In an instant I’m back to focusing on the job at hand. Make him crack and show me his true colors.
Putting on my best flirty tone, I say, “I could stay longer. I might, you know. There are lots of things in the Fitschtal that I really like.”
After darting a look at the pilot in front of us, who’s wearing a headset and couldn’t listen in on us if he wanted to, Andi looks out the window, straight past my sultry half smile and hooded eyes.
Yeah, should have waited with this till later. Should have waited till when there’ll be no one else around anymore, when there’ll finally be just him and me.
I expect him to ignore me, like he always does, and all but jump in my seat when he suddenly speaks.
“What about that exam in statistics?” he asks as if he were addressing no one in particular, still looking past me.
That exam in statistics?
He listened in when I talked about that with Jay and Carl! Ha, not so disinterested after all, it would seem.
I only wish he hadn’t reminded me of that frigging exam.
And then suddenly he shifts in his seat and settles his gaze on me. It feels like cold laser light.
“Shouldn’t you be studying right now?” he asks levelly. “It’s a retest, isn’t it?”
What the…?
For the first time he’s actually asking me stuff, only to basically tell me I’m going to fuck up my exam?
“If you heard that, I’m sure you also heard that I’m thinking of quitting college,” I say irritably. “I might do that, you know.” And on a sudden inspiration, I add, “I might start working as a snowboard instructor here in Fitsch instead. I have a license, you know. Then I could stay on indefinitely.”
I shoot him a challenging glare.
“Why would you want to quit college?” he asks, still looking back at me, not batting an eyelash.
Fuck those husky eyes.
“Perhaps I’m not a born academic?” I snap.
He tilts his head, raising one brow.
Shit, why did I say that?
“I might change programs,” I say. “Switch to something I like better than economics.”
It sounds pretty feeble in my own ears. Why the heck did I start discussing private shit with him?
All I meant to do was alert him to the fact I’ve got an instructor’s license. I wanted to make him see I’m a cool guy like him, not just an average tourist.
Now he thinks I’m a stupid loser instead.
Fuck.
WE STAND on top of the Sunnzeiger, the sun needle, and it feels like being on top of the world.
The helicopter has left in a whirl of snow and noise. It’s going west, rapidly becoming smaller, taking its sharp, echoing rattle with it.
And then it’s just Andi, me, the blazing white around us, and silence.
This is what the Alps are meant to be.
Fitsch 2000 is cool, with its buzzing lifts and groomed runs and fancy restaurants. But at the end of the day, everything man-made just corrupts the beauty of these mountains.
Up here their pristine grandness is simply overwhelming. It literally takes my breath away.
Or maybe it’s the thin air. We are at over twelve thousand feet. And it’s freezing cold too. I forgot to put my jacket on before leaving the helicopter, and the cold bites into me like a living thing. Scenery overload or not, I guess that’s enough of a reason for having trouble getting enough oxygen into your system.
I should stop looking around and get my jacket out of my backpack. And I will as soon as I’m ready. I’m not, not quite yet.
Sure, I’ve seen the Alps from above before, from out of the airplane and the helicopter. But this is different. Because I’m standing in the middle of this otherworld, of this symphony of blue and white and gold and all the shades in between. Because I’m part of it.
Together with Andi.
When I look over at him, I meet his gaze. He’s been watching me.
I guess he can see how plain floored I am. Stupid gaping tourist, that’s what he’s probably thinking of me right now. Frigging rich guy using his money to try to buy the magic of the glacier.
Fuck, I don’t mind what he thinks of me. I don’t mind as long as I get to ride my board down this glacier.
And later, him.
If he keeps up the cold fish act, yeah, I’ll have no choice but to forget it. But if he finds he wants to use the opportunity, if he realizes he wants to lose his virginity to a tolerably endowed guy who knows what he’s doing after all, I’m still up for helping him out.
I still trust he’ll come around. He definitely likes my body. I know perfectly well why he’s staring—it’s my slim-fitting thermal shirt. It’s a pity it’s not an option to do this tour in my underwear. That might actually be the one thing that would do the trick and make him snap. But I’ve already started to seriously shiver by now, so I quickly pull my jacket from my backpack and slip it on, not without some extended gratuitous stretching and flexing of shoulders to give Andi something to look at.
When I try to catch his gaze again, he quickly looks away, then slips his helmet on. His eyes disappear behind the mirrored black visor.
There’s just me now.
“Come on, what are you waiting for, Bennet? Put your helmet on and get on the board,” he calls out.
Giving orders sure comes naturally to him. Before I’ve made up my mind about whether this should irk me or not, he shouts, “Stay in my track!”
And without another look back, he gets going, carving down the powdery slope waiting for us, leaving a cloud of sparkling white in his wake.
Quickly I fasten the bindings to my boots and go after him. I don’t want to lose him.
I don’t want to lose him because I’ve got plans for him, but also, I’d probably never find my way back down into the valley without him as my guide. For all of Fitsch Glacier’s supernatural beauty, it wouldn’t be cool to get stranded up here.
As I swoosh downhill after Andi, struggling to keep up with his speed, I can’t help but admire his skill.
He’s riding a fast, super fluid line. The way he owns these precipices, working with the terrain as he goes, radiating complete and utter mastership—it’s like a billion years of evolution in this secluded corner of the earth have only had one single purpose: design this man to go boarding on this glacier.
But I’m good too. Hell, I am!
Considering I’ve never done anything like this, I manage pretty well. It’s a challenge to be sure. I have to focus on my footwork, take care to keep track of the permanently changing gradient and fabric of the ground under my board.
But I feel strong and fit, and the glacier is my friend.
There’s a fat layer of powder over the glacier’s ice, soft and responsive and inviting me to play. Oh yes, this tour is called Glacier Gold for a reason.
Going after Andi, I give myself over to the rhythm he sets, following the sweeping arcs he paints into the snow.
MY MUSCLES are burning, and my visor is fogged up from perspiration. We’ve been going down, down, down, for over an hour now. Andi doesn’t seem to intend to grant me as much as a pee break.
I get what he’s doing.
He means to show me just what it means to go boarding with him. Yes. This is him getting back at me. Trying to make me regret I made this happen, trying to make me regret talking about his strength needing testing.
But if he thinks I’m not the athlete he is….
There, he’s stopping. He turns around, his pose on the steep mountain flank as chill as if he were waiting at the bus stop. When I’ve closed the distance but for a couple of yards, he flips open his visor and calls out to me.
“Getting tired, Bennet?”
Fuck, I’ll show you tired, Fankhauser!
I go past him, just like that, never slowing down, leaving him standing covered in snow.
He shouts something, and then I hear him come after me. A few seconds later, he passes me with mortifying ease
. I don’t know how he does it; I’m going at top speed. But I have no time to think about it. With a sharp turn, he comes to a full stop right in front of me. I have to perform a rather awkward turn uphill to avoid crashing into him and land on my butt in the snow.
“Hey, listen, dude—”
“You listen to me, Bennet! I told you to stay behind me, and that was a fucking order! Fuck, you don’t pass the tour guide, ever! This is glacier boarding, and if you don’t stay behind me at all times, you can break your damn neck! This is no fucking amusement park! Do you understand, man? Tell me! Do you understand?”
He seems to be seriously mad at me. It’s quite unnerving to have him shout at me like this, and while sitting up to my chest in the snow too.
“Okay,” I mumble, struggling to get upright again, feeling as if I were an especially badly behaved kid in his course. He doesn’t offer me any help to get out of the snow. He just waits till I’m back on my feet, then gives a curt nod. With a single, graceful jump, he directs his board back into the fall line.
Then he’s off again.
AFTER TWO more hours, I’m exhausted like never before in my life.
Andi has simply kept going, never reducing his sick speed. Seemingly a stranger to human needs like drinking, peeing, or having a Landjäger.
I have a couple of those in my pocket. Carl forced them on me back at the suite this morning, claiming you never knew when you might need some calories. Turns out he was so right. I’ve started to think about those sausages a lot, and about the water bottle in my backpack too. But Andi hasn’t stopped again to ask me if I needed a break. And I can’t just take a break by myself. I’m perfectly aware there’s one thing that would be even worse than dying of a lack of water and Landjägers—losing sight of my guide in this endless desert of ice.
That’s how I’ve come to think of Fitsch Glacier in the last hour or so. It’s kind of hard to keep appreciating scenic beauty when you’re fighting for sheer survival.
Andi is punishing me.
Fuck, I got the message!—“You thought you could test me with this trip and make me crack, Bennet? News flash: it’s you who’s going to crack, tourist. You thought you’d get to make some memories during lunch break? By noon you’ll be too wiped out to even remember why you came here!”
Well, fine by me.
All I’m interested in by now is surviving the day and getting back to the hotel and into my bed to sleep for ten hours.
Alone.
ANDI HAS stopped. I come to a halt by his side, panting, grateful for the chance to catch my breath, not even bothering anymore to appear anything like chill and relaxed.
He takes a few swigs from his water bottle. While I pull mine from my backpack to do the same, I notice he keeps looking upward, like he’s checking for signs in the sky.
It has changed color. It’s a hazy, gloomy gray now, with wisps of white sailing past high above the towering glacier tops. Those clouds seem to move at a crazy fast pace, while the air around us is weirdly still.
“You think it’s going to start snowing?” I ask.
He shrugs and bites his lip.
The lip-biting isn’t a good sign. He doesn’t seem to get nervous easily outside of situations where he’s being hit on; I know that much.
Pushing the cap back onto his water bottle with the heel of his gloved hand, he says, “Right, Bennet. Let’s be on our way.”
Perhaps he hasn’t been setting this murderous pace just for my sake. Perhaps all he wants is to be down from the glacier before the weather turns.
It’s hard to say whether this is good news or bad news.
WE’VE STOPPED at the top of a slope that looks pretty nasty from where we stand. At the foot of the descent, some three hundred yards below, there’s a vast plateau, maybe half a mile wide. To the east of it, I can make out the outlines of a cabin. It’s half-buried in the snow and seems to have been built from nothing but weather-beaten wood and raw rocks.
The Mangeihütte.
It couldn’t be more different from the sleek, hypermodern buildings down in the ski resort. I fumble my phone from my pocket to take a photo, ignoring Andi, who’s probably smirking at my touristy behavior behind his mirrored visor. I don’t care. I like taking photos, and I like the looks of this hut.
And we’re going to have our sandwiches in there. Finally.
I really, really need those sandwiches. I’m craving them. If this is what Carl feels like all the time, small wonder he has no interest in sex. Right now I’m so hungry I have trouble thinking of anything other than my empty stomach, even though Andi is standing right next to me. And looking like he just stepped out of his model wardrobe for a photo shoot too.
He has opened his visor, revealing his fancy features and a pretty flush on his tanned cheeks. That touch of red is the only sign he has engaged in any physical activity recently.
I can only imagine what I look like myself, with my lips chapped from the exertion and the sweat running from my bangs into my eyes, making them sting.
Well, I’m beyond caring.
“Listen,” Andi says. “We won’t go straight down to the plateau. We’ll just do the first fifty meters or so. See the part where the slope gets really steep, the part with the boulders in it? We won’t go through there; we’ll traverse to the east, then take a little detour to reach the hut. The terrain is safer. Understood?”
The lower part of the slope really does look brutally steep, probably fifty degrees or more. It’s dotted with big pieces of rock that are covered in ice. Going down there is definitely going to be a nasty bit of boarding. But I know I can do it.
The sight of the Mangeihütte, the prospect of lunch and of getting to rest my bones for a bit, has imbued me with new vigor.
Andi has been pushing me to the limit for the last four hours to show me I made a mistake. He has made his point; he has made me see I don’t want to seduce him on this blasted glacier after all.
But if he thinks I can’t manage a little steepness or find my way around a couple of rocks, he’s wrong.
FOR THE first fifty yards downhill, I stay behind him as is expected of me. A few yards above the area with the boulders, he slows down. Below us the slope drops away at an almost vertical angle.
Andi comes to a halt, putting one hand to the ground for balance. I do the same. We don’t have to bend over to reach the ice; we can touch it standing. This is the steepest bitch of a slope I’ve ever been on.
With a curt gesture, Andi indicates to me we’re going to start traversing the hillside now.
When I push myself off the ground, turning my board south, he gives a shout of surprise.
Ignoring him, I dive right into the abyss.
Control. It’s all about control, and I’ve got that. You’ve got to select your line, you’ve got to focus on riding in wide arcs and avoid any sudden turns.
You want to forget about fear. All you need is an awareness of the terrain and of the limit of the speed you can control.
I’ll be fine. Already I’m more than halfway down this little hill. Just a few more seconds, and I’ll have reached the plateau.
Ha, and he thought I couldn’t deal with these fucking fifty degrees! Now I’m approaching the plateau, and the grade has already become much milder. This is easy carving now, almost like on a normal slope. I’ve done it. Just a few more turns—
From one moment to the next, I’m, like, switched off. No ground under my board, no thought in my head, just gravity hitting, sucking me straight down into nothing.
When my brain starts working again, I’m fifteen feet underground, surrounded by an eerie bluish twilight and solid walls of ice.
With a couple of seconds’ delay, I understand what has happened.
This is a crevasse. I fell into a crevasse.
It’s just three or four yards wide. How deep, I’ve got no idea. I landed on a narrow ledge protruding from one wall. A few inches from the tip of my board, there’s an abyss of blue blackness. This thing
might be like hundreds of feet deep. Or deeper.
I was lucky. I could be dead now.
I could die.
If this ledge comes loose, I’ll drop to my death and stay caught in the bowels of Fitsch Glacier as a frozen corpse forever.
I sit, crouching there like paralyzed, praying the ledge won’t give way under my weight. With my gloved fingers, I keep searching for purchase in the wall behind me and slipping off the ice.
I want to call for help, but my vocal chords won’t obey me. I hear my own hitching breathing.
“Justin!—Justin!”
Someone is screaming my name. It’s a shrill, agonized sound, alien and terrible and much too far above me. That’s Andi, Andi who has come after me.
I wouldn’t recognize his voice if I didn’t know it was him.
“Oh Gott, oh Justin! Oh verdammt, Justin!”
I look up, and there’s the outline of his head against the gray of the sky.
“Justin! Are you hurt?”
I shake my head, still unable to form any words.
“I’m getting you out of there. Don’t panic. Don’t move.”
He talks to me with brusque resolution. Like he would. The frightening screaming I heard before can’t have been him. Must have been the blood in my ears or something.
Andi’s head disappears. Staring up into the clouds, I hear snapping sounds. That’s him stepping out of his bindings.
After some endless seconds, his head reappears, and a red rope comes slithering down toward me.
“Grab the sling, Justin!”
I do it, heart hammering. One wrong move on the slippery ledge, and I’m history.
“Good. Well done, Justin. Now lose the backpack and fasten the sling around your chest.”
I obey.
“Very good. You’re doing good, Justin. Now lose the board.”
I don’t want to. My board feels like the last solid thing between me and the void. But obviously I need to do as he says; obviously I’ll need my legs to climb. Oh my God, I’m going to climb up this ice wall with nothing but a piece of rope and Andi’s strength to keep me alive.
Glacier Gold Page 8
