Yes, today is the one year anniversary of my encounter with Christina. I’m ready to talk about it now if you’re willing to listen.
In late August, I usually try to get in some camping as a little bit of “soul food.” Last year, I’d been out camping in the mountains and deserts of Nevada. My divorce had been final just a few months prior, and I was needing to get away, to re-center my life. Being out alone in the wide open spaces was helping, although I knew I needed something more.
I was driving along a lonely gravel road and got lost in thought for a moment, easy to do when you haven’t seen any other cars for days. So I didn’t notice where a flash flood had cut a channel through the road and exposed a huge boulder. By the time I saw it, it was too late. Down I went into the channel and smack my oil pan went into the boulder.
I was able to get the truck off the side of the road before all the oil drained out of the crankcase, then I shut it down. I got out my cell phone and found that the battery was dead. Considering my options, I beheld an unexpected sight – smoke from a campfire less than a mile away. It occurred to me that it might be quicker to get help from whoever was up there. Plus, there were trees and shade in that direction.
So I walked. I had determined to be in full sight of whoever was there as I approached; sneaking up on someone in that country is a good way to get shot. As I got nearer the camp, I could see one female form. She had long, dark hair tied back in a pony tail, and flawless brown skin with majestic high cheekbones. (Native American, probably? But she also looked Mediterranean…) She was wearing a multi-colored blouse and blue jeans, with turquoise and silver earrings. She had a cigarette in her hand.
I liked all of what I saw, especially that last part.
“Hello,” I said. “My name is Brent, and I just destroyed my oil pan on a nice little rock down there. I was wondering if you had a cell phone I could use to call for some help.”
She took a deep drag from her cigarette, held the smoke for a few seconds, and blew it skyward. My knees became weak, while “another part of my anatomy” stiffened. She then looked straight at me and said, “So, you travel in this empty part of the world alone and without a cell phone?”
“Well, I have one,” I offered, “but its battery is dead.”
“Couldn’t you have charged it up using your truck battery?” she said. Seeing me on the defensive seemed to delight her as I tried to spit the words out. She laughed, and said, “I was just kidding you. I don’t take a cell phone with me camping. A gun, yes. But no cell phones.”
She looked west toward the sun, took another drag, and gently blew the smoke out in front of her. “I don’t know if it occurred to you,” she said, “but it’s getting near dark. Even if you call them tonight, no one is going to be able to get to a remote place like this until morning. I hope you’re prepared to stay the night in the desert.”
I informed her I’d been camping all week, and she told me she had been, too. I knew that I had to think of something quick to be able to spend more time with this fascinating and beautiful woman. Then it came – a stroke of brilliance.
“Hey,” I said, “have you had dinner?” She said she hadn’t. (Yes!) “I have some steaks in a cooler in my truck and some bottles of red wine,” I said. “Would you like to have dinner together?”
“That sounds a lot better than what I have,” she said. “You’ve got a deal. Let’s go get your stuff. My truck’s over here.” She took the last drag from her cigarette, then crushed out the end on a nearby rock as she exhaled a beautiful cloud into the air. She offered her hand to me. “The name is Christina, by the way.”
I shook hands with her, noticing her non-manicured but still long and beautiful fingers. We got into her truck, and using a jeep road I hadn’t even seen, made our way down to my truck. We loaded up the cooler and my camping gear (“Cooking utensils,” I explained) in the back of her truck.
I fixed dinner and it was great. We finished a bottle of wine during dinner and opened a second one “for dessert.” The sun was going down, and there was a chill in the air, so we built up the campfire and I took a seat near it. Christina began walking toward me, and I knew instinctively what she was looking for. I looked over my shoulder and saw her cigarettes and lighter, which I picked up. The lighter was like none I’d ever seen – it was silver and turquoise and looked like it was custom made.
She sat down beside me, and I gave her the pack. She pulled a cigarette out, put it between her beautiful lips, and looked at me as I struck the lighter and lit her up. She inhaled and the tip of the cigarette glowed warmly. My heart melted.
“Ah, smoking,” she said, followed by a thin-stream exhale through pursed lips. “I like it way too much.”
Hoping I wasn’t prying, I asked, “When did you start smoking, Christina?”
“Too young, I guess,” she said with a laugh. “Friends got me started. But I …” She seemed to feel it necessary to change the subject. “Do you mind if I put on some music?” she said. Of course I didn’t mind. “Just a warning – I like old school stuff.” She got up and put a CD into her player and turned on an old familiar tune:
“I like the way your sparkling earrings lay
against your skin it’s so brown…”
As we listened to the music, she filled up our glasses with more red wine and sat down beside me again. And we talked. I told her about my recent divorce (she’d noticed I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring), and how I was in the process of getting my life back together. She listened intently, sipping her wine and inhaling deeply on her cigarette.
Christina clearly resonated with my story, and I think she was in a similar situation. But I never got her to open up about that. She did tell me that her mother was Western Shoshone (Yes! I was right.) and her father was first generation Greek-American (Yes again!). She had grown up in various rural locations, including on the reservation, where her dad was a miner and her mom worked various part-time jobs. Christina now lived in the city, which she didn’t particularly like, and worked at the hospital as an LPN. She never told me her exact age, but through various clues I determined that she must have been 30, plus or minus a year or so, just a few years younger than I was.
I was feeling more and more like we were kindred spirits as the night wore on. Then somehow we got onto the topic of religion. She mentioned that she was baptized Orthodox because of her father, and that it was a beautiful religion, but she had a lot of respect for her Native heritage as well.
She had me look up into the clear desert sky, with all the glittering stars against a pitch black backdrop. “See, that right there?” she asked.
“What? Do you mean the Milky Way?” I asked.
“Well, that’s the white man’s name for it. To the Shoshone, it’s the path to the eternal hunting ground, left by Wahinu, the grizzly bear. It’s the snow that came off his fur.”
“I love that,” I said. “The Native people had such strong ties with nature.”
“Still do,” she said. She looked at me, then reached over to my arm and gently stroked it. “I, uh, hate to ask this, but..”
Again anticipating her need, I said, “Here you are, Christina,” handing her the cigarettes. I gave her a light and she gave her usual beautiful inhale and pillowy exhale.
“I’ve been smoking a lot tonight, even for me. I hope it’s not bothering you,” she said.
She placed her cigarette between her lips and removed her hair tie, letting her long black hair flow free. Then she took a drag and exhaled skyward.
“No, it doesn’t bother me at all,” I said. She, of course, had no idea what an understatement that was.
I took her (free) hand in mine, and we watched the night sky together. The music had recently stopped, but neither one of us felt the need to turn it back on. I tried to avoid looking like a love-sick puppy, but my eyes kept wandering back to her. I marveled at her beautiful skin, her long dark hair, her beautiful deep brown eyes, and how the cigarette seemed a natural part of her strong but graceful hand.
I placed my arm around her shoulders. She took a drag that glowed red in the night, and blew a cloud of smoke that made a shadow against the crescent moon. Then, we just sat there enjoying the night. It got so quiet that I could hear the gentle kiss of her lips as they reluctantly released the cigarette at the end of her inhale, and then the delicate “whoosh” as she exhaled. The only thing that broke the silence was the occasional coyote howling off in the distance. After her second cigarette was done (or was it the third?), she crushed it out and turned to look at me.
I kissed her. She kissed back with soft passionate lips, and I was enthralled by the delicious taste of her smoky breath. We sat there in the moonlight, kissing and caressing each other, saying very little. Finally, she stopped and looked at me, as though she were about to say something. She had a look on her face as though she were about to make a big decision. Then she reached into her pants pocket, pulled out something, and pressed it into my hand.
It was a condom. She got up and I started to get up to follow her, but she motioned to me to sit back down. She walked away and I sat there for the longest 3 minutes (I’m guessing) of my life with my heart pounding out of my chest.
When she came back, she took me by the hand and led me to a spot where she had made us a bed from our sleeping bags. She lit up a cigarette, threw her arms around me, and gave me a kiss.
I was acting on instinct now. When she released her hug, much to her surprise, I removed the cigarette from her hand, and took a drag from it. (Did I mention I wasn’t a smoker?) I blew the smoke right at her, to which she responded with a look of puzzlement and almost annoyance. For a second there, I thought I’d made a big mistake and ruined the mood.
But then a look of recognition came upon her face. With a smile, she took her cigarette back, took a big drag, and exhaled it right into my face. She looked amused as she saw the look of enjoyment on my face. She put the cigarette in her mouth and let it dangle, as she began to unbutton my shirt, periodically looking up at me with a sly grin. She pulled off my shirt, took a drag and blew more heavenly smoke into my face.
I reciprocated by unbuttoning her blouse and helping her remove it. Then she unzipped, unbuttoned and removed my pants and underwear, releasing my “soldier” from his “imprisonment.” She had me lie down on the sleeping bag bed, and, with cigarette dangling, she took off her pants, and slipped out of her panties. She unhooked her bra, and gently removed it.
She stood before me in the moonlight like an angel whose beauty is rarely revealed to mere mortals. The light of the moon reflected off her silky dark hair, and highlighted the curvature of her firm round breasts. She reached up with scissored fingers to her cigarette as she took a long drag, her lips tightening and cheeks hollowing, and after removing the cigarette, she gave a relaxed but voluminous exhale. Then, her eyes fixed on mine, she approached me…
The rest – well, how can I, a lowly furniture maker, describe what can only be called a spiritual encounter? The warmth of our bodies against the cool of the night, the sublime silkiness of her “gates of Venus” as they enveloped my “soldier of (extremely good) fortune,” her breasts against my chest, delicious smoky kisses, occasional puffs from her cigarette gently blown in my face. It was as if time were standing still, and the universe revolving around us. Having held out much longer than the circumstances would have suggested, I finally succumbed to the ecstasy of the “big bang.” After catching my breath, I did the gentlemanly thing and made sure that she reached “nirvana” as well.
We crawled under the covers to keep warm, and Christina lit up another cigarette. We laid there snuggling and saying nice things to each other (“you were fantastic,” etc.). I’d never felt so relaxed and happy in my life. There were so many things I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t want to break the mood, and I was growing drowsy with the afterglow and the wine, and we talked less and less, and before I knew it, I drifted off to sleep.
Damn. If there’s one time in my life I wish I could have stayed awake, that was it. When I woke up to the sunrise, she was gone.
All of her stuff, too – packed up and gone. Well, not quite. She left half a pack of Marlboro reds, her lighter (which I could tell was very special to her), and a note. The note said, “I’m sorry, Brent. You really were fantastic. Maybe in another life, we’d be together. But I really have to go. Have a good life. Love, Christina.”
So, I’ve consumed most of a bottle of a good red wine. I have a pack of her favorite brand, Marlboro reds. Did I mention I smoke now? Well, not a lot; just a couple a day to remind me of…her. Of course, I still have her custom-made lighter. And the day after our night together, after the tow truck brought me and my truck to town, I bought an Eagles CD.
“I get this feeling I may know you
as a lover and a friend
but this voice keeps whispering
in my other ear, tells me
I may never see you again…”
I know what you’re thinking – “You’re a sap. Get over her and get on with your life.” But I am getting on with my life. I know what I have to look for now. When you’ve had the best, settling for second best won’t do. I’ll find her someday. I’ve got plenty of time…