Page 37 of Phoenix Fire

Jenny let the seeming symbolism pass as she remembered where she was. She suddenly felt her face flushed with embarrassment. She went back to Nora's desk in the reception area. Nora sat looking up at Jenny with a sad smile of understanding.

“Please, sit for a moment,” Nora said.

Jenny reluctantly sat. “I'm so sorry. I thought that he must be in there. He won't return my calls and I'm very worried about him. Do you have any idea where he is? I've tried his home number and he doesn't answer. I've tried to reach him through Mrs. Wimsley but, she, too, has not been able to find him. We don't know where to go or what to do. Can you help us?” Jenny's expression spoke of pain and sorrow.

Nora paused briefly before responding. She, too, of course, was worried about Jason, and this young lady obviously cared a great deal about him. “I don't know where he is, Ms. Mason. Really, I do not. He's only been to the office three or four times since his brother died and he's called in maybe three times. When he came in, he looked terrible. His eyes were red and puffy, and he looked so pale. I'm very worried about him myself. He just said that he needed some time to himself. I wish there was more to tell you that would help but there is no more.”

The telephone rang just as Nora finished her sentence. It was someone else calling for Jason.

As Jenny left Jason's office building, she was stymied. She simply did not know what else to do. She had hoped that by now Jason would have called her. She could not imagine why he had forsaken her. What had she done? She could think of nothing.

She drove back to her own office, picked up some client materials that needed her attention, and left for home.

At her apartment she tried again to reach Jason at his home phone number. No answer. She had allowed the phone to ring some twenty times.

She called Grandma Myrena to see if she had heard from Jason.

“Why, yes, dear,” Myrena told her, “he called yesterday. Has he not yet called you? He said that he would.”

“No, he hasn't, and I'm getting so frustrated. I don't know what else to do. I've even thought of camping out at his home address to try and catch him, but that seems so brazen somehow. If he won't return my calls, why should I think he would want me showing up on his doorstep? Maybe, too, I'm afraid of further rejection.”

They had talked for several minutes, and, after hanging up the phone, Jenny had a scary sort of presentiment about Grandma Myrena. Her voice had sounded so weak and somehow disjointed. Jenny guessed that it must be the medication she was taking for the cancer pain. It was a thought that came unbidden: Grandma Myrena was near the end. Jenny began to cry as an overwhelming sense of doom came upon her. She walked around the apartment, dabbing at her eyes with tissues, adjusting a wall painting, pacing, trying to shake the awful feeling.

Later, with a glass of wine to hopefully settle her senses, she thought again about Jason. He must have discovered the fact of Grandma Myrena's terminal cancer. That knowledge alone would subdue him, but add to that Carlton's tragic and untimely death and it would be difficult to imagine the depth and extent of emotional stress Jason was feeling and trying to handle. Maybe he couldn't handle the stress. Perhaps it would be natural, from a psychological point of view, that Jason would turn away from Jenny, having lost his brother and knowing that he would soon lose his grandmother, a grandmother who was in essence his mother and his role model. Perhaps he feared a potential loss of Jenny as well. And, who could truly say what the loss of his father and mother years ago had meant in terms of psychological scarring and repressed need?

Jenny could question why Jason was turning away from her, but the simple truth was that he had turned away. She could know that the bond they were building prior to Carlton's death was real, genuine, and beautiful. She could not be wrong about that. Jason loved her. She just knew that to be true. She loved Jason. He must surely know that to be true. The ultimate causes for Jason's avoidance of her be what they may, she must be patient and understand fully what he was going through. She must not permit herself to create doubt and self-pity in her mind. It was Jason who now needed her more than she needed to find answers for herself. She must find him and convince him of her love. She must convince him that she would never leave him.

She left her apartment with a new resolve and drove to Jason's house, a lovely Mediterranean type villa cut into the desert rock mountain in Paradise Valley. The large house was elegant in its stone, stucco, and wood exterior. The landscaping made it enchanting with meandering pathways through lush shrubbery, palms, Palo Verde trees, and large boulders.

As she drove up the palm lined lane, the house seemed to convey an aura of sadness. The red clay roof tiles appeared drooping and surrealistic in the late afternoon sun like a Salvador Dali painting. Jenny thought that the dwelling gave off a soulful emanation of its owner. A tear erupted from a quiet place and she felt her own sadness engulfing her.

Jenny parked on the spacious flat stone driveway that encircled a blossoming clump of neatly trimmed hedge growth. She turned off the ignition and stepped from the car. She paused, pivoted, and looked down upon the northeastern valley below. Houses with delft dotted pools in the midst of cacti and palm trees stretched far out to Scottsdale and the hazy McDowell Mountains. A soft crying wind caressed the hilltop and the sad house.

Jenny sighed at the desert beauty sprawled below and walked through an artfully created atrium to the front entry door. An octagonal sign near the hedgerow announced that the house was protected by a security system, with a telephone number in bold brown letting. She rang the doorbell for nearly five minutes and she could hear the accompanying chime sounds inside the house, lonely and softly rhapsodic. She rapped on the hard, thick, oak door for another two minutes. She tried the large gold handle but it was locked.

She walked out of the courtyard and around the house until she reached a fence gate. The gate, too, was locked. She walked back the way she had come, past the atrium, and along the other side of the house. She finally reached the rear left corner of the house, where a huge mountainous boulder nearly touched the sand finished stucco.

There was a narrow space between the house end and the boulder. It was a tight squeeze and she was able to get through onto a large porous patio by shimming up the rounded corner of the house and the boulder until the space widened enough for her to drop free.

Winded by the exertion she stood looking at the space through which she had just come. She shook her head and smiled. “Now, how did I do that?” she asked aloud, her voice hollow and reverberating.

The rear area behind the house was breathtaking in its beauty. The large swimming pool lay up against the mountain boulders, from which water flowed in gentle unhurried sheets. At the northwest end of the massive flagstone patio the backward drop of the shaded stone mountain gave way to slope, sun, and the desert floor below. Jenny paused to conjure a vision of Jason and her sitting here in this beautiful setting, holding hands across their chaise lounges, sipping cocktails, and discussing their wonderful future together.

She walked along the rear of the house where several glass bypass doors allowed for egress and ingress. The first three doors she tried were locked. The last door that belonged to the master bedroom suite glided smoothly open with her tugging. She felt a rush of optimism with the opening door. She half expected an alarm system to start wailing, but it was either not keyed 'on' or was not functioning.

She stepped into the large bedroom suite. A cool breeze from the air conditioner momentarily chilled her warm, perspiring body.

“Jason,” she tentatively called out.

The bed was neatly made and a cleansing smell wafted on the cool air. The maid had obviously been here recently.

“Jason!” she yelled as she stepped out of the bedroom into a hallway. “Jason!” louder still.

Other than her own voice and the whisper of air conditioning there were no sounds in the house.

She went from room to room, slowly realizing that Jason was not at home. “Oh, Jason, where are you?” she muttered in frustration.

Suddenly, the blare of a telephone ringing broke the quietness. Jenny impulsively jerked to attention.

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