CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15
That night Kari dreamed she was painting. And yet she was also inside the work itself. She painted a mist-clad road through an indistinct scene of low, half-formed structures. Inside the painting, Kari was scarcely able to see her next step. She wished she could tell herself to make things out more clearly. But, of course, no figure in a painting could be given a voice.
Up ahead, an individual walked, holding a lantern. The light was diffused by the drifting fog coming from this location, then from somewhere else, shifting points and directions. Just the same, Kari was not worried. She was almost happy to follow in the path laid out by this half-formed figure. The curious meandering journey captivated her.
Then she woke and discovered the kitten had crawled onto her pallet and was breathing softly on her neck. Kari dressed and picked up the kitten and padded through the house. She left by way of the rear door and crossed the starlit path. There was no mist here, just dry sorrel flavors of a clear California night.
Inside the atelier, she set up another canvas and sketched swiftly. By dawn the dreamscape was taking shape. The canvas showed a woman rushing forward, hand outstretched, desperate to take hold of a man she could not quite see.
* * *
Kari slept until half past ten and probably would have gone much longer had her phone not started ringing. She rose from her pallet, took the phone from her purse, and saw on the readout that it was Indrid who had rung her. Kari decided to wait until she had fed the mewing kitten and prepared coffee before calling back. She knew why Indrid had phoned. That conversation definitely required coffee.
Fifteen minutes later, Indrid answered with, “Did you find him?”
“I just woke up. I spent most of last night painting.”
“As far as excuses go,” Indrid said, “that one is close to top of my list.”
“I don’t know if I can find him.” Kari knew she sounded petulant. There was nothing she could do about it. In the clear morning light, the entire idea sounded ludicrous.
“If you can’t, you can’t.” Indrid refused to budge. “Do what you can.”
“I can’t see why it’s so important.”
“Can’t you?”
“We only talked twice. Thirty seconds each time. Less.”
“And the amount of time is so very important, is it?”
“Well, of course it is.” The previous day’s calm was gone now. Kari opened the kitchen door, nudged the kitten back inside, then walked into the atelier and stood staring at the new canvas. The first traces of colors were almost dry. She had started by painting the mist-shrouded man and his brilliant lantern. The glow reached out of the canvas, warming her.
“Kari?”
“The painting I started last night. I think it’s very good. Actually, I’ve been working on three more or less together. They feel—I don’t know—different.”
Indrid surprised her then. Almost always the older woman used such moments to draw Kari back to the topic at hand. Not allowing her to evade the uncomfortable by changing subjects. Only today she asked, “Is this normal, your working on so many projects all at once?”
“No.” She stood directly beneath the central skylight, which meant the easels were spaced around her. Kari inspected each in turn, then shivered. “Almost never.”
“Is it possible this gentleman has something to do with your creative surge?”
She felt herself being ejected from the atelier. She stepped back into the sunlight, closed the door on all the unfinished works. “Certainly not.”
“Just asking.”
“It has nothing to do with Ian. And everything to do with Miramar.”
“I see.”
Kari stared at the small structure set farther from the house. “Speaking of which, I want you to stay in the guest cottage. But there isn’t any furniture.”
“You have a guest cottage? That’s perfect. I worried about disturbing your routine.”
“Indrid, I mean what I say. I have one pallet, two sheets, a blanket, two towels, two plates, one pot. A table and two chairs. And the things I brought for Sienna.” She felt both defiant and ashamed. “I want to take my time with everything else.”
“I understand.”
Kari pressed on. “Find things that suit me and this home. Besides, I like the empty space. It breathes with me. I know that probably sounds a little nuts.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t even think such a thing. It sounds divine. May I bring something?”
“If you’re staying here, you have to.”
“Not for me, silly. For you. Can I bring a gift? So you have something of me in your new home.”
“I would like that more than anything.”
“Then it’s settled,” Indrid said. “Now go see if you can locate your young man.”
“He’s not my anything.”
“Kari.”
“All right. All right. I’m going.”
* * *
Kari parked just up the main street’s gentle slope from Castaways. The instant the car stopped rolling, she cut the motor and opened her door and started walking. She was giving herself no time to argue her way out of this next step. She had no idea what to say. Asking some stranger for a way to contact a man she didn’t know, after having run away from their first real conversation? Absurd.
Yet as soon as she entered, Kari was glad she had come.
Connor Larkin was seated at the piano, with Ian on a barstool facing him. Ian had his guitar propped on one thigh and a notepad stationed on the baby grand’s closed top. He and Connor were both making notes and talking softly. Three heavyset women occupied more stools between the piano and the big bay window. The woman closest to Connor nodded in time to something Ian said and made her own notes.
Two more men occupied a pair of front tables, pages and phones and computers spread out before them. The woman Kari had last seen managing the restaurant sat at the table closest to the piano. She bottle-fed one infant, while another was held by the bartender. Four other people moved slowly about the restaurant, setting up for the night ahead.
A young Latino spotted Kari and said, “Sorry. We don’t open until six.”
Which was when Ian looked over.
He settled the guitar in its stand, jumped off the stage, and rushed across the restaurant. He moved so fast, he collided with the bar. Just bounced off it, ricocheted with a chair, and forged on. “You came.”
All the words she struggled to half form, all the excuses and reasons for being here, just dissolved. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re apologizing?”
“Well, of course.”
The man looked impossibly handsome when he laughed. “I’ve spent hours racking my brain, trying to figure out what I did wrong.”
“Nothing.” The words gushed out, almost without thought. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just . . . When you started talking about next week, it scared me.”
He showed confusion. “Next week?”
“Yes.”
“You mean the festival?”
She nodded. “They want me to go.”
The older man at the front table called back, “Ian, we’re waiting here.”
Ian showed no sign he had even heard. “They want you to go to Miami?”
“For the art fair.” She breathed around the enormity of it all. “I just found out. When you saw me in the car . . . It was my agent. That’s why I was late. Well, that and I was sketching a new concept. I needed to get the idea down on paper while the emotions were still fresh. And then my agent called. And said the art fair wants to do a retrospective.”
Ian shocked her then. A simple moment in time, but somehow her view of this man changed entirely when he asked, “Did you bring it with you?”
Kari needed a moment to realize he meant her sketchbook. “I carry it with me everywhere.”
“Can I see?”
She drew the sketchbook from her purse, astonished at how easy it felt. And right. Showing this almost stranger what she kept hidden from everyone. Kari turned to the sketches she’d done before Graham’s call. “Here. These.”
He turned the pages. So very slowly.
The old man called Ian’s name a second time. Connor spoke too softly for Kari to understand the words. The three women laughed.
Ian turned the next page, revealing a blank sheet, and sighed. Closed the cover. Didn’t hand the sketchbook back. Did not look up. Just stood there.
She had to tug the sketchbook to get him to release it.
“Kari, these are amazing.”
It was beyond easy to confess, “I’m terrified of going.”
He breathed once. Like he was awakening. Only then did he look up. “You don’t want to go to Miami?”
“I’ve never been anywhere. I don’t . . . I revealed myself as Kariel only last week. It was part of my leaving LA and starting here. Being honest.”
She felt like the words had jagged edges. Just the same, she was glad she had spoken.
Especially when he nodded once and softly declared, “You need to protect your gift.”
She opened her mouth, but no words emerged.
“If you decide to go, I’ll do all I can to help.” This time, his smile was weighted down by the sorrow in his gaze. “It’s a lesson I need to learn myself. If there’s still time.”
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
“Of course.”
“I have a friend coming up. Her name is Indrid Anand. She wants to meet you.” Kari realized how that probably sounded. “Not because of who you are. She’s my oldest and dearest friend.”
“She wants to help protect your gift. Which means meeting me.”
Having Ian understand her and connect with her secret needs at such a level that it made him sad left Kari so intensely conflicted that she didn’t know whether to embrace him or flee. “Yes. Only we can’t meet at my new home. I don’t have any furniture. Yet. It’s just . . . I want to take my time.”
Ian seemed to find nothing amiss with her living in an empty home. His only response was, “We can eat at my place.”
“All right.”
“Or we can go out.” He smiled. “I know a great restaurant.”
“No. Your place is better.”
“It’s very small, Kari. Kind of cramped, even when it’s just me.”
“Better than sitting on my kitchen floor.”
“A little. Maybe.” He walked back to the stage, retrieved his pad and pen. Spoke a few words, then returned.
“This is my address and number.” He wrote, tore out the page, handed it over. “Thank you for coming today. So much.”
“I’m glad I did. Really.”
He started toward the stage. Then turned back long enough to say, “Kari, I wish I had met you years ago.”
Kari stood there a long moment, captured by the torrent of emotions. Finally, she stepped to the bar and pulled out her sketchbook. Swiftly she drew a new image. One of a man seated on a stool, playing a classical guitar. A storm of smoke and burning cinders surrounded him, whirling with hurricane force.
A heart’s flame flickered in feeble defiance to the tempest.