Adventures with Max and Louise (25 page)

He takes off, flying down the mountain, attacking the moguls with gusto. I watch him sprint down the side of the hill as long as I can. He skis into the shadows cast by the lift stanchions. I wait for him to reappear, but he doesn’t. He must be heading straight down the mountain.

I’m alone on a mountain after dark, injured. Forty minutes didn’t sound like so long when I was with Chas. Now it’s days and weeks staring into the growing shadows, my apprehension creeping into anxiety. I check my watch, but the face is broken. I nervously eye the black clumps of evergreen shrubs in the snow nearby. Did one move? I remember reading something recently about a hiker getting mauled by a bear, or was it a skier who stumbled into a bear’s den by accident? I swear one of the bushes moved. My heart thuds in my suddenly dry throat.

“I was just kidding about those bears,” Louise says.

“No, you weren’t,” I reply acidly.

“I was. Lord, even a kindergartner knows bears are all tucked in for the winter, snoozin’ away. They’re done eatin’ people till spring.”

“It’s only November.” My ankle throbs.

I squint to see if Chas has reappeared on the flat slope at the bottom of the hill below. He’s veered to the left to catch a small slalom course, dashing through it low and tight like a racer.

My ankle aches in its little igloo as Louise speaks. “Speed Racer’s havin’ an awful good time while you’re up here with your ass planted in the snow.”

“My thoughts exactly,” I mutter into the growing dark.

T
RUE TO HIS
word, forty minutes later, I rest in front of a cozy fire in Chas’s chalet, sipping cognac, my throbbing ankle propped up on pillows. The ride down the mountain on a travois carried by two handsome ski patrollers was bumpy, cold, and humiliating. While Louise kept insisting I order the men to ski slower, they carried me down the mountain like a bag of potatoes, much more intent on keeping an eye out for Candy, another “totally hot” patroller. The radio chatter was that Candy was coming down the same run with a “tree plant.” The patrollers were so intent on tracking Candy’s every move, they almost delivered me to the main lodge until Chas waved his ski pole in the right direction.

By the time I am discharged from the shack they call a clinic, I have gulped three of the codeine-laced Tylenol the doctor prescribed, which flips my mood 180. Chas arrives with his car.

As we leave the clinic, I hobble with one arm thrown around his broad shoulder. I ruffle his hair playfully. “Aren’t drugs great?” I say and laugh. “I can’t feel a thing.”

“Let’s just get you home.” He gently covers my head so I won’t bump it as I slide into the passenger seat. He throws our wet skis in his trunk, slams it shut, and slips into the driver’s seat with ease. “God, what a day,” he says, firing up the car. “First your hand and now this; maybe we ought to stay home and read.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Really?” he asks as if reading all day is his idea of hell. He pulls the car into the snowy passage between the lodge and hotel across the street. “I’m so sorry I talked you into that last run. It was my fault.”

“You didn’t talk me into it. I’m a big girl.” I immediately regret my choice of adjective.

“What a trouper. You know, one New Year’s my mom skied with a broken arm.”

“Is that a good idea?”

He laughed. “Hell, no. But she had a good time.”

Back at the castle, Chas builds a roaring fire, while I sip my first cognac. I manage to hobble downstairs to change into some sweats. When I come back, a fresh drink sits beside a chair in front of the fire. Chas has pulled an ottoman in front of it with a pillow resting atop for my foot. I settle down blissfully, savoring my drink before leaning my head back and closing my eyes.

Chas’s head pops out from the kitchen. “There you are! Just make yourself comfortable. I’m going to make you a killer dinner.” He wears fresh jeans and a thick white sweater, wavy hair damp from the shower.

“Great!” I don’t have the heart to tell him that my taste buds are so deadened from cognac and painkillers, I can’t tell the difference between dog food and pâté.

I lean back, savoring the fire as it warms my extremities. The porch lights flicker, brushed by the waving black pines outside the window. I raise my heavy lead crystal glass toward the mountain.

“I made it,” I whisper, downing the last golden drops.

“Slow down,” Louise whispers. “You ain’t even gonna remember what happens tonight if you keep up like this.” In the distance, a door slams. Chas must have run outside for a moment.

“Geez, Louise,” I snap. “You’re always trying to ruin things. Why do you hate Chas so much?” I ask aloud.

“Because he looks and acts like a Ken doll: plastic, plastic, and plastic.”

Sighing, I roll my eyes, searching for the cognac bottle. “Oh, come on. You obviously have something specific you hate about him. Give it up; I’m dying to know what he’s done, besides enjoy skiing when I was slightly hurt. That was so awful? What is it, Louise?”

Chas’s flushed face appears in the hall. He wears a black down coat over his white sweater. Snowflakes melt on the black nylon into wet spots. “Everything all right?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m just, um . . .” My drug-addled brain draws a blank.

“Singing!” Max says.

“Singing!” I chirp brightly, nodding for him to pour me another drink. “You know that song, ‘What Is It, Louise?’” I hum a vague melody. “How does that go?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard it.”

“It’s a good song. Um, it’s the Goo Goo Dolls, I think.”

He nods as he pours more cognac into my glass. “You sure you want another?”

I nod my head like a bobble head doll. “Uh-huh.”

“Okay, well, dinner’s almost ready.” He dashes into the kitchen.

As soon as he’s gone, I take a fortifying sip of my drink. “Spill the beans, Louise,” I hiss. “He’s nice; he cares about me. Heck, he’s even cooking. When’s the last time I had a home-cooked meal I didn’t make?”

“Oh, Lord, child, do I have to spell it out on a blackboard? He’s trying to get you into bed. If you liked peanuts and Coke at the circus, he’d have you ringside.”

“I’ve known him since high school. He’s nice.”

“Tell her, Max; tell her what the man wants.”

I can hear Max sigh. “ ’e’s a man, so by definition the bloke wants sex. But give ’im a chance. Louise, you don’t like the bloke ’cause ’e’s rich.”

“No, I don’t like him ’cause he’s wrong. I know wrong when I see it, and that boy is w-r-o-n-g. He’s right if you want to waltz into the tennis club or the yacht club or even the Seattle Golf Club, but when it comes to Molly Elizabeth Gallagher, he ain’t right.”

“That’s too vague. If that’s all you can come up with, Louise . . .”

Chas rounds the corner, grinning proudly, bearing a tray loaded with steaming food. “Dinnertime!”

I smile loopily as he spreads a napkin across my lap. “This smells so good. What is it?” The odor of the food makes me dizzy.

“Roasted herb game hen; spinach with apples, pine nuts, and raisins; and, um, this last thing is risotto with baby peas.” He points to each item proudly with his fork.

“Dig in.”

“Mmmm, Lkkksss wunnnerful,” I hear myself say with my first mouthful. I’m beyond thinking I am drunk; I’m in that bubbly twilight where more alcohol sounds perfect.

Out comes a bottle of wine, accompanied by some vaguely interesting story about visiting the winery in southern France, but I’m too looped to really pay attention. Chas swirls the wine in the lustrous glass, so huge I can see my face reflected like a balloon. He sounds like a page ripped from
The Wine Spectator,
something Martin sometimes reads aloud in a high-pitched nasally tone at work until we are all giggling hysterically. I grin at Chas until my cheeks ache, wishing we could just eat. He pours me a glass, holding the goblet in front of the fire, swirling it in the light again, then sticking his whole nose right down into it.

I pray he doesn’t hand me the glass he just sniffed when he hands me another. I swirl it and dip my nose slightly into the glass. “Mmmmm.”

“No, you’ve got to really shove your whole face in there,” he orders happily. “Just really go for it.”

“Oh.” Waves of nausea hit me as I dunk my nose. “Mmmmm.”

Holding the glass out, I wait for him to drink.

His eyes close as he swallows. “Amazing,” he pronounces. “Full, strong, and yet smooth with a chocolate finish. Wow. Good body.”

“It’s red wine, you dumb ass,” Louise mutters, “not the blood of Christ.”

I sip daintily as though I can taste something besides drunken hunger and stale cognac-coated teeth.

“It’s, um, well, there, yes, now I can taste the chocolate part,” I blab, oblivious to the sauce I am spilling on my lap.

“Whoops,” he says, righting my sloshing plate.

I look dumbly down at the reddish gravy on my sweats. “I spilled.”

“Yes, you did.” He hands me a napkin.

I scrape away at the mess, which spreads. “Boy, did I ever.”

“Nothin’ sexier than a lap full o’ gravy,” Max quips. I try to ignore him.

Chas takes his plate from the mantel and sits in the leather chair across from me. We eat in silence, listening to the logs snap and pop in the fire.

“This is really good.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I mean really, really, really, really good.”

He lifts his fork in a royal wave. “So glad you like it.”

“Nawwwww. I mean supercalifragilistic super-duper good.”

He blushes slightly, bending to take another bite. “It was nothing.”

I know from the lack of groceries in his car, the amount of time spent in the kitchen, and the quality of the food that he is passing off restaurant food as his own. Rather than be insulted, I decide it’s adorable. He is trying to impress me. I don’t blame him in the slightest. Who wants to cook for a food critic?

“Yeah, lying, that’s an adorable trait in a man,” Louise grouses.

Forcing myself to eat, I pray the food will stop the woozy, boozy jumble in my brain. Wrong. After a delectable apple tart with more cognac, I can’t feel the pain in my foot. In fact, I can’t feel my foot or my legs or the ends of my fingertips. At some point Chas takes the glass of wine away from me and lowers his body onto mine. The weight feels delicious. He traces a finger down my neckline.

“Ms. Gallagher, the way you fill out a ski sweater makes my head spin.”

I kiss him, letting him slip his hand under my sweater and run it across my breast, squeezing gently. He shifts his weight, and the feeling returns to my ankle in a burst of white pain.

“Ahhhh! My ankle!”

He moves his legs off mine. “I’m so sorry. I forgot.”

“No problem. Just watch the ankle.” I am anxious to get back to the kissing part, eager to slide headfirst into his warm red wine−scented kisses.

He slips his other hand behind my back and unhooks my bra. I lean my head back onto the couch. The heat of the fire makes me drowsy. Chas lifts my sweater off and kisses my nipples.

“God, they’re beautiful,” he moans, slipping his hands under my breasts and weighing them in his hands like fruit.

“Is this really the way you want this to happen, like some liquored up floozy who won’t remember one thing in the morning?” Louise asks.

“Yes!” I snarl.

Chas takes this as a sign to plow ahead. One hand unzips my pants.

I do my best to respond to his touches, but the undertow of drugs, cognac, and wine pushes my brain into another dimension. I blink, surreptitiously pinch my arms, and give myself a little pep talk about staying involved. Kissing him back, I rub my senseless fingers though his hair, whispering, “This feels so good,” as if it’s really true, and I can feel something. I’ve dreamed of this moment for years. Why is it drifting away? I try desperately to focus, paying attention to my arms, legs, and kissing lips. I’m determined to make this work and not pass out like a college girl after a beer bong hit.

Sadly, the dream is no match for the reality of four cognacs, two glasses of wine, and whatever was in those painkillers. I lay my head back, enjoying the fluttery kisses Chas plants on my neck. I relax, then drift off. My eyelids flutter, and the fire blurs. All I want to do is sleep. I stifle a yawn, contorting my face to hold it back. Chas sees me and lifts his head.

“I’m sorry,” I wail. “I can’t help it!”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t want to sleep.” I kiss him, running my hands down his thighs, my fingernails scraping his fire-warmed jeans. “I want to make love.”

His voice is husky. “I’ll make some coffee.” He kisses me hard on the lips. “Don’t move.” He squeezes my knee and disappears into the kitchen.

I fall asleep to the sound of the coffee beans grinding in the kitchen.

Chapter Twenty-Five

M
ORNING ARRIVES, AND
the only thing that’s immediately clear is that I must be lying on the crackly desert floor of Death Valley. I can hear the feathery beat of a lone vulture sweeping overhead, waiting patiently for me to expire. I open one eye. It’s a pine tree scratching the window. I close my eye. Much more sleep is required to ameliorate the effect of mixing gallons of red wine and cognac. My tongue no longer seems to fit in my mouth. I stumble to the bathroom, wondering who undressed me, gulp down three glasses of icy water, and hurry back into the snowy down duvet and silky high thread count sheets, burying my aching head in pillows.

I’m just drifting off to sleep when the blinding glare of the overhead lights mercilessly drills into my eyelids. Someone must have parted the curtains facing the snowy hill because the room is lit up like a fluorescent light bulb. A woman’s voice chatters imperiously in the sitting room, around the corner from where I lie, covers clenched to my chest. Groggily opening my eyes, I take note of two things: my utter nakedness and a five-star, head-throbbing hangover. The voice is vaguely familiar, but who is it? And what is she doing in my room?

“This is the room I was talking about. I’m so done with this whole country thing. The bed and everything goes. If I see one more piece of chintz, I’ll scream,” the woman’s voice threatens.