“My heart’s beating everywhere.”
“Good luck.”
April launched. She vanished in freefall, then landed with a hard rasp and carved right. Wylie dropped in and went left, gained speed, made a wide turn back toward the middle and crisscrossed April coming the opposite way. The snow was softened by the afternoon sun, but it was last year’s snow and far from powder. He heard the edges of his skis cutting into it, felt the surge of speed when he ran through tree shadows and shot into sunlight near the right side of the slope. He swung back and they crossed in the middle again, Wylie letting out a war whoop and April opening her hands in a bring-it-on gesture as she flew past him.
They essed down the mountain in a loose weave, each holding back, feeling for the ice and the softer holes. Wylie was truly impressed by her ease and economy of motion, her lightness and promise of speed. Such easy transitions from goofy to conventional, he thought. Fluid. Thoughts played out on snow. How does she do that? He put his weight into the turns, legs powerful from the miles on Highway 203, upper body staunch from splitting cords of wood. On the last few hundred yards, he pulled up next to her and they fell into a rhythm determined by the course, reading the snow, anticipating and approximating each other. They stopped at the downslope end of the natural out-run, both breathing hard, Wylie’s poles dug in for stability and April with a hand on his arm for balance. “Oh. My. God.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“Planet Amazement. Again?”
“Let’s go.”
Their second run was freer and faster, Wylie out ahead, coursing through late-afternoon shade and sunlight, trying to find that place where he was present but absent, where his body skied while his mind oversaw. Maybe it would come. He was strong enough, but he didn’t feel limber. Power without feel. Twenty-six years old tomorrow. Not twenty. Not bad. Just different. They figure-eighted down, two signatures on one mountain.
At dusk, they made a fire, using good split wood brought from home, then put on the steaks, asparagus, and rolls they’d picked up in Big Pine. The folding chairs were actually comfortable. Wylie poured her a very small bourbon in a coffee cup, which she casually sipped, then spit into the fire. “That’s just awful.”
“Practice.”
“Forget that. I like red wine.”
“Let me check the cellar.”
He got a bottle from under the sink and a wineglass from the tiny yachtlike galley cupboard. He felt worldly and important as he handed her the wine. He saw the flames flickering in her eyes and the dusting of freckles on her cheeks. He checked his watch, then turned his attention to the steaks, touched one of them with a fork. Four minutes. Asparagus and rolls, aluminum-wrapped and off the flame, would be ready about then. He sat down across the fire from her.
“This is the only part of the trip I’ve been dreading,” she said.
“Yeah. It’s dark by five and there’s really nothing to do.”
“You read a lot?”
“Sure.”
“I was impressed when I saw a book of poems in your trailer that first day I met you.”
“It’s in there, if you’d like to try some.”
“Maybe. The wine’s good. My trainers say one glass a night, max.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“What about you?”
“Overall, I shoot for somewhat reasonable.”
“Your definition of somewhat reasonable.”
“Of course!”
Wylie got the food onto two plates and the plates onto the small table in the trailer. With the door and windows and portholes open, it didn’t feel cramped. The screen door kept out the bugs, which were few tonight. A squat votive candle burned between them. He had pictured April Holly sitting across from him in the MPP, but his imagination paled against the real thing. In his imagination, she hadn’t been this close.
“I’m still waiting for the terrible awkwardness to arrive,” she said.
“Me, too. I imagined you here, so maybe it’s helping.”
“I imagined myself here at this table.”
“We could say things like ‘Pass the salt.’ Or get more serious, like ‘That next government shutdown could be a bad one.’”
She smiled and drank more wine, her shoulders forward in the small space and her voice a leafy rustle. “Or I could say ‘How do the planets look through the portholes?’”
Wylie’s turn to smile. “And then I could say ‘Mars rocks, but Venus is always my favorite.”
“But then I’d think you were flattering my gender.”
“And you’d be right.”
“So then I might say, to distract you, ‘Great asparagus tonight, Wyles.’”
“This conversation just keeps getting better and better, April.”
They were leaning toward each other, and Wylie could feel the heat from the candle. Her lips were red from the sun and dry alpine air. Golden hair. Her eyes were blue, with little orange flames in them, and they considered him side to side, skeptically, searching again.
“I like our conversation,” she said.
“I like you.”
“It’s awfully hot in here,” she said. He blew out the candle. “That won’t make a big difference.”
He leaned in and kissed her lips, lightly, briefly. She did the same back. “Walk me to the creek.”
“It’s going to be cold.”
“Hot, cold,” she said. “Let me get a few things. Could you put some more wood on the fire?”
April got into her duffel bag in the bed of his truck and came back with a bundle of clothing, a bath towel, and a lidded plastic box. Wylie set three big logs on the fire, then found a towel and a bottle of body wash. He led the way through the aspens to the creek, holding back the branches. Yards apart along the stream, they stripped down and spread their clothes on the boulders.
“Fast in, faster out,” he said.
Wylie felt the shock of the water, heard April gasp. In the good moonlight, she was pale and solid, like ivory or alabaster. Wylie was impressed that she waded in, squatted down, and went under to her neck. She held up her hair with one hand and splashed her face with the other, then rose dripping silver beads. Under the water, he rushed his hands through his hair and under his arms, came up and got the body wash lathered up. The cold went from skin to bone in seconds.
“I’ve never been in water this cold,” she said. “You wonder how anybody gets used to it.”
“I’ve got this body rinse stuff.”
“I’ve got soap, but I think it’s frozen solid.”
A few minutes later, they were standing as close to the fire as they could get, hopping in place as they dried off, teeth chattering, skin raised with goose bumps. April ran into the MPP and came back heavily dressed. Then Wylie went in, put on clean clothing and a good fleece jacket, stowed the dining table within the benches. He looked out at April shivering by the fire. He smiled to himself while folding out the bed and unzipping the two-person sleeping bag. You are Wylie Welborn, he thought: protector, provider, lover, luckiest man on Earth.
“All yours in here,” he said, stepping out. “I’m going to hang the food so the bears don’t get it.”
“Where are you sleeping?”
His heart stumbled, but his words did not. “By the fire. I do it all the time.”
“But that’s a two-person bag in there.”
“So let me know if it gets lonely.”
“Oh, it won’t. I’m a sprawler. Need help hanging the food?”
“I’ve got it, April.”
Wylie washed the dishes in the creek, then packed them with the food and lugged the canvas bundle over to the lodgepole pine. He got the rope up and over the right branch, third try, tied the bundle tight, and hoisted. His spirit had fallen with April’s sleeping arrangement and he felt rejected and ashamed of the rejection, then angry at the shame, but at least he could be man enough not to show his disappointment. He tied the rope fast to the trunk, smacked his cold, stinging hands together. Wylie Welborn, he thought: Man.