Welcome to Paradise

by Rosalind James

  “You need it more than you realize,” he’d insisted.

  To her surprise, he’d been right. It must have been the shock and fright, added to the pain of the actual burn, because she’d fallen asleep almost immediately, lulled by the sound of the women working and chatting in low tones downstairs, and had only woken up when they’d called her to eat.

  “That’s two close calls for you, Mira,” Kevin had said over their hastily prepared lunch of corned beef hash, fried eggs, and biscuits. “You’re getting to be as bad as Martin.”

  “Well, to be fair, she couldn’t help the gunshot thing,” Zara said. “And I’ve come close to catching my hair on fire myself. It just swings right in there.”

  “Well, it won’t any more.” Mira fingered a crispy end. “My fire danger’s over, I think. So I can get back to work, once Maria-Elena cuts off the burned part. Because phew, this stinks. How can you all stand it?”

  “You forget, I’m Mr. Animal Husbandry,” Kevin said. “You smell better than the corral. But it’s close.”

  “And as far as work,” Gabe put in, “you’re still taking it easy this afternoon. Simple things, all right. Chopping vegetables or whatever. But that’s it. Anything harder, that she’d usually do,” he said to Zara, “tell me, and I’ll do it.”

  Now, he was sitting with them on a chair of his own, churning butter and keeping them company. And keeping an eye on his patient, he’d insisted. Had known it sounded stupid, and had said it anyway.

  “Thanks for doing that,” Mira said lazily as his arms worked the dasher. “But you know that’s only Part One.”

  “Then you’ll have to direct me on Part Two after this,” he said. “Give me a tutorial. I’m pretty open to instruction. Anyway, it beats haying.”

  “That’s all the burned stuff,” Maria-Elena declared, snipping off the last wet, frizzled lock. “It smells better already. You can wash it again in the creek after I cut it, get all the burned smell and little ends out.”

  “Am I allowed to go in the creek?” Mira asked him.

  “Sure. Take the dressing off first. The cold water should feel good on the burn. I’ll dress it again after your bath,” he promised. Despite himself, his eyes went momentarily to her breasts before he brought them hastily back to her face again. He caught an expression there, saw a shiver that, he hoped, wasn’t just about her wet hair.

  “How short do you want this?” Maria-Elena asked.

  “Umm . . . ” Mira considered. “Long enough to put up, still? What do you think?” she asked Gabe. “You have an opinion? Got a preference in women’s hair?”

  She was flirting with him, he realized with delight. He looked across at her, hair parted in the middle, a single length chopped off above the shoulder. Eyes up here, he reminded himself. “Yeah, I’d leave some of that,” he decided. “You have beautiful hair. Maybe you could make it more . . . curly, Maria-Elena?”

  “Layered,” she corrected. “So her curl comes out.” She lifted a piece of hair with the comb to consider it. “I can do that.”

  “How did you learn this?” Mira asked her.

  “I wanted to be a beautician,” Maria-Elena confided, beginning to comb and snip. “When I was younger. I still kinda want to. But my mom really wanted me to go to college. So I’m starting at the state college this fall. Living at home, though,” she added with a disgruntled sigh. “I can’t afford to live on campus, even with, like, a scholarship and loans and things. God, I hate being poor.”

  “It’s not great,” Gabe agreed, still methodically churning. “But there are worse things than starting out broke. Like not knowing how to be poor. People can get into some real trouble that way. It’s a lot easier to go up than down that ladder.”

  “Huh?” Maria-Elena asked.

  “Trust me, learning how to live cheap, if you don’t start out having to do it, is the hard part. Learning how not to be poor—that’s easy. Just ask Alec.”

  “But you guys can’t know about being poor,” Maria-Elena objected. “You’re a doctor. And you have a really nice car. I saw it, at the beginning. At the motel.”

  “Alec’s,” Gabe explained. “We’re not poor now, no. But my dad’s a Presbyterian minister, and my mom’s a part-time school secretary. Not what you’d call your lucrative professions. Lots of macaroni and cheese, moving around, living in some kind of cheap housing provided by the congregation. A single-wide in Winnemucca . . . that was middle school. High school, it was Chico. Our first actual house. We thought we’d arrived, let me tell you.”

  “So how did you go to college, and to medical school?” Mira asked. “And Alec? He’s got a degree too, doesn’t he?”

  “Just like Maria-Elena. Loans and scholarships. Football, for me.”

  “You were a football player?” Maria-Elena asked, clearly more impressed than ever. “A pro one? Like the NFL?”

  He laughed. “No. They tend to be a lot bigger than me. And better. College, that’s all.”

  “What about Alec?” Mira asked.

  “Ah. Alec. Full scholarship to Stanford. But we both had to work, still. Me, it was the landscaping crew. Alec wasn’t into getting his hands dirty. Which is going to have made this show pretty interesting for him.”

  “You were a landscaper?” Maria-Elena asked. “Like, cutting the grass?”

  “Yep. And a whole lot more. Good for football, actually. Built as much muscle as the gym. Carrying stone for patios, digging, putting in plants. Just like here. That’s why I don’t mind it. And hey, I had to do something to earn some money, and I didn’t have that many skills, not like Alec. A scholarship doesn’t pay for everything. Clothes, pizza. Going out,” he added with a smile. “Not all girls think a walk and a picnic’s romantic, unfortunately.”

  “I would,” Mira said quietly. “I’d rather do that than look across a restaurant table at a guy all night, try to think of conversation.”

  “Not me,” Maria-Elena put in firmly. “I want to go to nice places. Don’t you just want to buy and buy stuff?” she demanded of Gabe. “Now that you’re rich?”

  He laughed. “I’m not rich. There are these things called medical school loans. I’ve about got them paid off now, but it’s put a big crimp in the old lifestyle.”

  “But Alec has that car, you said,” Maria-Elena pressed. “What about him?”

  “He’s a bit better off,” Gabe admitted. “He’s the catch, I’m afraid.” And that was enough about that, he decided.

  “What about you, Mira?” he asked. “How are your poverty skills? They as good as Maria-Elena’s and mine?”

  She smiled a little, the snippets of russet-brown hair falling around her. Gabe couldn’t tell how her hair was going to end up. But even if it wasn’t perfect, he knew, she wouldn’t be making a fuss. She seemed strangely calm, in fact, for somebody who’d just had her hair burned off, and was now having it cut by an eighteen-year-old wannabe beautician. Not many women he’d known would have been able to roll with this one. Hell, probably no woman he’d known. Certainly none he’d dated.

  “No,” she said now. “No poverty skills.”

  This churning was getting old. Gabe opened the lid and peeked inside. “Is this butter yet?” he asked Maria-Elena.

  She leaned over and took a look. “Nope. It takes longer than that. Keep churning.”

  “Slave driver,” he muttered, making her laugh.

  “So you were a princess, huh? Did you have one of those fancy bedrooms?” Gabe asked Mira, starting to work the dasher again. “My sister always wanted one of those, with one of those things over the bed. What do they call those?”

  “Canopies,” she said, her face closing. “No. Two bedrooms, always. But no princess thing.”

  “Your parents are divorced?” Maria-Elena asked. “Mine too. I can’t wait for my dad to see the show. He was really excited about me being on it. Is yours too?”

  “No,” Mira said again. “He didn’t think it was . . . a good idea. A good use of my time.”

  “Wh
at about your mom?” Maria-Elena asked, snipping the hair around Mira’s face now.

  “She’s on a cruise with her new husband. I emailed her. She’ll have got it by now, I guess. I’m sure she’ll enjoy watching it.”

  “Second marriage, huh?” Gabe asked. Mira’s normal transparency was completely missing. Something was wrong here.

  “Fourth,” she said.

  “Wow,” Maria-Elena said. “She’s been married four times? What about your dad?”

  “Three,” Mira said shortly. “You aren’t doing bangs, are you? I’m not sure what I want, but I don’t think I want bangs.”

  “No bangs,” Maria-Elena assured her. “We’ll part it on the side, and it’ll fall in waves. It’s going to be really gorgeous, I promise.”

  Gabe dropped the subject. The older he got, the more he realized that there were worse things than macaroni and cheese for dinner, clothes handed down from older boys in the congregation, however much they’d rankled at the time. And one of those things was growing up without love.

  When It’s Right

  “Everything’s healing up nicely. Looking good down low here,” Gabe pronounced after Mira’s late-afternoon dip in the creek two days later. His fingers were gentle against her skin as he began to fasten the new, smaller dressing. “How’s it feeling?”

  “Fine,” she said, her breath quickening a little at his touch, the sight of his head bent so close over her breast, where her hand was holding the chemise. “It’s only a little sore now up where the blisters are.”

  “You can go back to wearing the corset tomorrow,” he decided. “If you really have to,” he added with a grin, pulling the strap of her chemise back up onto her shoulder and sitting back on the chair he’d pulled out to face her.

  “I’ll admit, it’s more comfortable without it.” She picked up her blouse where it lay beside her on the bench and shrugged into it again. “Not much support, though, bending over in the garden. And I can’t run at all. Though the corset doesn’t make for the most comfortable running either. It’d be nice to have a bra.” She looked down at herself ruefully as she fastened her sleeve buttons. “I’m not a big fan of 1885 underwear, I’ve decided.”

  She looked up, and became even more flustered at the heat in his gaze. Why was she talking about her underwear? It must be the doctor thing.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” His smile started slow, began to spread. “I’m getting pretty fond of this—what do you call it?” he asked, giving a last rub to a bit of insecure tape, then lightly touching the strap he’d just pulled up.

  “Chemise,” she said, her hands arrested on the bottom button of her blouse.

  “Yeah. Chemise. Seen you in it a few times now, under a few different circumstances. I have to say, I like the wet version best. But all of them work for me.”

  “I’m not going to be feeling like singing tomorrow night,” Zara said as Mira and Maria-Elena finished the nightly ritual of washing dishes and grinding coffee beans in preparation for the next day, the men lingering over their final evening cup of coffee. “Not after laundry day, I’m not. And we’ve got the dance on Friday, the challenge on Saturday . . . We’d better make it a good one tonight.”

  “I thought I’d miss music the most out here,” Maria-Elena said to Mira, watching the men get up obligingly to begin the almost-nightly task of carrying the bench and Zara’s chair outside. Zara was already removing the guitar from its case with the tender care she always demonstrated. “Besides my phone, I mean. Like Melody.”

  They grinned at each other as Maria-Elena went on. “At home, I always have my iPod in. But this has been even better. At first I thought the songs were kind of, like, lame. But now . . . I don’t know, I sort of love them.”

  “Yeah,” Mira agreed, giving one last wipe to the cast-iron skillet and hanging it on its hook on the log wall. “Maybe it’s just the lack of other entertainment, but I don’t think so. There’s a reason those songs have hung around so long, I guess. And you have such a gorgeous voice. It’s been one of the best things out here for me too, the singing at night. And listening to you in the garden. I’ll bet you’ll be doing a lot more singing, once you’re home again.”

  “You have a nice voice too,” Maria-Elena said loyally.

  Mira laughed. “I’ve enjoyed accompanying you, let’s just leave it at that.” She left the dark, stuffy cabin gratefully and stepped out into the late evening light. The days weren’t quite as long now, but the sun still wasn’t setting until after eight-thirty, allowing the group plenty of time for their almost-nightly music sessions. She was in time, though, she saw with delight, for her favorite view of the day. She should be used to the Alpenglow by now, but the pink light on the mountains still gave her the same lift of the heart it had that first night, in the motel parking lot.

  And just like that night, there was Gabe, standing by the bench, watching her drink in the beloved sight.

  “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills,” he quoted.

  “From whence cometh my help,” Stanley added, seating himself with Kevin on the log that made up the third section of their little music circle.

  “I thought for the longest time, as a kid,” Gabe confessed, seating himself between Mira and Maria-Elena on the bench, “that that meant the help came from the hills themselves. Because my dad always said it just like that, didn’t add the rest of the psalm.”

  “Maybe because he felt that way,” Mira guessed, “the same way I do. When you look at them, they’re like that, aren’t they? Reminding you of what’s good, and strong, and . . . and permanent in the world. The things that matter, the ones that last.”

  She cut herself off. “I’m sorry. That was really sappy.”

  “No,” Gabe said forcefully as Stanley smiled his agreement, his gaze warm and approving. “Why shouldn’t you say what you think? Why shouldn’t we be honest out here?”

  “Maybe because we’re playing a game, and it’s not necessarily a good idea to expose yourself,” Kevin said quietly, serious for once. “Not always wise to show your vulnerability, Mira.”

  It was Zara who answered. “Mira doesn’t care that much about the game. No more than I do. She knows she’s not going to win it, not with Scott. She’s getting what she came for. And maybe even more.”

  Her gaze rested a moment on Gabe before she began to strum the guitar. “Going to break the rules a little here tonight,” she declared. “Do some songs I love, period-appropriate or not.”

  “Some of yours?” Mira asked hopefully, still feeling softened and moved by the sight of the mountains, the acceptance she’d felt from the others.

  “If you want,” Zara agreed. “And if you’ll help me sing them.”

  She sang of love and loss, heartbreak and longing. Traditional songs, and more recent ones too, each one winching Mira’s heart just a little bit further open. And then switched to a more upbeat note, the folk songs popular in her heyday. They all joined in on “If I Had a Hammer,” but only Maria-Elena could manage the Spanish lyrics of “Guantanamera.”

  Mira sang softly, as always, listening to Gabe’s strong baritone beside her, the words and melodies familiar and so moving. The bench wasn’t large, and she felt the thrill of his thigh, warm and hard against hers, of his shoulder pressed to her own, as surely as if she’d been in his arms. She didn’t dare look at him, afraid he’d see the truth in her face. She’d already revealed so much tonight.

  “Got one last song to do for you,” Zara announced as the fading light told them all that it was time to start wrapping it up. “I can’t sing it in Judy Collins’s angel voice, of course. But maybe you’ll help me out on it, Maria-Elena. You’ve got a bit of that yourself. ‘Someday Soon.’ You know that one?”

  “No,” Maria-Elena admitted. “Sorry.”

  “Well,” Zara smiled, “it’s not that hard to pick up, once I sing the chorus once. This one’s all about the way love can sweep you off your feet. About the terror and the certainty of it. About knowing when it’s rig
ht. So I thought I should sing it for you tonight.”

  She began, the sound of the guitar, then her lovely alto, rising to fill the evening air. Mira sat back and listened, her skin prickling, the chill running down her neck, her arms at the lyrics, the plaintive melody. Gabe shifted beside her, and then his hand was closing around her own where it rested in her lap. She felt him lift it, set it between them on the bench, lace his fingers through hers. The warmth of his broad palm against hers, the solidity of his thigh against the back of her hand.

  She cast a quick glance at him, saw his eyes fixed on Zara, even as his thumb began stroking the sensitive skin of her forefinger. The music filled her, while every bit of physical awareness focused on where he was holding her, the places his body touched hers. She saw Zara’s eyes on her as she sang, and realized that she meant the song for her. For her and Gabe.

  “Take a walk with me,” Gabe said when the song was over and Zara had pulled the guitar strap from around her neck, signaling the end of the concert.

  “The camera . . .” she murmured.

  “Screw the camera. I have a pretty good idea what the storyline of this show’s going to be, and so do you. And the next scene happens right the hell now. Let’s walk.”

  She got up with him, her heart beating fast. Saw that Stu was indeed following them at a discreet distance, and found she didn’t care.

  Gabe walked fast, seeming almost angry. Waited until they were on the path into the woods, out of earshot of the others.

  “Are you still in love with Scott?” he asked abruptly, still walking, not looking at her.

  “No,” she said softly. Then, more strongly, “No.” Not for a long time now, she realized. Certainly not since she’d come on the show with him.

  “You going to break up with him, then?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t think, suddenly, why she hadn’t done it sooner. She didn’t even want to see him again, let alone talk to him. Or, more correctly, listen to him talk to her. She’d done a whole lot better than he had out here. If anyone had the right to berate their partner, it was her.