The Restaurateur

by Aubrey Parker

  I tease him more than is sensible. I feel almost giddy. Must be the mountain air. Must be this sense of finally having a tiny “win” over Mateo — and one that doesn’t require fighting.

  I catch him looking at me. I glance away.

  I take pity on him. When he says that it’s steep for an “easy path,” I tell him that my grandparents hiked it into their eighties. Then I point out that the race he’s supposedly so interested in building won’t be especially tough if it can’t hack the simplest things the mountain has to offer.

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” he says from behind me. The trail is narrow, and I’m in front.

  “Sure sounds like it, with all that complaining.”

  “I’m not complaining. I’m simply observing.”

  Two or three seconds pass, and I get a distinct feeling that he’s “observing” my ass. It turns out I’m still good on my mountain legs, but there’s no questioning that I’ve chosen a poor garment to hike in. Most of what’s keeping me going is the need to show Mateo up. If I can do this barefoot and in a dress, he’s a pussy to so much as grunt.

  I turn. I catch his eyes in the wrong place, but rather than looking embarrassed he gives me a cocksure smile.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Why am I observing?”

  “Why are you building this competition? You’re super rich. You run a big, well-known chain of restaurants. Shouldn’t your ambitions be in line with buying out Papa Johns or something?”

  “Maybe we can sit and talk about this when we get to the top of this hill?”

  I give him a half-shrug. “Okay. Pussy.”

  Mateo swats at my feet, making as if to trip me. I step up quickly, laughing.

  There’s a little clearing at the top of the hill. My grandfather cut down some diseased trees up here before I was born, and the stumps remain. Dad lacquered the tops to keep bugs out and make permanent seats. Everyone wants a rest after that hill, so it’s a perfect spot.

  Mateo sits. I consider making fun of his being out of breath, but I am, too.

  “To answer your question,” he says, “I want to turn this mountain into one of the hardest physical tests a person can endure. It’s not as big as something like Everest, so reaching the top can’t be the goal. I need to invent something new. Something that accounts for the land itself. Something people are obsessed with finishing, like the Badwater Ultramarathon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A 135-mile foot race through Death Valley.”

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  “To test themselves. To see what’s possible.”

  I smirk, then shake my head. “Sounds like macho bullshit to me.”

  “Have you ever tried something like that? Something so hard, you didn’t think you could do it?”

  “No. I don’t feel the need to prove that I’m a big man.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Except that it sorta is. Face it, Mr. Saint. This is just a bigger ruler to measure your dick.”

  He’s looking at me. Smiling.

  “What?” I demand.

  “You’re different than I thought you were.”

  “Really.”

  “You struck me more as a serpent than an outright ballbuster.”

  “Guess you shouldn’t put your balls on such prominent display.”

  He smiles wider.

  “Will you stop that?” I say.

  “Stop what?”

  “Smiling. You look like you swallowed a coat hanger. I don’t like you, remember?”

  “Hmm, that’s interesting, because I was sure I didn’t like you, either. But out on the land, you turn into a lady lumberjack.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? You have to say ‘lady lumberjack’ because lumberjacks are supposed to be men?”

  “Still a bitch, though.”

  I roll my eyes as I look across the vista. The view is partially obstructed by trees, but there’s no part of my family’s mountain that isn’t stunning.

  “People are always surprised,” I say.

  “By what?”

  “By the fact that I have fun sometimes, I suppose. That I’m not just fashion and makeup. I don’t know why. I’m human, same as anyone.”

  “It’s not your clothes or your makeup.”

  I look over at Mateo. His tone is serious.

  “What is it, if you’re so smart?”

  “It’s the fact that you seem determined not to have fun.”

  “Says the billionaire, who wore a suit to a college tech conference.”

  “I didn’t know what I was attending. Besides, look at my press. Don’t you know a carefree international playboy when you see one?” He tosses his hair dramatically. I snort.

  “I just don’t see the point in being timid about what I want. And in our society, an assertive woman gets called a bitch.”

  He shrugs and looks away.

  “You think I’m full of shit.”

  “I think I like the sound of swearing on your lips.”

  “Because it’s cute? Because I’m supposed to be a Barbie, and it’s hilarious to hear Barbie not be Barbie?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it. You want to be serious, be serious. That’s your business.”

  But something inside me is bothered by all he’s said. I know the feeling; it’s here because a part of me agrees. It’s true that assertiveness is seen as bitchiness, but that’s not the real reason I keep people at a distance. Part of how I run my life owes to focus and knowing what I want, yes. But part of this shell is something else. Something Mateo’s words have slipped a needle deep inside and is threatening to poke.

  “Enough resting,” I say, standing. “If you want to see what your money bought, we’ve got a lot of hiking to do.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  MATEO

  ELIZABETH WALKS FASTER AND FASTER. Harder and harder. I’m not having trouble keeping up, but I am working to make it happen. Something has changed. We set out to vacate the lodge and get some fresh air.

  But it’s been a grim march after our talk in the clearing. A challenge, of sorts, as if she’s trying to break me.

  “Elizabeth. Hold up.”

  She keeps going. I march on behind her.

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Can’t keep up?” she goads.

  “I just think maybe we should rest.”

  “Why? You wanted a challenge.”

  “Yes. For my guests. Not for us to talk.”

  “I don’t know about you. I’m talking right now.”

  She marches faster. Almost bounding up a set of stone steps.

  “Elizabeth!”

  Finally, she stops. She looks back, and I’d swear her mascara is running. From sweat? Or something else?

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing is going on. Maybe this place is just beating you.”

  “I didn’t expect the race to start today. I’m not dressed for it.”

  “And I am?”

  I look up her body, long and silhouetted by the green dress. Standing there, three feet above me, Elizabeth strikes me as incredibly sexy. Her skin is shiny with perspiration, her feet are filthy, and the bottom hem of what I’m sure is a pricey dress is now ruined. But her legs are strong, and she’s upright like a statue — a carved tribute not to a forest nymph, but to a goddess of the mountain.

  “Talk to me,” I say.

  “We’re talking.”

  “Really talk. I told you what I wanted to build, so why don’t you tell me?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Your father said you wanted to build a school.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It would be a school.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “What does it matter? It’s never going to happen! You won!”

  “Look.” I raise my hands. “I don’t know what’s bothering you exactly, but if you’ll just
help me out by explaining—”

  “Who cares? You don’t want to hear it.”

  “I do.”

  She marches on. I chase after her, but she stays ahead. I’m strong, but her muscles have memorized these trails through a life of climbing. She places her feet in exactly the right spots, maximizing efficiency like a woodland creature. I slap and grind, huff and puff.

  “Come back here and talk to me!”

  But her tone is grim, almost deadpan. “We’re almost there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Where? Why?”

  She stops so suddenly that we nearly collide

  She turns and faces me with those green-green eyes. “You wanted to know why I wanted to keep this place so badly? I’m going to show you.”

  She turns without hurry. I don’t dare to speak.

  We reach the top, and there’s a bigger clearing, with a majestic view of the valley beyond. Looking out across the grandeur, it’s almost hard to breathe. My breath has literally been taken away.

  There’s a real stone bench up here this time. I can’t imagine what it took to get it up here. Someone had to carry each of the pieces up that slope. It would be easier to sit on the ground. Why?

  I move toward the bench, but Elizabeth walks slowly in the opposite direction. To a recess at the back of the clearing, where the view would be the best of all.

  I start to follow, but then I stop.

  Somewhere on the way up, Elizabeth must have picked a long-stemmed flower I can’t name. She’s kneeling with it now.

  As I watch, she places it on a grave.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MATEO

  “WE FOUGHT ABOUT IT, DADDY and me,” Elizabeth says, nodding back toward the bench and the grave site, purposely out of sight around the corner. After I’d given her three or four minutes, she’d silently risen and walked past me to this place, as if she couldn’t face the small white cross any longer, with Rachel Frasier written in tiny letters on it. I wouldn’t have given her a tissue if I had one. My role was merely to sit and wait.

  “Before she died, in those last weeks, Mom said she wanted to be buried on the mountain. Dad said that meant we should spread her ashes — just come up here and toss them into the wind. But she’d said buried. So, I fought him. I told him we needed to dig a hole and put the urn inside it. Mom used to love that spot over there. It’s where she came to be alone, and where we came to be together. If we’d spread her ashes, she wouldn’t be here. She’d be everywhere. I don’t suppose that makes sense, but it’s how I felt.”

  I say nothing. I let her eyes meet mine, and I wait.

  “You asked why I didn’t want to sell the mountain. Why it mattered so much to me to keep it in the family.”

  “I under—”

  “You don’t, though. It’s a small spot, and the trail bottom is hard to find. If I hadn’t shown you this was here, you’d probably never have known. Nor would your climbers. Maybe you’d build at the summit—” She looks upward and to the left, to the top of my new property. “—but not here. There’s a lot of sentiment, but I know that her ashes aren’t her. One little final resting place isn’t enough to keep me here, and you’d never have bothered it.”

  She sniffs and wipes at her eyes, but we’ve been here in silence plenty long enough for them to stop streaming. Around this corner, I suppose she feels as if she won’t have to face the grave. As if it doesn’t exist. I want to find another way through the brush, so we won’t have to go back to the trailhead. I want to save her from having to see it — to remember — again.

  She looks at me. I expect her to continue; but instead, she gives me a sad smile. I see her younger days, the person deep inside — the one she keeps so carefully hidden.

  “We’re a lot alike,” she says.

  It’s a total change of direction, and I need a minute to find my reply. Even when I do, I want to say, No we’re not — not at all. But I don’t. I can’t. Not right now.

  “You want to find people’s limits, right? That’s what your challenge is about.”

  “That, or measuring dicks,” I say. My tone is light.

  The joke lands as it should. Her smile returns. “I was just messing with you. I do understand. I don’t know if my dad told you, but he used to climb. His personal best was a 5.14 in Yosemite. I forget the name of the route.”

  “Jesus. 5.14?”

  She nods. “And a 5.12 free solo. He always adds that part. I forget what free solo means, though.”

  I won’t derail her, but ‘free solo’ means that Damon Frasier is a badass. Reckless, according to some people, with no respect for life. Free soloing is climbing alone, without a partner or safety gear. Just you and the rock. One mistake and everything is over.

  “I get it, is what I’m saying. I asked him why he never had anything on our mountain set up for climbing, but by then he’d had his back injury and lost the bug. But he talked about it like you do. He said that when a person tests himself in one way, he tests himself in all ways. Like each climb made him into a more complete person.”

  “After you hit a certain difficulty level, it’s more mental than physical,” I say. “You have to know yourself intimately. You learn what you’re capable of, and to trust it. Same as anything. It’s not the body that keeps you going. It’s your mind.”

  “You sound like him.” A smile touches her lips as she gazes across the view. “But I guess I inherited some of that bug. I got it from my mom’s side, too.”

  “Your mom was a climber?”

  Elizabeth shakes her head. “No. She was a teacher. Not in a school, but online. She taught people to knit. I know how that sounds, but it was so much more than needles and yarn. There was what she taught, and then there was how she taught it. Knitting was the niche she settled into. Her real brilliance was in the business she built around something so simple. She had a network of knitting websites. She held an annual conference. Had a whole staff — 13 people, I think, at the peak.”

  “Just to teach knitting?”

  “You’ll laugh, but Mom talked about knitting like Daddy talks about climbing. She said it doesn’t matter how a person gets to know herself, just that she does. For her, it was about mastery. She could have chosen anything — making sushi, trimming bonsai trees, growing orchids. It just happened to be knitting. But it was like meditation for her. And weirdly, that gave her and my father a common understanding. For him, climbing was meditation.”

  I nod. It has to be. If you free solo anything higher than twenty feet, you're putting your life into your hands. Doing it without dying requires a yogi’s concentration and self-awareness.

  “So, she expanded,” Elizabeth goes on. “After a while, she wasn’t just teaching knitting. She started teaching meditation. And self-help, and personal empowerment. She’d hear from students who said that her courses made them more confident. A lot of them got new jobs, leaving the old ones that they’d hated for years. Many left partners and husbands who were wrong for them or mistreated them. It was like she’d built this little group of soldiers who’d follow her anywhere. ‘The Yarn Army,’ she called them.”

  Elizabeth laughs at this, but it’s filled with melancholy. She’s looking out, away from me, but her hands keep fussing in her lap. I want to take them. To be the chauvinist she accused me of being — not because she needs saving right now, but because something in me wants to save her. The pain in her every movement is excruciating. It’s as if she’s kept all of this pushed deep down inside herself, never letting the pressure leak. Now here it comes all at once — God knows how many years’ worth of oppression.

  “My mom made me want to own my own business. In her own way, she pushed people’s limits just like Dad pushed his own. Both of them have always believed in something bigger.”

  Finally, she looks at me. Her wan smile breaks my heart. “Just like you.”

  “Elizabeth …”

  “I always wanted to be the bes
t I could be. I’ve driven incredibly hard, especially since Mom died. She hated that the cancer was the only thing she couldn’t master. The only thing she couldn’t find a way to conquer. But she kept teaching through all of it so that at least others could learn from her trials. I was always proud of my mom, but at that point, I couldn’t have been prouder.”

  She sniffs, hard. This one has the feel of resetting — of shoving troublesome emotions aside so Elizabeth can finally get down to business.

  “I’ll bet you figured I was stupid when you met me.”

  “Of course not.”

  But I did. The hackathon changed my mind — seeing how well she worked the room and the ideas that bloomed from her head. Then there was LiveLyfe. I saw her groups and how elite they were; I saw her friends and how respected for their minds they all are.

  “I kicked ass in school,” Elizabeth says. “And I have a network that you wouldn’t believe. I collect great people with tremendous minds. I’ve belonged to half a dozen masterminds filled with geniuses in business, money, and life in general. I come by it naturally. Like my parents, I want to explore human potential. I want to see what we, as a species, are capable of.”

  “And that’s why you want to build a school?”

  “It’s more like an academy. For very special people.”

  “Like Professor X’s school in X-Men.”

  “I don’t know anything about the X-Men.”

  “You can’t do it, Elizabeth. You’re not in a wheelchair.”

  She squints at me as though I’m a dullard.

  “And you wanted to build it here,” I say, bringing this back full circle.

  “Yes. People need to get away. To isolate themselves. This place has a spiritual energy. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it.”

  I feel something, but I don’t know that it’s spiritual. Elizabeth’s knee is almost touching mine. This woman I thought I hated is now magnetic. A force of nature. I feel myself wanting to spiral into her, to be closer.

  “Right now, you might be thinking I’m trying to tell you a sob story,” she says. “So that you’ll back off. But that’s not what this is. I know this is over. And it’s fine.”