“Milk? Sugar?”
She shook her head. He gestured at the chair across from his, and she sat down. With what she understood to be a welcoming gesture, he pushed a section of the newspaper in her direction. It was the Business section, and she read through it carefully while sipping the coffee, as if she might be tested on it later. Laurentian Bank’s revenues had increased. Four people had died in an accident in a diamond mine in Botswana. Tug yawned, flipping the pages and shaking his head over some article or another.
Fifteen minutes passed. There was no sign of the dog, and she wondered if his ex-wife had come by to pick it up. If he’d told her what he had done on the mountain, or had tried to do.
He rubbed his hair again, tousling it even further. Then he said, “I’m never much good before coffee. When I used to travel a lot, I always took a coffee kit with me. People would make fun of me, and it used to drive Marcie crazy. She’d sit across from me and tell me all her dreams, and then the entire plan for the day, and think everything was settled. Half an hour later I’d go, ‘Were you saying something?’ ”
It was his first unprompted confidence, and she didn’t speak, not wanting to startle or interrupt him. She only nodded.
“No wonder she left me,” he said, without apparent rancor.
She smiled at him, encouraging him to go on, and his eyes focused on her face, then on her clothes.
“Were you saying something?”
“I thought we could go skiing.”
As if this were the first he’d heard of it, he looked out the living-room window at the snow. “I never pay attention to the weather,” he said softly, seemingly to himself. “What’s wrong with me?”
Grace kept quiet. It seemed like a rhetorical question, and anyway she didn’t yet know the answer.
“I’d love to go,” he said after a pause, “but I don’t have skis.” He looked at her, shrugged, and the memory of the day they met registered between them.
“I brought you some,” Grace said. When he frowned, she explained, “They belonged to my ex-husband. He was around your height. Close enough to make do, anyway. You still have the boots, right? His might fit you, but I’m not sure.”
Tug puffed his cheeks comically, then let the air slowly drift out. She could tell he was relieved that she hadn’t actually bought him a new pair of skis.
“The social lives of divorced people,” he said. “All the old equipment still around.”
Grace leaned across the table and touched his wrist, so suddenly that the movement was upon her even before she’d decided to do it. She could feel his warm skin and the butterfly beat of his pulse. His eyes met hers, steady and green, and she knew that the electric charge between them wasn’t just on her side. He was flushing too.
“Let’s just go,” she said, “before you change your mind.”
Instead of heading to the mountain she took the Trans-Canada to a nature preserve on the West Island. In the early years of their marriage she and Mitch had often skied there. She had looked at the families around them, romping with their kids and dogs, and thought she was seeing her own future. But she hadn’t seen this: herself and Tug, almost strangers, unloading skis and poles after a car ride during which neither of them had had much to say. Yet she didn’t feel unhappy. She was pleased he’d agreed to go, and she was happy to be skiing, too.
They set off into the woods, Tug ahead of her moving swiftly, rhythmically. Mitch’s skis seemed to suit him well enough. Fresh snow had fallen on old tracks, and they could feel both the satisfying crunch of new powder and the underlying structure of the trail. Her breath rose ahead of her. On either side pine needles confettied the snow. She could hear Tug panting a little as they pushed up a hill. The sun was shining. Looking at his back, Grace thought, before she could stop herself, You’d have to be crazy to want to leave this world.
Half an hour later they came to a clearing and stopped to catch their breath. A few winter birds were picking at the bare, desiccated trees. When she offered him some water and he turned around, his cheeks were red, his eyes bright. He looked happy.
“When I lived in Geneva,” he said, “I skied all the time. Even trained to do a biathlon. But I left before I could actually compete.”
“What were you doing in Geneva?” Grace asked.
He handed the bottle back and bent down to adjust his boot. “Exchange student,” he said without looking up.
She assumed from his evasive tone that he was lying, but thought better of calling him out. “Must have been spectacular,” she said lightly. “But this isn’t bad.”
“No,” he said, and she hoped his look meant he was grateful she hadn’t pressed him. “It’s not.”
They started up again, Grace in front this time. They met a middle-aged couple on the trail with two large dogs. Tug stopped and chatted with them briefly about the weather, the snow conditions, how much exercise pets need, much friendlier than he had ever been with her. With his face reddened by the wind he looked younger and healthier, a casual smile transforming his face.
By now it was noon, and the preserve was bustling with newcomers, children, and dogs. Snow was falling again, a soft, lush drift. The day was warming, the trail slick with melt, and without discussing it they quickened their pace. Grace unzipped her jacket and put her hat in her pocket, and it occurred to her that she had never seen Tug wearing one. She was already thinking like that, as if she’d been around him so many times.
The last part of the trail was uphill, back to the lodge, and they herringboned this stretch madly in a kind of crazy, splay-legged sprint. She could hear the staccato rhythm of his breath behind her, and whenever she lagged he gained, so she picked up speed, not wanting to seem anything but strong. By the crest of the hill her thighs were burning. They skied to the finish as if in a race, each taking longer and longer strides until the trail was broken up by footprints, choppy ice mixing with gravel, their skis crunching, and it was time — too soon, she thought — to stop.
Tug smiled at her. “Well,” he said, “you gave me a run for my money.”
“I used to race.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I can picture that. You in a ski uniform with a number pinned on front. Intent on winning unless somebody was injured or in trouble. Then you’d veer off course.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “I was a laser beam of competitive focus,” she said, and he laughed.
They loaded up the skis and she drove back east, the highway’s gray-brown slush ruffled with tire marks. The car smelled of sweat and wet wool. With the heat on, she felt sleepy, almost dangerously so. How Tug felt she had no idea. He was leaning, either lethargic or relaxed, against the passenger-side door.
She double-parked in front of his apartment and waited.
“That was nice,” Tug said. He sounded surprised. “It was good we went.”
“I’m glad. I was hoping it would be.”
“I liked seeing all those people out there, just having a good time. I sometimes forget people actually do that.”
“Have a good time?”
He frowned impatiently. “No, that people ski in groups, or where other people are around, and it’s still fun. For me it’s always been a solitary activity. Something you do to be alone.”
She nodded; this was how it usually was for her on the mountain, away from the hours and days of conversation and chatter, with endless problems haltingly and passionately delivered.