'Jeremy,' said Carol, beaming, 'do you know, this is just like the room my sister and I had when we were growing up! I swear, I had some of these same pictures.'
'Oh, really?' He stood in the doorway, hoping his face didn't betray his disappointment. 'I guess all that's really needed is a crib.'
Deborah was watching him closely. He couldn't tell if she was gloating or feeling sorry for him. 'Well,' she said, 'call me if you need anything. I've got to get back downstairs now – there's something in the oven.' She held up the bottle. 'And thanks again for the wine.'
'Carol,' he said when she was gone, 'you don't really intend to stay here, do you?'
Her eyes widened. 'Where else would I stay?'
He sighed. Already things were going wrong. Out there, beneath the sun, the world was turning serenely, yet inside here a piece of it had turned away from him. 'The fact of the matter is, I thought that you'd be staying out there with me.'
'That's certainly not what I had in mind,' she said. 'And I don't think the Poroths would approve of an unmarried girl spending the night back there with you.'
'Their opinion doesn't matter.'
'Of course it does, Jeremy. We're guests in their home.'
'I'm not a guest. I'm paying rent.'
'Yes, but I'm a guest,' she said firmly, 'and I wouldn't want to offend them. And anyway, though it probably sounds silly to you, I just don't do that sort of thing.'
He'd deserved that, he realized. There was nothing dumber than trying to argue a girl into bed, and that's exactly what he'd been trying. Now she had blown him out of the water. 'It's okay,' he said. 'I understand.' Maybe he could still change her mind.
'And look,' she said, 'I'm sorry about that little outburst of mine, back in the yard. I didn't mean to take it out on you. I guess I just got nervous driving Rosie's car.'
He shrugged. 'Didn't bother me. Honest. I'm just sorry you had such a rough trip.' Glumly he eyed the room's low ceiling, the wide plank floorboards covered by a throw rug, the shallow, smoke-stained fireplace taking up most of one side. How could she actually think of staying here? It was so damned claustrophobic. Around him shapes were thumbtacked to the pale blue papered walclass="underline" faces grinned from the ramparts of a cardboard castle, a white-robed priest made solemn gestures before an altar fire, a cow danced dreamily round a startled moon. He waved his hand toward the room at large. 'Well, anyway, welcome to the Land of Nod.'
'It seems very comfortable.'
He sniffed. 'A little stuffy, though.' Frowning, he went to the other side of the room, where a tiny dormer window looked out upon the yard. Just inside the panes, hanging by a length of string from a hook above a lintel, a hollow, ruby-red witch ball of hand-blown glass revolved slowly in the sunlight. Large as an overripe apple, it was designed to keep evil spirits at bay; inside it lay a sprig of angelica, the herb beloved of the Holy Ghost. Across the room, from a trick of the light, a glowing disk the size and color of a rose appeared to float upon the wall above the bed.
From behind him came the muffled sound of a zipper. He caught his breath and looked around, half expecting to see Carol stepping lightly out of her jeans, but she was busy rummaging through the open tote bag; a hairbrush and a pair of slacks already lay upon the bed. Inside the bag he glimpsed a fat yellow book with ornamental covers but failed to recognize it. She reached inside for the volume, then seemed to think better of it and shoved it back among the clothes. God, he thought, she's even brought some kind of prayer book! With a sigh he turned back to the window. Unfastening the latch, he pushed open the two sets of panes, letting in a breeze from the yard. The leaves of the apple tree whispered with it just outside the window, and the witch ball stirred lazily on its string. Past the garden the dusty white Chevy sat dozing in the driveway. In the distance he could see his own building, the afternoon sunlight shining fiercely on the shingles of the roof, and, beyond it, the smokehouse and the old black willow that grew against the barn. She would have a pleasing view if she stayed up here tonight – a better view than he would have from down there on the lawn.
And he would be alone down there.
But she still might reconsider, the optimist in him decided. In fact, he felt confident that she would. Far from discouraging him, her behavior back in the yard made him feel curiously protective: here she was, supposedly a resourceful corn-fed country girl, yet she'd apparently managed to get herself lost two or three times on the ride out and had obviously had trouble navigating the final stretch of road. Whatever she liked to fancy herself, she was certainly no pathfinder. He realized that in the short week he'd been living here, he'd begun to feel at home.
'Come on,' he said, 'let me show you where I live.'
Their footsteps clattered through the hall and down the stairs, the floorboards echoing as they passed.
Behind them in the little room, deserted now, the ball of ruby-red glass spun like a planet in the sunshine. The image it cast on the opposite wall was aglow with rosy light, its center filled with swirling bands of red.
Gradually, hour after hour, the sun would settle earthward; the rosy light would travel ever higher up the wall. At last, trembling with the final rays of sunset, it would strike the lower corner of a Bible lithograph, then a line of badly painted foliage, a rock, a patch of moss, a bit of long white robe… until, like some intense supernal spotlight, it would shine directly on the center of the picture, on a bright configuration with the contours of a star: the altar fire.
Inevitably, for a moment, the star and rose would merge.
Afterward, the sun would settle further; the spotlight would move on. Yet for that single moment, beneath its rays, the fire would have flickered, glowed, and come to life. For an instant the flames would leap higher, burning with a vastly deeper hunger, now shifting, now spreading, devouring picture, planet, all.
Lazy clouds drifted above the tops of the surrounding trees; wisps of shadow swept the grass. Freirs sat slouched next to Carol on a rock by the banks of the stream, beneath the shade of one of the willows that grew along the side.
To his uneasiness the two of them had once more fallen silent, and now barely stirred except to brush away an occasional fly or flip a stone or twig into the water – water so clear that it was impossible to tell the depth. Along the opposite bank, where the woods began, the pine trees shifted restlessly in the afternoon heat, but the water here beside them was nearly cold enough to freeze one's fingers.
Carol leaned over, trying to see her reflection, but the current was too swift. Sunlight glimmered from the water's surface, picking out dead leaves and bits of debris being carried downstream. In the shadows one could see other things, smooth and pale and snakelike, twisting among the rocks at the bottom.
She seemed preoccupied. Freirs watched her out of the corner of his eye with a yearning he couldn't quite remember feeling since the days before his marriage. He wished she were staying more than just one night; he hadn't realized, till now, how lonely he had been. It was something of a surprise, in fact: she looked so wonderfully tight sitting here beside him in her old plaid shirt and slim-legged jeans, her skin so pale in the sunlight, her hair so red against the grass.
And she herself hadn't been immune to the feeling. By the time the two of them had left the farmhouse, she'd seemed very happy to be here with him today. Deborah had been singing in the kitchen. Outside, the air had grown cooler. Butterflies were dancing on the lawn.
'God,' she'd said, 'it feels like coming home!'
But something had unaccountably changed her mood; without warning she had suddenly become less friendly, just when he'd begun to feel close to her.