Northern Lights (18 page)

The six championship-flight finalists were being introduced by a man in a giant Eskimo parka. Daniel was on the stage along with the fifteen-year-old and the others. The crowd was dressed in sweaters and nylon ski jackets and stocking caps. They clapped loud for the fifteen-year-old.

Perry found Grace and Addie sitting on a bench. They stopped talking when he came up.

The man in the Eskimo parka made the introductions and
the six finalists trooped off the stage. Everyone applauded and waved scarves.

“Just a minute,” Addie said. “Don’t have breakfast without me, I’ll be right back.” She hurried over to Daniel and walked with him partway to the starting area, then she kissed him and came back. “Okay,” she grinned, “now we eat. He’ll win.”

“Bless your Olympian.”

“You said it.”

“I think it stinks.”

“Maybe over breakfast it’ll smell better.” She smiled straight at him.

Later Harvey joined them. He was sour, refusing to look at Addie. As soon as possible Perry took Grace’s arm and led her out of the hotel. They took a van into Grand Marais and spent the morning looking in the shops. Grace found a set of carving knives she liked, and Perry bought them, then they decided to hike back to the hotel. It was a sunny, deceptive sort of day.

“Sorry it’s not coming to a better time,” he said.

She took his hand and they walked quietly for a while.

“That Addie should be spanked.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s a vacation anyway.” A big truck went by and they moved off on to the shoulder of the road. “I like it when we’re alone like this. And it was nice of you to dance with me last night. Wasn’t it fun?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m glad. It was nice of you. Sometimes you do nice things and I like it.”

“It would all have been better if Addie behaved herself.”

“Well, I like being here with you. Can we come back in the summer? I’d like to be here in the summer. We could spend a whole week here, couldn’t we? I’d like that. Can we do it? I was
looking at some brochures in the hotel and they have all sorts of things going on. We can come alone then, all right?”

“Maybe. Maybe so.”

When they got back, the championship race was over and Daniel had won easily. The times were posted on the hotel blackboard.

Perry sat with a newspaper in the lobby, content to be alone. He read about events in Washington and Paris and Minneapolis, forgetting the details as he read. The twilight crowds were coming in, some heading for the bar and others to prepare for dinner, and people were laughing. Perry put the paper down. For a time he simply sat alone, watching the people move through the lobby and listened to them. He saw the yellow-sweatered girl and she said hello and passed on towards the stairs. A fire was going. The lobby had high ceilings and crisscrossing beams and leather chairs.

Reclining, absorbed into the lobby as if he were an odor or physical object, Perry sat alone. The winter evening restlessness. Too bad about Addie, too bad for Harvey, too bad in general. Everything was too bad. He did not want to go upstairs. And he did not want to go to the bar, or sleep, or wander, or be still. He lit a cigarette and snuffed it out, then thought what the hell and relit it, crossing his legs. When the cigarette was smoked, he took a walk around the hotel, stopped to watch some children skating on a large artificial pond, then he went inside and took a chair nearer the fireplace. Too bad about Addie, too bad about Harvey, too bad in general. He untied his shoes, slipped them off, let the fire bake the smell of his socks into the air. The yellow-sweatered girl came by again. She waved and said hello and continued into the bar. Too bad in general. Later the tiny elevator deposited a
group of young skiers into the lobby, the doors creaked, the elevator climbed again and came back with Addie and her new friend Daniel.

She was playful. She wore a long dress with gloves. The boy was careful not to touch her.

“Do you know Daniel? Daniel, this is my very good friend and confidant and trainer, Paul Milton Perry. Paul is a special friend and you have to be nice to each other. And Daniel, Daniel is the cross-country champion, you know. Daniel is my new friend, Paul, and you have to be kind to him, you must promise.”

Perry promised and shook hands with the boy.

He seemed nice enough. The boy had nothing to do with it. Sitting with his chin slightly tilted, he looked a bit of an aristocrat. He wore a maroon sweater trimmed in gold. Perry asked him about the Olympics and the boy blushed and said it was something he was aiming at, nothing certain.

“Oh, you can’t listen to Daniel,” said Addie. “Daniel
never
says the truth. The truth is always too good to be the truth. Daniel, Daniel has already qualified and he’s in training. He just won’t say that. Isn’t that right, Daniel?”

The boy nodded and smiled at the floor.

“And Daniel is also a student at the university and he’s majoring in … What is it? Premed. That’s it, he’s going to be an Olympic champion and then a doctor, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” the boy said, smiling at Perry. Perry smiled back at him.

“The skiing doctor,” said Addie, “can’t you see it? Skiing out to the farms with his black bag, arriving just in the nick of time, saving the pregnant mother, the baby dies but it isn’t Daniel’s fault, and the woman cries but he consoles her and tells her there will be other babies, other pregnancies, other dreams, other … I don’t know what. It’s a great story and I can’t wait to watch it on television.”

“Shut up,” the boy said suddenly. He didn’t appear angry, but he meant it.

“You see, you
see
?” said Addie. “Doesn’t he have an Olympian doctor’s presence of mind? He’s so positively certain about everything. It drives me wild. He’s not at all wishy-washy. Now, watch me ask him to get us all a drink and watch him refuse. Daniel?”

The boy shrugged and sauntered off towards the bar.

“He
is
a good lad,” she said, watching him go.

“You’re a sweetie, Addie.”

“Thank you,” she grinned. “And where’s your lovely wife Grace?” Then she stopped. “I
am
sorry. I’m being nasty and I hate myself. I’m in a mood. It isn’t so easy as you think, you know.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know. You think you know. You don’t know at all. You don’t know this—Harvey wants us to get married. There’s something I’ll wager you don’t know. He asked just yesterday, can you believe that? Even with Daniel and everything, he asked even then. Now there’s something Peeping Paul doesn’t know. How’s that? How do you think that feels, smarty-know-everything? Think it over awhile. You don’t know everything, you see?” She looked at him as though he’d hurt her, glaring. “There’s something you don’t know,” she ended softly.

“You’re such a sweetie,” he said. “Some sweetie to ruin it all.”

Then she grinned again. “Yes. Yes, that’s one of the world’s great truths. I’m such a sweetie.” She sighed, and her grin relaxed and she just looked at him. “I love you anyway.”

The boy came back and said the hotel didn’t allow drinks in the lobby. He was polite, winking at Perry as if there were knowledge between them.

“Well, we must go inside then,” said Addie. The boy stood aside, waiting for her to stand. He was careful again not to touch
her. “Aren’t you coming? Daniel will be upset if you don’t celebrate with him.”

“Please come along,” the boy said.

“I’ll just sit. Thank you.”

“Very well, very well,” Addie laughed. “You have only yourself to blame when you die of thirst.”

“Have a nice celebration.”

The boy nodded and smiled, and they went off. Addie walked fast ahead of him.

Perry spent another hour in the lobby then went upstairs. Harvey was not in his room. Grace had finished her postcards and they went down together to post them. They took a walk outside, down towards the lake and back up and around the hotel, then to their room. Harvey was still not in.

“Poor Harvey,” said Grace.

“He’ll be all right.” It was just too bad. They ordered sandwiches from room service. Grace wrapped up her new carving knives. Perry finally turned on the color television.

Such a small place, Perry thought. He had experienced the sensation before—inconsequence and smallness. The hotel restaurant was deserted. Red and blue tableclothes were draped in random readiness and the hotel had collapsed around the emptiness. Already the smell was musty. It overwhelmed him: an enormous lassitude that pressed down like low gravity, anchoring him to each slow-moving unfolding, each conversation like an echo, unspoken currents, each concern a well-traveled maze with each step plodding in the tracks of that previous. He waited a long while before a woman opened the kitchen door and took his order. When she was gone, Grace began talking, a waiter brought coffee, the morning unfolded as if begging for corroboration, and
Grace was talking. “And I don’t see why you should go, it doesn’t make sense. It’s another of Harvey’s ideas and it’s worse than most of them, so it must be pretty awful. I just wish you wouldn’t.”

“I promised I’d go along. You know that.”

“I know …” she trailed off.

“It won’t be so bad,” Perry said slowly. “Harvey’s got things arranged, maps and about a billion dollars worth of gear, the best stuff, and he’s … After all this, maybe it’s what he needs, I don’t know. And it’s only for a few days and all. You should stop worrying about it.”

“I’m not exactly worried,” she repeated. “I just don’t know.”

“You’re acting like it.”

“I’m sorry then.”

“Don’t be sorry. If you’re worried, say so. There’s nothing to worry over. Three days, four days. It’s not like we’re going whoring. That’s how you’re acting.”

“Paul.”

“All right.”

Nothing was settled. She ate her breakfast in a puckered, hurt way which he tried to ignore, knowing that in the end she had no real choice in the matter and would accept it as she accepted everything. Finally, when they finished coffee, she asked if they could take a walk. The invitation was a cripple. Pathetic except for the porous affection. So they walked out of the hotel and down to the lake and watched the ski-mobile races. Grace hugged his arm.

Afterwards they hiked down the road to the parking lot, and Perry got out the two orange rucksacks and threw them over his shoulder and they returned to the hotel. He went back alone for his skis. The sky was frosted gray.

Waxing his skis, he held quiet against her sulking. She sat on the bed and read travel brochures. “Maybe Harvey will call it
off,” he finally said as a gesture. She didn’t look up. He shrugged and went next door and knocked and went in. Harvey was drinking red wine.

“You get the rucksacks?”

“In my room. Where’s Addie?”

“I’ve put her out of my head.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, out of sight out of mind and so on. She’s well out of sight. Having a good-bye with her Olympic champion. What’s his name?”

“Daniel.”

“Right, Daniel. The giant slayer. No, is that Daniel? Daniel, David. I don’t know. Lion slayer? Anyway they’re off having their good-byes and we’re here. Did you catch any of the ski-mobile races?”

“A few minutes. Stinking boring. What you doing there?”

“Just encasing this map in plastic. It’s always a good thing to do,” said Harvey. Here, take some of this.” He handed Perry the bottle and Perry drank some and gave it back. “I suppose Grace is still putzing and moaning?”

“She’s accepted it. She’s that way.”

“A stellar woman. Truly. Has a lot of sense and a good head on her shoulders and all that.”

Harvey’s face was sliced into two planes, sallow and bright red. The bones seemed to want to push out through the skin. He was in his shorts. His beard was full now and dark against the rest of him. It looked to Perry like a fungus, some sort of fuzzy parasite that had taken Harvey in his sickness and was not yet defeated. “So,” Harvey was saying, “I’ll take a run into town and get the things we’ll need. I’ve got a list ready. I’m glad we’re going. I’m glad. Plenty of chocolate and peanut butter. Did you know how many calories peanut butter has? Guess. Just take a stab.”

“I don’t know, Harv.”

“A hundred! A hundred calories for each tablespoon, can you believe that? Each
tablespoon
! And it has protein, too. Anyhow, I’ll pick up a couple of big jars and some instant coffee and matches and chili and canned stew and that sort of thing. It’s all down on the list.” Perry took the list and scanned it. It looked complete.

“Okay, Harv.” Perry tried to think. He wasn’t a woodsman. “You called the weather bureau?”

Harvey stared at him. Then he grinned. “Sure. Hunky-dory. Just don’t forget your sleeping bag.”

“All right then. I’m going to take Grace down for some lunch. Want to come along?”

Harvey shook his head. He was intent on rubbing the gold wax into his skis. “Say a beautiful good morning to Addie if you see her.”

“I will, Harv. Take a nap if you can.”

“Righto.”

Perry went downstairs for cigarettes. Addie and her new friend were sitting by the fire. They didn’t notice him and Perry turned his back and went outside and smoked a cigarette, walked once around the hotel for air, and they were no longer in the lobby when he went in.

He went to his room. Water was running in the bathroom. He kicked the snow off his boots, unlaced them and put them before the radiator. The room was cold. He lay on the bed. A pack of Grace’s menthol cigarettes was on the night stand, and he took one and listlessly smoked it down to the filter. He thought of Harvey for a while, then of Addie, then of Grace, then quickly of Daniel. Then of himself. It was too bad. He smiled. He went to his suitcase and took out the thermal underwear and put it on. He looked at himself in the mirror. The
underwear made him look fat. Amazing changes. He got into his jeans and shirt and had another cigarette, and when Grace came out of the bathroom they went to the restaurant for lunch. It was nearly empty. The parties were over. A resonant hollowness followed everywhere. Three young girls were sitting at one table, quietly having their lunch. They were not very pretty. Perry guessed that it had not been a very good weekend for them. In a while Addie came in. She did not have much to say. She looked tired. She ordered a Coke and asprins.