Adventures with Max and Louise (23 page)

“Nice pad,” I say. What I mean is,
Holy shit.

“Thanks. My father had it built when we were little. I try to get here as much as I can in the winter.”

I get out of the car and stretch my legs, enjoying the sight of skiers racing past the back of the house. A cedar deck flanks both sides of the house, one with a perfect view of the mountain. You can walk out the front door and be on the mountain. It’s the kind of place where presidents and prime ministers could hang out with well-heeled friends, snubbing the paparazzi from the hot tub. The driveway is wet. Each snowflake melts the moment it hits.

“Why isn’t there any snow on here?” I ask, pointing at the driveway and front walk.

“It’s heated,” he says, as though heated driveways are the norm, like indoor plumbing. “Come on in; I’ll get the bags.”

Picking my jaw up off the heated stone, I follow him in, feeling like Dorothy in the Land of Oz.

Chas drops his bags in the flagstone entryway. Overhead is a massive deer antler chandelier. I try not to gape at the various heads of mounted animals staring down angrily from the walls. They look as if their last thought was,
I’m going to kill that little squirt,
before the bullet seized their life.

“Come on downstairs, your room is to the right,” Chas says, leaving my ski equipment in the hall and thumping down the first flight of winding staircase. “I think you’ll like it. My mother did it kind of girly, although she redecorates about every six months, so God knows what it looks like now. I haven’t been up in a while.” I’m relieved that he’s kept his promise of separate rooms but not quite sure what I’d have done if he hadn’t.

“Apparently his lordship doesn’t fancy another poundin’,” Max says.

“Oh, he wants a pounding, all right. He just wants to be the one doing it,” says Louise.

“Louise,” I whisper with a giggle. “You’ve been around Max too long.”

My room is crammed with rough-hewn log furniture and a bed so high, it has steps to climb up into its downy softness. Looking out the window at the snow-sculpted pines, I feel like a servant who has crossed the barrier and made it upstairs with the gentry. Giddy and nervous, I think at any moment Chas might say, “Okay, joke’s over, time to go home,” and hand me the bus schedule.

Instead, he opens the closets and shows me the bathroom with its sunken tub and glass shower, making sure there are clean towels and shampoo. “Just let me know if you forgot anything; Mom keeps a stock of everything under the sun. Why don’t you change and meet me upstairs? We can have a drink and decide if we want to squeeze in a late run.” He kisses me lightly on the nose, then squeezes my hand. “I’m really glad you’re here. You deserve a little break. Just go up to the top of the stairs and head in the direction of the hill when you’re ready. I’ll be in the living room.”

Alone in my room, I change into my borrowed ski outfit, remembering Chas’s face as he talked to Liz earlier in the day. I’m grateful that she is safely on the other side of the mountain pass. I’m the one, I remind myself, that he invited. Checking myself out in the vanity mirror, I realize the purpose of ski clothes: to combine looking sexy with sporty, definitely in that order. In the back of my mind I remember Trina saying she’d worn these size twelve pants when she was eight month pregnant, a comment I try hard to forget. Instead I focus on the giddy reality that I’m in a ski chalet the size of a European municipality.

We meet in the living room large enough to accommodate the University of Washington marching band, with majorettes. There are several seating areas in the high-beamed room, each flanked by leather sofas, Tiffany lamps, and overstuffed chairs. At the end of the room is a river rock fireplace large enough to roast an ox. Hanging above it is another huge chandelier made from deer antlers. “Where exactly do you get light bulbs for those? The deer antler lighting store?”

Chas laughs. “Yeah, I don’t know how many deer were involved in those. I try not to think about it. Did you notice the entryway?”

“Kind of hard not to, what with a rhino, a lion, a warthog, and God knows what else staring at you when you walk in the door.”

“There’s a story behind those poor guys. My father has been hunting since he was a boy, and when my Mom and Dad got married, he assumed he could hang his hunting trophies in the den, just like his dad had. Well, my mom came home the day he hung them and had them in a truck on the way to the dump before Dad got home from work. He had to go over to the city dump himself, pay them to stop working for an hour, and hire a bunch of street people to go through the open semis full of garbage to find them. They did, and Dad paid for every single trophy to be cleaned, which had to be done by a taxidermist flown in for the job and cost a small fortune. So, a couple of months later when Mom was in Sun Valley, he had an addition built onto the house just for his trophies. Mom came home, saw the addition, which she hated, and took it one step further. She piled the trophies on the front driveway, dumped gasoline on them, and torched them.”

“Wow, I wouldn’t get in her way,” I say carefully, not sure whether I am impressed or horrified at his mother’s resolve. I look out the wall-to-ceiling window. Ahead of me skiers zip past every window. It’s like watching a ski movie in a special theater where each screen is framed in rough-hewn logs.

Chas mixes drinks at the wet bar in the corner. “It gets better. A passing fire truck saw the smoke and in two minutes put out the fire. Dad came home to find Mom writing a fat check to the city for violating burn bans and calling around trying to get someone to haul away the gasoline-soaked, foam-covered trophies.”

“What did your father do?”

“He salvaged most of them, had them cleaned again, and built this cabin. He told her that if she touched them, he’d move onto trophy wives. So here they are.”

“If your parents ever ate any of the meat, I can probably use the story in my column.”

“They probably served it at dinner parties: rhino pastries with zebra steaks. I find the whole thing disgusting. My father was very disappointed that I wouldn’t hunt.” He offers me a crystal tumbler and lifts his own in a toast. “To the sexiest cook ever and her brilliant new career.”

We clink glasses, and he kisses me. “Wow, you look great. Maybe we should just skip the skiing.” He nuzzles me gently.

His scent, a masculine mix of aftershave and lingering gas vapor from an earlier stop, fills my nostrils, and I panic. My heart races with a fluttering, alarming beat; my breath comes in short gasps. The handsome man before me suddenly looks more like a great white shark apprising a swimmer’s kicking legs than my first gentle, sensitive lover. The idea of actually having sex, so appealing in the abstract, sends me into gut-wrenching panic. To make matters worse, I beat myself up over my crushingly juvenile reaction, which further heightens my paranoia. I feel faint.

“Molly? Are you okay?” Chas takes my drink.

“Oh, sure, I’m fine.” I stumble as he leads me to a chair, feeling like the biggest sissy in the world. “We should go skiing first. Before we . . . uh . . .” I rack my brain for a word to describe what exactly we’ve come up here to do. The idea of sex, actual intercourse with Chas, fills up my brain like a ten-foot neon sign, blocking all other thoughts. I’ve dreamed of this moment for so long that now it seems unreal, like bumping into Brad Pitt in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. Yeah, it happens to some people, but not to me.

“Before we eat dinner?” Chas says.

“Yes. I’m dying to get in a run,” I lie.

Chas raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure you’re feel up to it? You’ve had a pretty intense day.”

“Oh, sure . . .” I hope I sound reassuring. “It’ll be great.” I glance out the window at the skiers whizzing fearlessly past. The idea of joining them terrifies me. But staying here scares me even more.

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
HE SIGN ON
the ski lift reads H
EAVEN’S
E
IGHT
. It’s marked blue, which means it’s one of the easier runs. Shuffling through the line on Trina’s skis is easy enough. With one drink under my belt, it’s a cinch to blend into the lighthearted crowd, fresh from work and school, laughing and chatting jovially as the lift whisks couple after couple up the mountain.

Chas’s ski outfit is part high-tech, part retro: Ray-Bans, narrow black pants, and a white half-zip North Face pullover. He stretches, chatting amiably about his week, looking relaxed and athletic. Half-listening to him, I study the mechanics of boarding the lift. It seems simple enough. You position yourself, bend your knees, and lean back into the chair. Skiers of all ages casually plop themselves in the little metal chairs and are whisked up the mountain. Before I know it, we are next.

Chas leads me up a small hill toward the corner where the chair completes its turn. On the way up the incline, my left ski catches in an icy rut. Shaking my ski frantically to free myself, I fall behind, struggling to catch up.

“Come on, Molly,” Chas urges as the chair swings around the back of the lift, heading straight for us.

In my haste to catch up, I cross my skis, falling face forward into the snow. I lift my face to wipe off the crusty balls of dirty snow.

“Duck your head!” the chair operator screams.

My head is in the path of the oncoming chair. It bears down on me like a freighter, missing my head by inches. I slam my head into the snow, cheek stinging as I see Chas on a chair above me, his worried face growing farther away by the second. The chair operator hits a red idiot button that stops the entire lift. It grinds to a fun-stopping halt. The waiting line quiets, shifting impatiently as the operator hoists me by the armpits into place for the next chair. His breath smells of cigarettes and salami.

“You okay?” Salami Breath asks malevolently, missing his cigarette, which he’s placed on the ledge.

Fighting the tears, I nod, wiping chunks of snow off my cheek. My heart is racing so fast I don’t have the nerve to ask the guy for my goggles, which have flown off into a snow pile. The line of skiers focuses on me like a roadblock between them and their weekend.

“I’ll get her on the next one,” the lift operator yells to Chas, who gives him the thumbs-up.

From the chair ahead, Chas smiles encouragingly. “See you at the top.”

“Any singles?” the lift operator yells into the crowd.

Everyone stares mutely back. Not a one.

“Alrighty then, nice and slow,” Salami Breath says, as if I am drooling into a cup. He pushes a button. The chair moves toward me at quarter speed. Moron setting, I guess. I crouch with my butt out, baboon-style, until the chair hits the back of my knees. Collapsing, I hold the rail for dear life. Below me the skiers cheer. I want to flip them off. My ankles are crushed by the weight of the clunky, heavy boots, my nose freckled with sweat. The cute wool turtleneck chokes me. Relaxing slightly, I realize I have to pee.

“Here’s what you do: you keep your butt on the lift and go back down the hill,” Louise says. “Then you get yourself a nice glass of wine and read your book. That’s what a smart woman would do.”

The chair bucks as we pass over the last stanchions and climb quickly to the top. I can make out Chas ahead of me, waving to a friend, who yells something back and skis off. After spotting me, he waves both hands happily.

“A smart woman,” I insist, “would stick with Chas.”

“I
SN’T THIS GREAT?”
Chas asks when I finally reach him at the top of the chair lift, where the hill crests. Eyes aglow with excitement, he surveys the skiers attacking the mogul field beneath us. Halogen lights flood the mountain into a bleached lunarscape that abruptly stops in a wall of dense black night. Stars force their way weakly through the artificial light. I’m surprised at how quickly it got dark, how much steeper the mountains appear in the shadows.

“Yeah,” I smile thinly, wondering how on earth I am going to make it down this terribly cold, terribly steep hill.

“On your ass, girlfriend; I warned you, but noooooo, you just had to go wiggle yourself into those tight old pants and painted-on sweater,” Louise snaps. “That boy’s got you so turned around you don’t have the sense to come in outta the cold. Sheesh! I’m freezing.”

“Don’t listen to ’er, luv,” Max says. “You just take ’er nice and easy. Work yer way down. You’ll catch on quick enough.”

“Do you know how many people die skiing into trees? One minute they’re schussing with the best of them until they look away and it’s end of story, lights out. . You know how many people do that? You stay the hell away from those trees. They’re dangerous, not to mention probably chock-full o’ bears. Lord, I hate bears. They’re just man-eatin’ rugs, that what they are. I bet they’re all over this mountain just waiting for some dumb skier to smack into a tree. They hear that noise, that loud old thunk; it’s like the dinner bell.”

I’ve learned, when Max and Louise tick me off, to keep my mouth shut when I’m with someone else. Every fiber of my being pleads, “Shut up, Louise!” while forcing myself to appear delighted at the prospect of hurtling down the mountain.

“Will you shut yer ruddy gob!” Max hollers. “You’re scarin’ ’er witless.”

“Me?! It’s that Chas boy, putting her life in danger just ’cause he likes to ski. I bet he’s single ’cause his last girlfriend smacked into a tree skiing at night. I just bet that’s what happened.”

Beaming at me, Chas shouts, “Let’s hit it!” and lifts off the back of his skis, launching himself down the mountain. He skis with the grace and speed of a collegiate athlete. Dismayed, I watch him turn to his left, searching for me. He stops and glances back up the hill.

“Snow’s great!” He waves his ski pole, his face split into a happy grin.

“I can’t do this,” I wail under my breath.

“Now you’re talkin’,” Louise crows. “You take your skis off, walk on over to the lift, and tell ’em you just realized you’re a whole lot smarter than he is, and you wanna ride down in style.”

“Rubbish. Our girl’s no quitter.”

“Don’t listen to him, Molly. He’s a man. Most men’d kill themselves rather than admit they don’t know something. And he likes Chas.”