Rendezvous with Hymera Read online

  Colin wore a pair of simple jeans, a black shirt that emphasized his hard, nicely worked body – for which she had a particular weakness – and a million-watt smile.

  “Cat got your tongue, Blondie?” he said, expertly sliding next to her on the bench.

  Clara, who was usually voluble and self-confident in her interactions with the opposite sex, harmoniously combining charm with a dose of flirt, felt a shadow of disconcertedness and, to her horror, she actually blushed. Still, she managed the great accomplishment of not stuttering when she replied:

  “Well, well! The uncrowned idol of old-days cheerleaders appears at my table! Are you still as cocky as you used to be?”

  Colin widened his smile.

  “Absolutely. I accidentally saw you and suddenly felt an irresistible desire to salute and assure you that you look excellent! Even better than you did back in college!”

  “Thanks, I can return that compliment,” she answered, genuinely impressed by this encounter, which, in her subconscious, she had always foreseen.

  “I’ve always known we’d meet again someday,” she said, without realizing her thoughts had taken voice. Then, trying not to give Colin time to reply and also to hide her own embarrassment towards her remark and its implications, she rapidly changed the subject.

  “So, tell me, what have you been doing with yourself?” she asked, scolding herself for not being able to find a more original method to begin the discussion than an expired cliché.

  However, the technique soon proved to be efficient, because after this unusual debut, the conversation began to flow effortlessly, while both were studying each other with an interest that surpassed courteous curiosity.

  Clara learned, as a result of the numerous questions they asked one another, that in the past years their lives had taken sinuous but not very different turns.

  She had made a certain renown as a writer, and Colin was a respected journalist; he worked at a high rated newspaper and was without wife, kids, or criminal record, as he informed her with a cinematographic smile.

  “Do you live here, in the city?” she asked him.

  “Yes, for now. How about you?”

  “I’ve rented a cottage on a lake’s shore, thirty miles from here. It’s superb. For now, that’s my residence.” she emphasized.

  “At Rose’s?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” answered Clara surprised. “Do you know the place?”

  “I do. I’ve spent a couple of weeks there. Maybe I’ll pay you a visit,” he went on watching her questioningly over the Cola glass in front of him, which had been brought earlier by an attentive and energetic waitress, who had displayed for his benefit an obviously seductive smile.

  This suggestion triggered a chaos in her soul – emotion, anticipation, pleasure, but also a touch of hesitation that was ruthlessly ignored.

  “Um... Sure, why not? I’m in the third cottage. I really enjoy talking to you.”

  A corner of his mouth curved insinuatingly.

  “So do I. Tell me, how is it that a woman like you isn’t married or at least engaged?”

  Clara raised her eyebrows.

  “And what, might I ask, makes you think I’m not?”

  “I don’t see any engagement ring or wedding band on these elegant fingers of yours,” he answered and surprised her by kissing her hands.

  She felt she was melting.

  “You’re right,” she finally replied. “Presently, the only male in my life is Tony, my dog, and there isn’t anybody else because I haven’t preoccupied myself lately with this aspect. My work keeps me very busy.”

  “Hmm... Do you know what they say about people who work too much and have too little fun?”

  “That they’re boring?” she joked.

  “No, that they get old before their time,” he replied in the same playful tone. “You have to make sure no lines appear on this perfect face,” he said, gently stroking her cheek.

  Clara felt completely captive in the magnetic sphere emanated by this charismatic man, the more so as their attraction had burned like a smoldering fire in her subconscious for over ten years. She felt she was losing herself in those hypnotic eyes, and all the unspoken thoughts he was transmitting only by visual contact seemed to absorb, transform and recreate her. Blinking rapidly, disturbed by the depth of that moment’s emotional charge, she lowered her gaze on the watch she wore on her left wrist, without seeing anything at first. However, when she realized how late it was and how much her track of time had been distorted in the last hours, she stood abruptly.

  “Speaking of Tony, I have to go!” she exclaimed grabbing her purse. “He’s alone and probably waiting desperately for me. I told Rose he’s very obedient, but he slips now and then, and when he’s bored, he chews everything that seems appealing.”

  Colin laughed then took her shopping bags, saying:

  “I’ll see you to your car.”

  They covered the short distance to the automobile parked on one side of the street. While she was opening the car door, Clara gave her phone number to Colin, who had asked for it. Before she got into the car, he took her hand, interweaving his fingers with hers. Her green eyes lifted to his, seeming to form an almost palpable electric arc.

  Thousands of butterflies danced in her stomach when Colin gently kissed her cheek and said:

  “See you soon, beautiful!”

  ***

  When she returned to the cottage, Clara moved like an automaton and, although her feet were touching the pavement with each step, her mind was floating galaxies away.

  Over the years, she often thought about Colin, wondering what fate had dealt him, meditating on what could have been between them. The surprising thing was that, even after ten years, what she considered to be a spark without chances of expansion, an ambiguous chemistry, felt just as potent and was mutual.

  Her trail of thoughts was interrupted by Rose, who greeted her as she was heading to her cottage, loaded with bags.

  “You’re back?” the old lady asked without actually expecting an answer. “Tonight around eight, we’ll be waiting for you there,” she said, lifting her index to indicate the small wooden gazebo on the shore, partially hidden under the graceful branches of a willow tree.

  “I’ll be there. Thanks for inviting me and please excuse me for being in such a hurry, but I’m so hungry I could eat like a wolf!”

  “Ha!” exclaimed the old woman. “Only a mouth-and-you! If you’d eat like a wolf, you wouldn’t resemble a splinter,” she went on in a reproachful tone.

  Before the young woman could find a smart comeback, Rose had already turned away, going into the store.

  “I don’t resemble a splinter,” she muttered to herself. “I’m more like a big stick!”

  Tony was impatiently waiting for his mistress, frantically running around the bags and packs, which Clara had left with an enviable precision right in the center of the living area, and was sniffing them desperately.

  “Gee, Tony, if somebody would see you, they’d think you’re the most neglected and under-fed animal on Earth,” she scolded her quadruped friend, who ignored her completely, continuing his inspection.

  After everything had been unpacked and both woman and dog well fed, Clara sat in front of her laptop, now installed on the small bedroom desk, and began writing, carried by a wave of inspiration.

  In the evening, at the set time, wearing a casual white cotton dress, she headed to the gazebo. It was a construction with lines of an old elegance, sheltering a big square table, flanked on each side by benches with backrests and cushions that ensured a maximum of comfort. The wooden roof had a laced structure, and the pattern masterfully sculpted by an anonymous artist was filtering the moonlight, which threw mercurial reflections over the tableau. A corner of the gazebo was hidden under the branches of an old willow tree, whose foliage gently rustled, caressed by the cool breeze.

  The preparations were in full swing and the alluring smell of meat sizzling on the grill tickled Clara’s
senses. To avoid going empty-handed, she had bought a bottle of expensive wine and a box of cookies, hoping the others also harbored, at least, a benign weakness for sweets.

  The evening went much more pleasantly than she had expected. Marie and Robert Axel were about the same age as her and both worked at a telephone company in the city. Recently, they had bought their cottage from Rose, turning it into a permanent home.

  Marie was a pretty brunette with a vague gypsy look, cheerful, talkative and very intelligent. By contrast, her tall, blond, dreamy, blue-eyed husband was courteous, but rather reserved.

  When Clara reached the table, Robert and Mr. Garcia got to their feet and Rose made the introductions.

  “Need help?” Clara asked Marie, who was turning on the grill a few appetizing, divine smelling steaks, arranging a dark curl that escaped from the long, shiny mass of hair and humming something under her breath.

  “No, thanks a lot, but I can manage,” she graciously refused and went on with her business, returning to her song, which seemed to be a Mexican serenade. Tone by tone, in a slow crescendo, her full and flexible voice rose, following its own rhythm that sent magical vibrations in the fragrant night air; everybody fell quiet, listening to her, charmed.

  “She’s got a gorgeous voice!” Clara whispered to Robert, and he smiled proudly.

  “That’s what first made me fall in love with her, even before I met her personally. When I applied for a job at the company where we’re now working, I talked to her a few times over the phone and I was seduced by her voice,” he said, gazing at his wife with melancholic nostalgia. “Then, when I met her, I convinced her to go out with me by telling her she was an angel misplaced on Earth.”

  Clara remained silent, listening to Marie. In a little corner of her heart, she envied, without malice, the happiness and adoration she saw in Robert’s eyes and wondered if ever someone special will look at her with so much love, if someone would ever think of her as an angel.

  Not wanting to let the abstract reveries that were burdening her mind to ruin her night, she actively participated in conversations, being very pleased that the wine and cookies she had brought met with enthusiastic success.

  Robert intrigued the table guests when he took out his cell phone, a miracle of modern technology; beside all kinds of intelligent functions, it had installed an anti-mosquito application.

  “What in God’s name is that?” asked Rose, who wasn’t a fan for any sort of gadget.

  “It works using ultrasounds,” he explained. “It produces some frequencies we can’t detect, but which mosquito’s detest.”

  Clara, also curious, studied the object in question with the owner’s permission, making a mental note to document about the said application.

  “I wonder if Tony can intercept these ultrasounds,” she said, looking around after him.

  But the quadruped was blissfully unaware, munching with ecstatic pleasure at a piece of steak, which he had obtained in a suspicious manner at the least.

  An interesting character was the old gentleman Garcia, who, although he’d had a tumultuous and dramatic life, had remained kind and gallant. He was a war veteran and, with the gradual emptying of wine glasses, the usually taciturn old man began telling them stories about his life, about war, death and destruction, and about his long lost love.

  Clara found herself profoundly impressed by the tale of this idealistic man who had fought with all conviction to change something for the better, according to his patriotic sense. The exchange was that he had lost his wife, who had been his life partner since their teens, his home and, in a very symbolic meaning, his life, being repaid for all these with a now rusty stained medal and a miserable pension.

  Clara also gathered from bits of conversation and her own deductions a diluted version of Rose’s biography. Her husband had been a relatively wealthy farmer, and, in spite of the fact that their union hadn’t been blessed with any children – at least Rose had never mentioned the existence of an offspring – the two had had a happy and harmonious marriage.

  Three years before, Rose had become a widow, as a consequence of a tragic car accident, which had kidnapped the one who had been her life partner for over thirty years, leaving her inconsolable. After the funeral, Rose had sold absolutely everything she owned in terms of property, not being able to continue living alone in the home surrounded with so many memories.

  She had bought a trailer and crossed the country aimlessly, without purposes or dreams, searching for escape and oblivion, running away from the pain and uselessness that overwhelmed her since the death of her beloved husband, who had been, until then, her center of existence.

  When she had arrived in the place she now owned, the cottages on the lakeshore were the property of a hotel network, whose owners didn’t know how to get rid of them faster, because they were not cost-efficient. After only a few days of living there, Rose had made them an offer to buy the property and, in a couple of weeks, all the paperwork was finalized.

  “Something drew me here,” the old lady was saying now, wiping her glasses with an embroidered handkerchief. “The serenity, the peace, nature itself. Here I began to heal and...To resign myself, to learn living alone and enjoy what’s left of my life.”

  Everyone had listened to her quietly, each of them meditating in the privacy of their own thoughts at the moodiness and unpredictability of fate, which can turn any moment into the last spark of a man’s life.

  Long after midnight, Clara headed, sleepily and a bit melancholic, to her cottage, with a lazy Tony dragging after her. On the way to the stairs leading to the bedroom, she glanced through the living room window facing the lake, and froze.

  In the middle of the lake, which in darkness seemed a liquid abyss, with her back to the cottage, stood a woman. She was steeped in water to her waist and her blonde hair hung loose on her naked back.

  In her foggy mind blurred by wine and fatigue, Clara wondered how the woman could float like that, considering the lake was over thirty feet deep. Suddenly, the woman turned and Clara saw, for a moment, in the vague lunar light, a ghastly pale face and a pair of eyes as dark as the lake itself.

  Next to her, a ferocious growl had a cold shiver trickling down her spine and all the hairs on her body grew erect. She turned around slowly. Tony, showing his fangs in a threatening grin, was looking in the same direction, still growling lugubriously, with his body tensed in attack position.

  The young woman looked again through the window, blinking rapidly to clear her vision. The feminine figure was gone, but the water’s surface was covered by waves of translucent fog. The lake seemed to steam.

  ***

  After a restless night, full of odd dreams, she awoke under Tony’s hairy weight; he had installed himself next to her while she was sleeping, an unusual thing for him to do. The dog had been given to her almost six years ago as a present from her father and she had raised the furry ball with the same devotion she would have felt towards her own child, trying to impose on him a rigorous education. Therefore, it had been more than a few years since the quadruped had felt such an acute need for affection – and maybe even protection – that he would break the rules of canine etiquette.

  Presently, spoiled with the loving caresses of his mistress, Tony gave no sign of insecurity or anxiety, groaning and whimpering conversationally in his usual dialect as a response to her playful pampering. After this demonstration of attachment and sympathy, Clara pushed him gently off the bed and got up, feeling the past night’s effects as a vague sensation of a hangover.

  With her ruffled hair and puffy eyes, she pattered with bare feet on the kitchen floor. She brewed some coffee, so strong that only a short olfactory analysis of the steam dancing over the kettle cleared her mind and revitalized her body with an incipient constructive energy.

  In the sunlight sneaking through old shutters, the past night’s events seemed phantasmagorical, result of fatigue and the alcohol, with which she wasn’t used to.

  However,
somewhere in her subconscious, the ghostly image of a woman on the lake persisted.

  After she fed Tony and sent him outside in the garden, Clara was thinking, in a distant perspective, of breakfast, when she heard a discreet knock on the wooden front door.

  Probably Rose, she thought while opening the door.

  The visitor was Colin, holding a quite sizable paper bag that emanated a delicious smell. After he rapidly measured her with a glance, from the long, disheveled hair to the ducks and bunnies pajamas, he grinned widely and said:

  “Did I wake you up?”

  Deciding it was too late to feel embarrassed by the way she looked, Clara displayed a sweet smile and stuck her nose into the bag full of donuts and cupcakes, breathing deeply.

  “I forgive you, ’cause you seem to know my weaknesses pretty well. Come in,” she invited, already munching a donut with studied nonchalance.

  As always, Colin looked gorgeous, unshaven, dressed in a white shirt and jeans.

  I must be completely depraved, she thought, self-admonishingly. Every time I take a look at this man, my hormonal level rises and my brain activity drops drastically! It’s not normal! she scolded herself, taking care to keep a neutral expression, not to betray her naughty thoughts.

  She offered him a seat on the large couch, while Tony was sniffing him suspiciously.

  “I’ll go make myself look more presentable,” she told him, placing a coffee cup in his hand. “Careful, it’s lethal to the uninitiated,” she warned him indicating the black liquid. "I’ll be right back.”

  “No problem, take your time, Tony will keep me company,” Colin replied, scratching the furry ears. That action gradually turned the dog’s caution into a reluctant beginning of friendship.

  Combed, wearing light makeup, a spicy perfume and a white dress that showed off her long, tanned legs, Clara looked magnificent.

  “I’ve always thought you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he said, watching her with the fixed and lustful concentration of a cat courting the cream pot.

  She remained captive for a heartbeat in the penetrant intensity of his gaze, not finding any adequate response to this remark.