|10|
With the first job up on the lift and his hands under the car, Casnar was away to work with a little more energy than usual. His reason the woman in the jean shorts biding her mind with sketchings of her latest dream on receipt paper with a number two pencil. She was licking her lip to keep the sweat from gathering and dripping onto the paper curling against her fingers….Accustomed to the discomfort of a hot and arid sun over the town there in Cherry Lake.
He was working hard not to watch, her hooded pullover removed and her tank sticking to her shoulders while a slope of breast, or two, could be seen with the angle she aimed him….His shop experienced an uptick in work orders, seemingly the woman intent on her artwork was earning him some profits—those with the nagging auto problems they'd put off now found reason to get to the shop sooner rather than never….And while he fixed nozzles; pulled out brake pads; tuned an engine between oil changes, he thought about the house down the street and those weird drawings and etches; the moonshine on the carpet; Moonshiner in her fridge; clanging pipes and the worried paint on the peeling boards out front and in back. He thought about her shower wall and ceiling dilemma; fixing her kitchen up to make it more useful; decorating rooms with something other than nothing. He daydreamed a little as he went from his stations, fantasizing about legs, her eyes, her stomach.
He was a claimed drell, but he had been the one to make the claim on her and with her chemical….
When lunchtime hit around 11:30 she was with him in the shop looking through a takeout menu from a café a short ten-minute walk from their location. She offered to go pick up the order for them both and Casnar was a little guarded about letting her off—now he'd witnessed one of her episodes and learned about the woman's volatile condition…
"I'll get my sign up. We can walk together."
"You know I can walk the ten minutes without something going wrong, Casnar." She watched him close the bay door and put the sign up for "Closed" on the handle. "Before you and I hooked up last night I was shopping for myself, taking care of what needed to be done. It's not something that usually happens when I'm outside the house. So far."
"I know," he washed his hands, scrubbing with pumice, "…Sometimes when I think things are going right, bad things go wrong. I'd feel more comfortable walking with you, if you don't mind. And I like your company…A lot."
"You like something else." She blew into his earhole over his shoulder, which he shirked up to block her. "You're a big cheesecake slice…'I like your company' he says…After stalking me all those years…."
"It's not about that," he complained in defense, turning to her, "…But I do like your legs, and the way you move, the way you smell when you're not throwing up," he shielded himself from her playful slap, "….You're where I want to be."
She started to walk ahead of him—Casnar left his hat behind to feel the sun on his crests, and if she wanted to pull on his spines for whatever reason, he welcoming it.
As the walk lengthened with minutes and a mile, more and more cars were seen on the road they ambled together….Halfway towards the center of town Braith slowed and turned, an enlightened look on her face.
"Casnar, how long would you stay here with me if I hadn't—we didn't…..do last night."
"As long as I could go."
"Make love with me…Instead of lunch there's a place down that path leading into the ravine over there," she pointed off the road between two hills. They were in the spring of Colorado.
"I would rather get back with something to eat, and if it's that bad, take you into the house and do it there."
"Come on—you're dirty anyway." She grabbed his hand and ran backward with him pulling along and down into the ravine he followed.
"Wait, wait, I don't know about this…" The sound of water played from a spring under the cleft of the leftmost ridge and Casnar saw a scoop in a niche carved out by the natural lay of rock and dirt red as clay, only drier. "I've lived here for so many years…Not once did I think to explore this ravine." He looked at the dirt and picked it up in his hands.
Braith made bootprints leading towards the wettened pebbles glossy under the spring.
"Come into the shade." She started taking off her tank, eyes teasing him as she turned to show him her back. "Come over here, Casnar…"
The red dirt around her mixed with the water streaming out into the ravine fringed with dry grasses turning their blades golden after the brief burst of spring marking the start of the short season. It was a sacred life of freshness there in Cherry Lake, as elsewhere beneath the Rockies of Colorado…But still memorable to look at as the wind made the grasses bend and ripple like waves.
Casnar was transfixed by it….
"Braith, why…Did you bring me here…" He turned to face her coming down to stand behind him.
"Somehow I just had this idea you needed to see this place…More than food."
"On Rakhana before the desert Mier grew round my home, it was a vast plains like this with grass and crop….The Horn—the mountains behind my family's home was red and white," he bared his palm to her, showing her the red stain on his fingers and creased in his skin. He pulled her shoulder to him, leaving his handprint and she came as he lowered his mouth over hers. "I slept with someone who told me about the Mier before it faded….There was water I was listening to, playing for my ears….It was almost exactly like this heavenly noise," and she breathed out with the push of wind over the ravine and into the grasses…He walked her backwards under the sheltering ridge and lowered her down.
It was round two o'clock when they returned to the shop, covered in smears of red mud and their smiles devious as they slipped inside the bay door he raised high enough for them to have to bend under.
"You think I could go with you one day and see your family on Rakhana?"
"We could try," he said, "….But it would involve stealing a ship." Washing off his smooth crests of gold with sparks of light from the spray of water off a window lining the top of his stall, "…I don't have a ship, and I'm not sure how to find one here on Earth that's not protected by Alliance divisions among this country."
"I could book a flight through the Alliance. They would probably just give it to me."
He stared at her with beads of water falling over his eyeridges, "…You think you have that kind of pull?"
"No doubt, and they would probably ask me to come back and serve as a captain or something spicy," she smiled at his disbelief, it being written across his face, "…I'm sure of it!"
Running his tongue over his teeth, he smiled, shaking his head and bursting with laughter, "…Yes….Yes, of course, you are…Come here," he broke through the spray to pull her into the standalone with him and rubbed the mud off her skin, indulging in the hot pour of water over their mouths as they leaned in a push of war back and forth from one wall to the other.
Casnar closed the shop down for the rest of the day—ignoring the knocks and rings on the shopfront doorbell as he cleaned her and loved her with him washing her dirt off in the shower.
