I step to meet Jasper and slide my hand into his.
“I love it.”
He takes one last little breath. “Come on.”
It takes some rattling but Jasper is finally able to get the heavy iron key to turn in the lock. He steps inside and flicks on the overhead light. The house blinks to life. A warm glow from the dusty bulbs is cast over the terracotta tiles and patterned rugs. Immediately before me sit a few burnt-orange leather sofas, with woven rugs draped over the seats and armrests, and cushions all along them. A mirror hangs on one wall over a thick wooden shelf dotted with handmade-looking ceramics and old magazines. Beyond the living space is a kitchen with bottle-green tiles, a deep farm-style sink, light natural wood cupboards, and an island topped with more hefty natural timber. Doors lead off on either side of the living space.
“Through there is the meditation room,” Jasper says, pointing in one direction. “And the bedrooms are this way.” He makes in the direction of the bedrooms, ducking through the low doorway.
I follow him into a small hallway. An alcove at one end with a window looking out onto the back patio is furnished with a hanging chair and a stump of wood that serves as a table, and three doors punctuate the opposite wall. Jasper stops midway to nod at an open doorway.
“Bathroom,” he says, then moves on.
I stop to appreciate the geometric pattern on the tiles, the tub by the window, the large waterfall-style shower, then follow Jasper, who is turning into one of the bedrooms.
He tosses his bag onto a chair at one side of the large bed, already made up with white linen sheets, rich-yellow pillows, and a woolen throw, while I linger in the doorway.
“Is this…” he says stiltedly, glancing from me to the bed. “Are you…I’m usually on the left.”
I shake myself back into the room. “That’s okay. I usually sprawl, so…”
“There’s another room if you’d prefer. I can—”
“No,” I say before I know I’m speaking. “This is good.”
Finally, I enter the room, with a nervous smile, dropping my bag on the opposite side of the bed. I don’t know why I’m acting all bashful but there’s something about the quiet and the distance from the rest of the world that makes the fact Jasper and I are here together without supervision, without anyone to interrupt, all the more apparent, and all the more real.
We turn to face each other, the mattress an ocean between us. Jasper wipes his hands on the sides of his legs, his shoulders lifting and his lips pressed together. I chew my lip and rub my neck.
“Shall I…” Jasper begins, a little unsure, “show you the rest?”
“Yeah! That’d be great.”
Relieved to be leaving the bedroom, but also a little disappointed we didn’t christen the bed right there and then, I follow Jasper to the other end of the house. The meditation room is furnished with cane chairs, rugs and pillows with geometric patterns, candles, a small gong, and a few ferns in pots leaning their fronds against the wall, reaching for the window. It occurs to me that everything looks a little too clean, a little too ready for visitors for a place that hasn’t been used in years.
“Was someone here before us?” I ask.
“We have a property manager, someone who comes out here regularly to clean, water the plants, and fix anything that’s broken.”
I run my hands over the strands of string hanging from a dream catcher that’s hung on the wall. “Someone comes here to take care of this place even if no one comes here.”
“Yeah,” Jasper says, clearly feeling a little awkward about this admission. “It was actually my idea. A few years ago Dad wanted to sell the place. I convinced him to keep it and to hire someone to watch over it.” His eye catches on something sitting on the windowsill. “Oh, look at this.” He picks up a small glass figurine from the sill and I move to his side. Made from a dark-burgundy shade of glass is a horse figure, its mane flying furiously in an unseen breeze behind it. Jasper holds the delicate object up so I can take a closer look. “This was my mother’s. I remember she bought it at a local market. My father told me not to play with it because it was too fragile, but Mom—she showed me how to hold it so it wouldn’t break.”
“It’s beautiful,” I say. “She must have cared about this place a great deal.”
“She did. She loved it here almost as much as I did.” Jasper lifts his gaze from the object and surveys the room. “I can feel her. Her energy is all over this place.”
His eyes become glassy as he goes completely still, lost in thought or memory, I’m not sure which.
“Are you okay?”
He lowers his chin and smiles at me. “Yes. I like feeling her presence. I—I’ve missed it.”
Gently, he places the horse figurine back in its spot on the windowsill and glances out through the glass. “There’s more,” he says. “Come on.”
The back door seems to be stuck, but with a kick and a shoulder Jasper manages to dislodge it from its frame. For a moment he fumbles with the light switches next to the door, declaring “Uh-huh!” when he’s found the right one and flicking it on. A web of string lights illuminates the back porch, hanging from the slatted wooden veranda that stretches along the entire back of the house. Cool tiles rest under our feet, and a large wooden table sits with eight hefty chairs around it waiting for guests. Large planters line the edges of the veranda, encasing us with verdant plant life. Cacti, cacti, and more cacti! Beyond the veranda sits a glistening blue pool, also lit up and casting refracted swirling light onto the ceiling. Beyond that is nothing but desert, drifting off toward a mountainous horizon until the light can’t reach and everything becomes shadow.
“It’s so huge,” I say, stepping off the tiles, onto the dusty ground toward the pool and the expansive, arid world beyond. “It looks like it goes on forever.”
