Falling in Love Page 6

  Jayne was the one paying all the bills.

  Thank God, but all that resentment was gone now.

  The heat was much reduced in there after the boat ride and the long walk from the jetty. Her thick mop of medium-length blonde hair was wet up around the rim of her forehead. Her feet were a bit squashed in the shoes. Thank God she’d decided on flat heels rather than spikes. Maybe she could wear the new shoes later, bought especially for this trip. They were supposed to be going to some kind of disco club if she remembered correctly. She would love to dance—again there would have to be some kind of compromise with the shoes. She pushed up her glasses, slipping down a bit on her nose, and carefully examined the way the thing was put together. She really was enjoying all of this, she decided abruptly. It was funny how things worked.

  All the wrong sort of men, married mostly, and all of them looking soft and pudgy or old before their time, were paying her all kinds of attention, and yet the odd handsome stranger was always sort of lurking off in the background. The few of them that were about were looking very shy for some reason. She was scaring them off somehow, now there’s a cheerful thought.

  There was a fellow named Bartholomew, not the best-looking one of the bunch, but at least he spoke English. He was downright awkward, and there was this feeling that he was somehow failing to scrape up the courage in spite of a few awkward signals of her own.

  It just didn’t seem worth it sometimes. A man should be able to make up his mind.

  Years ago, invited out for a wine and cheese party at a downtown gallery at a very prestigious address, she’d sort of taken a shine to Edouard, her water-colour artist, although he was married and had three adult children. One of them was only a couple of years younger than her. Edouard was handsome, but it was his way of talking that got her. She still sort of referred to the incident internally, and quite often. He had such passion, for life, and work, his family and his art, all of which were inextricably entwined in one mad, swirling ball of wax and love and total commitment.

  She was managing an insurance agency, simply one of a nationwide chain. It could have been any insurance agency, but the thought of moving, even for twice the money, simply didn’t gnaw at her sufficiently to ever do anything about it.

  The education hadn’t hurt her any, but maybe she should have specialized in something technical. Her salary, though good, didn’t go too far in a city where an apartment, anything even remotely worth having, would set you back a couple of grand a month, and now with mother gone she had some thinking to do on that front. She had a big old apartment loaded with stuff she was afraid to let go of, and yet so little of it was her own choosing.

  When her mother died, after a long and agonizing bout with pancreatic cancer, Jayne had endured six months of the most intense emotional experience ever. Coming after two and a half years of struggle, the grief, which she had expected, was stronger than she could have ever believed.

  All that love, love which worked both ways, was gone.

  All objectivity, the passive acceptance, the submergence of self, which had been so necessary in care-giving as best one could, was gone. For a time, she honestly believed she was having a breakdown. Her well had run dry. She had nothing left for herself. The only time she wasn’t grieving was when she was at work. Even that had become a kind of hell. The thoughts and the memories never left, and it just ate at her. Without her mother to take care of, her own life didn’t seem to amount to much.

  She was too self-sufficient. She’d been on her own for too long.

  When her friend Melanie, good old Mel, pestered her into taking a trip somewhere, on some kind of a whim, mentioning this special charter, a real bargain when she thought about it, sheer desperation to escape from all the suffering led Jayne to agree.

  When her friend suggested Rome, Ravenna, Venice, Istanbul, and then on to Jerusalem, Jayne had reluctantly agreed that it might be just the thing. Now of course she was glad she came, but at the time, even the trip of a lifetime brought doubts. She felt so horrible. There was no way she could ever enjoy it, and inevitably she would sort of spoil it for Melanie.

  Off in the background somewhere, Maurice droned on and on and on.

  The next saint, all black, blues and gold, with lovely fresh skin tones, not stiff at all but very expressive, was off in a corner in a side chapel. He had a strangely modern face, one not without warmth and intelligence. The work was very good, and had recently been cleaned. The fellow reminded her of her Uncle Leo. The resemblance was uncanny. He had the same long head, the same long nose. There was something familiar about the shape of the eyes and the humorous, sensual mouth. Even the beard, the hair, the mustache were the same. She grinned for what seemed like the first time in days. Maybe even weeks.

  Jayne agreed with the experts that Byzantine mosaics were the highest artistic achievements of the culture, and, were as equally worthy of being considered a fine style as the Baroque, or French Expressionism for example.

  She might not be able to put it into the proper words, but she probably knew as much about this stuff as their guide, who had no doubt read up on it and committed his spiel into off-by-heart memory. He was there for the money and the tips, living a life she had once contemplated.

  “Oh.” She looked around in confusion.

  They were right there a minute ago, and now the silence was unnerving to say the least.

  ***

  Jayne stood at the end of the jetty and cussed in a rather unladylike manner as the bright yellow blob that was the back end of the boat slowly receded off into the warm, hazy distance. There were clouds on the eastern horizon and the moon was rising. Looking at her watch, insects sounded all around her and the heat of the day was beginning to abate. It was a hot country, but the nights could get chill this time of year. She already knew that from their arrival yesterday.

  It was the elevation.

  “Drat.” This was sheer disaster.

  Jayne looked around at the uninhabited island, which to all intents and purposes sat smack dab in the middle of Lake Kanritsar, high up on the barren plateau of eastern Anatolia, thinking that the frickin’ monks had loved their privacy perhaps just a little too much.

  She silently cussed Melanie, who in her own inevitably flaky way, had come down with a bad case of boyfriend-itis, a mysterious malady that would hit her whenever a new and particularly troublesome drummer or hip-hop producer came onto the scene. With Mel that was a crowded one to begin with. Melanie begged off at the last minute, more likely money problems than anything else. The conversation had been an unusually short one for them, what with Mel calling up at the last minute and all…Mel had been planning to pay with cash, but like a fool Jayne put it all on her credit card weeks in advance. Mel wasn’t going to lose a cancellation fee if she didn’t go. Jayne really wasn’t known for swearing, but at the time she sure felt the temptation.

  She shook her head and stomped her feet, kicking at the loose yellow dust of the path. She’d wondered once or twice if it was a pure set-up. Mel wasn’t vindictive, and probably not that clever. Still the thought persisted.

  “Damn you, Melanie Pringle.”

  The sun was setting in the west. She prayed that someone would soon miss her, either on the dock or when they got on the bus. Surely they would at the hotel. The bus was leaving at ten tomorrow morning after a free-for-all buffet breakfast at eighty-thirty or nine. All she could think of was to go back to the ruined old church with its crumbling roof, a corner missing and heaps of rubble on three sides and wait it out. That or the dock was the first place they would look. Maybe that Bartholomew twerp would say something. Surely he would miss her presence. He would remark upon it.

  When the sun fell into another dark band of purple cumulus to the west, she was glad of the decision. It was getting darker out by the minute. She cursed not bringing a sweater or a jacket, but of course they’d left hours before, in the heat of day.

  She didn’t even have any matches to start a fire with.

>   ***

  She sat inside on a flat slab of rubble, with her back to the wall and her knees drawn up in the deepening gloom.

  She had certainly gotten her wish. She had all night to study the blasted mosaics. The thought rattled Jayne, for the dark held many terrors, not the least of which might be rats. The idea disgusted her, and she clutched her purse as if it might be a weapon, which it most assuredly was not. She’d smash her reading glasses and that wouldn’t do. Her little read before bed-time was the only thing keeping her sane lately. Maybe they would have them for sale somewhere in town, but that wasn’t the point.

  The purse was no weapon. Not a very good one, anyway, but she hadn’t seen anything looking like a viable stick or club or anything like that in the ruined old building. It was all stone around here. Using indigenous materials, especially away from the capital in smaller centers, was a feature of many Byzantine buildings. A bitter irony, in that she knew so much about the place but had no idea how long it would take to be missed. She couldn’t even really picture where she was. On the other side of the lake was a dock and a village, and a highway went through there. It was in the suburbs. She knew that much.

  She didn’t even know if there was a daily tour of the place. Maybe no one would come back for days or weeks. That was a sobering thought, that and the chill creeping in with the night. The faint images on the walls mocked her. She was hoping for salvation, of the most pedestrian kind…sooner or later, someone had to come.

  Jayne began to cry, in spite of her best efforts, but coming after all that had happened in the last weeks, and months, and years, it was more than she could handle. It might even do her some good. She had known, deep down inside, for a long time even, that it was coming anyway.

  Sooner or later it had to.

  Fresh spasms of grief and hopelessness wracked her form, as her sobs rang up and around the hard stone walls, mocking her self-pity with a kind of harsh insolence.

  Occupied With Gloom and Pain

  Occupied with such gloom and pain, including the first major pangs of thirst, she must have missed his footsteps. A man stepped out from a corner aisle just as the pale orb of the moon, hanging low and austere in the vast gap in the southeast elevation, began to redden and dim in the beginnings of an eclipse. He must have heard her crying and come looking. The light was fading strangely and it seemed as if the whole world went dead quiet. It was like the calm after the storm, when the air tingled with ozone.

  “Oh!”

  The eclipse. They were supposed to go up into the hills above the city and watch it, then go on to the all-hours disco, and she’d just remembered that.

  She stood up as he came to a full stop, turned and stared in wonder. The vague back-splash of light off the walls and floor was enough to illuminate a remarkable figure of a man with a homely but angular face. The fellow was completely wedge-shaped, with big, wide, flat shoulders bulging up into an impressive set of neck muscles. His naked torso gleamed in the bloody glow of the moon, half gone it as it was now.

  She wrung her hands and her purse and carefully stepped out of the shadows, watching her step among the rubble, moving out into the imaginary warmth of the moonlight. His jaw dropped and his eyes swept her up and down. He straightened up and took a half-step backwards, one hand lifted, knees bent and his other arm poised in frozen action.

  He looked downright cute like that, and she was glad she had her everyday glasses on as he was quite a remarkable sight in his own right.

  “Oh, thank God. I was so afraid I’d be stuck here all night—”

  He uttered some words in a language that didn’t sound like Turkish at all, for she’d caught the flavour and accents of it in a couple of days here.

  She smiled encouragingly and stepped a little closer. He stood there staring at her.

  She sighed at the inevitability of it all. Of course he wouldn’t speak English.

  He lifted a palm and beckoned her forward. Then, as Jayne let go with a quick squeal of surprise, the fellow stooped a bit, grabbed her in behind the knees and put an arm behind and under her shoulders.

  When he swept her up off of her feet, it was a total reflex to sling her right arm over his neck and hang on for dear life with her left, clutching a veritable thatch of rugged chest hairs.

  “Oh, dear me. Goodness, gracious, me.” Her pulse quickened, but he was gentle and strong enough to bear the weight.

  She might as well try and put a good face on it.

  “Oh, thank you ever so much.”

  He grunted, taking the stairs two at a time in the darkness of the passage, his breath strong but contained. The gentleman certainly was very fit.

  He smelled very manly. He could have used a bit of a shower, maybe, that and a breath mint. He wasn’t a smoker and that was good. He wasn’t drunk either. It was all very visceral all of a sudden, as she acknowledged the sick sense of fear in the depths of her abdomen.

  Jayne giggled nervously.

  “Well. I can’t complain about the service, anyway.”

  The red moon shone down through a hole in the roof, and her neck prickled with something electric. It was certainly all very exciting as she breathed through parted lips, eyes shining and locked on those intent dark eyes only a foot or so away.

  His face was locked on hers in a kind of fascination, then he turned and carried her through the blackness of the vestibule with panther-like grace, taking her down the front stairs and out of the building as the moon finally died and the soft evening breeze seemed somehow warmer now, as if an eclipse of the moon could have anything to do with local weather patterns on the Earth down below.

  Maybe it was just warmer hanging onto the guy. Jayne stared in numb disbelief at the gleam of what must be the hilt of a massive sword slung on a broad leather band over his back and shoulders. It registered on her tired mind in a kind of delirious revelation and her jaw really dropped this time.

  “Uh, sir? Please? You can put me down now.”

  He just kept trotting along with more attention to the path now, all fluid masculine grace but a bit of a jostle as she clung to his sweaty body with a nice mat of dark and curly chest hair right there in front of her eyes.

  “Holy, Kowalski.” She said it in pure disgust, the reflexive response going back in the family for generations. “Argh.”

  This just kept getting better and better all the time.

  ***

  The fellow had a horse, looming pale and ghostly in the returning moonlight, and it seemed he was camped not far from the ruins.

  His blanket was spread on the ground, and he laid her upon it and then knelt and began going through a hefty brown bag of some indeterminate fabric.

  She sat, hugging her knees, and she watched.

  There was a canteen there. She spoke, more of a rueful grunt than anything, and pointed. He beckoned at it, and she lifted it up and uncorked the thing after a brief struggle. The man must have hands of steel to ram that in there so tight. The water was cool and tasted fine, although she wondered at the source.

  She’d never seen or heard of anyone like this in her entire life. You would think the brochures would have mentioned it. Corking it, she put it down where he could get at it.

  He offered her something with a few quiet words.

  With her nostrils catching some scent, she took the slightly-tacky offering and brought it up to her face.

  It looked and smelled like dates. It had to be something like that, a familiar smell from her mother’s kitchen. These resembled nothing she’d ever seen before, being fresh and not coming in a rectangular clump, all wrapped in brittle cellophane and cheap purple corrugated paper, heavy on the glue. She could almost picture the garish label, and there was a sudden stab of homesickness.

  They tasted divine, practically melting in her mouth, and he also had some kind of soft, tangy, spongy cheese and a hunk torn from a loaf of dark, coarse bread to go with it.

  “Thank you.” She was ravenous.

  The man nodded th
oughtfully, and took a bite of his own bread and then both he and the horse seemed to listen carefully to the night, which was oddly bright now that they were out in the open.

  They sat very quietly and had their meal.

  He had a bow, a quiver full of arrows…the horse and the blanket and little else but a breechclout or loincloth, on top of leggings with fringe along the outer legs. They seemed to tie onto the same belt, but only at the front. A good deal of his hard buttocks were exposed. He wore some kind of high lace-on boots of thin suede dyed in dark blue. If he had a proper shirt, it would have to be in one of the bags.

  For the time being, they could live without it, she thought.

  If only the fellow could speak English. It really was fascinating, once you sort of got over the inconvenience. It might have taken away some of the worry about getting back to the hotel.

  Letting go of something inside, she heaved a deep sigh of relief.