Shooting for the Stars (10 page)

Through the glass doors, Bear could see Stella standing at the check-out desk, taking care of business. She looked pale, her face drawn as she spoke to the woman behind the desk. He couldn’t hear their conversation, but he could imagine it. The agent at a fine hotel would be unfailingly cordial. “How was your stay with us, Ms. Lazarus?” she would ask. And then, “Did you enjoy any items from the mini bar?”

Holy fuck
.

For a second, Bear experienced an ordinary wave of panic. Hank was going to see that bill, and know exactly what Bear and Stella had done last night. But then reality smacked him again, and he realized Hank’s anger was now the very least of his problems.

Bear took a deep breath against the nausea that attacked him. The resentment he’d felt against Hank yesterday was unconscionable. Hank had only ever been good to him. As long as Hank woke up, though, Bear would get another chance to be a better friend. He needed Hank to wake up from his surgery, read the hotel bill, and then deck him.

Don’t you
dare
die
, he ordered Hank.

Stella’s rental car appeared in the hotel’s turnaround. Bear stepped up to the car when it stopped, taking the keys from the valet, and tipping him with three of Hank’s dollars. He dropped Stella’s luggage into the back seat. Then he climbed behind the wheel, idling until Stella came out. She climbed wordlessly into the passenger seat, her purse on her lap, her mouth in a grim line.

After a quick stop at the lodge where Bear collected his luggage, they were on their way.

Neither of them spoke on the drive to the Reno airport. Bear’s heart was swamped with memories of he and Hank as kids together. He spooled through them as the miles went by.

When they were probably six and eight years old, the two of them had tried to build a tree fort in the woods between their houses, using nothing but fallen branches and some rope. They’d worked on it for days, tying sticks together with inexpert knots. Nothing ever came of it, but it didn’t matter. Just farting around together was the whole point.

It seemed wrong to remember Hank this way right now, as if he were already gone. Bear owed Hank
everything
. And it didn’t seem possible to imagine a world where there was no more Hank.

One memory in particular was the hardest to take. Christmas, the year that Bear was nine. That had been the first year that Bear’s mother was gone, and the first time there’d been no Christmas tree at his house. His father had spent the entire month of December sulking with a bottle of cheap Scotch. Even now Bear associated whiskey with loss.

There had been Christmas presents, sort of. His mother mailed him a cheap package of die-cast sports cars, probably because they were easy to ship. Bear had been too big for little toy cars, though, and her insensitivity had made Bear’s stomach burn.

On Christmas morning, his father gave Bear three gifts: a basketball, a new pair of waterproof gloves, and a knit Bruins hat.

“Thanks,” Bear had told his dad. “This is great.” He gave his dad the candles he’d made at school, and the biggest smile he could. Because Dad had tried. Even though Bear had not been given the expensive gift he’d been hoping for. Even though nothing had been wrapped, and their house was about as cheery as a tomb, it wasn’t really Dad’s fault that Christmas sucked.

So he put on his new hat and new gloves (which he’d needed, anyway). And he tucked the basketball under his arm and trudged up the hill to see what Hank had gotten for Christmas.

Even before Bear’s mom had left, it was an accepted fact that holidays at the Lazarus house were better. For one thing, they had Hanukkah
and
Christmas, because Mr. Lazarus was Jewish but Mrs. Lazarus was not. The Hanukkah presents were small little things, but still. A wrapped present beside your plate for eight days in a row was nothing to sneeze at. And on Christmas Hank always got the very best presents. So Bear was curious to see what “Santa” (at that point, only Stella still believed) had provided that year.

When he knocked on the big back door, it opened immediately. Hank was right on the other side, suiting up already to try out his newest gift on the snow. “Look!” his friend said by way of a greeting. He held up a brand new Burton snowboard, a little bigger than the one he’d been riding last year. “Santa upgraded me.”

“Cool,” Bear said as an uncomfortable feeling settled into his stomach. He’d known he wouldn’t receive a snowboard. But he’d hoped, anyway.

“Let’s try it out,” Hank said. Then his forehead wrinkled, as he did the math on how that would work. He looked down at Bear’s feet. You couldn’t share a snowboard unless you also swapped the boots. “MOMMMM!” Hank yelled.

Mrs. Lazarus appeared in the vestibule a few seconds later. “Happy Christmas, sweetie,” she said to Bear.

“Hey, Mom? Do we still have last year’s snowboarding boots? I think they’d fit Bear.”

A flicker of hope lit inside Bear’s chest.

“Ah,” she said. “I was saving them for him. Just a moment.”

Not two minutes later, Bear found himself strapping snowboarding boots onto his feet for the first time ever. Just like that, Bear’s entire winter improved by a factor of about a million. If Hank gave him a turn on the snowboard in the yard sometimes, it would almost be as good as having a board for himself.

“Be careful,” Mrs. Lazarus said when they went outside. (She always said that when they went outside.)

They carried the board to the lip of the cleared part of the hill between their homes. Hank dropped the board onto the snow, bending down to strap himself in. “The maiden voyage,” he announced. He popped up and leaned down the fall line, riding the snowy hill with the beautifully carved turns of a boy who would someday rule the sport.

Then — and this was a theme of their childhood — Hank had to climb the hill again. Panting, Hank set the board down in the snow and helped Bear strap it on. “Can you do this?” he asked.

“Sure,” Bear had said, even though he’d never been on a board in his life. The previous winter he’d ridden a plastic disc sled while Hank used the board. Sometimes he’d stood up on it to mimic his friend, but that had always ended badly.

“Let’s see you.”

He hopped forward a foot or so, copying Hank. Gravity began to pull him downhill. Since turning looked tricky, Bear let the board lie flat on the snow. He picked up speed much faster than he wanted to.

“TURN!” Hank yelled from above.

Too late. Bear’s windmilling arms wrecked his balance, sending him careening onto his butt. Hard. The wet December snow began to seep into his jeans, and he could hear Hank laughing somewhere above him.

In spite of the indignity — and the pain in his tail bone — Bear just sat there and grinned. Because he was nine, and made of rubber. And snowboarding was
awesome
, just like he knew it would be.

It took him a few minutes to unclip and climb the hill again. He was wet and sweating by the time he made it to the top. Hank wasn’t there, but Bear spotted movement over by their equipment shed (an outbuilding that was probably half the size of Bear’s entire house).

Hank reappeared, carrying the snowboard he’d ridden the two previous years. “If we go at the same time, I can show you how to turn,” he said.

Bear handed Hank the new board and clipped himself onto Hank’s old one.

They stood side by side on the hill. “First, rock like this,” Hank instructed, showing Bear how to find his edges.

It was Bear’s first snowboarding lesson ever, the first of many given to him by an eleven-year-old kid who would someday be a three-time world champion and silver medal Olympian.
 

When the lesson was over, Hank frowned at the old board in Bear’s hands. “You should just keep that one,” he said. “We’ll do this again tomorrow.”

And just like that, Bear had become the owner of a snowboard. The
exact
thing he’d wanted for Christmas.

Hank had handed Bear his entire life that wet December day.

Almost two decades later, behind the wheel of a rental car headed toward the Reno airport, Bear pinched his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes, because the road had become curiously blurry.

Stella rode silently beside him, the citrus scent of her shampoo drifting through the small space. Last night Bear had his face buried in that hair when he should have been with Hank in Vermont.

What had he done?

October, Ten Months Later

Ten

B
EAR
AND
HIS
FATHER
stood together in their little kitchen holding identical mugs of coffee. Bear spooned bites from a bowl of granola on the countertop. His father held a piece of buttered toast in his free hand.

If you Googled “bachelors eating breakfast,” an image of the two of them would probably pop up.

“What are you doing today?” Bear’s father asked.

Bear considered the question, which wasn’t nearly as simple as it sounded. What his father meant was, “are you going to take any of my advice today?” Or, “will today be the day you figure out how to get on with your life?”

“Well…” He cleared his throat. “Today is Saturday.” That too was code, for
get off my back old man
. “Later, I’m driving over to Hank’s. He got some bad news, I think.”

His father’s eyebrows furrowed together over his coffee mug. “Is it serious?”

Bear set down his spoon. “Not medical news, Dad.” Ten months after his accident, Hank’s health was no longer touch and go. In fact, he was doing about as well as a guy could be doing who’d lost everything, including the use of both legs.

It’s just that he was stuck in a wheelchair forever. And he was big-time depressed about it.

“What, then?”

Bear sighed. “His ex-girlfriend just got engaged, and it’s all over the news.”

“You never liked her, though,” his father said.

Bear grunted at the stupidity of that statement. “But
he
did, Dad. Jesus.”

His father ignored the protest. “So you’re free until when, then? Because there’s a message on my machine from the ski hill. But I was supposed to take a run over to Rutland to pick up a tire for the truck.”

Okay. So his father’s
what are you doing today
had really been the prelude to asking for a favor. Bear could work with that. “I’ll listen to the message. If they need something today, I’ll run over and take a look.”

His father set his mug in the sink. “Thank you. Need anything from Rutland?”

Bear shook his head. The things he needed could not be found in stores. He needed to figure out what the fuck he was going to do with the next chapter of his life. And he needed Hank to do the same — and to get that scary, defeated look off his face. The one that suggested life wasn’t worth living anymore.

After his dad left, Bear listened to the message on his father’s business line. Barry Electrical kept business hours, more or less, but weekend emergencies were not uncommon. And in a small town, an electrician couldn’t afford to ignore any business, no matter how ill-timed. Especially a call from the ski mountain, which was easily the biggest business in town.

“Hello, Barry men!” a voice sang into the machine. It was Anya, who worked in operations on the hill. “We need one of you to take a look at our snow cams, if you would. We might want to move one of them this year. I’m working Saturday, of course. So swing by if you get a chance. Or you can call and we’ll pick another day to work on this. Toodles!”

Now he understood now why his father had asked him to handle the call, which was certainly not urgent. Cameras were Bear’s thing. He was good with them. Although his father would never give praise aloud, he knew Bear was good with cameras, too.

Bear would just as soon head over there now. It was good weather for an outdoor job, and it was Saturday. That reduced his chances of running into Stella in the office. He felt the same little thud of pain in his chest that occurred every time he thought of her.

It was Stella who preferred it that he keep his distance. She’d been avoiding him since the dark days of last December.

Bear took a basic electrical toolbox from the equipment shed and carried it to the driveway. It was a gorgeous October day, sunny with a bit of a nip in the air. He put the tools in the back of Hank’s old 4Runner.

It wasn’t until the third time Bear had borrowed Hank’s old SUV to run some errand or another for Hank that his friend had said, “Just keep that thing for awhile, okay? You gave up your Utah wheels. So you should drive my Toyota. In case you haven’t noticed, I sure as hell can’t drive it.”

Nine months later, Bear was still driving it. And he didn’t know what to do about that. Hank now drove a brand new sports car outfitted with a set of hand controls, which the 4Runner did not have. But this wasn’t Bear’s car, although he’d now made some repairs, and had changed the oil twice.

He could just add Hank’s truck to the long list of confusing, half-decided things in his life. It wouldn’t even make the top ten.

Before walking into the corporate offices at the ski hill, Bear braced himself, just in case. Seeing Stella always hurt. Whenever she caught sight of him, a look of irritation crossed her pretty face. Stella’s discomfort was one of the thornier problems in his life. He had no idea how to get their friendship back to a more normal place. Every time he walked into the office building, he was reminded of how badly he’d failed his friends. Both of them.

He pushed the door open and went inside, glancing around. Half the cubicles had bodies in them, even on a Saturday. Autumn was the busy season at a ski resort. Because, as Anya always put it, the seven thousand seasonal workers they needed each winter didn’t hire and manage themselves.

A quick glance into the corner of the room revealed that Stella’s chair was empty.
Thank you, Jesus
.

“Hi, handsome.”

Bear turned to find Anya watching him. “Hey, lady. I got your message.”

She tipped her chin toward Stella’s desk. “She’s not here today. So you can relax.”

He opened his mouth, but then shut it again. Arguing with her would only make it more obvious she’d caught him worrying.