Tough Cookie

Marla and I shook our heads in sympathy … and bafflement. Arthur nodded to us, as if he’d made the point he intended to make. He asked me to call him that night about the exact menu they’d put on the graphic for the next show, then scooted under the rope. Soon he disappeared through the trees.

“That guy is weird,” Marla commented as she adjusted her goggles. “Plus, he drinks too much.”

Eileen was waiting for us at Big Map; she waved enthusiastically as we skied up. Wearing a skintight royal blue ski suit and a red-and-royal-blue tasseled dunce cap, she looked the epitome of cute as a button. No matter what Arthur Wakefield thought of Jack Gilkey, he had clearly wrought a transformation in Marla’s and my old friend.

“Come on, come on, we don’t have much time,” Eileen chided gaily. “Jack’s going to meet us at the bistro at twenty to three. Feel okay on Mission Hill? It’s a very smoothly groomed intermediate run.”

Marla and I said Mission Hill sounded fine. With our skis stored in the gondola rack, and Eileen’s snowboard lying across half her metal seat, we rumbled back up the mountain. Once we’d unloaded and found the run, it was just a matter of minutes before the three of us were laughing and shouting, spraying snow on each other, and yelling “Wahoo!” every time we sped past each other down the slope.

Jack Gilkey caught up with us the second time we ascended in the gondola. Under her breath, Marla muttered, “I’d forgotten how yummy-looking that guy is.” Jack, dressed in a fashionable beige-and-black ski suit and a dunce cap to match Eileen’s, seemed cordial, even a tad shy, toward Marla and me. His solicitude and affection for Eileen was obvious. I watched as he cautioned her to slow down, sternly, like the mother hen Arch often accused me of being.

Eileen knew how to ride a snowboard, I’d give her that. She must have been practicing every day for years to be able to make the jumping, leaping, twisting moves she did that afternoon. Marla and I laughed at her antics, while Jack skied cautiously behind her. Maybe this trying-to-prove-you’re-virile thing was a universal phenomenon in May-September relationships. Who knew? They were having a great time. We all were.

One thing about intermediate ski slopes: There’s a lot of yelling. Kids call to their parents to wait for them, and vice versa. Usually it’s all good fun. Sometimes it isn’t. Husbands and wives scream at each other to speed up or slow down. Ski school instructors try to keep their charges in an orderly line behind them, calling out directions like a caterpillar head noisily instructing its lengthy tail.

An occasional skier wears a Walkman, even though it’s illegal. These skiers want to block out the noise, or time their ski maneuvers to the bars of Strauss waltzes or Three Dog Night. I don’t listen to a Walkman, but I do ignore the yelling. It’s distracting and can make you fall.

So I didn’t hear a bawled caution. At least, not the first one.

Yelled warnings of “Look out! Move! Get out of the way!” finally got my attention, however. I brushed snow from my goggles but couldn’t see what the problem was. I skied to the far side of the run. More screaming erupted as I looked up the hill and tried to determine the source of the commotion.

In her sparkly suit, Marla was easy to spot on the opposite side of the run. A ski school class had stopped in its tracks. A gaggle of snowboarders in backward baseball caps flew down beside me. Further up the slope, a lone snowboarder was hurtling down the hill. He was headed toward a skiing couple not far from me.…

The startled couple moved one way, then another to get out of the speeding snowboarder’s way. Each time they sped up and turned to avoid him, he changed direction. It was like watching a torpedo homing in on a target.

The couple, I suddenly realized with horror, was Eileen and Jack.

“Eileen!” I screamed. “Jack! Get out of the way! Move!” What could I do? “Hey, snowboarder!” I shrieked. “Stop!”

Eileen and Jack turned back, then started to scoot toward the trees. Down the boarder came, faster and faster. Was he drunk? Was he crazy?

The snowboarder hit Eileen and Jack with all the force of a speeding bowling ball. Two bodies went flying. The big boarder struggled to right himself, then kept going down the hill. As he came nearer, I feared for a moment he was going to hit me, too. Then I realized he was slowing down.

He stopped inches away from the tips of my skis. Then, almost in slow motion, he toppled sideways and then backward into the snow. Cautiously, I made my way to his side.

When I removed his dark goggles, Barton Reed’s eyes were closed. The sound of wailing drifted down the hill. Jack Gilkey was crying, calling desperately for help. He was leaning over a blue-clad body sprawled in the snow.

Eileen.

CHAPTER 18