Phoenix Heart

by Carolyn Nash

  “No! I mean, it was just, you know, a new situation and all.”

  He shifted around toward me and casually put his arm up on the back of the seat so that his hand rested a scant inch from my shoulder. “Well, I’m glad to know it was nothing that I did.” He gave me a slow smile and I could feel his fingers dangling next to my skin and any second a tendril of smoke was going to rise from the pink angora overlying that shoulder.

  “You know,” he said, “I started thinking about San Francisco as a possible destination for this trip when I heard you were going.”

  Why is he doing this? And why am I feeling like it’s feeding time in the lion cage and I’m a nice juicy steak?

  “San Francisco in October is really the best time of year. The weather is perfect; the summer crowds are all gone.”

  The limo changed lanes and hit a bump and his finger just barely brushed against my shoulder.

  Fire.

  “You practically have the whole city to yourself, to do anything at all that you want.” He smiled a slow, languid smile.

  Beyond the balcony the Golden Gate Bridge peeks through the fog. Andrew walks across to where she stands near the railing, grabs her by the shoulders, and presses his lips on hers. Her knees give out, as her heart thumps madly. One of his arms comes around her back, the other under her knees, and he sweeps her off her feet. “I’ve waited all my life for a woman like you,” he growls as he heads out of the cold San Francisco night toward the bedroom.

  I shivered and quickly shifted in my seat to try to hide it. “I am looking forward to seeing the city,” I said. “The museums, the aquarium, Muir Woods, Fort Point; in fact, just about every site worth seeing in a fifty-mile radius has been included in the itinerary. I thoroughly enjoy such things.”

  “Oh. Well, that sounds just fine.” He smiled, and his finger stroked my shoulder lightly, and I knew I hadn’t fooled him with my pompous act.

  The limo crawled past a sign: Los Angeles International Airport, Next Exit. Thank god! I was so out of my depth I couldn’t see sunlight.

  “I don’t know much about art, I’m ashamed to say,” he said, “but I am hooked on the De Young Museum. There is something magical about that place. My dad was always on me about being culturally deprived having gone through school with a concentration in the sciences. So, when I came up here for grad school, nothing would satisfy him except my promising to go at least once to the De Young. I figured, get there, run through a couple of rooms, memorize a few paintings, and get out. So, one Saturday morning, it’s pouring rain, I’m already pissed that I was going, pissed that I was wet, pissed that I was going to miss the first hour of a football and beer marathon at one of my friend’s. You know, just pretty much...”

  “Pissed?” I asked.

  “Uh, yeah.” He laughed. “I guess you could say that. Anyway, I get there right when the doors open and start my run. European masters. Check. Early American. Check. Greek something-gold. Okay. But then, I started to slow, just for a second because one of the Greek things was really pretty interesting. Beaten gold, intricate filigree design, a mask with eyes of some sort of stone, dark and sort of mysterious. But, hey! Beer and football were waiting.”

  “So, I headed for the last lap: Ancient Egypt. When I walked in, there was no one else there. It was eerily quiet. There I was, wet, in a hurry, and completely surrounded by statues, plates, tablets, paintings, tombs--all of these things that had survived thousands of years, that had traveled thousands of miles, and all of us had ended up in this room together at the same point in time. All that was left of the lives of dozens of artisans, and me.”

  He paused for a moment, thinking back. I could see him standing in that room, the glow of the exhibit lights; the only sound that of his breathing.

  “Each of those objects was a tie to that past life, a line reaching back through centuries. And just for a second, just for the briefest moment, I felt the connection, like all the lines were running through time to me.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at me, and I swear he blushed. He laughed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to go all metaphysical on you.”

  “It’s all right,” I said and smiled. “You make me want to go see it.”

  “You know,” he said, “I spent the rest of that day there, but I could stand to see it again. Won’t you reconsider? Instead of dinner, maybe we could go to lunch, and go see the De Young first.”

  “Well, I...”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry; I’d step out so you could have the Egyptian room to yourself. But then it’s my turn.”

  Holy merde. I had to get off this ride. I had ducked past the sign saying Children Under Twelve Not Allowed. “I don’t know when I’ll be going. The tour company has everything planned, and I’m not sure of the itinerary.” That was b.s. I had the itinerary in my purse. I’d been studying it for two weeks.

  He cocked his head at me and I had my first out-of-body experience. Andrew Richards was urging me to go out with him and I was refusing? So what if it was politeness prompting the date?

  So what if he’s a mad bomber?

  It would be the best date I’d ever had. And, it would give me something to tell Cheryl when I got back. A perfect man showed interest in me and I didn’t run, didn’t try to find something wrong with him. So, I ignored the whispering voices telling me to beware and cleared my throat. “I can probably change some things around. Yes, a lunch and the De Young would be very nice.”

  “Wonderful!” he said and flashed another smile. This one warmed my toes. At least I’d be evenly cooked by the time this ride was over. “What luck that someone I know is going! It’s always better traveling with someone. Hey, maybe… which flight are you taking?” he asked.

  I pulled the ticket packet out of my purse. “Flight 402, at 4:10.”

  “Oh,” he said. “This really is a coincidence. That’s my flight, too. Good. Company.” He smiled his dazzling smile. “I just hope we get to the airport in time for me to get my ticket,” he said.

  I smiled, too, not only in response to his smile, but because I’d been right. Right about the trip and everything else. I’d been right to wait for something to happen, for magic, for the prince, and I couldn’t wait to say I told you so to Cheryl.

  “Oh, we will,” I said. “We left early. I’ve got to go to the counter, too, and turn in the other ticket voucher.”

  “Other voucher?”

  The tone in his voice. His eyes. The sweat standing out on his temples. My smile stayed on my face, but inside all the pieces fell into place and the happiness snuffed out.

  “You still have it?” he asked. That strand of hair had fallen down over his forehead.

  “Yes,” I said. I had no urge to push that hair back.

  “Well, that could save some time. If we could just switch it to my name...” He smiled his dazzling smile again.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “As I said, I forgot my wallet. I was going to… wait until someone… a friend… my Dad, actually, came out to the airport to bring my wallet… credit cards. But if we could just switch it, that would be great. ”

  I just watched him.

  “I don’t suppose... I know it would be asking a lot, but do you think you could let me have the ticket and I’d pay you when I see you at lunch?”

  “No problem,” I said.

  His smile broadened. “Really?”

  “Certainly.” I flipped through the papers, snagged the blank voucher and handed it to him. “You really didn’t need to go to all the trouble to try to romance it out of me, Dr. Richards.”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “Oh yes you were. You could have just asked. I would have given it to you.”

  The smile faded. “Look, I didn’t mean…”

  “It doesn’t matter. Truly. As a matter of fact, you can have it. You don’t have to pay me. I got it for free. Here. Take it. As you said, this will save me some time.”

  After a few seconds he took the voucher from my hand. “I’m
sorry.”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, if I wasn’t…”

  I turned to him and he stopped mid-sentence. I stared at that perfect face above that perfect body and I felt nothing. “I said forget it, please. That’s the only condition. Just forget the whole thing. This all never happened.”

  I dropped my purse back down on the floor and turned back to the window, chin up, back straight, face expressionless. We took the exit to the airport, glided up to the terminal building, and I stepped out without waiting for the driver to come around and open the door.

  I heard Dr. Richards’ door open on the other side, but ignored the sound. The driver lifted my bags from the trunk and turned them over to a skycap, and I thanked him for the ride. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dr. Richards come around the front of the limo and step up on the curb. I followed the skycap into the terminal. As the automatic doors swept open for the luggage cart, I thought I heard a faint, “I really am sorry,” from behind me, but it might have just been the voice of someone in the crowd of travelers moving out past me as I went in.

  CHAPTER 6

  Somehow--and I don’t think it was just my mood--somehow first class just wasn’t what I had expected. Oh, the seats were wider; there were only two on each side of the aisle instead of three. There was a little more leg room, but, well, somehow I’d always thought everything would be softer, the light brighter, the atmosphere more rarified, the sound of violins in the background accompanying the gentle murmur of conversation between senators and movie stars and presidents of corporations.

  All that was really different was that the drinks were free, and I got to wear a snobby-nonchalant expression on my face as I sipped my champagne and watched the peasants troop by on their way to whatever that was (second class? coach? steerage?) behind the curtain. It might not be all that much better in first class, but I wasn’t going to let them know that.

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t in a very good mood.

  Actually, maybe the two men in the impeccably tailored suits across the aisle were presidents of corporations, who, at that very moment, were discussing whether to get out of sow bellies and jump into sugar beets. The woman sitting just in front of them, in the spectacularly understated creamy wool dress, was the senior senator from Arkansas, on her way to San Francisco to meet with a secret consortium of top Japanese businessmen, intent on buying the Ozarks to put up a retirement home for a retired Japanese movie mogul.

  I giggled and took another sip of champagne. You see, after the eighth Godzilla vs. Mothra movie, he’d snapped and wanted to make a ninth, this time Godzilla was going to eat a mountain, and the guy was determined to go for realism, and the Japanese officials had to let him because he held controlling interest in nearly twenty percent of all industry in Japan and if it got out he was crazy, the market would crash.

  I giggled again. I think I was having a little bit of reaction after the morning in the horror of that lab, and the ride in the limo. Between that, and the champagne, the giggles kept bubbling up.

  But, damn it, I was determined that I was going to have a good time. Men are gravy-sucking pigs, anyway. Who needs them?

  I heard the swish of material and turned to see a black-haired flight attendant pull the curtain between the first class section and coach. She began moving up the aisle, making the last minute check of seatbelts and luggage.

  “I’ll come back by for your glass,” she murmured.

  I nodded and smiled. A steward at the front began to swing the massive front door shut. I rested my glass on the arm of the seat, leaned back and closed my eyes.

  I will have a good time. This is going to be the best week of my life.

  I heard the steward at the front of the cabin say something, then I heard sounds of movement coming up the aisle. The sounds stopped near the empty seat next to me.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I tried to get another seat.” Andrew Richards dropped into the seat next to me. He’d changed into an ugly I Love LA t-shirt and wore a silver and black baseball cap pulled down over the top of his sunglasses. He carried a bulky brown paper bag in his hand.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” I hissed. “When I gave you that voucher, I thought you’d at least have the decency to trade it in for another flight.”

  His face was carefully neutral. “I couldn’t. And this flight is full. There were no other seats. There wasn’t anything I could do.”

  The steward was just latching the door. Dr. Richards must have stopped that first door-closing, and ducked into the plane at the last possible moment. There was no way he could get off now, as he’d obviously planned all along.

  I sat in furious silence, staring at the back of the seat in front of me, listening to the sound of the engines revving. Damn him, damn him! I looked down at my hand clenching the stem of the champagne glass.

  She stands in the aisle, quivering with righteous indignation, watching the stain grow on his white shirt (the champagne is now red wine), watching grimly as he tries to wipe away the drink she has dashed in his face. You cad. You bounder. You user of women. She turns away, one hand at her throat as a gentle tear slides down one cheek. The woman in the creamy wool dress puts her arm across her shoulders to comfort her. The two men in the tailored suits step between her and Richards and glare at him. The other first glass passengers come up around her and throw looks of disgust at Richards. Finally, he can’t take it anymore and slinks into coach. She hears a general booing from behind the curtain.

  The plane started with a lurch and the champagne slopped out of my glass all over my hand and the sleeve of my sweater. Not one drop splashed onto Dr. Richards’ jeans.

  “Damn,” I whispered.

  A handkerchief appeared in front of me. Linen, of course. “Take it.”

  “No, thank you.” I reached down, fumbled in my purse and found a tattered Kleenex down near the bottom and blotted at the sticky liquid.

  “Look, I really didn’t have a choice,” he said.

  “Fine.” I wouldn’t look at him.

  “Are you going to let me explain?”

  “There is no explanation necessary.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  He reached over and took hold of my wrist. “Listen,” he said.

  The champagne goblet tipped over and the last few drops dribbled on the carpet. “Remove your hand from my wrist,” I said, “or lose it at the elbow.”

  He released it and I snatched it out of his reach.

  “Look, I told you,” he whispered, “I didn’t have a choice. Now will you let me explain?”

  “I don’t care to hear it.”

  The plane lurched again and began to move away from the jet-way toward the runway.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he said.

  “What?” I looked at him, then down at my wrist. I was rubbing it with my other hand.

  “Your arm. I’m sorry if I hurt your arm.”

  I quickly released it. “You didn’t.”

  “Good.”

  Silence again as the plane reached the end of the runway, turned, paused, and then started accelerating down the runway. I felt myself pressed back into the seat and took tight hold of the armrest under the window next to me. This was the one part of flying that bothered me. There is a small part of me that is always certain that a contraption as heavy as a jet airplane couldn’t possibly lift off the ground. And soar through the air? Ridiculous. I held my breath, willing the plane upward, and only when the wheels actually lifted from the concrete did I breathe again.

  The landing gear clanked up under us and I began to hear people rustling around, speaking quietly, but not a sound came from the seat next to me. I slanted my eyes over. Dr. Richards’ hand gripped the armrest between us. His knuckles were white.

  “It’s not that I’m a total coward,” he said. “I just hate take-offs.”

  I rubbed at one pink-polished fingernail and looked back out the window.

  “I feel like such a coward, but I
can’t help it.” He sighed. “I guess I just don’t believe that a piece of equipment as heavy as a jet airplane can possibly lift off the ground. And fly through the air? Insanity.”

  My eyes involuntarily flicked his way as I heard my thoughts echoed.

  He grinned sheepishly and shrugged.

  I ducked my head and scratched at a tiny fleck of pink polish adhering to the cuticle of my left pinky.

  “I for one believe firmly in that old saying: If God had meant us to fly, he would have given us turbine engines.”

  I turned toward the window again. He could turn on the charm all he wanted. All I was interested in was watching LA through the scratched plastic as it and its blanket of smog began to fall away beneath us.

  “Look,” he said, “I really would like to explain what’s going on.”

  “It isn’t necessary.” I watched the sky turn from grey-brown to blue as we rose through the pollution.

  “There is a good reason.”

  The white and grey buildings of Los Angeles passed beneath us. To the west the ocean was sparkling in the late afternoon sunshine. “If there is,” I said, “that’s your business. We’ll just fly to San Francisco, you’ll go your way, I’ll go mine. When we get back to the University, it never happened. Deal?”

  There was a long silence. “As you wish,” he said finally.

  He sat back in his seat and I reached for the airline magazine stuck in the pouch of the seat in front of me. I began to leaf through it, casually scanning the pages of merchandise.

  Oh yes, here’s a bullet-proof briefcase with a small explosive device that will destroy anything inside if the case is tampered with.

  Dr. Richards moved his hand from the armrest to his knee.

  Just what I need to carry those important biochemistry notes to and from class.

  His hand gripped his knee and relaxed, gripped and relaxed.

  I shifted in the seat, got more comfortable and flipped the page to a short blurb on the expanded flights to Seattle. I read it with fascination.

  Dr. Richards turned in his seat. He looked back down the aisle toward coach, then up toward the curtain that closed off the small galley in the front of the plane.