Spires of Spirit (20 page)

“I wasn't planning to leave.”

“Los Angeles isn't attractive anymore?”

She shrugged. “I think the only reason I stayed there as long as I did was that I was born there. There's . . . nothing for me to go back to.”

“I wondered. I noticed your engagement ring when I interviewed you, and since you hadn't been in Denver for long, I assumed your man was in L.A.”

Lauri unconsciously let her left hand fall into her lap. “It's not an engagement ring. It's a promise ring. And it's . . . uh . . . it's from a friend.”

Silence hung over the table for a few seconds. Hadden's eyes were kind. Not prying. Not predatory. Kind. “Forgive me,” he said at last. “I didn't mean to intrude.”

“It's OK.” Maybe she should have stopped wearing the ring. But it was a link to something—someone—she wanted, and it embodied hope in ten-karat gold and a two-point diamond. And so she wore it. And so she was unwilling to discuss it.

“My apologies nonetheless,” he said. “I should remember my manners.”

It was not just a quick formula to gloss over an awkwardness in the conversation: Hadden sounded sincere. Lauri wondered if she was again seeing that elusive shimmer about him. “So, when are you going to show me how to pet birds?” she said, doing a little glossing of her own.

He grinned. “Next sunny day.”

As she drove home that evening, she was conscious of the ring on her finger. It flashed intermittently in the light of the street lamps along Colorado Boulevard, and it caught in the lining of her coat pocket when she fumbled for the key to her apartment door.

It was all a matter of hope. She had made the long drive to another city, to another life, and she had found the courage to do it only because there was a faint possibility of a reconciliation. Sometimes people had to separate for a while, had to get their feet under them, had to recognize themselves as individuals before they could, eventually, return to a relationship and renew it. Carrie was in Los Angeles, Lauri was in Denver. If things worked out . . .

She cooked an omelet for dinner and ate it sitting on the floor, for she had no furniture save a mattress. Japanese flute music on the stereo competed unsuccessfully with the incessant hard rock from next door, but she had given up complaining. The telephone sat on the kitchen counter. She had not called in a month. Maybe she should try again.

She held out until bedtime, and the one-hour time difference ensured that there was no hint of desperation about the call. Carrie hated desperation. Everything had to be even, calm,
pro forma
.

Tension crawled into her shoulders in the interval between the last of the eleven digits and the click of the answer. She was a little startled: it was a man's voice. She swallowed and asked for Carrie.

Carrie was there in a minute.

“Hi, love, this is Lauri.” She tried to sound happy.

“Oh . . . hello.” Silence for several seconds. “What's up?”

In truth, nothing was up. It was the same day-to-day existence. Working. Eating. Long evenings spent staring out of a third-floor window at the twinkling and colorful lights of a young city. Sleeping alone. She could not say anything about that, though.
Pro forma
. “I just called to . . . to . . .”

She heard Carrie turn away from the phone for a moment. “It's Lauri, Ron.” There was a muffled response.

“I just called to talk,” said Lauri when she was sure Carrie was listening again.

“About what?”

“About . . . uh . . . you. I just . . . wanted to see how you are.”

“I'm OK. Ron's over here right now. We're having a drink.”

“Oh.”

Silence again. Discomfort in both Los Angeles and Denver.

“Is your job all right?” said Carrie.

“Yeah,” Lauri looked for words. At least Carrie had asked a question. “The boss told me I was doing fine.”

“That's good.”

“Have you . . . have you thought at all about what I said last time I called?” It was a stab in the dark. She was not expecting much, but, really, she needed very little. Or so she thought.

“Last time? What was that?”

Lauri's mouth was dry. The conversation was going to hell, and there was nothing she could do about it. “About coming to Denver.”

“Uh . . . no, I hadn't.”

“It's a nice city.”

“I'm sure it is.”

She might have been trying to climb a cliff of glass. “Well,” she said when the silence had become too strained, “you might think about it. It'd be nice.”

“Yeah.”

“I'll . . . I'll talk to you later, then.”

“Sure.” Carrie hung up without saying good-bye. Lauri wondered what was going on, but felt, inwardly, that she knew.

The rock and roll faded out about midnight, and she crawled into bed. She stared at the light-stippled ceiling for several hours before sleep came.

***

The skies remained cloudy, and rain fell intermittently for the next week, so Hadden had no opportunity to keep his promise concerning the birds. But neither did he bring up the subject of Lauri's ring again, and Lauri was grateful for that, for it let her at least try to forget the whole sorry business while she was at work. By herself, in her own apartment, she could play by her own rules . . . and if she cried herself to sleep at night, that was, and would remain, her own affair.

But she could see that Hadden—and, in fact, everyone in the office—had noticed that something was bothering her. Fortunately, though, they did no more than speak, maybe, a little more softly to her. At least until Saturday.

The skies were clear that morning, and the sunlight sparkled on the small pond that occupied the center of Lauri's apartment complex. Lauri herself was just coming up the stairs from feeding the ducks when she heard her phone ringing. She took the stairs two at a time, missed the keyhole twice in her haste, but finally threw the door open and dived across the room.

“Good morning!” said Hadden. “I hope I didn't wake you.”

“Uh . . . no,” she gasped. “I usually get up early . . . even on weekends.”

“Good! My lady and I are going up to the mountains for a picnic, and we want you to come along. How about it?”

She hesitated. “I . . . don't want to intrude . . .”

“Not at all. Ash wants to meet you. I've been telling her about my wonder assistant. And she's not even jealous!”

Lauri laughed in spite of herself. “Well, if you're sure.”

“Of course I'm sure! We'll pick you up at nine. Don't worry about bringing anything except yourself.”

And at precisely nine o'clock, Hadden's Datsun pulled up outside her apartment building. Ash turned out to be a slender, graceful woman whose blond hair matched her name. She smiled warmly and took Lauri by the hands when Hadden made the introductions. “Hello. Good morning,” she said.

“Hi.” Lauri wondered if she saw the same light in her eyes that she had seen in Hadden's. She looked for the shimmer, but the sun was too bright.

“Ash, do you mind taking the back seat?” said Hadden. “We have a tall lady here.”

“It's quite all right,” said Ash, who was looking at Lauri as though she were seeing something rare and wonderful.

“Uh . . . thanks . . .” Lauri could not think of anything else to say.

The drive to the mountains took them out Highway 6, and they chatted while they drove. Ash turned out to be the owner of the largest employment agency in Denver, but Lauri found it difficult to associate her quiet grace with all that industry.

“You don't seem at all like the employment counselors I've met,” she commented.

“I . . .” Ash smiled softly, as if looking within herself. “I did some growing up.”

Hadden turned off at a small dirt road that climbed steeply at first, then rose and fell for twenty minutes or so until it opened out into a level area of hard-packed earth surrounded by forest.

Once Hadden had shut off the Datsun's engine, only the song of the wind sweeping through the tops of the pines remained to break the silence. The place reminded Lauri of TreeStar, and she wondered if the office decor had been inspired by it.

She stood at the edge of the clearing, hands in her pockets, looking up at the mountains. Ash touched her arm. “What do you think?”

“It's beautiful.”

Ash had the picnic basket in one hand, and with the other she took Lauri's arm. “Come.”

The three of them set off along a path carpeted with pine needles and the first blush of spring moss. Hadden and Ash had left their shoes in the car, and they padded silently along. Lauri's boots crunched an occasional twig.

The path led to a wide meadow open to the brilliant sky and studded with early spring flowers. Not ten feet away stood a deer, watching them placidly as they entered. Hadden waved at it, and it appeared to nod in return.

“It's nice to see the neighbors,” he said as he spread a blanket on the ground.

Lauri was still staring at the deer. It had not moved. “First birds, now deer. How do you do it?”

Hadden grinned. “Innate talent.”

And, while they ate, not only did the deer stay where it was, but they had other visitors as well. Another deer showed up, then two raccoons, several bluejays, and a sparrow hawk. The last perched on the branch of a sapling not three feet from Lauri, who, midway through a tuna salad sandwich, abruptly realized that she was involved in a one-sided conversation with it. And yet she would have sworn that the bird understood every word she said. She recalled again the sparrows outside the office, and she was not overly surprised when she turned around and saw that one of the deer was lying beside Ash, who was stroking its neck.

Lauri lifted her gaze, her eyes caught by a flash above the treetops. Beyond the trees on the far side of the meadow rose a white tower and the upper story of a building. Both were roofed in blue stone, but though the windows flashed as though polished up an hour before, she could tell that the structure was still at least partly unfinished.

She squinted against the bright sky. A filigree of silver tracery wound along just beneath the curving eaves.

“Did you want to learn about the birds?” said Ash.

Lauri's gaze came back to the clearing. The deer was gone. And, yes, even in the sunlight, Lauri could see a soft shimmer about Ash, and there was light in the woman's eyes that was one with the cool, glistening mystery of the stars.

She was held by the vision, and it seemed to her then that she was looking beyond Ash, beyond the clearing . . . and into a realm of midnight skies filled with that crystalline light. The world dropped away. There was only the sky, the stars, the soft winds that blew—who knew from where? Sighing, she breathed the air, breathed, it seemed, the light, too; and she felt something within her respond to both, as though finally, after years of searching, she had come home.

“Yeah,” she murmured, “that's nice. That's real nice.”

“Good.”

Ash spoke softly, but her voice brought Lauri back to the clearing. Lauri blinked. She had never really noticed how blue the Colorado sky was.

“
Killykillykilly
,” cried the sparrow hawk. It had not left the branch of the sapling.

Ash grinned. “Stretch out your left arm,” she said. “Invite the hawk.”

Lauri was dubious. “That . . . uh . . . usually accomplishes very little.”

Ash looked impish. “Try it.”

Hadden was leaning back on his elbows, watching. Wondering if this were all an elaborate joke, Lauri put out her arm.

The sparrow hawk regarded her with bright eyes. “Would you . . .” Lauri felt a little silly. “Would you like to sit on my arm?”

The hawk seemed to consider, then, with a quick flick of its wings, it was perching just behind her wrist, gripping gently.

“You're . . .” The bright eyes met her own, unafraid, trusting. “You're very pretty.”

The bird preened. Lauri was sure that it understood her. She looked at Ash and Hadden. “How is this possible? Things like this don't happen.”

“You're a special person,” said Ash. “The hawk knows that.”

“Special?” Lauri's promise ring flashed in the light, bright as the eyes of the sparrow hawk. Carrie's eyes were bright, too, but the hawk's tiny eyes seemed inexplicably kind in comparison.

Gingerly, she extended her free hand toward it. “May I?”

Something about it indicated assent, and it suffered her touch.

“See?” said Ash. “It knows you won't hurt it.”

It was true. How could she? After a minute, Lauri withdrew her hand. “Thank you.” The hawk ruffled its feathers into place, flicked its wings again, and was back on the branch.

“Bravo.” Hadden clapped his hands, and Ash dug through the picnic basket for the thermos of coffee.

In the tree, the hawk preened again. Lauri stared at it, seeing it as though through a haze of starlight.

***

She slept soundly that night, but her dreams were filled with the clear, diamond light of the stars. Rising before dawn, throwing open her bedroom window, she leaned out to see the first glowing arc of the sun blaze at the horizon in an aura of pink and gold. And when she went down to the pond to feed the ducks, she found them as trusting as the hawk, the newborns crawling into her lap and settling down as though in their own nests while their mothers looked on approvingly.

The colors. So bright. She had never seen colors before. Not like this. She was not sure what she had found, but she wished that she could show it to Carrie.

Lunch found her at her window, watching the pond as she ate bread and cheese and washed them down with a can of pop. Carrie, she thought, if you could only see this, you'd leave that hellhole in Los Angeles and come out here. If you could see this, we could patch everything up. You could get a job out here. We could . . .

She was already reaching for the telephone, punching in the numbers. She kept her eyes on the pond while the connection went through.

Rob answered again. He was a likable sort, but Lauri did not want to waste time. She asked for Carrie immediately, leaving Ron obviously baffled by her imperious tone.

“Hello?” came the familiar voice.

“Carrie,” she said, “I want you to come out to Denver. I'll pay for it. Just . . . you gotta . . . you just gotta come out and see this place.”