bBook Author's Pixie

 

 

Foxfire

     Foxfire reflexively closed her eyes as the shower gushed warm water. Her skin stirred with the caress. Sometime, I'll spend the whole day here. She wriggled underneath the spray and banged her elbow on the wall. Her eyes sprang open, took in water, smarted, and scrunched closed as she ducked and banged the other elbow and a knee. In a bigger stall, she thought. A whole day, but only in a bigger stall.
     She wiped her face and looked around her at transparent walls, clouded by steam, trickling with water, then she peered out at the house's bathing room, with its trio of basins, cozy toilet stalls, and family hot-tub in the middle. Time to get a move on, anyway. A late outing with Meyer. She bopped the volume switch with the side of her fist and the waterflow cut off. She grabbed the soap-sponge from its nook and mechanically washed herself from toes to nape.
     Meyer! Meyer? Oh, Meyer. What? Don't I mean 'Oh, Foxfire'? I'm the one who's asserting myself. All he has to do is take it — and go off and find another woman. What if he does? Yea, what if he does? If I don't want him now, why do I want him at all? It's not easy finding guys I can get close to. I mean, it's not easy letting myself get close to guys. My brothers were such bad examples. Well, O.K. So, he may not be perfect, but he's there. Is that it? Life is better with him around: he's fun. So I'm afraid of losing him? No, I'm afraid of hurting him. Anytime I don't just go along, I'll "hurt" him? Nah! I don't mean — Nah, he isn't that way. Is he?
     Another bop and the water returned, full force, same temperature, from all sides. She pirouetted, heels and knees lifting, arms rising and falling through the streams, breath held, eyes closed, chin pointed. She cut the water for the last time and paused to watch it swirl down the drain toward the garden.
     "Foxfire?" An alto voice echoed in the bathing room.
      "In here," Foxfire called back as she pressed the stud that slid the curved door aside.
     Corn, the dear, simple-hearted woman whose cottage Foxfire was renting, stood tentatively by the door into the house, her hands clasped anxiously at her waist. Foxfire stepped onto the ipê-wood floor and reached for a towel. She started drying her neck first, while she stared expectantly at Corn.
      "Okra — the Okra — is on our private entrance for a meeting/will-be-seen."
     Okra! Suddenly, the afternoon flooded back, her entire shift at the clinic: on continual alert in case Okra's call came; wondering how long it actually took two tacticians, even ones from different consortia, to work out a deal; pondering what these Gatogrebok Ausländer would be like; chewing her lip while fretting about whether Okra had been genuine in his offer to hire her; occasionally short-shrifting co-workers — but never patients, not like Possum, not again — while despairing that this career breakthrough would wither without her ever hearing from Okra, except when he read in the tabernacle.
     All that anxiety displaced by her anticipation of Meyer at midnight.
     But now, her bare skin prickled all over and her breath came up short as the tenterhooks asserted themselves again.
     All she could think to say was, "Now?"
     Corn widened her eyes, pursed her mouth, and nodded briskly.
     "Tell him just a moment — I've got to dry off!"
     "I can see that, dear." Corn turned away as she said, "I'll tell him."
     Will he let me down easy? Foxfire wondered as she swiped hastily at her back, front, and between her legs. She wrapped the damp towel around her and followed Corn. Or hard? The looming chance of rejection burned at the back of her throat.


      "Kasserian ingera," Okra said from the foilscreen.
     Flattered — surprised and flattered — and relieved — Foxfire smiled and answered, "Sapati ingera." She had heard members of the Bear Project greet each other this way. The from-Maasai exchange — "How are the children?" "The children are well." — acknowledged their prevailing concern for the Bears. She felt honored that he respected her concern and included her with those who cared for them.
     Okra glanced down at the towel. "Sorry for the bad timing."
     "Is there something I can do for you?" Excitement stoked Foxfire's heart, but she forced herself to stand still to avoid straining her modest cover.
     "At Ammaerln House-row, Foxfire," Okra said intently. "I have confirmed that they are Gatogrebok, setting up a demonstration clinic to help sell their anshinkan bid. Their tactician came to see me today. Glory in the Lord: Se allowed knowledge about an opportunity and a path to pursue it to fall into my hands together."
      "Glory in Life," Foxfire responded automatically.
     "The tactician was reasonable and aggressive. I had my doubts when Gatogrebok submitted a bid several days ago, but now I'd like to help them win. So, I took care of all his complaints immediately and offered him some help: you — like we agreed."
      No rejection here. Quite a different problem altogether. "Where am I going to find the time?"
     "As soon as you agree, I will coordinate with Nurse Poplar. Your final term can take a little longer, that's all."
     "How much longer?"
     "Spend your afternoons with Gatogrebok, mornings and evenings training."
      "That's every waking hour!"
     "Just for the next twenty-four days. Then they'll either be selected and you can leave because we'll all be profiting from their new methods and attitudes. Or they won't be and you can leave because they'll be packed up and gone."
     Foxfire paused. Hope for a job with the Bear Project waxed into a real possibility, jolting her heart, spreading her mouth into a grin. "O.K. then."
     "And Foxfire?"
      "Yes?"
     "You start tomorrow. Dawn-plus-breakfast with Nurse Poplar, then after noon, report to a man named Weir Annadetcall at Ammaerln Houserow." He paused, his eyes narrowed and focused straight out of the screen at her. "An alliance with Gatogrebok could make the Bear Project and its profits soar. The more Geld we earn, Foxfire, the more we can spend to improve the quality and length of Bear lives. Think about that as you're working over there."
      No pressure there. "I will, Okra, I promise!"
     "Good-bye." And his image was gone, its pixels dissolving into a double-T reminder of the connection completed through Our Circle. A narrow, well-defined line took her gaze from the lettered foreground across the pearly background into an apparently distant circle, perfectly round as metaphor. That promise of grace held her for a joyous moment.
     An instant later, Foxfire's excitement dissolved into heartache. More news for Meyer. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Let's hope he sees it that way. Better do it now, ndito.
     Foxfire glanced around. Corn had gone off someplace. The rest of her family were also conspicuously absent. Clutching her towel about her, she requested a can-hear with Meyer. He answered almost immediately.
     "Something's come up, Meyer."
     "Like what?" Edgy, cautious.
     "A change in my class schedule, a — a special project for extra credit. I'd really like to work on it, but it's going to take all my free time."
     "What about tonight?"
     "I can't stay out late."
      "We'll keep it short."
     Foxfire opened her mouth to say, "No," but gave no voice to the word. Empathy, ndito, empathy. You may not be male, but you know what it's like to be waiting for rejection or acceptance. After all, he did propose Life together last night. "O.K., Meyer. We just have to remember that I start work at dawn-plus tomorrow." A glimpse of her future, dragging her sluggish body out of her bed as the suns cracked the horizon, quickly led to thoughts of another bed. Smiling, she added a little tease to her voice. "None of your 'one more kiss' that leads us back to your place. O.K.?"
     "No." The word came weak and cracked. "No, we don't have to." More strongly now. "I know how important Nursing is to you. I know how much you need your sleep. Yea —" he snorted a laugh, nearly genuine "— I know that part real well. I sure don't want Nurse Poplar mad at me when you doze off during a lecture."
     Nurse Poplar doesn't know about you. Foxfire let a sigh of relief escape quietly through her open mouth, then asked, "Are you sure, Meyer? One short night wouldn't hurt me that much."
     The station glowed silently, its foilscreen shuffling through images that all said "meeting in progress."
     Foxfire shivered, goosebumps in counterpoint to a dreadful trembling deep inside her. "Meyer?"
      "When will I see you again?" His voice so weak as to be unrecognizable.
     Foxfire envisioned Meyer's resilience fading before dread, a dark cloud flooding over his darling face. He'd given up what could be his last moments with her. So she made a promise she didn't think she could keep. "In a few days, as soon as I get used to my new schedule."
     "I understand." Words from a man hardly able to breathe, much less talk.
     "Meyer?" Nothing. "Meyer?" No answer. "Meyer!"
     "Yesss," he sighed.
      Foxfire pumped up her voice. "I'll call you, really I will. Soon."
      "Good-bye." The screen flashed to a stark "adjourned" notice.
     Foxfire felt her heart beat, heard its lub-dub in her mind. So many possible futures, too few happy, draped themselves over her, stifling thought and feeling. In that awful stillness, she walked back to her cottage.