Winning is Everything (38 page)

76 

Three days later, late Sunday afternoon, Kip and Gary were lounging around the living room, working together on
The New York Times Magazine’s
crossword puzzle.

“All right,” asked Gary, pencil poised, “what’s ‘An actor’s golf stroke’?”

“How may letters?” asked Kip.

“Thirteen.”

Kip thought about it a moment, visualized it in his mind, and offered, ‘”Slice of Lemmon’?”

Gary counted the spaces. “Jack Lemmon! Exactly!” He filled in Kip’s answer. “You’re too brilliant!”

“Then why am I still an actor?” asked Kip.

The front door opened, and Ron, well-tanned and grinning ear to ear, stepped in.

“My God!” Gary looked up from the puzzle. “The prodigal son returns!”

Kip jumped up from the couch. “How the hell are you? What in God’s name happened? We were really beginning to worry!”

“Worry?” Ron was most casual. “Whatever for? Didn’t I tell you the Prince was in charge?”

“Sure,” said Kip. “But we also knew the Prince was in a little over his head.”

“Well, kids … the Prince has surfaced!” said Ron, plopping down onto a chair.

“Well?” asked Kip with unusual impatience. “Don’t be so smug about it all. Tell us … what happened?”

“Oh, nothing much,” said Ron. “I’ve just come home to pack up my things, take a day or two to sort out last-minute details before I fly out to the Coast,
first class.”

“The Coast?” asked Gary.

“Yes.” Ron sighed and leaned back in his chair. “You boys have the pleasure of looking at the new executive assistant to Kirkland Enterprises!”

“I can’t believe it!” said Kip. “How’d you pull it off?”

“It was simple,” Ron said. “I just proved to the Empress Kirkland that without my sage and savvy know-how, he would never make it to the top of his Hollywood empire.”

“Wait a minute!” Kip sat down again. “This can’t be happening. You’re moving out of our apartment?”

“Not for a couple of days,” said Ron. “I’ve got a lot of packing to do, lots of good-byes to make.”

“But what about our lease?” asked Gary.

“Our lease is up in two months,” said Ron. “I’ll pay my share for that time and then our commitment is finished. I’m a mogul now. My life is going to be executive screenings and Chasen’s chili! Who has time to ruminate about petty things like where you’re going to find another sucker who’ll help chip in for the rent?”

“Leave it to you,” said Kip. “I’m amazed. I left you in the Caribbean practically down for the count, like half a Christian in a lion’s den, and now you come back and tell us you’ve conquered Rome!”

“Of course.” Ron blew at his fingernails. “I’m a clever gladiator.”

“I think you’re making a big mistake,” said Kip. “You may have bamboozled Kirkland for the first round. But the war is far from over. There’s nothing about that man I like, Ron. He’s sly and conniving and creepy and he’ll nail you to the wall, given the opportunity. He’s a user, and God only knows what he wants from you.”

“He wants me to run his empire,” Ron said casually.

“This can’t be happening,” said Gary.

“Why not?” Can’t you guys accept the fact this is finally my big break?”

“Believe me,” said Kip. “I hope you’re right. I just have a feeling about that character. You may wind up no better than I was with Phyliss Dodge. One day I was going to be a star; the next I was the houseboy, answering phones and watering the plants.”

“I promise you, fellas, I won’t be a houseboy!” Ron said with firm conviction. “Besides, the Empress loves neurotic, attractive, ambitious types. He’ll be mad for me!”

“And what happens when Kirkland, with his mercurial shifts in mood, tires of you?” asked Kip.

“Tires of
me?”
asked Ron incredulously. “I have so many ways of keeping him content, he’ll never tire of me. All I have to do is find his film properties and keep him up to his hips in pretty boys and coconut oil. Producing and procuring, I call it.”

Gary and Kip looked at each other. “Oh, well.” Gary sighed. “Seems the old boy knows what he’s up against.”

“Of course,” said Ron, going over to his suitcase and opening it. He rifled through his clothing and pulled out a bottle of carefully wrapped Dom Perignon, ‘58. “Brought back a bottle of his private stock, figuring the fat man was so stoned the past three days he wouldn’t miss it. I want to celebrate my good fortune with my roommates.”

“Now you’re talking!” Gary got up to go into the kitchen to crack some ice. “The one thing this quiet Sunday afternoon needed was a bottle of Dom Perignon!”

“We’re going to drink to my success, boys. Hard to believe, perhaps—even for me—but at last Ron Zinelli, one N, two L’s, is on his long-overdue way to le big time!”

77 

“Stand back!” commanded Nora. “I don’t want to splatter you!”

Gary took two steps away from the easel. He and Nora were spending a Sunday afternoon in January in her town-house apartment, upstairs in the room she used as her studio. Nora was working on a huge four-foot-by-three-foot canvas, painting an abstraction of earth-tone colors and back-to-nature moods. “Greene’s green period is how historians will someday refer to it,” she mused.

“Jackson Pollock would’ve given up his use of the color red to have had your pitching arm,” said Gary.

“I do hope you’re right,” said Nora, placing her palette down on her worktable. “Enough of this artistic nonsense,” she said. “I stare at this canvas any longer, I’m liable to slice off my ear. Let’s have a glass of wine.”

“What a good idea,” said Gary.

They sat in the living room in front of three logs burning and crackling in the fireplace, while chomping on some of Nora’s homemade pâté. Outside, it snowed lightly.

“I think the pâté deserves a nine, and the wine a four,” said Gary.

“I knew I never should have cultivated your palate,” said Nora. “Now you’re going to be impossible to please.”

“I sure hope so,” said Gary.

“Did I tell you about your raise yet?” Nora asked matter-of-factly.

“Huh?”

“Your raise. I was so touched by your tale of woe and hardship, what with one of your roommates deserting you, I simply told the powers that be you’d been offered a job at Warner Brothers at twice your current salary and that we had to keep you, at all costs. So they said, fine, offer him another fifty bucks a week and see if he’ll stay.”

“Is this a true story?” asked Gary, too excited to scream with delight.

“Cross my heart,” said Nora.

“That’s wonderful. How come you’re so good to me?”

“I’m not just good to you,” Nora contended. “I’m good to me, too. Anyway, you’re going to need some extra cash for the next project I have in mind for us.”

“Aha!” said Gary, pouring some more wine.

“Aha is right!” said Nora. “I’ve got big plans, buster—you ready?”

“Spell it out!” said Gary.

“Okay. Here’s the program. I have to go to London next month for eight days to meet with publishers, to represent Olympus. It’s all business and fairly dry. Anyway, after that, I thought it might be nice if you and I met—that is, if you cared to—someplace like Zermatt. Have a little ski vacation. What do you think?”

“I think it’s about the best idea I ever heard,” said Gary. “If only I could afford it.”

Nora gave Gary her look of knowing smugness.

“I’ve found a charter flight that will jet you to Geneva, round trip, for a hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

“No!”

“Yes. I can meet you in Geneva and we can both take the train to the Matterhorn.”

Gary reached out and held Nora’s hand. “You know what?”

“What?”

“I’m not sure this is something someone generally says to their boss, but here goes: I really love you.”

78 

Zermatt was enjoying one of the warmest Februarys it had known. All the snow had fallen in December, and since then they’d had nothing but warm sunny days and crisp starry nights.

It took Gary and Nora a day and a half to get acclimated to the drastic change in altitude, so they skied just a few runs before lunch and a couple afterward, waiting while their bodies adjusted to the new surroundings.

They shared a cozy room in the Post Hotel, smack in the center of town. Wooden shutters painted with flowers led out to the tiny balcony which overlooked the Matterhorn, and the furniture was so seven-dwarfs-Tyrolean, Gary suggested that they’d just stepped out of a fairy tale.

On the third day of their vacation, Gary and Nora boarded one of the community trains and rode all the way to the top of a nearby peak, the Jungerhaufer. From there they skied a long, winding, unevenly marked two-hour trail back down to town where they stopped for lunch.

When they got back down to their hotel a little before five that evening, they were both exhausted.

“How does a hot bath and a healthy nap sound?” asked Nora.

“Perfect,” answered Gary. “Especially if you throw in another glass of wine with the offer.”

“Sold!” said Nora.

They bathed, one at a time, Gary after Nora. When he came out of the huge bathroom, wearing one of the terry robes provided by the hotel, Nora had already summoned from room service a small bottle of red wine and two services of tea with chocolate pastries.

“A little wine, a little tea, a few million calories, a little nap, and we should be ready for dinner,” said Nora.

“Sounds continental enough for me to believe we’re in Europe!” said Gary.

Nora walked to the balcony and looked out at the snow-draped Matterhorn, observing, “I love this area. It’s supposed to be truly beautiful in the summer. Might be nice to come back here one August and do some mountain climbing, no?”

“Sounds fine to me,” said Gary, pouring himself some tea.

He was amazed how comfortable he felt with Nora these past two days. They got along like an old married couple. Even sleeping in the same large bed the past two nights had proved no problem. Nora had simply announced she was pooped and had to rest up for the slopes. Nora slept in her nightgown and Gary slept in a pair of pajama bottoms.

Gary felt totally at ease. He knew Nora knew that he didn’t know exactly where on the sexual spectrum he stood, and he was grateful she respected his confusion. Theirs was a relationship built on friendship and trust, and Nora wanted nothing more from him, Gary was certain, than his companionship.

So why, Gary wondered as he poured a cup of tea for Nora, and noticed how beautiful she looked against the light of the setting sun, why, if everything was so comfortable, did he suddenly feel so threatened?

* * *

The following morning after breakfast, Gary and Nora took their passports and rode the funicular all the way to the other side of the Gorner Grat mountain ridge, so they could ski across the border into Cervinia and have lunch in Italy before returning to Zermatt.

“Don’t you just love it up here at the top?” asked Nora, stretching her arms out to the surrounding peaks as she embraced the unseasonably warm wind. “The invigorating air, that rush of power, that view!”

“I have to admit it,” Gary agreed as he snapped his boots into his ski bindings. “God is a good set designer.”

Nora was exhilarated by the view. “I bet when Noah landed his ark at the top of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, the first animals to run off were the mountain goats. Smart creatures, they took one look around, decided they liked the view from up there, figured they’d stay and make it their home.”

“Right!” said Gary. “And the last one off the ark must have been Noah, because he first had to clean up all the animal shit!”

“At least he didn’t have to wash any windows,” said Nora.

“Forward, my dear pantheist!” Gary pointed east. “Italy awaits!”

They had been skiing over Italian terrain for almost an hour, across poorly marked trails, before they realized they’d really lost their way.

The sun was so strong on the steep slope to which Gary and Nora had strayed, it was causing huge patches of snow to break away, to avalanche.

“I think we may be in trouble,” said Gary, about to ski across a ravine.

“Why?” asked Nora, looking down at the deep drop below them. “Just because we’ve lost Switzerland, don’t know where Italy is, and because the snow is melting so fast that it’s caving out from under our skis?”

“That’s basically it,” said Gary, trying to remain calm.

“The question is, should I start screaming for help?” asked Nora.

“No,” said Gary. “The snow is avalanching without our helping it along. We’ll go slow and steady, and most of all, quietly. I’ll go first.”

“My hero!”

“Bet your ass!”

“I think I just did!” said Nora, watching as a section of snow on a slope not three hundred yards from them broke off and cascaded down the canyon. It was too many moments before Gary and Nora heard the accumulated avalanche crashing onto the ground somewhere far, far below.

The noon sun burned against their faces. They sweated beneath their ski sweaters and down vests. Gary pounded his poles into the falling snow and pushed off. He skied down a long, steep ravine, past a wide open space, down to a grove of pine trees, where he stopped and stood in the welcome shade, waiting for Nora to follow.

Nora looked way down and over at Gary, wondering what in the world she was doing in that part of the world, all set to perform a feat she wouldn’t expect to see on
You Asked For It.

She felt a painful squeezing sensation in her back, but chose to ignore it. This was no time to start cramping up.

She skied across the snowfield, covering Gary’s tracks for about a hundred yards, until she found his trail too steep for her confidence. So she pointed her skis slightly uphill and continued traversing through the snow until, in no time at all, she had run out of momentum and ground to a complete halt, up to her hips in snow.

Stuck, she waved frantically to Gary, three hundred yards below, for assistance. He saw what had happened to her and immediately began climbing uphill, inching his way toward her, step by step.

Nora panicked. “Help!” she cried, and the echo of her voice set off a round of falling snow everywhere around them.

“Sssssssh!” Gary signaled to Nora, hoping his own message wouldn’t set off any further avalanches.

The sun burned against Nora’s face even as it continued melting and loosening the packed snow. When Nora took another futile stab at planting her poles into the slushy snow around her, the effect of her effort loosened an entire layered block from the ground and a twenty-foot area surrounding her broke off from the snow and slipped slightly down the mountain, opening like a gorge in an earthquake.

Nora had never been so frightened in her life. She stood in frozen terror until Gary finally made his way to her.

She looked at him, saying, “I’m not going to make it. I’m going to die!”

“Sssh! Listen to me! I’m going to hand you my pole,” he told her in a very hushed tone. “You’re going to hold on to it, and I’m going to pull you out of that hole, understand? Just like if you were on water skis. If I manage to pull you out, keep skiing. Not just across; that won’t get you anywhere … but
downhill,
okay? I’ll try to ski in front of you so you can follow my trail. If either of us gets stuck, the other one
must
ski down into Cervinia. It’s down there somewhere—it fucking well has to be. Don’t panic. Just get yourself over to the ski patrol and tell them I’m trapped here. I’ll do the same for you. Shake your head if you understand.”

Nora shook her head and forced a smile, hoping not to appear as terrified as she truly was.

“Okay, Nora,” Gary practically whispered. “I’m getting ready to hand you my pole. You’re going to hold on to it tightly. And one other thing. If I should fall into an avalanche and you have to ski into town to get help, don’t stop first for lunch, okay?”

Nora smiled through the tears now running down her cheeks.

“Everything is going to be okay, understand? Just be calm and listen to me. Are you ready now?”

Nora sat in the melting snow, now up to her waist, and shook her head. She was ready.

“Okay.” Gary raised his pole, pointing it toward her. “Take the pole, grab it tightly, and remember this: I love you. Understand that?
I love you!”

Once Gary was certain Nora held a firm grip on his pole, he slowly and carefully pointed his skis downhill and began to push off. Then he thrust his entire body weight forward, and pulling Nora toward him, began to ski straight down the steep hill.

Nora seemed to pop out of the hole in which she was imprisoned. A moment later she was shussing downhill.