Among The Cloud Dwellers (Entrainment Series) (22 page)

“
G
omi pulled me out of the car. Nothing new. I’d had accidents in the past, and he would always be the one rescuing me. That’s how we actually met in the first place.” Gabe glanced over at me to see if I followed.

I had kicked off my shoes and sat cross-legged on the sofa right in front of him, but without touching.

His eyes shifted, narrowed, and stared at the Aboriginal Dhamala painting I had gotten in Melbourne. “Where did you get this?”

“At the airport in Melbourne, coming home. Why?”

He shook his head. “No wonder . . .” His voice cracked, remembering pain. He turned his head away from me and time drifted. “As I was saying, I was told Gomi found me, but by the time he and the rescue team got to me, night had fallen; temperatures had dropped drastically. Several hours had gone by since the crash, and I’d lost consciousness. See, I’d driven away from the designated course and lost my way in the bush. While I was trying to figure a way to turn back and get on track something cut across in front of me. I think a dingo, but it could have been a bunyip for all I reckon. I couldn’t say. In order not to hit the animal, I chucked a yewy, swerving to the right. I smashed the bull bar into a massive boulder at about eighty clicks; that’s about fifty, fifty-five miles an hour. The car flipped and rolled about twenty metres to the bottom of a canyon where it stopped, upside down, with me trapped in it, hanging by the seatbelt.

“I don’t remember exactly how long I was out altogether. Clark won’t say and Gomi just shakes his head when I bring it up. Anyway, I woke up in the hospital a few weeks later after being in a coma. Doc said if it weren’t for the helmet, I wouldn’t have woken up at all.” He closed his eyes and relaxed his head against the blue of the sofa.

Somehow, I found myself with him, trapped behind his shut eyelids. I spiraled backwards against the blue of his eyes and fought the surging wave of claustrophobia closing in on me. His eyes slit open, and I was suddenly free, back in the room, breathing again. My own heartbeat immediately screamed for attention. I shook my head, stunned with what had just happened. No one told me magic could be this painful. I focused on his familiar features, struggling to anchor myself on solid ground. The strength of his sharp profile reassured me. The silence thickened around us as if to tangibly shield me from what he would say next.

“I don’t agree with what the doctor said,” he ventured at last. His eyes cast a doubtful look at me, searching to see if I would be open to hear more.

“Porzia, this time Gomi wasn’t the first one to get to me,” he let out in a breath. “Someone else got to the accident site before he did and helped me to not give up.” His eyes glazed over with memories still vivid, the brush strokes not yet dry on the canvas of life.

I felt my mind go empty. I knew deep down inside, without knowing
how
I knew, that we would never be the same once he told me what he was about to share.

“I didn’t know for the longest time whether I’d dreamed the entire experience or if it actually happened. Just like you at Evalena’s tonight, being out of consciousness can be disorienting and even scary. There’s nothing to hold on to, no sense of direction, not even a hint of what choices and possibilities might lie ahead. I saw it all in an instant: the halted, failed courage of eternal, unaccomplished dreams. Not to mention the fact that your past has been completely erased. Wiped away.” He smiled wryly. “Talk about feeling bloody vulnerable.”

Accidenti!

“I’d been in a coma for so long I was having a hard time grasping reality. To this day I remember images, dreams or whatever you want to call them, that I had while I was unconscious. But I can’t tell you honestly what was true and what I made up in my mind as I spun farther and farther away from reality.

“I was shown this to be a positive thing; something not to be afraid of. It was this state of pure potential that existed before the universe was created. So I was taught how to be into this . . . nothingness . . . into the silence between the worlds. I learned to watch the void between outgoing and incoming breaths and to treasure each empty moment of the experience. As time goes by, it seems I remember more and more, but it’s still bloody confusing.”

He paused. With a deep breath, he gathered courage to finish. “But in order to save my life, I had to pay a price.
Liberation
walks hand in hand with
Loss
, Porzia. You must promise me you’ll remember these words. Evalena, being an Intuitive, could tell you more. But not much more than what I’m saying to you right now; she senses the ordeal I’ve gone through. She respects the silence as part of the bargain I honor in order to be here today. I’m bound by the pact, and I am trying to keep up my end of the deal even if it means giving up my wings.”

Chills ran down my spine. I pictured his scarred shoulder blades.
Did he bloody sell his soul to the devil?
“Your wings, Gabe?”

“My wings, luv.” He leaned forward to kiss me. He meant to speak no more. With that kiss, he sealed his words. “Am I scaring you to death?”

I knew better than to press the matter. “No,” I said, resting my forehead against his lips. I searched myself for fear or uncomfortable feelings, but all I found was peace and acceptance. “Are you in pain?”

“Not the physical kind,” he said after a second. “Not anymore.”

“You have nightmares.” I thought about his scream and the shadow slithering away in the shattered stillness of the night.

He stared straight into my eyes, “Yes. But, you do too.”

“My nightmares are a joke compared to what you must have gone through.”

“No nightmare is a joke. I learned that a long time ago, luv. You need to learn to respect your fears. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to conquer them.”

“I need to worry about my own monsters and you’ll take care of yours?” I asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“Where does all this leave my love for you?”

“In my heart, Porzia. I’ve put my life on the line but my heart is free to love as I choose.”

I cupped his face with my hands and drew him closer. I smiled a soft smile and kissed him. “This love I’ve got for you . . . well, it’s sort of out of control . . .”

That night our lovemaking reflected the newly acquired reassurance that no matter what the past had been or what the future held,
we
were going to happen. Surrounded by silence, as if nature respected our decision, our movements had a liquid slowness, an unhurried, smooth rhythm, a stillness that held its breath. It lingered along with darkness right outside my windows until mounting pleasure shook every cord of our beings, rippling against the hot summer air, stirring a surreal breeze one shade darker than night itself. The profound connection of our bodies and souls in that velvet darkness reset the matrix of our destinies.

I woke up in the night stillness with my mouth parched. Gabe’s arm weighed heavily across my lower waist; for a second, I felt trapped by it in the darkness. With both hands, I lifted his arm so I could get up. I walked silently to the window to stare out at night itself. Nothing moved out there. The sky, in its impossible vastness, struggled to accommodate my heart. Right after the past life regression, Evalena had said that the immensity of my soul would be capable of embracing knowledge, and yet I struggled with the mystery surrounding Gabe’s accident.

Bulging storm clouds pushed against one another like giant, confused pachyderms. A few raindrops fell; slowly at first, as if not quite sure falling from the sky was their intent, then faster and stronger. The seams tore and the rain crashed down all at once.

Peridot’s tail coiled around my ankle as lighting struck, giving shapes to darkness around me. I knelt to pick up his soft body and held him in my arms.
At the flash, I counted mentally:
uno . . . due . . . tre . . . quattro . . . cinque . . . sei . . . sette . . . otto . . . nove
.
The thunder arrived. I divided nine by three, figuring the storm to be about three miles away.

“The gods are tilting buckets up there,
micio
,” I whispered to my kitty. It was an old expression Joséphine used when thunderstorms like this struck back home.

In the tear of another lightning bolt, Gabe appeared. Face down, sleeping undisturbed with a sheet wrapped carelessly over his lower back, and a bent arm supporting his head half-buried beneath the pillow, he faced away from me. I left the window and walked in darkness until my knees found his side of the bed. Above the rain, his peaceful breath filled my ears. Oblivious to the storm outside, the rhythm of his breathing stilled my heart. I waited for the next burst of lighting and used that instant of brilliant illumination to look at his back. I didn’t see the scars. I waited for another lightning flash and tried again, but it didn’t work. The flash didn’t last long enough for me to even focus. It came and went; thunder walked toward us in the sky above.

I wondered why I was so set on looking at his scars. I wasn’t going to get answers from looking at his back. I pondered what he had told me earlier. How much it must have meant to him to share such a painful part of his life with me. My heart bled in pain at the thought of him trapped in the metal wreck. I imagined him coming out of the coma to face what had happened, having to deal with it, to ultimately accept it. I knew that, except for the thin scars along his shoulder blades, he was in perfect physical shape. He had proven it to me. Whatever kept him from racing now must be something entirely spiritual and extremely profound.

Was I relieved he wasn’t racing anymore? How would I feel knowing he would be going off for weeks, risking his neck at every turn? I honestly found no answers to such questions. All I knew was that racing was what he loved the most and that I would not be the one keeping him from it.

No. No matter how dangerous.

I followed the edge of the bed to my side, balancing Peridot on my left arm. I took a sip of water from the glass on my nightstand and waited a second, holding my breath, listening for Gabe’s.

“Xavier?” I asked softly.

Peridot’s purring was my only answer. I scratched his chin.

Sleep eluded me and I didn’t feel like laying back down. I fumbled in the dark to find my robe, all the while holding the cat. Barefoot, I walked into the den to work a little. I sat at my desk, slipped into the robe, and readjusted the folds along my bare legs. Peridot jumped off my lap and went to sit on his favorite chair, fascinated by the rivulets of rain streaking the dark window. He completely ignored me. I flipped open my laptop and hit the on switch. Oscar wanted the article by the end of the week so I went to work. I barely had to glance at my notes, picking up where I left off; as my fingers flew over the keyboard I recalled the magic of Delilah’s recipes from memory and captured Aeson’s charming hospitality and the intriguing energies of their restaurant.

Rain poured relentlessly as night collapsed under the weight of a gray dawn. My brain begged for coffee. I made a cappuccino and sipped at it as I re-read my words, correcting here and there, stifling yawns. I stretched my aching body and went through the motions of saving the article, e-mailing and faxing a copy to Oscar. The sleep that so eluded me earlier now filled up my brain like a wet fog. It was still raining cats and dogs when I crawled back in bed.

*

For being a gourmet writer/critic, my fridge was looking pretty depressing,
I thought a couple of hours later as I poked through the rubble of yogurt and San Pellegrino mineral water for something more substantial.

Gabe fidgeted by the stove with the Moka. “I can’t believe this bloody thing is supposed to make coffee.”

“I can’t believe I have such an empty fridge.” I stared straight at a jar of salted capers on the top shelf next to some clarified butter. Empty fridge, but still gourmet.

“Never mind.” I shut the refrigerator, giving up on breakfast.

I walked up to him. “It’s an espresso machine,
amore mio
,” I explained, tickling his bare toes with mine as I filled the lower part of the Moka with fresh water, set in the filter, and added the ground coffee. He folded his arms against his chest and watched every move I made. I screwed the top part of the machine back on and fired the stove burner.

“Once the water boils, it percolates through the little funnel filter, soaking the coffee up, making magic happen . . .
et voilà
! Espresso shoots up from the tiny chimney into the top chamber.” I wasn’t done speaking yet when the little Moka, as if prompted by my words, began to huff and puff, letting us know it was happily doing its duty.

I took two small cups from the cupboard and asked Gabe how much sugar he would like.

“One.” His arms were still crossed against his chest.

I scooped one spoon for him and one for me into a small stainless steel creamer. I then added a little steaming espresso from the Moka and, using a small spoon, beat the sugar and coffee, whipping up a frothy cream in a matter of seconds. I added the remaining espresso to the creamer and stirred gently until a thick, sweet, creamy foam rose to the top. I poured the espresso into the small cups and handed one to Gabe.

“Am I supposed to drink this with my little finger standing at attention or what?” he asked, taking the cup.

“You do whatever, just let me know if you like it or not.” I raised my cup to my lips, anticipating the pleasure of the flavor that already intoxicated my sensitive nostrils.

“This is great!” He licked the frothy cream from his lips.

“Of course it is,” I said, laughing at his surprise.

“Can I have another?” He looked to see if there was any espresso left in the Moka.

“Be my guest. Now that you know how it works you can make your own while I watch.” I handed him the coffee can and sugar bowl.

“Do you want another?”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.” I hugged his waist and planted a kiss on his bare shoulder.