by Amy Field
As she turned around she realized that he was still holding her pack in one arm. The other he had stretched across Dina’s shoulders. The poor girl looked visibly uncomfortable.
“Doin’ well, Bud,” she hoped that this would re-situate him very much in the friend-zone, as well as clue Dina in as to the creep factor. As she watched them, however, she wasn’t really sure that Dina needed much cluing in.
“So, Catherine,” he said. “Your first big hike. Are you ready for a few of those pointers we talked about last night?” The way he made last night made it sound like it was something that it wasn’t, but she wasn’t worried that Dina would get the wrong idea. From the look she was giving this guy, she had his number right off the bat.
“Yeah, thanks Jacob. I really think I’m doing fine. I’m just out here enjoying myself with God and nature. And I know you were worried about my being lonely, but I’m already making new friends.”
With that she reached over and took Dina by the hand, tugging her a little too harshly so that she’d come free of Lance’s grasp. He let her go and looked puzzled between the two of them.
“I don’t know how Zamboni-driving works, but I can imagine it’s easy to get pretty narrowly focused, lose track of the big picture. If practicing law has taught me anything, it’s that you never turn down the opportunity to get a favor or to give one.”
She bit her lip, considering what would be best to say. She really didn’t want to piss him off any more than she had to. Apart from being generally creepy, they were essentially living together for the next two to three weeks. It might pay to play along to get along. She just wasn’t sure how much ‘play’ he was going to demand in the end.
She offered what she hoped was a reassuring grin. “Of course you’re right, Lance.” Playing to his ego seemed like a good idea. “It is easy to miss the forest for the trees sometime. I just know that for me to focus, I’m going to need some quiet, and to be surrounded by people that I trust.”
His face broke out into a grotesque parody of a grin. “Oh, Catherine, Sweetheart, you can trust me.” He looked over at Dina and gave her the same awful smile. “You. Can. Trust. Me.” And with that, he was off.
As soon as he was out of earshot Dina said something in French. Katie didn’t need a translation.
“I know, right? Super-Creepy.”
Dina agreed. “Ya. Super-creepy.”
Before they knew it Jacob was calling them back into formation again. Katie and Dina took their places at the end of the line and chatted amicably about life, without getting into any real specifics. Katie admitted that she had considered something a little more strenuous, but was glad that she’d chosen Mont Blanc. She wasn’t trying to prove anything to herself physically, but kind of hit the reset button psychologically and emotionally. Of course, Dina didn’t realize that the reason Katie didn’t need to prove anything physically was because she already had, but Katie still felt understood. They connected, and that was enough.
They broke for lunch at about one in the afternoon. Katie had imagined munching on protein bars and granola, but was happily surprised to see Jacob produce a surprisingly large propane stove from his pack, and various packets and satchels of food. Dina led the crew in gathering water from a nearby stream, showed them how to use the purification equipment, and in just over a half an hour a delicious-tasting lentil soup bubbled and popped from the stovetop. Katie’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t noticed how hungry she was until now.
When it was ready, Jacob called them over and gave them instructions. They’d be eating out of coffee mugs and using a fancy kind of metal spork to eat from. He instructed that none of the food was to go directly onto the ground, which would both attract animals as well as dirty the environment. Then, just before inviting them to eat, he gazed backwards over his shoulder towards the beautiful mountain vista that lay before them.
“You won’t find a view like this at of the finest restaurants in London, in Paris, or in New York,” he said. “I’ve lived in all three, and this,” he gestured towards the heights. “This is why I stay here. It reminds me of how small I am and how very big the world is. Take a moment now, before we eat, to be grateful: for the view, for the food, for the company—to be alive. That, friends, is what Christians call ‘grace.’” He bowed his head but his eyes continued to dance with life.
Katie marveled at how unselfconscious he was praying in front of other people, and, not so much demanding that they join him, but giving them the freedom to do so. She wasn’t an especially religious girl herself, and she wasn’t altogether sure where she stood on the whole God question, but she appreciated this kind of Christian—enthusiastic without being pushy, inviting without being preachy, he made her want to pray with him, even though she didn’t really know how to pray.
Most of the group was having the same reaction. A few of the men took off their hats, and most people bowed their heads. Lance, however, had that resting sneer firmly spread across his face. When Jacob murmured a soft ‘Amen,” and invited everyone forward for their soup, Lance hocked a big loogie and made sure the spittle landed near Jacob’s feet. Jacob barely gave it a second glance, simply covered over the spittle with his foot and went back to serving the food. When Lance’s turn came he made sure to give him an extra spoonful of the soup.
“What’s that for?” Lance seemed suspicious.
Jacob shrugged. “You looked hungrier than the rest.”
This raised a few eyebrows, but no one said a word.
Lance had been chatting during the hike with an attorney from London. He sat now with the man and his wife, lecturing them on the superiority of the American legal system, and especially of the benefits it offered its attorneys. The wife was long-suffering but the husband seemed to be just as big a blowhard as Lance, if maybe twenty years older. All Katie knew was that she was glad to have a break from them for the meal.
She sat with Dina, Jacob, and a single older man named Laurence. He was a philosophy professor from a small college in New Hampshire. He was a quiet man but kind and very polite. Nobody seemed bothered by him in the slightest.
They ate in silence for a long while. At one point the clouds parted over an adjacent peak revealing a stunning white mountaintop. Everyone gasped.
“I didn’t know there was this much beauty in the whole world,” Katie thought to herself.
“Oh there’s this, and much more besides.” It was Jacob who spoke now. She realized she must have been thinking out loud.
“I couldn’t imagine you’d give us the best view on the first day.”
Jacob laughed. It was an easy laugh, and one that made Katie feel comfortable with him. “There is that,” he said. “But it’s not all sales. The views, naturally, get better the further up you hike.”
Katie nodded.
“The best part, though,” Jacob leaned back against large rock and interlaced his fingers behind his hands. “The best part is at nighttime. You’ll catch a glimpse of it tonight, and it will only get better from there. But the stars will be out in dazzling array and will dance like something you’ve never dreamed of, and without any of the light pollution to obscure the view. Revel in the beauty; soak it in. Take pictures, memorize the landscape, write a poem about it.” He broke his hands free from one another and leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs. “Every second out here is more breathtaking than the last. This is, after all, why you’ve come.”
Jacob slapped his hands to his thighs and hopped up, then bent down to take Katie’s mug and spork. Together with his own he trotted over to where Dina and Laurence had already started doing the dishes.
Katie looked on after him. He was simply the most amazing man she’d ever met. She’d read about people like him, had maybe heard girlfriends describe guys like him, but she’d always assumed they were exaggerating or just plain love struck. Confronted with him here, though, in the flesh, she had to admit that maybe it wasn’t just the beauty of nature that she’d come to see; maybe she had to have her
faith in her fellowman restored as well.
That faith was quickly shaken, however, by the arrival of her least-favorite lawyer. He dropped himself down in the very same spot which Jacob had just occupied. He made her shiver.
“So, Catherine,” he started, reaching into his vest pocket and pulling out a flask. “How’s it going?”
She ignored the question. “What’s in the flask?” She tried hard not to make it sound like an accusation. It could just be water, after all.
He gave her a conspiratorial smile. “Chivas-Regal,” he said. “The good stuff. I never finish a meal without at least one belt of something that will warm me up from the inside out.” He took a drink. Then, glancing around, he leaned forward and offered the flask to Katie. “Want some?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m fine. I’d just assume keep my wits about me as we hike.”
He shrugged, took another drink and then replaced the flask. Then he leaned back against the same rock and assumed a posture almost identical to Jacob’s. It was a weird parody of the conversation she’d just had.
“My wits are so keen,” he sighed. “That I probably drink to dull myself. You know, just to bring myself down to everyone else’s level.”
She nodded despite herself. His arrogance was absolutely astounding.
“Listen,” he said abruptly, leaning forward on his haunches like Jacob, but making it appear as though he was hatching a plot rather than sharing an insight. “I heard Jacob and Dina talking about the lodge we’ll be staying in tonight. Apparently there aren’t enough rooms, and they’ll be looking for some of the singles to double up together.” He looked her square in the eyes. “Be my roomie, Catherine?”
“Not a chance,” was was she thought. What came out of her mouth was this. “Actually, Dina and I are rooming together for the rest of the trip.”
“Really, I figured she’d stay with her brother.”
He had a reasonable point here, but Katie was fairly sure that Dina would play ball with her once she heard about his indecent proposal. She looked on at Lance. It was weird, in this light he looked a little like a blond Gaston, from Beauty and the Beast. What was weird about it, though, was that Jacob resembled the character more in a physical sense, but that Lance’s personality captured the character’s cockiness perfectly.
“Catherine, let’s be real here for a sec. I am way, way, way out of your league. A big city attorney like me could have any girl he wants, and a, a…” he searched for the right words. “An ice rink supervisor from Kansas City, well you might land a minor league hockey player in a pinch. More likely, though, your prospects are wheat farmers and packing house workers. I’m a very successful man, a very influential man. I can give you the things you want. I can get you a job in places you never dreamed. You want to run an ice rink in New York? Done. You want to work for the Anaheim Ducks? I represented their manager last year, he owes me a favor. I’m not looking to get married, but I’m also not looking to spend this vacation as a monk. Mr. Christian over there,” he nodded towards Jacob and Dina. “He doesn’t care who you sleep with or how you spend your time. You don’t owe him a thing. So bunk up with me for the remainder of the trip. Give me what I want and what I know you want too, and we both go home happy, and you go home with more prospects than you ever dreamed of. We both deserve the best, after all.” He got up, walked over to her and squatted down so that his eyes met hers. “What do you say?”
She didn’t want to say anything. She wanted to punch him in the face. She settled for a couple of deep cleansing breaths, a heavy sigh, and then then standing up.
“You’re absolutely right, Lance. I do deserve the best.”
He smiled and rose to meet her, but because of the grade they were standing on she was about an inch and a half taller than he was. She looked down into his eyes, hard.
“Which is why I’m going to make this crystal clear to you. I don’t like you. I don’t want to have sex with you. I don’t want to be beholden to you for work, money, booze, or anything else. I am not looking for a romantic solution to the problem of my singleness, because I don’t see it as a problem. What I do see as a problem is you, the way you’ve interacted with me me, with Dina, and with every other woman on this trip. I don’t want to talk to you again, and as best as I can, I don’t want to see you again—ever. Understood?”
Lance’s face changed about halfway through her rant. First it fell in disappointment and then started to grow brick-red in anger. “Fine, Ms. Catherine,” his words fairly dripped with contempt. “I’ll give you your space. I don’t mind having to work hard to pursue a case, but just remember, in the end, I always win.”
“What’s going on here?” Jacob and Dina had reappeared, their packs ready and apparently trying to get everyone back on the trail.
“Nothing, Dudley Do-Right,” Lance sneered. “You wouldn’t understand. Why don’t you just go commune with the trees or something.”
Jacob inquired as to what had occurred, and though Katie tried to minimize it, he got the picture. Dina agreed to bunk with Katie, and Jacob promised both girls he’d keep a closer eye on Lance. He wasn’t going to have his clients threatening each other on his watch.
They hiked until it was nearly dark. The village they were staying in was small, little more than a hunting lodge, a bar, and a church that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. Dina and Katie wound up sharing a room, as did Lance and Jacob. By the end of that first day, though, pretty much everyone was so tired that they went to bed early. Even in her exhaustion, however, Katie couldn’t miss a glance out her window at the starscape Jacob had promised, and it was even better than she had imagined. Then she found herself, silently and inexplicably, thanking someone for it. The word “God” was not precisely what came to her mind, but she realized in that moment, just before sleep took over, that she was really and truly grateful for the first time in ages: grateful for the trip, grateful for the sights, grateful for new friends like Dina, and most of all, grateful for Jacob, who was acting as her guide in more ways than one.
The next morning she rose before dawn and took a sketchbook outside with her. She hadn’t drawn seriously since high school, once speed skating definitively took over her life. She had designed her team’s uniforms a couple of times, however, so she wasn’t totally out of practice. When she saw the sketchbook and pencil set at the airport she bought it on impulse, and now she was glad she had. She had a vista to paint here that would be unlike anything she could get from the skylines, either in Chicago or New York.
While she was sitting on a rock sketching some distance from the lodge she heard the unmistakable sound of someone jogging. Turning, she saw Jacob running down from path from higher on the mountain. Despite the chill, he had his shirt off and slung over his left shoulder. His hair was wet and slick with sweat, and his whole body glistened. Katie was half-tempted to ask him to stand still so that he could model for her. He was beautiful—like a Greek or Roman god chiseled in the marble of some long-forgotten temple.
Again, before she realized it, he was at her side.
“Good morning, Catherine.”
“Good morning, Jacob. How did you sleep?”
Burn off some energy? Katie knew well the patter of early morning exercise, but it had always had a purpose—a function. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d exercised on purpose, when she really didn’t have to, just for the fun of it. It was a little bit like what would happen when, on one of those rare occasions, she’d be visiting home at the same time that one of her nieces and nephews were having a Little League game or Pee-Wee Soccer. She did her best to act only like every other mom in the stands, but she couldn’t help feel a twinge of jealousy for these little kids. After all, somehow their games were still games to them. When had something been a true game for her?
Again, she was brought back to the present moment by Jacob’s gentle voice.
“After yesterday’s start? I slept the sleep of the just.” He chuckled to himself
. “I snored like a baby, enough that I was up early and knew I had to run to burn of some energy. And the stars? Did you see any before bed last night?”
She nodded her head enthusiastically. “They were so beautiful, Jacob. I watched them from my window before I fell asleep. I even found myself wishing on them.”
Jacob laughed again, that free easy laugh that made her laugh as well, and wish that her own laugh were as free or as easy. “Well, the views will only get better, so you’ll have plenty of wishing yet to do.” He pulled his shirt off of his shoulder and wiped the sweat from his brow and underarms. The scent caught her off guard. As an athlete she was used to the smell of human sweat, and the whole array of body sprays and deodorants that perfumed American locker rooms. She was even used to the stink of athletes from the rest of the world where neither hygiene nor odor were as big a deal. But this was something else altogether. Jacob, she was sure, was wearing no deodorant, but his sweat smelled fresh and clean, like belonged here in the frost-tinged outdoors. It made her flush, and ache deep inside. She supposed that his sweat just naturally accomplished what the expensive cologne Lance wore was meant to do—and that pale imitation was no competition for the genuine article.
Seeing the expression on her face he smiled and excused himself, saying that he needed to shower and change before getting breakfast ready. Katie found herself wanting to use every excuse in the book to get him to stay, but she didn’t. She simply watched in gratitude as he walked away, and found herself doing that thing she’d been doing the night before; thanking…God? The Universe? Well thanking Whoever for having a man like that around. Was this what praying felt like?
She returned to her drawing, and very shortly Jacob reemerged from the lodge, hair still wet, but with a fresh clean shirt and jeans. His pack was already prepared for the trek, but he immediately set up the camp stove again and started to prepare some breakfast. Katie watched as he fried up bacon and eggs, chopped up fruit and even prepared little bowls of nuts. He took such care with everything, even the bowls of fruits and nuts. He didn’t have to do that; he was their guide, not their cook and their cleaner. And this domestic work looked almost incongruous with his physique—this strongly built woodsmen who could have been some ancient god, tending to the needs of the mostly soft group of rich tourists who were mostly interested in postcard-style shots of the mountains and tales of adventure to make their acquaintances back home jealous.
