The Jeweler (7 page)

I’m charming her. I think I’m actually acting halfway normal. And I’ve almost maneuvered the conversation to the dead boyfriend ring thing
.

But Fender retreated from it as soon as he had the thought.
I don’t want to spoil this. She’s smiling. Hey, I’m smiling. I probably won’t even kill Sam when I get home
. He looked at her. She leaned forward on her ski poles, sliding her skis back and forth in a little subconscious dance.
She’s really cute. It’s been a while since I’ve been with a cute girl. A nice girl.

Fender thought about his standard choice in women. Besides their fondness for burning his underwear in effigy, most of his dates were high maintenance: hard to please, with expensive tastes and big hair.
Oh, face it
, Fender told himself,
you usually dig bitches. I’m surprised you didn’t try to wrestle Naomi away from Jimmy.

Well, this girl was not a bitch. Did he dig her? No, that was too predatory a word. And anyway, that wasn’t the point of this whole thing.

“So, let’s review a little before we head down this run.”

She was talking to him.
Oh, yes. Skiing
. Fender tensed up. How could he forget?

“Fender, don’t panic. You’re going to be fine. Remember to put your weight over the center of the skis. Ease the heels away from each other to make your wedge. Try that right now.”

Fender obeyed.

“Good. Now, how do we manage our speed?”

“By turning.”

“Yes, by turning. Often.” She smiled a little. “To make those turns, take your wedge and put more weight on one foot than the other. Pressure the ski, and you’ll turn.” She positioned herself to face down the slope. “Let’s do that now. Follow me, and turn when I turn.”

They made their way down the run in long, deliberate loops. Fender’s brow was wet from concentration. At the bottom, she turned back around and congratulated him.

“That’s how skiing works. Nice job. I think you’re ready for Cougar Forest.”

“You know, this is working. I haven’t injured anyone. Why ruin it?” Fender had been thinking more about a celebratory beer in the lodge.

“You can do this. And besides, you need to see more of the mountain than one run. Cougar Forest is just a cat track through some stands of trees. It’s still gentle. It’s a little narrower, but I think you’re up to the challenge. It’s off of this same lift.”

“Okay.”

So he found himself on the chair again with Ginger. He sat quietly while she reminded him about the wedge and the pressure on the ski and all the other skiing crap. But it wasn’t bad to just listen to her talk, really. He nodded a lot and then got off the lift when she told him to.

They began the slow, exaggerated turning again. Things seemed to be going fine. They passed through a stand of trees. The slope was mild, but the trail was skinnier than the last one. Ginger stayed in front of him, modeling the big turns. They neared a bend in the track.

“I forgot to mention one thing about this trail.”

“
What?” And things had been going so well
.

“It’s no big deal. It’s just that up ahead there’re gonna be some big cutout animals.” Ginger had turned around on her skis like they were ballet slippers and now skied backward, facing him. He was astonished by her grace.

“Cutouts?”

“You know, like the ones you stick your head through for pictures at the fair. These don’t have holes to put your head through, but they’re like that.”

“Why?”

“We take a lot of little kids down this trail. It gives them something to turn around. We make up games and races and stuff using them. It’s no big deal. I just wanted you to know about them. We’ll just make our big turns around them like we’ve been doing.”

They rounded the turn, and he saw them. As promised, there were three human-sized animals in the middle of the trail. There was a badly painted bunny Fender assumed was supposed to be the March Hare; a turtle who’d been left out in the weather too long, with peeling lime green paint punctuated by splotches of bare plywood; and a gigantic mouse wearing a yellow vest just like the one Wylie had worn.

“Look, an R.O.U.S.,” Fender said out loud.

“What?”

“A Rodent of Unusual Size. It’s from
The Princess Bride
. A movie. Never mind.”

Ginger had pulled far out ahead of him. She was talking, but he couldn’t hear very well.
I shouldn’t be this far behind
. He skipped a turn to try to catch up.

Then they appeared. Little kids in lessons, the Mogul Mice. The kids in Justin’s ski class. They’d skied onto the cat track from an adjoining trail. They were between Ginger and Fender.

He looked past the Mice, and he realized he’d stopped turning and was picking up speed.
A lot of speed for such a mild trail
. He was coming up behind the bunch of kids.

“Excuse me. Coming through, on your left. Watch it.” He zoomed past two of the little ones and the instructor, Justin. He needed to catch up to Ginger.

Ahead, instead of a clear trail to his instructor, Fender saw terrible, terrible calamity.

Actually, he saw this: three plywood animals looming large and one kid. The kid sat in the middle of the trail, eating snow. It was Wylie the dog-kisser.

Fender did the only thing he could. He wedged for all the money he was worth and managed to avoid Wylie, but it was at the expense of the March Hare. There was a loud splitting of wood and pain. Then a moment of eerie silence.

Then, pleasantly enough, shrieks of small children pierced the air.

“You killed Mr. Bunny! You killed Mr. Bunny!” Wylie led the charge down the trail, and then small, mittened fists pummeled him.

Justin picked children off of him, but they were like little hornets. Fender saw Ginger approaching, skating back up the trail from where she’d stood, waiting for him to catch up. She broke up the swarm.

“Everybody calm down. Mr. Bunny is fixable. Look at poor Mr. Barnes—you guys are being so mean to him.” She helped Fender to his feet and picked up his skis, which had come off in the tangle with the rabbit.

Justin picked the plywood up off the ground and tried to right it. It stood for a moment and toppled again. The Mogul Mice let out a painful collective gasp. Justin, the young ski instructor, looked at Fender.

“Dude. You took out the bunny. Cool.”

Ginger smiled at Fender and declared the lesson done for the day.

That night, Ginger stared at the ceiling for a long time.

There was a really interesting grayish spot on the far left corner, just short of the molding. She wondered for a long time if it was a leak from the roof, darkening the drywall from above.

Insomnia: Never a problem for her before Brad died, now a familiar companion.

Zoë snored. The hairy stinker had no problem sleeping whatsoever.

Ginger sighed. At least tomorrow was her day off. She’d tried all sorts of remedies and tricks to get to sleep. Molly had lent her a white noise machine, she’d bought a little fountain for her bedroom, she exercised in the morning instead of at night, she listened to guided meditation, she took melatonin. None of it had worked so far.

She did finally drift off. She felt herself falling into sleep and wondered how late it was, how long it would last.

Then she woke up. The nape of her neck and her stomach were wet with sweat, and she’d kicked the covers to the floor at some point. She was sitting up in bed. Her heart raced. She grabbed the pillow from Brad’s side of the bed and held it tight.

Fingers of pink streaked the sky.
I might as well get up.
She looked at the clock and figured she’d had about four hours of sleep.

And it was her day off. The irony of complete wakefulness when she could sleep in was just sad at this point.

She got up, took a hot shower, and got dressed in her ski clothes.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I’ll get first tracks at least.
She drove the road up to the ski resort as the morning lightened. If she parked at the upper lodge, she could get her first run in just before the lifts opened. Then she could ride the chair to the back side and ski hard.

In the parking lot, she poured a cup of coffee from her thermos and sat in the car for a minute before booting up. Brad never would’ve gone along with this kind of impromptu ski day. He’d liked things planned. Ginger shook her head.
Who am I kidding? He liked things planned when he was the one doing the planning. He liked things planned
his
way. Spur of the moment is my thing.

She got to the top of the run from the parking lot, slipped in her earbuds, and turned the music on loud. She pushed off down the run and felt the crunch of the snow under her skis.

It felt good. She kept her turns tight, then lengthened them out, feeling the edges of her skis curve and cut into the newly groomed run. Not another soul in sight.

At the bottom of the run, the lift operator stood, watching the chairs slowly gather speed and head up the mountain. The lift had just been fired up. The liftie looked for glitches, anything off balance or hung up.

As she glided up to the load board, she heard someone behind her.

“Ginger!”

Bode. He slid in next to her and smiled.

She was trapped. The next chair was there, and she would be riding it all the way up to the top of the mountain with Bode.
Why, why? What am I going to say to him?

“I know what you’re thinking.” Bode tucked his poles under his leg, pulled his goggles up so he could look her in the eye.

“Do you?”
God, I hope not.

“You’re wondering if I’m still mad about the coat.”

“I wasn’t, but I hope you aren’t.” She counted lift towers till the top of the mountain. Too many. And she was too high off the ground to pull a Rocket and jump. Though it was starting to sound like a tempting option.

“Naw. How are you?” He smiled at her.

“Fine, I guess.”

“You’re not working today?”

“Nope. Couldn’t sleep last night, so I figured I’d try skiing till I dropped.”

“I’ve got some time. We could get in a couple runs on the backside. I’m supposed to check out the upper left side of War Eagle. Snow’s gettin’ a little thin. One of the patrollers thought there might be a hazard I need to mark if they used the winch cat last night—there’s that one big slab of rock they might’ve exposed.”

“Race you to it.”
Brilliant, Ginger. I’m proud of you. There’s no chit chat in racing somewhere.

Bode took the challenge. “Loser buys beers in the lodge.”

“You’re on.”

They crested the top of the mountain, and a fierce wind greeted them, kicking up a fine mist of blown snow, thrown high into the bright morning sky.

Ginger pushed off the chair and made a sharp turn, cutting across a sketchy patch of ungroomed snow to hit the top of War Eagle.

“Cheater!” Bode yelled after her. He’d taken the gentler slope off the front of the ramp, the way skiers were supposed to exit the chair.

She couldn’t hear anything else from behind her after that.

She looked down the run and picked her line. War Eagle hadn’t been groomed the night before, so the hazard Bode was supposed to look for was still hidden under the snow. She didn’t see a sign of it anywhere. No rocks scraped bare by a winch cat here—just ungroomed chop and moguls.

It was icy in patches, and the moguls were uneven. Spring skiing made most of the runs unpredictable. She opened it up. Her thighs burned, and she felt her body warming up as she pushed her skis through the chop.

The speed felt good. She felt light. She picked her way across the run and chose a line through the mogul field, letting her skis come up and piston down in a satisfying rhythm.

She never skied this well when she skied with Brad. This was Ginger, pure and untempered. No holding back, no checking for her partner, no worrying about leaving him behind or choosing a run he wouldn’t like.

Just me. Just me, and it feels good. It feels okay.

She finished up the run and kicked up a huge puff of snow, hockey-stopping at the bottom. Bode was quickly behind her.

“You won on a technicality—we were supposed to race to the hazard. I think cheater buys,” he announced.

“No winch cat, no bare hazards, you obviously race to the bottom.”

“Whatever. You’re buying tonight, no matter what.” He pulled a glove off and offered a handshake.

She shook on it. “I may have to rain check that. I’m betting I’ll be too tired to last the whole day.”

He smiled. “If you ski like that, I agree. You’re a bad ass.”

No one had ever told her that before. She liked it. “Thanks.”

“I’ve got to go. Check-in at the top of Chair One in twenty, you know.” Bode had a patrollers’ morning meeting to attend. He skated off to the lift.

Ginger stood alone and breathed in the air, smelling the fresh pine and clean snow of the mountains. She thought about her lesson yesterday. She thought about the guy in her lesson yesterday, the beat-down he’d gotten from the little Mogul Mice.
Fender
. It made her smile to think about him.