Angels/Excerpt: Ali Rolls Into Storm's Life

Setting the scene: On an unusually warm day in mid-October in Toronto, Storm Baker is walking through High Park, taking in the sights: tennis players rushing the nets in their summer whites; sun worshipers stretching out on park benches; and at the park's zoo, a small boy eager to toss a rock at a peacock to make it fly, learns from his patient mother that rock tossing at zoo creatures is not allowed. Ever. It's on this golden afternoon that Storm first lays eyes on the woman who will become the love of his life...

... And that was when he first saw her, at the most mundane moment of what seemed destined to be but another ordinary day. Had she not been atop the hill, awash in sunshine, standing beside a black carrying bag that she had placed on the grass and that contained, he would learn, valuable photography equipment.

She was stretching like a cat upon awakening from a long, lazy nap. She was wearing a dark pink t-shirt, beige shorts, white ankle socks and white running shoes, an outfit that was unremarkable and yet remarkable... Because how could you explain how something ‘unremarkable’ ever managed to become so permanently seared into a man’s memory?

Skeptics like Storm's best friend, Harland (Hap) Hazard, would later question whether he could possibly have discerned (let alone been mesmerized by) her beauty from that distance, as Storm would claim. And what about the "bronze aura" that he alleged surrounded her, or the "slivers of sunlight" he would assert were reflecting off the strands of her brown hair? Could a sultry southerly breeze honestly caress a woman in such a daring, sensual way, or was he by then flaunting, flogging poetic license? Could he possibly have felt, that instantaneously, that powerfully, the arrow piercing his heart?

She held a hand across her eyebrows to reduce the sun's glare and gazed down in his direction.

He waved. Then wondered: what am I doing? He crammed the offending hand deep into the pocket of his track pants to ensure that it did not repeat the transgression. I don't even know this woman, he thought, and this is Toronto. She waved back.

She waved back!

Following that wave, she knelt beside the black bag -- putting something in, pulling something out, he could not tell.

"Ha!" the Hazard would exclaim, in his thorough and combative cross-examination. "You could not discern from this distance whether she was putting something in or pulling something out of the bag and yet, from that very distance, you claim you could discern her beauty! I’m calling bullshit!"

She hesitated for a second, leaving him spellbound and curious. What is she doing? Then she reclined on the grass and rolled over onto her back, her eyes looking up at the heavens. She placed her arms across her chest, positioned like an undertaker sometimes positions the arms and hands of a corpse. There was a pause -- and in that still moment, Storm would swear on his mother’s grave, a voice whispered inside his head: “Life is about to change.” And then, with an elbow, she gave herself a gentle push-off and began rolling down the hill. 

And how she rolled, her body rotating like the rollers on a steamroller, quickly gathering speed on the steep descent, her unabashed peels of laughter filling his ears, the park, his world; the very spinning movement of her body actually making him dizzy, vicariously. He could not help but feel that as bizarre as this behavior appeared -- and to the somewhat staid Storm Baker, it was bizarre -- it was somehow fitting and fateful: this woman simply rolling right on down into his life. That descent into his life seemed to last an eternity.

Upon hearing the story of how Ali and Storm first met, Janeen Reynolds, veteran thespian and seasoned stagehand, would suggest that at the moment Storm was watching Ali roll, he was experiencing what actors call a liminal moment. A moment that passes through the threshold of what is perceived to be real, that somehow becomes unglued and separated from time. Because he was so engaged in what was occurring around him, time, in effect, ceased to exist.

And it would be Janeen's daughter who would suggest that at that very moment both she and Storm were experiencing what photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson termed "the decisive moment"; specifically, "the fractional period when all elements in a photograph work in harmony." At some point in time the term entered the lexicon, cloaked itself in more casual connotations, was adopted by sportscasters and the like and became, simply, a pivotal moment in time. A moment after which nothing remains the same.

She slowed and came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, only a few feet from the road. She remained still for a moment then unsteadily rose, her head surely still spinning, and began brushing off twigs, bits of grass, dirt. The boy who would hit birds with rocks raised his voice in approval.

"I want to try, I want to try. That lady's crazy fun, I want to try..."

By then Storm was beside her, openly wearing his adoration and, he was sure, the smile of a simpleton pasted across his face. Staring, and admonishing himself not to stare, and staring. She was beautiful in a breezy and unconventional way. Hair adorably mussed, skin soft and lightly tanned, playful hazel eyes, thin lips. His heart pounded, a bass drum thumping madly in his chest. His thoughts scurried like harried mice in a maze, frantically searching every narrow corridor, every far-off nook and cranny of his mind for those, those things he so adroitly employed every day to earn a living. Words. That’s right, words. The few words he managed to retrieve from the recesses of his mind seemed inadequate and inane and would have been of no use anyway for his tongue was tied.

He watched as she fluffed her hair with her fingers to extract the tangled remnants of her roll. Every movement, he thought, sensual, alive, athletic without any aggressive edges, poetic, all fluidity and grace. When she tucked an errant wing of hair back behind her ear, about the only thoughts he could muster were of how he would like to run his fingers through that hair; how he would like to kiss the lobe of that uncovered ear, kiss a path right down her neck to her collarbone. And when she looked directly at him for the first time and smiled, Storm’s face flushed. Fretful that she was reading his mind. His heart accelerated, and his knees weakened. "White flags," he would say, "were raised in unconditional surrender." His defenseless heart belonged to her.

In his head he heard the off-key voice of Ringo, beatkeeper for the Beatles, answering the question: Would you believe in a love at first sight? Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time. Storm swears it was that immediate, that uncomplicated, or that incredibly complex, depending on your thoughts on a notion as divisive as love at first sight.

There is a popular concept that is supported, if not by science, then by tabloid media, talk-show television, and assorted diluted television Movies of the Week, that in the instant before you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes. There is another notion, what French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre termed giving birth to yourself, that suggests a human being can be 'born' more than once in a lifetime. The moment Storm Baker saw Ali Reynolds at the crest of that hill in High Park, he was reborn. And in the moments that followed that rebirth, he insists that he saw his future flashing before his eyes. Thankfully, the future that played in his mind was more idyllic than portentous, more Rockwellian white-picket-fence than prescient -- who could possibly cope with the vision of love abruptly found being abruptly lost? In those ephemeral moments he saw himself conversing with her, their fingertips accidentally, electrifyingly touching. He foresaw their first embrace, envisioned their first kiss...

"What I saw," he would say, "was certainty. That I was going to spend the rest of my life with this woman. That regardless, I would die loving her. I saw it all. From the first date to the wedding, to us walking through the park together as a family and me kneeling to explain to one of our kids that you don't throw rocks at the peacocks just to see if they can fly. And right on through to us growing old together. I saw the rocking chairs side by side on the front porch of the rest home, Happy Shady Acres, or whatever..." Wild, fanciful visions from such an earthbound soul. However, he would insist, these were not dreamy, fantasy visions: these were crystal clear...

A liminal moment.  A decisive moment.

However, because human beings are involved, even such rare and momentous moments are not without incidents, accidents, folly, not without the imperfections that define and afford distinction -- pimples, pockmarks, scars -- to the creamy complexion of life. When Storm finally recovered his voice, it was cracked and tweaked an octave higher than desirable, but he believed that employing that squeaky pre-pubescent voice was nevertheless better than remaining inappropriately and idiotically mute.

"Hi, I'm Storm.  Ah, nice roll." Nice roll? Hi, I'm Storm and I just tumbled off the turnip truck and you have no way of knowing that I actually make a living with words. Nice roll? He had mortified himself. "Down the hill. Nice roll down the hill..." Oh, God, he thought: I stood a better chance as a mute.

Again, that smile, crushing him with openness. 

"Thanks. I don't know what came over me. But other than the odd rocky bump, it was fun." She held out a hand. He stared at the long, delicate fingers belying the hand's strength. They shook, Storm’s mind remaining focused on her fingers.

"You have pianist's fingers." Pianist's fingers? With all the marbles in his mouth, his words, as they mockingly reverberated around the insides of his head, sounded more like... You have penis fingers. Storm felt the lump rising in his throat, the cold sweat trickling down his back, sensed the perspiration ringing his underarms. Penis fingers? And if there's a hole nearby, I think I'll just crawl into it.

But she kept smiling. She shook her head.

"I did play guitar when I was growing up. Four Strong Winds, Day Tripper, Leaving On A Jet Plane, that sort of thing. Simple songs, basic chord changes..."

"Well maybe that's it." Oh, you blithering idiot. You silver-tongued twerp. Maybe that's what?

"Maybe," she laughed, endearingly, like she was encountering a star of the stand-up comic scene Storm had been researching. Like she was face-to-face with the funniest man on earth.

"My hand, Norm," she grinned. And it was at that deflating moment he realized that not only was this woman under the impression that his name was Norm, but he was also still shaking her hand. Had been for an eternity. Because he loved the feel, the warmth, the power, the potential, the connection. Because he loved being that close to her, fast becoming intoxicated and disoriented in her scent -- a healthy, outdoors, woodsy scent, he would describe.

"Oh, for god's sake!" the Hazard would cry at the description: "Healthy?  Woodsy? You were outside, you moron! With fucking woods all around you!"

Self-consciously, he dropped her hand. That's it, pull the plug on the life support. Call it a mercy killing. He was about to correct her on his name when she set into an introduction.

"My name is..." she began, but at that instant her attention was diverted. Eyes abruptly averted, muscles suddenly coiled -- a sprinter, in the starting blocks, on the starter's 'set' command. She was staring behind them at something back up on the hill... "Shit."

Admittedly, it took the love-struck and love-stunned Storm a witless moment to determine the obvious. That she was not telling him that her name was Shit. First, or last, or perhaps a nickname? That she was in fact cursing something. In that moment, as he turned to determine the object of her ire, she was gone. Without a departing word. In a flash, up the hill. All long legs, explosive speed and resolve, after the punk making off with her camera bag.

Storm lost precious moments contemplating what had transpired. Lost further time standing idle, his head in the billowy, perfumed clouds of infatuation, mindlessly admiring her form as she powered up the hill, before he belatedly took up the chase. Although he was in splendid physical shape, there were elements working against him such as her head start, her fit legs, and the fact that an operation performed years ago to rebuild his knee had slowed him down considerably. Storm Baker could be counted on to run forever, but if speed were a prerequisite, count him out. His strength was conditioning and endurance and his natural tenacity, or what the Hazard called his "dogged, bordering-on-pig-headed, stick-to-it-iveness."

As he scaled the hill, she went over the top and disappeared from view. When he reached the peak, he got her back in his sights: there in the distance, those legs still determinedly churning, steadily closing the gap between herself and the thief, who appeared winded, waning, and impeded by the cumbersome camera bag. They ran about half a mile along the grassy paths; Storm’s despair growing in direct proportion to the widening gap between them. Aside from his desire to help her, he did not want to lose this woman. He did not know her name and she did not know his. In a city of some four-million people, he could only assume that she would be impossible to locate.

Increasingly anxious to ditch his relentless pursuers – stealing a camera bag with god-only-knows what inside was never supposed to be this challenging -- the thief made a calculated beeline into the thick woods. Ali crashed in after him. To Storm, now trailing by some four-hundred yards, eyes still riveted on her back, it was as though the trees and brush simply consumed her. By the time he reached the spot where he thought they’d entered the woods, there were no signs of anyone. Storm stopped for a second to listen for telltale sounds but heard only his own labored breathing. Felt only the burning in his lungs. He entered the woods, altogether uncertain of which direction they may have run. For all he knew he was putting further distance between himself and her.

Storm Baker had a history of what renowned psychoneuroimmunologist Joan Borysenko coined ‘awfulizing.’ That is, the tendency to mentally escalate a situation to its worst possible conclusion. By the time the exposed tree-root on the overgrown path caught his foot -- twisting his ankle, stretching elastic ligaments, and sending him sprawling -- he was certain that finding her had become an imperative matter of life and death. In his mind the punk had finally quit running, turned to face his pursuer and...

Storm pulled himself off the floor of the woods and limped back to the clearing. He was a sight, bruised and swollen cheekbone, scratched face, mud, bits of brush and leaves festooned to his clothes like harpoons on a hunted whale. He hobbled across the restaurant parking lot in search of a telephone.

The police took twenty-five minutes to arrive. A vet and a greenhorn, a male and a female respectively, both unmistakably underwhelmed by the situation Storm was so animatedly describing. Frustrated, Storm offered more detail, as though it was the dearth of specifics that was making them underestimate the gravity of the crime. When he rambled on about her hair, her hazel eyes and thin lips, the cops glanced at each other. Storm detected smirks and definite eye rolling when he mentioned that adorable nose. When he described what she was wearing, the female half of the dynamic duo glanced up from her notebook and repeated...

"Brown hair, shoulder length, maybe a little longer, dark pink t-shirt, beige shorts, white running shoes... We passed a match to that description as we entered the park, Bloor Street gates, leaving, heading east and, you know,” she added with a smile, “I’m quite certain she was carrying a black bag."

Ali Reynolds, the then unknown, unnamed woman, heading east. Gone. Love found, love lost.