More Lipstick Chronicles

by Emily Carmichael

  “The simple truths are the most profound,” he told her.

  “And this relates to God and the Universe how?”

  “There is symbolism here, Dana. You must think on it and relate it to your own life.”

  What she really wanted to think about was how the sunlight gleamed in Kieran’s hair and how the muscles flexed in the strong column of his neck when he turned his face to the sky.

  During their next session Kieran led her up the hill toward the dormitories and livestock area.

  She objected. “Aren’t we going to talk in the gardens?”

  “I thought you might like to apologize to the goats for the derogatory remarks you made about them,” he said with a wicked smile.

  “Wait a minute! I told you I was a city girl. And besides, I meant no insult to your precious goats.”

  “This might be a revelation to you.”

  “I don’t need a goat revelation! Let’s go back to the garden. I have tons more questions about the medicine wheel.”

  “You nearly fell asleep when we talked about the medicine wheel.”

  She hadn’t been sleeping so much as fantasizing, but Dana wasn’t about to confess. “I was meditating.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The ploy wasn’t working.

  “You might find that you like animals. They can be very soothing to the spirit. As a human being, you can’t isolate yourself from your brothers and sisters on this planet and expect to be a fulfilled and complete being.”

  “I am not sister to a goat!”

  His smile was broad. “Maybe a cousin.”

  “Not even ten times removed. You are so full of what they clean out of these pens.”

  It was a friendly, laughing exchange that moved them along the road from master and student to friends. Friends that just happened to be a man and a woman, something Dana never forgot when she was with him. No matter how platonic and circumspect he was, a certain sexual tension emanated from Kieran that set Dana’s hormones on full alert. She suspected he was aware of it, even though he ignored it. Did the tension exist with all his female students, or just her? She wished that she had the time to find out.

  Never would Dana have believed when she boarded a jet a few short days ago that she would end up wishing for more time away. Without Kieran to steady her, her life would return to chaos, her days to depression, her nights to alternately wishing she were on a date or wishing that she wasn’t.

  Since she had come to this place, Kieran had invaded her night dreams and occupied most of her waking thoughts. Her reaction to him was unlike her relationship with any other man in her life. Most hunky guys made her worry—first about how to get close to them, then how to get rid of them or why they had gotten rid of her. But Kieran didn’t make her worry. He made her smile, calmed her spirit, made waking a joy and retiring a pleasant anticipation of dreams to come. Dana’s state of mind had become so downright positive that her roommate couldn’t send her into a fit, even though Tamara talked of nothing but reincarnation, crystals, aliens and which flavor of incense was best to aid meditation. If Dana had been forced to spend a day with Tamara before she met Kieran, the lady would have been mincemeat.

  Yes indeed, Tamara probably owed Kieran her life. Dana owed him her present happiness, and she wasn’t yet ready to leave that behind.

  Nevertheless, she wasn’t sure even Kieran could get her to apologize to a goat.

  As they went through the gate to the livestock pens, Kieran greeted two middle-aged but fit-looking men. “Hello, Caymon, Ya-teh-mah. Meet Dana, a workshop student.”

  The men smiled an open, friendly welcome. “Have you come to admire Yasmin?” one said. “Caymon thinks she will deliver today. I think it will be tomorrow.”

  Beside the men was a very fat brown goat with long droopy ears and a woebegone face.

  “She looks like she’ll give us twins this time.”

  “Or maybe triplets,” Caymon said.

  On Kieran’s urging, Dana gingerly made Yasmin’s acquaintance. The goat nibbled on her jeans in a friendly hello.

  “She likes you,” Kieran said with a grin.

  Ya-teh-mah laughed. “Yasmin likes anything she can put in her mouth. But here is Sheila.”

  “Sheila?” Dana eyed the next goat uncertainly.

  “She’s our character barometer,” Kieran confided. “Butted Caymon clear out of the pen when he first came to stay here.”

  Caymon smiled. “She was just having a bad day is all.”

  Dana reached out a tentative hand to Sheila, who lipped her fingers gently.

  By the time they made the rounds of the pens, Dana felt like Farmer Jane. The goats were actually quite clean, and so were the pigs. They were tame as well. A litter of piglets napped beneath an empty hay rack, and Mother Pig was quite content to let Dana approach her brood and stroke a little piglet. Obviously these animals had never known anything but kindness from their keepers, and Dana did find a special kind of joy in such trusting acceptance from the beasts. She was delighted to find two warm, just-laid eggs in a hen’s nest, and marveled at the velvety feel of the old draft horse’s nose. At the last she let Kieran show her how to milk a goat. Sheila patiently stood on the milk stand and tolerated Dana’s amateurish attempts to coax milk from the silken-soft udders. Only drops appeared, and she finally leaned her head against the goat’s warm flank and sighed. “I’m acquiring a real respect for milkmaids.”

  Yet she felt strangely content with warm, soft goat against her cheek and the thrum of animal heartbeat in her ear.

  “You have to do it like this.” Kieran sat down at her back, crowding close on the stool, and put his hands over hers to demonstrate the proper technique. Two streams of warm, sweet-smelling milk jetted into the bucket. Sheila the goat gave them both a look that plainly said “About time!”

  What would her Allheart friends think if they could see her cozied up to a goat, Kieran’s hands wrapped about hers, his chest plastered against her back, all in front of an audience of pigs, geese, turkeys, two cult members with very strange names and a retired plow horse? Knowing the Allheart gang, they would probably laugh and say “Go for it!”

  Go for what? Dana wondered. What could she possibly go for with this man? The next day was the last day of the workshop. After the morning discussion group, the students would be packing their things and heading back to the real world. Except for Tamara, of course, who had decided once and for all to join the “school” at the Gardens of Oak Creek. From now on she would be the one milking Sheila and playing with baby porkers. For one Twilight Zone sort of moment, Dana actually envied her.

  “All right,” Dana conceded as she and Kieran walked back toward the hotel. “I admit it. Being with the goats and piggies and other beasties does put a person in a more peaceful frame of mind.”

  “Animals react to people on a very basic level,” Kieran told her. “Therefore when we’re with them, we regard ourselves and the world on a more basic level. Sometimes such a viewpoint can help us remember what is important in this life.”

  “You keep talking around that question,” Dana said irritably. “What is important in life, according to Kieran?”

  “What is important in life according to Kieran is not really relevant to Dana Boyle. She must discover what is important in life according to Dana.”

  She pouted. “It would be easier if someone like you would just tell me.”

  He chuckled warmly. “I know.”

  That evening, in celebration of their last night together, the workshop left the cloistered peace of the Gardens of Oak Creek and celebrated at the Cowboy Club in Sedona. For the occasion, Dana slipped into sleek Gucci pants and a ruffled jacket in eye-catching red. She loved to wear colors that the fashion mavens put off-limits for a redhead. Ralph Lauren Romance cologne, Charles David slingbacks with three-inch heels and a touch-up to her Maybelline Reckless Red nails completed the ensemble.

  Sedona might lean toward cowboy boots and chaps, but four days in je
ans was quite enough for Dana. She was accustomed to looking like a woman.

  “Wow!” was all Tamara had to say when they were ready to leave. “Very uptown!”

  Tamara, with her crystals and incense, probably didn’t know uptown from out to lunch, but Dana smiled and thanked her anyway. She really was feeling like the Dana of old.

  They filled a table for ten—the workshop students, the Master himself and three of the Gardens’ full-time devotees who had decided to indulge in a night on the town. They cleaned up rather well, Dana noted. Not a whiff of goat among them.

  Kieran cleaned up well also. Not that he needed cleaning up. He was a head-turner in worn jeans and his guru tunic. But tonight, in tan Dockers and white polo shirt, he could have passed for business casual. The white of his shirt set off the deep bronze of his skin and gleaming jet of his hair, which for this occasion was neatly tamed and tied into a ponytail at his nape.

  The civilized look suited him, Dana decided. She could almost see him working at a real job in a real place—a place like New York City or Washington, DC. Of course, the guru look suited him as well. In fact, she couldn’t imagine a look that wouldn’t suit him.

  Dinner was the equal of anything that one could order in the “big city,” though Dana was the only one who ordered the thick steak that the place was famous for. As she watched the others nibble their rabbit food—salads, bean dishes, tofu, eggplant, spinach lasagna pretending to be the real thing, she decided not to be embarrassed about it. Now if she could just find something wonderful and chocolate for dessert. All that health food at the Gardens had her longing to binge.

  The celebration didn’t end with dessert. The Club had a band—of sorts. They played classics from the fifties and sixties, mostly slow, but that suited Dana just fine when her turn came to dance with Kieran. He was a good dancer, much to her surprise, and they moved together as if they had been made for each other—as dance partners, Dana reminded herself. Only as dance partners. Tomorrow the workshop was over. Goodbye, Kieran. Hello, real world.

  “You look . . .” He paused, then gave her a somewhat crooked smile. “I’m trying to find a word that doesn’t reduce you to a sex object.”

  Make me a sex object—pleeeease! Dana laughed at her own reaction. Aloud, she assured him, “There are times a woman enjoys being reduced to a sex object.”

  Did she see a sudden flare in his eyes? But he moved the conversation toward safer ground.

  “Have you enjoyed your stay in Sedona?” he asked.

  The question was more than polite conversation, Dana sensed. He really did want to know.

  “I did,” she admitted. “I didn’t expect to, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “But now the time has come to leave, I find that I’m not all that eager for the gray skies and dreary cold of the East Coast in January.”

  “Sedona spoils people for the rest of the world.”

  As they moved around the dance floor, Kieran’s eyes measured her. For what? Dana wondered. Still, she didn’t feel at all intimidated. Instead, on this last night in Sedona, she felt a bit daring, even provocative.

  “So . . . Kieran.” She drawled his name in a manner that inspired one black brow to arch upward. “Here we are at the end of our time together, all friends, and the parting of the ways has come . . .” Her green eyes shot out a challenge. “I think you should tell me your real name.”

  His grin lobbed the challenge right back at her. “You do, do you?”

  “I do. I’ll bet it’s not Kieran any more than the goat minder is really named Ya-teh-mah.”

  “What is more real, Dana? An arbitrary name given to us when we first pop into the world, an unformed lump of human potential, or a name we assume once we learn who we truly are?”

  “That’s guru double-talk, and you know it. You at least have to have a last name. Why don’t you want me to know? Is it so lame that you’re embarrassed?”

  He chuckled. “My name is Kieran.”

  “That’s your whole legal name?”

  “Do I need a court to tell me who I am?” He tightened his arm around her waist and executed a few dance steps that claimed her full attention.

  Dana laughed. “Nice try, but I’m not distracted. Are you sure your name isn’t Fred Astaire?”

  “I think that name’s already taken.”

  “Well then, let’s see. Maybe it’s Walter. Walter Bovnik.”

  “Nope.”

  “Sherman?”

  He grinned. “Wrong.”

  “Claude.”

  “Way off.”

  “Joe, John, Trevor, Alfred, Caleb, Michael, Kiefer. Jones, Smith, Ford, MacDougal, O’Halloran, McGinty—”

  “McGinty?”

  “You look Irish. Black Irish.”

  He laughed. Cripes, but she loved the way the muscles of his throat worked when he laughed.

  “You’re being stubborn. Stubbornness is a very unenlightened trait. Maybe you should meditate on it.”

  “You’re very nosy, you know that?”

  “It comes with being female.” She grinned up at him. “And don’t tell me I should meditate on it. It’s an integral part of who I am.”

  “Joshua,” he said unexpectedly. “Joshua Gellis.”

  For some reason, Dana felt as if she’d been afforded a peek into his private soul, “Joshua. For real?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Joshua is a wonderful name. Where did you come up with Kieran?”

  “Kieran is my grandfather’s name. Kieran Tolleson. During World War II he lived in Norway and helped many people to escape the Nazis. In my eyes, he was a great hero against something very evil. I took his name as a baptismal name, to honor him, to try to give myself something to live up to.”

  “So Kieran is your real name after all.”

  “Any name you take for yourself, because it is a part of you, that is a real name. I have always been Kieran more than I have been Joshua Gellis.”

  In spite of the fact that Kieran danced with all the women students, Dana felt somehow that she had gotten special attention. The thought gave her a warm feeling as well as a tingly case of the nerves. A peculiar excitement suffused her. Something was about to happen. She told herself sternly that this was an end, not a beginning, but her instincts denied it.

  So when Kieran took her arm as they piled out of the van back at the Gardens, Dana was almost expecting it. He guided her toward the garden, where the sound of rippling water made the night seem very peaceful. The few buildings around them were mostly dark, but the sky was alight with stars. The dry, clear air made them gleam like a million shards of crystal strewn across a black velvet sky.

  “Dana,” Kieran asked her, “do you feel that you’ve fulfilled your time here? That you’ve done everything you were meant to do in this place?”

  If that wasn’t a loaded question then she’d never heard one. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . . uh . . .”

  Dana didn’t think she’d ever heard the articulate Kieran at a loss for words. His tongue wasn’t tied for long, however. He seemed to straighten his spine just a bit.

  “What I mean is this. If you have time to stay for another couple of days, I could show you some places in this area that might have some meaning for you.”

  For a moment Dana forgot to breathe, so hard was she trying to read the thoughts behind Kieran’s invitation. Then she decided to simply be honest. Kieran wasn’t a man who played games.

  “You want me to stay?”

  A pause, then, “Yes. I do.”

  “Who wants me to stay? Master guru Kieran, or Joshua Gellis?”

  “Both,” he replied without hesitation.

  The Allheart offices opened for business again January 2, and today was December 30, but Dana remembered Elyssa’s invitation to take all the time she needed. And she needed this, Dana decided. Maybe she needed what more Kieran could show her, or maybe she just needed the man himself. She wanted to find out.


  “I’ll stay,” she said simply.

  The smile that curved those sculpted lips was not Kieran’s guru smile, Dana realized. It was a smile just for her. A frisson of anticipation ruffled her nerves clear down to her toes.

  Dana didn’t feel quite so cocky the next morning at seven o’clock when the rude ring of the phone jerked her from sleep. Tamara had moved into the school dormitories and was no longer there to wake her with gushings about the sunrise. Dana fumbled for the phone with a grunt.

  “Are you ready?” Kieran’s voice queried.

  “Wha—? Whatimeizit?”

  “Seven. We have a full day planned. Get up, Grasshopper.”

  She groaned.

  His chuckle was rich and deep, and suddenly Dana did want to get up and meet the day.

  “Unnnnh! All right, all right, Jiminy Cricket. I’ll be down.”

  Kieran met her in the lobby with a cup of hot coffee and a granola bar, which he didn’t give her time to eat. She did manage to gulp it down in the little green four-wheel-drive Jeep that he claimed could go anywhere and do anything.

  “Are we going driving in the Outback?” Dana asked dubiously.

  “No. But this thing is fun to drive. The places we’re going today are spiritual places, not tourist traps. I want you to look at these places and think about what is happening there.”

  Most of what Dana wanted to look at was sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “The Native American peoples who lived in this area regarded this country as holy land, and they had good reason. Good things happen here. People come here to change their lives.” He gave her a knowing look. “And usually they find what they seek.”

  What was she seeking with Kieran? Dana asked herself. She didn’t really know the answer.

  First they drove to the mouth of Boynton Canyon and parked at a well-used trailhead. A resort blocked the very mouth of the canyon, but beyond the resort Dana could see a hint of high rock ledges crowded with pine and juniper.

  “One of Sedona’s famous vortices lives here,” Kieran said with a slight smile.