‘Are you still afraid of it? After what happened today?’
‘Put it like this. I think we should move into one of the rooms across the hall. I really don’t think the snow is going to crash down on us. But if it did, we’d be safer on that side.’
‘Right. That’s a very nice wine.’
‘Really? Doesn’t taste of much to me.’
‘Nonsense. Let’s go two bottles.’
‘You sure? I don’t want you drunk.’
‘Yes you do. You want me drunk.’
They commandeered a new room, where they lay on the bed with the curtains open, should there be any movement or activity or patrols in the night. Zoe was anxious at every creak of the hotel, in case it heralded the big slide of snow. Jake was oddly resigned. He didn’t think it was going to happen: he didn’t know why he thought that, he just felt that despite the evacuation, it wasn’t a threat.
Two bottles of red wine were enough to sedate them, though sleep didn’t come easily. They lay kissing for hours. Just kissing, not wanting to speak, not wanting to take their mouths away from each other’s lips, which was of course a way of speaking. Then Jake did something he’d never done before, which was to lift her and carry her from the bed so that they fucked against the wall, standing up, with Zoe balanced on her toes.
Then they fell back into bed, and finally fell asleep.
‘Wake up!’
Jake blinked at her. It was morning. Zoe pulled off her wool hat and opened her ski jacket. She’d been outside, to a pharmacy, to get some drops for their bloodshot eyes.
‘You been out?’
‘I got you this. Put your head back and open your eyes. Man, that looks sore. Your eyes are like piss-holes in the snow.’ She let three drops fall into each of his eyes, then screwed the dropper back into the bottle.
‘Anyone out there?’
‘Nope.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Not late.’
Jake tossed back the covers. ‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep.’
‘I thought you needed it. I think you’re still traumatised.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I think you are. You’re behaving differently.’
‘Like how?’
Zoe raised an eyebrow.
He dressed hurriedly. ‘We need to get that car back on the road and get going.’
‘Okay. I brought you some breakfast from the kitchen.’
There was a tray on the table: coffee, juice and scrambled eggs on toast under a silver dome. ‘You know what? You could almost get to like it here. If you didn’t have to scarper.’
He ate breakfast quickly, pulled on his thermal under wear, his salopettes and ski jacket and together they went out to take a look at the car. It was still snowing but only very lightly now. Tiny flakes billowed in the air, barely contributing to the thick, feathery deposit that layered the road and the pavement. There were plenty of patches of blue in the sky between the low-lying grey clouds. They stuck to the middle of the road, trudging through the thick snow.
After twenty minutes they came upon the police car and Zoe gasped as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
‘Holy heaven!’
Jake just blinked.
The wheel of the police car on the driver’s side dangled in space above a clean drop of fifteen metres down a smooth face of granite. Had it continued over, the car would have hit more granite rocks at the bottom, and from there it would have plunged down a steep tree-lined slope. Maybe it would have hit a tree trunk head on; maybe not. A rounded tooth of amber-stained limestone poking out of the snow in front of the passenger-side wheel had stopped any further onward motion of the car. The rock blocking the wheel looked like a carved tombstone, but their names weren’t chiselled there because it had been their salvation.
Zoe kneeled on the snow and covered her ears with her hands. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You’d better.’
‘We must have an angel watching over us. I swear.’
‘Well, I don’t believe in angels. But you’re right.’
Zoe scrambled to her feet again and grabbed Jake’s arm. They stared down at the car, and the drop beneath it, without another word.
Jake was trying to calculate if he might be able to reverse the police car back onto the road. The front passenger wheel was blocked, sure enough, but the vehicle was pointing downwards and looked ready to slip sideways. The prospect of climbing into the car, starting the engine and trying to back out was terrifying.
He watched Zoe go round to the driver’s side. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Maybe it will.’
‘Don’t even think about it.’
They walked back to the village discussing alternatives. They could try to find another vehicle. It was entirely possible that there might be more keys hanging around in one of the many stores that remained unlocked. Or they could simply walk out and follow the road across the mountain.
There were cars parked near their hotel. They checked them all out. They were all locked. They knew their chances of finding an unlocked car with its keys dangling in the ignition were pretty slim, but not impossible.
Yet within just twenty minutes they found a car with its keys winking in the ignition. Jake swung into the driver’s seat and turned the key, but the battery was completely flat. They tried bump-starting the car on a short hill, but nothing happened. They abandoned the car at the bottom of the rise and resumed their search.
Jake let out a cry when he stumbled upon a parking lot with eighteen identical black snowmobiles. ‘Here’s our ride out!’ he shouted. ‘Take your pick, they all look the same.’
But his enthusiasm was premature. All eighteen snowmobiles were linked by a thick chain and a massive padlock. They could find neither keys for the snowmobiles nor the key for the padlock. The search briefly turned to thoughts of a bolt-cropper, but this idea was abandoned when they realised that even if they did find a bolt-cropper they still had no ignition keys.
After three hours they were ready to admit defeat, at least for the day.
‘What will we do?’ Zoe asked.
‘Do? We’ll go back to our room in the hotel for another night. Drink some more of their fuckin’ fabulous tasteless wine. Then we’ll get up bright and early and we’ll hike out of here once and for all by following the road.’
They linked arms, and in a kind of neurasthenic trance they trudged back to the hotel.
They used the sauna to get warm again, and then swam in the spa pool. The water made a hollow lapping noise in the absence of any other guests; the changing rooms echoed oddly; the padding of their feet on the tiles was a lonely sound.
Afterwards they spent an hour using the hotel’s computers to get online. The computers failed to connect. While Zoe persisted in her efforts, Jake went through the entire series of phone numbers all over again. One by one the lines rang and rang and no one answered. No one answered anywhere.
‘It’s the local exchange. The fault has to lie with the local exchange,’ Jake said. ‘It must be out of commission otherwise somebody would pick up.’
They were no more successful with their mobile phones.
Jake found the toque Zoe had thrown on the floor and cooked again that night. He defrosted chicken and discovered spices to rustle up a sweet-and-sour stir-fry. He found a CD player and cranked the volume up high, banging pots and pans and cracking the imaginary heads of poor little kitchen boys to get his spirits up. There was a CD of classical operatic stuff sitting in the machine, offering a soaring mezzo-soprano diva vocalising beautiful words he couldn’t understand. He turned up the burners on the cooker and flamed oil in a skillet as if it was all theatre.
The stainless-steel kitchen work surface still offered the lean cuts of meat and chopped vegetables laid out from yesterday. Everything looked and smelled as fresh as if it had just been prepared moments earlier, but he left it lying there and cleaned himself another work surface across the kitchen.