The Understory (31 page)

“Do you like him?” Cooper abruptly asked his mother, who had walked over to Sonny’s cage.

“Who?” she said.

But Cooper could tell she knew. The room was starting to get crowded. “Martin,” he said.

Claire broke eye contact with Sonny, and said, “Yes. I like him.”

After a long silence, Cooper spoke. “He probably doesn’t even like baseball.”

There was nothing she could say after that, and Cooper knew it. He suddenly felt sorry for his mom, who was now looking to a small green bird for guidance, and he added an eight year old’s version of a peace offering. “Whatever,” he said.

The silence returned. Neither Cooper nor Claire knew how they were going to exit that room. Cooper finally said, “There’s just one sun, right?” He needed to make sure he hadn’t missed something in science class. He needed to make sure the same sun that hung in his Arizona sky also hung over the Amazon.

“Just one,” a smiling Claire confirmed as she forced her way out of the room.

“Okay,” Cooper whispered as she walked away, but he suddenly knew that not even one uniting sun could bring together two people that far apart. His dad wouldn’t be there, and no stupid book or wishful thinking could create magic when it didn’t exist.

He stared once again at the bare wall, with no trace of the sun, no glimmer of Hope, no physical proof that his dad even knew he was there.

Magic was officially dead. The signs were everywhere.

Cooper turned to leave, and as he put one foot in front of the other, he felt older with each step. One.
Goodbye birthday dream.
Two.
Goodbye magic.
Three.
Goodbye da—

“Miss you,” Sonny suddenly squawked.

Cooper froze, unable to believe his own ears. But the words were there. They resonated longer than usual, and they seemed somehow clearer. Cooper turned back to look at Sonny, and then, without any real logical thought, more like a compulsion, he went to the closet and took out a box.

He had a lot of work to do.

And with Sonny watching from afar, he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to give his dad a preview of what lay ahead.

Tomorrow we’re gonna find It.

Together.

“I
t’s beautiful,” was all Story could say when she called to thank Hans for the treasure box. She now had an official, full-blown relationship with Hans’s answering machine, and she thought maybe, if she kept her distance and kept her big mouth shut, she and her machine-boyfriend might just make it. Even Story, failure extraordinaire, thought she could effectively date an answering machine. Thirty-second conversations and random blinking didn’t sound all that different from other dates she’d had.

But dating Hans was another thing entirely, and Story knew it was unlikely she’d ever get the chance.
He’s probably fixing some pretty, soft-spoken girl right now as I leave this dumbass message,
she thought.
He’s probably laughing at the very idea of having temporarily fallen for me—a potty-mouthed criminal of a girl trying to find redemption in the Amazon jungle.

“Thank you. It’s beautiful,” she repeated into the phone. “I . . . don’t know what to say.” She laughed at the notion of being speechless. “I know. Shocker.” She thought about saying all sorts of things—how talented and wonderful he was, how stupid she was, how sorry she was—but as a tribute to Hans, she kept it brief and honest. “Miss you.”

After hanging up, she finished packing, and put last-minute touches on her big plans for the next day’s adventure. She placed the treasure box near the bed where she could see it, and as she let her hand slide over the tiny grooves in the carved tree on top, it felt bittersweet to Story: It would be the last thing she touched before sleep.

Nervousness settled in her stomach as she thought about what was at stake. It was the eve of a big battle, and she needed to win this one—not just for her, but for all of them. She wanted Claire and Cooper to find something worth believing in. She wanted Martin to find the man he used to be. And for herself? Just once, she wanted to taste success.

Exhausted, Story took off her clothes and, too tired to put on pajamas, collapsed into bed. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she fell into a deep sleep and soon, she slipped into a dream—something about questions and Ivy and failing ballroom dancing. A little bell dinged.

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

It took Story three real
dings
to realize it was her doorbell. After looking at the clock, which read 11:22 p.m., she sprang out of bed and instinctively grabbed her robe. Still half-asleep, a groggy Story pondered who could be at her door.
Maybe Mom paid someone to befriend me again
, she thought.
Maybe Ivy’s tendrils have grown so long they’ve come to strangle me. But why would they ring the doorbell?
Or worse.
Maybe the police realized I was, indeed, a danger to society and they’re here to arrest me. Again.

But when she opened the door, she saw the ultimate door prize: a Greek god bathed in moonlight. Was he really standing there? She rubbed her eyes to make sure. Yes. He had followed the small path that led to her door, and he was standing there, silent and strong. Why was he wearing jeans and a white T-shirt? Shouldn’t he be wrapped in a sheet or something? And in her fog, Story then thought it might be Prince Charming.
Where’d he park his horse?

If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

But as soon as the cool night air touched her skin, Story fully awoke and realized who stood before her. They stared at each other for several long seconds before Story broke the silence. “Did you get my message? I . . . I’m such a jackass.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Tomorrow is . . .” She paused to gather the strength required for guarded honesty, but abandoned it.
Who am I kidding? Tomorrow changes other people, but not me, not completely. But I can be better than I am today.

She could tell that for Hans, tomorrow was just another day in the rainforest. He was more concerned with the right now. Without saying a word, he took her hand and placed something in it, and the feather-light feel of it made her stomach flutter. When she looked down at her hand, she saw a tiny wooden machete carved with precision. Perfect for cutting one’s way through a dense forest. Perfect for finding magic.

She grasped the small machete firmly between her thumb and index finger, then held it up in the night sky and let moonlight flood around its shape, revealing the exact lines Hans had carved.
This story just got really interesting. Breathe. Okay. Don’t ruin this. Just appreciate the fact that you’ve received a really beautiful tool from a really handsome handyman who happens to think you deserve it. If this were some cheesy romantic comedy, Hans would say he made it with love, and I would say I know, looking super hot in my super-hot . . .
She looked down.
Terry cloth robe? F-word.

But he
did
make it with love. That was evident—not from the fine craftsmanship, which clearly existed in the piece of carved art that lay before her, but from the look in his eyes. When Story got the nerve to look deep into them, he stepped toward her, took her in his arms, and kissed her with a sense of urgency that made Story tense up for a moment. But when she breathed in his smell, she let herself melt into him. Hans showed no signs of ending the kiss, and as Story felt her body pulse with heat, she wondered if he could feel her heart pounding. She tried to slow down her heartbeat, tried not to give away how he made her body do things without her consent, but she knew she could not control her heart.

There was a slight hesitation on Hans’s part, as if he didn’t want to enter through Story’s door without her approval, and once again, they found themselves standing on a threshold, blessed by the moon.

Story knew that men as attractive as Hans didn’t have to try that hard to bed a woman, but what she didn’t know was that of all his past sexual encounters, this was the first time his hands felt this secure. Still, she sensed he was taking a risk, and that this risk was somehow part of his journey—this she understood firsthand. To show her gratitude, she instinctively took his hands in hers. After inspecting them for the magic she suspected they held, she discovered they weren’t magic at all, but mere tools to carry out the tasks of a magic man.

Overwhelmed that she was the one he wanted to be with, a fleeting thought—more a feeling—swept through her. She was getting something right. She was getting
this
right.

And nothing else before this had ever really been okay.

She switched her focus from herself to the man in front of her. Vulnerable, she placed his hands around the small of her back, then draped her hands around his neck, and waited.

Right then, Hans, the man, knew that Story, the woman, understood the difference between being saved and being lifted up. Suddenly, so did he.

And so Hans Turner lifted Story Easton across the threshold of what used to be, and into the story that was meant to be.

As soon as they were in the house, Hans kicked the door shut behind him, and in one swift movement, lifted Story up onto the entryway table and placed her between three short story anthologies and a short stack of paperbacks from the Phoenix Public Library. The sound of the slamming door lingered in the air as Hans secured Story’s position, then stopped, looking at his hands as if he’d never seen them before. He turned them over, back over again, and then let out a small breath of surprise, as if they’d been cured of some painful disease. He glanced over at the door, and when he looked back at Story, she noticed a new calmness in his eyes. With this new hope settled deep inside him, he greeted Story, for the first time, without the fear of losing her.

From that moment on, the touch of his hands escalated to an unearthly status. As he gently explored her face with his new hands, she felt jealous of what she imagined was in his bag of magic tricks—tiny eggs, rainbow scarves, silver coins—all of them getting touched, over and over and over again, by those hands.

When he began to kiss her neck, she held her breath for a moment, for fear she’d let out some sort of primal groan. A wave now undulated somewhere deep in her belly, fluttering inside her as if she was teetering at the apex of a roller-coaster, preparing for a downward spiral.

Hans removed his hands from her face and slipped them underneath her white terry cloth robe. As moonlight flooded through a small window in the front door, Hans saw hints of Story’s lacy black bra lying against her skin, now warm and pink. As she watched Hans react, Story was grateful for having on matching bra and panties, a rare and lucky event.
Thank you
, she said to the gods of undergarment planning,
for not letting me do my laundry for two weeks.

As if he were opening an extraordinary present he never expected to receive, Hans peeled the robe away from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Story trembled a bit when he put his hands on her waist and pulled her closer to him. But for her, it still wasn’t close enough. He was really there, in the flesh, and she wanted no distance between them. She wrapped her bare legs around his waist, drawing him even closer, and she heard him let out a soft moan as one of his hands slid over her hips and eventually made its way to her inner thigh. He’d had to push her away from him a bit in order to complete his magic trick, but Story felt more than compensated.

The logistics of what happened next eluded Story. As he kissed a tender part of her neck she never knew existed, Hans took his time to thoroughly explore all of her with a gentle and steady hand, and Story realized she had not been at the rollercoaster’s apex earlier, because she was there now. Teetering. And then she fell.

Sweet.

Sweet.

Success.

After a giant whimper, Story had no choice but to whisper, breathless, “Thank you,” and then she added a faint, “God . . .” unsure if she should continue to speak out loud.
He should insure those hands. I’ll pay the premium.

Hans smiled at her,
You’re welcome
in his eyes. Then Story led Hans down a hallway lined with bookshelves teeming with first lines, and finally, to her bedroom, where the real treasure lay, and then thanked him in her own special way.