Pinched into submission, her birthmarks quit prickling. But her long-denied aspirations continue to throb through her veins, newly awakened by the non-appearance of the white hart.
Someone else is likewise unable to concentrate on the task before him as the image of the white hart pops into his mind. But unlike Karen, Moey Thorpe doesn’t have the luxury of privacy when the memory of the fantastical beast returns to him. Instead, he stands before the serious, expectant eyes of twenty-four kickboxing students.
He gazes blankly at the far wall where mirrors reflect an orderly row of white uniforms: it is this sea of poised white that reminds him of the stag.
Jesus, he forgot all about it, what with helping the lady find her cat and all. How could he forget such a thing? (The image of smooth, pearly buttocks glinting up at him from beneath a halo of salmonberry leaves rises briefly in his mind.)
He shifts uncomfortably, then sends the students sprinting around the gym. But he can’t rid his mind of the stag. While teaching roundhouse kicks, he thinks about the beast. While demonstrating spinning back kicks, he thinks about Karen. While correcting a student’s epon kumite, he thinks about belly dancing. The thick, wiry hairs on the nape of his neck refuse to lie flat.
So it comes to pass that after finishing his classes, Moey Thorpe finds himself climbing into his Plymouth and heading towards Lynn Canyon, his skin prickling with presentiment. As he drives his exhaust-spouting car up Lynn Valley Road, the rain is so thick and fast from clouds so white that it seems as if heaven is hurling fat globs of cream onto his windshield. His wipers don’t so much improve visibility as draw attention to the lack of it.
Heart thudding hard against his chest, he pulls into the Lynn Canyon gravel parking lot and kills the ignition. His tongue turns into sand as he stares at the alabaster foot painted on the side of the house in front of him. His fingers turn ashen around the steering wheel. The prickly feeling of presentiment increases.
And, for the first time in his life, Moey Thorpe feels truly afraid.
He is scared of making a mistake and looking foolish. He is scared of trying to attain something that really matters to him because he is scared that he won’t be able to attain it. If he doesn’t voice his hopes, if he never tries to achieve what his heart truly wants, then at least the possibility that he can succeed if only he tries still exists. But once he tries and fails, then that possibility disappears; he will be faced with the stark reality that his dream is beyond him.
Moey has seen such fear grip kickboxing students prior to competitions. For the first time ever he truly understands their lock-jawed panic, their icy shivers, their loose bladders. “Your fear is only an imagined fear,” Master Zahbar always roars at Moey. “It’s a negative response that reinforces vulnerability and incompetence. Think positive! Don’t permit yourself to be afraid. Be victorious!”
For the past three years Moey has repeated those words to his terrified students. And yet now he understands there is nothing imagined about certain terrors, such as the terror that now seizes him as he looks at the Footstop. Trying to think positive thoughts while in the clutches of such a fear is like trying to tell a diabetic to produce enough insulin through sheer willpower. And trying to ignore his fear is like trying to ignore the impending 500-foot drop of a gondola that has lost its brakes.
Breathe, Moey instructs himself. Breathe.
This, at least, seems good advice. His watering, fixed eyes and swimming brain certainly agree — breathing is good.
He sucks in another lungful of air.
For a full five minutes Moey relishes the triumph of successfully breathing. Then, before his startled mind can react, his body launches itself out of the Plymouth and into the driving rain. His legs sprint along the rock path to the Footstop as his back obligingly ducks beneath dripping Douglas fir branches. His enormous hands grasp the quaint brass knob of the café and rattle the door. So paralyzed is his mind that he doesn’t notice the sign taped in the window, let alone the words inscribed on it. When the knob refuses to turn in his hands, his fingers ball into mallets and pound the door in a frenzy.
A light goes on in the café. A pale hand pulls a lacy drape to one side. A shock of frizzy red hair pops into view.
Only when Karen opens the door do Moey’s hands stop their frantic pummelling.
“You teach karate,” she says, blinking at his rain-splattered uniform. She is leaning on a pair of crutches.
“Kickboxing,” he gasps.
“Oh.” She shuffles back a pace or two, the rubber ends of her crutches squeaking on the hardwood floor. “Come in.”
Shivering, he does so and shuts the door behind himself.
“I didn’t expect to see you so soon. Not that it matters,” she adds hastily. “I’m grateful for your help last night.”
“No problem,” he says through chattering teeth.
“Would ... would you like a cup of tea? Officially, we’re closed, so I didn’t do any baking. Because of my foot, you see. But I can make you some tea...”
He wants to say no, to blurt out his purpose before his terror-spiked mind can resume control of his body.
“Tea would be great,” he says instead.
“I’ll put the kettle on.” She crutch-walks to the back of the café and ducks behind a heavy curtain. A moment later Moey hears the soft snick of a door closing.
The urge to flee overwhelms him. Karen doesn’t know where he lives, probably can’t even remember his name; if he leaves now, she’ll be none the wiser to his purpose and he can continue his safe existence as a kickboxing instructor without having threatened the fragility of his dream.
He turns to the door behind him. He imagines the Hand of Fate upon his shoulder, or more aptly, the breath of the white stag upon his neck. With a shiver he twists away from the door. And, for the first time, he becomes aware of his surroundings.
The café looks like a museum currently celebrating a Mexican festival. A flock of brightly coloured piSñatas dangles above a French Provincial trestle table. At either end of the table stands a pair of empty cake stands, book-ending an antique cash register, a pair of scissors, a roll of tape, and two rolls of wrapping paper.
Moey slowly surveys the café. A half-dozen pairs of wingback chairs are strategically placed throughout the room. Between each pair of chairs stands an antique coffee table, and beneath each coffee table rest two plastic Scholl’s Footbath Massagers. Their electric cords disappear into slits cut into the thick Persian rug covering the hardwood floor.
Here and there sculptures of feet sit on white pedestals. Antique cabinets line the walls. Trancelike, Moey wanders towards the first cabinet. On its mahogany shelves stand rows of beaded moccasins, Dutch clogs, and woollen slippers. The next cabinet contains foot-shaped soap dishes, clay pots of foot balm and soaking salts, pumice stones, foot-shaped towels, and pearl-handled nail clippers.
On the shelves of an adjacent cupboard, scrolled charts of acupuncture, reflexology, and horoscopes-for-the-foot vie for space with handmade address books, each the shape of a foot and bearing the title Footnotes on its cover.
Flower vases in the shape of feet, foot-shaped oven mitts, stationery
