Rendezvous with Hymera (9 page)

“A journalist’s work never ends,” Colin told his lover, who was looking around interested and curious,
while they were sliding, hand in hand, through the desks, casting greetings and cordial remarks.

“Is Nick still here?” Colin addressed a voluptuous redhead who was typing something
with lightning speed.

“At his place,” the woman answered, without taking her eyes off the monitor.

Nick’s
place
was a small desk, covered with papers, pens, clips, boxes, ashtrays, and half a donut, placed exactly on the laptop’s keyboard, dripping oil and sugar.

Carefully slaloming through tens of miles of cable, Colin and Clara finally reached their destination. Nick,
a solid, blond, blue-eyed guy, an Arian prototype, was reading something from a stack of papers. Clara, used to analyzing people from one look, quickly contoured a preliminary profile:
Early thirties, very attractive, probably unmarried, obviously a smoker, efficient, dedicated.
She almost smiled to herself at her own objective, calculated description.

Nick looked up from the pages, his face lightening at their sight.

“Rara avis, Colin, my friend,” he said, and rose to shake hands. “What’s with you at work? I rephrase: what is it that you need?” he teased smilingly, and then focused his gaze on Clara, raising an eyebrow.

Colin made the introductions without too much elaboration then cut right to the chase.

“As you already guessed, Nick, I need a favor. I want a list of the missing persons in the last three years here, in the city, and in a surrounding area of, let’s say, fifty miles,” he said, looking at Clara, who confirmed, inclining her head.

Nick noted the pertinent information on a sheet that had miraculousl
y remained white and clean. His personal policy, considered by everyone as a great plus, was not to ask questions when his interlocutor preferred discretion.

“It’s a little late now,” he said, consulting his watch, “but you’ll have it tomorrow.”

“I owe you one,” replied Colin smiling. “At what time tomorrow?”

Nick returned his smile, agilely shifting a pencil through his fingers.

“I’ll make sure you pay your debt. Around 11 o’clock, I think I’ll get you that list.”

Colin turned to Clara, who was vigorously digging into the enormous bag from which she rarely parted.

Dodging makeup kits, pills, wallet, tissues, tampons, chewing gum and other numerous articles, she got out, one by one, with a triumphant sound, three mini-bars of chocolate, which she shared with the two men.

“Mm!” exclaimed Nick with his mouth full. “So that’s what women keep in those suitcases.”

“You have no idea how much stuff she’s got in there,” said Colin unwrapping the chocolate. “A woman’s purse hides as many mysteries as the Amazonian jungle,” he added, grinning and receiving a poke in the ribs from Clara.

After they exchanged a few more words, Colin took his lover’s hand, getting ready to go.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Nick, and thanks for the favor!”

“I thank you for the dessert, sugar,” Nick told the young woman, winking. “After you get rid of
my buddy here, I’ll take you out for a coffee,” he teased her smiling.

Clara smiled back, not at all offended.

“It was nice meeting you! Bye!”

While they were heading hand in hand to the car, she remarked, “Nice gu
y! He didn’t ask any questions. It would be Heaven on Earth if all people could be so diplomatic.”

“Nick is a reliable friend. He also has experience in paranormal stuff,” Colin said seriously.

“Really?” she asked, eyes wide with amazement.

“Yeah. He interviewed people who claimed they have been kidnapped by aliens, a woman who thought
she was haunted by Marilyn Monroe’s ghost. Oh, and there’s Mrs. Grey, who frequently calls him to report that her husband, who’s been dead for ten years, overturns her dishes in the cupboards and pantry.”

Clara punched him lightly in the shoulder, roaring with laughter.

“Are you kidding me?!”

“Nope,” he replied soberly. “Mrs. Grey is annoying, persistent and completely nuts. A lethal
combination. Unfortunately, not to her,” he added dryly, provoking another giggling fit. “But poor Mr. Grey could have certified that.”

Chuckling with amusement, they made their way through the crowded parking lot.

“What do we do now?” she asked, after settling comfortably on the passenger seat, which she always left down in the back, like a sun lounger.

To her great surprise, for the first time since she knew him, a shadow of uncertainty passed over his
handsome features.

He moved his fingers on his chin, covered with tiny dark spikes that had emerged in the twenty-four
hours he hadn’t shaved. Clara had noticed that this gesture marked a state of reflection or nervousness. She said, “As long as we’re in... detecting partnership, I think we should stick together as much as possible. I mean... I don’t have anything against your spending a few days with me at the cottage.”

Then, crossed
by a thought, she added quickly:

“Of course, that is…if you don’t have other plans
or...”

She left the phrase hanging, not wanting to resemble a stressful, nagging female, who tried to mess
with his business or constrain him with a possessive and unsure attitude.

However, Colin took her hand into his and she saw the charming humor coming back into his eyes.

“How is it that you can read my mind?” he demanded.

Although the question was probably rhetorical
, Clara answered, very serious:

“Telepathy. Or so my
father says. Ever since I was a kid, I had moments when I could know, actually intuit, what someone thought.

Generally, only persons close to me. This capacity amplified after I started practicing yoga.”

He listened alert and somewhat intrigued.

“Yoga? You mean things with meditations, levitations, strange postures and other stuff?” he asked
mystified. “Is that why you have such mobility and energy?” he continued, on an insinuating, evocative tone.

Clara laughed, frankly amused.

“Hardly... I haven’t reached the levitation level, only very high masters reach those performances. I only practice Hatha Yoga and Pranayama. Those are the first steps, some postures and breathing exercises, which help maintain the physical and mental health, the interior equilibrium, so to speak.”

Colin was watching her
fascinated. Eventually, he said:

“You’re the most interesting woman I’ve ever
met, a labyrinth in which I always discover new corridors.”

“And you are a poet, a magician of the metaphor,” she replied, smiling.

“If there’s anybody magic here, it’s you, princess! Speaking of poetry,” he resumed, starting the engine and slowly blending in the twilight’s heavy traffic, “I read something this morning. Two gorgeous stanzas, the author of which I presume you to be. I know it was wrong of me to trespass on your privacy. I only wanted to see what time it was, but a folder caught my attention and I opened it.”

He thought about the infinite nostalgia that transpired from those verses, at the hopelessness
encrypted in words.

“They were the most beautiful verses I’ve ever read,” he went on, “but... why were
you so sad when you wrote them?”

Her belated response seemed to come from another universe, not from the ordinary reality in which
he was driving the car on streets where darkness was now banished by hundreds of lights coming from windows, street lamps, illuminated stores and chased headlights hurrying to be lost in the night.

“I don’t like talking about this, in fact it’s a somber-boring story I’ve repeated dozens of
times.”

Clara was speaking in a slow voice, almost impersonally, gazing through the windshield. With a
heavy resigned sigh, she continued:

“As you probably know, ever since high school I was seriously coquetting
with a professional dancer status.”

“Yeah, I remember I’ve seen you in a few shows. You were a great dancer. I remember the dance
teacher always complaining she couldn’t find you a good enough partner,” he replied, recalling the artist whose graceful and fluid movements emanated energy and talent, both on the stage and outside it.

Colin had watched her a few times while she was practicing with a couple of classmates in the gym,
but the mind of the teenager he was then appreciated more the voluptuous and incitingly shaped curves of the girls rather than the quality and flawless execution of the choreography.

“Just after I finish
ed high school,” she resumed, “a few days before I was supposed to take the admission exam to The Arts and Dance School, I had a stupid accident while practicing, with unexpectedly bad consequences. One of my spinal vertebrae was seriously damaged, and all the doctors I consulted told me I hadn’t the faintest chance to be a dancer. Furthermore, I had almost a month in which I barely could make a few steps, and those with the price of considerable pains. My dream had vanished overnight, replaced by four hospital walls, interminable physical therapy sessions and an infernally static life.”

Colin listened in silence, not wanting to interrupt, in any way, this moment of revelations, when she
was exposing to him the most vulnerable and dark sides of her soul, an irrefutable proof of trust and love.

“After losing everything I believed was important, I fell into a strong, deep depression,” she went on
in the same distant tone. “I can tell I crossed the blackest corridors of despair and I’ve literally known the meaning of the expression
Hell on Earth
. For months I felt my life was worthless, countless times I considered suicide.”

He held the wheel much tighter that was necessary, but she, lost in nightmare memories, didn’t
notice. She continued, with a cynical smile:

“Nobody could understand what was in my heart. No doctor knew what to do for me. Shrinks and all
others thought I was exaggerating, that depression deformed reality in my mind, making me see things more tragically than they really were. And maybe they were right. Eventually, I understood I somehow had to find the power to rise and get out of that dark gap of hopelessness. Then I started practicing yoga for beginners, inspired by a book, written by a certain N.C. Tufoi, a man who, with the help of yoga, had been cured of an illness all doctors had declared incurable, and had become a great master in this discipline. It wasn’t easy, each step, each crumb of progress required work, willpower, ambition, patience, tenacity, and, hardest of all, optimism. Dozens of times I regressed, falling again in depressive moods, then, with great efforts, I regained the lost ground. Finally, after almost eight years since the accident, I can say I have a very good health, which was my main objective in life... So far,” she concluded, smiling and looking at him, for the first time since she had begun this unpleasant quasi-confession.

Colin had remained silent, knowing she wouldn’t have appreciated any comment, much less pitying words
or sterile encouragements. He recalled the girl full of vitality, trying without success to imagine all that vibrating charm suppressed under the oppressive tentacles of a disability. To some, he reflected, especially for the young people who had never suffered the effects of a serious illness, health represents a part of their being, something they take for granted.

Reading his thoughts, she said:

“All these things I got through had their good parts. I learned to appreciate every small thing, stuff I didn’t even see before. A ray of sunlight, a plant on the side of the street, the passive but unconditioned affection of a poor stray dog. I learned what compassion and selflessness mean. I’m a totally different person. I found out what really matters in life and that the Universe is a huge balance, where everything balances. Nothing is priceless, each objective achieved needs work and brings compensation,” she finished, and only then realized they had stopped, and parked the car on a well-illuminated street, in a clean, coquettish neighborhood, with a bohemian aspect, and old but well-kept buildings – pictures detached from the dusty pages of a history book.

She felt his gaze studying her and, turning to him, she found in those eyes, which in such short time
had become the center of her universe, everything she had expected for so long: love, understanding, admiration and a tender compassion, which she didn’t think a man could be capable of offering without shadowing his masculinity.

In that moment charged with emotion, Clara loved this man even more, the only person to whom she
had trusted and needed to open her soul.

He took her hand into his and kissed it, a simple gesture, but so sweet that his touch invaded her
entire being with light, heat, peace and a feeling of euphoria – the absolute conviction that this communication beyond words proved their spirits complete compatibility.