The Understory (23 page)

“Is nightfall coming?” I said. He was so nervous he made me nervous. “The Fierce One—”

“First the treasure box, then the moonflower,” he said, as we plodded deeper and deeper into the dark, mysterious forest.

S
tory began her day with a lie.

“Yes,” she said to Ivy’s secretary after a fake cough, “tell her I’m coughing and throwing up. And have killer diarrhea . . . No! No, I don’t need to talk to her,” she said, before abruptly hanging up. But as soon as her hand released the phone receiver, she realized calling in to work was unnecessary. Unused to being a millionaire, Story had a hard time conceiving of being unemployed, but as she pondered a life of luxury, she decided she no longer needed to put up with Ivy’s bullshit.

She picked the phone back up, hit redial, and had one more chat with Ivy’s slave. “Hey, Laurie, it’s Story again,” she said. “On second thought, tell the Boss Lady I’m not throwing up—I’m throwing in the towel. And tell her I don’t have a cough, and I don’t have diarrhea. I have money. Lots of it. And I’m not coming to work again. Ever.”

As silence set in on the other end, Story realized the moment didn’t feel as glorious as she’d hoped—even to herself, she sounded like a spoiled brat. She lowered her voice. “Um, if Ivy dumps
Grief and Loss
on Carrie or Tony, tell them to call me and I’ll give them a hand.” She paused and tried something she usually avoided at work. “Hey, how’d the thing go . . . at the place . . . with the guy?” Laurie’s boyfriend had just proposed to her, or something like that.

“Oh, Story, it was a dream,” said Laurie. “I mean, I wasn’t exactly surprised, but even though I thought it might happen, it was so magical, it seemed unexpected. I know that doesn’t make any sense—”

“No, it doesn’t—”

“He actually got down on his knees, as the sun was setting over the ocean, and from that moment on, I felt like it was all more than just a stupid story . . . no offense, Story—”

“Oh, don’t worr—”

“It was my
life
, you know, my new life starting right then and there.”

Out of habit, Story almost made a gagging sound, her usual response to sugar-sweet tales of romance, but she stopped herself and said, “That’s great, Laurie. I hope you live—”

“I know . . . happily ever after!”

After hanging up the phone again, she tried hard to focus on travel arrangements. With the map in front of her, she stared at the green blob with the word
Amazon
in the middle, spilling into surrounding countries, wondering if an anaconda could really swallow her whole, but then her mind wandered back to the terrace, and to the kiss. She relived his smell—aftershave, martini, hints of sawdust—and she couldn’t stop smiling when she thought about him slipping her mother the egg.

“Okay, we’ll need airplane tickets,” she said out loud, “but where do we even fly into—Brazil, Ecuador, Columbia?” But now that she was rich, she found herself thinking about lavishing gifts on Hans. Maybe she’d build him a new workshop, equipped with all the latest woodworking chisel-things. Or maybe he’d like a new arsenal of magic gear. Top-of-the-line wands and rabbits.
Don’t be weird. You hardly know him.
She thought about his strong arms around her, in the perfect squeeze.

“Okay, there’ll be anacondas there. We’ll need . . . machetes?” she said, realizing that going into the jungle without a safety net was not only going to be a pain in the ass, but also reckless. She was responsible for three other people, and contrary to what Claire Payne thought, there was no camera crew, no leader to protect them, and less than a day to find and hire either, and she’d still have to convince Martin Baxter to be their guide. And he’d already shown he had no problem saying no to Story. As she tried to think of possible solutions, the phone rang.

“Hello?” she said, and when she heard the sound of an electric saw in the background, she smiled.

The saw’s screaming subsided. “Did you know that native Amazonians consider the kapok tree to be the spiritual leader of the forest?” said Hans.

“I did not,” Story said, unconsciously twirling her hair.

“Yeah, so says the Internet. I needed to make sure I knew what it looked like before I tried to carve it.”

“And . . .”

“It’s
big
.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Story said. Then she stammered, “About the tree, I mean. We’ll see how big the tree is.”

Hans chuckled. “Look, I don’t want to sound bossy, especially before our second date, but I was thinking, we’re gonna need more than a mythical, spiritual tree-leader to get us through the jungle without incident. Don’t get me wrong, I’m up for the adventure. I’m ready to kick a jaguar’s ass to protect you if I have to. But . . .” He stopped for a moment. “Does it have to be the
heart
of the jungle? Couldn’t we just stay on the outskirts, peek in, maybe take some pictures?”

“The book says ‘heart,’” she said, pausing, “so it has to be.” Story had told Hans about the book, enough for him to know what the treasure box looked like, but he didn’t realize yet how Cooper had hung on her every word.

“You know, I once got lost in Compton—middle of the night—with this woman.” He sighed. “After two hours of her trying to read the map and yelling at me, I was happy to finally see a man with a gun.”

“I promise not to stop in the jungle to ask for directions—”

“That’s why we need a guide!” he laughed.

Exactly!

But as Story reveled in the fact that Hans was somehow reading her mind, Hans paused for a moment, and revealed something that came out like a secret. “Heartwood,” he said softly.

“Heart wood?” said Story.

“You asked me earlier what I’m making the treasure box out of,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Except for the lid, where you said the tree and vines need to be carved, the box itself will be constructed from heartwood, the wood in the tree’s center that’s died and become resistant to decay.”

“It’s dead?” Story said into the phone, preferring the term
heartwood
to
deadwood
.

Story noticed Hans come to life when he said, “Well, funny you should ask. Some people believe heartwood is technically alive because it can still chemically react to decaying organisms.”

Is he “some” people?

Story thought about this notion of something being part alive and part dead, and wondered if Hans thought about people in the same terms. Did he think of her as a solid oak beauty, or as disappointing plywood?

“So it’s
kinda
dead?” she said, laughing.

But Hans didn’t laugh back. Instead, he answered, “Yeah, I guess so,” and Story suddenly felt as if they weren’t talking about wood anymore. “Sapwood won’t hold up . . . You want the box to last forever, right?” An uncomfortable silence arrived and then left. “I mean, the kid’s experienced enough loss, I can at least make sure the damn box lasts.”

Story was impressed that Hans had given Cooper that much thought. “Right.”

Hans changed the subject. “You said it needs to be dark wood, so I think African Blackwood would work best. It’s a beautiful hardwood,” he said, enunciating clearly, because
heartwood
and
hardwood
might sound the same over the phone. “Slight grain, with a deep, dark, almost eggplant color.”

Story, trying to keep up with him, spoke slowly. “So . . . heartwood from African Blackwood, except for the carved lid, for which you’ll probably need a softwood.”

“Yes.” She could hear his smile.

Before she confused her hardwood and softwood, she said, “Hey, thanks for coming last night.” She winced. “To the party—thanks for coming to the party.”

“No problem.”

“I know it was sort of weird—”

“Why are you doing this for him?” Hans interrupted. “He seems like a great kid . . . but why
you
?”

Story paused to gather her thoughts, but felt a sense of panic swell in her voice. “Because dads fix things,” she said, “and when you don’t have one . . .” She thought about father-daughter dances, about fathers showing daughters how to change tires so they could take care of themselves, and she thought about how fathers, even when their daughters become women, always think of them as their little girls. Or so she’d heard.

And then she thought about David Payne and how, if he could, he’d do anything to keep his promise to his only son. She thought about second chances, and what they mean to those who need them.

She thought of Cooper, for the rest of his life looking for a magic treasure box in every dark corner he encountered.

“But you barely know him, Story,” said Hans, “and this could be a very dangerous trip, and if it doesn’t work . . . Look, maybe I can help you find another way to make this happen. I could help you—”

“You never stop
fixing
, do you?” said Story. She knew her tone was angrier than she wanted it to be, but she felt as if she’d just solved a riddle. This is what she’d seen in his alert eyes, in the way his hands hovered, always on the verge of cradling every problem, the way he did magic tricks when he wanted people to smile, the way he looked at Story when she opened her own door.

Suddenly, she wanted to apologize, but she didn’t know how. “I . . .”

And Hans, of course, rescued her. “It’s fine, Story,” he said, and Story knew that somewhere, on the other end of the phone line, inside the words he would not say, Hans was extending his hands in the form of a makeshift life raft.

Damn it, even his silence is comforting.
“I know you’re just trying to help, and you seem to be very good at it, at fixing things, I mean,” she said, exasperated, finding herself, once again, alone in the middle of Failure Avenue. “But I’m not the one who needs to be saved here. Cooper needs . . .” A little embarrassed to be thinking of something as unrealistic as magic at such a real and tense moment, Story thought of herself as lost in
Once Upon A Moonflower
, searching for the treasure box that gave everyone what they needed. She tried a new approach. “Look, have you ever seen the look on a girl’s face when she’s fighting for something and a boy rushes in, sure he can make it all okay?”

Silence.

“Hans?” Story asked. She knew, without a doubt, that his frustration was showing in his hands, and she wished he were there in front of her.

Knowing he could not make it all okay, Hans did not attempt an answer.

“Well, if you had, I bet you’d know that we girls . . .”
God, this sounds like a retarded after-school special.
“Sometimes we don’t want to be rescued or fixed. We just want . . .”
We just want to learn to fucking swim. And for you to like me the way I am—broken.
Story sighed into the phone receiver.
I’m drowning here.

Story heard Hans let out a deep breath, and suddenly she hoped he was going to save the dismal conversation, but by the end of his exhale, she knew he’d let go. He’d loosened his grip on the Story rescue mission. But even as he distanced himself from her, his voice, soft and kind, washed over her. “Don’t drink any standing water. And you’ll need to get these special kinds of mosquito nets—”

“No, no, no, no.”
I’ve screwed this up before I even got a second date. I am fucking unbelievable.
“I want you to come with—”

“No,” he said in a stern voice, before adding, more softly, “I do, on occasion, follow directions, Story.” And then Story thought she heard him mumble “Why am I here?” and as he uttered the words, they seemed familiar, as if he’d said them hundreds of times before. After a pause, he said, “But I can’t
not
try to fix things. I can’t
not
try to protect someone like . . .”

Like me?
Story melted into her chair.
Shit!

“Good luck, Story,” he said, and then, as if Story might not have heard the sincerity, he added, “really. I hope you . . .”

I hope you . . . what? Find success? Dislodge your head from your ass? Get attacked by a jaguar and have to get rescued by natives who don’t smell like hardware and bacon?

But he never said another word. The story ended with the dreaded ellipses. What kind of story had it been? Had it been a dream sequence that existed only in Story’s mind? Had it been an adventure story that never got adventurous? Had it been a love story?
What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?
reverberated in Story’s head. Love Story
. What a crock-of-shit story. When someone dies young, of course they’re remembered as being perfect.

When Story had a moment to realize the truth hiding in that thought, she instantly felt guilty for having said it.
When someone is gone long enough, do you eventually forget they ever existed?
Story imagined the magic treasure box hiding under leaves and roots in the heart of the Amazon.
If something has never been seen, does it mean it doesn’t exist?

She waited for more words from Hans, but they never came. Instead, she heard a cold dial tone. After saying a quiet, “Bye,” she hung on to the last word he’d said—
you
—and heard the whisper of their words floating away in separate directions.