wire-taut limbs against her palms and the prickling of his hair against her shoulder. And in memory, she saw him lying so still in the grass.

What was she going to do with this child?

* * *

Alexander fingered the tins on the shelf as he waited for Esther to return, and admired a row of jewel-toned jellies with hand-lettered labels: rose petal, chokecherry, crab apple. Curiously he picked one up. “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” he commented to Abe, who had returned to sipping tea in a rattan chair next to a huge fern.

“You ought to give them a try.” He grinned and lowered his voice. “Esther would probably hang me for saying so, but you get the flavor best if you make the toast out of white bread.”

Alexander smiled appreciatively, for he was no stranger to the fanatical devotion of many Boulderites to natural foods. He lifted the jar toward the light, admiring the pale ruby color. “It’s beautiful.”

“Esther makes it.”

“Do they have healing properties?” Alexander asked with a grin.

“No. But they’ll do wonders for your attitude.”

Esther breezed back into the room. Once again, Alexander felt himself riveted upon her. Instead of the bright yellow peasant blouse of the festival, she wore a brown rayon dress with buttons up the front. It was oddly old-fashioned, a dress from the forties, and it clung with demure but enticing exactness to her generous curves. “Abe,” she said with a toss of wild red hair, “would you mind sitting with Jeremy outside for a few minutes? He’s pouting, but he might like a friend.”

“Maybe I’ll go tell him some soldier stories,” Abe said with a wicked grin and headed for the backyard.

Esther turned toward Alexander, brushing wisps of hair from her porcelain face. “Would you like to sit down?” She gestured toward a rattan love seat.

As he settled on floral cushions, he decided that she made him think of a goddess, but not those ethereal creatures artists were so fond of, with their flat blond hair and frail figures. Rather, Esther was more like an ancient goddess of fertility—laughing and lusty, drawn in robust hues, love and appetite flowing from her like sunshine.

Oddly appropriate that she was an herbalist.

“Since you’re English, I’m sure my tea won’t suit you,” she said, “but can I offer you a glass of lemonade?”

Alexander had to gather his scattered thoughts to speak and it annoyed him. He was thirty-nine years old and in addition to having been married twelve years, he was no stranger to women. What was it about this woman that tied his tongue? “Lemonade is fine,” he said gruffly.

“Fresh squeezed,” she said, sliding open the door of a glass-fronted cooler that displayed all sorts of exotic juices and soft drinks. She poured a tall glass of lemonade for each of them from a pitcher, then settled in the chair Abe had vacated. The pose put her against the light, giving her hair an edging of gold fire. Taking a dainty sip of her lemonade, she gave him a curious glance. “So, tell me more about this class.”

Alexander fingered his beard momentarily, gathering his thoughts. “My specialty is the history of the dark and middle ages, and I’ve several students who need a touch of reality regarding their favorite time period.”

She flashed that inviting, mysterious, goddess smile. “How interesting. What would you like me to do?”

“We need someone to share the old ways of medicine with us. Abe said there’s no one who knows the herbal arts as well as you do.”

Again she brushed away the compliment. “He’s much too loyal. But I love talking about herbs on any level.” Biting her lip, she paused. “I think I may even have a few books on the dark ages in particular.”

“An honorarium would be arranged, of course.” He forced himself to look away from the glowing colors of the woman before him and sipped the pulpy lemonade.

“Waive the honorarium,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve taken a class of any kind. I might enjoy sitting in on the sessions that I don’t teach.” She looked at him, a hint of shyness in her rich brown eyes. “Would that be all right?”

“Of course.” He smiled to put her at ease and cocked an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

“How many students are in the class?”

“Only eleven—most of them very intense, I should warn you. The sort of students who live and breathe for history. All of them are very bright, eloquent, and—” he gave her a rueful smile “—absurdly certain that the world we left was a far better one than the one in which we live.”

“You sound as if you know them very well.”

“Oh, I do. I proposed the class with all of them in mind. Obsession can be dangerous.” He shook his head. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough, I’m afraid.”

“Believe me,” Esther said with asperity, “I’m familiar with the syndrome.” She laughed. “I’ve probably even been one of those students.”

“As have I, I’m afraid.”

A group of little boys rushed up to the door. “Mrs. Lucas, can Jeremy play?” one called through the screen.

“He’s around back, guys.”

Alexander watched the gaggle of them run toward a parked group of trikes and tiny two-wheelers.

“Do you have children?” Esther asked.

“No,” he said.

“Somehow I didn’t think so.”

“Oh, really? Why is that?” His question was more curious than anything.

“You strike me as someone with an orderly life—and don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.”

For a moment, he was surprised, then he laughed at how accurately she had pegged him. “As a matter of fact, I do have an orderly life.” He inclined his head, realizing with a small part of his mind that it had been literally years since he’d laughed out loud so spontaneously. “But would I still live amidst disorder if my children were grown and gone?”

“Not a chance, Professor. That silver might fool some people, but you aren’t old enough to have children already sprung from the nest.”

“Right again,” he said. He stood up. “I’ve got a feeling I’m going to like working with you, Ms. Lucas.”

She inclined her head, as if taking his measure, a measure that somehow puzzled her. “The feeling is mutual.”

“I’ll send you a syllabus for the class and you’ll have a clear idea of what I’ll need from you on that.” He stood up and extended a hand. “I’m listed in the university directory if you should have any questions—and I don’t live very far from here, either.”

“All right. It was nice to meet you, Alexander Stone.”

“Goodbye,” he said formally, and firmly placed his hat on his head. Outside, the day seemed bursting with life and energy. He decided suddenly to forego the work he’d had planned for this afternoon in favor of working out at the dojo.

As he walked home to get his things, he found himself whistling.

T
he dojo was nearly empty on this warm afternoon, which suited Alexander as well as if it had been filled with people. He didn’t come here for social reasons.

The room was still, with reflected light falling in soft white arcs to the mats from windows high in the walls. It smelled faintly of hardworking bodies and the polish on the floors, with a hint of the incense Ryohe Kobayashi burned in his private room. As Alexander headed barefooted toward the unoccupied end of the room, he nodded at a young muscular man working with a heavy bag suspended from the ceiling.

Shutting external signals out, Alexander moved into the tai chi chuan exercise that had led him into the practice of martial arts as a boy. A series of 128 slow-motion movements, it served to loosen his body and shut down his brain. After so many years, he was able to block his rational processes, but another portion of his mind never entirely quieted. A purely sensual vision of Esther flashed against the darkened screen of memory, a vision of yellow light shimmering in her pale copper hair, of her sloe-eyed smile and throaty voice.

No thoughts. He pushed them away, slowly easing away even the vision of Esther as he sought the quiet of mind that marked true discipline.

Some days, when he worked hard and long, he found himself suspended in the flow and concentration that marked the art of tai chi. Not often—it was nearly impossible for a Western man to completely master the art of silence. But the mellow sense of peace occurred often enough that he continued to seek it. In the past few years, even the pursuit of it had often saved his sanity.

Flutters of calm touched him today and after several hours, he strolled home in the bright heat of early summer, feeling pleasantly energized.

On his porch, however, were the gory remains of a robin. The head, wings and tail were scattered beneath a chair, surrounded with a few loose gray feathers.

“Damned cat,” Alexander swore, and found a shovel to remove the carcass. Piwacket, the murderer, slept serenely below a rosebush in the backyard. The mangy tom opened one eye as Alexander began to dig a shallow hole.

“The only thing that comforts me, Piwacket,” he said to the animal, “is that soon you’ll be much too fat to climb a tree.” He frowned, eyeing the rippling, dusty belly that billowed before the cat like a sail. “It amazes me that you can move fast enough to catch even a robin.”

Piwacket yawned and flopped back down into the warm dirt. Despite himself, Alexander grinned—few creatures were as unrepentantly degenerate as his cat.

He spent the afternoon gardening, taking pleasure in the feel of the warm sun on his bare head and arms, in the rich smell of the earth and the damp feel of it on his hands. He weeded between sprouting marigolds and his late wife’s energetic lilies, and transplanted the tiny purple and blue violas that would create such lovely contrast to his collection of roses as the season progressed.

By dinnertime, he was satisfyingly sweaty and dirty, his arms and hands nicked from thorns and rocks. He showered, broiled a steak and sat down with a bottle of ale and the newspaper.

All according to schedule.

When he settled in the library for a nightcap of cognac and a little reading, that, too, was well within his routine. A breeze danced in through the French doors that led to his garden, carrying with it the relaxing scent of earth and wet grass.

He picked up a paperback suspense novel from the lamp table and read, sipping cognac in the quiet evening. Piwacket padded in on enormous paws and flopped his ragged, unkempt body at Alexander’s feet. He meowed, but Alexander ignored him.