The Frog Prince (5 page)

“Why do you need Onyx?” she says. The dog is wondering the same thing, his head tilted at a questioning angle in what Kat calls his “WTF look.”

“So I’ll have something to do when I run out of things to talk about.”

“Uh…what exactly are you going to do with Onyx when you run out of conversation? I think bestiality laws are still on the books.”

“No, clown,” I mutter. I squat down beside Onyx and lay my hand on his head. “If I get nervous or run out of things to say, I’m going to pet his head like this and say things like, ‘You’re a good dog, who’s a good little doggy?’”

Kat pauses to consider this. Finally she says, “If I had to think so hard about everything I did, I’d throw myself off the roof.”

“Then be glad it’s me and not you,” I mumble, swabbing the floor now with a handful of wet paper towels, and hoping she chokes to death on her corn chip. “I’m supposed to meet him at the trailhead in Castlewood Canyon at two o’clock. Can I borrow your dog or can’t I?”

She nods, still smiling, and slides off the bar stool. “I’ll put Onyx’s stuff on the front seat of your car.” Grabbing her car keys and purse off the counter she says, “I need to go grocery shopping anyway for dinner tonight. You’re still coming, right?”

“I never turn down the opportunity for other people to cook for me.”

“Hey, you should invite Roman!”

“I don’t know…that might be too much. I just met the guy. And he might already have plans.”

Kat shrugs. “Well, if he wants to come he’s welcome. You kids have fun.”

Once Kat is gone I descend on my bedroom to find the perfect hiking outfit. Out of habit I peek out my bedroom window at the sky, a fairly useless endeavor in Colorado. Weather fronts move quickly over the mountains and drop onto the foothills like deadweight, causing the weather to change drastically in a matter of minutes. I’ve seen it snow in July and have had to run my air conditioning in January.

I decide to wear my tan convertible hiking pants, the ones with the legs that unzip into a pair of shorts. I make a mental note to check the REI website later for a hiking outfit that converts with a few zips into a white lace teddy. Even non-Boy Scouts can appreciate the concept of preparedness.

I smile at my own joke—I am easily amused—before gingerly shoving my feet into a pair of lightweight gray hiking shoes and pulling a baby-doll navy blue T-shirt over my head. Grabbing a thick sweatshirt off the top shelf of my closet, I stuff it into a day pack next to an already-full water bottle and a bottle of ibuprofen.

“C’mon, Onyx!” I chirp at the dog, holding the front door open for him as I pull my hair back into a ponytail. He is stretched out in a square of sunlight on my kitchen floor, but scrambles to his feet and out the door at the sound of my voice.

Once Onyx is in the passenger seat, I chuck the whole pack into the back of my Neon, slide into the driver’s seat and reach for the bolt wedged into the faux-leather of the gear shift. At this point only I or an auto mechanic would be able to figure out how to start my car. An unfortunate attempted theft a few hundred thousand miles back—likely by some teenager who had watched
Gone in 60 Seconds
too many times—had left the ignition switch busted off.

At first I had started the car with a screwdriver. Sure, it made giving my keys to the Grease Monkey attendant or the mall valet awkward, but it was better than paying six hundred dollars to have it fixed. Various other pieces had fallen off over the years, leaving me with a bolt-shaped implement to cram into the hole that was left on the steering column. I figure in another few months this jury-rigged solution will also fail, and I’ll be forced to just cut a hole in the floor panel and propel the car with my feet.

“Yaba-daba-doo,” I mutter, jamming the bolt in.

The car sputters to life and I say a quick prayer that it won’t die and leave me stranded on the highway somewhere. I take the interstate south until I get to Castle Rock, then follow Highway Eighty-Three east to the Castlewood Canyon State Park entrance. I flash my season pass at the lady manning the visitor’s center drive-thru and make my way slowly to the first trailhead just as it begins to drizzle.

“Damn,” I mutter to myself. I didn’t bring a hat. The moisture in the air will take its toll on my hair over the next few hours. By the time we leave I’ll look like Bo-Bo the Clown.

The parking lot is mostly empty. I spy Roman immediately, his long frame leaning against his silver Prius, his normally disheveled hair tucked under a baseball cap. He seems unsurprised by the automotive prototype I’m driving, and raises his hand in greeting. I pull into the space next to his car, my heart erupting into a bout of ventricular tachycardia at the sight of him. Onyx barks and bounces around the car, his tail pistol-whipping my face about every third wag, as Roman walks up to meet us.

“Is this your dog?” he says as I open the door. Onyx runs over my lap and jumps out of the car, tearing off my sunglasses in the process. Luckily Roman is preoccupied with greeting the dog and doesn’t notice. I use this diversion to ease myself slowly from the car, hoping to get into a standing position without screeching in agony over the pain in my thighs.

“Nope, it’s Kat’s dog,” I say once I’m vertical. “I told her I’d take him out, get him some exercise. His name’s Onyx.”

The two of them frolic around the parking lot for a minute while I drag my pack from the back seat, take two more ibuprofen, and tighten the elastic cords on my hiking shoes.

“Which way do you want to go?” I say, pointing to the trailhead that immediately splits into two forks.

Roman shrugs. “I’ve never been here before. From what I hear you come here all the time, so I’ll let you decide. Take me on the grand tour,” he invites, his thumbs hooked around the straps of a Camelback over his shoulders and cinched tight across his chest.

I lose the thread of the conversation as I become distracted by his deltoids. I have a thing for men’s deltoids. Roman stands there patiently, waiting for me to offer up some sort of response, while I gape at his shoulder muscles contracting underneath his long-sleeved T-shirt.

I tear my eyes away and hide my embarrassment by grabbing for Onyx’s leash as he bounds towards me. With the dog in tow I lead the way to the trailhead and break northwest onto the Canyon View trail.

“So what did you think of the dancing yesterday?” says Roman, quickening his stride until he’s next to me.

“It was fun!” I say with real enthusiasm. What I don’t tell him is that I was so sore this morning that it took me five minutes just to get out of bed. I finally abandoned all attempts to sit up and just sort of rolled out onto the floor and crawled to the bathroom on my hands and knees. I ate toxic amounts of ibuprofen for breakfast and lay in bed until I was able to stand up without screaming…much.

“Really? You think you’ll come back next Saturday? Shea says your lessons are free for the month.”

I look over at him, wondering why this guy sounds like he actually wants to be around me–regularly.

“Will you be there?” I say. “I know you’re not a beginner…” I trail off, hoping I don’t sound needy. According to Shea, the next class requires that your partner actually touch you. I’m not really keen on strangers pawing me, even in controlled dance class situations.

“Absolutely,” he says, smiling. “You’ll learn faster if we’re partners.”

“Excuse me, folks,” says someone behind us. I turn around to see a stern-looking park ranger approaching us. She looks from me to Roman, as if unsure who to address. “I’m afraid dogs aren’t allowed in the park,” she says, jutting her chin towards Onyx. “You’ll have to take him out.”

Roman shoots her a smile that could liquefy graphite. “Are you sure?” he says, his voice sugar-sweet. “He won’t be any trouble, and we’ll clean up after him.”

The ranger scowls at him. “You’ll have to take him out.”

Still smiling, Roman takes a step towards the ranger. In a low voice he says, “It’s because he’s black, isn’t it?”

I snort, and am immediately mortified. The snort: the most dreaded variation of human laughter that sounds like someone huffing wet gravel. I can feel my face getting hot as I take off my pack and drop it on the ground. Both Roman and the ranger look over at me while I dig around and finally pull out a rolled-up piece of royal blue nylon.

“Sorry,” I say to the ranger as I hold one end of the nylon and let it unroll. I lean down over Onyx, put the vest over his head and close the plastic snap around his waist. “I should have put this on him before we got here.”

The ranger eyes the vest’s white lettering: SEIZURE ALERT K-9. “He’s a service dog?” she says.

I nod. “He can sense when I’m going to have a seizure.” Out of the corner of my eye I can see Roman grinning like a village idiot, and I will the ranger to keep her eyes on me so I don’t have to go into fake convulsions in order to distract her.

“Oh, okay,” says the ranger. Her voice is kinder now, and I feel a creeping sense of shame. “Do you folks have a cell phone in case of an emergency?” She says this very slow and very loud, as if epilepsy and English as a second language go hand-in-hand.

“Right here,” says Roman, still grinning wildly as he holds up his cell phone. I want to punch him in the shoulder, right in his sexy deltoid.

“Alright then, you folks have a safe hike.” The ranger pats Onyx on the head–despite the DO NOT PET in large red letters on the vest–and walks back the way she came.

I watch her leave, fearful now of what Roman will think of my brazen lying abilities.

“You don’t really have epilepsy, do you?” says Roman once the ranger is out of hearing range.

“No,” I say, unable to look him in the eye. “Kat likes to take Onyx into grocery stores and onto airplanes. She bought the vest off some website.”

“In that case…that was the single coolest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do!” he says, clapping his hands once and then rubbing them together with undisguised glee.

“Yeah, nothing says ‘cool’ like pretending to be disabled,” I say. “Now we’ll have to keep the vest on him the whole time in case she comes back to see if I’ve flopped off into some ravine. Poor dog.”

Roman shakes his head, still smiling. “That was awesome,” he says before following me down the paved portion of the trail. Pretty soon the sidewalk will end and we’ll both be too busy making our way up and down hills and over rock formations to talk.

"You hike here a lot?" he says.

"Not so much anymore," I say. "The park closes at sunset and you can't camp here. It's strictly a day hike kind of place. In the last few years I've gotten more into backpacking."

"Really? Where do you go backpacking?"

"All over the place. Kat and her husband got me into it. The three of us did a five-day, thirty-mile loop in the Little Belt Mountains in Montana in July."

I see him sneak a look at me sideways, eyeing me in studied disbelief. This is because I look like an evolutionary dead-end. I’m fully aware that I don't look like I can walk three blocks–let alone thirty miles–unless it’s to get to a shoe sale or a better lip plumper.

I turn onto the dirt trail on the north side of the river at the top of the canyon. I stop to let him take in the view. The river gurgles its way through garage-sized boulders scattered haphazardly along the canyon floor. The trail is closed in by greenery, mostly scrub grasses and ferns. Ponderosa pines and Douglas fir trees dot the canyon walls, interspersed with groves of aspen trees.

"Thirty miles?" he says. “That's pretty impressive.”

That's twice today that he has found me remarkable. I take immediate action to adjust his good opinion.

“Actually not that impressive,” I say. “At mile twenty-eight I sat down on the trail and cried for twenty minutes.”

I expect him to laugh, but there is no audible response from behind me so I keep soldiering on down the path. I point to a cluster of green to my left. “Look out for the poison ivy.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” he says, tugging my backpack strap to stop me.

I turn around and prepare myself for ridicule. Instead he just looks curious.

“You cried?” he says. “Why?”

I shift the weight of my pack, wondering if he’s one of those people who need to look at you in order to converse. If that’s the case we’re never going to make it through the canyon before nightfall. Onyx lets out an impatient whine, anxious to be moving.

“Um, a combination of fatigue, shock from a near-death experience after almost being swept away during one of the river crossings, and pain from the right knee that I blew out walking for fourteen hours straight.”

He’s looking at me again with a kind of growing respect. I try to redirect him back to the embarrassing, salient point. “So I cried for twenty minutes like a four-year-old.”

“So this was backpacking
for fun
, right?” he says finally. “It wasn’t some sort of survival training for the Navy Seals or something?”

I laugh. “Do I look like military material to you?” Onyx is tugging on the leash now, and I start to turn back to the trail when Roman reaches out to touch my arm.

“Does it embarrass you? That you cried?”

I shrug. No need to tell him that I spend about eighty percent of my time in the poignant throes of mortification.

“When I was in boot camp, grown men cried,” he says, more somberly than the conversation seems to deem necessary. “One of us cried every single day.”

I am strangely touched by his profession, and fight against the urge to drop down next to the poison ivy and demonstrate my finely-honed crying abilities first-hand. I clear my throat. “You were in the military?”

“Marines,” he says nonchalantly, stepping in front of me and leading the way. “After college, before law school.”

“Why didn’t you stay in?” I say, scrambling after him over a boulder the size of a tractor trailer.

“Military service sort of runs in the family,” he says, jumping from the top of the other side down onto the trail. “I did the bare minimum.”

“The bare minimum for what?”

He reaches up to take my hand to help me down from the rock. Still on top, Onyx peers down at us, whining uneasily. “C’mon, buddy!” I say, clapping my hands and making kissing noises at him. Onyx gives me one of his WTF looks, so I drop my pack and push my foot into a crevice in the rock, grabbing for a handhold above me.