Текст книги "The Call of the Mountain"

Автор книги: Sam Neumann

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4

“You just left?”

“I did,” I said.

He looked at me a while longer, waiting for some further explanation, but I just shrugged my shoulders.

Anthony squinted his eyes and shook his head. “So…Megan’s okay with this?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“Are you getting a divorce?”

“Hmm,” I said and rubbed my chin. “Hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t gotten that far. But probably, I guess. Yeah, that would make sense.”

“You’re being flippant.”

“I’m not.” I wasn’t.

He squinted his eyes further and shook his head more vigorously. “I don’t get it.”

“Honestly, still trying to figure it out myself,” I said. I looked around his home. Small, two bedroom, decorated by some tasteful hippie. Hemp rugs and abstract paintings, low ceilings and wood floors. “I appreciate you letting me crash here.”

The comment rolled off him. “When’s the last time I’ve seen you? Five years?”

“Seven. You guys came back for the family picnic.”

“Damn,” he said, shaking his head. “Seven years.”

“Yeah. Seven years. Sorry about the lack of notice.”

“I appreciate you letting me know this morning.”

“Least I can do,” I said, a thin attempt at humor. “Anthony, I know this is weird. But you’re the only one I know in Colorado. I would’ve just gotten a hotel, but those were getting old.”

He got up and started pacing the room, mumbling sporadically to himself. This was something he’d done as a kid, and it made me smile that he’d carried the trait. Seven years. He was the older cousin—four years my senior—but our houses were five miles apart and our parents got together often. He was the epitome of cool back then –always seeming so old, sophisticated, advanced. I didn’t know what to think now. It’d been seven years since any contact, and far longer than that since contact on a regular basis.

Anthony stopped near the window and looked back at me. “Why Colorado?”

“Why not?”

He moved closer and shook his head for the last time. His voice was quieter. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have to figure that out still. But I had to get out.”

“So you’re just, ‘getting out?’”

“Yes. And for right now, that’s all I’m doing. I’ll decide the rest later.”

He sighed, took his glasses off, and rubbed his eyes. Then he smiled, a pensive, defeated smile, and walked to a sliding glass door on the other side of the room.

“Well,” he said, “welcome to Boulder.”

5

I slept on Anthony’s couch that night. His wife came home an hour after I arrived and greeted me like an old friend. There were no mentions of how many years it had been, or what the hell I was doing. Nothing said about how she and I had only met a handful of times, and now I was setting up shop on their couch for reasons she probably didn’t understand. Julia. She was a kind soul.

Julia made us dinner, and afterward we sat on the back porch and drank pale ales. She asked about me a lot, never poking or prodding, but nibbling around the edges of who I was and what I was doing there. I told her as much as I could. The sun set and extinguished the soft glow of summer twilight, and we were left in darkness.

Anthony and Julia had married eleven years prior, in Massachusetts. I was not at the wedding. Shortly after, they moved west so Anthony could take a position helping start a technology company in Boulder. The company flourished and they bought a house.

A half hour passed and they moved inside; there was work in the morning. I stayed on the porch for another beer, sipping it slowly and looking out into the darkness. Through a hole in the trees I could see the moon reflecting off the foothills, casting its silver glow on the rock and pine. I thought about money. Three days ago I left a generous salary and prestigious title without a word to anyone at the company, and now I had no prospects for future employment, and no real plan on what to do. Since leaving Wilson Keen, I’d traveled one thousand, eight hundred miles and received sixteen voicemail messages and countless emails, all wondering where I was. The messages started Friday morning and continued through the weekend, growing more agitated. On one level this was amusing; shouldn’t these people be doing something else with their weekends than worrying about a single employee that didn’t show up on Friday? But it wasn’t just that. I didn’t show up Saturday, either, and I didn’t swing by or at least check in and answer emails on Sunday. There were no weekends as a senior analyst. So yes, I had been MIA for a full three days, and while none of the correspondences had explicitly mentioned termination, I was fairly sure the decision had been made. I planned on calling tomorrow to explain my situation, which would not do much good. They probably already knew. They had Megan’s number.

I wasn’t worried about money, at least not in the near future. I had enough in the bank to get by for a while, as did Megan, and tomorrow I’d call the bank and transfer a significant chunk of what I had into her account. She would be fine without me, and better in time. She was, however, unemployed, with no tangible work-related skills, no real idea about how the job market worked, and, above either of these things, no desire to find out. And this was not her fault, at least not entirely; more than anything, it was a product of the arrangement we’d built together. I needed to make sure she was taken care of financially.

I thought about Anthony’s question about divorce. It was an ugly word. She and I would have to cross that bridge eventually, but for now I wasn’t ready. She hadn’t called since Friday, an undeniable result of her steadfast pride, and I didn’t blame her for it.

6

For three days I relaxed and acquainted myself with the town of Boulder, Colorado. Monday I awoke to an empty house. I opened the sliding door and stepped out on to the back porch again, the landscape now illuminated with sunlight and color. A circular temperature gauge mounted on the house read 71 degrees at 8:34 a.m.

I drove to the north part of town and sat at a diner, where I ate french toast and drank coffee and read the Denver Post. The forest fires were being kept in check for the time being. Two local politicians were sparring. The Rockies were in last place.

That afternoon I drove west to the foothills and attempted to hike. I parked on the side of the street and followed a trail that led from the roadside into the trees. It was hot now; nearly ninety, and my t-shirt stuck to my skin. The trail quickly reached a clearing and started upward, becoming a series of rugged steps, and the elevation and my general lack of physical fitness quickly caught up with me. I had to stop and catch my breath.

I continued this process for an hour—climb for a short time, rest for almost as long, repeat—until I came up around the backside of a large rock formation. I followed a trail inlet through a gap in the rock, sat down on a boulder, looking east, and was startled by how much elevation I’d gained. I hadn’t hiked far, and the trail continued up long past where I sat currently, but from my perch I could see all of Boulder. Sweat dripped down my face and off the end of my nose and the sun beat down on my neck as I scanned the town and the flat land to the east. I saw the highway I took into town, spotted a reservoir to the north, and if I squinted through the sunny haze, I could see the outline of downtown Denver to the southeast. Two young girls, in their teens or early twenties, briskly passed by on the trail behind me, holding a conversation and laughing and not visibly out of breath.

This, my first hike, was a pathetic attempt at reaching the romantic mountain heights I had dreamed of as a kid. I was out of shape and un-acclimated to the altitude, and was able to cover only about as much ground as one might on a casual neighborhood stroll after work. My legs burned as I walked, and my head spun from fatigue. I was acutely aware of all of it, of how ill-suited I was for such an activity, and still the reward of the trek was every bit of what I could have hoped. I was doing it. I was in the forest, away from the stoplights and taxi cabs and skyscrapers, among the birds and rocky cliffs, and I was hiking. I was terrible, but I didn’t care. I was doing it.

Later that afternoon I made my phone calls. My boss told me I was fired, and Megan did not answer her phone.

Tuesday and Wednesday I explored. I drank coffee and drove up the winding switchbacks of Flagstaff road, then back down. I went up through Lyons and Longmont and even Estes Park, and down to Golden for a Coors. I ate sandwiches for lunch. I took the dirt road down to Eldorado Springs, its name too enticing to simply pass, and swam in the natural pool. I waded in the crystal blue water and let its water wash over me, splashed it on my face, through my hair, in my eyes. I swam underneath and came up for air, again and again. The rock walls of Eldorado Canyon stood tall on either side, sealing me in, alone with this pool of natural spring water, joined by a few strangers, but alone just the same. I let the water wash me clean. I dunked my head and Wilson Keen was gone. Dunked it again and New York was gone. Then I stayed above water.

At night I roamed Pearl Street, Boulder’s downtown walking mall, and ducked into shops for a look and bars for a drink. I paused near the street performers, joining small crowds curious about their bizarre acts, and threw dollar bills into their buckets.

And on Thursday I met her.

Anthony returned home from work and sat down on the couch.

“Let’s get a beer,” he said. Julia was working the night shift at the hospital.

“Done,” I said.

“There’s a brewery on the east side of town. Best beer in Boulder.”

We jumped in his Subaru and were there in ten minutes. It was a small building, unassuming, hidden back in an industrial area between auto shops and a car wash. A few hasty picnic tables outside, a small sign on the door displaying the brewery’s logo. Anthony opened the door and we stepped inside, and to my surprise, the place was buzzing.

It was an L-shaped room with low ceilings, draped in the comforting scent of barley and hops. On the south side, a long oak bar snaked along the wall, displaying dozens of taps. The room must have been near capacity; servers had to carefully maneuver through the humanity with trays full of beer, squeezing past groups of loud-talking people and somehow not spilling a drop.

We wiggled up to the bar and Anthony asked me what I wanted.

I looked at all the taps, nearly indistinguishable from one another from across the bar, and shrugged. He nodded and raised two fingers at the bartender, who materialized quickly. Soon we had two dark and strong brews, and we clinked them together and drank.

“You talk to Megan?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Tried her a few times. Just rings and goes to voicemail.”

“You leave one?”

“No. She knows I’m calling.”

“She moved on faster than you thought,” he said, and offered a smirk.

I shrugged. “Still pissed off, I’m sure. Don’t blame her.”

“Me neither.”

“She’ll pick up one of these times.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll talk. I already moved the money over.” I downed half of my beer, and Anthony his. “I’ll figure something out.”

Anthony shook his head and took a drink.

“I won’t be bugging you guys much longer,” I said. “Another week. Two, tops.”

He waved his hand. “Stay as long as you need. It’s no trouble. Julia likes having you around.”

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

“Somewhat surprising.”

“Very surprising.”

“I just mean, considering what’s happened. It’s odd considering what happened. She knows the story, right?”

He nodded. “Told her everything. Not sure she cares much. People have problems in their marriages. She gets that.”

“And you?”

He shook his head and laughed. “Every man walks his own path.”

I laughed too and faced the bar, not knowing what he meant by it. Not knowing what he thought of me. Not knowing what I would’ve thought of myself if I were someone else. Not knowing, precisely, what I did think of myself.

I chuckled and thought about it, I scanned the line of taps on the bar, and then I met her.

She was standing to my right, and she turned to face me. Randomly, and without explanation, but with poise, she turned to face me.

“You gentlemen need anything?” she asked.

She wore a loose flannel over a black tank top, not dressed like a server, but that didn’t much matter in a place like this.

“No,” I said, “thank you. I think we’re good.”

“Ok,” she said, “but let me know if you do. If you do need anything, I can get it for you. I know everyone in here.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t work here,” she said. “But that doesn’t matter.” She extended a hand. “I’m Suzanne.”

“Julian,” I said, and shook it. “Pleasure.”

Her skin was fair and her hair a fiery red, waving slightly as it fell down to her shoulders. Her eyes were brown, or black.

“You’re not from Colorado,” she said. It was a statement.

“No,” I said, “New York.”

“New York,” she said and her eyes widened. She put her hand on my chest. “New York. That’s precious. You’re precious.”

Her hand slid off and she looked at me, and I looked back. She raised two fingers toward the bar and a bartender was there.

“Hey babe,” she said and leaned toward him. “Two Belgian’s for these gentlemen, please.”

In a moment, they were poured.

“Now aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” she asked, sipping a beer of her own.

“Sure,” I said, and introduced him.

“You two are cousins?” she asked, excited again. “That’s delightful.”

“It is?” Anthony asked.

“Yes, Anthony, it is,” she said. “Positively delightful.”

I looked at him and he looked at me, and neither of us knew what to say.

“Thanks for the beers,” I told her finally.

“I told you I’d take care of you.” Her eyelashes fluttered a little, just enough to notice. She wouldn’t have caught my eye in a normal setting. Pasty skin, a button nose, a simple haircut. Slender, flat chested. Not beautiful, but cute, in a quirky sort of way.

These were my thoughts the night I met her. Suzanne. She was not beautiful, perhaps she was cute. She was odd, but the oddness was intriguing. The oddness made me want to know more. I identified this immediately, and it never went away.

She gently grabbed my hand and led me across the crowded room.

“Come, both of you,” she said, motioning for Anthony to follow. “Meet my friends.” He picked his beer up and came along.

She leaned in to me as we walked, squeezing between groups and dodging waitresses. “Now, Mr. Julian, how long ago was New York?”

“Like, how long have I been here?”

“Yes, Julian.”

I thought to myself. “Five days.”

“Five days!” she exclaimed. “Straight from New York?”

I nodded. “Drove the whole way.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling and putting a hand on my back, “what a world.”

I again looked back at Anthony, who shook his head. We stopped moving, and stood before a circular group of ten.

Suzanne spoke, raising her voice. “Everyone, this is Julian and Anthony. Julian and Anthony, this is everyone.”

They were a friendly bunch. Immediately they descended upon us—both of us—with handshakes and questions. Everyone had some sort of beard or nose ring or tattoo. Suzanne made an announcement about New York—New York—and the mixture of men and women buzzed with congratulatory excitement. I shook hands and learned many names I would not remember. One particularly tall man told a story about passing through Manhattan a number of years ago, and two women to his side listened and laughed.

I was near the bottom of my second beer now, and it began to cloud my mind. The pours were big and the concoction was strong. My head became foggy, and Suzanne appeared beside me once again.

“Julian,” she said.

“Suzanne.”

“Tell me about yourself.”

So I did. Not everything, and not in depth, but I told her. How I left a job I hated in New York and drove three days out here. That I was staying in Boulder, on Anthony’s couch—I motioned toward him as I said it. He was engaged in conversation with a flannel-clad couple. I told her how I was trying to figure out what to do next.

“Will you stay?” she asked.

“Maybe. I like it here.”

“You must,” she said. “You simply must. It was fate that brought you here.”

I said nothing. I was confused, but the way she spoke was captivating. One notch from the deep end, but her cadence had a rhythmic quality, and her flowery words put me in a trance. There was no one like this in New York, even Brooklyn, no matter how hard they tried.

“There is a home for you here, I can sense it,” she said. “I can feel it. Already I can tell. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, and nodded, because I didn’t, but I wanted to. Then I asked her about herself, and she shook her head.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. There was a small golden locket around her neck, hanging down to the top of her tank top. “I’m just Miss Suzanne, the belle of the mountains, and that’s all you need to know.”

I nodded, but I didn’t know why. “So you live in Boulder?” I asked.

She shook her head again. “Oh no. No, we’re just down for a soiree, shall we say.” She made a sweeping motion with her hand that covered the whole group. “We come down from time to time.”

“Down?”

She giggled. “Yes, from the mountains, Julian.”

Anthony appeared beside me. “You two enjoying yourselves?” he asked.

“Very much, Anthony,” she said, delicately. “We very much are. But it looks like you gentlemen need another round.”

“Would love to,” he said, “but we gotta split.”

Suzanne looked at him, then me. “Is this true?”

I glanced at Anthony, who wore a stern, matter-of-fact look. He nodded at me.

“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” I said. “It was great meeting you.”

“Yes,” Anthony said, “it was a pleasure, Suzanne. Thank you for the beers.”

She frowned. “Very well then. The pleasure was all mine.” She turned to me just slightly. “I do hope to see you again.”

She handed me a napkin with something written on it, and we walked out the front door.

7

“I would’ve left you,” Anthony said in the car, “but you’re still married. Remember?”

I scoffed. “You think I was actually interested?”

“Couple more of those Belgians, interest isn’t so hard to come by.”

“No,” I said. “No. Nothing wrong with being social.”

The oncoming headlights reflected off the windshield.

“She was weird,” I said.

“She was,” he said.

“Interesting though.”

“I thought you weren’t interested.”

“Well, I wasn’t interested, but she was interesting. Like, the way she was. The way she talked.”

“Yeah, an odd duck,” he said. “That’s Boulder for you.”

“She said she wasn’t from Boulder.”

“No?”

“No. She just said, ‘the mountains.’ What does that mean?”

“Could mean a lot of things. That’s all she said?”

“Yeah.”

“Just means west. Up I-70 probably. Breck or Silverthorne or Avon or something.”

These were words with which I was unfamiliar.

“She sure liked you,” he said.

“I think she just liked anything.”

He shrugged. “Think what you want.”

We returned to Anthony’s house and I again lay down on his couch to sleep, and when I did I thought of her. I thought of Suzanne, and the way she was, and what it represented, and whether it meant anything. I thought of her friends, the friendly group of outcasts that were so quick to welcome us in their circle, at least for the evening. I thought of the beer we drank, cloudy and strong, and how I wanted another. I thought of the tap room we stood in, the smell of brewing, the crowd I never met, and the rustic décor. But mostly, I thought of her.

8

In the morning when I woke, I had a voicemail from Megan. I rubbed my eyes and studied the phone. Message received at 5:57 a.m. local time, 7:57 eastern. I scarcely remembered her being awake before nine.

I walked to the back porch with a cup of coffee and sat down. Then I played the message.

“Julian,” she started. Already there was something wrong with her voice. Something scratchy or distant or off, but then that was to be expected.

“It’s Megan.”

The composure was there. She kept it together well, her top lip holding strong and communicating poise. I heard it waver just once, briefly, in those opening lines, and that was only because I knew her well. Had I been a casual acquaintance, I would have been fooled into believing her guise of detached tranquility. But we were past that. We shared a bed for seven years.

“I’m just returning your call. I’ve been busy.”

It was rehearsed, but I couldn’t blame her for that, either.

“Call me when you get a chance, if you still want to talk.”

She said nothing about the large sum of money I’d transferred into her account, nor was she obligated to.

“I wanted to tell you I saw Brent last night.”

What.

“I figured you should know.”

What.

“That’s all. Talk to you soon.”

What.

My hand shook. I listened to the message one more time to make sure I had heard right. When she said his name, the pretense fell off her voice, and she spoke clearly. And when I heard it, my feelings of sympathy dissolved immediately. Sympathy was out of the question now, which should have made me happy.

“I wanted to tell you I saw Brent last night.”

I replayed it in my head, and heard again the way she spoke it. The waver gone instantly, replaced with genuine confidence. Satisfaction? Comfort, in the pain she knew it would cause me? Perhaps. Not that it mattered.

Brent. That fucking clown.

It shouldn’t have killed me the way it did. I waived my right to heartache when I put that car in drive. And I should’ve known. If I’d been looking long term, and doing any prognostication, I should’ve known there was a chance that would be the first place she’d go. It made sense. The dots connected. But still. But still.

I hiked again that day, this time through the meadow of Chautauqua at the foot of the Flatirons. My lungs burned again and I turned back after an hour. The beauty was overwhelming, though I didn’t allow myself to enjoy it. In the afternoon I walked to Boulder Creek and sat down. I found a grassy spot, just above the water’s edge, and watched the creek move. Summer was well underway, but still the water was high and fast, the masses of snowpack in the mountains slowly melting and trickling down the canyons, steadily gaining power until it became a force like this one. Upstream some college students swam in the creek, staying close to the side and laughing. At one point a young couple floated by, quickly, on black inner tubes. They smiled at me.

By 3 p.m. I was drinking. Still at my perch above the creek with a bottle of Seagram’s whiskey at my side. The water moved and I took a swig from the bottle. Throughout my life, when I looked at a river like this one, I trusted the water would always move. I had never given it much thought, never asked where the water came from, or why it moved. Just blind faith, that as a river flowed today it would also flow tomorrow, and the day after that. Sometimes the water would rise or fall, perhaps even freeze, but it would be there, always, because it always had been there before. I hadn’t once pondered where the water ended up. We see the stretch of river in front of us, and trust that we always will.

Sitting there with the bottle, I realized I had been naïve. Assuming the river would flow forever was an exercise in entitlement. This creek could dry up. Any creek could dry up, anytime the natural world saw fit. The supply of water could be cut off, and the creek would dry up, and all that would be left is a dry sandy bed. Or maybe that bed would close up, the land on either side would join together, and there would be no evidence of the creek ever existing. Or maybe it never did exist at all. Maybe I’d come to find I’d imagined it, or thought I saw something I didn’t. Maybe.

I watched that creek until the sun set. Hours later, in the dark of the Boulder night, I finished the whiskey and walked home.