Prelude
She could make smoking a cigarette look elegant, seductive . . . and dangerous even. Chic. Cool. And somehow romantic. Of course she could make anything look good. She appeared taller than she was, standing flat-footed at maybe 5’ 7”. It was probably the shoes. Often those very high skinny heels somehow lifting that lithe, narrow frame. I saw her in the summertime out there against the building with her cigarette, her skin nearly bronze and not one bit unnaturally enhanced. Standing there in the rain of late winter under the generous overhang, well, leaning really, against the coarse white brick of the building, it was almost the color of ivory. So fair. I wondered how she didn’t burn in the summer sun. On the one occasion when I saw her smile in the last year, her teeth were a dazzling white—right out of a toothpaste commercial or a mailer ad from a dentist for the new Zoom 2 whitening method. No smoker’s stain on those pearly whites.
Anyway . . .
That’s basically how the whole thing began. By casually, unintentionally, watching her smoke . . .
One
“Mildred,” Shay called out from the doorway of her office but didn’t see the woman at her ample, organized desk.
The woman was old enough to have such a name but certainly didn’t fit the stereotype her name inferred, at least not to Shay. Mildred went by the full pronunciation of the name, too, unbending to shortening it or using a nickname as Shay had done with hers. She laughed after Shay first hired her when she said she went by Mildred because her middle name was even worse. When she told Shay it was Lucille, Shay couldn’t help but wonder why she thought it worse. Names were what they were—they meant something important to the one who placed them upon a person. Her own name, Shaylen Price, was a melding of her mother’s name Shayna, which her mother repeatedly insisted sounded like the name of a jungle queen’s sister, and that of her father Lenoard with the unusual spelling, aka Lenny. (Lenny invariably teased Shayna, who he called Shaynie, with affectionate Tarzan yells when he was feeling romantic—or so he said. He was a terrible tease.) Shaylen actually liked her full name but went by Shay for simplicity to the few people who really knew her.
“Sorry, dear,” Mildred answered upon seeing Shay surveying the desk from the doorway. “Restroom.” Her need to excuse her absence. “What can I do for you?”
“You want to go to lunch?” she forced out. “We never do that anymore. We can put the calls to voice mail. We’re allowed, don’t you think?” Shay pushed a smile.
Mildred examined the young woman closely but briefly. “Sure, dear. Sounds like fun.” She paused, noting what must be done to secure their suite. “Right now?”
“How ‘bout we leave in . . .” Shay lifted her coffee-bean colored silk blouse sleeve to check her bracelet watch and finished, “a half hour?”
That brought a smile from Mildred. “I’ll be ready then.”
Shay returned to her part of the office behind the rich dark wooden door which always seemed heavy to close over the pale plush carpet. Unless she was having a guest, she never wore her shoes in the office. Mildred always wore her shoes even after Shay gave her the freedom to take them off. Mildred never stooped to wearing slacks of any kind either, and Shay couldn’t help but admire the woman for her innate sophistication—the genuine kind that didn’t happen because you had money to dress well or because you had years of education and cultural background. No, Mildred had simple, unpolluted class. You couldn’t manufacture it—it came from somewhere within you, or it was appointed to you by some supernatural gifting process, she surmised. Shaylen Price hoped she had it too, but wasn’t honestly sure she did. Mildred Lucille Devons was a very special lady assessed through the cloudy grey eyes of Shaylen Price.
A good sign, Mildred thought, that Shay wanted to go out to lunch. It had been a long while since Shay wanted to engage herself again in social interaction. Such a guarded young woman . . . delicate exquisite beauty like a fragile piece of crystal or blown glass. No one upon looking at her would ever assume how withdrawn she was from the vibrancy of life. Of course very few people even knew her real name since she wrote under the pseudonym of Cabin LuCaine.
The one young man had known it—if ever so briefly. Their two lives touched as quickly as a tender kiss that speaks of so much more but concludes with only the hint of it. It was like the sped up film sequence of a budding rose exploding into full bloom. Then nothing. So utterly tragic, she mused. Yet somehow noble and important. In spite of the ache of sorrow, it had such value for its season.
Reminding her of her own bout with sadness, far more time allowed to her and her first love—he having just departed. Well, not “just”, she conceded. It had been three years now. The grieving was slowly making its way into the recent past like that of visiting a particular cupboard which one only seeks out occasionally for its special contents. How so many yesterdays could seem like one quick glimpse and way, way too short of one at that, she would never understand. But she accepted it just the same, for she had come to understand this much in full: life was just a breath . . . in terms of eternity.
Breath of Life was not my second book written, but it was my second book published.
Father, thank you for every story. Apart from you, I can do nothing. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Into the Fire 