Off Course (15 page)

“Hey—you think I liked them showing up unannounced?”

“What's not to like?”

“You think I liked spending a whole night within spitting distance of Candy? I didn't ask them to come. Why are you being like this?”

“I was looking forward to one kind of evening,” Cress said quietly, “and I had a very different kind of evening. I was disappointed.”

“I was, too.” He put his arms around her waist.

She twisted away. “But you had company.”

*   *   *

Franny told her to try the golf course, Beech Creek Country Club, which had a busy holiday banquet season. “The banquet manager's Dalia Oliveras.”

Dalia told her to come in that very night. A waitress had quit. “If we like each other,” Dalia said, “I'll keep you busy through New Year's.”

Cress drove down the mountain to serve dinner to a private party of golfers from San Diego. The six older retired couples drank ten bottles of wine and left for their rooms by nine-thirty. Cress was home by eleven. The next day, Saturday, she worked a wedding with a hundred guests; the dancing lasted until ten, the cleanup till midnight. On her way home, she stopped by the Sawyer Inn for Donna's last set.

“We just had a big fight,” Don Dare whispered. “She says I can't go to Family Night without her, or poker.”

“Her ex drove her crazy,” said Cress.

“I am not him! I have never been like that,” he said. “I don't have the time or the energy or the
interest
to have more than one woman at a time. Speaking of which—how long have you and Quinn Morrow been up the tubes?”

“What do you mean ‘up the tubes'? Says who?”

“My supersuspicious, eagle-eyed girlfriend. And I see you two out walking from the Crags.”

“It's probably over, anyway. But Donna must really hate me now.”

“So long as you're not with me, she doesn't care.”

*   *   *

Working at Beech Creek wasn't half as demoralizing as the Dinner Plate had been; her hours were varied, with banquets clustered around weekends and a few easy luncheons during the week. Dalia Oliveras was a competent and calm manager, and the head waitress, Lisette, the pretty blond wife of an apricot farmer, called Cress a godsend. The owner of Beech Creek was a golf-mad oilman who had made his fortune selling drilling equipment; Beech Creek Country Club was a tax write-off, a hobby, and a folly. Nobody expected profits, and a relaxed, carefree mood trickled down to the employees, who ate the same prime rib and chicken Kiev as the members. Shift drinks came in twenty-ounce to-go cups.

Cress worked the Kiwanis Club Christmas party, then the Junior League's, Snap-on Tools', the Sparkville Boosters'. She didn't see Quinn all week, he didn't even know about her new job. This time apart, she thought, was practice for their ending, or possibly was the ending. Although nothing seemed over. Quinn's heavy-browed scowl floated before her as she wound in and out of the curves in the dappled sunlight of morning, and later, again, when she drove up the mountain in the star-strung freezing dark. Serving a martini or carrying out salads—she could carry five at once—a sudden shift of light, a twinge in her thoughts, and she knew:
He's thinking of me
.

*   *   *

“You
are
still here.”

“Where else would I be?”

His gloominess made her playful. She danced away from him, or started to. It was eight o'clock, and for the first time in six nights, she wasn't working. He caught her wrist. “Ah, Cressida.” He kissed her, pressed teeth on her lower lip.

“Let go,” she said.

He freed her wrist and sat heavily on the wicker love seat. “I don't blame you,” he said. “I've cost you a job, and for what?”

She stood away from him. “I've been working a new job. That's all.”

“When I married,” Quinn said, “I was only eighteen. I made decisions then that have to last my whole life—at Annette's age, basically. I've had to give myself some leeway. Or I'd be out of my mind.”

“I'm not your first”—Cress considered how to say it—“outside interest?”

“I was married twelve years before the first time. When I started working away from home … But nothing ever counted before.”

“You never fell in love.”

“The last one, down south, we enjoyed each other, and she started wanting more. But I told her from the start, nothing could come of it.”

“How long ago was this?” said Cress.

“Two, three years now.”

“Do you ever talk to her or write?”

He looked away, shrugged: he'd reached his limit of disclosure.

“And now there's me.” Cress spoke lightly.

“It's not the same. You must know that.”

“I don't know anything,” she said.

“I never talked to anybody like I talk to you.”

Ah yes. Her talent. Men talked to her. Even men who didn't talk, talked to her. It usually meant more to them than it did to her.

She smiled, and grasping his head, she kissed the crinkles by his eye. He caught her hand. She allowed this for a moment, then sprang away.

“Look.” She swung a plastic bag of fresh chestnuts from the Italian grocery. He'd never eaten one and didn't know what they were.

“Come,” she said, and showed him how to prick the hard shiny skins, nestle the nuts in the coals, turn them with tongs. They burned their fingers peeling them and their tongues eating them. “Like apple-flavored potatoes,” said Quinn.

A loud crack and an ashy burst made them jump. Quinn shoved her behind him, and still partly crouching to hold her down, he faced the door.

“Quinn!” Cress tugged at his pant leg and started to laugh. “A chestnut exploded! Just a chestnut. Insufficiently pricked!”

He sat heavily on the love seat. She was still on the floor by his knees. “I thought maybe we had a crime-of-passion deal going on,” he said.

“But Sylvia'd never shoot—”

“She's a damn fine shot. Taught her myself.”

Quinn refused any more chestnuts, as if they'd offended him. Snow swept against the window. He slid a hand under Cress's hair, squeezed the back of her neck. “Please,” he said. “I'm begging, here.”

*   *   *

Quinn and Caleb left the mountain three days before Christmas and wouldn't be back until after the first of the year. Cress's parents came up for two days, then went to Mazatlán. Cress barely saw them; she worked every night until Christmas, including Christmas Eve.

 

Twelve

She told Tillie and Edgar to bring chains, and of course they didn't. They called from the lodge to say that their VW station wagon was nose-first in a snowbank a mile down the hill. Some travelers had given them a lift to the lodge, and now they needed someone with a truck to pull them out. Cress told them to go inside and ask for Jakey or Kevin. Tillie called back to say that neither was around, so Cress called Abe Johnson and waited. An hour later, their VW was spinning its wheels in the elbow of her driveway.

With Tillie and Edgar were two more friends from Cressida's high-school days, Miriam and Dora, plus Dora's husband, Lucca.

“The famous cabin,” said Dora.

“You never came up in high school?” said Miriam. “I was up twice.”

“Just once for me,” said Tillie.

“You could've come up more,” said Cress.

“Except your mother hated me,” said Tillie.

Dora said, “My parents wouldn't let me go so far away.”

Edgar and Lucca hauled in grocery bags and duffels.

Three more women were on their way, Rochelle Boyer and the Ellis sisters, Maddie and Lina. Cressida had not been sure how many were coming, or who. She'd let Tillie do the arranging so as not to run up the phone bill. All the women were friends from high-school art classes. Except for Tillie, Cress hadn't spoken to any of them since her going-away party in late July. She was a delinquent letter writer, too.

Edgar set to work frying spices for a lamb curry. Much was made of the snow; Cress found old sleds and saucers in the basement, and they took them right outside the cabin and slid down to the meadows between the trees, trudging back up again and again until the sun dunked behind Shale Mountain. Cress built a fire; they drank wine and waited for the curry.

Tillie demanded to see all of Cress's drawings and sketches and, paging through them, said, “Coming along, coming along … Can I have this one?” She stabbed a rock study with her finger.

“Take it,” said Cress.

Miriam, a business major, had landed a job in the ad department of
City and State,
a glossy new monthly with offices in Westwood. “The publisher's this iconoclast, a journalist with an MBA who calls himself a publisher/editor,” she told them at dinner. “He wants big investigative pieces, but also to make money. So ads and editorial work together. I get to suggest story ideas! Tillie's applying for a job in the art department. I'm trying to talk Maddie into coming on as an editor, and you should apply too, Cress. They need editors.”

Cress doubted that her stint as the editor of an obscure university-published economics journal—no ads—would count for much at
City and State
.

“No thanks,” said Maddie, who had a master's in journalism from Berkeley and was now interning at the
LA Weekly
. “I still believe in a firewall between editorial and publishing. Advertising shouldn't even
talk
to editorial.”

“Doesn't hurt to throw advertisers a bone now and then,” Miriam said. “Sure helps with ad sales. It's just for the front of the book: gizmos, fashion, decor. I wrote a fifty-word squib on a vertical chicken roaster—and got an ad!”

“But readers will think you liked the roaster,” cried Maddie.

“The roaster's fantastic! It cooks the chicken upright, so all the skin gets crisp,” said Miriam. “Seriously, Maddie, you know subscriptions and newsstand sales can't pay for a magazine.”

“That's no excuse for sneaking in ads posing as articles.”

“Look at it this way,” said Miriam. “The guy wants his writers to make a living. And why shouldn't he make a profit?”

“Not that kind of profit,” said Maddie. “God, you sound like Milton Friedman. I just saw him on PBS extolling the virtues of sweatshops!”

Cress kept quiet; her friends were all out there making headway in the wild-and-woolly marketplace. She could join them, once the damn diss was done.

*   *   *

After dinner, they walked to the lodge in the moonlight. Tillie was keen to meet Jakey, but he was still not around. Waiting for the bathroom, Tillie did befriend a pretty thirty-two-year-old veterinary assistant from Encino and brought her over to their table.

“But she's a bim!” Cress hissed in Tillie's ear.

“I know!” said Tillie. “She came up to spend a week with him—rented a whole cabin! And then he had to go down the hill on family business.”

“That just means the bull is tending his lower pastures. The poor thing.”

*   *   *

The next day, they sledded and lolled around the A-frame, reading and drawing. Cress had to work a dinner dance at the club, so she sent her friends to eat dinner at the lodge. By the time she came home, the house was dark. She filled the percolator with water. Tillie wandered in, wearing Cress's robe. “Who's Quinn?”

Cress counted six spoons of coffee into the percolator's filter. Come morning, the first one up could just plug it in. “A carpenter up here. Why?”

“He called a few minutes ago.”

“What'd he want?”

“To talk to you. Is this someone I should know about? Another one of your virile working guys?”

If Tillie hadn't taken such a taunting, lascivious tone, Cress might have been more frank. But she wouldn't sacrifice Quinn for Tillie's amusement. Best keep that sweet small corner of her life to herself. “He and his brother work up here. Both married, by the way.”

“Why is he calling so late?”

Cress put the coffee can back in the cupboard. “People know when I get home from work. Did he want me to check his trailer? Hand me that sponge, would you?”

“He didn't say.” Tillie reached into the sink. “But God, what a low, sexy voice. You should make him read you to sleep.”

*   *   *

Breakfast the next morning was complicated by an old waffle iron and a breaker thrown when someone turned on the bathroom wall heater at the same time. Then the women sat around the kitchen table and made monoprints with art supplies Tillie had brought up. They inked glass plates, laid paper over the ink, drew trees, rocks, each other, and peeled off the images. They talked about Jakey, who'd finally shown up—“So adorable! So appealing!” He'd bought them all drinks, then cozied up to the women in turn, and chatted with Edgar for half an hour. “He ignored the poor vet tech for the longest time,” Tillie said. “But he finally made his way over to her.”

“We've unanimously decided,” Miriam said to Cress, “that Don Dare should dump that hick folksinger and get together with you.”

“He's so not my type! And Donna's not a folksinger, actually.”

“Well, he's definitely my type,” said Miriam, who was single and looking. “I like Jakey, too. Which makes me think I should widen my sights to include more working-class guys. Carpenters, small businessmen, like that.”

“Neither Don nor Jakey is exactly working-class,” said Cress.

Miriam said, “Well you'd hardly call them professionals!”

*   *   *

Cress had the day off, so they drove in two cars to Globe Rock for its view of snow-choked forests and Camel Crags frosted like cupcakes. A fast, furious snowball fight broke out on the big bald pate of the rock, the teams random, this side versus that. Cress stood up to warn everyone again about running too far down the rock—“You could start sliding and never stop!”—and took a ball right in her eye, a big red shock that stopped the game.