Brass Ring (37 page)

Ski season was technically over, but an early-spring snowstorm had given Slim Valley a bonus weekend. “The weather god created that storm just for you, Jon,” Pat had said to him the day before. “Come on. I know it’s only been a couple of weeks since Claire left. I know you’re grieving, but I think it would do you a world of good to get out. Weekends are hard when you’re alone.”

That argument was probably her strongest. He dreaded the weekends and had already decided to spend this one in the office. “I have plenty of work to do,” he said.

“All you do is work, Jon. It’s not healthy.”

The work kept his mind off Claire. Most of the time, anyhow. One night this past week, the pain of losing her, of imagining her with Randy, was so bad that he drank himself into a mindless stupor.

So he had let himself be persuaded. He and Pat had come close to blows over transportation to the mountain. Pat had wanted to ride in the car pool with the other members of Mountain Access; he’d wanted to take his Jeep, preserving the time he felt in control. Pat had finally relented and agreed to ride with him. She probably figured it was the only way she’d get him to go.

“There’s the mountain.” Pat pointed to an outcropping of white in the distance, a mere bump in the horizon covered by bare trees, and Jon thought she must be mistaken.

“What mountain?” he asked.

Pat laughed. “You’ll see.”

The Jeep began a gradual ascent, and piles of dirty, crusty snow appeared in clumps at the side of the narrowing road. Jon felt his ears pop.

“Make a left here,” Pat directed after a few miles.

He turned the Jeep into the parking lot of the ski lodge. The handicapped spaces were filled, and they had to park a distance from the other cars in order to have room to fully open their doors. Jon got out of the car first, then steadied Pat’s chair as she transferred from the Jeep’s high seat. She muttered under her breath the whole time, and although he couldn’t make out her words, he was certain she was cursing him for insisting they take his car. She was accustomed to a lift.

The air was crisp and cold as they wheeled to the front door of the lodge.

“Watch it.” Pat pointed to the grate in front of the door. Jon angled his chair as he crossed over it, wondering how many wheelchairs had lost a caster in those grooves. Someone opened the door for them, and suddenly they were in the warmth of the lodge. Across the room, the mountain—it was not the Alps, but it would certainly do—shot up behind a glass wall, and Jon was mesmerized. A surge of excitement began edging out his apprehension.

There were wheelchairs everywhere. People turned to look at him and Pat, and he heard whispers of “Jon Mathias” coming from all directions at once.

“Hey, Jon!” someone called.

“Never thought we’d see you on the slopes, bro’,” someone else shouted across the room.

“About time you saw what your money’s buying, Mathias.”

He and Pat were quickly surrounded. Many of the faces were familiar, others were not, but all were welcoming and friendly.

A member of the resort staff—a blond, tanned man in his thirties—walked over to Jon and pumped his hand.

“Come on,” he said. “You and Pat come to the front of the line.”

Only then did Jon realize there was a registration line to his right. He swallowed his discomfort as the blond man ushered them to the front, but the people they passed seemed unperturbed. They wheeled out of his way as though a red carpet marked his path, and within minutes he and Pat were registered and ready to ski.

Once outside, Pat went off with a group while Jon waited for the appearance of his instructor. Not far from him, he could see a few skiers transferring into the mono-skis. He’d never seen one of those contraptions up close before. They looked pretty simple from where he sat—a seat mounted above a single ski—and the skiers seemed to have little problem getting into them without help. For some reason he’d imagined having to be lifted into the ski like a sack of flour. He smiled as he watched.

“Are you Jon Mathias?”

The voice came from behind him, and he turned to see a young woman walking toward him. “I’m Evie,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’ll be working with you today.”

She was tall and very attractive. Twenty-six or -seven. Her snug

ski pants and jacket were a brilliant blue that matched her eyes, and wisps of blond hair fell from beneath her hat.

She sat down on a bench near him. She was a physical therapist, she explained in a sunny voice that distracted him from the little nervousness he had left. She asked him appropriate questions about his injury and abilities, listened carefully to his answers, then led him over to a mono-ski.

Suddenly, a young black man appeared next to them.

“This is Lou,” Evie said. “He’ll be your buddy.”

“You look like you work out,” Lou said to Jon. Despite the bulk of Lou’s skiwear, it was evident that he spent a good deal of time in the gym himself. “Think you need any help getting into the ski?”

“I think I can do it,” Jon said.

Lou pushed the ski next to his chair, and he and Evie guided Jon into it without incident. Evie strapped him in, and the fit was tight but comfortable. He was a little wobbly, though, until Lou attached the outriggers to his arms. The two small skis helped keep him upright.

“Hold your arms out to the side,” Evie said. “Let’s check your balance.”

He did as he was told, and Evie and Lou applauded.

“He’s not gonna have any trouble out there,” Lou said. He explained the mechanics of the ski for getting on and off the lift, and when Jon had no problem mastering the lever, Lou looked at Evie and said, “I’m gonna find me a skier who needs my help.”

Evie nodded as Lou walked away from them, and Jon grinned. If he was being patronized, he didn’t care. He had this ski down pat. At least on level ground.

His first run was on the beginners’ slope. Evie skied backwards in front of him, giving him directions the entire distance down the hill. “Turn your head to the right,” she’d call out. “Great! Now the left. Now do a series of turns.”

He was quickly gaining control of the ski. It felt like an extension of his body, and he longed to pick up speed, to really fly down the mountain, but Evie was methodical. “Got to learn the basics,” she said when he complained about the slow pace, and he promptly took a spill on a turn, proving her point.

They took the lift up together, and he felt the rush of being carried into the air, mono-ski and all.

“You’re doing incredibly well,” Evie said as they rode in the air above the slope. “You must have skied before your accident.”

“My parents bought me skis before they bought me shoes, I think,” he said. “But it’s been a long time. This feels terrific.”

“Well, you’re going to feel even more terrific in another few minutes,” Evie said.

And she was right. The moment Jon pushed off from the top of the big slope, he felt whole. Able-bodied. The sensation, at first alarming, quickly thrilled him. What a total escape from reality! Bare trees flew past him, and he was carried back to the thrill of skiing as a teenager, before the accident. It felt no different. Maybe better. His euphoria stole his caution, and he took another spill—at high speed this time—near the bottom of the slope, but he was laughing when Evie arrived to help him up.

He pushed himself to the lift with his outriggers. Evie sat next to him again, and she teased him about his cockiness. He loved the lilt in her voice. He loved the view of the mountain from his seat on the lift and the bite of the cold air on his face.

He asked Evie questions about herself. Where she’d gone to school, where she was from. He liked looking at her. He watched as she drew a stick of lip balm across her full pink lips. Her goggles had fogged up, and when she opened her jacket to find a tissue, he could see the shape of her small breasts beneath the textured blue cloth of her long johns.

She’s barely older than Susan. Don’t be an idiot
. But he was happy. Drugged happy. Crazy happy. Slipping off the lift, he was grinning to himself.
I don’t need you, Harte
.

When he’d pictured how this outing would unfold, he’d seen himself—and Pat if he could tear her away—driving home early while the rest of the Mountain Access group put up in a nearby motel. But the sky was dark before he was ready to surrender the mountain. Pat had long since retired to the lodge, where he imagined she was warming herself by the fire, talking with other skiers. As he transferred back into his chair from the mono-ski for the last time that day, a wave of melancholy washed over him, and he felt the loss of the mountain and the loss of freedom, from both his chair and his thoughts.

Halfway home, he and Pat stopped for dinner. Over thick chowder and corn bread, they decided that it made no sense to drive the rest of the way home that night. They were tired. They could get a couple of rooms in the motel next door.

There was a moment of quiet awkwardness between them as they drove into the motel parking lot.

“We can get one room, if you’re comfortable with that,” Pat said in an offhanded way. He glanced at her, and she quickly added, “It’d be cheaper, and the rooms probably have two beds. Unless you’d rather not.”

He didn’t care about the money, but the idea of sharing a room appealed to him. He wanted Pat’s chatter surrounding him tonight. He was afraid of the void, of the crash that seemed inevitable after so full and glorious a day. He didn’t want to think about the nasty twist his life had taken.

“But if you’d rather get two rooms,” Pat stammered on, “that’s fine. I didn’t mean to imply anything untoward.” She was positively squirming in her seat, and he laughed.

“One room sounds good,” he said. “I don’t particularly relish the thought of being alone tonight.”

The room was spartan but large, and it was indeed furnished with two queen-sized beds. He and Pat took turns in the bathroom. He would have to sleep in his T-shirt and boxers, but Pat emerged from the bathroom in an enormous pink nightshirt, an evil-looking black cat painted on the front, the fabric stretched across her large breasts. Obviously, she had been prepared to spend the night away from home. She must have known he would enjoy the slopes in spite of himself.

They got into their respective beds and turned off the lamps on their night tables. Jon stared at the ceiling, marveling at the oddity of the situation. Here he was, lying alone in a strange bed, while a woman he’d worked with for years—and whom he loved dearly—lay alone a few feet from him. Their wheelchairs stood like barriers on the floor between them.

In the darkness, they talked about skiing. Every time Jon closed his eyes, he saw the white ground falling away in front of him and felt the sensation of speed, smooth and freeing. Even after he and Pat stopped talking, images of the mountain continued to draw him, careening and weightless, into the valley below.

“How is Susan handling the separation?” Pat asked suddenly, jerking him miserably back to reality.

“Not well,” he said. He and Claire had spoken with Susan two days earlier. As planned, Claire made the initial phone call, and Susan had reacted with a stunned, shocked silence, quickly followed by anger—anger that masked hurt or confusion or fear. It was clear that she blamed Claire for the separation, and Claire shouldered the blame with grace. He’d been surprised by her honesty with Susan. For once she didn’t try to submerge the truth under a sea of wishful thoughts. Claire was changing.

“Susan’s pretty confused,” Jon said to Pat.

“Yeah, well, so’s your wife, if you ask me.” Pat’s voice was uncharacteristically icy. “I mean, I understand that she’s suffering some sort of posttraumatic stress because of the incident on the bridge, but she should be working it out with her husband at her side, not some other guy. She’s in therapy, I hope.”

“Yes, though I don’t know how well that’s going.”

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. All Jon could hear was the soft, steady hum of the traffic on the highway.

“I’m going to tell you something, Jon.” Pat’s voice cut across the dark room.

“What’s that?”

“I could never say this to you in the light of day, but right now we’re in…well, strange circumstances.”

He smiled. “Yes.”

“I think you’re an incredible person. I would much rather be next to you in that bed than over here. And I know at least six or seven other women who feel the same way.”

He grinned at the ceiling. “Yeah? Who?”

“Never mind. Just remember that if Claire is crazy enough to actually end her marriage to you—and once you feel ready to move on, of course—there will be a string of women waiting to help you do the moving.”

He looked over at his longtime friend, her face barely visible in the darkness. “Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

Another moment of silence passed between them, and Jon became aware of the broad emptiness of his bed. What the hell, he thought.

“Pat?”

“Yes?”

“Is there a chance you’d like to share my bed tonight in a non-consummatory fashion?”

It seemed to take her a minute to understand his choice of words, but then she laughed. “I’d love to.”

He switched on the night table lamp and watched her sit up in bed. The cat’s hindquarters were painted on the back of her pink nightshirt, and they swelled and shrank as she got into her chair. Moving his chair out of the way, Pat wheeled the few feet to his bed, where she transferred deftly in beside him. She lay on her side, her back to his chest, and he hugged her against him. Her breasts rested heavily on his arms. She was a much larger, much softer woman than Claire. Her hair smelled like summer sunshine.

“This feels good,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. And it did. “That’s one of the hardest things for me to get used to. No physical contact. I don’t mean sex. I mean touching. Hugging.”

“At least you’ve had it for twenty years,” she said, and he realized that Pat was one of those people who never had it, who went to bed night after night without the touch of another human being’s hand on their skin.

He pulled her close and breathed in her sun-smelling hair. He had a pleasant sense of exhaustion and had nearly drifted off to sleep when Pat suddenly asked him, “Have you met the man?”