by Jill Jaynes
“In high school, I thought geology was boring,” Leonie admitted. “Down the bayou, we didn’t have rock formations.”
“Here you can see why geology is really cool.”
“When you use this cliff for inspiration, how do you translate the different textures and temperatures of the rocks into colors?”
“I don’t. Not yet at least. So far, what I capture with my camera provides enough ideas for my work without trying to include the other senses. The colors and patterns you see now will never look exactly like this again. Shadows change during the course of the day and year, rain and tide make the rocks wet, clouds make small differences harder to see, one never looks at something quite at the same angle, the setting sun adds different colors on different days —these and many other things make the cliff constantly change.” His voice had gotten louder and faster. “Remember I told you about diatoms in chert? They had silica walls. The chert layer looks dull now, but when the sun hits it, it glows like a band of opal.”
“Wow!” Leonie exclaimed. “How do you know so much? Were you a geology major in college?”
He stiffened, and his smile disappeared. “Pre-law.”
“You don’t seem like the lawyer type.”
“I wasn’t. It was my parents’ idea.” Looking away from her, he wiped his palms on his shorts. “I came to my senses in sophomore year and changed to art.”
There’s a story here. “And your parents?”
“They said I was a huge disappointment to them.” He shrugged. “I never fail to disappoint them. I learned long ago not to let it influence what I do.” He kicked at a rock. “Besides, I have made a few really bad decisions.”
“Parents are supposed to have your back. They’re supposed to get you on track when you screw up.”
He looked her straight in the eye. “I dropped out of college to get married.”
She took a step back. “I can see they might have been disappointed. Still. Several kids in my high school dropped out before graduation to get married. Each time, the ruckus died down quickly, and their families rallied around them. That’s what families are supposed to do. Or at least what the ones I know do.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “You’re not still married, are you?”
“No. Not for a long time.”
“Good.” What are you doing, Leonie? You’re not here on a date. You’re here professionally, to talk about marketing.
“So it’s not a deal breaker?”
She licked her lips. He, too, was treating this excursion like a date. “No, not a deal breaker.”
He let out a long breath. “Want to see something really unusual? We’ll have to squish between some rocks to get into a cave, but it’s worth it.”
“Sure. I’m starting to like geology. I guess it helps to have an enthusiastic teacher.”
He led her along the cliff face to a dark fold of basalt. He sucked in his breath and, to her astonishment, squeezed into an invisible passage between the rough rocks.
She followed him in, and they walked between rocks for several yards. Then the passage opened onto a closed bay lit by sunlight streaming in from gaps in the rocks overhead.
She gasped. “How beautiful! It’s like an arm of a bayou, but with rock instead of trees surrounding it. I almost feel at home.”
He pointed. “There’s what I really wanted to show you.”
On the other side of the cove was a masterpiece of nature’s art made only of thin layer upon thin layer of pinkish stone. The years had bent and folded and even twisted the stone until it resembled the bark of an ancient, crooked oak, down to the small, knothole-like caves.
Leonie’s skin tingled, and she pressed her palm to her chest. “Hoo lawd,” she whispered. Being here was like being in the candle-lit church for Midnight Mass on Christmas. Awestruck, she sank to her knees, her gaze never wavering from the formation. The rest of the world disappeared, and she was engulfed by a deep sense of mystery, joy, and privilege. For true, le petit Jésus should have been born here.
Her knee bones ached; the light on the rock was different now. Time had passed, and she had not noticed. She whispered, “Does anyone else know about this?”
“Probably,” he said from right beside her, startling her.
“Too bad. This spot is so special, so romantic. Wouldn’t it be so very wonderful if it were our secret?” She ran her hand over the rock beneath her, wishing she could gather up a piece of it to carry in her pocket always.
David’s fingers touched her chin and turned her face gently toward him. He gazed deeply in her eyes for several moments. “I spoke too soon,” he said. “Look around. There’s no graffiti, no scratches in the rock from a bear’s paw, no woolly mammoth bones on the rocks. No footprints, paw prints, or hoof prints in the sand under the water. Maybe we are the only two ever to set foot in here.”
“I like that idea much better.” Wincing, she pulled her knees out from under her and folded her legs. “Thank you for bringing me here. I’ve never even imagined a place like this existed.”
He pulled the cap from her head and stroked her hair. “Your eyes are such an unusual color. Like sherry. They’re beautiful. Is that color common among the Houma?”
She leaned into his caress. “Your guess about where I got my eye color is as good as mine. The bayous are a melting pot. French Acadians came from Canada. Germans and Spanish wandered by and stayed. So did runaway black and Indian slaves.”
He kissed her lightly from her forehead down her nose to her mouth. “It would bother me not to know my roots,” he said and then peppered the corners of her mouth with quick little kisses.
It tickled, and she wiggled as she tried to pull away. As she brushed against more of his body, she stopped trying to escape. She relaxed against him and turned her head.
“It’s not genetics that determines my roots, it’s culture,” she said. “Even if I were part alligator, I would still be Houma in my mind, in my heart. When I move back home and tell people about Jake, everyone will still consider me Houma.”
His hand stilled. “Wait. Back up. You’re still thinking of moving away? Even after today? After what we’re doing?”
Something in her chest squeezed painfully at the thought of never seeing David again. “I was so excited about getting to know my father and having a family again. But Jake disappeared soon after I got here. You think something bad has happened to him. I worry he disappeared on purpose, that he’s using me as free labor.”
“He’s not that kind of guy.”
“I don’t know him well enough to say. My reason for coming was to get a new family, and that didn’t happen. Why stay?”
David resumed stroking her hair. “I sometimes get very faint hints from you that you don’t like California much.”
“You picked up on those, did you?” As always, his teasing relaxed her. “I miss hot weather. The earthy smell of the swamps and their total, dreamlike silence in the mists before dawn. The magical calls of birds. The soft, musical plink of a turtle sliding from a log into the water. The crash of an alligator slapping its tail. Having friends. You’re the only friend I’ve made so far. Most of all I miss trees.” She shifted her butt a little until she was leaning against him. “You know what you didn’t pick up on? How fast my heart is beating,” she complained.
“Yes, I did,” he whispered into her ear. He unbuttoned the top button of her shirt and caressed her neck. Then he lifted her, turned her to face him, and kissed and licked the hollow of her throat, shoving aside the collar of her shirt with his chin.
She squeaked, and he chuckled. He leaned back to watch her face as he lightly and slowly stroked a finger from one collarbone to the other and back. Her head tipped back, inviting further exploration.
“I promised you I’d show you some trees on the top of the bluff,” he said and then ran his hand over her face. “Do you want to go up there now?”
She smiled impishly, or at least as impishly as possible while breathing hard. “In a minute or two.
Or five.” Then she pulled his face toward hers and kissed his lips.
David wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back. And in his secret place that was now her secret too, in the mystical stillness and beauty inside that rocky cove, beneath the blue, blue sky, she closed her eyes and clung to him, and they kissed for an eternity.
Chapter 10
Later, they squished themselves through the passageway and out onto the beach and into the normal world where the sun still glared and the ocean still smelled.
“The stairs are this way.” Again David led the way, but when they reached the stairs carved into the rock, Leonie ran up them quickly and beat him to the summit. Grinning, she did a Cajun one-step at the top while he stopped to puff before walking the rest of the way.
“That doesn’t count as a win, you know,” he said. “You’re just showing off another of your superpowers.”
“Superpowers? What superpowers?”
He shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a bottle of water for each of them. “You can leap tall display counters in a single bound. You can go from standing to sitting in one smooth motion… even when holding a cat. For extra points, I guess. My arms and legs are strong from carrying heavy packages all day, yet your legs held out for the entire flight up.”
“I don’t have superpowers. Just four years of college gymnastics and a lot of yoga since then.” She took several long drinks from her water bottle until it was gone. Once again, she had forgotten how quickly she dehydrated in the dry California air, and she had not brought any water.
“Gymnastics training and yoga don’t explain how you healed my elbow so quickly.”
He looked around and then pointed to the largest bush in the park—she couldn’t call it a tree without being a liar—and they went and sat underneath. As a josh, she did a graceful sink-and-sit with her backpack on.
“Rub it in,” he grumbled. He finished his own water bottle and pulled out another two.
“Thanks.” She took hers and drank, looking around. The bush might be a stunted runt of shrubbery, but it gave some shade and did a good job of softening the harsh light. She took off her sunglasses to at last really see the ocean. It glimmered and shivered for miles and miles until it merged with the sky far in the distance, and Moonlight Cove looked insignificant next to the power and size of the ocean.
“I know you don’t care about the ocean. You’re avoiding telling me how you healed my elbow. So what gives?”
She looked him straight in the eye so he would believe her. “I’m a traiteuse.”
He looked blank. “I don’t know that word. It doesn’t even sound English.”
“What it means to be a traiteuse, it is hard to explain to outsiders. I’m a healer, but I don’t heal people myself. People are healed through me. I’m the channel, you could say. My Nonc—my Uncle—Antoine was a traiteur, a male healer, and he had no daughters, so he passed his knowledge on to me. I’ll pass it on to one of my future sons.”
He looked at her as if she had sprouted horns and a tail. He pulled granola bars from his backpack, dropped them between the two of them, and then ignored them completely. “This, uh, being a traiteuse or traiteur—is it a Houma thing?”
“More a melting-pot thing. I did a paper on its history in college. Online, I found records from France, some four hundred years old, that described healing rituals we still use. Other practices originated among Indian peoples, including the Houma. Others probably came from Africa. Who knows whom God gave these blessings to first?” David’s face looked confused and frustrated, and she shook her head. “You and I, we came here to sit under trees and discuss marketing your art. Instead I bore you and make your eyes glaze over.”
“I am interested. It’s just I’ve never been into New Agey stuff.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Louisiana healing techniques aren’t new. What we do is hundreds or thousands of years old. Modern Western medicine has developed almost entirely in less than one hundred fifty years. If any healing techniques are ‘New Agey,’ it’s what’s practiced in modern hospitals.” She leaned toward him. “Did you know that sick poor people who have to settle for ‘outdated’ treatments have better outcomes than rich people who get the newest, shiniest medical procedures?”
He hooked a finger in the neck of his t-shirt and pulled on it.
I’m making him uncomfortable by questioning his assumptions.
He makes me question my assumptions too. Am I leaving California too fast, without thinking through the pluses and minuses?
“How about marketing?” he asked, relaxing visibly with his change of subject. “Did you research its history too?”
“Yes, and if you don’t stop being a smart aleck, I’ll tell you about it in minute detail.”
He swiped an X across his chest with his finger. “I promise to behave.”
“Good.” She pulled a pen and a pocket notebook from her backpack. “Let’s start with the basics, your customer. Who is the person you have in mind when you imagine and create a piece of art? Who buys your art on the craft fair circuit? How do people react to your art?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Whom do you make art for?”
“For myself, of course.”
“Of course.” Spoken like a true artist. He’s no hack. And I would know; I’ve had many for clients. “What I mean is, who are your customers?”
His brow crinkled. “I’m not sure I know. Your father pays me when people buy my pieces, but he doesn’t tell me anything about who bought them. Sometimes customers at crafts fairs chitchat, but I don’t learn anything important about them.”
“Let me approach this a different way. Have you looked for customers to commission stained-glass windows from you? Rich people, churches, synagogues, city halls, those sorts of customers? For the fairs, do you take intricate enamelwork pieces with high price tags and hope to sell one or two? Or do you make lapel pins customers pay a few bucks for and then hope to sell hundreds? When people come to your booth, what do they hope to find, and do they find it?”
Sunlight pierced the shade and encircled David like a giant, full-body halo. He put his hand to his forehead, swaying dizzily.
Leonie grabbed both his arms to steady him. He seemed on the verge of fainting. “Do you need some water? A granola bar?”
He shook his head, closed his eyes, and raised his face to the light. “I feel like Jake Blues in the first Blues Brothers movie. And I thought ‘seeing the light’ was only a metaphor for a revelation.”
Darn, I’m good!
She shouldn’t get too carried away with herself. She didn’t want to take credit for a “come-to-Jesus moment,” as her Protestant friends called it. Or for his deciding to get his blues band back together. Cautiously, she asked, “What revelation did you have?”
He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and leaned toward her. His face was as serious as she had ever seen it. “I finally understand why I don’t sell much. Creation has been one process; and selling art has been another, unrelated one. It never occurred to me to analyze what I made and look for the people most likely to buy it.” He clasped her hands between his large ones. “Thank you.”
Over the next hour, Leonie asked him many questions about his hopes and dreams as well as his goals and plans for achieving them. For almost every question, he answered, “I need to think about it.” When he looked completely drained of energy, she took mercy on him and shut up. She wrote down her thoughts and ideas before they could escape.
When she finally looked up, pleased with the progress they had made, she found him staring down at his hands. “I set myself up to work as a delivery guy for the rest of my life and didn’t even know it.”
“Get in line. There are so many artists like you, I made a living helping them. Did you know ninety percent of businesses fail in their first year of operation? One reason is some people don’t have enough savings to tide them over until the business is turning enough profit to cover expenses. You
haven’t made that mistake. Businesses also fail because they don’t have a business plan, and we can make one for you. Together, we can boost your chances of being in the ten percent who succeed.”
“If that happens, my mother will faint and conk her head, and my dad will blame me for the concussion.”
“That’s all you have to say? You should be happy.”
He rubbed his forehead with his knuckles. “I will be once everything sinks in. Right now, I’m overwhelmed. My head is about to explode.”
“You don’t have to do it all today, you know. And you don’t have to do it alone. You made a lot of phone calls on my behalf yesterday. I owe you.”
“Fat lot of good it did. Nobody knows where Jake is.”
“Still, you saved me from having to make those calls,” Leonie said. “We’ll start your new marketing plan with something small and easy: picking more works for consignment in Jake’s shop. Something subtle, elegant, refined, suitable for someone who’s will to pay a thousand dollars or more for a writing instrument.”
David zipped up his backpack. “Let’s go to my studio now.”
Chapter 11
David’s studio was in the small Victorian part of Moonlight Cove. Leonie had not even known this neighborhood existed, and she looked around with interest. It still contained many elegant Queen Anne houses, each painted in several colors. But there were also brick warehouses, squat 1950s ranches, and two empty lots roped off for pay parking with a bored teenager stationed in each to collect money.
The air here smelled good enough to eat: From the open windows of the homes wafted the aromas of red sauce simmering, garlic frying, and, to her surprise, the nutty smell of a roux cooking. She left David talking to himself and followed her nose to identify the house where someone knew how to make a brown roux correctly. I need to come back here. There may be other Louisiana transplants in town.
“Leonie! Over here,” David called. He had stopped at one of the warehouses and was unlocking deadbolts on the metal door. Leonie trotted over and put her hand on his arm, corded with years of work.