“It is?” Josephine stared in the beveled mirror. “Jules, where did you get this marvelous thing?”
“Yes, Jules,” Ashton said, “where’d you get it? Tell the girl.”
“I don’t remember,” Julian said.
“There you go,” Ashton said. “He doesn’t remember. So what do you say? Can she have the red beret you found somewhere and haven’t parted with in a decade?”
Like it was even a question.
Josephine nearly skipped in place. With a grateful smile, her adorned head tilted, her fingers splayed, she did a two-step, a shim-sham, twirled around, swiveled her hips, and sang a few lines of the chorus of “Who’s Got the Pain” from Damn Yankees.
Ashton, his light blue eyes dipped in indigo, gave Julian a long anxious stare soaked with question, unease, and, for some reason, despair.
“Let’s go,” Julian said, grabbing his keys.
Josephine looked Julian over as they got ready to walk out, at his starched gray-check shirt, gray khakis, black suede Mephistos, tailored greige sports jacket. “Julian, we’re going into the mountains after my callback.”
“Yes, so?”
“Well, you’ve put on your teacher uniform again, not your mountain climbing gear.”
“Oh, you’re adorable, Josephine, to think that’s a uniform,” Ashton said, stepping between her and Julian. Forcefully he shook his head to underscore his words. “That’s not a uniform, dear girl. It’s a costume.”
“ARE YOUR SHOES AT LEAST COMFORTABLE?” JOSEPHINE asked him in the Greek parking lot after the callback. Her outcries of woe killed it, she said—because of the lucky beret.
Julian didn’t know how to answer her. All his shoes were comfortable. Comfort was his MO. “Why, is it a long way where you’re taking me?”
“It’s up a mountain.” She poked him. “You want to back out?”
“Who said? No, I’m in. Maybe you should’ve asked Ashton. He loves to do that stuff.”
Josephine fell quiet as the sun played footsies with the sparkles on the rattlesnake weed. “I don’t think he would’ve said yes. He didn’t seem too friendly. I don’t think he likes me.”
“Of course he does.” Julian deflected since he wasn’t sure what had been up with Ashton. “He was off his game. He’s not a morning person.”
They began their uphill climb through the loamy sand in which juniper and spruce grew and eucalyptus was profuse. Josephine was in front of him. Flame trees turned everything to fire. The jacaranda and the pink silk trees looked and smelled like cotton candy and made Julian feel he was in a sweet blooming garden full of redbuds and desert willows and lemon-scented gums. He wanted to point out to her their bright and gaudy surroundings, but what if her response was, yes, sure a garden, but what kind of garden is it, Julian, Eden or Gethsemane?
What was wrong with him? Gethsemane!
As he was thinking of something less idiotic to say (frankly, anything would be less idiotic to say), there was a rock in his way, and he tripped over it. She was too fast for him. He could barely keep up, while she was practically sprinting through the peppergrass. It was hard to flirt walking up a steep hill on uneven terrain in a single file. He tried (not very hard) to keep his eyes off the smooth white backs of her slender thighs. His gaze kept traveling to her lower back, bared above the waist of her shorts. He wanted to dazzle her with his knowledge of blessed thistle and golden fleece, of Indian milkweed and fragrant everlasting, of the perennial live-forevers, but he couldn’t breathe and dazzle at the same time.
She returned to him, fanning herself with the red beret. “Julian Cruz,” Josephine said, one hand on her hip, “come on, a little more hell for leather. We have less than fifteen minutes.”
Hell for leather? “I didn’t know there was a deadline.”
“There’s always a deadline. You should know that, Professor Daily Newsletter. I know you’re a novice at walking …”
“I’m not a novice at walking.”
“We have until noon,” she said. “And then it will be gone.”
“What will? The sun? The mountains?”
“You think you’re clever, but you’ll see. If we miss it, that’s it. Tomorrow you’ll have a million things to do, and I have my Mountain Dew shoot. Yeah, they called while I was at the Greek. If I get this Dante gig, that’ll be two for two. I don’t know what’s happening,” she said. “I haven’t gotten two jobs in a row in like never.” The beret went back on her head.
“Maybe I’m your good luck charm,” he said. “Lucky hat, lucky Julian.”
“No time for chit-chat, Mr. Talisman—spit-spot.” In her combat boots, she disappeared up ahead, around a cottonwood.
“If we miss it, we could definitely come back another day,” he said after her. “I’m not saying we’re going to miss it—”
“We’re going to keep coming back day after day because you can’t hurry up today?” she called back. “What makes you think you’re going to be able to hurry up tomorrow?”
“I’m hurrying. I’m running uphill.”
“What you’re doing is called self-paced running,” Josephine said. “That’s another phrase for walking.” Ahead of him, she continued to scoff and mutter. “I can tell you work from home. People who work from home have absolutely no sense of urgency. They never have to be anywhere. It’s always dope-dee-doe.”
“I’m not dope-dee-doeing.” Julian huffed, wanting to tell her he didn’t only work from home, he also worked out. And drove all around L.A., loading and unloading trucks full of heavy things, and taught a class. Suddenly he wanted to tell her everything.
Josephine was barely flushed when they made it to the crest. “How you doing, cowboy? Hanging in there?” She smiled. She was flushed enough.
All he could do was pant. “Where are you taking me?”
“To show you magic.”
Pushing through the brush, they went off trail until they reached some scrubby silver dollar gums and a lonely laurel fig. She was happy, open-mouthed, panting, wiping her wavy hair away from her damp forehead. “It’s going to be amazing today, I can feel it,” she said. “Look how sunny it is.”
He saw. It was blindingly sunny. They swirled around in a 360, taking in the view. Miles of Los Angeles valley simmered below. They were high in the hills, floating in the shivering air, soaring above the vast spaces where people lived. The ocean in the westerly distance was in a mist, downtown L.A. a haze of matchbox towers. All the roads with a million white houses and a million palm trees led to the sea. Up here, the air was thinner, the oxygen weaker. It was time for nosebleeds and birds of paradise and whispering bells. The summer flora was blooming, the mustang mint and golden currant vivid in the high noon sun. There was a smile on her lips and thunder in his heart. He knew there was magic in these hills. All he wanted to do was kiss her.
She sucked in her breath, a bird of paradise herself, a whispering bell. “We’re standing above the fault in the earth called Benedict Canyon,”