Falling for June: A Novel (7 page)

It was a beautiful property, with gorgeous orchards and sweeping fields cut through by a clear mountain creek. The road turned at a fence line and led him up past barns and stables to a circular drive at the end of which stood the house. He took a deep breath, climbed the steps to the porch, and rapped on the door. He must have stood there for a long time; he must have felt his courage draining away with each unanswered knock. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, he thought. Maybe she wouldn’t want to see him.

He was returning to his car when he heard voices from beyond one of the barns. Deciding he’d come too far to turn back so easily, he went to investigate. When he rounded the corner, his heart leaped in his chest. But yours would have too.

Beyond the barn was a barren circle of dirt and in the center of the circle stood a man on fire. The man was staggering about like a fire-engulfed zombie, helicoptering his flaming arms. But he was not alone. There were other people circled around him, watching. Watching, but not helping.

David rushed into the circle, stripping off his coat as he pushed through the idle spectators and wrapping it around the burning man to smother the flames. It was a heroic image, the two of them embracing there in the dirt circle with flames licking up between them. Then someone tackled David to the ground and he heard the hollow
whoooosh
of a fire extinguisher. Then someone yelled, “What’s hot?” And he heard the reply, “Nothing. Nothing. I’m fine.” And then someone was pulling him to his feet and shaking him by the shoulders, asking, “Are you crazy, comrade?”

David could smell gasoline and his own burned hair. He was standing in the center of the circle and all eyes were on him.
Slowly, very slowly, the way a Polaroid picture might develop, he began to see what was happening.

The man who had been on fire was peeling off his protective clothing and mask. Men beside him held fire extinguishers. The rest of the group stood staring at David with smug, satisfied expressions, as if they were enjoying his discomfort—looks David recognized from decades ago when he was in school; looks that could have only belonged to students.

“What were you thinking, comrade?”

The man asking him the question had a firm grip on David’s shoulders and was looking right into his eyes. He was tall and thin, with dark eyes and dark skin. He spoke with a slight accent. David thought he might have been Mexican, but he was Spanish.

“I wasn’t thinking,” David said. “I just saw someone on fire and I acted.”

The man appeared as if he were about to chastise David, but then he caught himself with his mouth half open and cocked his head, as if considering David’s answer. Then he smiled. “You know, comrade, that’s a satisfactory answer. Most satisfactory.” He released his grip on David’s shoulders and reached up to take his face in his hands, just for the briefest of moments. It felt like a sign of affection to David. Then the man turned and addressed the gawking crowd. “Students, what you have witnessed here was courage in action. Action devoid of thought. The body and the mind fused into one. You have seen displayed the very nature of what I have been teaching you.”

The students all began to nod, as if they’d known this all along. There were nearly a dozen of them, mostly men, with a few women sprinkled in, and they all looked to be half David’s age. The young man who had been on fire was just getting his last leg out of the burn suit, and he stepped over and shook David’s hand.

“That took real courage, dude. Sorry about your jacket.”

David looked down and saw his coat smoldering on the ground. “Oh, it’s fine,” he said. “That old thing.”

“Students,” the instructor said, “you’ve seen true bravery, a rare thing in this world. Now, please help me welcome our new student.”

“It was nothing, really,” David said, blushing. “Wait. Me? A student?”

The instructor stuck out his hand. “I’m Sebastian.”

“Okay. Yes. Sure. Hello. I’m David.”

Sebastian’s handshake was firm but friendly, and he didn’t immediately release David’s hand. Instead, he held on to it and said, “There can be no indifference between courageous men such as us. We will either be great enemies or good friends.”

David had no idea at the time just how true this statement would become. All he knew was that he was very, very confused.

“But for now,” Sebastian went on, “we are student and teacher. Come with me and we will get your paperwork sorted out.” Then he turned to address the students again. “Practice your high falls, but keep an eye on one another. We’ll be back
en un momento
.”

Before David could even protest, Sebastian put an arm around his shoulder and led him away toward a trailer. “It’s nice to have a mature student,” he said once they were inside and sitting down across from one another at the small desk. “The others will look up to you. Especially after your fiery entrance.”

David looked around the cramped trailer. There were diagrams and drawings of falling dummies and choreographed fights and detailed car crashes covering the walls. Sebastian opened a desk drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to David, but David declined. Sebastian shrugged and lit one himself. “We had begun to worry you wouldn’t show, like the others,” he said, blowing out smoke. “It means a lot to the
camp and the sanctuary that you’ve come. We need the press desperately to help us raise money.”

“I’m sorry,” David said, “but I seem to be a little confused. Do you happen to know the woman who runs the animal rescue? Echo Glen, I mean.” He pulled the flyer out of his pocket and unfolded it on the table. “Her,” he said, tapping his finger on the picture. “Do you know June?”

Sebastian took a drag from his cigarette. The way he had his elbow on the table and his cigarette held up near his head looked very European to David, if not a little pretentious. He barely glanced at the flyer. “But of course I know June,” he said. “How could I not?” Then his eyes hardened and his face dropped into a frown, as if he had suddenly tasted something sour. “I can see that you’re like every other newspaperman, chasing the easy headline. Too good to talk with me I suppose. You only want June because she’s the one in the Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame.” He took another drag, then leaned forward and blew smoke out his nose as he spoke. “I will be inducted someday, comrade. You can bet your lousy newspaper career on that.”

David was more confused than ever.
Newspaperman?
Surely not him.
Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame?
He hadn’t any idea that there even was such a thing.

“I’m sure you will be,” he said. “But if I could just maybe talk with her for a moment, with June. That would be great.”

“That’s quite impossible now,” he said, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray on the desk. “But she will be glad to see you finally arrived when she returns.” Then he opened the drawer again and took out a packet of papers and laid them on the desk in front of David. “Please, sign these waivers.”

“Waiver?” David asked. “You need a waiver?”

“Of course. We want you to have the real experience, don’t we, now? Everything from a student’s point of view. Besides,
you’ll need to be enrolled before you can see June. She’s much too busy to talk with a reporter who isn’t serious this time. We’ve had others not follow through, you know. Now, please sign if you would. I must be getting back before one of those monkeys breaks their skull.”

David looked down at the papers on the desk in front of him. Printed on the top in bold capital letters were the words:
ECHO GLEN HOLLYWOOD STUNT SCHOOL, LIABILITY WAIVER
. Below the title there was an italicized quote: “
Let go of your fear and live your dreams.
” He couldn’t have explained at the time why he did it. Maybe because Sebastian had mentioned several times how June would be glad to see him, even though David knew it wasn’t really him she was expecting. Or maybe it was the quote about letting go of fear, which reminded him of their rooftop conversation. Or it could even have been the adrenaline from his brush with the flaming man that was still clouding his mind. Whatever the reason, David picked up the pen, printed his full name on the form, and then signed it. That was easy, he thought, even though he was now impersonating a newspaperman.

“Very well,” Sebastian said, pulling the signed form back across the desk. “Now, about your payment for the three-week course.”

“My payment? And did you just say three weeks?”

“We wouldn’t want your reporting to be biased, now, would we? The authentic student experience. And, after all, comrade, about the fee: the whole point of the story is raising money for the animals, you see.”

Five minutes later David was two thousand dollars poorer and already second-guessing his decision to play along as Sebastian showed him the bunkhouse where he was supposed to sleep. They had converted an old barn into barracks with what looked to be foldout army surplus cots lining the walls. David suspected
the cots were as uncomfortable as they looked since it appeared that many of the students had taken to sleeping on a giant pile of hay. Their blankets and bags were strewn everywhere.

“You know what,” David suddenly said, “I completely forgot my bag. Would it be all right if I drove home to get it and returned tomorrow?”

Sebastian shrugged. “Suit yourself, comrade.” Then he patted his shirt pocket, where he had tucked away David’s check. “You paid already. We start an hour past sunrise.
Nos vemos en la mañana.
” He walked off and left David standing there, pausing only briefly to turn back at the barn door. “And, comrade,” he said, “don’t forget to bring your mouth guard and your cup.”

“Mouth guard. Cup. You mean, like a personal drinking cup?”

Sebastian laughed. Then he reached down and grabbed his crotch. “No, comrade, a cup to protect your tender
cojones
.”

7

I
LAUGHED SO HARD
at that last part that I almost fell off of the couch—mostly because Mr. Hadley had half risen from his chair to grab his crotch and deliver the
cojones
line with a Spanish accent. He really could be quite theatrical. Between his storytelling and that crazy rooster song-and-dance he’d put on earlier you’d have thought he was an old vaudeville man long before you’d have ever guessed he was an accountant.

“You didn’t go back, did you?” I asked, once I’d gotten over my giggle fit.

“You’ll have to be patient and hear the whole story.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “But at least tell me who they thought you were.”

“A reporter for the
Times
,” he said. “June was expecting one, although he never showed. She had hoped a newspaper story would help boost enrollment.”

“So, the stunt camp was like a business she ran?”

He nodded. “But its main purpose was to raise funds for her true passion: rescuing animals. Well, animals and people. She had arms big enough to hug the entire world. Say . . . you didn’t finish your apples. Aren’t you hungry?”

I looked down and saw that my apple slices were all brown. Truth is, I was hungry as hell. I’d just been so wrapped up in the
story that I’d forgotten all about them. There was a cat clock on the wall and it meowed just as its tail pointed to noon.

“Tell you what,” he said, seeing me glance at the clock, “if you don’t mind moving into the kitchen I’ll make us some lunch.”

The kitchen was on the south side of the house and it had a little dining room nook built right up against the window. The sun was coming in. It was nice. Mr. Hadley went to work, taking down pans and dishes and opening drawers and generally just making a lot of noise. He did everything pretty slowly and methodically, like old people sometimes do. I noticed that his hands shook a lot. I offered to help, but he shooed me away, so I walked around and admired the watercolors that were on the walls.

They were all over the house. Some of them looked pretty good; others looked like maybe a child had painted them. I really liked one of them a lot, though. It was a painting of a waterfall coming down a mountain glen. There was a little hill with an oak tree on it that overlooked the whole scene. The sun was hitting the hill. It really was a gorgeous painting.

“Who painted this one?” I asked.

He had the stove going and was opening a can of soup. He didn’t even look up to see which painting I was asking about. He just said, “My wife.”

It made me wonder who had painted the other ones, the ones that looked kind of like they’d been done by a kid. They weren’t bad, just sloppier. But I really liked that waterfall.

By the time he finished preparing our lunch, he had made a royal mess out of the kitchen. I got the impression he didn’t cook for two that often. I asked again if I could help him, maybe by cleaning up before we sat down to eat, but he waved dismissively at the mess, as if it were no big deal. He really was a character, this Mr. Hadley. He had made us grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

We had just settled into the nook—which was no small task given that he had to go back to the living room to fetch his cane first; you could tell he didn’t like to use it with company around, but he really did need it—when he took one look at my bowl and said, “Shoot.” Then he went through the whole process of hoisting himself up again. What he’d forgotten was the garnish. I’m not kidding. He went into the kitchen and came back and dropped a tiny sprig of fresh thyme or something into each of our bowls. “There we go,” he said. “Perfecto.” Then he lowered himself into his seat again. I didn’t dare fish the thyme out and put it on my plate like I usually do with that stuff. Instead, I had to push it around in my soup the entire time to avoid eating it.

But forgive me, please, for boring you with the travails of uneaten garnish. We have a love story to get back to.

8

W
HEN DAVID ARRIVED
the next morning, with his mouth guard and his cup, it was still very early and the camp had not yet woken up. There were several old picnic tables near the bunkhouse and he sat at one of these with his duffel at his feet and contemplated the likelihood that he was making a huge mistake. He didn’t have any paper to do a proper spreadsheet, but he could hazard a fairly educated guess.

The sounds and sights of the farm were very different from those of the city. He heard horses neighing in their paddocks across the way. Smelled a tinge of manure. A rooster crowed. The sun was up. Birds were singing. Oh, come on, David, he thought, stop being so negative and cynical all the time. After a while an old three-legged Labrador retriever trotted over from somewhere and licked his hand. It sat at his feet and he leaned over to scratch its belly. Its leg started kicking. Then David spoke to it using the puppy voice he’d honed while driving for the humane society: “You like your belly scratched, boy? Is this how June does it? Does she scratch your fuzzy wuzzy belly just like this? Maybe she’ll show up any minute and scratch your belly, and mine too! Wouldn’t we be a couple of lucky old dogs?”

Then, all at once and without warning, the dog got up and hobbled away, the birdsong ceased, and everything got quiet,
even the horses. It was as if they had sensed it was coming. The chanting, that is. Suddenly, speakers mounted in the bunkhouse eaves blared to life—“Ooga-chaka ooga ooga ooga-chaka!” It was deafeningly loud, and David nearly jumped up off the picnic table where he sat. It was the intro to “Hooked on a Feeling,” of course, and the music would have been enough. But there was more.

The exterior hayloft door in the gable end of the bunkhouse swung open and Sebastian stepped out onto a makeshift balcony and began singing along into a battery-operated bullhorn. It reminded David of a crazy clock he’d seen on a German palace during a year he’d studied abroad, except Sebastian was singing with a Spanish accent and the figure on that clock had been wearing more than just underwear. Between the underwear and the look of his wild, slept-on hair, David assumed that the hayloft must have been Sebastian’s apartment.

The music blared on, Sebastian sang along, and the students began appearing one by one from the bunkhouse, blinking into the sun and rubbing their tired eyes. The following morning David would be among them as they emerged, and he would wake up to this same crazy ritual—only the song seemed to change daily—three more times before he’d even set eyes on June. And then, when he and June did finally come face-to-face again, David would be in such an embarrassing and compromised position that he’d almost wish that they hadn’t.

It was a Thursday, his fifth day in stunt camp, and his fourth day calling in sick to work—which he didn’t feel too bad about because although he wasn’t really sick, he had told his boss that he felt like he’d been dragged behind a horse, which he actually had. No amount of stair climbing could have prepared him for stunt camp, and he ached in places he hadn’t even known could ache. So far he had jumped from a scissor lift onto air-filled mats, beginning at three feet and working his way up to thirty;
run a gauntlet of smoke and been launched from a piston-fired platform over an old burning car; fought off swashbuckling opponents with a broadsword that weighed more than he had when he was young enough to have been playing at such games; and even jumped through a breakaway window into a big pile of hay. Plus the horse-dragging incident, of course, which was too embarrassing to ever fully tell of. About the only thing he hadn’t done yet was be set on fire, unless you counted that mix-up when he had first arrived. But it wasn’t his singed brows that had him feeling embarrassed when he finally saw June. No, it was much worse than that.

Sebastian called it stunt camp’s crowning act. “Wire flying, comrades,” he said. “It’s the future of stunt acting. Flying fighting, coming everywhere to theaters near you.” But if it was flying fighting they were supposed to be learning, then David wondered why in the world he needed to wear a Peter Pan costume. Worse yet, a Peter Pan costume that was four sizes too small. David figured it must have been a kind of initiation—in fact, that was the only reason he didn’t object—because each of the students had to put on the silly tights and green vest, hat too, before being hoisted up into the rafters of the big red barn to fly from the hayloft. The goal was to swoop down and grab an egg from a basket of them balanced on a classmate’s head. The trouble was, you had to rely on the person, or persons, manning the wires.

It took David so long to squeeze into the costume—finally giving up on the belt altogether and settling on closing just one button on the vest—that everyone was waiting and watching as he reentered the barn for his turn on the wire. Even more embarrassing, it took two of them to hoist him up. When he was finally in position, he stood on the edge of the hayloft and looked down at the basket of eggs on the unlucky girl’s head. Her expression was no show of faith in David’s dexterity, and
her eyes were half closed already as if she were preparing to be yolked.

“Sing the song, comrade,” Sebastian called, holding his arms aloft. “Sing the song and fly.”

David frowned down from the hayloft, shimmying around in the harness to try to take a little pressure off his already aching legs. He was wearing his cup and his mouth guard, just in case.

“Do I really have to sing?” he mumbled.

“Come now,” Sebastian replied from below. “You are my comrade in courage.”

“But what does the song have to do with Peter Pan?” he asked with a noticeable lisp due to the mouth guard. “And what does Peter Pan have to do with eggs?”

Sebastian looked insulted. “It’s a stuntmen’s tradition, comrade. And besides, Peter Pan is my own personal addition. The costume belongs to June. She’s played him many times.”

“Well, thank you for the extra layer of humiliation,” David mumbled to himself, wrenching down the vest to cover his belly where it had come exposed. He didn’t want to do it, but the tights and harness were cutting off the circulation in his legs and he feared if he didn’t get it over with he wouldn’t be able to go at all. So he flapped his arms as he’d been instructed and sang as best he could with a mouthful of plastic.

We had an old hen that wouldn’t lay eggs, until that sly old rooster flew into our yard and caught our old hen right off her guard . . .

When he had finished the song, David plucked up his courage and sort of half-stepped, half-dove from the hayloft platform. He was surprised at how easy it was and how great it felt. He had dreamed of flying, but here he was really doing it. The students manning the wires guided him deftly through the air, and he swept in a gentle arc across the barn, passing over, al
though just out of reach of, the basket of eggs. But that was fine. The first pass was practice anyway, he reminded himself. He’d have another chance when he swung around. Or so he thought.

Because he had passed over everyone on his first flight and was now facing away from them, all he saw was daylight from the opening barn door reflected on the wall ahead of him, and all he heard was Sebastian saying, “
Hola, señorita
!
”

The two students manning the wires must have gotten caught up in the excitement of whatever was going on, because they ceased what they were doing altogether, and instead of making a nice swooping turn and coming back around again, David stopped midflight and swung there like a pendulum, hanging from the rafters in the center of the barn. He heard a conversation happening behind him, although not well enough to make any of it out, since he was busy flailing his arms and kicking his legs to turn himself around on the wire so he could see what was going on.

When he did get turned around, he saw the backs of the students’ heads, including the one with the basket of eggs he’d been aiming for, and he saw the back of Sebastian’s head too. In fact, the only person facing him was June. She was listening to something Sebastian was telling her, but her eyes kept darting above his head to where David was hanging. Then she began to giggle. She even lifted her hand to her mouth to try to contain it. Sebastian turned around and looked up at David. He appeared surprised to see him still hanging there.

“Oh, my apologies, comrade,” he said. “I forgot you were still flying.” But rather than instruct the students to let him down, Sebastian turned back to June. “This is your reporter,
señorita
. This is David Hadley.” He held up his hand in a broad theatrical gesture, as if to present David to her, where he hung in his tights, bulging in the harness and the silly Peter Pan vest.
The hat had fallen off somewhere during his flight, thankfully. David’s face flushed. He felt like a piñata hanging there, and he half wished the students would pick up sticks and start hitting him. It couldn’t have been worse.

He opened his mouth to say hello, but somehow during his flight, or perhaps just because he was hanging nearly upside down, the mouth guard had shifted considerably and what came out instead sounded like, “Heh-whoa dare.”

But at least June didn’t laugh at this final humiliation. And if she recognized him from their encounter on the roof all those months ago, she showed no sign of it. She didn’t even let on to Sebastian that he wasn’t the reporter she had expected, if in fact she knew it at the time. Instead, she just smiled up at David with her wise and knowing eyes. He thought he saw a sparkle of recognition in them, perhaps a hint of humor too, and the intimacy of the shared look was so enchanting that for a moment, anyway, he didn’t even care that he was hanging from the rafters in tights.

“Charming to meet you, David,” she said, bowing slightly and extending her hand. “You do make a very lovely Peter Pan. Now, if only you had appeared at my bedroom window like I wished when I was a little girl.” Then she turned back to Sebastian and said, “I realize it might be tempting for you to hang our reporter out to dry, since they do it to us all the time, but for the love of Wendy, please put the poor man down.” And then she turned on her heel and strode from the barn.

David watched her go with a mixture of embarrassment and glee. They did eventually let him down, of course, and he spent the next several days stalking June as she worked with the animals around the farm.

He would wait for an opportunity—usually when one of the other students had done something unsafe and was being
scolded by Sebastian, most often in Spanish, which nobody understood—and then he would slip away and try to find her. It was a large property with many outbuildings; the stunt lessons took place away from the rescue animals, so when he found her David would have to pretend he’d been sent by Sebastian on some errand. He suspected that June was onto him, though, since he’d returned on this particular afternoon to the stables to ask for various bits of tack more times than could have possibly been necessary, even if they had been working with horses that day, which they weren’t. But he did finally manage to strike up a conversation with her.

A yearling filly that had been born blind and abandoned by its owner had just arrived, and June was spending quite a bit of time acclimating it to its new surroundings. She was brushing its coat and humming to calm its nerves when David crept back into the stable.

“Need another halter there, do you, darling?” she asked.

“This one you gave me wasn’t big enough,” he said.

He was a terrible liar.

“Oh, is that so. You must be working with Scamp then, since that halter’s plenty big for any of the others.” When David nodded, she grinned and added, “Well, perhaps you should bring Scamp up with the halter then since he’s in the stall there next to you.”

David just nodded again. “Oh, sure,” he said, hardly hearing a word she had said. “Sounds good.”

She was captivating to watch. He could have stood there and looked at her forever, despite feeling like she saw right through him—although she still hadn’t acknowledged whether or not she recognized him. She hadn’t mentioned anything about his supposedly being a reporter either.

June giggled quietly and shook her head. “The halter’s over there, darling. In the tack room. Just swap them out.”

When he came out of the tack room with the bigger halter, June had settled the young filly down and was feeding it grain from her hand. She caught David watching her and waved him over to her side.

“Do you want to pet her?” she asked. “Don’t be shy, she needs to be socialized.”

David shook his head, but June ignored it.

“Give me your hand.”

She took his hand in hers and placed it on the filly’s head. The black velvety hair was soft and warm against his palm, but it was June’s hand on his that made him shiver with excitement. He couldn’t explain it exactly, but he felt magnetism in her touch. There was life churning inside of her, fighting to get out, and it made her vibrate with a sort of contagious energy. She was looking at the filly, but he was looking at her. He couldn’t seem to look away for a moment.

“See,” she said, “there’s no reason to be afraid.”

“No reason to be afraid?” he asked, coming out of his trance to realize that her hand was still on his, guiding him as he stroked the filly’s head.

“That’s right,” she said. “Especially not of horses.”

“Maybe if you haven’t been pulled through a six-foot pile of fresh cow shit meant for fertilizer, like I was by that crazy quarter horse the other day,” he said.

“Oh, Lord”—she let a chuckle slip—“I heard. That was you?”

He could tell she was trying to contain her laugh. He had noticed while watching her that she was a little vain about her teeth. They weren’t terrible, just somewhat crooked, but in a cute way, he thought—although she seemed to try to hide them. He wondered if maybe this was partly why her smile was so much in her eyes. He had first noticed it as he watched her talking with a visiting veterinarian the afternoon before. They were tell
ing one another jokes, he assumed, and whenever June laughed she kept her lips sealed tight, holding it back, keeping it in, until her head would finally tilt back and her mouth would open and let loose the most captivating laugh he had ever heard. It was a beautiful thing to hear and see. So beautiful one might follow her around just waiting for it. Which, of course, was exactly what he had been doing.