So she appeared in his. He heard the noise out back behind the house, and was sure one of the cats had gotten out or a rabbit in. He opened the screen door and strained to see into the shadows. He listened more carefully. The crickets who’d fallen silent when he stepped onto the porch began singing again.
He did a quick mental inventory of cats. The old tom was asleep in the living room; the tiger stripe in the kitchen, eating. Which meant it was the little black female.
“Seena!” he called. He’d named her for an ex-girlfriend. Like the woman, the cat demanded great affection and endless indulgence, but over time the cat had proven more endearing.
And more responsive. He called her again. It was unusual for her not to answer.
Something moved inside the garden gates. He stepped into the yard, surprised as always by the softness of the summer night. He rarely came out to the garden after sunset. He’d water at dawn before work, and do the occasional weeding and trimming on weekends.
The garden hadn’t been his idea at all but a legacy from another girlfriend, Cassie, who couldn’t stand the sight of his barren yard and had decided to do something about it. It made him uncomfortable, actually, that Cassie had worked so hard on his land. Still, it had made her happy at the time and he’d ignored the premonitions of obligation as long as he could. Eventually, after she put in the star jasmine and the gardenia, but before she could plant the wisteria that was meant to wind round the trellis, he broke it off. She was giving him gifts he could never repay, and it had to stop before he fell too deeply into her debt. So he told her it was over and he sent her from his house and her garden. He still missed her sometimes. Cassie was a sweet one. But it was cleaner this way. He had no regrets. And now he had a garden that bore the imprint of one who loved the earth and knew how to work it, one who knew how to coax life from the desert’s parched ground.
He heard the sound again. It was an animal but not Seena, he decided. Whatever it was, was wearing some sort of bell. He called the cat again and was answered by a woman’s laughter, low and throaty and mocking.
She came toward him and he honestly couldn’t tell if she was walking or dancing or floating above the ground. She moved slowly, her body swaying lightly as though the evening wind moved through her. She had long, glossy black hair that shone in the moonlight and a body that was too full to be fashionable — high, full breasts, a long waist with a round stomach, and stocky, muscled legs. She wore a white gauzy skirt tied just above her pubic bone, and he realized that what he’d thought were bells were tiny golden disks sewn to the skirt. Brighter disks hung from her ears and from the bangles on her wrists. She was barefoot, bare-chested, bare-armed, and she faced him without shame or surprise.
“Who are you?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he tried his first language, Spanish. “Quién es?”
“I came to enjoy your garden,” she replied. Her English was accented, an accent he didn’t recognize.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
She smiled. “I’ve told you what you need to know.” She gestured to the garden. “Did you plant it?”
“No,” he admitted. “Except for the birds of paradise.”
She regarded the delicate plants with scorn. “They’re not doing well.
You bruised them when you planted them, and then you gave them too much water. The poor things are waterlogged.”
He didn’t doubt his senses. He was a scientist, trained to make accurate observations. He rubbed his forehead, knowing full well that this was real and yet unable to make sense of it.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
“How long has it been since you’ve lain with a woman?” she countered. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it. Nearly half a year. And you wake up hard and frustrated and you tell yourself it’s better that way. Easier.”
“I think you’d better leave,” he said quietly. He remembered that he hadn’t heard any kind of vehicle approach. “If you don’t have a ride, I’ll call you a cab.” He stared at her dark nipples. “I’ll even lend you a shirt.”
“Your generosity is overwhelming, Enrico.”
His name wasn’t anywhere on the outside of the house or the mailbox.
She reached a hand toward him and the scent of the datura became stronger. “I want to show you something,” she said.
She took his wrist in strong, cool fingers and despite the heat of the summer night, the coolness went through his body like snowmelt poured through his veins.
He pulled away from her, chilled, unsure of what it was he’d just touched. A gust of wind bent the branches of the jasmine, tumbling tiny white stars toward the ground.
She stepped deeper into the shadows, and the golden spangles clicked together softly. “Here,” she said, pointing to the garden path where it was arched over with cassia branches. “Lie down.”
He was getting hard and he had a horrible feeling that she knew it. “You are one strange lady,” he said.
“Not a lady,” she told him. “Never that. Lie down, Enrico, and let the earth give you her gifts.”
He wasn’t used to taking orders from women, but he was too curious to refuse this one. He knelt then laid himself down, descending into a layer of air woven through with the scents of the garden. He hadn’t known the rich tapestry of smells. Rosemary overlaid with cassia, the musk of sage intertwined with the nectar of honeysuckle.
He looked up at her and swore for a second that behind her back two large dusky wings were rubbing together. No, it was a trick of the shadows.
He held out a hand to her. “Come down here with me.”
“You like to invite women in,” she said. “And then to make them leave again. It’s a rhythm with you, no?”
He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. She’d spoken with Seena’s exact inflections.
“You won’t have to ask me to leave,” she promised. “I never stay.”
Overhead, a screech owl winged through the night, and he remembered something his grandmother had told him. His abuelita, who’d grown up in a tiny mountain village in Mexico, was as superstitious as they came. “The owl brings death, Enrico,” she’d say. “When you see the owl, you must pray to la Virgen de Guadalupe. Then only she can help you.”
The woman was standing by his side now. She moved one hip and her skirts brushed the ground, then his chest. The tiny golden spangles were like thin disks of ice against his bare skin. It was impossible, he told himself. The temperature was in the nineties. Nothing could stay so cold in the summer night.
“You’re chilled,” she observed.
He took it as his way out. “I must be coming down with something,” he said, and got to his feet. “I’d better go in.”
The laughter again. “What about your little cat?” she asked. “Don’t you want to find her?”
Somewhere to the north lightning flickered in the skies, and the scent of creosote began to fill the air. The skies were unusually dark, the desert stars hidden behind a mass of cloud cover. There would be a storm, he knew, quick and hard and loud. The female cat was terrified by thunder. Astrid, another ex, was a therapist who had told him in no uncertain terms that the young cat suffered from an anxiety disorder related to noise.
“The cat will be fine,” he told the woman.
“That she will,” the woman agreed.
He started toward the house, aware that he was leaving a cat to a storm and a half-naked woman in his yard, aware that it was high-summer in southern Arizona and he was colder than he’d been after being stranded for hours in a Montana ice storm. He would not try to puzzle out who she was or how she’d known the things she had, for all of it was impossible.