Bridge To Happiness

by Jill Barnett

  Sitting there with my wine glass, I leaned my head back against the pillows and closed my eyes. The only sound was my own heartbeat.

  The storm lasted another two days, with white-out conditions on the mountain and only a short break before another storm hit, so my sons didn’t come up that weekend after all. Molly was off with Spider (I was going to work on accepting that situation) and Mickey was happily ensconced back on campus, where he loved his graphic arts class and had plans of his own to go up to the local mountains on a boarding trip.

  From the time he’d first gone off to school last fall, he called home regularly, Tuesdays and Fridays. I learned the sunny days in Westwood sent him constantly off doing something fun, especially with the mountains in one direction and the beach in the other.

  My Monday dawned cold and clear, and everything was feathery white or bright blue sky. I walked outside into that complete absence of sound that comes after a snowstorm. What was it Rio Paxton had said to me that day we were stuck on the lift? Twenty five percent of sound was absorbed by snow. As I stood there in the snow silence, I realized I felt good. There was some peace around me. Signs were all around that it would be an amazing day on the mountain.

  The runs at Heavenly were like riding on goosedown, and not crowded. I even ran into some old friends at the lodge during lunch, a couple Mike and I had known for twenty five years, and we met again at the end of the day for a drink and nachos at the crowded bar nearby.

  I came home a couple of hours later, cleaned up and threw on jeans and a soft sweater, and walked out to the kitchen for a bowl of ice cream. The message light on the answering machine was blinking like a railroad crossing. I pressed the play button.

  The red digital number twenty two flashed on the small screen. There were twenty two messages? My heart stopped.

  Now what had happened? I pressed PLAY.

  “Hi, March. This is Harrie. I’m just checking to see how you are. Give me a call if you have time to talk. Enjoy the snow!” There was a long pause. “If you need to talk, I’m here.”

  “Hi Mom. It’s Scott. Just checking to see if you’re okay today.”

  Next was Phillip, then Mike’s brother from Vancouver, Ellie, MC, May from Peru, even Molly. As I listened, I looked at the calendar and wanted to throw up. I had forgotten, or blocked out the date. Mike’s accident was a year ago today.

  I sat down on a nearby chair, then called my children, assured them I was fine and talked to each of them about their father, guided them toward some moment or memory I knew had been special, one that made them laugh. Only when I was certain each one of them was okay, did I end the phone call.

  By the time I was done, my mind was running in every direction, complete chaos. I stood in the center of the quiet house and knew I couldn’t stand there a moment longer.

  Peacocks screamed and Aztec gods moaned from the long bays of slot machines lined up like neon dominoes. The jackpots rang while a woman’s excited laughter came from a busy corner. Waitresses wove their way across the casino floor shouting “Cocktails! Beverages!” and male shouts and whoops pierced the air like buckshot from the hottest crap tables. All around me was noise, loud, blissful, rowdy, clamorous noise.

  In the first hour or so I’d won a couple hundred bucks at blackjack and spent another two hours losing it on a slot machine with singing Elvis piggies, then I became bored.

  In the lounge, a band from the Eighties had already wrapped up one show, so I sat just outside at the lounge bar, drinking Tequila Marys with three olives and talking to the chatty bartender who kept me supplied with extra olives.

  I had already planned to see a magician whose show was coming to the lounge later that week as my out-alone-at-the-casino-lounge-test, but tonight the music was upbeat and it was an uncrowded Monday, so when the midnight show started, I wandered inside, sat at a empty booth table in the darkest back corner and let them entertain me. This could be a new lesson. Maybe I could learn to drink alone.

  By the time the show stopped, I had gone through the three drink minimum and more. I looked down at a colorful pile of plastic olive skewers sitting there like Pick-up Stix on the small table. Taxi time. Around me the lounge had emptied, and I could hear the clatter of the band behind the curtain clearing out their instruments. But I didn’t get up right away.

  When I did stand, the room swam and so I sat back down hard and closed my eyes to stop the spinning, then leaned my head back against the padded leather booth. Somewhere in my tequila-fogged mind, I had the thought that this had been a bad idea.

  How long I stayed like that I didn’t know, and I might even have been snoring when I thought I heard my name. I closed my mouth and swallowed dryly. My mouth tasted like a parade ground for an army of green pimento-stuffed olives.

  “March?”

  I didn’t have to open my eyes because I knew that deep silky voice. “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Silence. Snap, snap, snap! Was he was snapping his fingers in front of my face? “I’m here,” I said, but I just wanted to stay where I was.

  “It’s Rio.”

  “I know.”

  “Open your eyes.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Open your eyes.”

  I put my finger to my lips and said, “Shhhh.”

  “You can’t sleep here. Security will take you out. Come on. Let me help you up.”

  “I’m not sleeping.”

  “Come on, darlin’. Stand up.”

  I smiled and opened my eyes. Rio’s face was just inches away. He really was too damned good-looking for one man to be. “Hi,” I said huskily. Why did I sound like Marilyn Monroe?

  “Stand up, darlin’.”

  “Okay. But only because you called me darling.”

  There was a smile to his voice when he coaxed me up again and slid his arm around me.

  “My purse.” I turned back around and almost keeled over.

  “Whoa. Hang on.”

  “I’m not a horse,” I said indignantly.

  “I know. I’m sorry. Slip of the tongue.”

  “You have a golden tongue.” I thought I heard him laughing.

  “I meant a golden voice.”

  “Hold still. I’ll get your purse.”

  “But I forgot about my coat.”

  “Do you have a claim ticket?”

  “In my back pocket.” I turned around and his hand patted across my behind. He pulled out the claim check.

  He took me by the shoulders and sat me down. “Stay there. Do not move. Do not leave. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll just take a little nap.” I leaned my head back and closed my eyes again.

  “March? I have your coat.” He was back again.

  “Thank you, but I’m asleep,” I said and didn’t move. “I lied before.”

  “You need to get up again, darlin’.” Now he was laughing.

  I took a deep breath and thought I needed to pull myself together, so in one big movement, I stood and started to move toward the entrance.

  “Not that way,” he said and put his hands on my shoulders and turned me toward the stage.

  “But I need a cab. Out there.” I turned and pointed toward the casino’s front entrance.

  “I’m not putting you in a cab by yourself. I’ll drive you home.”

  “Okay,” I said on a breathless sigh, frowning at the voice that came from my mouth. “I do sound like Marilyn Monroe.” I took a few more steps. “Happy Birthday, Mister President . . . Are you old enough to know what I’m talking about? Probably not,” I answered myself.” Do I know what I’m talking about?”

  “I’m sure you think you do,” he said lightly.

  I managed to walk up the stage stairs quite well, but I was steadier when he kept his arm around me. I glanced up at him as we maneuvered through the back stage and down a hallway toward doors with red lit exit signs. Tonight he was wearing a dark blue baseball cap.

  “I miss t
he cowboy hat,” I said.

  “I dressed for poker. Hides the eyes without drawing attention.”

  Together we moved toward the back doors, this tall, rugged-looking man with his arm around me, who smelled like coffee beans and sounded like rich and creamy dessert. He had my large red leather Dior purse hanging from his arm.

  “Your hat’s okay, but I like your purse much better.’ I said, and his sweet laughter was the last thing I remembered.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  A sharp shaft of bright sunshine woke me, and I took my first conscious breath; I smelled like tequila. I groaned and turned over, pulled a down pillow over my head which rang painfully, as if filled with a thousand church bells. The sheets felt silky against my bare skin—I was in my bra and panties—and I vaguely remembered waking in the middle of the night and stripping off my uncomfortable jeans and sleep-twisted sweater and tossing them somewhere.

  Even now in my current groggy and hungover state, I was acutely aware that I was not in my own bed.

  Rio Paxton.

  Sitting up was an effort, and I rubbed my throbbing eyes before I could actually focus on my surroundings. Across from me, a wall of tall broad windows let in a bit of bright yellow sunlight cracking through a dark sky roiling in with an approaching snowstorm. Outside the house, thick mounds of too-white fresh snow went part way up the glass.

  I shifted and the view was amazing. My breath caught at the southern panorama spread out before me: those clouds; the towering white Sierras; the round, rolling Nevada foothills; and seemingly miles and miles of the flat, snow-drift covered prairie that was Northern Nevada, broken only by distant tracks of fencing and an occasional barren tree.

  The golden shaft of sunlight was the only color; everything else was like looking through the lens of Ansel Adams: black, gray and white.

  From the distinctive terrain, I figured I was at the ranch Rio spoke of that day in the chairlift. The wood overhang of the roofline above the sharp point of windows was natural cedar, edged with deep green trim. I could see a glimpse of lodge wood siding, and if I shifted to the right, a flat stone wall that was most likely the back of a fireplace in a nearby room. The house was long and seemed to crouch outward, stretching clear to the corner with large posts that held the open roof of a covered patio. My mental image of ‘a ranch house in Sparks, Nevada,’ and this wood and stone home of Rio’s were polar opposites. The place had all the appearances of a big, sprawling and magazine worthy home.

  Inside my room, on the edge of a long pine dresser, my jeans and sweater were neatly folded, and a white spa robe was strategically accessible at the foot of the huge pine bed with its four thick, rough-hewn bed posts. To my great relief, a wide open door on the opposite wall showed an en suite bathroom, so I crawled out of bed and into the robe.

  A few minutes later I braced my hands on the marble counter of the bathroom and squinted into the ugly honesty of a big mirror. The whites of my eyes looked like Thomas Guide roadmaps, and the bed sheet had made creases across my cheek. I looked like what I was: a woman of a certain age who’d had too many drinks.

  Inside the medicine chest was an over-sized bottle of Excedrin, the kind they sold in those warehouse stores, so I took two and rummaged through a basket filled with small square boxes of hotel shower caps, mini shampoos, soaps, and body lotions, razors and travel-sized blue mouthwash bottles, mini-tubes of toothpaste and a new package of multicolored toothbrushes.

  The shower was hot and long and wonderful and by the time I was done, my head had stopped throbbing and I had scrubbed away the tequila sweat and smelled amazingly clean, in that old-fashioned motel soap scent. Camay, I think it was. My makeupless face was less puffy, but pink from the hot shower and moistened from a layer of Nivea cream. After I toweled my few inches of blonde tipped hair and finger-combed it, I looked semi-human again.

  A wooden tray had magically appeared and sat on the corner of the bed with a glass of orange juice and a hot mug of coffee with red dancing elk painted on it. There was a lined yellow Post-it note alongside written in a dark masculine scrawl:

  Aspirin’s in the medicine cabinet. Meet me in the kitchen. Turn right and down the end of hallway.

  Rio

  My heart began to pound and skip in a way I didn’t care to examine, and I wondered what I was going to say to him—other than thank you. Of course part of me was deeply embarrassed, getting so drunk, but it was over and done, like the margarita lunch that set Molly off, there was nothing I could do; you can’t live backwards.

  Common sense, something I’d seemed to have lost lately, still told me I should just get that first awkward moment over with. I chugged down the orange juice and sipped the coffee.

  The last time I had worn my panties inside out the airline had lost my luggage. To my amazement, my jeans were washed, soft and clean and folded with neat creases, and it looked as if my cashmere sweater had been freshened and pressed; it smelled like spray fabric softener.

  Outside the bedroom I walked down the hallway, snooping my way past two more bedrooms and a large library with dark wood bookcases and a huge rock fireplace.

  Rich and masculine and beautifully decorated, the room had huge hammered copper table lamps with square burlap shades and hanging copper and wrought iron light fixtures, inlaid wood tables and oversized saddle leather furniture arranged in the room’s center on an imported rug in shades of gold and green and red.

  I cast a quick furtive glance down the hall and went inside the room.

  The only wall without custom bookcases was wood-paneled and in its center hung an original Remington, and an antique wood and glass gun case holding a set of very old pistols was displayed above the fireplace.

  As I glanced around the room, I liked what I saw. The books on the shelves weren’t those classic, identically-bound leather and gilt books that people put in their bookcases to impress.

  On Rio’s shelves were real books, well-read books with cracked spines, torn jackets and white chips in the paperback covers, by authors you actually read—a timeline of popular writers: Ludlum, Shaw and Michener, Wilbur Smith, Patterson and McMurtry, Grisham and Cussler. McCarthy, Vonnegut, and Phillip Roth next to long shelves filled with old paperback Louie L’Amour westerns, mysteries, and thick historical fiction. Lined up together were every one of the Harry Potter books, and there was a section of poetry, both classic and contemporary.

  “Harry Potter and Keats,” I murmured as I left the room.

  At the end of the hallway, I could see the kitchen entrance, but to get there I had to walk through a small portion of what turned out to be a huge great room, probably thirty by forty with vaulted beamed ceilings, a bar and more floor to ceiling windows. The slate floors were heated.

  I could hear Rio talking in the kitchen when I was just steps away, so I plastered a smile on my face before I walked in.

  Rio was leaning casually against a stone counter in the kitchen, his hair looked wet and he was wearing faded jeans, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He was barefooted. Suddenly I felt less uncomfortable.

  He was drinking coffee from another red dancing elk mug as he talked on the phone, that rich voice of his a little serious, but he looked up and smiled as he casually waved me in and pointed over at a plank trestle table with comfortable, high-backed tapestry chairs and spread with serving dishes, more juice, and a metal coffee carafe. The table was set for two with plaid placemats the same colors of the tapestry chairs and red and marigold damask cloth napkins. Even the juice glasses were tinted amber.

  Rio Paxton evidently had a great decorator and an efficient housekeeper. I lifted the ceramic lid on a pinecone serving dish.

  Scrambled eggs with spinach, fresh tomatoes and cheese.

  Rio also had a cook.

  I sat at the long end of the table, away from another rock fireplace burning bright with wood that snapped and popped and made the kitchen feel too warm, and I poured myself another orange juice.

  He finished his business�
��something about a glitch in some recording equipment—and he set down the phone.

  I could hear the beat of my blood throbbing in my ears, and the moment of heavy silence in the kitchen proved it wasn’t exactly a race between us to see who spoke first.

  I set down my mug. “I need to thank you for what you did for me last night. I’m really terribly embarrassed. I was so drunk.” I looked away. “I guess I haven’t much to say for myself except it was the anniversary of a very bad day.”

  He gave me a speculative look, then walked over to the table and refilled his coffee and topped mine.

  “There are some things you don’t want to remember,” I said in a voice I didn’t like.

  “You’re apologizing to the wrong person, darlin’. My past makes last night look like a sweet little tea party.”

  I cupped the mug. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

  He laughed, then said, “I have the press documentation to prove it, and the sad thing is they don’t even know the half of it.”

  I remembered the old reports of carousing, that he was out of control and breaking up hotel rooms. There were fights in bars and an unfortunate mug shot of him on the news. But that was a long, long time ago. The man I was looking at appeared nothing like that out of control young man. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  I poured myself more coffee, while he ate a piece of bacon. “Did I actually sing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President?’ ”

  “You did. All the way across the casino’s back parking lot to my truck,” he said, laughing. “And sang it very well.”

  “You should have put me in a cab.”

  “Darlin’ you couldn’t tell me where you lived, except turn right off the Grade, so I doubt you could have told a cab driver. The good news is, now I know there are at least twenty five private roads and driveways off 207. We tried them all.”

  I groaned. “Our road’s just past the two mile post marker. On the right. But it’s hard to find when the snow’s this bad. We usually put a small blue flag on one of the trees but I forgot.” I paused. “I’m really sorry to have put you out.”