Right after Natasha left him,
August got involved with a beautiful artist. She was a thin, leggy-yet-boyish
blond with curly hair and faint pink lipstick. They had a strangely potent
connection grounded in pastel landscapes and cold beer.
Shelby enjoyed plein-air
painting. Nighty met her at the college. She was an adjunct art instructor.
Something about the way she looked and smelled and painted drove him crazy. He
nearly melted into a weak puddle of primary colors when he heard her voice on
the telephone. How can logic explain such a reaction?
He purchased several of her
paintings from a local gallery and innocently had her come over to his
motorhome to "hang" them correctly. This aesthetic-minded event
turned into a five or six-year on-again-off-again relationship.
They had a perpetual fire-cracker
hot attraction to each other. He spent as much time with her as he possibly
could. Yes, he enjoyed drinking beer and watching her paint desert and mountain
landscapes. He would stop playing his guitar or reading a book at a moment's
notice and drive the six miles over to her three-bedroom house on Northern
Avenue just to see her, to hear her speak, to kiss her lips. She was always so
glad to see him during those early years.
On numerous weekends, Nighty and
Shelby drove hundreds of miles across open high desert country to the Sangre de
Cristo Mountains in New Mexico. They enjoyed camping and cooking outdoors and
sleeping in a tent like wrestling pretzels. Nighty especially enjoyed the late
autumn afternoons, when he would wear a light jacket and stocking cap, and
breathe perfect, dry, tree-scented air.
Even on the coolest of
afternoons, however, Shelby would wear a spaghetti-string halter top and
shorts. She needed freedom to move, few restrictions, and the motion mechanics
required for broad and powerful strokes.
Sometimes her work reminded
Nighty of Bierstadt's paintings.
Nighty's days in such camps were
relaxed and calming. He was only responsible for keeping the coffee pot ready
and making campfire meals. Shelby's daytime hours were productive.
Typically, Nighty would sit on a
lawn chair and watch her paint. He would scrutinize the movement of her firm
arms and her brush strokes and sense the powerful kinetic relationship between
a beautiful woman and her art. He was still transfixed at the image of her
swirling paint from the palette.
Many of his best nights were with
Shelby in the tent, listening to the autumnal wind rustle pines and push leaves
across the forest floor.
Such aesthetics cannot be
dissected, creases of pure and sensual ballet, potent and powerful dreams
massaged by bristlecone and sleepy birds.
Romance was good, always very
good. All it took was a brush of lips or incidental touch of fingertips, and
they were loving.
And on the stormy nights, the
howling wind would shriek passionately, driven by primitive, unchained forces,
making poetic melodies in the potent darkness, perhaps fearful of the dawn and
hasty dew-dripped illumination.
Shelby almost always wore a
fragrant powder which made Nighty think of the nineteenth century. The aroma
drove him mad. He could smell her, feel her, and hear her, to this day. But she
was gone. The lovely artist was yet another ghost of his increasingly distant
past.
Nighty was often sad their
relationship did not mature or develop. On the contrary, their affair collapsed
after several jealous rages. Accusations flew like mosquitoes on a late summer
Georgia night. Shelby left him for an artist in Taos. She told Nighty,
matter-of-factly, he was too materialistic. She
couldn't be with a man any longer who stayed in a job he didn't like and
complained all the time. She couldn't understand why he didn't pursue his music
career.
Her old impressionist lover,
Leigh, invited her to Taos for a working weekend. She never returned. Nightly
did nothing to bring her back, to coax her back. He let her go. He often
wondered if he would have felt differently about her if she had been a musician
or a sculptor. Probably not. Too much energy. With a fleeting moment of intense
clarity, Nighty recognized he was interested in her for what she did, what she
created, not for her core being.
Of course, those times were also
way back before cell phones and the internet. Nighty looked for Shelby with
Google back in 2013, for a minute or two, just out of curiosity. He didn't find
her. Gone.
He missed her art. Nighty still
had a few of her paintings hanging in his motorhome. To an extent, he missed
her too. But the Taos business had soured him.
He could still smell the powder,
though. He surely hadn't forgotten those legs.
REVIEW:
The Auroran
Cold Front Redemption
Jeffrey Ross
978-1-62420-282-7
Reviewed by: Courtney Rene
This is the story of August
Nightingale, middle aged, with little success with relationships—and even less
in his current work and life in general. The story may begin when he abruptly
decides to “leave it all behind,” on a road trip in the snow of winter. The
real story is his journey of self-realization. August Nightingale is not the
only main character though. Sarah, his neighbor is high up there on the list.
When August has a accident on the highway, she comes to be with him while he
recoups. They find each other and realize it is never too late to find
happiness. This was such an enjoyable read. It was quick and flowed easily all
the while keeping you entertained. A sweet romance that tells a real story
about human nature and how sometimes we just go along with life unhappy but we
don’t have to. We can change it all with a bit of courage and a bit of self
awareness. Such a good read.
ALSO BY JEFFREY ROSS:
This quirky and fast moving
romance revolves around passionate lovers in tangled and mostly unfulfilling
relationships. The tale is complete with hot housewives, rock musicians, exotic
dancers, motorcycles, steamy nail polish-melting love scenes, hard drinking college professors, hybrid
alien children, a romantic bug exterminator,
girl fights, a New Year’s Eve brawl,
religious zealotry, prophecies (The Temple of Just DOET) —and more.
Ultimately, Love in the RV Park is about the male perception [misperception?]
of the female psyche—and the novel attempts to answer an age-old question: What
do women want? Laugh or cry—you’ll come away enlightened after reading this
zany romance.
Blurb: A Crisis in Community College Leadership: The
Phillip Dolly Affair is literary in development but grounded in “chaotic” community
college daily experience. The novel is comic, satiric, quasi-politically
correct, edgy, and richly descriptive of community college life, leadership
foibles, and cultural themes. This hyperbolic text is entertaining, edifying,
and fun. Little community college fiction—comic or otherwise—exists—the authors
are fearless in their humorous—and sometimes biting-- analysis of community
college culture....
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