First Tracks

by Catherine O'Connell

  Without a word, the waitress slid into the booth beside me and put her arm around me. As embarrassing as it was, I turned my head into her shoulder and cried like a small child. When I got my act together enough to share my troubles with her, she shook her head knowingly.

  ‘We’ve all been where you are in this town, trust me. I think I can help solve your problem. You said you have some money. You’re not flat out.’

  I nodded, blinking back miserable, embarrassed tears. ‘I have around four thousand dollars.’

  ‘No shit. You’re better off than most of us who land here. And this is your lucky day because there’s a bed coming available in the house where I’m living.’ It just so happened she was living in a mid-sixties three-bedroom with a rent of $10,000 a month. Unbeknownst to the landlord, there were ten of them crammed into it. One of her roommates was moving in with her boyfriend and with one fewer contributor they were going to have trouble coming up with the rent money, so I was invited to make my home on the living-room couch for the rest of the season.

  At first the thought of sleeping in a house with that many people was mortifying. My life thus far had been so small and insulated. I had done little other than take care of my mother, go to school and get good grades. I decided I should give it a chance. There was nothing to lose.

  The waitress was Judy, and not only did she find me my first place to live, she also found me my first job. Aside from working at Little Annie’s, she worked as a cocktail waitress at the Bugaboo, a hip private club that catered to three groups: the rich, the richer, and beautiful women. The woman whose place I was taking on the couch had just quit her job as coat-check girl there. She’d scored big at the ‘Bug’, as they called the club, and was now going to live with one of the rich patrons she’d met there. He’d made it clear he didn’t want his girlfriend working as a coat checker. Which worked out fine for me. My only wish was that she would have been one of the girls sleeping in a room with a door.

  Working at the Bugaboo was a real eye-opener. It didn’t take long to figure out the inverse relationship between how rich a guy was, regardless of how old or unattractive, with how beautiful the woman accompanying him was. Anyhow, I worked nights at the Bug and skied during the days, taking every lesson I could so that by the end of that first season I’d become a competent skier. By the next year I was teaching skiing at the beginning levels and getting better and better myself. And while I should have been a good teacher, because I had all the skills and the teaching ability needed, I fell a little short in one category essential for teaching a sport like skiing to the uninitiated.

  I didn’t understand fear.

  I didn’t realize my lack of fear when I was young. There was nothing to test it. I liked sports well enough, and did the usual childhood things like ride bikes and play sports. But I never knew how practically fearless I was until I saw fear manifest itself in other people. I could stand at the top of the steepest run and instead of thinking what might happen if I fell, I was invigorated by the thought of conquering it instead of it conquering me. I imagine Toby and I share the same genes in that way. He’s been in and out of the Middle East so many times in the past years he should be wearing robes instead of camo. But he’s the same way. Instead of fearing danger, he embraces it. Only his is of an entirely different kind.

  Funny, but while I wouldn’t have called my mom adventurous at all while we were growing up, I now realize you can’t get much braver than raising two kids on your own.

  Now after spending fifteen years in Aspen, my devotion to the town was the same as Sam’s had been. I thought the only way I was going to leave Aspen was post-mortem. But in the aftermath of Warren’s death, my feelings had been challenged. What happened? I asked myself again and again. But the answer continued to evade me and for the very first time since driving into town all those years ago, I wondered if it might be time to move on from this place I loved so dearly.

  SEVEN

  After sharing the earlier described meal of salmon and risotto with Judy and Gene, accompanied by an excellent Pinot Noir, which I declined on doctor’s advice to avoid alcohol for twenty-four hours, I spent a restless night in one of their eight guest rooms. The next morning, Judy had her hot-yoga class, so Gene drove me home in his Range Rover. Gene is such a super nice guy you hardly notice he is super rich. He and Judy met at the Bugaboo when she spilled an entire tray of drinks on him, and instead of being really angry that his right side was soaked with glue-like Amaretto, he asked her for her phone number. Little had he known she did it on purpose. The rest is history.

  A High Mountain Heating and Cooling van was parked along the side of the cul-de-sac, a ladder propped up against my slanted roof. Jack Johnson stood atop the ladder feeding something into the metal duct that pierced the shingled roof. Though the temperature was in the twenties, he wore shorts and the sinewy muscles of his calves flexed as he leaned his toes into the building while he worked.

  ‘Yo, Greta, you gotta start getting your chimney cleaned a little more often,’ he called down when he saw me standing at the base of the ladder. ‘You should see the shit I’m pulling out of here.’ He tossed down a handful of pine needles as well as a few actual pinecones. The matter landed at my feet. ‘This kind of stuff can back up the flue and the next thing you know you got a one-way upload to you know where. Or download … depending,’ he added.

  ‘You cleaned it last winter, in case you don’t remember. Just hadn’t gotten around to it yet this year.’ I looked down at what he had thrown at my feet. It didn’t look like much. ‘You telling me this was enough to put my life in danger?’

  His arm disappeared into the stack. A moment later he pulled something the size of a softball out of the chimney. ‘No, but this is.’

  He tossed it down to me. It was a bird’s nest. Both of our eyes went skyward to the huge blue spruce that abutted the house. ‘It was super windy up here on Saturday night. Must’ve blown free and plopped straight into your chimney. What’re the odds?’

  Saturday. The day of the slide. Evidently, the gods weren’t favoring me that day. Or maybe they were. I was still alive. Warren wasn’t.

  He took a long last look down the chimney and climbed back down the ladder. ‘All good now. I put a new screen on top. The old one must have come off. That’s how all that junk managed to find its way in in the first place.’

  ‘What do you mean the old one came off?’

  ‘Wasn’t here. Maybe it blew off or an animal messed with it. If you’d called me in before the season I would have caught it.’ He wiped his hands on his shorts. ‘Anyhow, problem solved. I’ll go and fire her up to be sure.’

  He went into the house while I stood outside staring up at the ancient spruce scratching the winter blue sky. I recalled sitting on a lawn chair reading with Kayla at my side last summer while an industrious gray jay built her nest, inexhaustible as she transported twigs to prepare a fine home for her eggs. After the chicks had hatched, she resumed her never-ending cycle of flying back and forth, this time transporting unfortunate worms to the ravenous beaks above. And then one day, just as the surrounding Aspens in the grove had started to turn gold, I noticed there was no more activity above. Both the mother and the chicks were gone. Just like that.

  I couldn’t find it in me to blame the mother jay for my near-death experience. She was a classic example of nature at work and the life cycle. Luckily it hadn’t cycled for me.

  Jack came out of the house rubbing his hands together in a way that indicated his task was finished. ‘Working fine now,’ he said. ‘I put new batteries in your CO detector and all should be good.’ He hesitated, his sea-green eyes flashing a bit impishly from his tan, weathered face. ‘Want me to hang around a while to make sure? We could, uh, test the air with some deep breathing.’

  ‘Jack,’ I scolded. ‘In your dreams.’

  He gave me that smirk I used to know so well, and for a moment I was tempted. Looking at him in his shorts and blue fleece jacket, my mind travell
ed back to what that body looked like when the clothes were removed. Lean without an ounce of extra flesh. Every inch iron-like muscle. This was a man who could scale the Bells with two packs. Jack was my first lover in Aspen, that first season in Aspen. But Jack never quite understood that being with someone exclusively meant there wasn’t room for a third party. He had long enjoyed the easy sex life that comes along with living in a resort – pretty young girls looking for fun or mature women looking for a holiday romance – and he was beyond curing on that matter. We had parted friends.

  ‘Suit yourself, Greta,’ he said with absolutely no malice. ‘Don’t forget, bad things come in threes. Let’s see. Avalanche, CO …’

  ‘Yah, well letting you stay might just be that number three,’ I sniped back.

  He folded up his ladder and secured it to the top of his truck. He gave me a quick slap on the bottom before driving off, leaving me alone in the snowy lane. Three white-tailed mule deer sauntered out of the woods and walked along the edge of the glade undisturbed by my presence. I watched until they blended into the trees on the other side.

  I glanced back up at the spruce tree and then the chimney. A strong gust of wind rattled the tree and the fir needles moved in synch with the branches as they bowed to the wind. Seemed to me that a strong wind like that would blow a nest away from the house and not on to it.

  I went into the house with Jack’s words ringing in my ears. What were the odds?

  EIGHT

  I slept better than I was entitled to, considering all that had come to pass of late. But it just felt so good to be back in my home. I decided not to give the furnace another thought. I knew enough of how things worked from tinkering on things with Toby as a kid. We always wanted to save Mom money, and so we could fix just about anything from the bulb that floated in a toilet to a broken garbage disposal. I understood what had caused the furnace to malfunction, and that had been solved, so there was no reason to worry about being asphyxiated in my sleep. Just as disaster didn’t affect my eating, it usually didn’t affect my sleep either. But since the avalanche my sleep had been spotty, and I woke frequently during the night thinking of Warren’s death. I wanted so much for it to be that nightmare that you wake from in the middle of the night relieved when you realize it’s only a dream. Unfortunately, this nightmare was here to stay.

  I remember visiting my mother in the hospital when she was dying, when her breast cancer had metastasized to stage four and all hope was gone. Toby and I wanted to bring her home to die, to the small house with the big mortgage she had so cleverly decorated on a hairdresser’s budget, but she refused. Even in death she had that Scandinavian practicality. She didn’t want us to have to listen to her moan at night. For the entire week she hinged on death, Toby and I would spend the day at her side, returning home only after the drugs finally put her to sleep. I would scarf down a quick meal and hit the rack, lapsing into unconsciousness the moment my head touched the pillow. My brother didn’t have the same constitution as I in that regard. He wasn’t able to eat a thing, losing five pounds and barely sleeping, pacing the halls into the early morning hours until her end came.

  Neither one of us was much like her. While I never doubted her love for us, she was practical to the point of boring, a demanding mother who could make us behave with a cool look. She was beautiful when we were small, with creamy skin and blond hair and the ubiquitous blue eyes of a Swede, before illness and too much sun and alcohol turned her dry and crinkled. Both Toby and I must have gotten our looks from our father, whoever he was, because while I inherited my unmanageable blond curls from my mother, my eyes are a dark brown and my skin borders on olive. The same for my twin. His thick blond hair is the color of the sun, but his eyes are black bullets.

  I lay in bed trying not to think of Warren when my stomach started to growl. It dawned on me I hadn’t eaten a good meal since leaving Judy’s yesterday morning. Dinner last night had been the same as a couple of days prior, Triscuits and cheese, only this time I’d substituted a couple of glasses of Pinot Grigio for the Heineken. Since I wasn’t ready to go back to work yet, I climbed down from the loft, got dressed and went outside to clean off the Wagoneer for a drive into town.

  Though it was sunny, it had snowed during the night, and the blanket of snow burying my car had grown to nearly three feet. The car made a couple false starts and turned over on the third try. I left it running to defrost while I shoveled it out. My car was a true sixties vehicle, only rusted through in a few places. I probably should have turned her in for a newer model, but just like the Barcalounger, it was Sam’s and so it was sacrosanct. Besides, it was built like a tank, able to make it down the half-mile road in all conditions, the plow in front assuring my way when deep snow made it questionable.

  And anyway, I didn’t want to lay out any dough for a new car. I had better uses for my money. My biggest dream was to climb Everest. Several of the guys and one of the other girls on patrol had done it, and it had become one of my quests. However, not only was the 29,029-foot peak a physical challenge, it was a financial one, costing around thirty-five thousand dollars for the bare-bones climb. Every spare penny I put aside was earmarked for the Everest trip.

  It was toasty warm in the Wagoneer by the time I finished cleaning it off. Halfway down the road, I noticed the deer again, their cotton-white tails still as their lowered heads scoured the snow for sustenance. One buck lifted his head as the Wagoneer drove past and looked at the car with little interest as if it were just another woodland creature, sinking his head right back into the snow once the vehicle was past. Part of my passion for where I live is getting close-up views of mule deer and fox and bear and, every once in a while, a rogue moose. The moose were the only ones to truly fear. They were skittish and territorial and lightning quick. A moose could turn on you and stomp you before you knew it. More than once, I’d had to scoop my barking sixty-pound dog into my arms and carry her inside to avoid a particularly angry moose’s ire.

  Aside from the moose, with the other animals it was live and let live. Even the bears. They just wanted to be left alone, although I had to be scrupulous not to leave any hints of food. Bears were notorious for breaking and entering when they suspected sustenance on the other side of a door or window. Kayla used to bark like she was possessed whenever a bear approached the house, which was usually enough to drive them off. But Kayla wasn’t there anymore, meaning I was going to have to be more vigilant.

  Pushing back memories of lost humans and lost animals, I turned on to Highway 82 and headed into town.

  It’s difficult to be in City Market without seeing someone you know. Aspen is, after all, a small town despite its large reputation. It’s also a town accustomed to celebrity, so people generally turn a blind eye when encountering the famous. I wish I could have said the same applied to me this morning. My fame had preceded me, my bad luck in the slide making the front-page days prior with a half-page shot of the slide and a photo of a smiling Warren inserted in the bottom. The carbon monoxide incident appeared this morning, the headline screaming at me from a stack of papers near the door. SKI PATROLLER OVERCOME BY CARBON MONOXIDE. Then a smaller headline beneath: ESCAPES AVALANCHE TO NEARLY DIE AT HOME. At least three people in produce congratulated me on being alive, deftly avoiding any mention of Warren’s death. I grabbed a bunch of bananas and navigated my way out with my head down, hoping I could get the rest of my groceries without any more undesired recognition.

  That wish was short-lived as I guided my cart into the dairy section and nearly ran into the tall, lanky body of the store’s general manager, Bruff Horner. He’d been at City Market as long as I had been in town and he could be seen just about any day riding his scooter into work in just about any kind of weather from his employee housing unit on the edge of town where he lived with his family. We’d dated a few times when I first moved to Aspen, long before he met his wife and settled down. Like I said, it’s a small town, especially among the worker bees, and people overlap. He was unloadin
g a crate of milk and he stopped what he was doing upon seeing me.

  ‘Sorry about your run of bad luck, Greta,’ he said sincerely. I was surprised, because as much as I liked Bruff, he was notorious for saying something inappropriate whenever possible. Such as ‘when’s the baby due?’ to an unfortunate woman with a larger abdomen. I tried to steer around him, but between the cart and his body, the way was blocked.

  ‘I’m kind of in a hurry and I really don’t want to talk about it right now,’ I said, trying to work my way past him.

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose and brushed an errant strand of gray hair from his forehead. ‘Yeah, well I wouldn’t buy any green bananas if I were you. These things tend to come in threes.’

  What did I say about inappropriate? Or had he been talking to Jack? My torture ended when an announcement over the public address system called him to customer service. Torture came anew as I found myself wheeling down the pet-food aisle out of habit and realizing there was nothing for me to buy in that section anymore.

  I was almost finished checking out at the self-service when the automatic doors behind me slid open and Joel Simpson stepped into the store. Joel was Sam’s son. I’d seen him more in the two years since Sam died than in the prior five. Dealing with Joel at this point would rank with recovering from an ACL repair. I’d already been down that route and, believe me, it’s slow, tedious and painful.