“Don’t let racing be only work. It can’t be only that. Mom and the coaches always say, ‘It’s your destiny and your job.’ And I keep trying to fight off that job idea.” She was still looking hard at him, blue eyes roaming his face as if searching for something. She reslung the bag strap over her shoulder and they continued up Meridian. “Why did you give it up? You were at the top of your game.”
“I had to launch.”
“Meaning that we athletes live narrow, self-obsessed lives and have no idea of the real world around us?”
“I saw that happening to me.”
“Most of us pros don’t have an idea of the world.”
“You knew about the Crusades.”
“I got lucky and had some good tutors.”
Wylie could see the Starwood houses huddled in the trees now, and the black Escalade with April’s face and the yellow Team Holly logo on it. Helene Holly and extra-large Logan climbed into the vehicle and slammed the doors. “Here comes your posse.”
“Mega crap.”
“We can cut across the golf course and hide.”
“I’d feel childish.”
“Me, too. We never ran from the skinnies, and they were trying to kill us.”
“I’ve never thought of my mother as Taliban.”
“She has that look.”
“Do you want to blast Sky off the mountain in the Mammoth Cup?”
“Positively.” Wylie watched the SUV turn onto Meridian and start toward them.
“Everybody’s heard about his pledge to beat you. And I saw his selfie threat, what he’ll do if you run someone off the course again. I also got the gossip, Wylie, even way down in the Andes, and what I heard is that half the freeski team saw you run Sky off the X Course, and the other half saw him try to do that to you.”
“Vote Wylie. I barely touched him. I forced him off his line and he lost his nerve.”
April stopped mid-sidewalk and gave Wylie another long assessment. The Escalade whooshed past them and Logan made a U-turn. “You idiots should wake up and make up. Lose an enemy and gain a brother. It would lighten both your loads and you’d ski better.”
“Would I have to hug him?”
“That’s a shitty comment.” The SUV came to a stop behind them. April looked back, then at Wylie.
“April? April!” Helene’s voice cracked sharply in the warm Sierra afternoon.
“I apologize then, April. But I don’t have anything to make up with Sky. He makes messes; then other people have to clean them up.”
“April, we are late for the two-thirty! Please? Now!”
“Four hugs a day happen to work, Wylie. I was about to start my hugs today with you. But you can wait and I can, too.”
“It’s my loss.”
“I hate your detached sarcasm.”
“But I meant it.”
She wiped a sudden tear from each eye. “I broke my engagement. His name is Timothy and we’ve known each other since ninth grade and he is a good, good guy. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
“April!”
April turned. “Shut up, Helene! Just shut the fuck up!” Then she wheeled on Wylie. “Don’t you say one word.”
An Escalade door opened and slammed, and looking over April’s shoulder, Wylie saw Helene marching toward them.
“Look me in the eyes, Wylie.” April’s voice was a hurried whisper, almost a hiss. “I thought about you every day in Portillo. It was ridiculous. I texted you every day, and deleted them. I couldn’t wait to get back here and see you. There’s no order left inside me, and I don’t like it.”
“I dreamed I drove from Mammoth to Chile to see you. Slept in the MPP.”
“I wish you had.”
Helene stopped short of them. “Honey?”
“I dreamed it twice.”
“April — we just really can’t leave ESPN waiting, can we?”
“Come ride Madman with me,” said Wylie. “We’ll stay a few days. Adam and Teresa will be there, too. For adult supervision.”
“You really do think I’m a sheltered child, don’t you?”
“Nothing childish about this.”
“I can’t do something that foolish.”
“Sure you can. Soon, while the weather holds.”
She looked at him unreadably, then turned and walked toward the vehicle. Helene came to Wylie. “Stay away from her. She’s very vulnerable now. She has no time in her life for you or people like you. April wasn’t born to lose, Mr. Welborn. Surely you can see that.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The evening of that same October day, the Black Not began creeping down on Sky Carson. He happened to be with Megan at Mountain High. What terrible timing, he thought. Just when he was feeling healthy and strong and optimistic.
The Black Not — Sky’s name for it — was a black shapeless thing that slowly draped itself over him, tarlike. He could never get a good look at it. While it lowered and began to seep into him, it talked to him in his father’s voice — a voice he’d actually never heard except in recordings. The Black Not made him feel bad about things, very bad, and it brought him pain, surely as a poison. He’d could keep it off him for a day or two at most. Then it would have him for three, maybe four days. Those days were hell on Earth. He had been free from it now for nearly seven months.
He sat there in Helixon’s theater with Megan, nursing along his second beer of the whole night and watching Fight Club for the forty-eighth time in his life, trying to prepare himself for what was to come.
“I want to go home,” he said.
“All right. Okay. Though this is one of my nights off.”
“I hope Ivan hasn’t torn apart the other couch.”
“He’s still just a puppy.”
Sky lay in his bed in the dark with her, Ivan locked out but scratching inquisitively at the door. Sky looked through the blinds at the ragged outline of the Sherwins, darker than the sky and topped by stars. “I love you,” he said.
“I can tell something’s wrong.”
“Uhhh... yes.”
“Is it the dog?”
“It’s in addition to the dog.”
“Talk to me.”
“I get low sometimes.”
“I heard. That’s okay. We all do.”
“Okay.”
“Dangerously low?”
“Very low, yes.”
Ivan scratched at the door with vigor, growling softly.
“Is it me?”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m good for you, Sky.”
“I’ll need to be alone for a while.”
“It’s me.”
“I swear it isn’t.”
“For how long?”
“A few days.”
“Let’s have sex.”
“God, yes.”
By now, Ivan was tearing at the door with industrial strength. There were odd pauses, then the sound of the dog rending wood with his teeth. Sky turned to Megan and wrapped his arms around her and pressed his body against hers. His desire, urgent and whole, blocked out the dog, and, for a moment, even the Black Not. Megan’s mouth was warm and her taste was sweet. And those apples in her hair! Then the Black Not found him and Sky sensed its blackness easing closer and he heard his father’s voice again, the one that as a boy he had played over and over and over on video to save in memory, now telling him, You’ll ruin love, Sky. Like I did. And it will be the end of you.
“Harder,” she said.
Later, Sky rose and let in Ivan, who flew onto the bed and defended Sky’s place as his own, backed into the pillow, his butt hitting it with each bark. Two weeks ago, the dog would have bitten Sky, but Ivan’s ferocity was waning and now he allowed Sky back into the bed with only warning growls and barks. Megan turned the pillow and patted it and Sky lay down next to her. They looked out the window at the stars, always good in the fall. “You don’t have to leave here, Meg. I have a safe place to go. It’s kind of a regular deal.”