I turn slowly then, but there's only me in the room. Me and Fritzie, and one small Christmas miracle to remind me that everything magic didn't die when Gina walked into the lake.
"Me, too," I tell Fritzie.
I get up from my chair and cross the room to where he's sitting up, looking at me with those sad eyes of his. I put my arms around his neck. I bury my face in his rough fur, and we stay there like that for a long time, listening to Gina sing.
Where Desert Spirits Crowd The Night
If your mind is attuned to beauty,you find beauty in everything.
All I ask of you
Is that you remember me
As loving you
Each of us owes God a death
1
Sophie didn't attend the funeral. She hadn't met Max yet, couldn't have known that his lover had died. On the afternoon that Max stood at Peter's gravesite under a far too cheerful sky, she was in her studio in Old Market, preparing for a new show. It wasn't until the opening, two months later, that they met.
But even then, Coyote was watching.
2
There is a door in my dreams that opens into a desert... where the light is like a wash of whiskey over my vision; where the color of the earth ranges through a spectrum of dusty browns cut with pale ochre tones and siennas;
where distant peaks jut blue-grey from the tide of hills washing up against the ragged line the mountains make at the horizon, peaks that are shadowed now as the sun sets in a geranium and violet glory behind me;
where the tall saguaro rise like sleepy green giants from the desert floor, waving lazy arms to no one in particular, with barrel cacti crouching in their shadows like smaller, shorter cousins;
where clusters of prickly pear and cholla offer a thorny embrace, and the landscape is clouded with mesquite and palo verde and smoke trees, their leaves so tiny they don't seem as much to grow from the gnarly branches as to have been dusted upon them;
where a hawk hangs in the sky high above me, a dark silhouette against the ever deepening blue, gliding effortlessly on outspread wings;
where a lizard darts into a tight crevice, its movement so quick, it only registers in the corner of my eye;
where an owl the size of my palm peers at me from the safety of its hole in a towering saguaro;
where a rattlesnake gives me one warning rattle, then fixes me with its hypnotic stare, poised to strike long after I have backed away;
where the sound of a medicine flute, breathy and soft as a secret, rises up from an arroyo, and for one moment I see the shadow of a hunchbacked man and his instrument cast upon the far wall of the gully, before the night takes the sight away, if not the sound;
where the sky, even at night, overwhelms me with its immensity;
where the stillness seems complete...
except for the resonance of my heartbeat that twins the distant-drum of a stag's hooves upon the dry, hard ground;
except for the incessant soughing cries of the ground-doves that feed in the brushy vegetation all around me;
except for the low sound of the flute which first brought me here.
The sweet scent of a mesquite fire in the middle of a dry wash draws me down from the higher ridges. The ground-doves break like quail with a rushing thrum of their wings as I make my way near. A figure is there by the fire, sitting motionless, head bent in shadow. I stand just beyond the circle of light, uncertain, uneasy. But finally I step forward. I sit across the fire from the figure. In the distance, I can still hear the sound of the flute. My silent companion gives neither it nor my presence any acknowledgment, but I can be patient, too.
And anyway, I've nowhere else to go.
3
Given her way in the matter, Sophie would never attend one of her own openings. She was so organized and tidy that she never really thought that she looked like the typical image of what an artist should be, and she always felt awkward trying to make nice with the gallery's clients. It wasn't that she didn't like people, or even that she wasn't prone to involved conversations. She simply felt uncomfortable around strangers, especially when she was supposed to be promoting herself and her work. But she tried.
So this evening as The Green Man Gallery filled with the guests that Albina had invited to the opening, Sophie concentrated on fulfilling what she saw as her responsibility in making the evening a success. Instead of clustering in a corner with her scruffy friends, who were their best not to be too rowdy and only just succeeding, she made an effort to mingle, to be sociable, the approachable artist. Whenever she felt herself gravitating to where Jilly and Wendy and the others were standing, she'd focus on someone she didn't know, walk over and strike up a conversation.
An hour or so into the opening, she picked a man in his late twenties who had just stopped in front of Hearts Like Fire, Burning—a small oil painting of two golden figures holding hands in a blaze of color that she'd meant to represent the fire of their consummated love.
He was tall and slender, a pale, dark-haired Pre-Raphaelite presence dressed in somber clothes: black jeans, black T-shirt, black sportsjacket, even black Nike sneakers. What attracted her to him was how he moved like a shadow through the gallery crowd and seemed completely at odds with both them and the bright, sensual colors of the paintings that made up the show. And yet he seemed more in tune with the paintings than anyone else— perhaps, she thought wryly as she noticed the intensity of his interest in the work, herself included.
Hearts Like Fire, Burning, in particular, appeared to mesmerize him. He stood longest in front of it, transfixed, his features a curious mixture of deep sadness and joy. When she approached him, he looked slowly away from the painting and smiled at her. The expression turned bittersweet by the time it reached his eyes.
"So what do you think of this piece?" he asked.
Sophie blinked in surprise. "I should probably be asking you that question."
"How so?"
"I'm the artist."
He inclined his head slightly in greeting and put out his hand. "Max Hannon," he said, introducing himself.
"I'm Sophie Etoile," she said as she took his hand. Then she laughed. "I guess that was obvious."
He laughed with her, but his laugh, like his smile, held a deep sadness by the time it reached his eyes.
"I find it very peaceful," he said, turning back to the painting.
"Now that's a description I've never heard of my work."
"Oh?" He regarded her once more. "How's it usually described?"
"Those that like it call it lively, colorful, vibrant. Those that don't call it garish, overblown..." Sophie shrugged and let the words trail off.
"And how would you describe it?"
"With this piece, I agree with you. For all its flood of bright color, I find it very peaceful."
"It reminds me of my lover, Peter," Max said. "We were in Arizona a few months ago, staying with friends who have a place in the desert. We'd sit and hold hands at this table they had set up behind their house and simply let the light and the sky fill us. It felt just like this painting— full of gold and flames and the fire in our hearts, all mixed up together. When I look at this, it brings it all back."
"That's very sweet."
Max turned back to the painting. "He died a week or so after we got back."