Falling for June: A Novel Page 6

  She had said much more in their brief talk, he knew, but these were the words that had echoed in David Hadley’s mind as he stood on the ledge, watching her drop away into the fog. And now he had to know how it felt: falling like that, rushing toward certain death, then choosing at the very last second with the pull of a cord to live. And, like everyone else, including the newspapers, he also had to know why.

  If there was a positive side to his new obsession, it was that David no longer thought about suicide. Nor did he stop at the liquor store on his way home ever again. Instead he would walk to the library after work and spend evenings with his face pressed close to the blue screen of the microfiche machine, searching for a picture or a name. There were several prior jumps reported in the newspapers—one from the Space Needle, after the painting crew had inadvertently left the roof access hatch unlocked; one from scaffolding on the famed Smith Tower; and another from a communications antenna atop Queen Anne Hill—but no one had a clue as to her identity. Investigators had only recently decided, after several eyewitness accounts and the aid of one hastily shot and grainy tourist photograph, that the jumper was actually a she. Which left them to wildly hypothesize as to why a pair of men’s size-nine boots were left behind at the scene of each jump—with the exception of the most recent one, of course, since David Hadley had those boots sitting now beside his bed.

  He was not proud of it, but because he had no one in his life to hide anything from he was not ashamed either, and each night before going to sleep, David would take the socks from the boots and hold them to his nose as he drifted off to sleep. The fragrance was of wool and leather and a hint of something else too—something subtly sweet that reminded him of summers as a boy. He was not sure why he smelled her socks like this. Many months later, when it was almost too late, he would come to understand that it was because he already loved her. He had resigned himself that day on the roof to falling nine hundred feet to end it all, but he never would have guessed he’d fall much farther in less than the time it took to turn and look into her smiling eyes. All he knew for sure was that he had to find her again.

  An awkward visit to the Seattle police department armed with a poorly concocted lie about an old college friend he was trying to locate landed him the number to a local sketch artist. He went to see her the following day. But although he sat with her in her studio for most of an afternoon, all he seemed able to recall were the stranger’s eyes.

  “And you say you knew her well, huh?” the artist asked.

  “I guess not as well as I thought,” David replied.

  He walked out with a sketch of her eyes floating on a page, a wise and knowing smile without a face. It looked less like a portrait sketch than it did a rendering of a Buddhist symbol someone might have wanted tattooed on his or her arm.

  David would sit in his bed at night, propped up against the headboard with her socks in his lap, holding the sketch before him, staring at the eyes and trying to animate her from his memory upon the page. And as with anyone who looks for any one particular thing long enough and doggedly enough, he eventually came to see not what was there, but what he wanted to be there instead. He saw her so clearly one evening he retrieved a pen and began tracing in the rest of her features. By morning, of course, his sketch looked nothing like the way he remembered her, and he quickly whited the pen lines out, making a promise to himself to only mark it from then on with pencil. Which he did each night as day by day his obsession with finding the Barefoot BASE Jumper grew.

  Being an accountant, he made a spreadsheet outlining what it was he knew about her. She was an expert with a parachute. She had a disregard for the law. She had a thing for men’s shoes. He guessed her age to be close to his own, but of this he was still unsure. She had had tan toes. Tan toes, yes, and three of the toenails were pink, he remembered. He wrote it all down. Anything beyond these general facts, however, he hadn’t any clue. And he seemed to be losing hope of ever learning more. Then late one night, while his list-in-progress rested on his nightstand and her socks rested in his sleeping arms, he woke from a dream and sat bolt upright in his bed.

  “The door was unlocked!”

  Early the next morning he was in the building maintenance office, waving his drawing in front of the super’s face.

  “I know it was you,” he said. “Who else has a key to that stairwell door?”

  “Lots of people do,” the super replied, casually sipping his coffee and looking over the mug’s brim at David with an expression somewhere between curiosity and fear.

  “I’m not with the cops, I promise,” David went on. “And I’m not interested in telling the papers who she is either. I work at Caldwell and Strong on seven, and you can verify that in the directory. Look, here’s my building access card.”

  The super waved the offered card away, reaching instead for a clipboard on the desk and holding it out for David to see.

  “This here’s the list of everyone with keys to that door. You can see yourself there’s two dozen companies. Whoever your Daredevil Dolly turns out to be, her little stunt just made my job a lot harder. From here on the locks are changed out and everyone wanting up has to come to me. I hope you find her, fella. And when you do, you tell her I ain’t at all happy. You hear?”

  That was on a Friday. Saturday he found himself at a parachute center housed in a small airport north of Seattle. He spent an hour there harassing the woman who maintained the flight manifest with his drawing. “Sir,” the woman finally said, her patient eyes melting slowly into pools of anger, “the weekend’s our busiest time, and I’m afraid I’ve told you four or five times now: nobody here knows anything about the Barefoot BASE Jumper.”

  Just for good measure, he held the sketch up one last time.

  “You’re sure you don’t recognize her?”

  “Looks a lot like a young Bette Davis to me,” she said. When David sighed, she added, “Or maybe Cybill Shepherd.”

  “Those two don’t even look anything alike,” he said.

  “Hey”—she shrugged—“it’s your drawing, buddy.”

  Another weekend, another parachute center, another disappointment. He was quickly running out of hope. Despite causing him frustration, however, David’s obsession was improving his life. He was out meeting new people, even though it was to harass them with his sketch; he was sleeping more, because dreams were the one place he could clearly see her face; and he was becoming more efficient at his work, if only to be able to leave the office early in order to continue his quest. He even saw his name slowly climbing up the office bonus board for the first time. But none of this mattered to David. All he could think about was finding her.

  But not even the strongest of attractions can be maintained in a vacuum, and as the scent faded from her socks, his enthusiasm for the search began to wane. He found himself feeling lonely again, spending long evenings cooped up in his apartment with only the TV for company. He had replayed his rooftop conversation with her in his head a thousand times, recalling the promise she had extracted from him to give himself another chance. And it was this promise that kept the thought of suicide from crossing his mind again. But he was sinking into a depression just the same.

  Then one evening he saw an ad for the local humane society on TV, and he began to cry. He wasn’t quite sure why; maybe he saw himself in the sad puppy’s eyes. The next day, a Saturday in early June, David was driving home from having his first colonoscopy—which had left him feeling more than a little vulnerable, even though the prognosis had been all clear—when he passed by the humane society and recognized its sign from the commercial. He pulled over and went inside. The dozens of sad faces staring out at him from their cages immediately overwhelmed him. No way could he do it, he told himself. No way could he be responsible for another living creature. He could hardly take care of himself and he knew it. But he also knew that his shrinking from anything that resembled responsibility had been a
recurring theme for him since the day his father had died.

  The woman at the front desk looked defeated when he told her he had changed his mind. So defeated in fact that David asked if there might be some way other than adoption that he could help. He had meant something along the lines of a financial donation, and had even taken out his checkbook, but much to his surprise, she waved the check away and asked him if he had a driver’s license instead. And so he began his days as a doggy driver, taxiing terriers and chauffeuring shih tzus all over the city, logging long hours each weekend on the road, delivering the little yapping companions to new, if sometimes temporary, homes. He hated it, or so he claimed. But in truth it was the best thing to ever happen to him.

  He would address the little faces in his rearview mirror as they looked out through the bars of their carrier doors. “You want to listen to the radio?” he’d ask. “Do you prefer classical or jazz? Neither? Okay, stop barking. I turned it off.” He went as far north as the Canadian border, and as far south as Portland, and even though he was loath to admit it, he began to look forward to these drives, and to his furry companions, finding it more and more difficult each time to say good-bye. Then one day a doggy delivery forever changed his life.

  It was on a Friday, the fourth of July, when he left the office to pick up a cocker spaniel, having no idea that he would not return to his job for several weeks. He picked up his yapping companion and drove it south to Puyallup, fighting traffic to reach his destination before the fireworks began. Arriving at the puppy’s new home, he lingered for just a moment in the foyer, being welcomed by the licks of a half dozen dogs, when he once again laid eyes on the face he had been dreaming about all this time. He walked without a word into the kitchen and stood staring into those smiling eyes.

  The flyer was hung from the refrigerator by a fruit magnet, and it read: “Even racehorses deserve a happy retirement.” It was an advertisement for an animal rescue called Echo Glen, and in the picture on the flyer she had her arm around the neck of a horse as it ate grain from the palm of her hand.

  David reached into his pocket for his wallet and pulled out the worn and tattered sketch he had carried with him all this time. He unfolded it and held it up. Yes, he thought, if nothing else, he had in fact captured her smiling eyes.

  “It’s lovely work they do up there at Echo Glen,” the homeowner said, appearing beside David at the refrigerator. “And it’s not just horses. They rescue dogs, cats, goats, and all sorts of other animals too. Have you been out there yet?”

  “Do you know who she is?” David asked.

  “Of course,” the woman said. “Everyone knows June.”

  June. So that was her name. June. June. June. Yes, it even sounded right.

  “May I take this?” David asked, reaching and pulling the flyer free from its magnet without even waiting for a response.

  He drove home beneath the colorful bursts of fireworks, but he hardly saw them at all; his heart was bursting with an excitement brighter still. He was half tempted to keep going when he reached Seattle and drive to the address on the flyer, but he decided against it and spent a near-sleepless night in his bed, reaching countless times for the lamp so he could pick up the flyer and look again at her face.

  The next morning he was up before dawn and in the freeway fast lane, heading north out of the city. In the seat next to him he had the flyer and a map. When he finally arrived at Echo Glen, the gates were open, but he hesitated in the street with his blinker on, too nervous to turn up the drive and too committed to turn back. But as so often happens, fate made the decision for him in the form of a honking lumber truck barreling down on him in his rearview mirror. He turned in and drove through the gates.

  It was a beautiful property, with gorgeous orchards and sweeping fields cut through by a clear mountain creek. The road turned at a fence line and led him up past barns and stables to a circular drive at the end of which stood the house. He took a deep breath, climbed the steps to the porch, and rapped on the door. He must have stood there for a long time; he must have felt his courage draining away with each unanswered knock. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, he thought. Maybe she wouldn’t want to see him.

  He was returning to his car when he heard voices from beyond one of the barns. Deciding he’d come too far to turn back so easily, he went to investigate. When he rounded the corner, his heart leaped in his chest. But yours would have too.

  Beyond the barn was a barren circle of dirt and in the center of the circle stood a man on fire. The man was staggering about like a fire-engulfed zombie, helicoptering his flaming arms. But he was not alone. There were other people circled around him, watching. Watching, but not helping.

  David rushed into the circle, stripping off his coat as he pushed through the idle spectators and wrapping it around the burning man to smother the flames. It was a heroic image, the two of them embracing there in the dirt circle with flames licking up between them. Then someone tackled David to the ground and he heard the hollow whoooosh of a fire extinguisher. Then someone yelled, “What’s hot?” And he heard the reply, “Nothing. Nothing. I’m fine.” And then someone was pulling him to his feet and shaking him by the shoulders, asking, “Are you crazy, comrade?”

  David could smell gasoline and his own burned hair. He was standing in the center of the circle and all eyes were on him. Slowly, very slowly, the way a Polaroid picture might develop, he began to see what was happening.

  The man who had been on fire was peeling off his protective clothing and mask. Men beside him held fire extinguishers. The rest of the group stood staring at David with smug, satisfied expressions, as if they were enjoying his discomfort—looks David recognized from decades ago when he was in school; looks that could have only belonged to students.

  “What were you thinking, comrade?”

  The man asking him the question had a firm grip on David’s shoulders and was looking right into his eyes. He was tall and thin, with dark eyes and dark skin. He spoke with a slight accent. David thought he might have been Mexican, but he was Spanish.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” David said. “I just saw someone on fire and I acted.”

  The man appeared as if he were about to chastise David, but then he caught himself with his mouth half open and cocked his head, as if considering David’s answer. Then he smiled. “You know, comrade, that’s a satisfactory answer. Most satisfactory.” He released his grip on David’s shoulders and reached up to take his face in his hands, just for the briefest of moments. It felt like a sign of affection to David. Then the man turned and addressed the gawking crowd. “Students, what you have witnessed here was courage in action. Action devoid of thought. The body and the mind fused into one. You have seen displayed the very nature of what I have been teaching you.”

  The students all began to nod, as if they’d known this all along. There were nearly a dozen of them, mostly men, with a few women sprinkled in, and they all looked to be half David’s age. The young man who had been on fire was just getting his last leg out of the burn suit, and he stepped over and shook David’s hand.

  “That took real courage, dude. Sorry about your jacket.”

  David looked down and saw his coat smoldering on the ground. “Oh, it’s fine,” he said. “That old thing.”

  “Students,” the instructor said, “you’ve seen true bravery, a rare thing in this world. Now, please help me welcome our new student.”

  “It was nothing, really,” David said, blushing. “Wait. Me? A student?”

  The instructor stuck out his hand. “I’m Sebastian.”

  “Okay. Yes. Sure. Hello. I’m David.”

  Sebastian’s handshake was firm but friendly, and he didn’t immediately release David’s hand. Instead, he held on to it and said, “There can be no indifference between courageous men such as us. We will either be great enemies or good friends.”

  David had no idea at the time just
how true this statement would become. All he knew was that he was very, very confused.

  “But for now,” Sebastian went on, “we are student and teacher. Come with me and we will get your paperwork sorted out.” Then he turned to address the students again. “Practice your high falls, but keep an eye on one another. We’ll be back en un momento.”

  Before David could even protest, Sebastian put an arm around his shoulder and led him away toward a trailer. “It’s nice to have a mature student,” he said once they were inside and sitting down across from one another at the small desk. “The others will look up to you. Especially after your fiery entrance.”

  David looked around the cramped trailer. There were diagrams and drawings of falling dummies and choreographed fights and detailed car crashes covering the walls. Sebastian opened a desk drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to David, but David declined. Sebastian shrugged and lit one himself. “We had begun to worry you wouldn’t show, like the others,” he said, blowing out smoke. “It means a lot to the camp and the sanctuary that you’ve come. We need the press desperately to help us raise money.”

  “I’m sorry,” David said, “but I seem to be a little confused. Do you happen to know the woman who runs the animal rescue? Echo Glen, I mean.” He pulled the flyer out of his pocket and unfolded it on the table. “Her,” he said, tapping his finger on the picture. “Do you know June?”

  Sebastian took a drag from his cigarette. The way he had his elbow on the table and his cigarette held up near his head looked very European to David, if not a little pretentious. He barely glanced at the flyer. “But of course I know June,” he said. “How could I not?” Then his eyes hardened and his face dropped into a frown, as if he had suddenly tasted something sour. “I can see that you’re like every other newspaperman, chasing the easy headline. Too good to talk with me I suppose. You only want June because she’s the one in the Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame.” He took another drag, then leaned forward and blew smoke out his nose as he spoke. “I will be inducted someday, comrade. You can bet your lousy newspaper career on that.”