The Fire in Starlight Page 4

  She slipped her hands into the pockets of her lavender fleece jacket as she walked beneath the trees, enjoying the way the cool breeze played with her long, golden-brown hair. Birds were calling urgently to each other all around her. She could distinguish at least two songs, one especially lovely, plaintive melody contrasted by another shriller, less complex series of notes. She knew nothing about birds, and more than once she was amazed to look up and discover the most powerful music emanating from the tiniest breast. A bird's throat was an enchanted instrument, indeed, that made her wish she had a lovely singing voice like Princess Aurora so she could contribute to the woodland chorus. She was surprised some crickets were still vibrating in broad daylight, their energetic chirping reminding her that everything around her was actually just a bunch of sub-atomic particles assuming the form of a forest and of a lovely woman walking through it. Everything was energy that only appeared solid thanks to the haunting artist of the human brain commanding the universe like its own personal Monet, and the truly interesting thing was that she had the power to think about the interpretive magic her brain was so casually performing every second.

  She missed talking to Robert about her metaphysical thoughts and everything else. Until he was gone she hadn't realized what a wonderful verbal shorthand they had developed between them over the years. She missed him so much it literally hurt when, at least once or twice a day, she was forced to stop whatever she was doing when she began crying and couldn't stop. She didn't miss Steve at all. In fact, with every second that passed, her relief at being free from him only deepened.

  A swift rustling across the crisp carpet of dead leaves made her pause and watch two grey squirrels running up a tree. They performed death-defying acrobatics leaping between the flimsiest top-most branches with a reckless speed that made her breath catch as she tried to imagine herself doing that. She smiled wondering what they were up to. Did they store their nuts up so high or were they simply having fun? It was impossible to tell, and she didn't really care, she was just happy they were there.

  She continued walking wondering how long she could endure such bucolic peace without going crazy. She searched inside herself for an honest answer, and was happy to discover that the reply was a fervent forever. She didn't miss BR anymore than she did Steve. In only a few days her ex-boyfriend and the city had become synonymous in her psyche, and she was nothing but glad to be free of them and on her own. She would have to go back to teaching eventually, but there was no earthly reason to think about that now; a year from now felt a lifetime away and so much (she hoped) could happen between now and then.

  Sofia concluded she must have done something right to suddenly find herself in such a beautiful place. Native Americans understood you can never own the land, and it was true. With every passing day the line between her feelings and the sensuality of her property became more and more blurred, until she suspected that one day it would hardly exist at all.

  When she reached one of the two large open areas, she stood warming herself beneath the sun. Later in the day the temperature would start dropping and she would have the pleasure of lighting a fire again. A burning log was the best company of all sometimes, the crackling of wood being consumed as eloquent as the most profound conversation. Sitting on an oversized pillow warmed by the gray hearthstones, she felt wonderfully close to Robert in the evenings. As she sipped her Chardonnay gazing out the window watching the sun set between the trees in the west, she would talk to him in her head and be sure he heard her somehow, the silence of the house he had left her a profound response that mysteriously answered all her questions by reminding her of how much she had to do. She had to make this her home. She had to plant the seeds of a new life here and believe in the harvest of future happiness and fulfillment.

  How she was ever going to meet people (especially so-called eligible men) out “in the middle of nowhere” was the really important question. She had to believe in Fate. If she was destined to meet her soul mate, it didn't matter where she lived. Yet could she really believe that? Firstly, was there such a thing as a soul mate? In the beginning she had thought Steve was the one, hadn't she? She had been wrong, but that hardly disproved the theory of true love. She could only hope. Hope was everything, and Robert's last letter helped to stoke it passionately inside her whenever she read it again for reassurance and company. But secondly, even if she did continue believing in a man she was meant to be with, how was she going to meet him? Reality wasn't a Disney cartoon, he wasn't going to ride his valiant steed through the forest one afternoon and spy her between the trees singing along with the birdies.

  She turned back towards the house, once more deliberately not defining the borders of her land, enjoying the intrigue of not knowing exactly where it ended and someone else's property began. She was also itching to get online. Bless Robert for understanding she could not possibly live without the internet. Probably on the same day her refrigerator and washer and dryer were delivered a Satellite dish was installed on her roof, and last night, after dinner, she hadn't been able to resist creating a profile on match.com. She used a fake name and a new hotmail account in order not to compromise her LSU e-mail address. She had to do whatever was necessary to take charge of her destiny by making sure Fate had plenty of raw material to work with. The world-wide web made physical distances irrelevant. For all she knew she might end up falling in love with someone who lived in Madagascar. She doubted it, but she was determined to believe anything was possible because it was exciting to be positive and very boring to be cynical.

  She followed a different path back to the house which took her out to the mailbox. She had met her postal carrier yesterday as she drove up in a cute little red jeep with flashing lights on top. She was a blonde lady named Kelly who cheerfully informed her that she also delivered stamps, weighed packages and picked up mail, all Sofia had to do was leave it in her box.

  The shadow of a hawk glided across the gravel drive, its open wings dark-gold against the lapis-lazuli sky. Her mailbox was empty, but that was okay, it was too early for Kelly to have made her rounds yet, and it gave her an excuse to walk out here again later that afternoon.

  She thought about how nice it would be to have a dog or a cat or both as she followed the winding driveway back home. The apartment she had lived in with Steve had allowed small pets, but for some reason they never indulged in one. Yes, she would definitely get herself a nice big dog, for protection as well as company, and a kitten or two to cuddle with in the evenings. Veterinarian bills were expensive, but she could handle it.

  She skipped lightly up the porch steps, cheered by the prospect of a devoted canine companion and a sensual pair of felines even as she wondered how many men had already responded to her ad. That's what it was really, she was “selling” herself and all her charms to potential suitors/buyers, yet she hated thinking about it that way. In her mind she was simply giving Fate material to work with, and a possible stage to play itself out on.

  A large wicker basket was sitting in front of her door. She stared down at it, not quite able to comprehend the sight, and she avoided making sense of it for a minute by watching a red squirrel climb head-first out of a Tulip tree, busily talking to itself. It was much bigger and fluffier than a gray squirrel, with a white face like a mask, and as it disappeared beneath her car, she looked back down at the basket. She crouched beside it and inspected its contents with a curious wonder. It was filled with food, but there was no brand name on anything; it all appeared to be home-made. The basket contained a small circle of semi-soft white cheese in plastic wrap; an old-fashioned looking half-pint milk bottle; a violet nylon net filled with six large, light-brown eggs; a luxurious head of curly spinach; and a gallon-sized plastic bag filled with big shelled pecans.

  "Oh, my...” She handled each offering reverently. Someone must have dropped by to welcome her to the neighborhood. “This is so nice!” City dweller that she was, the last thing she had expected was a housewarming present from a complete stran
ger, but she was living in the country now and things were obviously different out here. She was sorry she had missed whoever had been so thoughtful. She couldn't even see her neighbors’ houses, but she had a feeling she was going to get to know them better than she had ever known the people who lived right next door to her in the city.

  She carried her gifts into the house and promptly refrigerated them. The eggs had probably come from local hens, the milk from someone's cow or goat along with the cheese, and the Spinach and Pecans were also almost certainly home-grown. She would have to drive well over an hour to get to Whole Foods in Baton Rouge. This basket was what organic eating and sustainable farming were all about. The thought occurred to her then that she could do it too, if she wanted to. The fact that she didn't know the first thing about vegetable gardening or raising livestock didn't matter. She was a smart woman, she could learn. It would help keep her busy, and exercise her creativity in a very different way than writing essays on poetry. The Romanian Lute Player songs she was composing a paper on were all about how the land and the human soul were inseparable from each other. Hard, creative work was what she needed, in every sense, but right now she was dying to check her new hotmail account to see if she'd received any e-mails from sexy men.

  * * * *

  "U gh, ugh, ugh!” Was the only way to express how she felt about the first responses to her online profile. Incredibly, there were over fifty messages in her Inbox, most of which she immediately deleted for a variety of reasons. A man who had not yet mastered the art of spelling could never be her soul mate. In the end she was left with three candidates, but only one of them had bothered to attach a photograph of himself. Provided that was actually him in the picture (and that it was him in the present, not twenty years ago) he was rather attractive. He was wearing a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and a tantalizing slice of his chest was exposed beneath his broad shoulders. His legs looked strong if a little squat in tight blue jeans, but she blamed that on the camera angle. His blonde hair appeared to be thinning a little, but for the moment it was all still there, and the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and of his smiling mouth were appealing. He was too far away for her to make out the color his eyes, but according to his profile they were blue, and he was clean shaven. He had been a professor of Economics at Tulane University in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, but the severe faculty cuts had forced him to relocate to Baton Rouge, where he was fortunate (well connected) enough to be welcomed into the LSU fold. There was nothing wrong with him that she could see, certainly nothing to prevent her from writing him back thanking him for getting in touch. She didn't commit herself to anything or attach another photo of herself. The two pictures she had put up on her profile had been hard enough to come by as it was. She owned dozens of CD's full of digital images, but Steve had taken most of the recent photos she had of herself, and maybe that was why she never looked as good in them as she thought she did in reality, a forced smile being worse than no smile at all. So she posted two images of her captured by Robert late one afternoon beneath one of the magnificent old oak trees growing on campus. The first one was a full body shot of her in a sleeveless violet dress she had worn to some reception or other, her cleavage, slender figure and long legs accentuated by the tight bodice and the diaphanous skirt beneath it blowing in the wind. She was wearing white high-heeled sandals and holding a small white while with her other hand she laughingly kept the hair our out of her eyes. The second one was a close-up of her face taken the same day. Her light-brown eyes were averted in a way that made her soft smile look sad in a wondering sort of way ... as though she was seeing the future when Robert would be dead and Steve history and she was living alone posting this image of herself online in the hope of catching her true love...

  If the professor asked her out she might agree to meet him for lunch at Louis. After all, she had to make a trip into BR soon to go to Whole Foods, and that way she could be home well before nightfall and avoid driving down lonely country roads in the dark.

  Chapter Five

  I t was overcast and dark all the next day, and the dramatic change in the weather completely demoralized her. All the mental and emotional steps she had taken not to become depressed vanished with the sunlight and she was left at square one—a gravestone marking the death of all the love in her life. She chided herself for being so dependent on the sun's cosmic vitamin D, but to no avail. She turned on all the lights and lamps she possessed in an effort to dispel the gloom, but she did absolutely nothing except wait for nightfall when she could at least drink some wine and light a fire. She listened to NPR for a while, but news of war, disease, famine and overall government corruption throughout the world did nothing to improve her mood. She was forced to turn the radio off and listen to the silence.

  Sofia had never experienced such silence. The whole world was subdued; not even birds were singing the day was so dreary. The only thing that relieved the oppressive gloom was a vigorous wind blowing in from the southeast. She couldn't remember wind like this in Baton Rouge and at LSU where she was always surrounded by buildings. There was a front moving in and she kept waiting for it to begin thundering and raining, but even though a gentle drizzle darkened the tree trunks, no tumultuous atmospheric relief was forthcoming. It didn't rain, it didn't storm—the day just never chose to dawn, that was all—and by the time six o'clock and Chardonnay time rolled around, she could not have felt more miserably lethargic.

  She had gone for a walk at around three clock, defying the sky to open up when she was farthest from the house, gambling with the elements. She followed the gravel road all the way to the edge of her property from where she could see rolling meadows and horses peacefully grazing. She stood gazing out at them for a while because she had nothing better to do, and because they were beautiful. Her favorite was a chocolate-brown horse, his flowing blonde mane a sensually striking contrast to his sleek, dark flanks. She knew no more about horses than she did about birds—her ignorance of animal life was truly appalling—but she knew beauty when she saw it, and for a long while she couldn't take her eyes off the muscular bodies that were using only a slight fraction of their power to walk contentedly across the nourishing grass. It was humbling how sedately unaware they remained of her tormented humanity. Her brain felt like a roiling grey cloud trapped in the firmament of her skull. The horses bore the oppressive weight of the drop in air pressure easily, the earth's atmosphere a mysterious saddle over their ancient backs. After a while she couldn't stand their indifference any longer and headed back. Her challenge had not been met—it didn't rain, it didn't thunder, it was simply depressingly dark all afternoon, and the wind kept blowing as though on its way somewhere more exciting, leaving Clinton suspended and longing for a sensual release that never came.

  Her second day in the house she had driven into Zachary for groceries, but she still wasn't eating the tasty, balanced diet she was accustomed to. Tonight she was very grateful for the fresh head of curly spinach and the moist, crumbly white cheese she used to make herself a salad, tossing in some whole pitted black olives. The pecans also served as a delicious and nutritious snack to have with her white wine, and as an entrée to go with her salad she fried up two of the fresh eggs and served them over-easy over some brown rice. A glass of red wine to accompany the rustic feast, and she found herself happier than she had been in over twelve hours eating across from a crackling fire. Nevertheless, it was a relief when it was late enough to go to sleep. She prayed it would be sunny again tomorrow. The LSU professor had not yet written back after she responded to his e-mail, and she was at once relieved and disappointed as she slipped beneath the sheets. Already she had a backlog of new e-mails she hadn't gone through yet. She needed all the positive energy she could muster to deal with so many disappointing (and often disgusting) suitors.

  The moon and the stars were only a memory. There was a layer of clouds concealing the sky, and that restless wind was still blowing. A tree branch tapped a
gainst a window just as she was sinking into sleep, making her open her eyes and stare alertly into the darkness ... it was as if someone wanted to get in and was communicating with her by way of a haunting Morse Code...

  Sofia has no idea how long she managed to sleep before something else woke her. The wind had finally dropped, she could tell that right off because the house was cold and silent as a mausoleum around her. It was so cold, in fact, that she had decided to wear a long white nightgown to bed. She got up, drawn like a moth to the light glimmering far away between the trees out in the field bordering her property. She wondered at the sight, for the middle of the night was hardly the time to casually light a bonfire, yet she was glad of the vivid red flames as she felt their heat even through the window panes. The fire was large and vigorous. She had missed the sun desperately, and now a piece of it had fallen to earth to comfort her, burning like a star. She couldn't resist opening the French doors and stepping out onto her porch. She was surprised to discover that it was much chillier in her bedroom than it was out in nature. It didn't matter that she was barefoot and sleeveless; it felt absolutely right to step off the smooth wooden boards onto the cool and prickly grass softened by a welcoming carpet of dead leaves. The fire was so animated, so beautiful, all she wanted was to be closer to it. At first she walked slowly, tentatively, not quite sure what she was doing, but then all at once she began running towards the blaze as though her life depended on it; her heart pounding in rhythm with the flames fervently licking the wood sustaining them. The aerial photo of her land had indicated there was a fence surrounding her acreage, but nothing got in her way as she lifted her nightgown up to her knees to keep from tripping on it.