Incredible. How typical of her luck. Was there no way to separate the thing? Hideous, stupid thing. Had she been parading around the entire day with a frazzled hair clump showing at the back of her neck?
Tugging with furious fingers, Mary Cunningham tried to loosen the ratted hair knot. The purpose of her morning shower had been to get some cream rinse on the rat so she could comb it. Somehow, she'd forgotten. Daydreaming, no doubt, about Ian. She winced to recall that she'd been strolling down a corridor ahead of Ian McKensie when she'd smoothed the back of her hair and felt the tangled gob of hair. Luckily, her office had been nearby and she'd been able to duck in quickly. She wondered if Ian had seen her. Had he noticed her hair? He was so attractive with his dark brown hair and blue eyes. The way he stood with one hand in his pants pockets all the time thrilled her. Even his drooping moustache was a delight. She had a desperate crush on him.
Thoughts of her growing attraction to Ian troubled Mary. There had been too many unrequited loves before. During high school, she'd nurtured a passion for a blonde halfback who sat beside her in German and for the old movie stars, Dirk Bogarde and Montgomery Clift. When a tall bearded man in her fencing class at college had handed her a foil, she'd dreamed of him for months. In graduate school she'd fallen in love with a series of her fellow scholars. And in October, the married man upstairs at her apartment had bewitched her. Ian, however, was the first man she'd actively pursued. But flirting with a real person was a new skill. Recently, he'd seemed to scorn her attentions and a smirk developed on his face whenever she approached.
The sneering face of Ian bobbed before her like some snide, swollen balloon. She abandoned the tangled lump of hair and sunk her head onto her folded arms.
In an adjacent office of the Arizona State Department of Economic Research she heard the janitor spraying an aerosol can. He was talking in a loud voice. "I can't believe she's attracted to me," he said, "We're from different worlds."
"Blah blah blah blabedy blah blah blah?" someone asked.
Mary heard a can spray once more. She sat up. A pause followed.
"She keeps saying hello and smiling," the janitor replied.
"A splee," said the voice.
Love life of the janitor. But she always spoke to the groveling dope and smiled when she left her office late. It didn't hurt to be cordial, even if he was a bit of a ding dong. You never knew who he knew. His older brother might be a striking surgeon or his best friend a rising young lawyer. Besides, Mary thought you always ought to acknowledge someone who worked for you...gad! Had he been talking about her? Did he imagine she was attracted to him because she spoke to him and smiled? Was he discussing his prospects with her with a man in their office? Oh dear god. She hoped not.
Mary fumbled in the desk drawer for a pencil. Outside her window a pigeon lit on the dry skirt of a palm tree. Beyond, across a lawn of dormant Bermuda grass, the failing twilight obscured a row of gnarled olive trees. She sat in the semi-dark, doodling.
Ian McKensie. She liked his style, rather James Bond-ish, Indiana Jones-ish, that Ian. One word described him: debonair. Like the way he ordered a vodka gimlet at that bar in Denver after they both attended a conference panel discussion on Exchange Rate Adjustment. And his flawless clothes. He wasn't afraid to make his mark. He wouldn't be afraid of anything. Put Ian McKensie on the trail of?ancient artifacts and he became impervious to fear. Knowing well that the territory ahead was fraught with danger, he forded the San Juan River and headed toward Diamond Pass, one of the most remote regions in the southwest. Memories of resent massacres were fresh. Months earlier two young prospectors from Colorado had been shot by robbers while trying to flee their camp, yet Ian McKensie was eager to work on archaeological cave explorations.
Yes, that was it. That was what she wanted. With a sniff Mary leaned back in her chair, twiddling her pencil through air, resting her heels on the one clear corner of her desk.
Ian's small string of pack burros plodded into Diamond Pass; at the front of the burros, his student assistant, Mary Cunningham, rode at Ian's side, both of them mounted on ponies. The trail they took led upward over loose outcropping of red shale and into the heart of the canyon where, on either side, massive cliffs towered. Looking up at the immense bluffs, Mary felt afraid of what they were doing. Yet she trusted the strong, silent Ian, whom she secretly adored.
After a trek of almost three miles, they encountered traces of an abandoned camp. Ian ordered Mary in his gruff manly manner to shorten up the burros' lead. "Bring them up," he growled, glaring over in her direction. She yanked the rope tied to the lead burro. Why couldn't Ian be kind to her? It seemed that to him the beautifully wispy, delicately virginal Mary, cowering at his side, was a despicable worm, groveling and incompetent. He hardly noticed her, except to criticize her actions in his cold imperious fashion. And he never used her name.
Rounding a tight bend of the trail, Mary's eyes climbed skyward, blinking back angry tears of love for Ian while examining every crevice for movement. When she glanced down again she was astounded to discover that they had ridden onto a narrow slanting shelf of rock.
The shale began to crumble beneath her pony.
"Help!" she screamed.
Big chunks broke loose and plunged over the cliff edge. Ian's pony bounded forward, onto the wider portion of the trail that lay ahead.
"Help me!" she screamed again.
"Spur him, you fool!" shouted Ian.
Mary struck her pony's ribs with her heels; she beat its beck with her open palm. Its hooves clattered on the angled shale. The pony and Mary slid backwards, burros braying behind them. The pony sprung forward and slid, sprung forward and slid. Mary felt her mount begin to weaken.
Ian swung off his pony and dashed back to her. In an instant he had snatched the burros' rope and slapped her pony's rump.
Up, up her pony struggled, charged forward, and held its position. It lunged again and was up.
Ian brought the string of burros through.
After their ponies and burros hurried up the difficult, narrow and twisting pass, the trail widened and afforded a backward glance. Ian halted in the shade of a cliff and lit his pipe. He clenched the stem in his teeth.
"Will there be another way out?" Mary asked, struggling to catch her breath, while sweeping her golden tresses back from her face.
"Maybe," replied Ian, "Maybe not."
Mary splashed water from her canteen on a handkerchief and held it to her brow.
Ian's expression was grim. "I should have seen that narrow section coming. I led you out there. I must have been daydreaming," he said.
Day dreaming? Mary was stunned. What would be have to daydream about? Her, perhaps? She quivered. It was the first time he had addressed her with something other than a bellowed command. It was the first time he'd shown concern for her. Her chest ached. She felt as though there was a taut string stretched between them. She had no time to enjoy the sensation, for Ian spurred his pony forward and rode swiftly and masterfully, manfully and marvelously, forward on the trail. The comely young Mary followed.
Further up in the canyon, caves ripe for exploration appeared in the rocky precipices; Ian established a camp beneath them. He instructed Mary to lead the livestock down a small gully in the Pass where there was grass and water. Like the innocent child she still was, Mary soon forgot the difficulties of their situation. At the sight of a spring surrounded by grass, she stripped down to her lacy, ribbon-trimmed underthings and bathed in the cool spring water. While she frolicked nearly naked, she glimpsed Ian set the coffee pot and Dutch oven on the campfire rocks above. At times she had the curious feeling that he watched her with his icy and domineering pale blue eyes.
Later, with her wet underthings clinging to her pink skin and her sun-warmed dress on top, Mary worked at Ian's side, conscious of his closeness and the home-like felicity of their situation. Perhaps that night when they would sleep so close together on the ground in their blanket rolls he would roll over her way? Perhaps a chink would appe
ar in that cold, masterful, domineering, and dispassionate armor he wore??
"Well, hello," said the janitor who was opening Mary's door. An ugly flood of florescence streamed from the hall; a ring of keys jangled in the lock.
Mary catapulted forward in her chair. "Hello," she said.
"Working late again?" the janitor asked, his dark eyes glowing. He towered in her doorway. Tanned and muscular arms bulged from the sleeves of his uniform.
"Yes," Mary replied, fumbling under the desk for her garbage can. Before he could come further into the room, she got up and handed it to him. She groped along the wall for the overhead light switch. With a flick of the switch her office became a glowing yellow cube.
"Hey, how about them Cougars!" He rocked backward on his heels and forward on his toes.
She blundered back to her desk. She hadn't seen anyone rock on their feet since third grade. "Huh?" she said.
"The Cougars."
Mary stared.
"I guess you don't follow football. Lots of women don't," he said, as though it were all right with him. He dumped her trash, glancing twice at the heap of blonde hair which fell out. With a ridiculous wrist flick and flourish he fit a new liner into the can. She gaped at him. "I do magic," he confided, "At children's birthday parties. My best friend is a magician. From Mexico. He owns a baby elephant and rents it out for parties. No kidding."
He pulled a spray can out of his rolling cart and shook it. The top edge of her bookshelf was lightly misted. Lemon rained. He slid a red cloth forward and back, forward and back, rubbing the imitation wood and shuffling closer to her. When he reached the end of the shelf, he returned to the far end without glancing up and repeated the same actions on the next lower shelf. Watching him creep toward her, Mary wanted to scream. What a ghoul. Hunched shoulders. Neanderthal eyebrows. Scars of corpuscular acne on his cheeks. Ugh.
At work on the third shelf, the janitor cleared his throat. "I see the museum next door is having an opening next Saturday night. 'Mankind Meets the Monkeys.' And "Tarahumara Traditions."'
Mary pretended to be studying a tattered international trade journal. The page in front of her was foxy and coffee-stained.
"Are you going?" he asked. He plodded out the door and fiddled with a broom on his cart.
"I don't think so," Mary muttered.
"What was that?"
"No," she said.
"You should," he said, coming back to her door.
She slapped the journal closed and threw it on a slumping pile. "I'll have to think about it."
"I try to get to a lot of educational dos," he began, leaning against the doorjamb.
Mary nodded. "Uh huh."
"Learn, learn, learn," he continued. "That's my motto. Mother says I'm going to overwork my brain. But I've told her that's nonsense. The brain isn't something you've got to conserve. You're supposed to exercise it. That's my theory." He showed no sign of leaving.
"Okay," Mary answered, turning away. "I must get back to work now."
"Well, have a nice evening, Miss Cunningham," he said. "Do you want the overhead light off? No? Goodnight, then," he smiled, gently shutting the door.
Mary swung around again and stuck her tongue out when the door closed, pulling a series of faces which were worse than any displayed on the Furies. "Of all the luck! I've attracted a goon head. And he lives with his mother," she said to herself. "His mother thinks he overworks his brain! I have a lobotomized loverboy after me!"
Damn glamor magazines. She wished she'd never read that article about the ten things one could do to overcome shyness. One of the suggestions had been to say hello to everyone you met. What drivel that was for a woman. Now she had attracted a nitwit. His best friend loaned a baby elephant out to children's parties? Thrilling. He had arguments with his live-in mother about educational "dos?"
She'd have to get rid of him. That much was certain. She'd have to ice him out of the picture. Cold shoulder him into another country. Banish him to oblivion.
Mary waited to hear him finish the next two offices before she switched the overhead light off again.
Ian would never tell her to have a nice evening. Good grief. Nice wouldn't even be in his vocabulary, except if it were the city, pronounced differently. Ian was?a rugged man, a man's man, who had known women, tough women, in cities all over the west. But had he ever known one as delicate, fresh, and sparkling as Mary Cunningham? Mary thought he might like to know her, but it would take time.
Mary propped her feet up on the desk and returned to a certain western canyon where the campfire glowed and their bedrolls beckoned?
After the camp supper was cleared away, Ian sat down before the fire with his pipe. Strange. Was he studying his notes on possible artifact locations or Mary's slender form stretched out on her blanket? It was difficult to tell, with him wearing a black patch over his left eye. How had he gotten that dark, ominous patch? Had he been wounded in some manly endeavor? A duel, perhaps? Or had he fought in a far-away war? Once more, mystery lurked in the past of that enigmatic man.
With the last rays of the sun striking the canyon walls, the cliffs reflected all shades of color from deep red to light buff, and the huge pinnacles were turned into the fantastic shapes of gleaming castles, towers, and spires. Deep shadows began to form and the worries which had melted away in the afternoon returned in the eerie glowing dusk. Were they going to be able to leave the canyon or would they be trapped there forever? Whose camp had they discovered? Would they be attacked in the night?
"Get some sleep," said Ian curtly. He sat bolt upright at her side, his back leaning against a pine tree truck, a rifle crossing his lap.
"I feel afraid," said Mary, her lower lip trembling. She gazed up at his strong, confident form looming above her. His face was chiseled steel.
"There is nothing to be afraid of, Mary, for I am here," Ian said manfully, masterfully. He looked down at her with his one good cold blue domineering eye.
Mary. He had used her name. He did know it after all. Then magically, wonderfully, he bent over and brushed a lock of her ethereal hair from her cheek. Moving slowly, he planted a kiss on her flawless forehead.
She couldn't restrain herself. "Oh sir, oh sir!" she cried.
He held her brusquely in his arms...
"Mary?"
Someone rapped on her door and slid their key in. It was the return of the loony janitor.
"What do you want?" Mary asked hoarsely.
"I forgot to mention something," he said, poking his head in.
"What?"
"I forgot to tell you that the openings at the museum have some really nice ethnic food." He was leaning into the room, into the dark, with his hand on the knob.
"Yeah? I'm not a fan of ethnic food-"
"And you might want to bring your boyfriend-"
Mary snatched her briefcase from the corner of her desk. She crammed a pile of papers into it, then the journal she'd been pretending to read.
This was it. Time to lie and make up an imaginary boyfriend, but she didn't speak fast enough.
"-or anyone else," he added happily, when she hadn't responded affirmatively to the boyfriend probe.
A door down the hall shut. Someone was leaving their office late, whistling. Their heels clicked on the linoleum.
"I've got to go," Mary said. The grinning, stooped janitor shuffled backward into the hall.
"Don't worry, Thomas, I keep telling you these things have a way of working out," Ian McKensie said, strolling up. He clapped the custodian on the back and jogged off.
"I think it has!" cried Thomas with glee. "You won't believe it! I'll tell you everything tomorrow night at the opening!"
"Okay!" Ian called. "There's nothing I like better than sampling ethnic food. And the exhibit sounds interesting!"
Mary stepped out of her office in time to see Ian's retreating back. Harris Tweed jacket. Then nothing.
He'd gone to the elevators. Damnation. She flew after him without glancing back at th
e big happy custodian.
She heard the elevator ding its arrival. Her arms pumped. Her briefcase struck her thigh repeatedly. She had to get to the elevator fast. It was a chance to ride down alone with Ian. She'd be able to say that she was going to the opening, too. She'd be able to claim she liked ethnic food. Maybe smiling at the janitor hadn't been a complete disaster if it meant she could be at a social gathering with Ian.
She dashed down the hall, running headlong. Stupid heels. Stupid tight skirt. And how much of that rat had she gotten out of her hair? She thrust the hair at the sides of her head backward, felt where the hunk was, and tried to cover it.
She turned the corner.
The space in front of the elevators was empty. Where was Ian? She spun around. An elevator one floor below banged closed. Mary heard a faint humming.
Ian went down and away.
Damnation. Tripled.
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THE END
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Genuine Aboriginal Democracy