Gypsy Spring

The two receptionists at the Boulder Community Health Services both observed the unusual way that the Funeral-Director suited, mild mannered Mr. N. Folmsberg was clutching a notebook-sized brown paper package-- in both hands, with fingers splayed but a constant grip--as he hunched his slight, seated form under a buzzing overhead light in the waiting area. Marsha, the elder of the receptionists, coolly replied to Shelly, the bouncy twenty-something straight from the college job board, “Perhaps we should”.

Nearly five thousand miles away, Jeremy Folmsbee whistled softly through his teeth and gently tapped on the steering wheel along with the tinny rhythm of the 80s pop music playing on his midnight blue BMW's stereo. The car whooshed around wet bends and tight turns of the country New England byway, charging towards the morning sun. He was uncharacteristically giddy at what he considered to be a lazy eight o'clock in the morning since he still rose at 4:00 am sharp as he had done from boyhood. Now he was skidding his way into work, untimely but not fussed, as this was going to be a special day, like no other. A day to remember. His eyes eagerly turned to the glove box to reassure himself that it was still there, as though he had x-ray vision, but he willed his gaze to turn back to the slick road again. Even though he had been driving this curvy, brittle road day in and out for the past fifteen years through all incarnations of treacherous wet muddy icy snowy wildlife infested seasons, he couldn't afford any mishap to drift his attention from the perfection that had to be this day. An uncorrupted day to match the incomparable green-eyed, mocha-skinned beauty of Vanessa Kota, his executive assistant, who agreed to go to the conference in Atlantic City with him. The only one whose simple gestures-- like the lingering tilt of her head when she was asking a question and not provided a full, satisfactory response or the way she pursed her pouty lips whenever she checked the clock, signaling her determination to will time backwards-- the only one who had turned back the clock twenty years for him. To the one he had lost so long ago. He could not hold together if he lost her again. The pieces of who he had become would crumble on her altar, and his name and his essential being would cease to have any meaning, like dust on the wind. There was no turning back to the shell that he had once been.

But that was highly unlikely. He had read the signs that he had learned to understand back then in the unsteady certainty of adolescent ardor. She touched her hair whenever he walked into the room. She clocked his every movement during staff meetings. She found excuses to talk to him every week, typically proving her agreement with a position he took earlier. Wide-eyed gazes or side eye stealing glances, she flaunted the intense attractiveness of her diminutive profile, the way her colorful emotions crept up her spine to how she held her breathlessness through her shoulders arched towards him like a compass pointer. It was clear that even though he is in the neighborhood of fifteen years older, she wants him. She can’t escape craving this. And this is part of what makes it a heart-rending perfection. Enough to shake him from his dream of getting past the past.

“We just don’t know what he has in there,” Shelly stated for the second time, her whisper becoming more emphatic with the repetition, leaning away from her computer screen on a swivel stool that she had claimed helped her think better the first day she started. She bobbed her head in Mr. Folmsberg’s direction, rolled closer to Marsha, seated like a queen throned in an executive desk chair at her desk facing the greasy green customer counter but pushed back into the receptionists’ hub. Shelly’s station was directly under the counter, decorated like a Christmas tree with post-it notes and two towering aisles of vertically stacked, wall-hanging document holders filled with color-coded copies. Immediately to her left, light-glazed pine saloon doors and half a wall of plexi glass formed a barrier to the visible waiting area beyond. She stared over at the seated Mr. Folmsberg, and observed, “Look how he’s sweating but his teeth are starting to chatter.”

Marsha, comfortable in her nook domain, focused on her insurance invoice processing, even though she was just as alarmed as Shelly was acting. She was still annoyed at the younger lady for the inconsiderateness of being both 10 minutes late to prepare for opening and then immediately running off to photocopy sample preferred designs for her wedding invitations on the agency’s large multifunction copier. Marsha’s weakening bladder had processed the 6th cup of coffee it took to stay awake on the drive to the office half an hour before Shelly arrived, and she knew she couldn’t expect the younger woman to understand the urgency or her commitment to agency policy to man her station until relieved.

Shelly sat, watching him, at least 3 feet away from her computer, no longer making a pretense of occupying herself on her work. She finally breathed out, “It could be a bomb”, with the initial “b” of “bomb” bursting out in breath rather than pronounced.

Marsha scowled in conditioned disapproval for the disruptive influence of apprehension on routine. “That’s why I said, ‘Perhaps we should’”, Marsha replied. She finally paused in her typing and turned a hard stare at Shelly. After a moment of silent stillness, Marsha picked up the smirched beige receiver of her desk phone, and with equanimity stated, “John, I think we have a bit of a situation here….”

Jeremy bumped into Vanessa at their office parking garage, just as he expected. She leaned her short, lithe form against the side of her sleek but standard silver Ford, her left arm slack with holding the weight of a medium-sized carpet bag. She could not be any more perfect to him. He expertly pulled up his BMW beside her Ford, and sprang out to take her bag, clicking his key to automatically open the trunk.

She looked into his perched face with puzzlement as he lifted her bag from her hand, and assertively inquired, “I thought we were driving separately?”

He anticipated this. “No need to cost the company more in mileage. But don’t worry, you’ll get half the mileage reimbursement.”

She still looked puzzled, and leaned back, naturally accepting his lifting of the bag from her soft, manicured hand. She had tiny green gemstones embedded into her purple nail polish, he noticed. He easily stepped to the side with the weight of her bag despite its heaviness, and gingerly tapped the small of her back to reassure her into following him back to his car. He noticed her shoulders stiffen a little at his touch, but then it seemed to him like she eased into the motion, floating like an angel towards the awaiting passenger side.

He did not notice her gaze land on the left side of his belt, detect a sharp glint, but quickly assimilate a coaxing smile. She sauntered like a gazelle to the passenger side, and climbed in to the soft velvet seats while he placed her bag gently into the trunk. He jogged to the driver’s seat, and got in, pulling away in seconds flat.\

It took about fifteen minutes for a security officer to stalk into the agency. Officer Germaine slowed his pace when nearing the waiting area, and looked down into the clearly very anxious gentleman’s round face. Despite the guy’s glare, Officer Germaine used a friendly but dismissive tone to say, “Hey, how are you doing this morning, sir?”

The man desperately murmured inbetween clenched teeth. “I’m glad you’re here, as I’ve got a crime to report. I can’t talk to you, though. It has to be Miss Marshall.”

“Ok sir, well first thing’s first. Is that what you’re doing here, to see Miss Marshall?”

“I have an emergency appointment, yes,” the man stuttered.

“I can see that it’s an emergency, ‘cause you say there’s a crime and you look pretty upset about that package that you’re holding.”

“I just—I just have to talk to Miss Marshall, please.”

“Why don’t you let me see what’s in that brown paper, there?!” Without waiting for a response, Officer Germaine yanks the package from the precarious grip.

Mr. Folmsberg’s face falls and his panic shudders through his body. Carefully watching him, Officer Germaine accidentally lets the package slip from his hands. As it falls to the floor, unraveling a little, Mr. Folmsberg grabs his face with both hands in a surreal, comic panic.

Dust and anciently brittle stalks of corn seep out from the collapsed package. With a confused, and profound calm, Mr. Folmsberg thinks aloud, “Dad always said Gypsies have no heart.”

On the road, Vanessa suddenly asks, “Where are we going, cause this doesn’t look like the right direction?”

Jeremy ignores the question, and pulls over near a tall bed of corn. It’s much sunnier, now. He takes in a deep sigh, and says, “You know we used to call this time of year a Gypsy Spring.”

“I’m sorry, why are we stopped?”

“Because it is the time of year of enchantment, the soft warm breeze of early summer is like a love potion.” Finally, he turns and looks at her, acknowledging her. “Come on, I have something I need to show you.” He leans closer to her, and takes out a brown paper package from the glove compartment, somehow without touching her knees.

She unbelts herself when he steps out from the driver’s seat. He stumbles near a filthy, vagrant’s mattress somehow lost next to the tall grains swaying in the sun.

She swiftly climbs over the gear shift, and into the driver’s seat.

“Gypsy Spring, indeed,” she hoarsely howls, and speeds away.