by Alan Mulak
Can we meet?
The reply came back in about ten minutes.
Why?
Alex wrote:
To say hello.
Anna’s reply:
Why?
Alex wrote:
I have something I would like to say to you. Face to face.
Anna did not reply again until about six P.M. My husband is sick and takes strong medicine, which sends him into a deep sleep by nine P.M. I can meet with you – briefly – at ten P.M. Where?
Alex wrote:
At the hot tub behind the lodge.
Anna wrote:
OK
23
Hot Tub
At ten P.M., Alex slid into the hot tub. The only light was from a dim, underwater 25-watt bulb – barely bright enough to see the steam rising from the water. At roughly ten-fifteen, he spotted an outline of a person walking his way from the lodge. A moment later, Anna emerged into the dim light and stood at the edge of the tub. Her hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, and she wore a thin fleece jacket. Her arms were crossed across her chest.
Alex heard his heart hammering.
Anna looked directly into Alex’s eyes. “Hello, Rob.”
Swallowing hard, he said, “Hello, Anna. Thanks for coming. You look great. And by the way, I go by ‘Alex’ now.” He paused, and then asked, “Are you going to come into the water?”
Anna blinked a few times. “No, I’m not coming in. I wasn’t even sure I’d come at all, but for certain, I won’t be going into the hot tub with you.”
“If we’re going to talk, you have to come into the water.”
Anna stared at Alex, her mouth open. “That’s a bit presumptuous. Don’t you think?”
Alex held up his hand. “Hold on. It’s not what you think. Just like my name has changed, my situation has changed as well. I need to make sure that…well…” He paused again. “It’s a long story but if we are both in the water, wires and recording devices don’t work. I know that sounds crazy, but please try to understand."
Anna continued to stare at Rob, blinking but saying nothing. Finally, she said, "You are un-fucking-believable. Not only did you …" she stopped, thought for several heartbeats, and then continued. "It took me a while to figure out what was going on. Last night, I lay in bed, trying to make sense of you being here. You're supposed to be dead. Then, at about 2 A.M., it hit me: you've run away, and now you're living happily ever after out here." She looked up at the stars and then beckoned to the hot tub. "That's what this tub thing is all about. Correct? So then, am I to assume you don't trust me not to reveal your continued existence? You don't even have to answer. Now I get it. Well, you have nothing to worry about, because unlike you, Rob or Alex or whoever you are, my word can be trusted. I won’t be sending your grieving widow or the local authorities an anonymous letter, telling them of your whereabouts.”
Anna abruptly turned, took a step towards the lodge, and then turned and came back. “Do you know what I thought? I thought this meeting was going to be you trying to lure me into this tub with you, to kiss and make up after all these years. As always with you, I was mistaken. I don’t know whether I’m more insulted, amused, or enraged.”
Alex said, “Look, I just wanted to talk. Maybe this tub idea is not my best but…”
Anna cut him off. Her eyes shone with emotion in the dim light. “You said you had something to tell me face to face. Well so do I.” She pointed at the lodge behind where she stood. Her voice was wavering, but louder. “Back there, in room six, there’s a man who loves me. He hired me back when I was young and pretty, and I became his number one model. Then we fell in love and got married. But then, a few years later when I wasn’t so young and pretty anymore, do you know what happened? He kept on loving me. He didn’t toss me aside like some ragdoll he didn’t need anymore, replacing me with a new and younger woman. He loved – and still loves – me. Get it? And here’s a hot news flash for you, Roberto Santos: I love him too. And even though he’s dying of cancer and withering away, I’m going to stay with him to the end. That’s what people who love each other do. They don’t cut and run.”
Anna abruptly turned, took a step towards the lodge, then turned and came back. Now her eyes were filled with tears. Her face wet. Her voice loud and choked. “You broke my heart! Do you know that? You broke my heart back then. How could you have done that?” Her demeanor changed. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. “How could you have done that? I loved you.”
Spent, Anna slowly turned and took a step toward the lodge.
“Wait!” Alex yelled. “Please, wait.”
Anna stopped but did not turn around.
Alex again heard his heart hammering. "Eight thousand, one hundred, and fifty-seven days."
His words hung in the air.
Alex, speaking to her back, said, "That's the one thing I wanted to tell you face to face. The morning after I ran out on you, I had a dream…and in my dream, I regretted what I did…and I thought about how much pain I caused…and how much I missed you...and how much I loved you…and how I'd just made the most colossal mistake of my life. Well, I've had that same dream every day…all eight thousand, one hundred, and fifty-seven mornings since that cold February day I bugged out. That’s how many days it’s been. That’s how I start each day. I’m haunted by my dream.”
Except for the heaving of her shoulders, Anna stood motionless, her back to the tub – and Alex. After a minute, without turning, she walked back to the lodge.
24
Hard Labor
Early the next morning, when the work crew arrived at the workshop, they found Alex seated in one of the chairs against the wall. The guys wandered in, coffees in hand, pulled up chairs and gathered around.
Scott was lighting a cigarette. “So, Alex, what’s up? What brings you here?”
“Yeah,” Mark added. “We haven’t seen you for a couple months. Everything okay?”
Alex held up his hand. “The ranch is doing fine. In fact, better than fine. I’m just here to get my ass out of the office and volunteer my services. I need some exercise and thought you guys might have some task I could help with.”
Carter and Darby exchanged looks. “We could use some help clearing the North Ridge Trail.”
Mark asked, “Can you handle a chainsaw?”
“Some,” Alex said. “Plus, I’m a quick learner.”
Carter asked, “Can you ride a horse?”
“Is that the big brown thing with four legs?
Darby shrugged. “He’ll do.”
After donning wide-brimmed cowboy hats – a first for Alex – and lathering up with SP50 sunblock, the men mounted their horses and were off. As they rode up the North Ridge Trail to where it leveled off and hugged the nine thousand foot contour, wrapping around the five-mile sandstone outcrop just below Delight Peak, Darby and Carter told an interesting story about how the mountain was named.
Carter began. “This here mountain has been the subject of a long-winded debate, going back to about 1900. The argument was – and continues to be – whether this mountain in front of us is Mt. Delight or Mt. Daylight. Originally, cartographers during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration, working for the National Park Service, named it Daylight Mountain, believing the local name – Delight – was simply a misspelling and should have been Daylight. From Washington DC, they thought the peak was a great place to observe the sunrise.”
Darby interrupted. “Which is dead wrong. Look for yourself.” He pointed at the towering peak in front of them. “It faces north. Up here in Colorado, the sun rises in the east. Can’t see the sunrise from up there.”
Carter continued. “Then, in 1906, local ranchers corrected the United States National Park Service, claiming Delight was correct, owing to its origin back to two sisters who lived in the valley – where Slater Ranch now stands - who had a reputation of offering delightful services to male guests. The USNPS Director of Cartography, a tight-assed devout member of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints and staunch opponent of anything remotely debaucherous or fun, overrode the rancher’s request and ordered the name to officially be Daylight. Then, after WWI, some guy named Nathan Ludgate, a returning US Army veteran who served in France and recent graduate of Yale Law School, decided to test his legal prowess and take on the USNPS and get the name changed back to Delight. Exactly what the link was between some far off mountain in Colorado and a recent graduate law student from Connecticut has been lost from any written record. Rumors suggest Ludgate may have been an illegitimate offspring of one of the sisters, but that is a bit of a stretch. Regardless, the name was changed back to Delight where it remained until 1963 when a women’s group from Santa Fe filed an official objection to the name, claiming it was sexist and offensive to women. This became part of that far-reaching legal suit which included names such as Squaw Mountain in Maine, and the Teton Mountain Range in Wyoming. Although the action is not yet officially concluded, it languishes as a low-priority petition, somewhere in the bowels of the United States Supreme Court backlog.”
Darby chimed in. “It is interesting to note there is no record of any two sisters - sexually promiscuous or not – ever living anywhere near the current location of Slater Ranch.”
Mark, who was bringing up the rear, said, “Too bad. Makes a great story.”
Clearing the trail proved to be arduous, monotonous work. Scrub oak is tenacious and invasive and has a way of inflicting painful scratches on the arms and legs of anyone who happens by. They broke into two teams and got down to business: one man sawing, the other hauling. By late afternoon, they had cleared about two miles of trail and called it quits. Once they reached the ranch, put away the tools, fed and watered the horses, they dragged themselves into the workshop. They were all spent – especially Alex. He was exhausted, and tomorrow with muscles howling with painful objections, he would pay dearly for this day. But this excursion was precisely what he had hoped for. After the emotional blasting he took the night before, the hard physical work helped right his unbalanced internal yin and yang.
Mark reached into the refrigerator and grabbed two Dolores River Brewery growlers, four frosted mugs, and the four men collapsed on the back porch of the ranch house. After a few minutes, MacKenzie came out.
She looked them over – four men, filthy dirty, all scratched up, wearing that I’m-so-tired-I-don’t-give- a-shit-about-anything look – and then pulled up a chair.
It was then she noticed Alex sitting there. She cocked her head. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d finally taken some time off, but instead, you’re hanging out with this crew?”
Mark emptied his glass. “A vast improvement in his social status. Pour me another, please.” Carter did as directed.
MacKenzie asked, “How did it go?”
Darby said, “Almost done. You’ll be able to take the guests all the way up by the end of the week. We made good progress today. Mr. Spreadsheet here,” he nodded at Alex, “did all right for a pencil pusher.”
MacKenzie smiled and nodded, then snapped her fingers. “I almost forgot, Alex, check your mailbox on your way out. You’ve got mail.”
25
The Letter
Alex drained his glass, stood, gave and received fist bumps, nodded to MacKenzie and left the workshop. Fatigue from a long day’s labor suddenly disappeared. Mail? I never get mail. As he strode to the lodge, he felt both energized and weak-kneed at the same time.
His hand shook noticeably as he removed the envelope in his mail slot. It was plain white; Alex was written across the front. He knew who it was from. He paused. There was too much traffic and commotion in the great room for him to sit and read it there, and returning to the workshop was out of the question. But he had to read it…NOW!
His feet took over where his brain left off and guided Alex out the front door, down the path toward the river, to a secluded park bench which sat in the shade of a huge cottonwood tree. Alex tore open the envelope and extracted the letter. It read:
Dear Rob,
We will be leaving the ranch tomorrow. Jacques has taken a turn for the worse, and I need to get him to a hospital ASAP for the required medical care. But before we left, I wanted to write this letter to you. And before you ask; no, I cannot see you again. It was just too painful.
So with that introduction, let me begin.
Last night, after our meeting out back, I couldn’t get to sleep. In fact, I haven’t slept at all. I kept thinking about what you said and what I said.
First, I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat when you mentioned the wire-thing and recording devices. After what you have been through – and I am making an assumption here, assuming it was difficult for you to turn your back on your entire life, the good and the bad - it is an understandable precaution. It just caught me off-guard. So I am sorry about that.
You can take me at my word your secret life is safe with me.
Where to begin? I am awhirl with conflicting emotions. The fact that this is my third attempt at writing this letter – I destroyed my first two attempts – underscores how confused and uncertain I am.
Perhaps it would be best for me to begin at the beginning.
As I said last night, you broke my heart, and although I may be able to forgive you, I can never forget. I have loved before you and after you. You were not the first or last person to hurt me, but the pain you caused when you left, is like nothing I have ever experienced. I suppose, the deeper the love, the deeper the pain.
Next, I was profoundly touched by your words – how every day you regret the decision you made – and believe you. Part of me wants to tell you to move on and forget me. Get on with your life. Stop living in regret. Be free of the sad dreams. But another part of me wants to be remembered. No one wants to be forgotten. And what we had should never be erased. It was beautiful. If this sounds like a contradictory message, it is. I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel.
When I heard the news about your house exploding and your death, I confess to you that I was enormously saddened and privately grieved for you. So much so, I wondered why. Why was the news so devastating? All these years, I had been fooling myself, thinking I was over you. I thought you were merely someone I used to know. Clearly, that was not the case. I was not over you. I am not over you. But after the explosion and fire, I again tried to put your memory away once and for all. That proved to be impossible. I mourned your loss all over again.
Sometimes, right out of the blue for no apparent reason, I think of you. It’s like you refuse to go away. And sometimes, I get angry at you – wishing you would leave me alone - but not really meaning it. I don’t want you to leave me alone.
Again, if this letter is confusing and contradictory, it reflects my feelings.
I still have the necklace you gave me all those years ago. Do you remember? It has a gold charm letter a on a chain. It is one of my most cherished possessions. For a long time after you left, I would cry when I touched it. Up until this week, I thought it was all that remained of you. Now, I have discovered you are still alive – and clearly still harbor feelings for me. Could life be any more confusing?
Last night, I sat on the balcony and watched the stars. While I was there, I thought about what your life must have been like to concoct a plan to fake your own death and run away from everything that ever mattered to you. The circumstances that drove you to that decision must have been horrific. I am truly sorry for the pain you had to be feeling.
Recently, I was in Cambridge. Jacques was in Mass General Hospital for an experimental treatment, and I had time on my hands. I visited our old apartment. It’s now upscale condominiums. That saddened me. Our old, three-story walk-up is gone forever. I stood on the sidewalk and studied the building, closing my eyes and recalling in my mind’s eye the way it was. We had many wonderful times. I must confess, there are times I long for your touch. Those memories will never die. But that was then, and this is now.
To concl
ude, you must believe me when I say that I am loyal to Jacques and will stay with him until the end. I love Jacques. I suspect this is not what you want to hear, but you must please respect my resolve.
Rob, I forgive you.
Alex closed the letter and gently slid it back into the envelope. There he sat, watching the water flow by for a long time.
26
Wires and Moonlight
During July in Colorado, the sun sets at about eight thirty. At the Slater Ranch, some 7,500 feet above sea level, as soon as the sun ducks behind the mountains and because the air is bone dry, the temperature falls precipitously as the shadows emerge from the foot of the mountains and race across the pasture. By the time the first stars appear, it is not unusual for the temperature to have fallen twenty degrees.
Alex found himself shivering. He had been sitting in a stupor for a long time and the day had concluded without his notice. He stood and headed back toward the lodge.
By then, MacKenzie and the guys had gone home, which was good, because he didn’t feel like talking.
He stuck to the shadows and made his way to the workshop. On the rack along the far wall, all sorts of work clothes hung, ready for use. There were raincoats and slickers, cowboy hats, leather chaps, denim coats, and a variety of cold weather gear. That would do. He donned a heavy fleece-lined jacket, wool cap, and then left the shop.
Alex did not have a purpose or a plan, but he simply could not leave. Without knowing why he drifted over by the hot tub and sat in the darkness on the split-rail fence which ran behind the lodge. The almost-full gibbous moon was rising over the jagged mountain peaks – the stuff that calendar pictures are made of.