AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD Read Free Page B

articles going?”
    Maya, who wrote for a small, local magazine entitled
The Animal World,
shrugged and said, “Okay. I’m working on an article about the pronghorn antelope. That reminds me. You haven’t seen any deer around here, have you?”
    “There are no deer around here, Maya. Just hunters. I see them every day, in the woods. They creep along, trying not to shoot each other. Extremely annoying. By the way, Bernard, it’s small animal season up here. If I were you, I wouldn’t let Misty run loose in the woods. She might be mistaken for something. All those people seem to live for is a small moving target.”
    “All right. Any bears?” said Bernard.
    “Bears? I haven’t seen any. Why do you ask?”
    “Just wondering.”
    There was a silence.
    “Any mountain lions?”
    “Mountain lions? I think you have the wrong area of the country entirely, Bernard.”
    “Any murderers or psychopaths loose in the woods?”
    “Not too many. Just the usual, you know, that run happy and free all the time.”
    “Anything dangerous at all?”
    “To tell you the truth, the most frightening thing I’ve encountered so far was a bug that got into my bedroom and sat on my bedstead looking at me. The largest thing I’ve ever seen, all legs and wings and about a hundred pairs of eyes. Horrible. Really horrible. It took some doing to get it out of the cabin, I’ll tell you.”
    Maya and Bernard stifled yawns. Misty was already fast asleep.
    “Well, I can only pray for the sake of your sanity that it doesn’t visit you one night. I nearly packed my bags and left for New York City.”
    A little while later Snooky, yawning, said, “Time for bed,” and showed them with a flourish into the guest room. He left them with repeated admonitions to get up early the next morning. The room was freezing cold, but Bernard discovered with joy that it was toasty warm under the goosedown quilt. He kissed his wife a sleepy good-night and rolled over on his side. Misty, left abandoned by the hearth, crept trembling into their room, her toenails clicking on the wooden floor. She sat and whined until Bernard lifted her onto the quilt, where she snuggled in happily between them. Soon all three of them were sound asleep, although (as Maya had often remarked testily to Bernard) only the dog snored.
    The next morning Bernard and Maya awoke to the heavenly smell of fresh coffee wafting through the cabin. Maya got out of bed, shivering in her pink flannel nightgown. She went to the window and pushed aside the green gingham curtains. It was a bright sunlit day; the sky was a perfect translucent blue. The road leading up to the cabin, which had seemed so dark and threatening the night before, nowappeared to curve away gently through the trees. The forest, which last night had leaned in menacingly around them, tall shapes looming through the darkness, now looked sylvan and welcoming with the sunlight slanting through the bare branches. She sniffed the air. “I smell bacon.”
    “And coffee,” said Bernard, throwing back the covers.
    “And eggs.”
    “And toast.”
    “Breakfast!”
cried Snooky, appearing like a vision in his ratty blue bathrobe at their door. “Nippy, isn’t it? I’ve started the fire. You two sleep much too late. It’s nearly eight o’clock. I’ve been up for hours.”
    “Stop bragging,” said Maya. “It isn’t becoming.”
    “Go take showers or whatever. I’ll have breakfast ready when you get out.” He vanished with a wave of a spatula.
    “It’s amazing,” Maya said to her husband in a whisper. “I never thought Snooky would take to the wilderness this way.”
    “I never thought Snooky could survive more than fifty feet away from a TV,” said Bernard. “He used to hang onto our remote control like a life raft, if I remember correctly.”
    After breakfast, which consisted of perfect scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, toast, raspberry jam, and hot buttery croissants, as well as (for Bernard only) a thick slice of the