Quinn finished at the Rodinger house in the first week of March, then moved his tools and the trailer up to the Hartleys’ new cabin. Cress brought him hot coffee mid-morning. “Inspector!” she called upon entering. He worked as he walked, skip-coating drywall or measuring a window bench with his usual grace and economy of movement. Did she want to help? He could use her, he said. So she hand-sanded and stained balustrades, took down measurements for a window seat as he rattled them off; she learned to use the chop saw and router. At three, they knocked off and skied into the woods.
He never bothered to level the little trailer in its new parking spot. They slept in the loft bedroom, on the unforgiving bed, with the window cracked for fresh air, the electric blanket humming.
* * *
On March 10, Don and Donna held a party at the tent to celebrate the syzygy. All the planets had lined up on the same side of the sun. “It’s the most auspicious alignment for love,” Donna said when she called to invite them. “When soul mates find each other. When eternal love takes hold.”
“It better not take hold of me,” said Cress.
She and Quinn skied over. Don had cut steps in the snow, and a glassy-walled chute led to the tent’s opening. The snow had melted back a few inches from the tent and formed a hard wall around it. The woodstove kept the place warm—too warm; one front flap stayed up.
“Brian and Franny were going to come, but they went to Ensenada to thaw out,” said Don. “So it’s just us.”
Donna wore a rabbit-fur vest, a long skirt, and shearling mukluks. Her hair was in looped braids. “Isn’t she the adorable Laplander?” said Don.
The tiny potbellied woodstove was vented through the wall of the tent. Stew bubbled on the hob. Two propane lanterns hissed valiantly, producing a trembling pale light. The canvas swelled and contracted in the night breezes. They sat on folding canvas campstools around an old wooden folding table.
The tent’s ceiling was beginning to sag, so the two men went out to rake the snow off the fly and to tighten the tension lines.
“You and Mr. Morrow are awfully thick,” Donna whispered. “I was telling Don, it’s too bad he’s not single. I’ve never seen two people better suited. You brighten him, he sweetens you—you glow! He crazy-adores you.”
“Really?”
“Completely gaga. Any plans to divorce the high-school sweetheart?”
“Oh God no,” said Cress. “That’s why it’s so idyllic. With no future, you don’t care about things that’d drive you nuts over the long haul.”
“Like decades of wet towels on the floor?”
“For example.” In fact, Quinn was tidier than Cress. She was thinking more of his past participles. Tonight he’d said, Have you wrote much lately?
“I still couldn’t do what you’re doing,” said Donna. “I have to be the first and only. I get too mad at these guys just taking whatever they want.”
“Quinn’s not like that.”
“They’re all like that, deep down. I could kill Brian. Franny thinks he’ll marry her. Not a chance. She’s just his round-the-way girl.”
“I think there’s a chance.”
“Not a whisper of a chance.”
The men came back inside, finely frosted head-to-foot, as if pulled from a deep freeze.
* * *
In the A-frame, under the covers, in the cool blue darkness, Cress said, “Do you think Don and Donna will make it?”
“Make what?” said Quinn.
“You know. As a couple.”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t you wonder?” she said.
“Not about that.”
“Well, I wouldn’t bet on it,” Cress said. “I’ve never gotten the feeling that she’s too smitten with him. Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Felt that Donna’s really in love with Don.”
“Never thought about it.”
“You are no fun.” Cress threw her leg over his and grabbed his arm. “I’m not even going to ask what you think about Franny and Brian. I mean, if you aren’t interested in the people around you, what are you interested in?”
“Fly fishing,” he said.
“Such a limited storyline!”
“Not if you do it right. It’s very absorbing.”
Cress snorted, and he drew her close, kissed her eye, her cheekbone, her lips. She drowsed and drifted, half-dreaming of fishing, of ripples, gnats, angles of the sun. She recalled the deer devouring the trout, the thrashing of the bushes, birds flushing, and hunters. She pulled back from Quinn. “I keep thinking about Tom Streeter and those binoculars.”
“What about them?”
“I’m sure he’s spying on Ondine,” Cress said. “You don’t think he would ever shoot Jakey, do you?”
Quinn grabbed her arm and flipped her onto her back, then stretched over her. “Does that big, busy mind of yours ever give you a moment’s rest?”
* * *
“What’s going on? Are you mad at me?” Tillie hadn’t even said hello.
Guilt panged near Cress’s heart. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“Maybe I didn’t leave our room clean enough when we left at New Year’s? Maybe I hurt your feelings about something? Or you hated my boeuf carbonnade?”
“I’m—uh—” Cress couldn’t say busy. She wasn’t busy. “Snowed in, I guess.”
Tillie had a new job, at Maddie’s magazine, City and State. Assistant art director. Full-time and a real salary. “And you? What’s up? I’ve been calling and calling, all hours of the day, early, late.”
Cress had heard the phone pealing downstairs. Three or four nights in a row.
“So what’s his name?” Tillie said.
“Does it always have to be a guy?”
“What’s her name?”
“The thing is, you won’t approve,” said Cress.
“I might surprise you,” said Tillie.
But she didn’t.
* * *
Franny made fish tacos at the Crittenden family’s Swiss-style château. They were the first fish tacos the others had ever eaten; Franny and Brian had had them in Baja, and Franny had watched how they were made: chunks of red snapper floured and fried, onions chopped with cilantro, fresh limes squeezed over all. She’d bought salsa at Younts: “I hung around the Mexican food aisle to see what Mexicans liked—Herdez, mostly.”
Brian patted Franny’s hip as she served. She wore black stirrup pants and a crisp bright white shirt—new clothes, Cress saw. Good clothes. For the first time Franny’s tiny body broadcast not a childhood of malnutrition but stylish, adult slenderness.
After dinner, Brian and Donna got out their guitars. “Come on, Fran,” Brian said. “Sing for ’em.” He winked at the others. “We’ve been practicing.”
Franny stood by his chair and, swaying a little, sang “Satin Sheets” in a sweet, thin twang; then “Almost Persuaded.”
“Dang girl, I’m gonna call you onstage next Family Night,” said Donna.
“I won’t do it,” said Franny.
But she did, the next Thursday. Franny sang both songs again, plus she and Donna had worked out a duet, “Two More Bottles of Wine.” Donna’s capable alto provided a good foil for Franny’s sweet, stubborn plaintiveness.
* * *
The next storm brought another four feet of snow. Don Dare’s tent semicollapsed, and until he could dig it out, he moved in with Freddy and River Bob in DeeDee’s old place.
During the days, the cold was not severe; once you got moving, you could ski as long as you wanted wearing a sweatshirt with a down vest.
At night, with Quinn asleep beside her, Cress listened to distant choruses endlessly singing, at a very high pitch, right on the edge of hearing.
They kissed on the creaky wicker love seat, the kissing a form of daydreaming, where she floated amid bright images. The white world, the golden meadow, a granular spew of stars. They stripped each other, layer after layer. His skin was supple but coarse; ol
der and vaguely hide-like, just beginning to loosen at his wrists, knees, and elbows. Without cologne, he smelled faintly of wood and some days, not unpleasantly, of engines. They gazed calmly and at length into each other’s eyes, inhaled each other’s breath. She sat on the back of his thighs and pushed her thumbs up the trough of his spine—he claimed never to have been massaged before! She sat the other way and dug into his calves and thighs. “Do you think, in some far distant future, we’ll ever see each other again?” she asked. “Like when you’re old and I’m still relatively young?”
“I’ll come see you in my wheelchair.”
“And I’ll tip you out of it. Onto my bed.”
* * *
Cress’s father came up for a night, long enough to have a yelling match with Rick Garsh over the inspection; since Rick wrote the inspector a check, he charged Sam Hartley 10 percent on top of the inspection fee. Sam called Rick a chiseler, a cheat, and a phony, and refused to pay. Both sides now spoke openly of lawyers and lawsuits.
* * *
Sometimes she wished that Quinn would just leave. Leave and get it over with, so she could stop being afraid of being alone on the mountain and just be alone on the mountain. She couldn’t begin to get over him if he was still here.
* * *
At Beech Creek, Dalia announced that banquets would pick up mid-April and get incredibly busy come May, with weddings and graduation parties. Cress could work as much as she liked, six or seven days a week. The money was there to be made. So this became her plan: once Quinn left, she would make her nut (a thousand dollars was her goal) and leave. Where, she didn’t know. London, maybe.
Donna said, “Hey! Rent a room from me, so you don’t have to drive up and down the mountain every day. A hundred bucks a month. A good deal for you and a big help to me.”
Cress hardly had to consider it. “Just don’t tell Quinn. I don’t want him to think that I followed him off the hill.”
* * *
“I’m going to miss your gloomy mug, Quinn, man,” Brian said at Family Night. “Now who’s going to teach me how to use a router?”
“Cress can,” Quinn said. “She’s a pro with that thing.”
At one point, when all the men had left the table—for the bathroom, the bar, the phone—Franny said, “Here’s this, you guys,” and pulled a chain out of her blouse. On the chain dangled a yellow-gold diamond ring.
Donna grabbed it, squinted. “Jeez, girl, that’s a honker.”
“Three carats,” said Franny. “He proposed at Estero Beach. I’m wearing it round my neck till we get it sized.”
Donna gave Cress a bright laughing look. “I knew it was going to happen, Franny. I told Cress just last week…”
“I wish you could be next, Cress,” Franny said softly. “I see how he looks at you—it’s like Brian looks at me. Like he’d curl up ’n’ die without you.”
* * *
Cress discreetly boxed up her woolens and hiking boots, her thrift-store ski pants. Her dissertation—or, full disclosure, two and a third chapters thereof—she filed in the box with her research notes. The Selectric went back in its case, and all of it went into the upstairs closet. She took an old plaid suitcase from the basement, filled it with Beech Creek uniforms and low-altitude clothes—jeans, T-shirts, light sweaters—and stowed it in the Saab’s trunk.
Quinn finished her parents’ cabin on a Wednesday. The next morning he cleaned and packed up his tools and secured the cupboards in the trailer. He and Cress skied for the last time to the meadows and the Bauer cabin.
The sky was an aching blue with two lenticular clouds, one large, one small, like enormous Frisbees tilted against the northern range. The sun was warm; they shed their sweatshirts and skied in T-shirts and open down vests. They pushed on, passing Don’s tent, a hump in the snow, the fir ridgepole protruding like a bony elbow, and, deciding against a longer outing, turned back toward the lodge, where they stopped in for a drink—who cared what anyone thought now? The crowd was large for a late weekday afternoon, and a good-natured drunken hilarity gusted in loud laughter and shouts. Carpenters lined the bar, and a party of snowmobilers had pushed tables together; cross-country skiers dried their backsides at the fire. “Heya, Hartley!” Jakey yelled across the room from the register. “Your old boyfriend broke into the Mackenzie cabin last night, made a big damn mess! Kitchen looked like an eight-point earthquake—molasses, maple syrup, and pancake mix all over the floor.”
Cress, confused, tried to smile, but she was socked by sudden guilt: What old boyfriend? Who was Jakey talking about? Himself? Had she lost track of someone? She tried to sound light and game. “Which old boyfriend is this?”
“Big old black guy with the white snout. The one who won’t stay in bed.”
“Oh, him!” She could’ve leaped with relief. “He’s up again? Something’s wrong. He’s hungry all the time. Maybe he has worms.”
* * *
They gave each other the same present: a silver flask from the locked knife case at the Sparkville hardware store. “The man told me he’d just sold one, and this was his last,” said Cress. “Maybe it’s a sign.”
Quinn squinted at his elongated reflection. “I don’t believe in signs.”
He’d been intermittently gloomy and clingy all week. She’d been cooler, strict with herself. No fantasies of a future. No weepy moments.
“You’ll be okay up here?” he said.
“I’ll be at Beech Creek most of the time.” She kept her tone light.
She couldn’t say so, but she was glad to be leaving. The Meadows was too small, Julie and Rick Garsh too ubiquitous.
“I’ll have a little something for you once Rick’s check clears,” he said. “For all the hours you put in. To add to the kitty.”
A flare of anger: that he would give her money to send her on her way.
“If you can’t get hold of me here, call me at Beech Creek,” she said. “I plan to work double time.”
* * *
In bed that last night, Quinn held her too tightly. He wanted to stare into her eyes, he was too squirmy and abrupt in his movements.
“These were the best months of my life, since I was a boy,” he said.
“Me too.” She wasn’t certain yet that this was true—she’d have to think about it—but why not say so now and make their last hours together sweet? Best months, second- or third-best months: she hadn’t allowed herself such formulations.
She had been calming and kind to him for so long. Now, impatience jolted through her. What more could be said? They’d reached their agreed-upon limit. She put her back to him, feigned sleep. At some far remove, her distant chorus sang.
This was the end, but not quite the very end—they had to meet in a few weeks so he could give her the “little something”—so she was not sad yet.
* * *
Friday morning, she followed him down the mountain in her Saab. She had a luncheon and a dinner banquet. Her plaid suitcase slid back and forth in the trunk on the curves.
The trailer looked ridiculous. Quinn had hitched it to his truck without clearing the accumulated snow off its roof. Five or six feet had compacted there, forming a concise history of snowfalls, glacial blue at the bottom, with compressed and stratified layers. The overall shape was a blunted trapezoid, like a scudding cloud or an enormous white pompadour. Quinn was charmed by its comical look. Evan, he said, would get a big kick out of it.
Eleven or twelve miles down the road, Quinn steered into a tight inside curve, and Cress watched as the trailer-with-snowpack leaned to the right, and then leaned some more. As the truck began pulling out of the curve—to the left—the top-heavy trailer continued its rightward trajectory. In languid slow motion, twisting at the hitch, the trailer leaned farther and farther to the right, finally landing softly on its side in a turnout, where a spring flowed from a small pipe into a culvert. The truck dragged the trailer a few more feet and stopped.
Cress pulled over and met Quinn beside the trailer’s expose
d chassis and white aluminum belly, so wrongly revealed. The top wheel still spun. Quinn’s hands rested on his hips.
“Hey!” Cress elbowed his elbow. “That’s good money! Lying right there on the ground.”
He touched her waist.
Two cars stopped. Men got out and closely examined the twisted hitch. A boxy green Forest Service vehicle drove up. The driver used a walkie-talkie to call for a tow truck. Quinn had to wait. Cress didn’t want to be late, so she left him by the toppled trailer in a cluster of onlookers and went to work.
PART II
THE FOOTHILLS
Sixteen
Donna gave Cress a tiny bedroom off the dark, narrow front hall, between Norma, the established roommate, and a storage room. Cress’s room was also half-relegated to storage; she could walk only partway around the bed before musical instruments in their cases, black speakers, and hatboxes blocked her way. Donna was an accumulator, a prodigious one. While Cress went to college and grad school, Donna had married, amassed the stuff of several households, then divorced with full custody of the goods.
Donna had cleared nine inches of clothes rod in the closet for Cress, enough for her work uniforms. The closet floor was a foot-deep jumble of shoes. Cress would have to live out of her plaid suitcase, and the only place for that was at the far foot of her bed. To draw the thin white curtain, Cress had to walk across the mattress and reach.
But this was only a way station; she’d live here for ten weeks at most—and better here than driving daily down and up the coiled road. Better here, with roommates, than alone in the Meadows in noxious proximity to Julie Garsh.
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