The Fall Line

by Mark T Sullivan

  “How long is he here for?” Farrell asked.

  “He’s got a late flight out tomorrow evening,” Portsteiner said. “Maybe it will snow for him again.”

  “Maybe,” Farrell said dully.

  Portsteiner raised his eyebrows. He huffed, “You know, Jack, you seem just busted up about your old friend.”

  Farrell turned away, embarrassed that he didn’t feel more. He finished his second drink and waved to the bartender for another.

  “You know,” said Portsteiner finally, shaking his head, “the more I think of it, the more I realize I don’t know the first thing about you, boy. You’ve never talked about where you come from, or anything.”

  “Unimportant,” Farrell said. “I’ve found you just live for today, no behind you, no in front of you. You do all right.”

  “You think that way too long, you’ll start to slide,” Portsteiner said. “You know why?”

  “I suppose you’ll tell me,” Farrell said.

  “No past, no future, you’re like a climber way up on the ice with no belay lines to set you; sooner or later you’ll make a false step and there’ll be nothing to hold on to when you go.”

  “The way I see it, there are some ropes not worth holding on to,” Farrell said. “Easier that way.”

  Portsteiner tugged at his earlobe and considered Farrell for a moment. Then he said: “I don’t know why I’m asking, but you want some dinner? You look like you haven’t eaten enough lately.”

  “Can’t right now,” Farrell said. “Some French woman wants to talk to me.”

  “That moviemaker?”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “Hear her ski movies are good,” Portsteiner said. “She interested in you?”

  “Point is that I’m not interested in her.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Portsteiner said.

  Inez strode across the room like it was a stage and she the actress everyone had come to see. She played to the crowd as she flounced toward Farrell and Portsteiner, rolling her eyes, exaggerating each step so her jeans pulled too taut, her silver-tipped boots jingled, and her mottled brown leather jacket shimmied. Behind her came Page and The Wave.

  “Surfus, brainus, minimus,” Portsteiner said, smiling for the first time that evening.

  “The Rasta?” Farrell said. “I don’t think so. He talks strange, but there’s a lot going on under that wild hairdo.”

  Before Portsteiner could respond, Inez was upon them. She drew both arms back toward her shoulders, palms up, and gushed: “Monsieur Portsteiner! It is marvelous to see you again. When I ask you about skiers to film, you do not tell me about this Collins.”

  “Collins, yeah,” Portsteiner coughed. “Um, he’s been back only a few months. Used to be pretty good. Haven’t seen him ski too much recently, so I wouldn’t know.”

  “Perhaps he skis in my film if you ask him?”

  Portsteiner quickly glanced at Farrell, who was scrutinizing his own lap. “This boy strikes me as the stubborn type. Has to make his own decisions. Anyway, got to be going.”

  “I’ll be in touch, Frank,” Farrell said.

  Portsteiner nodded and left.

  “Buy me a drink?” Inez asked.

  “And what does a European drink?”

  “Not European, Collins. French.”

  Farrell made a half bow, excused himself, and headed down to the lobby to the small store where they sold liquor. He thought about walking to the truck and driving east on the canyon road out of the slide path and calling it a night. Definitely not: this woman was a curiosity and he decided to see where she was heading. He picked a nice red wine from the rack and cradled it under his sore right arm. He thought of all the deep powder turns he’d made during the last four days and decided that the actions of the shoulders and the wrists are crucial to the float: keep the body perpendicular to the fall line and the snow will reward you with flight.

  He daydreamed of Canada, where the rich can ski on glaciers fifty miles from the nearest civilization, making endless, unsullied arcs through the snow toward their private helicopters. Farrell recalled a story he’d heard on the ski lift earlier that week about a shoe salesman from Boston who’d saved his money for four years to have one such perfect week. He arrived in Canada to find he’d been grouped with a movie producer from Los Angeles who had brought along his novice daughter. The salesman was forced to wait at the bottom of every run while the poor girl fell her way down the mountains. On the last night of the trip, the salesman got drunk, punched the producer in the mouth, and made the daughter cry.

  Inez, Page, and The Wave had slid into a high-backed booth, so they didn’t see Farrell coming. The Wave was talking. “I don’t know about this one. Going through the woods like that. He’s got cold eyes, doing shit like that. Seen them in dudes back in L.A.; they go off.”

  Farrell said: “What’s the matter, kid, a little scared?”

  The Wave jumped. “Didn’t see you there, mon. But yeah, you’re damn right.”

  Farrell slid in next to Inez. “These cold eyes boys you knew, what did they do, steal a comic book in the malls out in the Valley?”

  “Shit, mon,” The Wave said. “I’m no Valley dude. Grew up in Venice Beach. I know the streets. These dudes had their finger on the trigger.”

  Farrell held his hands up. “No gun on me, Wave. I’m a pacifist.”

  Inez broke in and asked Farrell to pour the wine. He drank while The Wave nervously turned the conversation to the day and the future weather conditions. The talk turned to the techniques of taking big jumps off cliffs. Page went down and bought two more bottles. As the wine flowed, the conversation shifted to camera angles and production values and then to skiing again.

  “As I say so, I think America finds her heroes on teams,” Inez said to Farrell. “But in France, and very well, in most of Europe, the public has a desire insatiable for stories of the individual. They gave a skier named Tardival an entire night to himself on national television this past year.”

  “Fewer people like that able to do it these days,” Farrell said. “I think I read that other skier, Pierre Vallencant, died rock climbing last year. His wife two months later.”

  “They know the risks,” Inez said.

  “That isn’t always an excuse,” Farrell said.

  Inez cocked her head and studied him. “I do not understand your English,” she said. “Could you explain?”

  Farrell saw then that Inez hadn’t been drinking glass for glass with him, and through the blur, he realized his position was somewhat precarious. He squeezed his hands together under the table. “Ce n’est rien?”

  Inez’s eyes widened and she grinned. “You speak the French, then?”

  “Passable,” Farrell said. “Some Spanish, too.”

  “Good, then you help me when I become difficult,” Inez said. “Here’s the plan, okay? We come to create the film on the extreme skiing descents of the Western United States for the audience which is European.”

  “From what I understand, they’d be bored,” Farrell said. “The Europeans are into feats that just aren’t allowed here: linking climbs and descents in a single day—enchainments, the triathalon of thrill sports, isn’t that what they call it?”

  Inez nodded.

  “And that crazy parapenting sport, launching yourself off the side of a mountain hitched to half a parachute. Besides, the terrain here is not half as dangerous as the Alps,” Farrell continued.

  “Just so,” Inez said, and she ran her finger in circles on the table. “But there are ways to make it more dangerous, you know.”

  Before Farrell could ask her what, Page said: “A lot of what we do depends on the permission we get and the way it’s filmed.”

  The Wave’s dreadlocks bobbed. “It’s all in the voltage we find, mon. We get ourselves to the most electrical chutes, plug in, and turn on. She does the rest.”

  Farrell pursed his lips; he was interested, but didn’t want to be.

  “I chase so
mething different,” Inez insisted. “Many of the films you see are shot in—how would you say it?—ecervele?”

  “Madcap,” Farrell said.

  “In a tone madcap,” Inez went on. “You know—oh, ‘we are off to ski another wonderful place.’ Really, this is nothing more than advertisements for ski resorts. I think what occurs is something more serious. I chase the head of the men who ski the extreme. To understand them on the basic level. Not a story of the voyage but the art, you know? We have the money, the patrons, and if the weather helps us, the time.”

  “What qualifies you?” Farrell asked.

  Inez’s face hardened. “I make two documentaries in France. These attract much attention. And I propose the idea to some capitalists willing to give me their money for profit. How I make the film, c’est mon affair.”

  In spite of his misgivings, Farrell asked, “And where do you plan on making this film?”

  “Here, Tahoe, Grand Tetons,” Page said.

  “Ranier in Washington and the Brooks Range in Alaska,” The Wave added.

  “My patrons, they want the film in the theaters in Europe in November,” Inez said. “I begin to shoot since the end of January. We finish by mid-July.”

  “Quite a ride,” Farrell said.

  “It is,” she said. “I believe you called it your ski bumming days. Did you go … how do you say hors de piste in English?

  “Out of bounds or backcountry,” Farrell said. “Yes, a bit.”

  “Then you have experience?”

  “It’s been years. But well enough.”

  “With the avalanche predictions, too?”

  “Two years here,” Farrell said. “Took courses with LaChapelle. But it was all a long time ago.”

  Page said: “Do you really know this canyon like you act?”

  “I’m strictly in-bounds now,” he said, trying to discourage them.

  “But you know the runs out-of-bounds,” Inez said.

  “I know where they are.”

  There was a silence at the table that was palpable.

  Inez began slowly. “We shoot you with the video, you know. Page does this in the woods yesterday without you knowing,” she said, and then pushed on before Farrell could protest. “I say again, I like this style. So primitive. It makes the eye beg to follow you. I want you.”

  “Not interested,” Farrell said. “I’m here to ski powder. To calm myself. To relax. I don’t chase adrenaline anymore.”

  Inez’s hands flexed into fists. Her voice became insistent: “But we ask people. We know you do not work. Every morning first in the line. Every afternoon, the last person to leave the mountain. No commitments.

  “We are here to make the film about where you thrive,” she continued. “And let me tell you this: I pay you very, very well.”

  Farrell felt the unmistakable sensation of the heel of a hand on the nape of his neck, pressing him toward a cliff he had no desire to look over. He leaned forward in his seat, took a deep breath, and reached toward a basket of popcorn. He allowed his elbow to veer slightly off course, tipping the last third of the wine bottle onto the brilliant yellow of The Wave’s suit.

  “You freaking glue-sniffing idiot!” The Wave yelled. He leaped to his feet, his mouth wide open in disbelief as the red wine turned his pulsing neon crotch the color of mud.

  “See now, I’ve had way too much to drink,” Farrell said. He jumped up beside The Wave and brushed at him with his napkin. “I really should sleep this off.”

  Inez had covered her mouth with a napkin. Page sat with his chin in his hands, silent. Farrell said, “As I told your boys, I don’t think I’m right for it.”

  He hurried out the door before she could protest. He stumbled down the stairs and out the door into the frigid night. A shooting star tore across the sky. He stood outside the camper breathing in the clear, cold air, willing his heart to calm and his mind to stop racing. After five minutes ice had formed on his upper lip. He shivered. He drove the camper a mile east to the end of the road, parked, and climbed into the camper. His head throbbed with the alcohol, and his stomach rolled at the knowledge that he’d somehow escaped a dangerous situation.

  He wrapped himself in his sleeping bag and tried to sleep. But Portsteiner’s words came back to him. You’re like a climber way up on the ice with no belay lines. … He flipped on the light inside the camper and knelt on the bunk so he could reach above himself to the small compartment that contained his only links with his past. He slid the wood back and thrust his arm in past the envelope that contained his money and the phone number of a banker in Telluride, past the jewelry box, past Lena’s nightgown, past her jewelry box, and drew Lena’s diary and a photograph out. He flopped on the bunk and looked at them like museum artifacts.

  He stared at the picture of Lena and their infant daughter, Jenny. He paused long on Lena’s shoulder-length auburn hair that framed the high cheekbones of her face, her gentle nose, the freckles, the green light of her eyes. She was smiling, as usual, the warm, inviting smile that had followed one of her funny, cutting remarks in the early days of their marriage. Jenny was no more than four months old in the photograph, dressed in a pink jumper, her crystal blue eyes staring up at her mother in adoration.

  He closed his eyes and considered how tenuous being connected really is: jobs, families, life itself can go in a blink. He wondered whether he’d ever reestablish himself as a thread in the web. He put the photograph down.

  When he opened his eyes, the diary seemed to stare back at him. The fact that Lena kept a diary still amazed him. Few people wrote down their thoughts anymore. How did Lena put it the first time he saw her writing in it, the morning after their third night together? “I write only of the things that matter to me, emotional, physical, and psychological,” she had said.

  Farrell lay under the blankets in her apartment in Chicago. “Why limit yourself?” he asked.

  “I’m ordinary,” she said. “I like ordinary things.”

  “Hardly,” Farrell said. And at that moment in the camper he recalled how vulnerable he’d felt thinking of what she may have recorded. “Where do I fit in?” he’d asked.

  She stood from her desk, then crawled under the covers. “I can’t tell yet, lover. But I fear you are all three.”

  Her words echoed to him off the camper walls. He smiled a terrible, chin-trembling smile. Since he was a child, he’d developed the ability to separate his experiences and box them away in his mind where they would not disturb him. Now he was torn between the need to know what words lay within the diary and the need to keep harsh memories stored away where they couldn’t hurt him. He thought about that word “ordinary.” He had used it as an excuse for everything he had done, as if ordinary were something bad, something to take advantage of, something to run from.

  Farrell gritted his teeth to quell the swelling that ran up the back of his throat. Then he stood and returned the diary to the compartment, understanding that sooner or later he’d have to listen to her. Right then, though, he did not have the strength. Right then Farrell was a coward. He pulled her nightgown from the hole, balled it into a pillow so he could smell her, and fell into a deep, dark sleep.

  Chapter 3

  THE FIRST PERSON FARRELL saw in the lift line the next morning was Paul Timmons, who stamped his feet in anticipation of being in the first chair. Farrell looked at his stooped shoulders, then skated up to him.

  “Beat me to it,” Farrell said.

  “Had to,” Timmons grinned.

  “You still need someone to ski with?” Farrell asked.

  “If you can keep up,” Timmons said, still smiling.

  On the ride up the hill, they remarked on the breathy snow that had fallen during the night and how it wafted away from their pants with the flick of a hand. Throughout the day they explored all the nooks and crannies at Alta: Alf’s High Rustler, the Eagle’s Nest, Gunsight, Yellow Trail, and White Squaw glade. About two in the afternoon, the snow stopped and the sun broke through the clouds
. They decided to ski out of bounds off the eastern edge of the area. To get there, they had to climb a short ridge. Timmons stopped twice and coughed violently. In a fit of guilt, Farrell told him who he was.

  “Thought you looked familiar, but different with those scars,” Timmons said. “And is that a wig? They say I might be needing one of those soon.”

  Farrell looked away. “It’s not as painful as that.”

  They both fell quiet, the weight of Timmon’s load hanging in the air between them. Farrell shuffled by Timmons and found a forty-yard stretch of untracked snow. The two men spilled into it beside each other, instinctively sensing each other’s rhythm until they began to cross each other’s path and cut figure eights down the side of the slope.

  In late afternoon, while the patrolmen shut down the farthest lift, Supreme, Farrell turned to Timmons: “Last run—what’s it gonna be?”

  “Moon dance,” Timmons said.

  Farrell swallowed hard. “You up to it?”

  “Not Cardiac Ridge,” Timmons said. “We’ll go into Devil’s Castle.”

  Behind closed lips, Farrell ground his teeth together, then nodded. The Castle, a giant alpine bowl rimmed by cliffs that tower over the backside of Alta, hadn’t been open all day. The snow would be loose, spillable, treacherous, an undeniable allure.

  They skied down a deserted trail, ducked under a rope, and hid in the woods until the ski patrol swept by and disappeared. They took off their skis and climbed toward a particular notch in the Castle’s stonework that the locals call the Apron: a hundred-yard waterfall of snow tapered at the top, fat and bulging like a pregnant woman’s smock. They waited quietly in the spruces below the Apron until almost six o’clock when the sun set and the moon rose behind them, almost full, bathing the bowl in a gentle light.