Well In Time Part 35

While the water was heating, she opened the west side doors and shutters and went out under the pergola. Its vines filtered golden morning light onto the restored wooden table. She threw a fresh white linen tea towel down on the tabletop and brought out a basket of bread, a plate of b.u.t.ter, a pot of local strawberry jam that one of the ladies of the cleaning crew had brought her, and laid out flatware and an antique faience plate.

Back inside, she stood before the Provencal hutch and its shelf of cups and saucers, choosing carefully which would become her morning favorite. Finally, from among Limoges cups covered in hand-painted roses, Luneville with innocent bouquets of flowers and Minton with elaborate oriental designs, she chose a large hexagonal cup of white Paris porcelain, decorated only with a gold ring around its lip. Even though it had a chip along the edge and its saucer was mismatched, Calypso responded to the dignity and resilience of the two hundred-year-old vessel.

"When I'm your age, I'll have a few chips and dings, too," she said.

Setting the cup on the counter, she filled it with hot water from the kettle and then filled the French press. From the drawer of the hutch she produced an antique tea cozy st.i.tched like a Provencal boutis in a charming cicada pattern and, from a cupboard, a worn Empire tole tray in chapped red enamel and spotty gold.

She depressed the French press and the smell of hot coffee welled up blissfully. Putting the press on the tray, she popped the tea cozy over it, added a bowl of brown sugar cubes, a little pitcher of cream and the warming cup, and carried the tray outside.

Settling in behind the table, faced so that she could look down the sun-dappled length of the pergola, she poured her coffee, and slathered bread with b.u.t.ter and jam. A small breeze s.h.i.+vering through the leaves of the plane trees and the Roman fountain's languorous plash, were rustic music spiked with birdsong. Calypso thought, then, of the figure in the vault. Down in darkness, like an anchor for a s.h.i.+p bobbing in a pleasant harbor, the G.o.ddess radiated her joy up and outward, filling the world with song.

Sharp concussions of footfall on gravel interrupted her musings. Before she could rise to investigate, a voice behind her said, "There you are! I've been hammering on the front door."

Her body convulsed in shock and joy.

"Is it you?"

She pushed back her chair, twirled to face him, and collided with his onrus.h.i.+ng chest. His arms went around her, pressing her to him, and she smelled the scent that, since their first embrace almost fifty years before, had annihilated all reason in her. She buried her face in his s.h.i.+rt and clung to him, her arms wrapped around him.

"Oh, my G.o.d, Javier!" was all she could say, and was not surprised when he was too overwhelmed to respond.

They sat half the morning under the pergola, catching up. She plied him with food and coffee, which he accepted but did not eat in the intensity of their chatter. Their coffee grew cold. Wasps trekked through the jam on their plates, unheeded. They bent toward one another, holding hands across the table, lost in the amazement of being together again.

"You've been traveling a long time," Calypso said.

"Yes. Two full days. But you won't believe it, Caleepso. I was in such a hurry to get here, I forgot my pa.s.sport back at the ranch. It took four days to get a temporary one issued. Can you believe something so stupid as that?"

He rubbed his head, amazed at his own mistake.

In her mind's eye, she traced his long journey down from the Sierra into Chihuahua City. The unbearably convoluted and frustrating bureaucratic ha.s.sle over the pa.s.sport and then the airport, the flight into El Paso, then onward to New York, the change of planes, the hop across the Atlantic, then customs and the rush across Charles de Gaulle Airport from the international terminal to the domestic one and finally, the short flight to Montpellier. It made her tired just to think about it.

"You rented a car in Montpellier?"

"Yes. I spent the night there last night, at the Palais Hotel. I wanted to come last night, but I was too tired."

"I've missed you." Her chest was compressed with emotion and it came out in a whisper.

"I have missed you too, Caleepso. I need to tell you something."

She was suddenly wary. What if he had come to insist that she come back to Rancho Cielo? Or worse, unbearable to think of, that he was so tired of missing her that he wanted out-wanted a fresh start, so that the wound of her absence could heal?

Tears glossed her eyes and she could barely wheeze, "What?" It came out more sharply than she had antic.i.p.ated.

He pulled his hand away, stood, and brought his chair around to her side of the table. She turned her chair to face his and he reached for her hands with both of his.

"Caleepso," he began, in a voice so serious that it terrified her, "I need you to know that..." He stopped and gazed down the length of the pergola, collecting his thoughts. "That I have been thinking."

He stopped to look her straight in the eye.

"There has never been a time when you did not support every single step of my life, starting that very first day in Berkeley. You have never denied me anything my heart really wanted. You've followed me into warfare and into a kind of exile in the mountains. You've helped me build the ranch and to rebuild my life."

Calypso smiled slightly, hearing the listing that she had antic.i.p.ated. The only real issue, she knew, was what he had included in the other pan of the balance.

"When you decided to buy this property, I was angry. I thought you wanted to leave Mexico for good. I thought maybe you even wanted to leave me. I went a little crazy with that thought. I couldn't really believe it but I couldn't let it rest either."

He let go of her hands and rose from his chair. She looked up his tall frame to his beloved face, now furled in thought, and knew the verdict was about to be p.r.o.nounced. She braced herself for it, with her fingers curled around the frame of her chair's seat.

"And then I thought about what I've done for you. I took care of you after the rape. That was the start. And I killed a man for you-but my guess is you don't consider that a plus. I built Rancho Cielo with you in mind. I wanted it to be beautiful and big and strong, so you would feel safe and happy there. And you know, Caleepso," his eyes sought hers with a kind of desperation, "I have always loved you. I would give my life for you."

She nodded and swallowed the lump in her throat.

"Then maybe six days ago, I felt something. Just a knowing. And I knew I had to get to you fast. Were you in danger, Caleepso? I was certain I needed to come to you."

"Only in danger of dying of loneliness," she whispered.

"But nothing happened about a week ago? I had a big hit of your energy, Caleepso. So strong, I dropped what I was doing-I was building new gates for the courtyard-and I just ran to my truck and came."

"About a week ago?"

So much had happened so fast. She rummaged her memory for something that could have jolted him, almost six thousand miles distant. When it came to her, she covered her mouth with her hands in astonishment.

"Oh! Of course!"

"What?"

There was no way to explain it to him. She realized he would have to experience it for himself. She took him by the hand, saying, "Come," and led him into the kitchen. Taking up her ring of keys, she unlocked the door leading to the north entry room, now set up as a mud room and laundry. The same huge Provencal armoire that had guarded the secret stairs was now centered on the wall, leaving the door in the tiled floor unenc.u.mbered.

She knelt and unlocked the concealed door and struggled to raise it. Javier shot out his arm and with one heave, pushed it back against the wall and held it, as Calypso maneuvered the metal loop over the hook in the wall.

"If this thing ever fell on you," he said severely, "it would kill you."

"Swatted down like a fly! That would be an ignominious death, for sure," she smiled.

She reached into the armoire and produced flashlights for each of them. "You'll need this. Be careful going down. It's even more treacherous than it looks."

They spiraled carefully down into darkness. When she reached the landing at the bottom she said, "I'm very sure that you're about to see what-or who-brought you here with such speed."

She turned and smiled at him, where he balanced on the bottom step, one hand braced against the stone wall of the stairwell.

"Watch your head. This door is very low."

As they ducked into the vaulted room, the beams of their flashlights immediately spotlighted the statue. Calypso heard Javier gasp and turned to see that he was struck speechless, his eyes fixed on the figure before him. They stood for a long time with their lights playing over the polychrome and gold surface of the Queen of Heaven.

"Caleepso!" Javier breathed at last. "It's the same figure that's on the locket!"

"Yes."

He approached the image and reached out to stroke it but drew his hand back before his fingers touched the surface.

"This is more than a statue," he said, stepping back. "This has power!"

Calypso nodded.

"Yes, you're right. It does."

She went to him and took his hand.

"A few days ago, I was completely overwhelmed by Her energy. Stunned by it. Almost knocked senseless. It seemed to me that time and s.p.a.ce were liquid, like a big wave that was was.h.i.+ng me into a sea of-of I don't know what. Pure consciousness, maybe."

Javier was nodding, even before she finished.

"Yes. I felt it. It felt like you were dissolving."

He put his arms around her and pulled her close.

"I was scared, Caleepso. So scared that something had happened to you."

They stood embracing one another for long minutes. At last, Javier whispered, "She did it, didn't She? She brought us back together."

Calypso nodded, her cheek rubbing against his s.h.i.+rt.

"Yes," she said softy, "I think so. I believe She has both the power and the intention to do that."

At last, they turned away from the serene and infinite gaze of the G.o.ddess and ducked back through the arched door.

Calypso spent the remainder of the day touring Javier through her new domain.

"I think She held you off with the pa.s.sport problem," she said, nodding her head toward the floor, "so we could finish the decorating. It would have been anticlimactic if you'd come in the middle of scrub buckets and sweating movers."

Javier made polite murmurs over every room. Only when she opened a door and said, "And this is your study," did he show genuine surprise.

"Mine? You made a study for me? How did you know I would come?"

"I didn't. I hoped."

He nodded, his lips pursed.

"Caleepso," he said, drawing her to him, "I told you this morning I need to tell you something."

Again, Calypso's heart sank. "What?" she whispered.

He cleared his throat, looked down at his boots, and then back at her, his lips still pursed.

"What I want to tell you is this. . .I have been a colossal jerk. I came here to ask your forgiveness. And now I see that you've already forgiven me."

He waved his hand around the study, with its deep leather chair, broad desk and walls of bookcases awaiting books.

"How can I ever thank you?" His voice broke and his dark eyes were limpid with unshed tears.

Calypso raised her face to his and kissed him then. It was a kiss holding all her pent-up doubt, sorrow and longing, all her creative pa.s.sion, all her joy at his closeness. All her love.

Javier received the kiss in the same spirit. His soul encompa.s.sed her in an embrace that knew no time, no place, and no end. What did it matter, if they were in Mexico or France? On Earth or on the Moon? In the twenty-first century or any other, past or future? As long as they were together, everything was possible.

Mist that had crept inland from the Mediterranean was just lifting its veil to the clear light of dawn, as Calypso slipped behind the leather-topped desk in her study and began to write. The dream was still heavy upon her and with eyes closed, her fingers flew across the keyboard.

After an hour or so, she heard Javier get up and go down to the kitchen. In the quiet house, the ground floor rustle of water flowing into the kettle and the fierce grinding of coffee beans were audible, but her inner vision persisted.

Javier was just entering the study to put a cup of coffee beside her as she wrote FINI and straightened from the computer.

"I'm done!" she crowed. "Free, at last!"

Javier grinned. "Good morning."

She stood and put her arms around him. "I'm a free woman! I just wrote the final scene of the book. What do you say we go to the coast today? Let's eat a huge breakfast and then drive down to the sh.o.r.e. What do you think?"

He pulled her close and kissed her. "How can I refuse you on the day when you're liberated from that thing." He nodded toward her laptop. "It's as if you've taken a lover, when you're writing. I'd better take you away before you start a new book."

They prepared omelets fat with avocado, onions, and cheese, and ate them ravenously out under the pergola, watching wrens coming and going to some secret nest where babies screamed mercilessly for more. After cleaning up the breakfast dishes, they packed more food for a picnic-bread, cheese, olives, and a bottle of local wine. Calypso gathered sweaters and hats while Javier loaded the basket in his rental car.

"Ready?" he asked, keys in hand.

"Ready." She pulled the front door shut behind her and almost skipped across the gravel to the car. "I don't know why I feel so unaccountably gay this morning," she said, as she folded herself into the pa.s.senger seat.

"Because you've just finished another book?" He went around to the driver's side and lowered his length into the tiny interior. "Or maybe because you get to ride with me in this little clown car?"

Calypso smiled, pulled down the visor to check her lipstick, and nestled her purse beside her on the seat.

"No," she said as they pulled away from the house. "It's that, but also something more. Maybe it's simply being with you, my love!" She gave him a radiant smile. "Or because it's spring. Or because we're in the south of France. Or maybe all of the above."

They drove through the awakening village and turned onto the auto route leading south to the sea. The roadsides were thick with red poppies that had yet to open their dewy heads to the sun, and the vineyards were just beginning to show a few tendrils and leaves, like topknots on the black zigzags of the old vines. A little veil of sea mist floated seaward and even the somber olive groves seemed to sparkle with silvery inner fire as the morning breeze flounced their leaves.

They drove in silence, so deeply absorbed in communion that no words were necessary. Coming to the coast road, Javier turned left with the aqua ripple of the Mediterranean to their right.

They hadn't gone far when Calypso exclaimed, "Look at that little point of rocks! Let's go out there and explore."

Without a word, Javier pulled the car onto the shoulder, got out and then went around to help Calypso extricate herself.

"We both have legs too long for French cars," she said, laughing as he pulled her to her feet.

Hand in hand, they crossed the road and went down an embankment, heading for a small promontory crowned with sea- and wind-worn rocks. Sh.o.r.e birds swooped and cried in the chilly air and the tang of salt was sharp and clean on the wind.

After a few minutes of clambering, they found themselves on top of the point, looking out over the restless blue skin of the sea. In both directions, the coast swept away in a gentle curve as if Earth were embracing her glittering waters.