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Brian took the kid’s joke as if he had an ounce of good nature in his body. He grinned and tilted his head toward Stacey and said, “Right. Then why don’t you tell
her
I’m good for something. I’ve been trying to get that message across for years.” He started distributing the drinks, getting every one of them wrong except his own.

“For
years?”
The words came from someone somewhere around the table. It was hard to say who.

Brian unbent himself from swapping the drinks around and said, “Friends, I’d like to introduce you to Stacey Curtis—my fiancée.”

There they were: two boldfaced lies in one sentence. The
friend
part, followed by the
fiancée
part. That was probably some kind of a record, even for an account guy like Brian. Even for one who used to be a lawyer. Although what he’d said explained things well enough, it smelled wrong to everybody—so Stacey, having the most to lose, was the first to speak up.

“Former
fiancée,” she said. Then, clarifying that and providing a little additional distance, “In a former
life.”

“That’s OK,” the wiseguy Evan said. “We’re not his friends, either. Not even former friends.”

Karen Pruitt gave an approving nod. “Former fiancée? Then you’ve got both looks and brains. Not a bad combination.”

Brian looked a little hurt, but let it go.

Stacey was making her way around the table, sliding coasters under the glasses that Brian had already put down and that the crew was still busy swapping around. She decided she liked these people well enough. She tended to like pretty much everybody well enough; everybody except Brian, but he was a special case. He’d shown his true colors a long time ago. For the most part, though, Stacey was the kind who tended to give people the benefit of the doubt. It made things go easier.

Her father had always been exactly that same way, and she’d seen how liking people from the start—actually
liking
them, and expecting them to like him in return—had smoothed plenty of roads for him. Her mother, not so much. Stacey was glad that she’d gotten this trait from the genetic stew that had brought her into this world. It certainly helped her make the transition when she’d thrown aside life in Boston and gone the way of the ski bum in this little mountain town. It also kind of explained why she was so at ease tending bar here at the Binding, in spite of the BA in Classics from Amherst (and the MA in Art History from Williams) that had cost her parents a fortune. Some things just come naturally to a person, whether or not she thinks she’s going to have any use for them.

“Friends of yours?” Tina Montero asked when Stacey got back behind the bar.

“One friend,” Stacey said, thinking numbers, not specifics. “Sort of.”

Tina sipped her chardonnay and studied Brian over the rim. “He’s pretty cute.”

“You can have him.”

Tina lifted an eyebrow.

“It’s Brian. You know.
Brian.”

Tina nodded sagely and put down her glass and folded her hands around the base of it. “I still say he’s cute.”

“And I still say you can have him.”

*   *   *

Brian was there when Stacey announced last call; and he was there when Jack closed out the cash register; and he was there when Pete Hardwick showed up bleary-eyed and yawning to make up the night’s deposit. He was sitting at a little table over past the silent jukebox, as though he was waiting for somebody and didn’t care if everyone in the whole world knew.

“Hey,” Pete said, sizing up the tape. “You had a good night.”

“One good table is what we had,” said Jack. He took the tape, ran it through his fingers, and found one transaction, twenty or thirty times the usual.

“That’s all it takes.”

“Definitely an expense account situation.”

Pete looped the tape around itself and pressed it flat. “Nice.”

Jack picked up a spray bottle and worked on scrubbing the bar, moving in close to where Jack stood. He tilted his head ever so slightly in Brian’s direction. “That’s the last of them right there,” he said. “The TV people.”

“Huh?”

“You know, the TV people. That commercial they’re making over at the mountain.”

Pete forgot all about the money. “The one with Harper Stone?”

“If they’re making more than the one commercial, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Come on, man. Harper Stone was in here and you didn’t tell me? You didn’t call?”

“You said no calls unless the place burns down.” He kept working the spray bottle, moving along the bar. The bottle quacked like a duck when he squeezed the trigger. He breathed in the sharp smell of disinfectant. “That’s your rule. No calls to your house, unless I call the fire department first.”

Pete looked aghast. “I don’t believe it. You didn’t—”

“Take it easy, boss. Take it easy. There weren’t any movie stars in here tonight.” He pointed with the spray bottle at Brian, who was distracted for the moment by the bottom of his empty glass. “That guy right there’s as close as we came. He’s the one signed the slip.”

“My new best friend,” said Pete, his face softening. “Movie star or no.”

“I thought you’d see it that way.”

Stacey came out from the back where she’d been putting the vacuum in the storage closet. She stopped short to see Brian there still, then she turned around and went back for her coat.

“Hey,” Brian called before she could disappear. “I could use a lift back to the condo, if you don’t mind.”

Jack and Pete exchanged a look.

FIVE

They had to sit side by side in the freezing car for a while, their breath blowing thin clouds of smoke, until the engine warmed up and the windows cleared. Stacey pushed the gas pedal to hurry things up and the Subaru coughed and hesitated and steadied itself. Brian shivered and turned the thumbwheel to switch on the heated seat, but nothing happened.

“Doesn’t the heater work,” he asked, “or is the light just broken?”

“That heater hasn’t worked in five years,” Stacey said. “If you’d ever lowered yourself to ride in my car, you’d have known.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“I’ll try to do it more often from now on.”

“Oh no, you won’t.” Stacey threw the transmission into gear and hit the gas. If there had been any snow on the ground it would have been a risky move, but even in the Binding’s ill-maintained parking lot there wasn’t much of anything on the ground but gravel and frozen dirt.

They were quiet as they drove through town, and the streets were quiet, too. No lights anywhere except the big arc lamp on the front of the library and the yellowing overhead fluorescents at the gas station. Bud’s Suds was closed up tight, along with the pizza joint next door to it and the grocery store down the block. All of the other restaurants and bars were shuttered and dark, too.

She asked him why he was here shooting a television commercial instead of doing research or whatever for the family law firm. He said that he’d been made an offer he couldn’t refuse by an old college classmate of his father’s who sat on the board of an international conglomerate that owned the consumer products company that owned the pharmaceutical company that owned the mouthwash company that employed the agency that was spending a fortune on this new campaign with the old defunct has-been of a former movie star. He was there to keep an eye on things. He said that last as if it were possible that he could keep an eye on anything. Loser.

When they reached the far edge of town—it didn’t take long—Stacey turned up the access road. Brian hadn’t said exactly where he was staying, and there were quite a few possibilities, but most of the nicer condos were more or less together.

“We’re all at the Trail’s End,” he said.

“Nice place,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“It’s all right. They’ve got underground parking.”

“That’d be an advantage, if you had a car.”

“Oh, I’ve got my car,” Brian said. “I just didn’t feel like bringing it out. What if we got snow?”

Pure Brian. Both eyes on his BMW, and none on the Weather Channel. She slammed on the brakes. “In that case,” she said, “you can walk from here.”

“Stace.”

“Don’t ‘Stace’ me.”

“Come on.”

She reached across him and pulled at the door latch. “Out.”

“Come on.”

“A little walk will do you good. Out of the car.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Try me.” She waited a beat, looking straight ahead, up the hill. Then she turned to give him a look that would have propelled any sane man out the door.

“All right,” he said. “I’m going.” He opened the door and the light popped on. “But if I slip and fall in these loafers, it’s on your head.”

Oh, God. There they were, in the glow of the dome light. A pair of useless Gucci loafers, tassels and all, in a pale and highly vulnerable color that Stacey could only describe as looking like undercooked veal. What on earth was he thinking?

“Go on and shut the door,” she said, starting up the hill while he was still off balance. “I can’t leave a helpless creature to die out here.”

*   *   *

She didn’t sleep all that well. Between Brian’s arrival and the lack of snow, things were going downhill around here fast, and her dreams were oppressive. Nothing but misery and melt. Come morning she squeezed her eyes shut against the light and lay in bed listening while Megan Ramsey made coffee in the kitchen, and when everything was quiet again she pulled on her robe and went out to wait for the first cup. She leaned against the doorsill with her bare feet cold on the linoleum. Beyond the kitchen window the Rutland
Herald
lay in the gravel drive, wrapped in thin blue plastic. She thought about going out to get it just to check on the weather forecast, but decided that it probably wasn’t worth the trouble. When it felt like snowing again it would snow. Besides, the weather around here varied so dramatically from one valley to the next that the official forecast never counted for much.

Guy came down the stairs while she was stirring a little sugar into her coffee. He turned the corner from the foyer into the kitchen and snugged up the belt of his white terry cloth bathrobe at the sight of her. He never seemed to get used to the idea of finding a boarder in the kitchen. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she said right back.

“Solve any good murders lately?”

“Not lately. You?”

“It’s been a little slow in the murder department.”

“That’s good.”

“I guess.” He measured half a cup of oatmeal into a pot, added some salt and a cup of water, and set it on the stove. He fired up the gas burner and turned it down a little from full. Then he cut up a banana into a shallow bowl and went to the refrigerator for orange juice, which he poured over it like milk over cereal. Such was his breakfast, seven days a week, summer and winter. He sat at the table and addressed the bowl with a tablespoon, keeping an eye on the pot. “So,” he said from a mouthful of banana, “you seen any of those movie people around?”

“It’s a commercial. A TV commercial.”

Guy waved his hand dismissively. “Movies, TV…”

“What’s the difference, right?”

“Right. What’s the difference.” He sipped some OJ from his spoon. He was due upstairs to brush his teeth before the oatmeal was ready, but something was on his mind. “So you’ve seen them,” he said.

“They were in the Binding last night.”

“Tell me,” Guy said, putting down his spoon. “How’s the old man holding up?”

For half a second Stacey thought he was asking about Brian, and for the next half a second she hated herself for thinking it. The idea that her old fiancé was somehow that present in her brain freaked her out entirely. “Oh,” she said, “that guy Stone. The actor.”

Guy had lost all interest in his breakfast now—which wasn’t a huge problem, since the banana would never get any soggier than it already was, and the pot on the stove hadn’t yet started to steam. “I’ll bet you’re too young to remember him very well, but I loved his movies.”

“I’m not
that
young.”

“Oh, yes you are.” Guy did some calculations in his head. Stacey wasn’t that much older than his own kids; seven or eight years, give or take. That wasn’t enough to have made any difference in her appreciation of Harper Stone’s career. “And television doesn’t count,” he said. “You had to see them on the big screen.”

“My dad took me to see
Devil May Care
when I was in junior high.”

“Sorry. Stone didn’t have much more than a walk-on in that, if he could have walked. Wasn’t that around the time he had the knee surgery they kept so quiet?”

Stacey shook her head and sipped her coffee and shuffled toward her room.

“So was he there or what? At the Binding?”

“Sad to say, no. There were a couple of old men with canes, but they were from the retirement home in Woodstock.”

“You never know,” said Guy, getting up to stir his oatmeal.

“You never know.”

“Keep your eyes open.”

“I will.”

*   *   *

What she didn’t expect was to run into Harper Stone himself on her way to the mountain.

Under ordinary circumstances it never would have happened. But under ordinary circumstances she wouldn’t have been stopping at the Slippery Slope. The place was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, the biggest ski shop in town but also the emptiest. Biggest as in the most square footage and the widest selection of gear. Emptiest as in
no customers, ever.
It was weird, is what it was. As many times as Stacey had driven by the place since she’d first come to town, there was hardly ever more than a single car in the parking lot. As often as she’d stop in to check out the merchandise, there was never more than a couple of customers in the place. Not like the crowds that always jammed MountainWerks or the Sitzmark: frustrated parents up from Connecticut, outfitting whiny kids with stuff they’d forgotten at home; high rollers up from New York, bagging the latest and greatest of everything whether they needed it or not; locals trolling the sale racks. Nope. For all the activity at the Slippery Slope, the whole property may as well have had yellow police tape strung around it.