Cloud Waltzer Read online

  Meredith tore off the suit, wishing she could strip away the realization she’d so recently arrived at along with it. It was certainly humiliating enough to have been turned down and rudely propositioned by a man with more money than manners, but to come home with a crush on the lout? That was indeed a low blow and one she would most assuredly not let Mr. Archer Hanson land.

  Changing quickly into the periwinkle skirt and gaily woven blouse she’d wanted to wear that morning, Meredith grabbed up her notebook and purse and, after an apologizing pat on Thor’s head, slammed out of the tiny apartment. She headed for the public library downtown. Almost as if she believed that by staying in rapid motion she could prevent Archer Hanson’s magnetism from reaching her, Meredith drove faster than she should have, then rushed into the library when she arrived.

  She spent the afternoon studying Writer’s Market, the freelancer’s bible, and perusing back issues of magazines she thought might accept her articles. After her failure with Archer Hanson, Meredith had faced the fact that she had to branch out of purely financial writing unless she wanted to return to Chicago in defeat. By the end of the day she’d come up with a couple of ideas that she thought might prove saleable, but knew that she’d need a bundle more. She drove home with one eye on traffic lights and the other scanning the streets for potential article material.

  Even if she sent out a slew of prizewinning ideas this very night, Meredith realized as she plodded wearily up the stairs, it would be months before she’d have the articles written and published, and even longer before they were paid for. As she was unlocking her second-floor apartment, her neighbor, Phil, an engineering undergraduate at the university, popped his head out his front door.

  “I’ve been straining to hear the pitter-patter of little keyboard clicks all day,” he announced. “Where have you been?” Though she enjoyed her neighbor and was glad of his friendship, at times, like the present, Phil’s youthful enthusiasm tended to make Meredith feel old and weary.

  “At the library. Come on in; I’ll fix us some tea.”

  “Can’t now. I have an organic chem quiz tomorrow afternoon. But, listen, I wanted to find out if you could be on our chase crew tomorrow morning.”

  “Chase crew?” Meredith echoed the words.

  “You Yankees,” Phil sighed, shaking his head in mock despair. “A chase crew for the Balloon Fiesta. Usually you have to go to a bunch of meetings and training sessions to get on one, but someone from our crew got sick, so we need another person. I told them I’d ask you.”

  “I still don’t understand, Phil. What precisely does a chase crew do?”

  “As you might suspect,” he answered impishly, “they chase. Balloons, to be precise. Every balloon is assigned a crew of about half a dozen people. We stumble out real early, five-thirty, six, and help the pilot launch his balloon. Then, since the pilot has no way of guiding a balloon, we chase it around until he comes down. Then we help him pack it back up. The neat part about it for most people is that at least once during the fiesta, your pilot will take you up for a ride. What do you say?”

  With her mind fixed so firmly on the track she’d set it on that afternoon, one thought immediately sprang up: Could be an article here.

  “We really do need another pair of hands for a safe launch,” Phil pleaded. “What do you say?”

  “Aside from that five-thirty launch time, your offer sounds irresistible.”

  Phil’s grin made him look even more like Howdy Doody than he normally did, stretching his wide mouth and freckles across his broad face. “All right!” he enthused. “The rap you hear at your door tomorrow at an ungodly hour will be mine. So be ready to roll, okay?”

  “Okay,” Meredith agreed as Phil’s door swung closed. She was smiling as she entered her own apartment. An adventure was precisely what she needed to take her mind off of today’s debacle. As Thor twined between her legs Meredith puzzled over which magazine to submit the balloon story to and what angle to take with it. After a dinner that was simple but, like all her meals had been since she’d left Chicago, scrupulously balanced nutritionally, Meredith outlined the query letter she would type up tomorrow and went to bed.

  Meredith’s dream that night was of soaring through the sky in a Viking warship with its full white sails billowing in a reckless wind. And of being clasped in a warrior’s embrace that was both far too strong and far too compelling for her to break. Along with the image came all the old, familiar anxieties, both named and nameless.

  * * *

  At six the next morning Meredith was pacing her tiny apartment, much to Thor’s annoyance, and wondering what had become of Phil’s predawn departure. Just as she was about to go next door to investigate, a loud pounding signaled that Phil had arrived.

  “Jeez, I’m sorry,” he announced sheepishly, still dazed from sleep. “I was booking it until three this morning and just slept right through the alarm. We’d better hustle. Drat, I hope we don’t miss the launch.”

  As they started out the door Phil stopped her and glanced down at her feet. She was wearing her hiking boots. “Good shoes,” he commented. “We’ll probably end up doing a lot of tromping across fields. If you have a pair of leather gloves, you’d better bring those too. You can get a nasty rope burn on those balloon lines.”

  Meredith fetched an old pair of ski gloves and they were off. Outside, the cold and dark of night still held sway and she slipped on her kelly green parka over the raspberry sweater she’d topped off her jeans with. The vivid color combination warmed her soul as much as the wool and goose down warmed her body. She and Phil piled into his Jeep Wrangler and set off for the Balloon Fiesta Field on the northern outskirt of Albuquerque. She and Phil were snuggled deep in the silence of early morning as they watched the earth wake up while they tried to do the same.

  A thin line of pink stretched out in the dark sky above the Sandia Mountains to the east, limning their granite bulks in the pastel radiance that announces dawn. Meredith looked off to the west. There, above the jagged silhouette of the five extinct volcanic cones that crowned the West Mesa, reigned a gleaming silver dollar of a full moon. Meredith was transfixed by the loveliness of the dawn moon, staring at it for several long minutes as the Jeep rolled northward. The vehicle melded into the line of cars making their way to the launch site. They passed a special city bus, crammed with sleepy passengers headed for the Balloon Fiesta. The Jeep’s headlights picked out a bumper sticker on the pickup truck ahead of them. It read, “Follow Me, I Chase Balloons.”

  Meredith glanced up from reading the sticker and was stunned by the sight that greeted her. There, hovering in the sky above them, floated a giant orb, glowing orange in the navy darkness. As suddenly as it appeared, the globe was gone.

  Though Phil didn’t actually look up to see the balloon himself, he heard a characteristic whooshing sound and caught the look of surprise that crossed Meredith’s face and guessed its source. “It’s a balloon,” he explained, though she had been able to figure that much out for herself. “They light up and make that noise when the pilot hits the burners. That releases a stream of propane gas that ignites to keep the warm air inside the balloon heated up. The flame lights up the entire envelope.”

  Meredith nodded her comprehension, unable to drag her eyes away from the now-empty sky.

  Then it appeared again. The balloon had bobbed through the western sky until it drew alongside its luminous twin, the dawn moon. The blaze from the burners had illuminated the balloon’s design. It was a radiant unicorn rearing up on its hind legs and stabbing his single glorious horn at the vastness of the empty universe above him. Meredith was transfixed by the wholly unexpected beauty of the sight.

  Phil, absorbed in negotiating the tangle of traffic that had suddenly developed, missed the display entirely. The Jeep bumped off the highway onto the frontage road that led to the back entrance of the field. A guard checked the pass on Phil’s front windshield that verified he was a chase crew member and then flagged him on through the
special entrance. They pulled into the parking area located on a bluff overlooking the launch area below where fiesta activities centered.

  Meredith was surprised at the number of people who’d gotten out of warm beds so early on such a chilly morning. It looked like a carnival with endless rows of cars parked around the periphery of the field and thousands of people milling about at its center where balloonists were unloading their gear and concessionaires were selling steaming cups of coffee to frozen spectators.

  “We’d better move it,” Phil advised, sliding out of the Jeep. Before locking up he patted his pockets, then looked around inside the vehicle. “Dammit!” he cursed himself. “I forgot to bring the directions to our balloon. The field is divided into a grid and I can’t remember what our coordinates are.”

  “You remember what the balloon looked like, don’t you?” Meredith asked.

  “Sure. It has a really unusual design. But look at how many balloons are down there. Six hundred are registered from more than nineteen countries. They’re not all here today, but still . . .” His voice trailed off miserably as they both looked out on what now seemed an unending sea of people clustered around the slack heaps of uninflated balloons.

  “We’ll find it, Phil,” Meredith offered with more optimism than she honestly felt. They headed down the hill toward the launch area. Once there, Meredith truly did feel as if she were in the midst of a carnival with all the people and activities around her serving as the midway. Nearly everyone was bundled up in parkas and ski hats. Balloon Fiesta officials in bright blue and yellow jackets buzzed about, attending to the thousand and one details that go into keeping an event that was expected to attract 700,000 spectators during its nine-day run functioning smoothly.

  As they reached the first balloonist and his crew, Meredith’s footsteps slowed. The uninflated balloon envelope lay on the ground like a sail drooping off the main mast in a becalmed sea. The size of it surprised her. Meredith figured it must be sixty or seventy feet long. A dozen crew members and onlookers were spread along its length. At the pilot’s signal they all grabbed onto the nylon skin and began lofting it toward the sky as if they were trying to resuscitate the flattened beast. Gradually a pocket of air formed in the envelope.

  “Come on, Meredith.” Phil coaxed her away from the watching crowd. “During the course of the coming week you’ll see this whole operation so many times you’ll be sick of it. But for right now we’ve got to find the Cloud Waltzer.”

  “The who?” Meredith asked as she pulled herself away from the intriguing operation.

  “Cloud Waltzer. That’s the name of the balloon we’re assigned to.”

  “Cloud Waltzer.” Meredith ran the syllables over her tongue, liking the feel of them.

  Hurrying after Phil, she passed an assortment of balloon aficionados: A man in an Australian bush hat pinned up on one side surveying the action through a pair of field glasses. A chubby woman with a frizzy perm that matched the topknot of the poodle she had nestled beneath her sweater. A sleepy child wearing his father’s jacket and dragging the sleeves in the dust as he toddled after his parents. The giggly members of a high school drill team all festooned in high white boots and spangles, shivering as they waited to perform. An entire fifth-grade class following after their teacher in the course of a special, early morning field trip. And cameras. Everywhere Meredith turned someone was pointing a lens toward the crews working to resurrect the balloons.

  As they approached the concession stands, Meredith became acutely aware that she hadn’t had her morning caffeine ration. “Phil,” she called out after her gangly friend, “I’m stopping for a cup of tea. Can I get you one?”

  Phil glanced uneasily from Meredith to the turmoil of balloonists beginning to inflate their crafts. His shoulders sagged slightly at the prospect of trying to locate the Cloud Waltzer. “Make it a hot chocolate. I’ll search out the area and be right back.”

  Meredith nodded and got into line, amused by Phil’s eagerness. Once she stopped moving the cold seemed to catch up with her and seep under her parka. She huddled in closer to herself. Even a chorus of whooshing hisses, like the one she’d heard earlier when the pilot of the unicorn balloon had turned on his burner, couldn’t make Meredith turn around: She was intent upon jockeying her way through the crowd to a hot cup of tea.

  The sun was peeking over the Sandia Mountains by the time she made her way to the head of the line. She paid for her tea and Phil’s cocoa and turned to locate him. For the second time that day, serendipity overwhelmed her. Behind her the shriveled shells of dozens of balloons had been pumped full of life. They loomed there like an enchanted city, topped by domed minarets, that had magically materialized within the space of a few minutes. She walked forward, mesmerized by a display of colors and designs unlike any she’d ever witnessed before.

  Her eyes were tugged from one brilliant globe to another. At first all the balloons seemed to be covered with vivid stripes—fire-engine red, sunny yellow, sapphire blue, hot pink. Stripes that ran straight up for sixty feet. Stripes that zigzagged crazily across newly swollen girths. Stripes that encircled the balloons, making them appear to be the most fanciful of giant tops. Then, from the pandemonium of color, Meredith began to pick out even more striking designs. To her right rose a balloon emblazoned with all twelve signs of the zodiac. Ahead of her was another that looked like a vastly overinflated world globe with all the continents and oceans marked out. Another sported the French fleur-de-lis. A carousel complete with prancing horses twirled around the circumference of another.

  Laughter bubbled up within Meredith as she caught sight of other, more whimsical creations: a giant gum-ball machine, a dragon spitting fire, Pegasus winging across ruffling nylon. There were even a few floating puns, like an ace of hearts obviously meant to symbolize an ace high. The Rocky Mountain sunrise, complete with tall pine and snowcapped peaks, Meredith figured, must symbolize a Rocky Mountain high.

  She walked amid the riot of color and design thinking that if there ever were an absolute antidote to the dull hollowness of her former life, this was it. As overcome as she was, though, she realized that her favorite balloon was still probably the one she’d seen drifting beside the moon, the one with the mythical unicorn rearing up to challenge the heavens.

  “Meredith, you’d better hand that over before you dump it on someone.” Phil relieved her of the foam cup of cocoa. “You’re stumbling around like a sleepwalker.”

  “Phil, I’ve never seen anything so gorgeous in my life.”

  “Yeah?” Phil gave her his Howdy Doody smile, wishing that he were fifteen years older and ten times better-looking, but pleased all the same just to be able to make Meredith smile. “It is pretty neat.”

  “It’s a lot more than ‘neat,’ ” Meredith countered gently, almost whispering the words. “It’s magical.”

  “Hey, I found Cloud Waltzer. She launched early with a bit of aid from some helpful strangers and floated around for a while, then they tethered her to the ground at the west end of the field. They’re getting ready to cut her loose, so we’d better be ready to follow. The rest of the crew is waiting for us where she’s tethered.”

  They wended their way through the crowd to the Jeep. After a few minutes of jostling it around the other chase vehicles that were streaming out of the parking area in pursuit of their assigned balloons, they hit open terrain. Meredith spotted their objective, a balloon straining at the end of a hundred-foot rope. A thrill shivered through Meredith—it was the unicorn balloon! At their approach the ground crew set the balloon free, and it floated away as elusive as the unicorn of myth.

  “Let’s pile in, folks,” an older man with a grizzled beard ordered the other crew members as Phil came to a stop. Chilly gusts blew in as doors opened and the four crew members scrambled aboard. The bearded man sat up in front. A portable CB radio crackled in his hand. He held it up to his mouth.

  “Yeah, Cloud Waltzer, you’re coming in. We’re on your trail. Out.” He turn
ed to Phil. “We’ll attend to introductions later; let’s hit the road first.” Phil rocketed over prairie dog holes and mounds of tumbleweeds as he tore out after the rapidly receding blob. The passengers in the back laughed and grabbed for handholds. Once they were under way, the bearded man introduced himself and the others.

  “Carl Wilmers,” he said, sticking a weather-gnarled hand the size of a bear paw in front of Meredith. “And that’s Marie.” A rosy-cheeked young woman wearing a white tam over her brown braids nodded. “And Tomas.” A middle-aged Latino gentleman flashed Meredith a warm smile. “And my wife, Betty.”

  “Pleased to meet you . . .” Betty paused, the question in her gray eyes magnified by her bifocals.

  “Meredith. Meredith Tolliver.” Meredith supplied the missing name.

  “Well, I’m so pleased you could join us,” Betty said, her southern accent softening the words.

  “We should have been out here earlier to help you with the launch,” Phil said by way of an apology. “It was my fault. I was up late trying to cram half a semester’s work into one night.”

  “Don’t kid us, Phil,” Carl joked. “You were probably out on a hot date and she wouldn’t let you go home until the wee hours.”

  Phil reddened in response to the good-natured ribbing about his nonexistent social life.

  “Hey, is that pickup following us?” Carl asked, twisting around in his seat to peer out the back window. Meredith turned, catching sight of a pickup truck raising a trail of dust behind them. “Good, he’s there.” Carl eased back into his seat, satisfied that the chase crew was intact.

  Meredith took advantage of the silence that opened up to ask, “How do you all know each other?” She had already sensed that the group had not come together by accident. They seemed welded together by a playful sense of fun.

  “That guy’s my boss, if you can believe it,” Phil said, poking his thumb in Carl’s direction. “We all work together. I’m a part-time draftsman. Carl is head of my division. Betty is the company’s bookkeeper. And Marie and Tomas are engineers. The guy up in the balloon owns the company. Got all that?” Phil asked with a smile.