Spires of Spirit (15 page)

He dropped his eyes for a moment, but then he lifted them, met her gaze. “Perhaps not,” he said. “But it seems that I have much to learn. Of sleep. And of death and rebirth. Will you be my teacher, Roxanne?”

She stared at him for a moment. “I will, Varden,” she managed at last. “If you will be mine.” And then: “Will you . . . will you be my lover?”

The tears ran down his face, but he smiled at her, and the radiance of that smile was unmatched even by the radiance of the just-rising sun that broke over the distant horizon in an arc of fire. “I will,” he said as the light mounted in the east. “If you will be mine.”

Joan knew it was going to be one of her odd days when she drove to work that morning. The sun was too bright, the sky too blue, the fields on either side of the road too green for her to feel at all normal. Traffic about her and landscape unreeling past her windows, she struggled to keep her eyes on the road, to shut the warm, sweet air of midsummer out of her mind.

She could never say exactly what caused these days. If she tried very hard, she could push the whole question away . . . for a while. The air was clearer maybe, the polluted Denver skies swept clean by mountain breezes; or perhaps some flower was in bloom, causing an obscure allergy to flare up. But such excuses smacked to her of dishonesty, and though she was quite willing to forget to mention a thing or two when dealing with a difficult applicant or a reluctant employer, she was quite unwilling to apply the same procedure to herself. And so, when (the Mercedes idling at a light) she found that on her right beckoned a small park, a carefully landscaped and mowed and manicured city park with an artfully sculpted pond in the middle and nothing natural about it save for the water and the grass and the earth, she nonetheless found herself staring at it hungrily . . . and admitting that she
was
staring at it. Hungrily.

Green. And blue. And the fertile brown of good dirt, warm and gritty and all ready to push the tender shoots of plants toward the sunlight. Joan wanted to do nothing so much as pull over, take off her shoes, roll up her Yves St. Laurent pants, and (admitting it again) go wading. And she wanted to reach down and touch the water and the earth, because . . . because water and earth were what
mattered
, not things like managing employment agencies and clients who—

A horn blast startled her out of her thoughts. The light had changed. Flushed and cursing under her breath, she dropped into gear and pulled out quickly; and if her eyes were moist, she only clenched her jaw tighter, kept a more careful grip on the wheel, fought more grimly against the sunlight and the sweet air.

It was one of her odd days.

Excruciatingly conscious of her every thought, she managed, as usual, to fight down the urgings, and she was only a few minutes late when she hurried past the receptionist and entered her office. But even here, in a room full of synthetic carpeting and the subliminal flicker of fluorescent lights, her ordeal was not over, for her window looked out upon the fields as yet untouched by the burgeoning construction of the suburbs, the tall grasses speckled with yellow daisies and the gully just to the south supporting, even in the summer heart, a stalwart bunch of cattails.

Eyes averted, she closed the blinds on the scene, and then she sat down at her desk with a cautious glance through the window that looked out into the main office. To admit her problem to anyone was out of the question, but no one on the other side of the glass appeared to have noticed her distress. In any case, were she asked, she had a headache, that was all. Not an unusual thing for a woman who was trying to run an employment agency.

A tapping at her door. “Joan?”

“It's open,” she said with more irritation in her voice than she wanted. Those fields, and particularly that pond, were still in the back of her mind. Why this damned desk? Why this stupid brown velvet blazer with the too-tight sleeves? Why anything at all instead of grass, and ponds, and . . .?

Sandra, the receptionist, stuck her head in. “The counselors are waiting for you, Joan.”

“What?” Joan fumbled with the papers on her desk. Headache. That was it. Just a headache.

“It's Wednesday. Staff meeting.” Sandra peered at her. “Are you all right?”

The odd day. She had forgotten about the staff meeting. “Ah . . . ah . . . ah . . .”

What was it again?

“I have a . . . a headache. That's all. I'll be right in.”

Sandra disappeared behind the closing door and Joan tried to put her thoughts in order. What was she supposed to talk about this morning? Sales technique. That was it. Selling people was just like selling ballpoint pens. You had to know the tricks, the dodges, the ways to finesse the disembodied voice on the other end of the line and simultaneously gloss up the flesh-and-blood client who sat at your desk.

But it was an odd day, and her thoughts were jumbled, the sleeves of her blazer seemingly just a little tighter than usual. She knew she could not speak with coherency, and with a pang she remembered that the large room where the counselors worked—where the meeting was to be held—looked out, through a wall of windows, on the same scene of fields and daisies as did her office. She would never make it through a talk, but she had to, for to admit that something was wrong with her—to admit that something was
that
wrong with her—was . . . was . . .

Grappling with her thoughts, she forced them to slow down, forced herself to consider the matter logically. There was a way out of this. There always was. Placing clients, collecting fees, giving talks during odd days: all were just problems to be solved. And she could solve them. In this case, if she could not speak, then someone else had to.

Quickly, she looked through the reports on her desk. Among them were breakdowns of placements for the last month, and she noticed that two counselors, Rick Shane and Wheat Haddock, stood out markedly above the averages. Wheat's performance was particularly interesting, since she had joined the staff only two months before.

Good. Rick and Wheat could do the talking, and Joan could keep her back to the windows. The two would, doubtless, feel rewarded by being singled out, and the other counselors would work all the harder in hopes of eventually garnering the same recognition for themselves. Managing people, managing problems: she could do it. She was Joan Buckland, and she could
do it
.

She paused at her door, pulled down the sleeves of her blazer, and composed herself before walking quickly out past the receptionist's desk and down the hallway to the counselors' room. Even as she approached, though, she could see the windows through the open door, and the lovely yellow light was spilling into the room. It was a hideous threat, and she kept her eyes firmly on the beige carpet—she was thinking, that was all—as she sidled in and sat down facing away from the view.

She looked up and forced a smile. “Okay, everyone. I want to talk about technique today. You've all had the basic courses in selling, but you've all got your distinctive styles, too. Some of those styles work, some don't. I'm not coming out against imagination, but if it doesn't make you money, you don't want to use it. Now—” She glanced at Rick and Wheat . . . and fell suddenly silent. Rick looked much as he did every day: gray suit, blue tie, pale blue shirt, polished shoes. The epitome of competence. Wheat, though . . .

She was a young, sweet-looking woman with cornflower-blue eyes and hair the color of dark honey. She had from the first reminded Joan of fields and daisies (a near fatal recollection on such an odd day), but this particular morning, there seemed to be a nimbus around her, a delicate shimmer sparked with traces of silver that glittered like the stars on a clear winter night.

Joan stared, and she suddenly realized not only that she had been silent for considerably longer than was good for appearances, but that Wheat had met her eyes. There was no question in the young woman's glance, only a calm acceptance, and perhaps . . . perhaps a sense of wonder.

Joan shook herself out of it. Ignoring the fields, trying to ignore the nimbus, she plunged on. “Rick and Wheat have done extremely well this last month, and it . . .” The fields, the nimbus: they were somehow related. Though she had denied herself the pond that morning, she was sure that Wheat had no such qualms. Dawn might well have found her wading among the minnows, reaching down to touch a lily . . .

She realized that ten counselors were watching her: nine puzzled, one calm. “It . . . it looks like they've got some insights into what works,” she said, stumbling through the words. Problems, solutions. She could do it. She
could
. “So I'm going to let them talk about what they do. I'm sure we'll find out a lot that will make us all better employment counselors. Rick?”

Rick stood up so that he could be heard better. One hand in his pocket, he looked at the floor for a minute to choose his words. “I think the first thing I realized,” he said, “was that most people don't know what they want, even if they think they do. It's up to me to tell them. Usually they haven't thought much about it, so I've got the advantage, because I have. I work with what I've got . . .”

Joan lost track of his words. She went back to thinking about the fields, about the pond, about Wheat. The young woman was listening to Rick, but her cornflower blue eyes were troubled. And there was still that . . . that nimbus.

Nimbus? What?

Rick went on for several minutes, but his thoughts were neither novel nor overly remarkable. Perhaps he used his training a little more effectively than did others, but Joan had already perceived that his superb performance this last month was more of a fluke than anything else. Control the conversation, convince the employer that he or she needed the client, convince the client that he or she needed the employer, and, most important, stay on top of whoever was responsible for the fee until the money came through. Next month, no doubt, Rick's performance would return to pedestrian normalcy. She began to worry that she would have to speak after all.

But after Rick finished and sat down, everyone looked at Wheat. Joan had marked her as shy from the beginning because she was usually quiet, but she showed no trace of nervousness when she rose . . . still surrounded by that odd shimmer that no one else appeared to have noticed.

“How do you do it, Wheat?” said Joan. She tried to sound hearty, but the back of her neck was prickling as though something were about to happen; and she knew, with a horrible sense of prescience, that Wheat's success had nothing to do with luck.

Wheat looked at all of them with that same calm acceptance. “It has to do with love,” she said.

Joan could have sworn that everyone stopped breathing. Including herself.

“You have to look at the clients that come to you and love them,” Wheat went on, “because they're people and they deserve it. You have to feel them, what they've been through, why they've come to you. I look at them, and I try to sense what they want. What's important to them. If I can't get that, I level with them about it. Maybe I can get them one thing but not another. But maybe what I
can
get them is more important to them than what I can't. Sometimes security is more important than a title, or a casual office is more important than money.”

Rick snorted. Two counselors murmured to one another. Joan sat, stunned.

“And when I'm calling employers, I try to do the same thing. There are . . .” Wheat searched for words, as if translating from another language, seeking equivalents where there were none, looking for words that did not exist. “There are . . . energies in the world, and you can sense them over a telephone line just as well as if the person sat at your desk. I'm helping people. I help the client. I help the employer. That's what I'm here for. Aid. Comfort. I can't think of a better way of loving someone than to make sure that he or she has a job and is happy in it.”

Rick exploded. “Oh, bullshit, Wheat.”

She looked at him, that same calm expression in her eyes. “That's what I do,” she said simply.

“Wheat,” said Rick, “you've been through the same courses as the rest of us. Are you telling us that all that is just garbage? What about those skills? Come on, Wheat! What's your secret? How do you clinch the deal? How do you go for the close?”

In Joan's eyes, the nimbus around Wheat flared a little, but the others still did not notice. Wheat gazed past her, out to the windows, out across the green and brown fields with their daisies and their cattails. “People,” she said softly, “have a very precious thing. It's called free will. I never interfere with it. I level with my clients. I level with the employers. I let them make the choices.”

“You're crazy.” Some of the counselors were plainly confused. Some were thoughtful. Rick, however, surprisingly red-faced, was on his feet, and one or two of the other counselors looked as though they might join him in another moment.

Joan straightened. “That's enough, Rick. Sit down.” She noticed Wheat looking at her and tried to ignore it. “Wheat should be congratulated. If that's how she does it, that's fine. She brings in money for the company and for herself. As we all know, the bottom line is what counts. You can't spend good intentions.”

Wheat flinched.

Joan continued. “All right: if you've found something useful here, add it to your knowledge. I've been in this business for fifteen years and, heaven knows, I'm still learning.” She glanced at her watch. “I'll let you all get on with your work. Wheat, could I see you in my office, please?” She kept her tone bland.

Wheat followed her employer back past the receptionist's desk and into the paneled office on the other side of the glass wall. The window blinds were still drawn. Wheat glanced at them in surprise but made no comment. Joan gestured her to a chair and sat down behind her desk.

Still the look of calm, the sense of wonder in Wheat's eyes. And the nimbus. Joan tried to ignore it. “You should be congratulated again, Wheat. Very good. Very good indeed.”