Laughing Down the Moon (12 page)

When I rejoined them, Trisha and Heather were there in the booth, looking both spooked and relieved. Elizabeth was gone.

Book of Shadows

Spell for Good Luck on a First Date

Cast the circle.

Burn cinnamon incense.

“Blessed be Creatures of Light.”

Light pink candles in glass holders to bring romance.

Place the big rose quartz between the candles.

Greet and honor the four directions and the universal elements.

“Eight of Wands, I invoke the love at first sight which your arrows represent.”

Place the Eight of Wands Tarot card against the rose quartz.

“Eight of Wands, please let hot romance in my sullen heart make a dent.”

Thank the four directions and the universal elements.

Panic, reconsider, feel the fear…

Want desperately to take the words back—I’m not ready for this!

Deep Pranic breath. Deep Pranic breath. Deep Pranic breath.

Focus on the dancing flames of the candles

knowing that Mother Earth, the Goddess and the Universe will do what they will.

Deep Pranic breath.

“Blessed be Creatures of Light.”

Use that deep Pranic breath to extinguish candles.

Open the circle.

Walk away wondering what damage may be about to occur.

Chapter Sixteen

First Impressions

Shiloh stood in her doorway, framed by dark red brick, bright white wood and clear glass. Behind her the house glowed, warmly lit and smelling of cinnamon. Shiloh was beautiful. And she didn’t stare at my crooked bangs.

“Hi Allura,” she said, with a hint of question in her soft voice.

The tentativeness with which Shiloh extended her hand made my heart ache. I took her hand, but didn’t shake it the way I usually would. Instead, I held it for a few seconds and then released it.

“Yes, hi, Shiloh,” I replied. I smiled at her, and she smiled back but seemed to be looking a few meters beyond me. I turned to inspect my parking job, thinking she might have an issue with it, but it looked okay to me. Maybe she was into cars. I hoped my little green Honda measured up. I turned back and saw that she was looking down now. My pre-date anxiety quickly evolved into early-date anxiety. I hoped it would somehow be dispelled before it became a full-blown case of mid-date anxiety.

“Do you want to come into the house for a few moments?” she asked. “I just need to grab my coat and some cash.”

“Sure, of course,” I said, and as she turned and walked back into the house, I followed her.

Shiloh wore a slightly oversized cream fisherman’s sweater and gray flannel trousers. They fit her perfectly. I tore my eyes away from Shiloh’s backside and took a look around me. The foyer’s floor was tiled in textured terra-cotta. The walls were painted a warm shade of golden yellow. The house’s interior woodwork was dark, and it appeared to be original.

She ran her hand lightly along the wall as she walked toward what I expected to be the kitchen, so I did the same. The walls had a gritty sand-like texture in the paint. I wondered if she did this every time she came through the foyer. I would, as it felt good.

Her kitchen struck me as the most inviting I’d ever been in. The ceiling was beaten copper and two of the walls were red and dark orange brick. Her countertop was poured cement with some sort of iridescence in it that made me think of sunfish I had caught when I was a kid. Her pots and pans hung from a rack suspended over the range, and the floor in here was the same style of tiles from the foyer, in the same hues, but they were twice as big. The scent of cinnamon, stronger here than at the front door, made me feel like I had just stumbled into an Indian spice market. I watched Shiloh moving her hands across the countertop.

“Whew, I would not mind coming home if I lived here!” I exhaled. She laughed. Then, realizing the double entendre, I said, “I mean, that sounded forward, didn’t it—that’s not what I meant.”

Shiloh looked in my direction and laughed. “No, I get it. It’s okay.”

“I just mean I like your house. You have a nice style here,” I said. And I was relieved to see that there were no signs of a cat anywhere. No hairballs coughed up on rugs, no litter pans tucked into corners, no shredded scratching posts.

“That’s what I thought you meant, thank you,” she said. She was still running her hand along the counter as if she was seeking the purse that sat not ten inches from her hand. Then it hit me.

“Shiloh!” I said, “You’re blind!”

She stopped and pulled both of her hands back toward her abdomen. “You didn’t know that?”

“No, I didn’t know.” Wow, how had I not known? “You didn’t mention it.”

“But you had seen me at yoga and at pottery,” she said, “Collette said you knew who I was when she talked to you. I didn’t think I’d have to mention it.”

Her voice was a combination of sadness and accusation. Did she think I was going to change my mind about our date?

“You probably thought I was kidding about the movie then, hey?” I asked. I twisted the beads at my neck.

“I did,” she said. “I mean, I do listen to movies, but usually at home so someone can tell me what’s going on. Scene-by-scene narration doesn’t really go over too well at the theater. And I did think you were being funny when you brought it up, you know, because I had just made that yoga comment. I thought you were teasing me in retaliation.”

“Oh wow, that would have been a great comeback on my part, but I…” I said, “I just really didn’t know you were blind.”

“The yoga comment was funny though, wasn’t it?” she asked, smiling again.

I nodded, putting on a rueful expression. Then I stopped as soon as I realized what I was doing. Words. I had to use words. “Yes,” I said, “it was funny. Funny like coming out of an important job interview and looking down to find your panties peeking out of your open zipper funny.” Shiloh laughed and I continued, “But you know, about that yoga, I really need to explain…”

“I think I know what happened,” she said.

“Uhm, no, I don’t think you
could
know,” I said, trying to figure out how to tell her the whole story without sounding like a twit. Or more like a twit than I had already sounded that day. She probably thought I forgot to take my meds before yoga class or was having a nervous breakdown highlighted with hysteria. “I read this article in the
Star Tribune
about laugh yoga. I thought I was in the laugh yoga class, but I was at the wrong YMCA,” I said all in one breath. “I think I ruined what could have been a very nice yoga class.”

“Well, you made my day—I wrote that article,” Shiloh said. You could have knocked me over with a Pranic breath, on both accounts. “That’s exactly what I thought happened, too, by the way. I laughed once with you so you didn’t feel bad, but after someone shushed us, I got self-conscious and couldn’t do it, even though I knew whoever was laughing needed someone to join in. I’m sorry I didn’t laugh with you, Allura,” she said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “You wrote that article?” I tried to picture the byline on the article…Shiloh Liebermann, I thought it said. Yes, it had said Shiloh Liebermann.

“Yes, so I guess I’m partially to blame for your misadventure.” She laughed and then said, “Sorry.”

“Hmm, well, if you’d like your share of the embarrassment, I guess I could give up, oh, maybe a quarter of it?” I teased.

“No, no, give me my full half, I can take it,” she laughed.

“Okay, but no fair trying to give it back, okay?” I asked.

“Okay,” she answered.

“Hey, you’re a writer. I am, too.”

“You are?” Now she sounded surprised.

“Yeah, I am. Are you freelance?” I asked.

“Yes, mostly. I try to concentrate on fitness magazines, but occasionally I get picked up by the
Star Tribune
,” she said. She explained that she also taught a fitness class at Davidoff Academy for the Blind three times a week, which she loved as it worked in perfectly with her writing. She said a structured class schedule made her write more. Without it, she said she wasted time with not writing until the deadline’s very last minute. “Right now I’m trying my hand at a novel, my first,” she added, somewhat sheepishly.

“What’s it about?”

“A retirement ranch for lesbians is the site for a murder.” When she said “murder” she stood up straight, jutted out her left hip and did the “jazz hands” thing. Then she laughed at herself and leaned back against the counter. Goddess, she was about the cutest person I had ever been in the same room with.

“Murder?” I asked, “Do you get scared writing it? Hey,” I got excited and wondered why I didn’t think to ask immediately, “are you using an OutWrite?”

“No, I don’t get scared—maybe that means my novel isn’t very effective,” she mused. “And about the OutWrite, I wish,” she said. “I’m using Soundbyte software. It’s sort of outdated now, but I’m used to it. The OutWrite would be a dream. How do you know about it?”

“I’m doing an article on it,” I said. “It’s the first article I’ve liked writing for quite a while—seems like a quality piece of technology.” I regretted saying that it was the first article I liked in a while. I hoped she didn’t ask about that. It would be a downer. There were eight hundred things I’d rather be than a downer on a first date.

“It is. I have a friend who uses it, in case you want a resource for your article,” she offered.

I told her I would appreciate that. She didn’t jump to get the friend’s number which made me happy because I took that to mean that we’d do that later, and that meant that there would be a later. It got quiet in her kitchen then, so I brought the conversation back around to her joking yoga comment. “So as long as you are willing to share the embarrassment, I guess I forgive you for bringing up the non-laugh yoga experience,” I said.

Shiloh laughed. “Yeah, I guess I should have been called for unnecessary roughness on that one. You just sounded so nervous on the phone when you called—you sounded like you had misdialed and were surprised to suddenly find me on the other end of the line, so I figured I’d lighten up the situation for you.”

“Well, that you did,” I said, “and truth be told, I
was
surprised to hear you on the other end of the line. I wasn’t ready to call, but I dialed before I had time to, uhm, well, chicken out. I was nervous.”

“You still are,” Shiloh said.

“Aren’t you?” I asked.

I opened the front of my coat and threw it off my shoulders a bit, suddenly warm. Maybe it was the conversation. My carefully chosen paprika silk shirt matched the floor tiles. Shiloh wouldn’t be able to notice. I thought of Dr. Browning again and about how we prepare for the wrong crises.

“I am,” she said.

She was still leaning against the counter and facing me. If she really was nervous, she hid it well. I glanced behind her at the small purse on the counter near the wall. That was what she had been feeling for earlier. I looked at her beautiful face, at her blue eyes framed with dark lashes, her pointed chin and her smooth lips. She didn’t look nervous at all and that was incredible because here I was, essentially a stranger in her house, and she trusted me not to hurt her or rob her or do any of the horrible things people did to each other. How could she trust like this?

“Shiloh?” I asked. I toyed with my tiger’s eye beads.

“Mm-hm?” she said.

“Do you still want to go out to eat?” I asked.

“So, no movie then?” she asked, the corners of her mouth turning upward.

“Yeah, no, I think we should save the movie for another time.” I smiled too, not for her, but for me and because I couldn’t help it.

“So you still want to do something with me, then?” she asked.

“Yes, I do,” I said. I did. I wanted to do many things with her. I wanted—the thought jolted my core—to do everything with her.

“Okay, good. Let’s go.” She turned around and quickly found her purse.

“Okay,” I said, holding still so that she might walk through the kitchen before me. I followed her as she took a rich red woolen pea coat from behind the dark wood door of the foyer closet. I let her put it on by herself, wondering the few seconds it took her to do so if I should be offering to help her. I followed her out the door. She stopped on the front step, and I remembered now the way she had stood in the yoga studio with her arm crooked in front of her. How had I not noticed she was blind?

“I’m here,” I said, taking her arm in mine, our inner elbows pressing our coats together. I wanted to tell her I was also wearing a pea coat and wanted to ask her if she thought that was funny, that we both had on pea coats. We might look like a set of salt and pepper shakers to anyone who set eyes on us, only we were more like two pepper shakers. She was cayenne pepper, and I was gray pepper.

“Thanks,” she said as she gripped my arm.

She stepped very lightly. I wondered if she needed my arm at all. I walked her to the car door and took her hand in mine. I pressed her hand to the top of the back of the passenger seat. “It’s a Honda Civic, so go low,” I said, wondering if I should put my hand on top of her head so that she didn’t bang into the roof of the car. I didn’t think I should because I didn’t want her to feel like a little kid. She did just fine, sliding in with grace. I closed the door and ran around to my side, jumped in and asked where to.

She wanted to go to Sea Lavender’s in St. Paul. She told me they had the best salmon lasagna she had ever eaten and a whole wall of the restaurant was an aquarium.

“The salmon lasagna is for me. The aquarium is for you,” she explained, facing straight ahead until I spoke. Then she tipped her head toward mine.

“That sounds good,” I said. “Is it off Dale Street? Near Lexington?”

“Yeah,” she answered, “I think so anyway.” She smiled, so I smiled, too. She was exquisite.

“Okay, if it’s not, we can GPS it from my phone,” I offered.

“Sounds like a plan,” she said.

I rolled away from the curb and took us off on our first date. We drove less than a mile in silence, and I was just about to say anything to break the quiet when Shiloh broke it for me.