Precious Moments

by Suzanne Roberts

  Be happy, she told herself, as the music seemed to get louder and more and more women stopped by to give the grinning Thorne deep, provocative kisses. Be happy; this is what you’ve always wanted—a magnificent man, exciting parties and interesting friends!

  She could almost hear David’s sarcastic voice: “What friends?”

  SEVEN

  She was not sleeping well at all. Her life had resumed a normal facade; she was always in the kitchen moments before David, making coffee, teasing him, talking about his book, being cheerful and, she hoped, sounding very sane and sensible and happy.

  But he wasn’t fooled. Why had she even for a moment thought that she could fool David? He knew her, and in a way, she knew and understood him as he did her. So it was only a question of time before he faced her with the truth: she was not happy.

  When David would come into the kitchen and have his breakfast, he said very little. He ate, but not with the heartiness he’d once had, and when it was time to begin work, he typed with a fury, sitting across the room from her, banging away on his typewriter.

  “It’s not very good, is it?” he asked her one evening. He got up from his desk, looking rather thin and weary. “Something seems to have gone wrong.”

  “David—”

  He went to the window; his wide, rather bony shoulders seemed slumped. “I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. You’ve become my severest—and best—critic.” He looked hard at her. “Well, Jamie, I’m right, am I not? My novel has become a burden to me. It’s going along, but the magic isn’t there anymore. The truth is, my dear, I’m spending all my energy worrying over you and what’s to become of you.” He seemed to hesitate. “What if he dies on that mountain? What will you do then?”

  “I don’t think about that.” She folded her hands, there at her desk. She’d slept badly, gotten only four hours’ rest and probably only minutes of actual sleep, and now, at the beginning of a long day, she already felt tired and edgy.

  “Do you realize that every hostess in Aspen is trying to get in touch with you?”

  “No,” Jamie said, surprised, “I didn’t know that. There’ve been no calls or messages—”

  “I’m afraid there have,” he said unabashedly. “I simply didn’t give them to you. In my opinion, you’re going to many too many social disgraces right now. If I start telling you all the people who want you to drop by and say hello—and bring Thorne, naturally—I’d never get my book typed. You’d spend all your time being the belle of the Beautiful People. Their pet, their darling for this season. They love finding a pet, you know. Last year it was an artist, the year before that a clever fellow who painted fake masterpieces and sold them at outrageous prices. He cheated them but they adored him anyway. They’re after you, Jamie, like hunters after the hunted. And that is why I can’t stop worrying.”

  “I’d like very much for you to stop worrying about me. I know you don’t approve of my—friendship with Thorne and I’m sorry about that.” She decided to go ahead and say it: “Please don’t ask me not to see him anymore, because I’ve no intention of listening if you do.”

  “Does he love you?” It was a direct question; his eyes were steady and dark behind his glasses. “Has he told you he does?”

  “That’s really none of your business!” She had not meant to sound so harsh; sometimes David could be very much like a spoiled, dependent child, always telling her how much he needed her and then behaving in a very naughty way.

  “Now I’ve got you angry with me,” he said, shaking his head. “Come on; let’s get to work. Maybe this pea brain of mine will come up with some great idea to make you happy again.”

  Happy again? What about—what about her happiness with Thorne?

  She concentrated on her work for the next four and a half hours, there in David’s study. He was across the room at his typewriter only for half the morning or less. Once, as she glanced out the window, weary of the sound of the new electric typewriter, she saw David crossing the street, dodging traffic, apparently in a great hurry.

  She went back to work. She hadn’t read this chapter of his book yet and she found that, although it was fiction and names were changed, the people in it sometimes were very clearly those she had spoken to or danced with or sat with the night before at some party Thorne had taken her to. The parties were endless; they went on at odd hours of the day and all night, every night. For a break from them, people skied or sat around the big, comfortable but always crowded Lodge, or they bunched into bars or coffeehouses, looking for someone to tell them where the best party going was.

  Around noon, she stood up to stretch and saw David coming hurriedly around the corner. He checked his watch, came up onto the porch and stomped his feet to get snow off. Then he came inside and began yelling for Jamie.

  “Here I am! David—what on earth is—”

  “I was afraid you’d finished up early and left.” He glanced at the housekeeper who was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. “It’s perfectly all right, Emma. I’m taking my secretary on a picnic, so I wonder if you’d mind putting whatever you’ve fixed for us in a box or something.”

  “A picnic! David, it’s supposed to snow today!” That was so; Thorne had told her he’d be on the slopes early, getting up very early to practice-run. He was to call her at five, something about a cocktail party at someone’s house.

  “Snow? Put in a thermos of soup, please, Emma. And maybe some brandy. Get your coat, Jamie, we’re leaving.”

  “But—”

  He reached into the front closet and took out a plastic clothes-bag, reaching into it. “Here—this was Margo’s. It’s warmer than animal fur; she’d never wear that. Put it on and come and see what’s waiting in front.”

  For an instant Jamie felt hesitant about putting on the dead woman’s coat, but the feeling quickly passed. It was indeed a lovely sort of garment, soft and light but wonderfully cozy and warm. There was a hood; David quickly flipped it up and tied it beneath her chin as if she were a child.

  “Come along; I have to pay by the hour, you know.”

  “What?”

  “He told me we could keep her as long as we want but it’s by the hour. If you like it and we don’t freeze, we can go all the way out to a place I think you’ll like, for dinner.”

  She had stepped out the door, warmly bound by the jacket and hood, and now she stared out to the street. There was a horse and buggy there, waiting, tied to a young tree.

  “Like it?”

  “David, I’m not sure I—”

  “Of course you can. He’ll be on the mountain all day anyway, most likely. There isn’t that much time before the big day, is there? I promise I’ll have you back early enough for him to keep you out half the night Okay?”

  She couldn’t refuse. Emma handed David a rather large box and a very large thermos of homemade soup, and waved as David, settled on the driver’s side, urged the horse to start walking.

  “Emma’s a terrible liar,” David said. “She never makes her own soup. It’s always out of a can.” He smiled at Jamie, there beside him on the seat. “Warm enough?”

  She saw worry and something that was so much concern it could have been love in his eyes. Love—she didn’t want that from this man. But there was something she did want, and that was a little wisdom.

  She was beginning to feel that her feeling for Thorne was some kind of wild mistake, that it shouldn’t have happened. It was a terrible thing to admit, but there were moments, at a party or watching women and young girls crowd around him, that she had a certain feeling of despair inside her, the feeling that, if she’d never met him, her life could have been smooth, happy, with no wild ups and no plunging downs.

  So it felt good, sitting beside David, knowing that, no matter what happened, no matter what was said, it wouldn’t change their friendship. In a way, perhaps she needed David as much as he said he needed her.

  There was snow on the ground and on the trees; it was like a ride into a crystal-whit
e place she’d never been before. The jacket and lap robes kept her quite warm; David had reached into Margo’s coat and pulled out a pair of small, warm mittens that easily fit Jamie’s hands. Oddly enough, she did not feel ill at ease about the mittens or coat; she had enjoyed listening to David speak of Margo. He didn’t do it often, but Jamie felt certain it had been a beautiful love story and that someday he would write about it.

  His glasses steamed up from the cold, finally, so they pulled off the pretty, winding back road and he uncorked the thermos.

  “Here. You have the soup and I’ll have the brandy.”

  “Not yet. David—it was very nice of you to do this.”

  “Good. I was afraid I might have to bring you kicking and hollering.” He poured himself a tiny sip of brandy into the top of the flask. “I have something to tell you, you see. It’s got to do with loving other people. I don’t think you understand what I’m talking about and I mean to see that you do.”

  Yes, she was ready to talk about that. Because she was certain that she was in love with Thorne, and nearly certain that he loved her.

  Perhaps David could help her discover why this fact made her uneasy, even unhappy sometimes.

  They rode for the better part of an hour. There was a roadside lodge about thirty minutes out, and they warmed their feet there and watched a three-year-old boy deftly put on his skis.

  “Starting early,” David said, helping her into the buggy once more. “Come on—the horse is getting a bit cold, I think.”

  She mentioned the child over cocktails at one of David’s favorite places, an old inn at the end of a narrow, snowy road.

  “I wonder if that little boy will go on with it.”

  “The one putting on skis? Yes,” David told her, “I thought that would ring a bell somewhere inside your head.” He reached over and covered her hand with his. He still wore his wedding ring. “You’re afraid for him, aren’t you?”

  She knew he was talking not about the child but about Thorne. Out the far window, one could see Ajax. They had spent all those hours, riding in the buggy, stopping to get warm, stopping for tea, now they were here, and they were both chilled and tired, and there it was, there was the mountain, still there, as huge as ever, watching her.

  There was no running away from it. Or from the fact that, in a matter of days—nine to be exact—Thorne would be trying to ski down the far face of it, all the way down. And nobody had ever done that, including her cousin.

  “Aren’t you, Jamie?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Of course I’m afraid for him. But I can’t stop him. Nobody could do that.”

  “I might be able to.”

  She looked at him. She knew the look; David had some plan in mind. It was the same look his face had when he was planning a chapter, thinking about a character.

  “You think you can convince Thorne not to ski Silverlode? I thought you were, when you come right down to it, a realist, David.”

  “I am.” He let go her hand, searching for his pipe. “It’s all part of a kind of planned hoopla that basically makes a lot of people in town very rich. Just having Thorne Gundersen in the general area makes them generally rich. Groupies flock here to get a look at him. Parents fly here to bring groupie kids home, but not until they’ve hung around long enough—probably until after Thorne tries to ski Silverlode Run—to spend more money than the average man makes in six months. And perhaps more importantly—” He was lighting his pipe, puffing away furiously, looking at her through the blue smoke, “the Beautiful People want him to ski Ajax. They want a hero, even if it’s soon going to be a dead one.”

  She put her glass down very quickly. “Thorne is—more capable than my cousin was. He wouldn’t try it if he didn’t feel he could make it. Not to please his friends, or groupies or anyone.”

  “Jamie,” David said gently, “before you can help him, you’re going to have to try to understand him. And you don’t, you know. That’s what’s wrong; that’s what’s missing. He kisses you very well; it’s probably going to end up in very wonderful sex, possibly before he tries Silverlode, but the point is—the two of you communicate about as well as Rhonda and I do. We aren’t bitter enemies; in fact, from time to time we’ve been physical lovers. I’m not being ungentlemanly—everyone here knows she’s spent nights here, or else I haven’t rushed directly home after one of her crazy parties. But what I’m saying is simply that, although in a way I find Rhonda very interesting and even exciting, we never talk about anything real.” He signaled the waiter. “Let’s go and sit by the fireplace while they fix our dinner, Jamie. They’ve a very pleasant, private dining room in the back. Would you like to eat in there?”

  It was a charming room, very old; it had been some kind of back bedroom in the old house during the days when Aspen was really young. It had been one of the first houses in town, built soon after the town had been named by a shrewd man who had sometimes been called a low-down claim jumper: Clark Wheeler. He’d called it Aspen, because of the trees in the area. The miners had killed a lot of them, but they were still plentiful, there on the mountains, lining the roads.

  “A man named Deerjack built this house,” David told Jamie, settling himself beside her on the low couch in front of the fireplace. The door to the room had been left discreetly open, but all the same, the room seemed very private. “He made his money mining silver. They say he promised his wife a fine house and built this one for her. Unfortunately, he was killed in one of the mines before they moved in here. So she didn’t move in either—she went back East to Philadelphia. So you see, if it hadn’t been for his ambition—”

  “Are you trying to tell me something, David?”

  “Of course. But it isn’t something you don’t know right now. Thorne hasn’t a chance in the wind of surviving that ski run. But he knows that too. That’s what I don’t understand.”

  Suddenly Jamie thought she could hear the wind outside, the cold wind that sometimes rattled windows and seemed to knock on doors, like a ghost or perhaps like some angel come to call. The angel of death.

  “You’re wrong, David,” she said quietly, “Thorne wouldn’t try unless he was confident—”

  “Stop kidding yourself, Jamie! Listen,” he said earnestly, bending toward her in front of the warm fire, his face worried. “I talk to people, on the phone, in a bar. I’m not always behind that desk working, as you may or may not have noticed. And the word is that Thorne Gundersen is as good as dead!”

  She stared at him, slow horror creeping over her. It was possible; it was entirely possible that he wasn’t lying, or trying to frighten her into making a move. David didn’t want to manipulate her or anyone; that was one of the things he always put down in his books: loss of personal freedom, selfish manipulation—he hated those things and said so.

  “We’ve got to stop him,” she said finally. “David—if anyone can talk to him, you can!”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Think it’ll do any good? You haven’t known him long but I’m sure you know him better than that.”

  Her hand had begun trembling on the glass. “Is this what you’ve been wanting to talk to me about?”

  “Partly. I also wanted you to understand something about loving someone. I’m not sure you’re past the dating stage with Thorne. And I’m not at all sure it isn’t the fascination of who he is that’s charming you—not the man himself.”

  “David, I don’t think—”

  “Of course you don’t. Not about what you should be thinking about, anyway. That, little girl, is why I’ve gone to the trouble of freezing my feet to come all the way out here in that infernal, cold buggy—not just because it’s quaint but to give you a chance to get away from Gundersen and do some clear thinking. Mountain air,” he said, “is supposed to be good for that.”

  She looked at him. There was no doubting the kindness and deep concern in his eyes. And he was right, of course; he was only saying something outright that she had felt all along. It was wild insanity for T
horne to try to make it down Silverlode. Silverlode was one of those trails that wasn’t meant to be conquered.

  “You’re saying that by allowing myself to be in love with Thorne, I’m setting myself up for a very bad time if he doesn’t make it.” He didn’t answer her, but she knew, of course, that was what David had been talking about. “Well, then, what should I do?” Walk to the phone, she told herself. Call Thorne and tell him either to forget Silverlode or else forget me!

  “Two possible answers, I’d say. Let’s order dinner and we’ll discuss them.” He smiled at her. “I really think you’re going to like one of them very much.”

  She tried to eat, to please David, but it was very difficult. He had a way of getting through to the truth, like the little child in the fable about the naked king. Now, now that she was forced to face the distinct possibility that, very soon now, she might be forced to go through the pain of loss she’d suffered when her cousin had died.

  “Should I say it?” She put down her napkin. “I wish I’d never met him.”

  “Good,” David said heartily. “That’s a healthy beginning. Eat your salad and I’ll tell you what I have in mind.”

  “I’m not going to Jamaica, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I’ve no intention of trying to take you away from it all, Jamie. If you really think that, let me waste no time in telling you what seems to me to be the best possible solution to what we’re both dreading—your friend’s trip down the mountain on skis.” He leaned closer to her. “We simply put a stop to it. To the exhibition.”

  “But—how could we—”

  “We ban it. We get people to sign a paper and we take it wherever we need to so nobody will ever get killed on that mountain again—at least not for the purposes of making money. Did you ever stop to think what Thorne’s being paid to take that chance?”

  Would he, was it possible that he would risk his life for money? She threw aside that thought almost immediately. Thorne didn’t need money; his father had left him a fortune. Besides, he seemed to have a peculiar dislike for material things—the lovely mountainside house was rented, so was the furniture. His car had been expensive at one time, but now it was rather old and somewhat battered-looking.