Goddess of the Rose (8 page)

 

Mikki's eyes followed the lines on the script as the First Woman's voice trembled with emotion.

From the edge of the stage Cio pointed to her, and like a horse goaded by spurs, Mikki plunged into Medea's lines.

 

On the script were written the words
(Medea kneels and prays).
Mikki glanced questioningly at Cio. He nodded and gestured to the stage floor. Drawing a deep breath, Mikki knelt and began reading the invocation.

 

As Mikki spoke, her voice gained power and the small electric thrill that had lodged in her stomach when the First Corinthian Woman began to speak swelled throughout her body. Excitement rushed, adrenaline-like, into her throat, so that when she continued the invocation, her voice strengthened and magnified. Had she been looking at the director, she would have seen him frantically adjusting switches and turning dials. Had she glanced at the actresses onstage with her, she would have seen their mildly amused expressions change to confusion and shock. But Mikki looked nowhere except the script before her and the words that suddenly appeared, glowing, on the page as if her voice had called them alive.

 

Mikki faltered. The small, Band-Aid-covered cut on her palm throbbed painfully. There was a great rushing sound in her ears that reminded her of the ocean. She felt the night wind, which had only moments before been gentle and cool, whip in a sudden heat around her, lifting her hair as if it, too, along with her body, had been electrified. Caressed by the wind, the unusual scent of the perfume she'd dabbed on her pulse points lifted with the breeze to fill her senses. She breathed deeply, inhaling rose and spice and heat. Overwhelmed by the exquisite beauty of the rich oil, the glowing words on the script blurred until Mikki could no longer see them. But it didn't matter. Unbelievably, she heard the lines within her mind, and with a sob, she opened her mouth and cried the words that were echoing through her head.

 

A great roar split the night, ringing in Mikki's ears with an intensity that washed her in dizziness. She blinked tears from her eyes, looking around her as if she had just awakened from a dream.

Ah, hell! I'm having one of those damn episodes!
Mikki frantically tried to make sense of the bright lights and the women who were staring open-mouthed at her.
The play! Crap! Crap!
Mikki looked down at the script she still clutched in her sweating hands. The words printed there in ordinary black and white made no sense. They weren't the lines she had just said. What the hell had happened to her?

Three single claps came from the rear of the stage.

“Lovely job of ad-libbing. Truly moving.” The voice was filled with sarcasm.

Mikki managed to get awkwardly to her feet as an attractive petite woman wearing a gold toga and a long, dark wig stepped up to her.

“But the star has returned. So I'll take my mike and my stage position, and you can run along.”

Mikki felt frozen with humiliation as the actress reached up to yank the neatly hidden microphone from her hair.

“Ouch! Fuck!” the diva shrieked, pulling back her hand and sucking on her bleeding finger. “The damn thing stabbed me.”

Woodenly, Mikki raised her hand to touch the rose that still sat behind her ear.

“Sorry,” she muttered, quickly pulling the mike from her hair. “Mikado Roses don't usually have prominent thorns.”

“Catie, darling, it's all right. She was just helping us out with the sound check.” Cio rushed onstage.

Catie snatched the mike from Mikki and turned her back dismissively as the sound manager hastily began working the tiny microphone into the hairline of the star's wig.

“Someone get me a Band-Aid before I bleed to death! And my God! What is that smell? Who has on too fucking much perfume? It's like I'm standing in the middle of a bordello, not a stage. For Christ's sake! I leave for half a second and everything goes to shit!”

Two more people hurried onstage, and Mikki sidled off, ignoring the director when he called insincere thanks and reminded her that she could pick up her tickets opening night at the Garden Center.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
T took several minutes for Mikki's cheeks to cool down. She could easily imagine the blazing red of her blush. Jeesh, what a humiliating experience! She left the sidewalk and retreated up the side of the gently sloping hill that would lead her to the uppermost entrance to the rose gardens. Shuffling her feet through the dry leaves that browned the soft grass of the park, Mikki tried to make sense of what had just happened. Everything had seemed fine—even fun—when she'd gone up onstage. Then she'd started reading her lines and . . . she looked down at the script that she had forgotten to leave behind. The light was too dim, and she couldn't make out the words, but she didn't have to read them to know that what had come out of her mouth had definitely not been what had been written on the script. She remembered all too well seeing the lines glow and then hearing them ring in her mind. She ran a shaky hand through her hair.

What was happening to her? She should go home. Maybe she should call Nelly. If having a totally embarrassing hallucination in front of multiple people didn't constitute an emergency of enormous girlfriend proportions, she didn't know what did.

Just then Mikki topped the little rise and came to a halt. The Tulsa Municipal Rose Gardens stretched before her like a familiar dream, comforting her frayed nerves. Just what exactly was so terrible about what she'd just done? What had really happened had probably more to do with three glasses of wine and being freaked out by suddenly being thrust onstage than with psychosis. She shoved the script into her purse. When she got home she'd reread Medea's words. What she had said was probably close to the original text. She needed to quit being so hard on herself. It was ridiculous to focus on every little mistake she made and every little daydream she allowed herself. She grinned suddenly. She'd even pick up the free tickets and consider heckling diva Catie on opening night.

Mikki felt the pull of her beloved gardens dissipate the last of her nervous stress as she gazed out across the expanse of roses. The gardens had been built in the shape of a gigantic tiered rectangle that always reminded Mikki of a huge, Italian wedding cake. There were five sections of terraced gardens, which climbed almost 900 feet from street level. Each tier was filled with row after row of meticulously tended roses. The gardens were styled after the gardens made popular during the Italian Renaissance, and amidst the more than 9,000 roses and imported statuary were Italian junipers, sheared by hand into formal, conical shapes, southern Magnolias, as well as deciduous holly and mugo pines.

Each level also held its own distinctive water element. The gardens boasted everything from peaceful, deep reflective pools and ancient-looking spouting wall fixtures to the graceful, cascading fountain situated as the garden's water showpiece in the magnificent center of the third and largest level.

It was fully dark, and, unlike Woodward Park, the rose gardens didn't have freestanding lights. Instead, each water feature was lit from underneath. The effect was spectacular. The gardens seemed to glow, suspended in the flickering illumination of rose-scented water. A whimsical breeze lifted Mikki's thick hair, pulling her forward. Eagerly, she crossed the boundary between the two parks and drew in a deep breath. Roses filled her senses.

“Heaven couldn't smell any better,” she whispered.

As if her feet made the choice for her, Mikki started down her favorite walkway, working her way slowly toward the center most garden area. Some nights the grounds remained filled with people almost until closing. They brought chairs and picnic baskets, books and sketch pads. That night Mikki was relieved to see that the only other human activity was a couple of lovers who were making out on a blanket at the edge of the top tier. She ignored them, and they ignored her. Mikki preferred it that way. She loved to have the roses to herself. She walked lazily through the gardens, pausing often to visit beds of her personal favorites. The night was quiet, and except for the wind playing through the trees, the hypnotic tinkling of water and the muffled tap-tap of her boot heels against the pebbled cement of the pathways, there was little outside noise. It was like the roses created a sound barrier between their gardens and the rest of the world.

The disappointing date in the past and the
Medea
fiasco forgotten, Mikki was thoroughly enjoying herself once again as she chose the wide stairway that ran down the right side of the third tier. Hurrying, she almost skipped down the steps that led to the heart of the gardens. The bottom of the rocky stairs was framed by a large archway made of heavy rock. She stepped through that amazing arch of stone and, as always, she felt like she was entering another world. Mikki smiled and glanced to her left.

“And you know you're a big part of the reason why.” She spoke to the enormous statue that perched imposingly between the archway she had just walked beneath and the second stone archway, which framed the set of steps to its left—a mirror image of the stairs she had just descended.

She walked to the statue and looked up at it, breathing in the scent of the profusely blooming Double Delights that surrounded it.

“Hello, old friend,” she said softly.

The flickering light from the large, circular fountain situated a few yards from them threw a strange, aquatic glow over the statue, illuminating it with an eerie, ever-changing light. For a moment Mikki felt a tremor of unease; the thing looked almost alive in the blue-tinged light. Its marbleized skin seemed to borrow a glow from the water that pulsed, giving it the facade of living flesh. The ancient statue appeared to breathe. Then she mentally shook herself.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said firmly. “It's the same statue that's always been here. And it's supposed to be scary-looking, that's why it's called the Guardian of the Roses.”

As Mikki spoke, the statue settled into the familiar marble lines she had known since she was a child. Local legend said that the statue had been a gift from an eccentric Greek heiress in 1934, the year the gardens were christened. No reason had ever been given for her largess—the local assumption was that she had visited and had fallen in love with the design of the gardens.

Mikki drifted forward and let her fingers play over the raised words of the plaque that proclaimed it:
Beast of the Greek Goddess of Night—This statue is a restored copy of one found in the Parthenon and is thought to have been the inspiration for the Cretan myth of the Minotaur.

Mikki's lips twisted in a crooked smile. The beast had never looked like the Minotaur to her. Yes, he had always evoked exotic images of fantasy and myth, reminding her of late, sleepless nights and the shadowy fairy tales her mother used to read to her throughout her childhood, but she just didn't see that much similarity between the statue and the mythological creature who was supposed to have had a man's body and a bull's head.

“It's more like you're from another world than ancient mythology,” she told the marble creation. Actually, Mikki admitted to herself as she studied him for the zillionth time, the statue was a wonderful, frightening mixture of raw male power and beast.

He was huge, at least seven feet tall, and more human than Minos's Minotaur, but the fact that he was manlike didn't make his appearance any less imposing. He crouched on the top of a wide, ornately carved marble pedestal. His rear legs were thick, much like a world-class sprinter's, except that they were covered with a coat of fur and ended in cloven hooves. His hands were massive, and they curled clawlike around the top of the pedestal. The thick muscles in his arms, shoulders and haunches strained forward. His face had been carved with indistinct lines, almost as if it had been half finished. It gave the appearance of a man, though he was decidedly fierce and bestial. His eyes were wide, empty marble under a thick, bestial brow. Mikki cocked her own head as she studied him. A beast, yes, but in a man's skin. Not really a bull, yet vaguely Taurean. On his head were thick, pointed horns, and an impressive mane of hair cascaded around his enormous shoulders. The sculptor had carved the creature's mane so it was swept back, making it appear as though he was straining against a raging wind.

Mikki felt a jolt of recognition. That's right, the statue had horns! Like the creature in her dream last night. She narrowed her eyes. Maybe this was where her fantasy had originated. She wanted to smack herself on the forehead. Talk about too much imagination! Was the answer to her supposed obsession as simple as that? She had always loved the rose gardens, especially this particular tier. And as her mother would have reminded her if she had still been alive, she did have a tendency to be overimaginative. How many times had her mother admonished her to quit daydreaming and get her room cleaned up . . . or her homework done . . . or the dishes washed?