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I set down my knife and planted my hands on my hips. It was time to take a break anyway; the onions had started to make my eyes water something fierce. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked, blinking the tears away. I knew better than to let my fingers get anywhere near my face.
Archie’s broad little nose scrunched. “I’m a man stuck in a cat’s body. What do you think?”
Well, he had a point there. Still, I wished he’d leave me to my chopping. I’d been working off some of my antipathy toward Lilith Black by whacking onions, celery, carrots, and mushrooms into neat little chunks, and I didn’t feel like having a verbal sparring match with a cat.
I glanced at the clock on the stove. “Well, it’s almost two o’clock. Isn’t it time for your afternoon nap?”
The look he shot me then was one of sheer annoyance. “I don’t nap until two-thirty.”
“Sorry — it’s hard for me to keep it all straight when you sleep twenty hours out of twenty-four.”
My remark seemed to be the final straw for him, because he sent me a malevolent glare before disappearing down the hallway. I’m sure that there were some who would advise me to be patient with Archie, that he’d suffered a great deal and needed to be treated with kindness and forbearance.
Maybe so…but those people had never been forced to live with him.
Cat dispelled for the moment, I returned to my vegetables. Soon enough, they had all been added to the big stockpot I already had simmering gently on a back burner, and I could push one more task over into the “finished” column.
Speaking of which….
Since the soup would keep going the entire afternoon, I left the kitchen and headed into my office. Luckily, Archie was nowhere in sight; he sometimes liked to sleep on the rug in the guest bathroom, and I had a feeling that was where he’d gone.
I’d already made some notes for the ritual, and had decided that although many people celebrated Litha — the pagan midsummer holiday — with ceremonies at noon when the sun would be highest in the sky, I knew that most people attending would much prefer a bonfire…and would also prefer to avoid the searing heat of summer midday in Arizona. Since a fire was also a traditional way of celebrating the solstice, I’d decided on a big bonfire that I’d keep burning until dawn. I’d attended a ceremony like that on the beach, once upon a time. When the sun rose, we’d all made our wishes and affirmations for the coming months, and then jumped over the bonfire’s coals to seal our intentions. It had been truly magical, and I wanted to do the same thing this time. Most likely, the vast majority of the attendees would decamp long before dawn, but for anyone with the stamina to last through the night, it should be just as memorable for them as it had been for me that time in Malibu.
Because I’d wanted to avoid any awkwardness between us, I’d already texted Chuck earlier that day to let him know what I was thinking of and if he had any recommendations for places where I could get a good supply of firewood. He’d responded almost immediately, letting me know that he had a huge stockpile at the ranch and that I didn’t need to go looking for any wood to buy.
And when I offered to pay him, he refused. Politely, but I could tell he didn’t want me to keep shooting down his offers of help. My feelings were so muddled on the topic of Chuck Langdon that I honestly didn’t know whether he was still trying to impress me, or whether he just was that nice and I needed to get over myself.
I’d decided to limit the number of tickets to one hundred even. The location I’d be using would probably accommodate more, but that seemed like a decent sized group without getting out of hand. Also, because I planned to make the refreshments myself, I wouldn’t get too overwhelmed by trying to feed an army.
No, I wasn’t going to go crazy. I’d make honey cakes — a traditional Litha treat — and have platters of fresh fruit, symbolizing summer’s bounty. Nonalcoholic punch with fruit, and sparkling water, and also platters of cheese and meat, just because honey cakes, while tasty, didn’t have a lot of staying power. It wasn’t as though I planned to have a full-on luau with a roast pig or anything like that. But I wanted to provide something for my guests, if only to say thank-you for the way they’d traveled so far afield to attend my solstice ritual.
Even though I hadn’t planned for things to be too elaborate, my shopping list was getting longer and longer. And because I knew I had to be at Once in a Blue Moon the next morning to hand out tickets, I realized I needed to do my shopping now.
I gathered up my list, called out, “Archie, I’m going to the store!” and collected my purse from the entry table on the way out the door. No response from the cat…not that I’d really been expecting one. He seemed to view anything I did that wasn’t in pursuit of a cure for his curse as a personal affront, and there wasn’t much I could do to fix that attitude. I honestly had been researching his problem, but it was slow going, and not exactly the sort of thing I could do twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
A blast of hot air met me as soon as I opened the back door to the building. I held back a frown and hoped that the mythical monsoons would be early this year. My duplex back in West Los Angeles had only been about a mile and a half from the beach, and I’d never had to struggle with heat like this before, except on those extremely rare occasions when the wind changed direction and blew hot desert winds across the L.A. basin.
I hoped I’d get used to Arizona summers…eventually.
But because of the little carport/sunshade pavilion Josie’s nephew Brett had helped me set up, at least my Beetle had been shielded from the worst of the sun’s blast, and the A/C kicked in right away. By the time I got to the Walmart at the western edge of town, I was almost comfortable.
Or rather, I would have been comfortable…if I hadn’t spotted Calvin’s big white Durango with the tribal police logo on the side, heading right toward me.
My heart began pounding a mile a minute, but I told myself I needed to be cool. After all, we were just passing each other in a parking lot. Perfectly normal.
I caught of glimpse of him inside the SUV, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, hair pulled back into its usual ponytail, and I had to grip the steering wheel to force myself to keep going down the aisle I’d chosen. No way of telling whether he’d spotted me or not; my VW Beetle was pretty distinctive, but his gaze had apparently been fixed straight ahead, and that single glimpse wasn’t enough to allow me to see whether he’d had any kind of a reaction.
And then the moment was gone. Someone in a shabby old Toyota Camry began to pull out of a space directly ahead of me, and I had to jam on my brakes to avoid crashing into their rear bumper.
Shaking, I took the place the Camry had just occupied and sat behind the wheel for a moment, doing my best to regain my composure. In all the weeks since Calvin had ghosted me, that was the first time I’d actually seen him, unless you could count the one or two times his Durango had gone past on Broad Street just outside my shop.
So what?I asked myself.It’s Sunday, and he needed to go shopping. This wasn’t two ships passing in the night. It was just…errands. Get yourself together.
Good advice. I pulled in a bracing breath, then adjusted my sunglasses and walked as quickly as I could to the front entrance of the store, grabbed a shopping cart, and headed inside.
Since it was a Sunday afternoon, the place was packed. Most of the time, I tried to do my shopping at off hours, a luxury I could afford myself since I had the ability to close up my shop pretty much any time I wanted and take an hour off.
But with the various deadlines for my solstice celebration looming, I didn’t have that option today. I had to just suck it up and get the job done.
