“Sell lots of art,” said Eric.
“Yeah, I will.” Leon chuckled, and hung up.
The buttes now glowed orange and yellow outside his window. Eric got out of bed, showered and shaved, had toast and a banana for breakfast.
He brewed a pot of strong, Colombian coffee, and spent two hours making notes and doodles on what he’d seen on the aircraft called Pregnant Sparrow. When he was finished he set fire to the pages and burned them to ash in the sink.
It was after ten when he called Nataly’s shop. A girl answered, and put him on hold. His stomach was crawling with certainty that the dinner he was to have with an exotic woman was about to be cancelled.
The phone clicked. “Hello?”
“Eric Price. Leon said I should call you this morning.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you called early. Are you terribly busy today?”
Eric’s heart fluttered. “Just the usual; nothing special.”
“Could you take some time off? I thought we might do some hiking and climbing on the rocks near my house. I don’t get a chance to do it very often. It’s nothing technical. Hiking boots or good running shoes will do, and the views are wonderful.”
It was not the ethereal tone of voice he’d heard before, but excited and animated.
“Sounds interesting. Is this a group outing?”
“Oh, no, it’ll just be the two of us. If we leave in an hour or so, we can have lunch on the summit.”
“We’re climbing a mountain?”
“Cathedral Rocks. It’s a thirty-minute climb.”
“That’s where the angels are.”
Nataly laughed. “You’ve been reading. Maybe we’ll get lucky and see one, but first you have to say yes.”
“Yes.”
She laughed again, and it was a beautiful sound. “Meet me at my shop within the hour. I’ll get started on lunch.”
“Okay.”
“Bye,” she said, and was gone, like an excited child. Eric caught himself smiling as he hung up the phone. How many different people are you? he wondered.
On a day for lounging at home, he had dressed in jeans and pumas. He closed up the house and made the twelve-minute drive to the shop. Two cars and a battered, white truck were in the parking lot, and Nataly came out the door as Eric pulled up in front of it. She carried a daypack with one hand, was dressed in jeans and a red flannel shirt. Her dark hair was tied tightly in a tail that nearly reached her waist. She waved, then pointed at the truck, walked over to it and deposited the pack behind the cab.
By the time Eric reached the truck, Nataly was inside, and pushed the passenger door open for him.
“This is yours?” He climbed in, and pulled at the seat belt.
Nataly gunned the big engine, and the tires spit gravel as she backed up. “Not a showpiece, but it can take me anywhere in the backcountry.”
They drove up to the Y, and turned east. A stream of traffic was coming into town, but little was leaving. Nataly pushed the truck well over the speed limit on the narrow, winding road, pointing out shops, galleries, the turnoff to Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Red Rock Chapel. They turned on Back O’ Beyond road, wound their way down into a sort of canyon and passed the turnoff to Nataly’s estate. Signs warned of flash flood dangers at low spots in the winding road. Coming around a sharp corner, Nataly suddenly jerked the wheel left, and pulled into a small parking area with a Redrock Pass sign. Two cars were parked there, with Arizona plates.
Beyond the tops of trees, red rock spires loomed above them. Nataly pulled her pack out of the truck, and swung it up onto her back in a single motion.
“I could carry that,” said Eric.
Nataly smiled sweetly. “Thanks, but it’s light, and the exercise is good for me.”
They descended to a dry wash, and then up a trail winding past cactus and gnarled pinyon to a series of broad shelves. Eric was already puffing when Nataly stopped to point at a blackened spot on the rock. “People come up here to drum and play instruments at full moon. It’s a good time to meet creative people, and hear their stories.”
“I’ll bet,” said Eric, and looked up at rocky walls towering above him. “It looks straight up.”
Again that smile. “It’s just a walk up, but we do start out with one interesting section.”
A faint, scuff trail crossed hard rock and split into two trails heading left and right. Nataly veered right, then left up a faint, steep trail of earth and scree to a shelf along a wall, and a thirty-foot drop on one side. A crack ran up a jumble of rock at the end of the shelf. Nataly shoved a foot into it, and climbed without hesitation about twenty feet before looking back at him. Eric took the hint, and climbed after her. The rock was rough, with handholds everywhere. In a minute they were standing on another wide shelf, and above them was a series of shelves extending to the bases of two, monstrous spires. In another twenty minutes they had ascended the shelves, and were standing on a narrow saddle between the two spires.
Nataly took a deep breath, and audibly sighed. Eric fought for breath. “Too much time behind a desk,” he wheezed, and looked out at the expanse of green mixed with rusty red below them.
“Quite a view,” he finally added.
“This is my favorite place,” she said softly, “since when I was a little girl.”
“Steep climb for a kid.”
Nataly looked at him, and for one instant seemed sad. “I used to come up here with my dad, but he’s gone, now.”
“Oh,” said Eric. “I’m sorry.”
“We were close,” said Nataly. She shrugged off her pack, and looked at him with huge eyes. “Were you close to your father?”
Eric leaned her pack against the base of a rock massif. They sat down beside it, with a spectacular view to the south. Nataly rummaged in the pack, pulled out a thermos, and food wrapped in aluminum foil.
“When I got older, I guess we were. Dad was in the military. He met my mom in New Mexico. I came along before he retired, didn’t see him much until I was a teenager.”
“You grew up in New Mexico?” Nataly handed him a wrapped sandwich, and took one for her.
“Yeah. Albuquerque, but we moved to Taos after dad retired. Mom insisted on it. Her family had lived there before she was born.”
Nataly raised an eyebrow. “Was she a Native American?”
“No, but people wondered. She had a subtle, Asian look and dark eyes, but her skin was ivory white. She was very beautiful, and soft spoken, but she had a power, that woman.” Like you, he thought. “My dad was a tough guy, but she had him wrapped around her little finger. Me, too.”
Eric smiled at a memory, but looked away when Nataly smiled with him. “They were killed in a car accident several years ago. Dad was driving, and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. His eyesight was getting real bad.”
“Oh,” said Nataly.
Eric forced another smile, gestured outwards with a hand. “They would have loved this view.”
“But now you’re here to enjoy it for them,” said Nataly, and suddenly a young couple stepped up onto the saddle. They had come down along another trail that snaked around a spire beyond where Nataly and Eric had stopped to eat. They nodded a greeting, took a photograph of the view, and started off down the trail towards the parking area.
“Where did they come from?” asked Eric.
“I’ll show you. It’s a short trail.”
They finished eating, and repacked the pack. Eric offered to carry it, and Nataly allowed it. She led him off the saddle to a faint trail along a shelf that curved sharply around a red rock wall and ended at a steep slope of earth and scree. Below them a gray slab of rock thrust upwards like a tongue. Eric pointed at it.
“Looks like basalt. Really stands out against all this red.”