by Amy Field
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 a
nd 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.
And then he was standing behind her, exactly opposite of Jacob had stood just a few moments before. “Fantastic view, isn’t it?”
She looked turned slightly. Lance’s face was hard to see with the rising sun, but there was no mistaking the rage in his eyes and the leer of his mouth.
“It was, till you came along.”
He leaned in close, so that he was almost whispering in her ear. “It wasn’t the landscape I was talking about.” He moved so that his body was clearly invading her own personal space, but he never actually touched her. He was like some great snake playing with his prey.
She thought about Jacob, and about how he would want her to handle a situation like this. She knew that yesterday had not gone especially well, and she knew that was at least partly her fault. She meant to be firm but kind today; her chance to practice had just come early.
“Listen, Lance,” she said, trying to put on a genuinely sympathetic voice. “I was wrong with some of what I said yesterday. I’m sure you really are a great guy, and that you’ve got lots of wonderful qualities that loads of girls would want. I’m just in a really difficult place emotionally right now, and you coming on so strong kind of freaked me out. It’s not that I don’t like you,” she actually reached out and touched him on the arm. “It’s just that I need a little bit of space. And I need some time to figure things out.”
He smiled a little, and it wasn’t his creepiest smile, which allowed Katie to relax slightly. “I do understand, Catherine. I do. And I can help you figure out just what need. You just need to let me in.”
She bit her lip again, which she knew could be easily misinterpreted. She needed to be firm but kind. “The thing is, Lance, you’re just not the type of guy I want to let in right now.” His eyes blazed. She tried to do some damage control and play to his ego. “Maybe because you’ve got it all together, because you’re so successful or whatever. Maybe what I need is just some minor league hockey washout, or a wheat farmer who can’t see past this year’s grain prices. You’re just too good for me.”
Okay, now she was in trouble. She was laying it on too thick, and even he wasn’t dense enough not to notice. He moved in closer again, close enough that she could feel his breath hot on her neck, which broke out into goose pimples involuntarily.
“Believe me, Catherine, I am exactly your type. We could do amazing things together, you and I: have a lot of fun, go anywhere we wanted, do anything we wanted to do. I am, literally, the best guy you will ever meet.”
As soon as he said the words her eyes darted involuntarily over to Jacob. She didn’t have to say a thing.
Instead of getting angry, however, Lance grew weirdly sympathetic. “Look, I get it. He’s big. He’s strong. He’s foreign and so exotic. And he seems like such a ‘good guy’. But believe me, Catherine, guys like that, they don’t want girls like you. You’re damaged goods. You’ve been spreading it for whatever guy actually paid you attention since you were what: fifteen? Sixteen? This guy wants a virgin, both in spirit and in fact, and we both know…” He leaned in close again, whispering into her ear. “You are neither!”
She shuddered and struggled to hold back the tears. He was right, of course; she was no virgin, but she wasn’t the undiscerning little slut he was making her out to be either. It may well be that she wasn’t good enough for a man like Jacob, but she knew damn well she deserved more than a man like Lance.
Something in her snapped. Before she knew it, she had raised both hands and pushed hard, from the chest, into Lance’s own. He tripped over backwards and landed on his butt, hard.
“Now you listen here, you lecherous creep.” Her voice was strong with a conviction no one had heard since she had arrived in Europe, and she hadn’t heard herself since shouldn’t remember when. “I am not some statistic in some study you’ve produced to confuse a jury and beat out the competition. I’m not some intern you can easily intimidate either with threats to my career or promises of opportunity. I’m not even some successful business woman who would find laying you as satisfying a conquest as you would be. And I am most certainly not another notch for bedpost or knock in your belt. I am a woman, with ideas and hopes and dreams and fears and love the likes of which you have never seen. You have done nothing since you arrived here but treat me and the other women on this crew with leering eye and disrespe
ct. You aren’t suave or smooth; your slick like a car salesman and creepy like a child molester. You’re the guy in bars that girls avoid, and the only reason any woman would ever sleep with you is because her self-esteem was so broken that she was trying to prove to herself that she was unworthy, unwanted, and unloved. I am not the unlovable one here, Lance, you are, and you keep your distance or, lawyer or not, I will find a Swiss policeman and have you drawn up on every single sexual harassment statue they’ve got in the book. Do you understand me?”
She stood boldly over him, though he didn’t cower. He seemed to be watching with some vague amusement. Jacob had abandoned the breakfast preparations and approached some time ago but was watching from a few feet away, and better than half of the group had just watched and heard the whole interaction. Jacob closed the distance between then and approached.
“What’s going on over here?” He sounded angry.
Lance looked up at him, then reached out his hand. Jacob pulled him up and Lance dusted himself off. He smiled his most repentant smile. “Nothing, nothing at all. I was just trying to be friendly but the lady here has made it very clear that she would like her space. I’m a gentleman, so I’m very happy to do that.” And with that he was off.
Jacob invited Katie over to where the group had assembled, and a few of the women placed their hands on her and gave sympathetic coos of support. Lance, for his part, went back inside the lodge. The rest of the crew ate breakfast, mostly in an awkward silence, and Lance did not return from inside the lodge. After the dishes were done Jacob retrieved him and they started out again along the trail.
A new order had emerged within the hiking party. Lance had drifted to the back near Dina, and Jacob had noticed, asking Laurence, the philosophy professor, if he’d stay near the back to keep an eye on them. Some of the couples in the middle had rearranged themselves, and Katie had found herself drifting into Jacob’s protective shadow.
