“Where’s your mother and the dwarf?” asked Wylie.
“Gave ’em the slip. I’ve got a day to recover from South America, then hit the gym and pray for snow. Nice to be free for a whole day.”
Wylie steamed the milk into the espresso, sprinkled some cinnamon on the froth, and worked on a plastic lid.
“I’ll drink it here,” said April. “Unless you’re trying to hustle me out.”
Wylie gestured to the empty chairs and couches. There was a nice little fire going, though, and magazines all about skiing and boarding and fishing. What more could an Olympic gold medalist want? He poured the drink into a big ceramic mug and set it on a saucer in front of April.
“Manners, Wyles!” Belle whisked around him, picked up the saucer and mug, and took them to her favorite table, near the window and the fire. After April had settled into one of the red leather chairs, Belle moved the saucer just a skosh closer to her, gave Wylie a look, and headed back across the room.
With no more customers, Wylie knelt down and went back to work on the refrigerator. When he stood again, Beatrice and Belle were both seated in red leather chairs at April Holly’s table and the three were tightly engaged in conversation. They all stopped talking and looked at him at once, his sisters proudly defiant but April smiling.
Wylie went about his work, looking over at them now and then from various inconspicuous angles. April caught him once, or did he catch her? A couple came in and headed toward the counter, faces raised to the wall menu.
She stayed almost two hours, talking with the girls, signing autographs, and posing for pictures with the steadily growing stream of social-media-informed fans. With her around I really could give Gargantua the finger, he thought. To Wylie, she seemed earnest, asking questions, considering her own answers. He kept a weather eye for falseness but saw none. But when the rush was over, he saw April sit back and let out a big sigh. Her face looked a little slack. He offered to see her out.
They walked up Meridian toward the Starwood homes. The golf course grass had gone pale and the tractors were already taking up this year’s turf. Wylie shortened his stride to match April’s, though she was a brisk walker. The sunlight lit her hair and freckles and bleached the blue of her eyes. When she smiled, April looked almost impossibly happy, and he wondered how much of this was her act. It certainly brightened magazine covers and sold shampoo. But now, up close like this, her face looked puffy and tired and older than when she’d left two months ago. “You must be thrilled to see me again,” she said.
“I am. I thought about you.”
“Thought what?”
“There’s this run we call Madman. It’s a secret. Adam Carson showed it to me years ago, a good steep run, and you have to use snowshoes to get to it. I’ve been hitting it hard. I think of you when I go down it. Think of you boarding it, I mean. It’s not a slopestyle course. Just a straight alpine schuss.”
“No one else was there?”
“Deer.”
“And what do you do at night?”
“Grill up the catch. Read and make notes. Listen to music. Sleep like a rock.”
They continued slowly up the gentle grade. Wylie felt proud and privileged for the chance to walk alone with April Holly. Like he’d won it in a contest. He was hoping a carload of friends would come by, just to witness this.
“That sounds fun,” she said. “The second I turned pro, they tried to take the fun out of boarding. I had to fight to keep it. Still do.”
“How old were you?”
“I had sponsors at eight, Mom and an agent lining things up. Pressure. You?”
“Sixteen, I got skis, boots, and bindings. And free breakfasts at Main Lodge after workouts. I loved those.”
“We athletes live weird lives. Sometimes I think we’re born to do what we do. Other times, I think we get a notion in our heads because it’s all around us when we’re young. But then they make a pro out of you and everything changes. They, like, melt you down and pour you into these body molds so you can reanimate and become a champion and make money.”
He smiled at this, but she did not. “You’re the best there is,” he said.
She looked up at him. Her standard public expression of permanent sweetness seemed far away now, replaced by something somber. “Wherever I go, I see two kinds of people,” she said. “Mammoth? Aspen? Portillo? It’s all the same. There’re the ones who love what they do. They’re at their best when they’re doing it. Then, there’re the ones who want to be the best in the world at something. And to prove it by winning.”
Wylie had come to the same conclusions. There were two basic paths: to be your best or the best. “Which are you?”
“I live for it, Wylie. Launching into the sky at high velocity, doing impossible things? That’s my best me — doing something beautiful in the air. It’s what I care about most. What about you?”
It took Wylie some time to put words to the complex brew inside him. “The other. I need the Mammoth Cup for a shot at the X Games. If I can do well at the X Games, I’ll have a shot at the World Cup tour and the U.S. Olympic team. I don’t know if I’m good enough, but if I can get to the podium in South Korea, my family is set for life. I’d get endorsements and job offers and who knows, maybe another Olympic shot when I’m thirty-two. I could buy the space for Let It Bean instead of Mom and Dad leasing. Hire some help. Get the girls out into the world. Give a rest to Mom and Steen. This is my first official dream. So, I have to win.”
“So you want fame and riches.”
“Sure. Sign me up.”
“So skiing is a job?”
“If I win, it is.”
“Oh, man. No pressure, Wylie!”
They walked on. On the flanks of the Sierras, the aspens had burst into orange and the cottonwoods were coined with yellow. The meadow grasses glimmered white in the sun. Wylie felt a sudden desire to talk. “And there’s Robert. I want to win for him because I love him and he loved racing and now he can’t even walk. That sounds corny, but it’s true.”
“That’s not corny. It’s love, looking for a way to show itself.”
They continued up Meridian and along the golf course. Wylie successfully stole another glance at April. He thought back to when he and his friends had sneaked onto the golf course to steal golf balls and seen a large black bear digging a gopher out of a fairway, and the clots of good green turf flying through the air.
Now, loading up ahead, Wylie saw the forest that surrounded Starwood. Mammoth had still not recovered from the recession and real estate crash, so many of the beautiful Starwood homes now sat locked and empty. They slowed their pace. “So, Wylie, you have to beat everybody in the world to get what you want?”
“Every one of them.”
“It must be scary, saying you’re going to do that. Because if you fail, the whole world will know you’ve failed at what you wanted most. They’ll know and you won’t be able to hide it. And they’ll use your pain against you.”
“You must feel that pressure, too.”
“Oh, yes, I feel it.”
“You board for yourself, but there’s got to be a part of you that wants to blast the opposition off the snow. Just being out there says you want to win. And you know those other slopestylers think the same, teammates or not. No friends on the mountain, as John Teller told me once.”
April nodded along but said nothing for a long moment. She stopped and gave him a half smile. “I love winning. But being on the podium isn’t as good as being in the air.”
He tried to steal another look at her, but she was studying him closely. “I love skiing, too,” he said. “When I’m coming down Madman, there’s no one to even beat!”