“Yes,” said Tristan.
“Good, then in that case, I've taken the liberty of going online and getting myself an itinerary and a map so that we can find interesting things to do in the evening when the lifts are closed. I think I can guarantee that you will not have more than two or three conscious hours during the entire trip in which to pine.”
“You're a good friend.”
“I am, am I not?” said P.K., smiling his white smile. “Come on. You have a novice to teach on the slopes, and I'm a slow learner.”
“As if.” Tristan followed him to the door, carrying his coffee with him.
“Really, I still cannot dribble a soccer ball even if someone holds a gun to my head.”
“Really?”
“Yes, in secondary school, I had a very angry coach, and he tried it.” Tristan didn't know whether he was kidding. P.K. didn't enlighten him.
“But snowboarding is fun,” Tristan said doubtfully.
“They said that about soccer too,” sighed P.K.
Tristan looked on as P.K. tried his best, but after two times coming down the smallest hill, he gave Tristan the kind of look his mother always had when the toilet backed up. P.K. manfully put up with a third, and then excused himself.
“My quads are going to burn for a week,” he said, huffing as he picked up his snowboard. “I will be much happier watching you from somewhere warm.”
“If you're sure,” said Tristan, looking back at the bunny run they'd been taking. “I'll go up and get a couple of good runs in.”
“And I will be better off with coffee and snacks and television sports,” said P.K. “I am prepared to wait until you are finished for the day, however long that will take.” He smiled and lurched toward the clubhouse. Tristan finally returned at dusk, after the lifts closed, sore, wet, and exhausted. He found P.K. surrounded by a group of people, laughing and talking as though he'd known them forever.
“Did you have a good time?” asked P.K. politely. His eyes narrowed as he took in Tristan's appearance. “You should have worn sun-block, Tristan, you look masked.”
“I did. I just didn't reapply. It happens every year. It's okay.” He looked around at P.K.'s new friends, who introduced themselves and asked if he'd like to come with them for dinner.
“I'm sorry, I'm so exhausted,” he said. “P.K., do you need the car?”
“He can come with us,” said a dark-haired girl with fine features, who looked interested in P.K. and wasn't trying to hide it.
“P.K.?” asked Tristan.
“Will you be all right?” P.K. asked thoughtfully, and Tristan waved his concern away.
“Go on, I'm not even going to eat before I pass out, I'm so tired.” He got up and stretched. “You have your key, right?”
“Yes, and I know the address of the place where we're staying.”
“Okay. If you need me to pick you up anywhere, let me know.” He started to leave. “You have my cell number programmed, right?”
“Yep,” said P.K. grinning.
“All righty then,” said Tristan, happy that P.K. had found some nice people to hang with. “Have a good time.”
As he left, he thought he heard some of P.K.'s new friends say it was too bad his friend couldn't come too. He knew he hadn't mistaken the frank female appreciation from one of the dark-haired girl's friends. He was tired and glad to go home alone. The sooner he left, the sooner he'd sleep. He took the shuttle to the parking lot and picked up his car. When he got back to the tiny cabin he tossed off his wet clothes and showered to get warm, then got into bed, more than half asleep before his head even touched down. In the seconds it took to get comfortable and drift off, he wondered if his whole life was going to be like this, like monochrome when it used to be in color.
It took a scant seven hours and forty-two minutes for Michael to alienate everyone who loved him and tried to help him. Ron and Emma took turns standing on the porch breathing in deep breaths before one or the other would confront the wounded man in his lair to make him eat, shower, and dress, eventually just confining their concern to eating, as showering and dressing seemed inexplicably to anger the already irritated Michael beyond bearing.
Ron was checking and rechecking meds, and Emma had had just about enough.
“Hey, baby,” she said, squaring her jaw and entering the dimly lit living room where Michael lay on the couch reading the newspaper in front of the fire.
“Hey, Mama,” he said automatically, flipping to the next page. He seemed to be reading each page completely and going to the next one regardless of how the articles played out.
“You're a mess, son,” said Emma. She was tired, and it showed on her face. “Ron is coming by to put the Christmas things away.”
“Tell him not to bother; I'll get them when I feel better.”
“I will not,” declared Emma. “That's a fresh tree, or was, and now it's little more than a fire hazard. You of all people…”
“Yes, yes. I know. It isn't safe. All right, have Ron take it down.” Michael flipped another newspaper page. “It says here that there's something about drinking diet soda that makes people fatter. Figures.”
“Michael, what are you going to do about this? You can't just lie here moping.”
“I'm not moping. I'm healing. I have to heal so I can go back to work,” he said in a patronizing, patient voice that was like touching a match to an open can of gasoline.
“Oh, for heaven's sake,
ye
s
! Let's make sure you get right back on the damn job.”
“You too? I thought I just had the one detractor.”
“Detractor? How can you call either of the two people who love you most in this world detractors?” She picked up the plates from his lunch and breakfast and started to the kitchen.
“People who love you,” he said, “love you for who you are. They don't say, I'll love you if you only just quit your job, Mama.”
“Who said that?” she demanded angrily.
“Tristan.”
“Did he? Did he really? Or did you just hear that?” She rounded on him, plates in hand. “I may be a damned old hippie, but I know a thing or two about people. I know, for example, that loving someone isn't enough when you want two totally different things. I know that a man could love me and still walk away because he wasn't ready to marry and have children.”
“He was a total shit, Mama. He didn't love you, and he didn't want me, and he blew off his responsibility because he wasn't worth a damn.”
“You have no idea what you're talking about, Michael. Love isn't a panacea. Sometimes things don't work out. Your father was a med student. He would have had to give up his family's support, his family's plans for him, and his own dreams, to marry and have a child right then. He wasn't ready, and I wasn't willing to let him do it. I can't be sorry for that. It was a tough thing. A hard thing. But I've never been sorry to have you, and I've never been sorry to have known him.”
“He should have made it work,” muttered Michael sullenly.
“Maybe. But he wouldn't have been happy. He'd have grown to hate me, and hate you, and hate the prison that his life became. It is possible that to love someone you have to let them go, Michael. It's hard. It sounds like a black-light poster from my childhood, but it happens.”
Michael stared at her, and she knew she'd overstayed her welcome. She took the plates to the kitchen and made him a sandwich, resisting the temptation to put something he absolutely hated in it, like store-bought yellow curry powder, and left it next to his sofa. She said nothing further and just let herself out the way she came in.
Michael slept in front of the fire on the couch at night, sometimes so deeply that he feared he might be succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning, and he'd claw his way back out to open a window. There were patchy bits of rain outside, and the cool air rushed in to replace the warm fairly quickly, dispelling the fuzzy-headed gloom until he felt he must have just imagined it. His phone wasn't silent, but he screened his calls. He really didn't want to answer any more questions about his health or his “incident.”
The homeless-person-as-a-wild-card angle the press took enraged him, making him feel responsible for more than just Mary's death, but also for the misperception of homeless people as violent offenders in waiting. He pieced together what he remembered of Mary's behavior and realized that she'd acted wounded, and her behavior had been completely reasonable under the circumstances. She had been attacked, the autopsy showed, and probably robbed and wasn't in her right mind.
He looked into the crackling fire and fed the newspaper clippings about his ordeal into it. They caught and curled, dancing for a short minute until there was nothing left of them. He remembered his Sparky's face as it had been the night he'd stripped and fantasized, fondling himself on the futon before the flames. Michael could almost see the color of his hair and the way his eyes looked if he gazed into the flames themselves, the gold, red, and blue licking at the logs as Tristan's tongue had once so eagerly lapped at him. He leaned over to get the poker, and his abdominal muscles shrieked in protest. Once again, he pulled a pillow to his chest and held on hard, the pain subsiding for a minute.
It was going to take months to come back from this. His body, which had always been something he could count on, betrayed him when he made the slightest move. The fluid grace of his years playing competitive sports in high school and college, of jogging and training with weights in the police academy was completely out of his reach. He'd have to start at the very beginning, taking it slow, working his way up to proficiency even as his body fought him every inch of the way. Just the thought of it was exhausting. The idea of waking up every morning and putting one foot in front of the other, of going to work and coming home and feeding and bathing himself seemed…pointless. His reason for doing all those things was changed and might be gone forever, and he was having a hard time coming up with a new one as fast as everyone around him wanted him to. That's why he figured they could all just go to hell and wait.
In his quiet moments, Michael felt compassion, even gratitude for his mother and Ron, who came and went quietly, checking on him as if he were an unexploded bomb. As if he'd eat his gun. That thought never entered his head. He dragged himself back and forth from the bathroom and ate what they gave him. He read the newspaper. He kept up on current events. Sometimes he'd pull out a book and actually try to read it, but mostly he read the same paragraphs over and over. So he preferred reading the paper because for some reason, he could read the whole thing cover to cover and feel like he'd actually accomplished something. He'd stopped taking the pain meds after New Year's, a little afraid of how good they made him feel. Now, when the burning pain of his repaired muscles got too bad, he found a Tylenol or two, never more than they directed on the bottle. It didn't help him to sleep, but he dozed on and off all day anyway, preferring the quiet darkness of sleep as long as he didn't dream about Mary.