by Clare Naylor
—Frank Morgan as Professor Marvel
The Wizard of Oz
“Would you like me to valet your skis for you, Miss?” A young man in overalls came over to me as I finally made it to the bottom of the slope. I had been suffering for about an hour and a half. Which had been divided equally between forty-five minutes on my butt and forty-five minutes on my knees. With the interstitial moments spent on my face.
“No, I’d like you to burn them, please,” I retorted bitterly. He looked alarmed. The cold had obviously numbed his sense of humor.
“Have you finished skiing for the day or not, Miss?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’m just going to get a hot chocolate from the café, and then I’ll get back to you.” Then I decided to play straight and not torture him any further, poor guy. “Oh, and just for the record, how do you valet skis?”
“We take them from you, clean and wax them, and return them to you tomorrow morning.” He gave me a friendly smile—he was back in his comfort zone.
“Wow. Great. I’ll get back to you,” I said. Then I stuck my poles in the ground and attempted to push off. Only I didn’t go anywhere. The snow now appeared to be flat and not the kind that was going to propel me at 160 miles per hour into a killer pine tree. Which was a mixed blessing—for while I was now unlikely to die skiing, I might be stuck here until the spring thaw.
“Er, excuse me,” I called after the ski valet. “Would you mind . . . giving me a push?” But he was parking somebody else’s skis. I stabbed my poles into the ground behind me once again and thrust my body in a forward direction. To absolutely no avail. “Fuck,” I said, and a tiny cloud of breath rose in front of my face. I shuffled to the side and tried to scissor my skis like Scott had shown me this morning on my abbreviated ski course—the course that had pretty much consisted of him saying, “Just avoid trees and people, and if in doubt fall down.” And then Jake, whose pearl before swine had been, “Just don’t break anything. I’ve had sex with girls in plaster before, and while it seems like it might be kind of kinky, it’s just annoying after a while.” If my tear ducts hadn’t been frozen, I might have cried.
“You fucked a chick in a cast?” Scott was clearly impressed, and the two of them slipped onto a chairlift together, leaving me floundering like a washed-up trout on a riverbank.
I had made quite a brave go of my time on the slopes, if I do say so myself. I’d shuffled over and shimmied onto the lift and finally made it to the top of the mountain and then tumbled down. And tumbled again. And then repeated the whole chilly, chilling experience. Because, despite Scott’s having rented me a very high-tech ski outfit, which was probably designed to keep germ warfare at bay, I still managed to perform such unimaginable maneuvers that I ended up with ice packed around my knees and down my front. Guess at least I’d have hot-to-trot nipples, I had thought.
But now I’d had enough of the activities corner. I had no luck with the scissoring, so I turned back around. I thought of removing my skis, but I was in the middle of a major thoroughfare, which was only marginally less busy than the Santa Monica Freeway, so I didn’t think I’d try that.
“You wanted a push?” I turned around, thinking that the ski valet was dashing to my rescue at last.
“I’d love a push,” I replied. But it wasn’t the ski valet. It was the very same man who seemed to be making a career of getting me out of trouble—Luke Lloyd.
“You,” I said accusingly.
“Hey.” He smiled and sailed effortlessly around me, stopping smack at the tip of my skis as just the right amount of snow flew up behind him.
“Do you just hang around waiting for me to screw up so that you can rescue me?” I asked. I wasn’t sure yet whether I was pleased to see him. Would I have preferred that he were playing Casanova in Morocco with Little Miss Harem Pants, or did I want him to witness my catastrophic ineptitude in yet another arena of life?
“I can leave, if you like.” He had on a red ski hat that was less Prada Sport and more festering-in-the-back-of-the-coat-closet. But he looked fine in it. His cheeks were raw-looking, and I knew that if I touched them, they’d burn cold in that frostbitten way.
“Well, now that you’re here, I suppose I wouldn’t mind a push,” I said grudgingly. He was just a little too cocky for me to feel grateful.
“Does that mean I get to put my hand on your bottom?” He smiled.
“Did you just turn into Jake Hudson?”
“Ha, I wish. But if that’s your attitude, then I’ll just be leaving.” He turned deftly as if he were about to ski away. He was joking. I think. He seemed to have a sly, faintly perverse sense of humor that I didn’t expect coming from a Hollywood veteran.
“No, I’m sorry. That was a terrible thing to say. I’d love a push. Truly. I need a push.”
“Do you really think that I’m like Jake Hudson?” He turned his head to look at me, a concerned expression on his face.
“I have no idea what you’re like. I don’t really know you,” I explained. “Listen, could you just give me a shove, please?” I said with a catch of desperation in my voice.
“If I give you a shove, can we continue this conversation in the café?” he asked teasingly.
“Yes, anything you like,” I agreed. “Only please be quick because any minute now one of these skiers is going to come flying down that slope and slice me in half like it was logging season.”
“Fine.” He picked up the pole in his left hand and poked it in my direction. “Hold on tight.”
“You’re going to pull me?”
“I’ve been trying to do that for months,” he laughed. I blushed and looked at my ski tips. “Here, catch hold.”
I did. And Luke Lloyd pulled me slowly and embarrassingly in the direction of the café, like one of the two-year-olds you see on the bunny slopes.
“I think you’re deliberately being slow,” I said as groups of slick D-girls and young filmmakers shot by us.
“It’s not as easy as you think.”
“Are you saying I’m heavy?” I was tempted to let go of his pole.
“I’m saying nothing,” Luke replied as I followed the back of his navy blue ski jacket. “Look, we’re here now.” He gave me a final tug, and we landed in front of a bench. He clicked the heels of his skis with his poles and stepped smoothly out onto the snow. Then he made his way to me and stood on my bindings.
“I guess I owe you a thank-you,” I said.
“An espresso will do the job.” He released me from my sports-equipment hell, and I was free to stumble around in my deadweight boots.
“It’s the least I can do,” I said as an avalanche of snow tumbled down my trouser leg and onto the ground between us.
“First time skiing?” He upended our skis and arranged them into a small, colorful forest of fiberglass.
“No, I was an Olympian until I lost my nerve.”
He took my gloved hand and helped me up the wet wooden steps to the café. “I just wondered what the hell you were doing on a black-diamond run.”
“Doing as I was told.” We walked to a table and eased ourselves in. Luke took off his jacket and placed it on a radiator next to us. Then he reached out for mine. “Scott and Jake Hudson came up here, and so I had to as well. The joys of being an assistant.”
“You’re lucky you’re alive.” He glanced over the menu. “Do you want some lunch while we’re here?”
“Sorry, but I’m not sure that the twenty bucks I have in my pocket will stretch that far. My wallet’s in my purse, which is in a locker in the ski lodge.” I winced. “But maybe we could both get a sandwich.”
“Okay, my treat, then.” He took in the specials board.
“But you pulled me.” I smiled at him, suddenly happy that I was here. And feeling relaxed for the first time since I’d arrived at Sundance. The café was dark and cozy, and the snow down my chest was beginning to melt.
“Exactly. Which means that I have to buy you lunch.” He was remarkably cute, even with his h
air flattened to his head from his hat and his crazy pink cheeks.
“Here,” I said, and reached over to fluff up his hair. “You looked really dorky.”
“Gee, thanks,” he laughed, and turned to the waitress. “Two espressos, and what’re you having?” he asked in that melting southern drawl.
I shrugged. Anything. I’d have whatever was available. “Toasted ham and cheese sandwich,” I suggested.
“Great. Two of those,” he told the waitress, who jotted it down and walked away.
“So you think I’m cut from the same cloth as Jake Hudson?” he asked, idly moving the salt and pepper shakers around.
“I have no idea, to be honest. I was just lashing out because you always seem to catch me at the most embarrassing moments of my life. In fact, I’m really surprised you weren’t there when the elastic went in my underpants on my first day of high school.”
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t.” He raised an eyebrow. “But to set the record straight, I’m nothing like Jake Hudson.”
“You’re not a dissolute, evil-minded man-whore who shares himself with the whole town, then?” I asked, remembering Courtney’s charming summing-up of our mutual friend.
Luke laughed loudly, then looked seriously at me. “You don’t think that even slightly, do you?”
“Does it matter what I think?”
“Well, yes, actually, it does,” he replied. I was surprised. Even if he was lying.
“I honestly don’t know. I’ve only met you a handful of times, and you’ve always been sweet. But I haven’t really had very positive experiences with men in Los Angeles. We’ve always had a bit of a clunky time.”
“Clunky?”
“Yeah, they’ve all been into the usual L.A.-boy stuff—strippers, hookers, karaoke, drugs, fast cars,” I explained. “All very sexy, but I’m a bit intimidated by that. Boring old me, huh?” I wasn’t sure how we’d gotten onto discussing matters of my heart, and I tried to back off. “So have you seen any films you like since you got here?”
“Films?”
“It’s a film festival,” I informed him.
“Right. So you won’t date men in the business?”
“I was very strongly advised not to.” Thank heavens for Lara. Not that I’d followed her advice to the letter, exactly.
“Shame.”
“Why? Do you think I’m missing out?” Our drinks arrived, and we buried our cold, red noses in the steam.
“I’m not at all like those guys.” He took a sip of his espresso and looked at me over the top of the cup.
“Right.” I wondered why he thought it would make any difference to me to know this. I thought that maybe he was flirting with me, but compared with sledgehammer come-ons like Jake Hudson’s and Bob’s, I couldn’t really tell. “Well, with all due respect, Luke, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” I said.
He nodded sagely. “So how did you get here, Lizzie Miller?”
“On a G4.”
“No—here. Hollywood here. Here in your life?”
“Oh, here?” I said, and settled back into the soft cushion on the bench. “Do you really want to know?”
It turned out that he really did want to know. And that, surprisingly, his attention span was much longer than my gnat boss’s. Or even Jake Hudson’s. Or almost anyone else that I’d ever met, in fact. He wanted to know what my parents did for a living and whether I’d preferred international politics to local and if I thought that the UN should be dissolved and what I liked about my job.
“You really want to be a producer?” he finally asked as I confessed that I had a project I wanted to develop.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh, yes, you’re right to be afraid. In fact, be very afraid.”
“It’s quite a good project, I think. I mean, as a movie it probably wouldn’t make much more than the price of a can of soda, but it’s interesting. For indie material.”
“So you might be showing your movie here next year?” He smiled encouragingly.
“I suppose I might.” What a thought that was. How happy would Jason be?
“I’d love to look at it. The script, that is.”
“Oh, it’s not really ready to be seen by producers yet. I mean, we don’t have representation and all, but—”
“Well, if you wanted to show me . . .” He shrugged, letting me know that the choice was mine.
“I don’t really believe in mixing business with pleasure.”
“And this thing we’re doing here . . . it’s pleasure, then?”
“Well . . . I’m not sure, but I’d hate it if you were good enough to save my life for the fifteenth time and then I made you read my script, too—that wouldn’t be fair.”
“Well, if you decide that this is pleasure, then don’t give the script to me. But if it’s business, then you must. I don’t want to miss out on a potentially great piece of material.”
“It’s a deal,” I said. Hoping that I wouldn’t have to show him the script at all. Because at that moment he had his hand up his T-shirt, flapping it around so that it dried before the fire. And . . . well, he looked sexy as all hell. And right now Sex Addicts could wait. I wanted this to be purely pleasure.
The ironic thing is, I don’t think that my time with Luke Lloyd would have been quite as amazingly pleasurable as it turned out to be if it hadn’t been for Jake Hudson. But it just so happened that back on the mountain he had just finished a great run of moguls and then he’d bumped into his pal Bob Redford on the chairlift. Bob had persuaded Jake and Scott to come to a cocktail party he was giving at the institute at six. Naturally, the fact that my boss had arranged to meet me back at the Wildflower Mountain Home at six did not factor anywhere in his memory at this point. And even if it had, it wouldn’t have made one speck of difference. Scott and Jake trotted off to the Sundance Institute with their friend Bob and didn’t spare me a second thought.
“You really don’t have a key?” Luke said as I drummed on the door in vain.
“There was only one, and Scott took it.” I peered through the window. The night was drawing in, and my teeth were beginning to chatter, as I still had on my wet ski clothes. “But it’s fine. He’ll be back soon. Really. You just go, and I’ll wait here,” I told Luke as I zipped my ski jacket up to my nose and tucked my hands far up inside my sleeves to keep them warm.
“You’re insane if you think that I’m leaving you here alone in the dark.” He overturned a few rocks by the door to see if a spare key was lurking there. “You’ll get eaten by an elk or something.” He looked at me as I shivered. “Or die of hypothermia. So just get back into my car, Lizzie.”
“I’m fine.”
“Get in the car.”
“He’ll be back soon. I swear.” I sat on the step obdurately.
“We’re talking about Scott Wagner here. He may not come back for days.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow evening,” I said optimistically. Luke looked at me like I’d just fallen down the stupid tree and hit not only every stupid branch but every stupid squirrel and every stupid leaf on the way.
“Oh, well, in that case I’ll leave.” He threw his hands in the air. “I’ll go back to my luxury hotel room, where there’s a bath and a hot tub and a log fire and a clean pair of sweatpants, and I’ll just let you sit here until tomorrow evening, then. Okay, Lizzie, been nice knowing you.” He walked down the path back toward the car where his driver was waiting patiently.
“Luke?” I called out.
“Yes?” He turned around.
“Do you have sulfate-free bubble bath?” I laughed and got up and ran down the path to where he was standing and looking at me with such complete incomprehension that I might as well have been speaking Chinese.
“You’re such an odd duck,” he said as he piled me into the back of his car, shaking his head. “Truly.”
We drove back to his hotel, the superwinterwonderland Stein Eriksen Lodge, in relative silence, looking out the car window at the aspens and the
pines, and every so often one of us would point out a deer or the moon shadows being cast over the blue-white snow on the ground.
“The full moon means weird stuff happens.” I turned and glanced at Luke, with his arms stretched out over the back of the seat.
“Oh, well, that explains a lot.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and we both cracked up laughing. He put on Tattoo You by the Rolling Stones, and we both melted back onto our warm seats.
“You want first bath?” he asked. “ ’Cause if you do, I can just hang out downstairs in the bar until you’re done.”
“God, no, it’s your room! You go first.”
“Actually, it’s a suite, so I can watch TV and you can bathe. How’s that?”
“You’re a gentleman.”
“I’m from Kentucky.” He turned to me. “I can’t help it.”
“Well, I’m glad, because I think that if I did have to wait any longer for a bath, my whole body would be one giant Christmas tree.” I pulled off my damp glove and showed him the wrinkled tips of my fingers. He took my hand and looked closely at it.
“Is your whole body like that?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t looked,” I said. “Though I did get a bunch of snow down my front. So the damage could be extensive.”
“Yuck.” He let go of my hand. “I know just the thing for it,” he said as we pulled up outside the hotel.
“You do? What?”
“Wait and see.” He got out of the car and held open the door for me. Then he spoke to the driver, and we went inside.
“Good evening, Mr. Lloyd,” the concierge said as we clattered into the lobby, looking more like washed-out dishrags rather than chichi clientele. “Will you be dining in the restaurant this evening, sir?”
“I think we’ll be having dinner in the room.” He turned to me. “If that’s okay with the lady?”
“Perfect,” I agreed, as it dawned on me for the first time that something might actually be about to happen between me and Luke. Other than dinner and separate baths and sweatpants.
“So what was your genius solution for getting rid of Christmas trees?” I scavenged desperately for something to say. We were in Luke’s suite, and he was busy turning on lights and kicking off his boots and readjusting the air-conditioning and closing curtains. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and tugged at my boots. Then I unzipped my jacket. My sweater underneath really was soaking wet, and so were my socks. But I said nothing.