Susan Kirby - Love Sign

“Shall I bring in your things, or do you want a ride back to town?” asked Jake, returning.

“Are you sure I won’t be in the way?” Shelby asked.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“I can see you’re a busy man. I won’t be a pest,” she promised.

Jake smiled and excused himself and returned moments later with her belongings. “This way.”

Shelby let go the last vestiges of convention and trekked after him through the kitchen and dining room. Their footsteps fell to a whisper on the rose carpet that spanned the staircase. The woodwork was dark, the walls embossed, the decor turn-of-the-century elegant, though with a nice splash of modern graces.

The guest room at the top of the landing was spacious and homey with quilts and lace curtains and woven rugs. Shelby circled the room, absorbing it with an appreciative glance that didn’t escape Jake. “My mother would love this. She works with Harbor House, restoring old houses for low-income families,” she said.

“And your father?”

“He is a plastic surgeon.”

“I’ll bet even he couldn’t put a pretty face on this day,” said Jake in open sympathy.

“I should have seen it coming,” she murmured, then flushed at his confusion. “Oh! You mean the car.”

He nodded. “What’d you think?”

Patrick. She thought he meant Patrick. Embarrassed, Shelby averted her face.

“Can I get you anything?” asked Jake.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said, gripping her pocketbook.

“Okay. I need to be going. But if you need anything, my sister Paula is out back in the shop,” Jake told her.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thank you, Mr. Jackson.”

“Glad to help,” he said, and stopped in the door to look back. “And make that Jake.”

“Jake,” Shelby amended, meeting his gaze. His smiling eyes begged descriptive notation: Pale tropical waters splashing at sun-browned banks.

No wastrel of words, Shelby filed the line away for literary use. She rubbed her throbbing temples, slipped out of her platform sandals and stretched out on the bed. It was plush and cozy and comforting. But she couldn’t relax. She hadn’t in days. Locking her hands behind her head, she invited a story line to wander in and make order of her muddled thoughts. But before she could conjure up any story characters a slim, attractive, auburn-haired woman in a cotton shirt and jeans knocked at the open door.

“You must be Shelby. Don’t get up. Just popped in to say hi.” A smiled warmed her face. “There’s ham and fruit in the refrigerator. Help yourself when you get hungry.”

“That’s kind of you, thank you, but I’ll get something out.”

“There is no ‘out.’ Except Newt’s Market, and you’ll soon tire of that. I’m Paula Blake, by the way. Jake’s sister.”

“He mentioned you,” Shelby said. She introduced herself.

“Jake says you write and edit and all sorts of interesting things,” Paula continued amiably. “Excuse me while I get that.”

Shelby swung her feet off the bed and into her shoes as Paula crossed to the nightstand and the ringing phone.

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation, Joy,” Paula said. “Give Mr. Wiseman a break, would you? No, Dirk can’t come over. I’ll see you at four. I love you. Bye-bye.

“My daughter,” Paula explained, hanging up the phone. “She’s doing some field work over her summer vacation. Or supposed to be. Her boss didn’t pick her up this morning. His van is gone. She can’t reach him on the phone, now she’s conjuring wild scenarios. He’s sick. He’s lost. He’s fallen and can’t get up,” Paula ticked Joy fancies off on her fingers and rolled eyes as blue as Jake’s. “Kids! Now be sure and eat something,” she continued without stopping for breath, and backed out of the door, still talking.

The silence in Paula’s wake was nagging. Shelby found her way to the bathroom, tidied up and went downstairs. She made a sandwich, washed it down with a soda, then returned to her room and set up her laptop. Once upon a time…she told herself, fingers poised and waiting. The anticipated lights did not flash. No icons. No whirring. Just a black screen.

“Come on, come on,” murmured Shelby. “Give me a break. Please?” she muttered. But the screen remained dark and cold. At length, Shelby gave up. She fished pad and pen and dime-store reading glasses from her shoulder bag, took a seat and tried to recall the idea she had had before Patrick pushed the lead domino and brought her well-ordered future tumbling down around her. But her thought screen was as blank as her computer screen.

Shelby grumbled and wandered to the window and hiked it. She tapped folded glasses against the frame. Voilà! As if by design, a girl rode into the alley below, then flung her bicycle down. A skinny, sunburned, straw-haired preteen in cutoff jeans, she pinched off hollyhocks greens with bright-tipped fingernails and left a shredded trail of leaves into Jake’s shop. Moments later, she reappeared with Paula at her heels. Paula turned the girl toward a vegetable patch and gave her a nudge.

“But Mom! I don’t even like vegetables.” The girl’s voice carried through the open window. “Yikes! A bee! I think I’m allergic! Well, I could be. M-o-o-o-m!” she wailed, hands on skinny hips. “Oh, all right! How much are you paying me?”

“A nickel a weed,” Paula said.

“A nickel? Is that all?”

“Make it a penny,” Paula returned.

“Mom!”

“Keep whining, Joy, and you’ll be weeding for free.” Paula retreated into the shop.

Shelby pressed her nose to the window screen and watched Joy flounce over the garden. She plucked a weed here, a weed there, all hop-and-stop energy with no logical system. It was hard to picture a girl like that willingly weeding fields that ran on for acres and acres.

So what made Joy tick? What movements turned behind those eyes and turned-up nose and sullen brow? Shelby played what-if until a distant rumbling broke her concentration. Cool air rose from a vent on the floor below the window. Air-conditioning.

Shelby closed the window, took the chair again and balanced the pad on her knee. An opening sentence trickled across the page to be joined by more words, inserted here and there until it became a nice fat paragraph. She reached for her glasses.

Cranes, crushed cars, trapped book bags and blue-eyed men retreated as a Joy-like girl in frayed shorts and peeling freckles appeared on the lined yellow tablet. A Patrick-like guy took shape beside her. The resemblance startled Shelby from fiction to reality. She hadn’t deliberately chosen him for inspiration. It was automatic. Finger memory, like a pianist’s hands finding the right keys when the pages to a familiar song fluttered shut.

Shelby marked out the Patrick clone and reeled through male acquaintances, seeking hero inspiration elsewhere. None seemed to fit. Again, the Patrick-like character beckoned. Stubbornly resisting, she stirred from her chair and paced to the window. Sunshine glittered off the nearby building, lighting the lettering on the side of the building: Jackson Signs South.

Jake Jackson. He had been kind. Helpful. Patient. A gentleman. The heroics of everyday life. And he had those arresting eyes. Here, here! Her heart might be curled into the fetal position, but she still had her story world. A world with a voracious appetite, it fed indiscriminately on new situations, new people, fresh material to keep her upright and writing. That was the upside of this unsettling, upside down day. “This is the day the Lord has made.”

The snippet of verse ran through Shelby’s head. Not the day she had expected or long anticipated, rather a day marked by adversity. Yet in God’s hands, even shrapnel was a windfall, a deposit, a hedge against creative bankruptcy.