| Stay |
| by Chandrah |
| Chapter 1 |
| “Stay.”
I look down into his heavy lidded brown eyes, note the tiny smile on his lips, and pause. Stay. I don't understand my hesitation, my instant of reluctance, until his hand begins to move toward me. “C'mon,” he murmurs. That hand, large, with long fingers and long, fleshy palm reaches out and touches my arm, slips up, then down the inside to leave shivers in its wake. “Stay. It’s too late to go back to the cabin.” “I can't,” I hear myself saying. I try to draw away, only now noticing how close we’ve gotten here on the floor in front of the fireplace. So close that he can touch me the way he’s touching me. So close that I can’t pull away without seeming rude. I can’t move, but I can’t stay, because a part of me wants to stay. A large, frightful part of me. To stay and never leave. It wouldn’t take much to change my mind, only he doesn't know it; he's oblivious to that fact. He's oblivious to so many facts, and once, I felt it was a part of his charm. That laid back, kicked-back, 'whatever' charm that oozes from him like slippery bayou water. His 'southern' thing, his 'man' thing. At this moment, it's terrifying to me, because, well, because I want to stay, but it would take a response, a reaction. It would take some change in expression, or tone, or some movement other than that, that touch he's bestowed to my arm, more than his hand resting on my skin. I want his eyes to open wide; I know they can. I want his hand to take me, to feel his fingers wrap around my wrist and pull me to him. Make me stay. Make. Me. Stay. Make me. He lowers his eyes, just a flicker of the lids, a slight glance to the side, and his smile, that mere hint of a smile, sucks in on itself the smallest bit before he raises those eyes to me once again. “Then I'll see you tomorrow,” he says, and his hand pulls back. “Tomorrow,” I parrot. I plaster my own small smile on and pick myself up from the floor. He likes it here, on the floor, our work spread out around us on the carpet that’s become our island before the fire. He likes the smell of wood smoke and the feel of the heat that reminds him of home; of where he's not. No one here will touch the piles of paper. No one here will gather them up like stray autumn leaves and make order of them. When I return here tomorrow to his place, his house, his one-of-many homes, everything will be as it is and we'll pick up where we left off: me with my laptop computer that more often than not blinks itself to sleep while I scribble words on pages in a more ancient, tried but true manner, and him, him with his own pages and pencils and picks for his guitar. He strums; I write. He sings; I write. And so it's been for too many weeks. My story should have been written by now, my story about him and his band and his songs should have been recorded by now, his songs about whatever is on his mind, whatever suits his fancy; whatever. My assignment has been prolonged, a purposeful thing, a novel by design to keep me here in this house, to keep me near him. I don't have any idea what's kept him here. Not a clue. Not a hint. Not a thing, even after what seems like a hundred thousand questions I've asked and he's answered. Stay. I have stayed. I've overstayed. He follows me to the door. Gentleman, he opens it and follows me on silent feet to my rental car parked in anonymity beneath a great giant of a tree. Gentleman, he opens my car door, stands and watches with hands thrust in pockets, rocking on the balls and heels of his bare feet as I go through the nightly ritual of keys and ignition and seat belt. Preparation to the short ride across the acres of his land to the small cabin, satellite to his large house, where I've slept these past days, weeks, months. Stay. I can't look at him as he hovers over me. The word rings in my ears over the sound of the music playing in my car. His voice singing, his words speaking to me. Part of my immersion program. Stay. Make me. I want to scream, to rip off this restraint across my chest and go to him and shake him until he makes me stay. I want to shake myself to make myself lose the fear of staying, or it not that, to lose the thoughts in my mind that are inappropriate. I lift my hand and wave; watch him wave in return, watch him as he stands surrounded by light that spills from the doorway. I watch him in my rearview mirror until I turn a corner and can't see him any more. Stay. I want to keep driving until I run out of gas. I want to turn the car around and drive it through his front door. I want to stay, but I’m afraid to stay. So I go. **~~***~~****~~***~~** I wake up with a headache and the same thought that runs through my head every morning; my story is done, it's time for me to go home. Then I blink and erase that thought immediately. For now, this is my home. My eyes scan the room I’m in. It's a comfortable room, for what it's worth. Not my taste, not of my design, but homey in only the way that a cabin can be homey. I suppose calling this house a cabin takes a stretch of the imagination. This is more of a lodge. Something akin to a fabulous ski resort that one might find in Telluride where the rich and famous 'slum'. My bed is perched up here in a loft with a large skylight above it. It's made of wood, hammered together with thick, rough dowels, and resembles nothing more than something that might have found itself on top of a great oak tree. The mattress is huge and firm and delightful to sleep on, and the sheets are the softest cotton I've ever felt. My comforter is stuffed with down that sometimes escapes from its confines and tickles my nose. At night I have the stars as my roof, in the morning; the sun and the painfully blue sky greet me. The lower floor is a great-room: living room, kitchen, den, entertainment area. The kitchen is stocked twice a week with fresh, organic produce that's shipped in from my host's 'farm', and wine from my host's vineyards. The utter indulgence of it makes me close my eyes to the dawn that's turning the skylight purple. No, this is not my home; not at all. I remind myself; I bring up the vision of my empty apartment in a town far away from here. I'm neither a country person, nor a city person, but a person suburban born and raised. It's become my preference, it's suited me, at least I thought it had, until I came to this place nestled somewhere betwixt and between ocean and mountains and found the quiet so profound it gave me room to think. The mental vision of my apartment, my true home, leaves me cold at this moment. It seems dark, and lonely, and distant enough to be a dream. It seems unreal, but where I'm at seems just as unreal. This cabin is not my 'home' either. It's something else that I haven't put my finger on as of yet. I pull myself out from under the warm covers and slide my feet into slippers. It's another day here, where it's not real. I comb my fingers through my hair in some effort to flatten the wild spikes and whorls the pillows have made, and catch a glimpse of me in a mirror. I see myself surrounded by a background of wood and muted light and warm, rich colors from prints and woven wall hangings and I'm struck with a thought. What the hell am I doing here? I putter around the cabin making coffee and piling together bits and pieces of my life that have strewn themselves over various surfaces. The hour is ungodly for me to be up, and I would have normally just turned over and returned to sleep until the afternoon, but I can’t. Instead, I wander the enclosed, familiar terrain of the great room placing pencils back in a jar that holds them, tossing out a bunch of dead flowers that didn’t dry the way they were supposed to despite my following David’s instructions to hang them upside down above the sink to the letter, and sorting through a small stack of forwarded mail. The mail comes here several times a week along with the fresh produce and other staples of life that support this place. There’s nothing of any import, and I end up throwing it all out after a cursory glance or two. It’s during this exercise that I hear it, the jeep, approaching the cabin. I stand in my tracks, listening, and hear the familiar sound of engine, brakes, car door, and boots on gravel, dirt, wood. “C’mon and take a walk with me,” he says when I open the cabin door at his knock. Unshaven, rumpled shirt thrown over a T-shirt and baggy khaki pants that puddle over his boots greet me in my robe, still not fully awake. “I'm not dressed,” I tell him, stating the obvious. “Get dressed and take a walk with me. I'll wait.” We pause, the both of us, and stare at each other. It's not often that D.J. wakes up before me, and less often that he finds his way over to this dwelling. It's usually well after noon when the both of us begin to fuddle about the main house; me with my never ending stream of questions and him with his answers. We are not morning people, so we stare for a moment, taking stock, perhaps making sure that this, too, this moment, is not some fragment of each other's fertile imagination. “Coffee?” I ask him, and move back from the door. “Thank you,” he says, and steps over the threshold. “You’re up early this morning.” I walk toward the island that separates the cooking area from the rest of the spacious room. “Couldn’t sleep.” “You’ve been up all night?” Our chatter is inane and I’m aware of it because it’s so unlike our usual talk. D.J. is a good interview, and perhaps that’s why I’ve prolonged this experiment of getting inside my subjects head. There have been times throughout this process where I’ve convinced myself that this man has been an open book and enthusiastic participant in discussions of his personal and public lives. There have been equally as many times that I was sure that this man has told me nothing of any consequence whatsoever. Nothing. “Yeah, well, I got to thinkin’ and then I got to writing, and, well, you know how that is,” he offers as explanation to his unexpected appearance on my doorstep. I offer coffee, steaming in a mug, along with spoon, raw sugar, and milk from a glass bottle that I have to shake to mix the cream that’s separated. A dash of this, a drop of that, and the tink, tink, tink of the spoon in the cup is all that breaks the quiet. “Get anything good?” I ask. “Yeah, maybe.” He shrugs and smiles into his cup. “You should’ve stayed.” You should have stayed. His eyes lift, along with the corners of his mouth. “I was tired, David,” I tell him, using his proper name so he’ll believe me, because it’s a pattern we’ve adopted, this use of proper names to create impact. He is D.J. to the majority of the free world; D.J. Phillips, sometimes Deej. To a small, select group, though, he is David Julian Phillips, David, Dave. This morning, this conversation and where he seems to be teasing it, he is David. “You’re never tired, Betts,” he replies with a wrinkle of his nose and another smile. Betts. For Betsy. For Elizabeth. No one calls me Betsy, not anyone alive, and no one, absolutely no one, has ever, ever called me Betts. No one but David. “That’s a lie,” I snort. I take a sip of coffee and burn my tongue. “Get dressed. Walk with me,” he says. He turns from me without another word and takes his cup outside, stands in the doorway, and waits. **~~***~~****~~***~~** The tall grass that we walk through is wet. I look down a lot. D.J. looks ahead for the both of us. This is his land and he knows it. Me, I don’t even recognize the variety of trees other than the tall pines we’re heading for. As I look down I see my feet, clad in ridiculous but necessary hiking boots that, even after a brief two month’s use, are worn and filthy. These walks are not unusual, only the timing seems odd. Never at dawn, unless it was a trek to end an evening that ran into morning too, too quickly. “Y’all right there, girl?” he asks, because my staring at my feet is slowing me down. That and my much shorter legs. “Yup.” Yup. I never said yup until I did this stint in no man’s land. I say ‘y’all’ now, too, and it sounds silly coming out of my mouth, but then again, I played back an interview tape and have noticed that my usually clipped Northern East Coast tone has softened, along with my skin, and, so it would seem, my brain. The only thing that’s still hard about me is my conviction and my calves. “Ah’ve told you there’s no snakes here about a million times,” he drawls. “I’m not looking for snakes, I’m watching out for rocks and things.” “Ummhmm.” He’s not convinced. I’m not that much convinced, either. Country. I don’t like it out here in the woods and valleys and mountains and fields. I was never one to even enjoy a day at the zoo, so seeing so many creatures of all manners roaming wild has left me nervous. Snakes. I don’t know why I equate these overgrown paths we walk on with snake territory. Don’t know anything about snakes; don’t want to, and I’ve been told time and time again, possibly the million D.J. refers to, that there are no, repeat no, snakes here, but I don’t trust the thick brush and high grass. “Tell you what, girl,” he says, his voice rich with laughter, “I’d be happy to introduce you to all kinds of snakes down Louisiana way. You wanna go there, and trip out in the swamps with me?” “No, I don’t want to go and ‘trip out’ anywhere,” I reply. “Now that, that’s a lie,” he says, the laugh still right there on the tip of his words. “What do you mean by that?” “I mean that I think the very thing you need is some trippin’ out. Yes ma’am, I do believe that it’s the very thing you want.” “I’ll tell you what I want, I want to be out of these godforsaken woods,” I say under my breath, but he hears me, and I suppose that I want him to hear me. “This is the least godforsaken place you’ve ever been in.” “How would you know? You don’t believe in god,” I counter. That had been a long, several evenings worth conversation. “’Course I do,” he says, “Just maybe not the one everyone else does.” He swats a fly, and reaches out to part some of the undergrowth that to me looks like overgrowth, and nods with his head for me to pass through. “After you.” “I think not.” “You can’t hold back these brambles. I’m right behind you,” he says, and urges me forward again with a cocked nod of his head I’m familiar enough with to know that it doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I step into what appears to be a wall of green, part some soft ferns with both hands, and find myself in a clearing with a vista laid out that is breathtaking. Purple mountain’s majesty. The line to that childhood hymn to god and country is suddenly clear in my mind as I look at the skyline and valley before me. Purple mountains, shrouded in early morning mist. A quiet, empty valley, verdant and cool below. I take a step, and D.J. does what I wanted him to do last night: a strong hand wraps around my wrist and pulls me back, for I’ve stepped too far and toed the edge of a somewhat steep decline into more brambles and ferns a well as sharp rocks. “Now’s when you should be watchin’ your step,” he tells me, so close I can feel his breath on my cheek, but the warning is a gentle one, said in a gentle voice that still holds laughter in it. And his hand, it eases its grip, but doesn’t let go as he moves around to stand behind me, to run calloused fingers up my arms until he’s holding my shoulders and pulling me back against him. A long moment passes in silence, where the only sounds are soft: wind through leaves and over grass, crickets, our breathing. “I’ve been tempted to build somethin’ here,” he says, his voice low as if this is some secret he’s sharing, “but when I come here, and see this like it is, all pristine and such, I think that it would be a crime to touch the place.” “It’s beautiful,” I say, and find that my own voice is nothing more than a whisper. So close, too close, I feel his closeness and start to shiver. “Yes, it is,” he agrees, and his hands squeeze my shoulders. In one quick motion his hand flings out and a finger points. “Look!” There’s a bird in flight, of what sort I don’t know, but it looks big and wild as it drifts on the wind. Up, down, floating like some kind of miracle. It’s then I feel his cheek against mine, warm, rough, alive like the rest of him that’s pressed up close behind me. “Betts, I never intended this,” he says. I feel his words as they rumble through his chest, through his shirt, “but we know where this is goin’.” “What are you talking abou…?” My words get cut off by his kiss. Lips first, then a tease of tongue to open my mouth a bit. I turn without a second thought, without any thought at all; it’s pure gut, simple reaction. There’s a hand on the back of my head, holding me steady, and another on my spine, the fingers digging into me. There’s a long moment before I realize that my own fingers are clutching the worn material of his shirt and bunching the damp wrinkles into a wad. Crushed. I’m crushed to him, reaching up on tip toes as he bends down to me so that we meet halfway, and even though I know, I know, that this is wrong and should stop and should not go on and on and on, it goes on and on and on until I can hear us over the quiet. “I don’t mean to offend you,” he murmurs, his forehead pressed to mine, “and if I have, I apologize.” My only answer to him is to press my fingers to his lips to silence him. There’s a groan, and I don’t know if it’s his or mine. “You’re gonna leave soon, I know you are. Y’all’ve probably stayed here too long as it is, and the thought of you goin’ is about killing me, girl.” I watch his chest heave with a sigh. “I’ve ‘bout exhausted every excuse to keep you here.” His thumbs keep stroking my face and I’m barely hearing his words. I think about my own excuses, all the things I’ve convinced myself of these past weeks, but the only thing that’s actually registering on my radar is the way he’s touching me. The way I want to be touched. The way I’ve talked myself out of this very scenario ten dozen times. The way, dear god, the way he’s touching me. “When are you goin’?” “I don’t know,” I manage to babble out. I don’t know. My rational brain that is swimming aimlessly somewhere within my skull sends out a distress signal. Leave? I probably should have left three weeks ago. Go? I should probably go right this very minute. D.J. nuzzles his nose against mine and the next thing I know we’re on our knees, hidden in the shrubs, locked at the mouth. Clutching, grabbing, almost desperate and desperately afraid all at the same time, I sink onto the soft ferns with him and we hold each other. “Stay,” he says, his face buried in my hair. “Stay.” And I know, without a doubt, that I’m going to stay. **~~***~~****~~***~~** **~~***~~****~~***~~** © 2006 Chandrah, Inc. © 2006 (*> Baby Bird Productions |
| Part I |