Adventures with Max and Louise (41 page)

A gritty wind sweeps swirls of dirt across the tarmac as we walk at a leisurely pace back to the office. I think about Wolf, his face turning serious as he talks to me about the night of the accident. I’ve rushed up here like a lovesick teenager, so consumed with the hunt, the frantic logistics of finding a man on a mountain, that I haven’t stopped to think about timing. Sure, I’m ready for love, but now that Wolf is in Alaska, will he be ready? Surrounded by people who know him as an experienced outdoorsman, will he find a city girl’s sudden appearance pathetic and needy? The wind sweeping across the tarmac grows colder. I’m glad to be wearing my fancy new jacket but also self-conscious. It never occurred to me before: I am on Wolf’s turf now, and I wasn’t invited.

As we approach the office, I can feel Louise and Max gearing up to defend Wolf, but Jess interrupts. “Now, of course that don’t help you much with the question about calling Wolf or just showing up. I don’t reckon he’s gonna take up with a park ranger, although I’ve heard there’s a new girl that ain’t too hard on the eyes.”

We climb the concrete steps to AirPac, and Jess opens the door for me. “Gee, thanks, Jess; that never would have occurred to me.”

He grins, and we enter the building like old friends. He goes to his desk, picks up the ringing phone, and is soon engaged in a conversation about a fuel truck with a broken axle. I take my cell phone out of my pocket and gaze at it cupped in my hand.

“Carpe Diaz, luvey,” Max whispers.

“Carpe
diem,
you fool!” Louise snaps. Her voice is as thin as straw.

“Carpe Diaz is Latino,” Max counters.

“He probably doesn’t even have cell reception,” I whisper.

Jess glances over at me and smiles. What a nice man. I have all these great people rooting for me, and I’m shaking like a sick dog. I find Wolf’s message, and his number pops up on the tiny screen. I press dial. The phone rings four times and goes to message.

“Hey, this is Wolf. I’m 12,000 feet above sea level and climbing, so if it’s important, leave a message.”

I hear the beep and hang up. What was I going to say?
Hi, I just happened to be in Anchorage and thought we might get together for a drink.

My phone rings. It’s a credit specialist from MasterCard. “We’re sorry, ma’am, but at this time, based on your earnings, we’re unable to extend your credit line.”

“What?!” I screech in his ear. “You give college students with no jobs $5,000 at the drop of a hat. You give people so much credit they’re slaves to their MasterCard bill! What’s wrong with me?” I steam. I’ve been rejected by a faceless drone.

“Nothing, ma’am. We just aren’t handing out additional $5,000 credit lines to people in your income bracket anymore. It’s nothing personal.”

But it is. “My cookbook just came out, and I was on the
Today Show,
” I boast. “I can afford this. My cookbook is going to be huge.”

There is a long, unbelieving pause. “Good for you, ma’am, and thank you for calling MasterCard.” He hangs up, leaving me staring at the phone.

Jess finishes up his phone call and claps his hands. “You ready to fly? Looks like great weather.”

“No. My credit card is maxed out. I can’t go.”

Jess picks up his coffee mug, swirls the last dregs around, then tosses it down with a grimace. “Sure you can.”

He sounds like one of those cockeyed optimists who see a broken dam as a surfing opportunity. “I really can’t. I don’t have any other credit cards, and my dad would never lend me money to chase a man. He’d tell me to hang tight and wait for him to come to me.”

Jess takes his leather coat off a hook by the door and whistles for the dog. “Aw, come on, I’ll pay for the gas. I need to take Scout for a ride anyway. Maybe the altitude will squeeze some of the gas out of him.”

I slump down on my chair, running my hand through my hair. “Jess, you’re very sweet, but I can’t let you do this.”

He finds his sunglasses on his desk. “Sure you can. Otherwise I just have to sit around here and stare at government paperwork all day. Come on. You’ll get to see the real Alaska.”

I’ve already said yes in my head, but I have to be polite. “You sure you don’t mind?”

Scout and Jess wait for me at the door. Scout’s tail beats against the door in anticipation. Jess jingles his keys as if he can’t wait to fire up the engine and lift off. “God, no, I love to fly. How ’bout you pay me by cooking me a real nice meal sometime? Nothing fancy, just good home cooking; I’m a great pilot and a lousy cook, right, Scout?”

“I’ll cook you one of the best meals you’ve had in your life.” I offer Jess my hand, and we shake on it.

Jess kicks open the weathered door and skips down the steps like a sixteen-year-old. “Hot damn, let’s go.”

I bend down, grab the stinky dog, and give him a big squeeze. God, I love Alaska!

Chapter Thirty-Seven

J
ESS’S HELICOPTER IS
an old wreck that appears to have been dragged from an Army salvage lot and given a new coat of paint. When I open the door, it creaks ominously, leading to visions of the whole thing flying apart midair. Scout worms his way ahead of me, crawling into the copilot’s seat before I can sit down. Jess yells, “Get down,” several times, but the obstinate beast stares at the ground, suddenly deaf. Jess drags him out by the collar, no small feat since Scout must weigh a good eighty pounds. But Jess wins, and the dog skulks into the back of the helicopter, whining and pacing unhappily.

I brush off a thick mat of black dog hair from the seat and settle in, watching Jess go through his pilot’s checklist, written on a laminated piece of paper. I wonder again how old he is and why exactly he needs the starting procedure written down. Could I perhaps be flying with a charming Alzheimer’s patient? Once the disgruntled dog settles into one of the four seats behind me, Jess flips some buttons, and the giant blades overheard spin, rattle, and shake as if they’re going to fly off on their own. With a thundering groan of metal, we’re airborne. This is nothing like the sleek flying limo Charlotte rented. Compared to that helicopter, this one’s a crumbling Model A.

Alaska, from a commercial flight, is pretty. Swooping deep into the country in a helicopter is spellbinding. Flying low over the deep green lichen-covered tundra takes my heart and twists it in a knot. I’ve never seen land so craggy and elemental. Jess flies me over inlets of turquoise water reaching deep into the land like fingers, edged with white lines of ice. We see a herd of caribou grazing on the foothills of Denali. Jess tells me he’s flown over caribou herds on one of the Pribilof Islands so big that all he could see was miles of brown hide with no end in sight.

“The thing they don’t tell you on the Nature Channel,” he yells over the helicopter’s whine, “is that they stink; God, do they stink. Like fermented wet dog and skunk mixed together.”

I turn around to get a better look at the dog, thumping his tail on the back of the rear seat. He rubs his nose on the window, barking at the grazing caribou below.

“He really loves this, doesn’t he?” I ask Jess.

Jess glances back at the ecstatic animal. “More than steak on Sundays.” He points his finger at a cluster of low buildings on the horizon. “That’s Talkeetna.”

The muscles in the back of my neck tense as we get closer. My cell phone rings, and I check the number. It’s Wolf.

“Hello?” I yell, hoping he can hear me.

“Molly, I was so happy to see that you’d called. What’s that noise? Are you driving behind a cement truck?”

Jess keeps his eyes straight ahead, pointing us in a beeline for Talkeetna. “I’m about one mile from Talkeetna. A friend is flying me in his helicopter.” Jess grins.

“Jesus, Molly, is something wrong with my mom? Has there been an accident?”

“I love you,” Max says softly. In the midst of the chopper noise, the phone call, my emotional high, the world grows to a pinpoint, encompassing Max, Louise, and me in a very still place.

“Me too, honey,” Louise adds.

My heart lurches as I realize that Max and Louise, my modern-day guardian angels, are leaving me. I’m done grieving. I have so many questions I want to ask them, where they came from and where they’re going, why they showed up when they did and what took them so long. I could have used them the moment Mom died. Okay, maybe not in breast implants, but the loss of my mother dropped me into enemy territory. I could have used a couple of allies. I’ll never stop missing Mom or not imagine how different it would be if she were still here, but thanks to Max and Louise, I’m ready to let go of the past. I don’t want them to leave me, but as the helicopter zips closer to Talkeetna and Wolf waits anxiously on the line, I know it has to end.

A sea change occurs in my soul. Max and Louise have gone. Despite all the bittersweet sadness, there is no place to go but forward. As I respond to Wolf, the words are all my own. “No, no, no accident. Everything’s fine. In fact, it’s great.”

“Good. Now, what are you doing here?”

“My mom said you can do the most amazing things and travel all over the world and have the greatest job, but at the end of the day it doesn’t amount to anything if you don’t have someone to share it with.” I babble without answering his question. Apparently, I haven’t learned eloquence.

He laughs. “You came all this way to tell me you’re getting a dog?”

I take a deep breath. “I love you.” And although I am scared out of my mind at how he’ll react, I’m proud of myself. Max and Louise brought me to the last mile, but I crossed the finish line solo.

He sucks in his breath, sounding hoarse. “Wow,” he says. “I thought you and Chas were—”

“Over, we’re over,” I say quickly, the tiniest little germ of panic implanting itself in my brain. “And I didn’t realize how I felt about you until last night, after you’d already left.” What if he doesn’t want me here? What if he’s shacked up with the hot ranger while the storm rages outside?

He laughs. “So you flew all the way up here, and now you’re almost in Talkeetna?”

He’s dancing around my declaration of love like Baryshnikov. “I hope there’s not more than one.”

“Wow. I don’t know what to say. This is the most amazing thing.”

Is this the part where he says I am at an emotionally fragile point in my life, and this is bad timing? I’m thinking love, and he’s thinking stalker? “I’ve just said I love you, and all you can say is, ‘That’s amazing’? I mean, I have just strung together the three most powerful words in the English language; I’ve outed myself emotionally, and you’re letting it hang there like, like—”

“Like bad salami?”

“Yes,” I reply indignantly. Jess concentrates on lining us up with the strip of dirt that passes for an airfield.

“Or stinky socks?” His really annoying, argumentative habits come rushing back. What was I thinking? He isn’t the least bit romantic. Life with him will be one rough patch after another.

“Whatever, Wolf. You can come up with all the analogies you want, and it still—”

He interrupts me. “I’m in a tent full of guys, Molly. This really isn’t the place for heartfelt declarations. There are three guys pretending not to listen to every word you’re saying who are going to kill me if we don’t make this climb,” he says. “But if you want me to say that I’d much rather be with you, saying what you want to hear and what I want to say, then you’re absolutely right.”

Warmth floods me body and soul. “So go climb. I’ll be here when you get back.”

“That could be in three days. I want to see you now.”

I cover the phone, yelling to Jess over the helicopter engine like a teenager. “He wants to see me!” I could open the door to this helicopter and fly on the wings of happiness. “But the other guys want to climb.”

“Tell him to look up,” Jess says, but there is a sudden deadness on the line, and after a few shouts of “look up,” I realize that the phone is dead.

W
E CAN’T SEE
the top of the mountain because there’s a big beautiful snowstorm raging there, but down below it’s easy to make out a gray speck perched on a steep incline. Jess dives the helicopter down low over the speck until it becomes a dark gray domed tent. Denali jumps forward as if my life is an Imax film, and we’re going to crash. At the last moment, Jess pulls back, and we hover over the tent. A tent flap folds down, and there, below me, is Wolf, dancing around in the snow, waving his arms and screaming. Three other men climb out of the tent and cross their arms, glaring. They eye the helicopter as if a giant fly has descended on their picnic. I feel like the jealous fiancée who’s just crashed the bachelor party, but I don’t care. Nothing can ruin this moment.

Wolf’s friends shake their heads as he dashes back into the tent, flying back out into the snow with something in his hand. He sprays it onto the snow, and the letters appear in thin cherry red. Ketchup? Gatorade?

“Hang on, I’ll turn us around,” Jess yells as we curve around the side of the mountain. The dog is going nuts, clawing at the door, barking his head off.

When we make a second, lower pass, I can see what’s written in the snow:
I love you.
I am bursting with happiness, thinking about asking Jess if there’s any place around here we can land, when the dog’s paw rotates the hatch handle. The hatch opens. Frigid air rushes in with a great whoosh. The dog disappears into thin air. Jess and I look down in mute horror just in time to see him land in deep, engulfing whiteness.

“Oh my God!” I cry, feeling responsible for the little mutt’s demise as Jess yells, “Close the hatch!”

I scramble to the back, holding on to a seat so I don’t fly out behind the dog. I slam the hatch shut with all my might. I don’t want to look down and see that sweet, stinky dog splayed out in the snow, his frozen corpse to be picked clean by carrion in the spring.

I make my way shakily back to the copilot’s seat, crying. “Is he dead?”

Jess shakes his head, annoyed, and points downward. I look out the window. The dog is shaking snow off his coat, barking his head off as he lopes toward Wolf, who gets down on his knees to check him before giving us the thumbs-up. A moment later I get a text message on my phone.