The Top of the Hill

Synopsis: Michael Storrs is a man who seemingly has everything: He is handsome, successful in business and married to a beautiful woman, Tracy Lawrence. He is, however, attracted to the most dangerous of sports--downhill racing, sky diving, surfing, hang gliding. When two of his companions are killed in a parachute jump, Tracy is deeply disturbed. But Michael refuses to give up his hobbies and, as a consequence, their marriage begins to come apart. Michael's out-of-town business trips increase; he no longer calls Tracy when he's away; and he has taken up with an old girlfriend, a beautiful model who is always happy to drop everything to oblige him.

One weekend, Michael and Tracy go out to her parents' home in the Hamptons. The weather is rough, but his father-in-law insists that he and Michael go sailing. On board, they discover that there is only one life jacket, and Michael forces Lawrence to put it on. When the boat capsizes due to high winds, they are thrown into the water and it is hours before they are rescued and taken ashore. For Tracy, this is the last straw. Accusing Michael of risking not only his own life but her father's as well, she refuses to believe his side of the story and asks for a separation. Michael leaves that very night.

A couple of years pass before Michael contacts Tracy. They meet for dinner and Tracy asks for a divorce, mentioning that there is a new man in her life. Michael reluctantly agrees to call the lawyers. After the meal, Tracy surprises him by suggesting that they go to hear Antoine--an old friend of theirs--play the piano. At the bar, Michael gets involved in a fight with several loudmouthed Texans who persist in insulting Antoine. He winds up in the hospital with a concussion and three broken ribs. While recuperating, Michael makes several decisions about his life. He is going to quit his job as a management consultant, leave Manhattan and retreat to Green Hollow, a ski resort in Vermont where he spent an idyllic winter many years before. When he tells Tracy his plans, she wishes him a good winter and confesses that she has had a change of heart and does not want to proceed with the divorce.

At the end of Part I, Michael is driving optimistically toward Vermont, looking forward to the snow.

Part II

Michael decided to stay at the new hotel in Green Hollow called the Alpina that was owned by an Austrian couple, the Heggeners. It was pleasant-looking, architecturally unpretentious, rambling, of white clapboard, rooted in New England, making no claims to be part of a Tyrolean village.

Inside, Michael saw that it was furnished comfortably with Colonial and rustic pieces, everything impeccably polished. Mr. Lennart, the manager, was a stout, unflappable-looking man of about 55 and seemed friendly as he asked Michael how long he expected to stay.

"A week, maybe," Michael said, as he signed the register. "At least for starters."

"We're still just about empty," Lennart said, "so we give you the best room in the house."

Just as Michael was about to go up to his room, a woman came down the main staircase into the entrance hall, followed by a big golden retriever. She was handsome, in her 30s, with a mass of ash-blonde hair done up in a neat, rather severe bun. She had blue eyes set in a long, pointed face and was wearing a light-gray lynx coat.

"May I introduce our new guest, who's going to be staying with us for a while? Mr. Michael Storrs. Mr. Storrs, Mrs. Heggener."

"How do you do, sir?" Mrs. Heggener said. Her voice was reserved, her accent slight but unmistakably foreign. She did not offer to shake hands. "I hope you have a pleasant stay, Mr. Storrs."

"I'm sure I will," Michael said.

Mrs. Heggener fluffed the collar of her coat up around her face and made a little clicking noise to the dog, which had been sitting beside her, making small, impatient sounds. Michael watched her go out. No nonsense there, he thought.

Michael followed the bellboy up one flight of steps to a large room, with a double bed, a fireplace, a wide desk, a rocking chair and two deep-green corduroy-covered easy chairs, everything crisply clean and in order, brass lamps on the desk and tables throwing a subdued and comfortable light.

After the bellboy had left, Michael went over to one of the windows to see the view. The room was at the front of the building and in the light of the lamps that lined the driveway, he saw Mrs. Heggener, bundled in her coat, with the dog trotting beside her, walking toward his Porsche. She stopped and peered at the car. The dog lifted its leg and peed against the rear wheel. Mrs. Heggener looked up at the window of Michael's room. He knew he was outlined against the light of the lamps and he knew she was staring at him. He had the impression that she was smiling.

He stepped back hastily. I hope the damn dog isn't an omen, he thought. He was sorry Mrs. Heggener had seen him at that moment.

•

He unpacked, bathed and shaved, put on fresh clothes and wrote a short note to Antoine, giving him the address of the Alpina.

Then, carrying an old sheepskin coat that he had had since his days in college, he went down to the lobby.

Mrs. Heggener, now dressed for the evening in a long black gown, was sitting in a little sitting room lined with bookshelves, reading a book, but looked up as Michael stood at the desk and nodded to him and he nodded back. As Michael was waiting for the stamp to put on his letter, a tall, slender, exquisite black girl, very young, dressed as a maid, in black, with a small white apron, crossed the lobby, carrying a tray with a bottle of white wine and a single glass, and went into the room where Mrs. Heggener was sitting. He couldn't help but stare.

The girl poured the wine into Mrs. Heggener's glass and Mrs. Heggener raised it in salute to Michael. She was obviously used to the guests of the hotel staring at her beautiful servant. She said something to the girl that Michael couldn't hear and the girl came over to Michael and said, "Mr. Storrs, Mrs. Heggener asks if you would like to join her for a glass of wine," her voice melodious and shy.

"Thank you very much," he answered, and the maid went off to fetch another glass.

"It's very kind of you, madam," he said, as he threw his coat over the back of a chair.

"Please do sit down," Mrs. Heggener said. "It's good of you to join me. This is the time of the year I like best--before the season really begins and you have the place practically to yourself. But there are moments when one is grateful for a little company. You are familiar with the town?"

"I spent a winter here many years ago. This hotel wasn't built then."

"No, my husband and I are comparative newcomers." Her tone was even, the words carefully spaced and clear, giving or taking nothing.

"When I was here before, no one dressed for dinner. I'm afraid I left anything fancy back in New York."

"Oh, this," Mrs. Heggener said, flipping a fold of her skirt slightly. Her hands, Michael saw, were long and pale, with polished, pointed nails. "I dress as the mood moves me. Our guests are encouraged to do the same. Tonight I happened to feel rather formal." She studied him frankly. "Don't worry, you look splendid."

He put his hand in the pocket of his tweed jacket. Nobody had ever told him he looked splendid.

"Do you plan to stay long?" she asked.

"For the season. At least," he said. "If all goes well."

Mrs. Heggener arched her full, un-plucked but shadowed eyebrows, as though surprised. "For the season? Well, we shall have to see that all goes well."

The maid came back with a second glass and Mrs. Heggener poured. She lifted her glass. "Prost."

"Prost," he said.

"The wine is delicious," Michael said, drinking.

"Austrian," Mrs. Heggener said. "Have you ever been in Austria?"

"I've been in St. Anton, Kitzbühel, a couple of weeks."

"You're a skier, of course."

"I manage to get down the hill," Michael said. He had the feeling his credentials were being examined by this cool, critical woman, with every movement measured.

Mrs. Heggener sipped at her glass. She had a wide mouth, with full lips, somehow, Michael thought, not fitting the same face as the cold blue eyes and the fined-down, almost ascetic lines of her cheeks. "My father makes this wine," she said. "I've drunk it since I was a child. One grows attached to the tastes of childhood. Shall I have Rita, the maid, leave a bottle for you in your room?"

"That would be very nice. Thank you."

"If you don't mind a rather mournful empty dining room"--she hesitated--"perhaps you would like to share your dinner with me."

"That's very good of you, madam," Michael said. "But I'm planning on looking up some old friends."

"Of course," she said and then added, "If there's anything you need, please don't hesitate to ask. The service will be worse later--when the crowds come."

"Good night, madam." Glacial, he thought, as he left the hotel. Then he shivered and put on his coat and got into the car and drove off.

•

When he got back to his room later that night, there was a fire going in the fireplace and an opened bottle of wine was in a cooler with two glasses. He wondered whom the maid thought he was going to bring back with him for the second glass. He threw off his coat and jacket and put another log on the fire, poured a glass of wine for himself, sat down and leaned back luxuriously, sipping the cold wine, staring into the flames. Snow tomorrow. That would make everything perfect. He would get up early and buy himself some ski boots and skis and be ready to go before lunch if there was enough snow.

There was a knock on the door. He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. Puzzled, he went to the door and opened it. Mrs. Heggener was standing there, still dressed in the long, loosely flowing black gown.

"Good evening," she said.

"Good evening," he said, not moving from the door. "Is anything wrong?"

"No, I was coming along the corridor and I happened to see the light under your door and I decided to make sure you were comfortable."

"Couldn't be more so."

She looked past him into the room. "Do you mind if I come in for a moment and see that everything's all right?" She crossed the room, inspecting it as she did so. Michael was sorry he had thrown his coat and jacket carelessly over different (continued on page 158) Top of the Hill (continued from page 150) chairs instead of hanging them up when he came in and that he had left a pile of shirts on a table.

Mrs. Heggener touched the radiator. "Warm enough?"

"Just right."

"The wine cold enough?" she asked. "I could ring down for some ice."

"It's fine, thank you." He was feeling ill at ease. The sight of the handsome woman moving around his room so intimately in the middle of the night began to make him wonder if perhaps with her.... "Oh," he said, making a sudden resolve, thinking, What have I got to lose? "would you like to join me in a little wine? There seem to be two glasses."

"So there are. I suppose Rita doesn't approve of solitary drinking." She seated herself across from the chair in which he had been sitting, crossing her legs, showing a very pretty, rounded calf and a fine ankle. Whatever she was, she wasn't ill at ease.

He sat down and poured some wine for each of them.

"I was speaking about you this evening," Mrs. Heggener said.

"Oh, you were?" Maybe he ought to stop all this inane small talk and just grab her and see what happened. His erection was firm and unmistakable, caught awkwardly in the folds of his shorts and trousers, and he had to sit twisted to keep it from being noticeable, like an old-fashioned actor in a drawing-room comedy.

"An old acquaintance of yours dropped by. David Cully. He was coming from a meeting and he gave me the schedule of the courses and the events they've planned from Thanksgiving until Christmas. As the head of the ski school, he and I often have things to discuss for the benefit of my guests. He said you were a very good ski teacher and that he'd like to see you. They're running short on instructors this year."

"Maybe I'll look in on him," Michael said.

"I ski, too," Mrs. Heggener said. "But I'm one of those timid souls who have to follow an instructor at all times."

"I must say," Michael said, "you don't look like a timid soul to me."

"Appearances can be deceiving. And remember, I am on my own home ground here at the Alpina. No ski slope feels to me like my home ground." She poured some more wine for both of them, leaning forward as she did so, her breasts stretching the cloth of her dress a little. She put the bottle down and leaned back again. "I know all the instructors here well," she said. "Too well. The conversation is limited, to say the least. Country boys who are only beguiling when they are going downhill. In my country--peasants. Only you can't call anyone a peasant in America."

"No," he said. "In America, we range only from middle class to noble."

She looked at him speculatively. "I have a feeling that your conversation would not bore me."

She is getting ready to lay it on the line any minute now, he thought. "You must not flatter me, madam," Michael said ironically.

"Eva," she said.

"Eva," he repeated.

"If I tell David I want you, he will assign you to me as a private instructor. I pay the ski school and the ski school pays you. It is an impersonal arrangement."

"The best kind," he said. He sneaked a look at his watch. Half past 12 and we're still talking, he thought. But he'd be damned if he'd make the first move. "And," he said, "if you find that my conversation, too, bores you ...?"

She shrugged. "I will tell David that we do not hit it off. That you go too slow for me, or too fast, or are too demanding. And ask him to suggest someone else."

Bitch, he thought, but sounded interested as he asked, "Do you ski every day?"

"No. Only sporadically. And usually in the afternoons. But I like to have the instructor on tap, in case I get a sudden urge to go up the hill. When I am in a dark mood, I seem to want to ski more often. It is a way of forgetting." Her speech, he noticed, was beginning to sound a little thick, the accent more marked. He wondered if she had been drinking all evening, alone. "I thank God for winter," she went on, her voice crooning sadly now.

"What do you have to forget?" he asked.

"That I am living in a country not my own." She seemed on the verge of tears and Michael wondered if she were one of those women who had to cry a man into bed. "That when I want to see my husband, I must go to clinics, hospitals all over the country, different places, every time my husband hears of a doctor who has developed a new treatment for his rare form of t.b. That when he is at home with me, I am a nurse. That when I say, 'Take me home to Austria,' he says, 'Yes, dear, perhaps next year.' He was born there. But when he goes there, he can't stand it for more than a week at a time. It is a dying country, he says, it is no place for him."

Finally, Michael felt moved, though whether it was for the woman who, acting or not, was on the verge of tears, or for the doomed husband he had not yet met, he did not know. He leaned forward and took her hand. It was cool and steady and limp in his own hand. "I hope I will not go too slow for you or too fast for you or be too demanding," he said.

"We shall see," she said abruptly. She withdrew her hand, stood up and moved quickly to the door. He watched, stunned, thinking, What in hell was that all about?

She stopped at the half-open door, then pulled it shut with a sharp little click and locked it. She turned and faced him, her head high, put her hands up to her hair, pulled something and the ash-blonde hair, almost reddish in the light, cascaded over her shoulders to her breasts and to the middle of her back in golden tumult. "Now," she said, staring at him seriously, "please put out the damned light."

•

Her body was deceptive. Given her height and the narrowness of her face, he had taken it for granted she was thin and angular, and later, in the loose black gown, her figure had been hidden. But now he saw that it was full and rounded, nourished on Viennese pastries and pots of rich hot chocolat mit Schlag in the best confiseries of the old capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The ascetic face proved also an illusion. There was nothing ascetic about her tastes and no reticence in her performance. She was instructive and demanding and he was happily instructed and answered all her demands.

He had no idea how much time had passed before she finally rolled off him and stretched out beside him, one leg across him. She sighed contentedly. "Another way of forgetting," she said. "Maybe the best."

He noted, a little bitterly, for future reference, that she was categorizing him merely as a teammate in a particularly vigorous sport and was not pleased with the image. Affection, he guessed, was not in her repertoire.

"Have you any idea what time it is?" Mrs. Heggener asked.

"A quarter past delirium," he said, and she chuckled complacently. She was, he could tell, used to pleasing men. "It's twenty past four."

"Mein Gott," she said. "The maids will be moving about soon." She got briskly out of bed and dressed quickly, but left her hair down. Then she went over and kissed him.

(continued on page 178) Top of the Hill (continued from page 158)

"You're something," he said.

"A lady does her best," she said and kissed him again.

Well, he thought, be grateful for the small gifts the night bestows.

•

The next morning, Michael ate a late hearty breakfast in the deserted dining room. Looking out the window, he saw that it had snowed, but lightly, and what there was on the lawn was already melting in the warm sunshine. No skiing today. No matter.

Mrs. Heggener, as he still thought of her, was nowhere to be seen. He remembered that Cully had told her he wanted to talk to him and when he had finished breakfast, went out to get into the car and drive into town to the ski school.

He found him not at the ski school but at the diner, having coffee. He was seated alone at a table in a corner, drinking out of a mug and scowling at a newspaper he had spread in front of him. Cully was a big man, much heavier than when Michael had seen him last, and was beginning to grow bald.

"Hello, Dave," Michael said.

Cully looked up. "Hi," he said.

"Mrs. Heggener tells me you'd like to talk to me."

Cully nodded. "Sit down. Coffee?"

"Thanks."

Cully called to the waitress behind the counter. He examined Michael across the table. "You seem to have weathered well."

"Careful living," Michael said.

"I would have given odds you'd be dead by now," said Cully. His voice was heavy, without timbre or inflections. "Nobody would've taken them."

"I'm still around."

"So I see. Thanks, Sally," he said, as the waitress brought the coffee. "It looks as though it ain't going to snow before Christmas this year," he said, looking unhappily up at the blue sky through the big plate-glass window of the diner. "There ain't much to do around this town unless you can ski. What'll you do with yourself?"

"I saw a poster in town for a hang-gliding school. On a nice day, I might take a few flights."

Cully looked at him incredulously. "Don't tell me you still go in for that sort of thing."

"Occasionally. You ever try it?" Michael asked.

"At my age? My idiot days're over."

"You're missing some great kicks."

"You mean to say you like it?"

"Why else would I do it?"

"Showboating. Look, Ma, how brave I am." Cully looked sharply at him. "Those exhibitions you gave doing double somersaults and twists off cliffs. Almost every kid here could beat you in the downhill, but they wouldn't dare try half the things you did."

"I had a peculiar talent," Michael said mildly. "I worked out tumbling for years in gyms. It was fun...."

"Maybe," Cully admitted. "Maybe. But maybe you were trying to prove something to yourself that you didn't ever want to admit was bugging you. You really serious about saying you might want to work this year?" he asked abruptly, getting down to business. Michael realized that they had been sparring with each other, feeling each other out. "Mrs. Heggener called me," Cully said, "and said you might, and that if you were going to teach, she wanted you assigned to her. I said I'd arrange it if you were serious."

"I guess I am," Michael said.

"You were a good teacher. I won't say yea or nay about your off-time activities." Cully grinned sourly. "You been skiing much? You look in good shape. Better than me," he said glumly. "If you want the job, it's yours, and glad to have you back."

"Are you sure?" Michael asked doubtfully.

"Mrs. Heggener wants you and in this town, what madam wants, we supply. I ain't doing you any favors. She's a hard lady to please. Last year she went through four instructors. Just make sure there's no damage to the goods from now to April. You'll earn your pay. Which ain't saying much. If you don't get killed dropping out of the clouds before lunch, come into the office this afternoon and I'll fit you into one of these jackets and a Green Hollow sweater; they're due in by three P.M. And if we ever get any snow, maybe we could do a couple of runs together."

"Thanks," Michael said, standing.

•

The hang-gliding school was in a narrow valley, with a respectable hill behind looming above it. A battered pickup truck and a mud-spattered living trailer, each with Green Eagle Hang-Gliding School painted on in irregular letters, stood nearby.

Just as a glider was slowly circling for a landing, Michael looked up and felt the first tingle of excitement. The man in the glider landed expertly and came toward him. Young and gangling, blond, with a sad, sunburned, skinny face, he introduced himself as Jerry Williams, proprietor.

Michael told him that he had been up a few times before and wanted to go up today. Williams agreed, took him up to the wooded mountain in his truck and warned him not to wind up in a tree, and that if he busted the machine, he'd have to pay.

Michael agreed to the terms. After reaching the top of the hill, Williams checked to see that everything was secure. Michael could feel his body trembling with impatience as he took three deep breaths and started running. The wings made him feel like a land-bound bird as he soared off in the updraft. "Ah," he whispered to himself, "ah, God."

He banked to the left, then to the right, and all too quickly, he banked down, everything in dreamy slow motion, time suspended. Williams asked if he wanted to go up again, but Michael declined. Williams told him that when the season started, there'd be some competitions. "Tricks, landing in target circles, length and duration of flight, stuff like that. I know some fellas who already signed up. You want to join?"

"Thanks," Michael said. "If I have the time...." He said goodbye to Williams. As he drove back to town, he was humming.

•

It had become a routine, each evening, after dinner, which Michael and Eva Heggener ate together in the dining room, for them to go for a walk, with the retriever trotting beside them. Although there was still no snow, there were a few guests who had booked their rooms in advance and who by the hour kept looking hopefully up at the recalcitrant sky.

This night the sky was overcast and the moon could not be seen and Michael took along a pocket flashlight to light their way. Eva had been especially silent during dinner.

Finally, she said, "There will be some slight changes tomorrow. My husband is arriving."

"Oh," Michael said. He didn't know how Eva expected him to receive this news. "Perhaps," he said uneasily, "I should find another place to live."

"I've been thinking about that," Eva said. "And I want to show you something."

They were approaching a large stone gate, behind which was the main house, which was in the process of being redone. Two heavy iron gratings swung open onto a graveled driveway. "Let's go in here," she said. Just behind and to one side of the gate, there was a small brick cottage. Eva took out a key and opened the door and flipped on a light inside. "Come in, come in," she said. "This is the gatekeeper's cottage, from a time when there still were gatekeepers."

The living room was quite large, with a Victorian sofa covered in worn beige silk and a big desk and old oil lamps now wired for electricity. There was a fireplace with the mounted head of a stag with spreading antlers over the mantelpiece. Through an open door, he could see a small kitchen. Another door led, he saw, to a bedroom. There was even a telephone and a television set.

"How would you like to live here? The big house is four hundred yards away and there are woods in between and you can make all the noise you want without disturbing us or our seeing who comes and goes here. You can make yourself useful, shoveling snow, keeping the driveway clear, bringing in wood for the fire, driving my husband when he's too tired or I'm too busy, things like that. We have a maid, but she's seventy years old and she's barely strong enough to cook our meals. Naturally, we wouldn't expect you to pay rent."

"I could always sell my Porsche," Michael said, "and live in luxury at the hotel and I wouldn't have to bring in the wood." She was, he felt, talking to him as though she were hiring a servant.

"Once I move into the house," she said coldly, "it will not be possible for me to visit you in the hotel. I hope you understand that. Unless, of course, that is of no importance to you."

He took her in his arms and kissed her. "I'll show you later how little importance it has for me."

She pulled back, smiling, then opened her coat and pressed hard against him. "I would like a demonstration immediately," she said. "Let us inaugurate this dear little house here and now."

He followed her into the bedroom, where she had turned on a lamp next to the big, oversized bed, with a patchwork quilt. He closed the door to keep the dog in the living room. There were some sights, he believed, that dogs should not be allowed to see.

•

That night, in his hotel room, Michael was having a nightmare. He was going down a steep, icy slope on skis, with mean little rocks showing in the bare spots and sparks flying up from his skis as the steel edges hit the rocks and threw him off balance. He was going faster and faster and below him there was a deep, dark gully. The wind was screaming past his ears, as his speed became greater and greater as he neared the gully. He tried to stop, but he knew it was impossible on that ice. He screamed, but the wind took the sound out of his mouth. He knew he was going to crash and he knew it was going to be bad and he resigned himself to how bad it was going to be.

Then the telephone rang and he awoke, sweating. His hand shook as he reached for the receiver.

It was Dave Cully. He sounded happy. "Mike," he said, "it's really coming down. There should be over a foot of new powder by morning. I'm opening the lifts at nine. How about making the first run of the season with me?"

"Great," Michael said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I'll be there."

He left the drapes pulled open so he could watch the snow fall and got into bed and tried to go back to sleep, but the phone rang again. It was Susan Hartley, the woman Antoine thought he was in love with, calling from New York. She told Michael that she and Antoine were arriving Friday night. "Stay up for us."

He sank back into bed, pulling the blankets around him, half-hypnotized by the steady, straight, silent fall of snow outside the window, and fell asleep quickly and did not dream.

•

Cully was waiting for him at the chair lift exactly at nine in the morning. The slopes above them shone untracked in the sunlight. Cully had an expression of faraway, almost sensuous pleasure on his weathered, tough face. All he said as Michael greeted him was, "It's about time we had it."

They rose steadily and silently upward through the swath cut in the forest for the chair lift.

At the top, they skied down the little slope off the lift. Then, without saying anything, Cully skied off on a traverse on the bald top of the mountain. Michael followed. It was as steep a hill as any Michael had skied anywhere. It dropped, almost sheer, below them, for a straight 100 yards, then veered sharply to the left, out of sight, into the forest.

"Follow me, you son of a bitch," Michael said and skated off and down. He whistled tunelessly as he sped straight downhill. He had wanted to schuss the whole thing to the turn, but he knew he was out of control halfway down and it wouldn't do to wind up smeared against a tree on the first run of the winter. As he made his turn to brake his speed, he saw Cully glide past him, his skis together, pointed straight downhill. Michael was relieved to see that at least Cully didn't schuss the whole face but made four turns before stopping and waiting at the place where the run curved into the forest.

"Pretty good for an old fart," Michael said when he stopped beside Cully.

From then on, Cully was merciless. Comradely, smiling, but merciless. He never stopped, never looked back, jumped bumps 20 feet in the air, landed lightly as a bird.

Michael hung on doggedly, sweating through his parka, his city muscles screaming within his legs, fell twice, forced himself to scramble up and pound down after the inexorable broad back below him.

It was nearly noon before Cully finally stopped and asked as he was bending over a ski, "Have a good morning?"

"Never had a better one," Michael gasped, leaning forward on his ski poles. "Thanks."

When he got back to the hotel, he asked if there were any messages. There was. Mrs. Heggener wished to ski at 2:30 that afternoon. He hoped she wouldn't be as active on the slopes as she was in bed.

•

At 2:30 promptly, Eva came down into the lobby. She was wearing a navy-blue ski outfit that showed off her figure and a fur hat that made her delicately colored, sharply cut face look like that of a court beauty in an old Dutch painting. She glanced up at the clock over the front desk and nodded approvingly at Michael's promptness.

They drove to the lift in Michael's Porsche, and at the bottom of the lift, Michael bent and put on her skis.

As they mounted in the crystalline, silent air, Eva asked if he played backgammon. He did. She explained that her husband was always looking for partners but warned Michael to be careful, because he was a wily player.

She then invited him to have dinner with the two of them that evening. Michael accepted, though he wondered why they didn't have dinner alone his first night back.

"Do you know the slopes by now?" she asked, as they reached the top.

"Cully had me all over the place," Michael said, "and I've looked at the maps of the runs. Do you have any preferences?"

"Any run but the Black," she said. The Black Knight was the first one Cully had taken him on that morning. "Steep places give me vertigo. Go ahead, now, I'll follow you. I'll tell you if you're going too fast for me."

Michael set off on the easiest of the slopes, looking back from time to time to see how Eva was doing. She skied confidently and with grace and had obviously had a great deal of expert instruction. He put on speed and she followed on the heels of his skis. Vertigo, my ass, he thought. What is she trying to prove?

It was getting dark when they made their last descent, this time with Michael going at about three-quarter speed and Eva having no trouble keeping up with him. When they stopped near the lodge, her face was glowing as she looked up at the mountain and said, her voice tinkling (continued on page 262) Top of the Hill (continued from page 180) in the frozen twilight, "That's what it's all about, isn't it?"

•

Andreas Heggener turned out to be neither bent over nor coughing, rheumy-eyed nor barely able to move. He was a slender, gentle-looking man, perhaps 55, his skin translucent, with a full head of white hair and a small, neat white beard. His manners were exquisitely polite and formally friendly. He was wearing a beautiful dark-green loden jacket, with elaborate black embroidery around the buttonholes, and a gleaming white shirt and dark silk tie. Although the table at which they were seated was in front of the fireplace, he had a Scotch-plaid lightweight blanket over his shoulders. A little nervously, Michael had dressed for the occasion, too, and wore a shirt and tie and a blue blazer. Eva was wearing the same loose long black gown she had worn the night Michael had arrived, but she had on pearls and a gold broach tonight.

Heggener was a perfect host and the conversation, Michael was relieved to discover, flowed easily--mostly about the lucky downfall of snow, the condition of the runs, the difficulty in finding ski instructors of acceptable caliber, the comparison of runs in Europe, the inevitable growth of the town since Michael had been there before and the accompanying changes. Heggener had a light, pleasing voice and spoke without an accent and was careful at first not to monopolize the conversation, bringing first his wife and then Michael into all the discussions. During the meal, he never touched his wife's hand, but Michael could see that he was deeply attached to her and listened intently when she spoke, which was not often. She seemed content to listen most of the time to the two men and sat back relaxed in her chair and ate with a good appetite and smiled when her husband complimented her on how well prepared the meal was.

Over dessert, Heggener said, "I suppose, my dear Mr. Storrs, that you, like so many of our guests, wonder how I came to be here. My settling here, if it could be called settling, might be considered ... ah ... fortuitous. There is a clinic outside town that somebody told me was run by a professor who had performed miracles. Perhaps he had"--Heggener laughed lightly--"with others. Unfortunately, he was not in his magic phase when I visited him. But I fell in love with the town. The gentle mountains pleased me. The majesty of the Alps dwindles men who live in their valleys. I come from a hotelkeeping family. When I see a place that has a certain intangible, attractive atmosphere, a combination of geography, population, beauty ... and"--he chuckled--"I must say, the lure of profit about it, my thoughts immediately run to building, buying, landscaping, personnel, length of season, etc. So with Green Hollow. Hotelkeeping, if one keeps a proper distance from the inevitable daily annoyances, can be a very satisfactory profession."

Heggener poured the cognac that had arrived, carefully, but with relish. He raised his glass. "To the best of all possible winters," he said.

They drank to the best of all possible winters, though Eva barely touched the glass to her lips.

"You've skied, Mr. Heggener?" Michael asked after Heggener mentioned that one of his disappointments as a young man had been that he'd never won a race. Somehow, it was hard to imagine the frail figure in the chair opposite him as ever having been robust enough to cope with snow.

"Yes, I skied. After all, my dear Mr. Storrs," Heggener laughed, "I was born in Austria." He looked at Michael seriously. "Skiing, I take it, is not your profession?"

"No," Michael said, but added nothing.

"Mrs. Heggener has told me certain things about you, but she has been vague about your profession. If you don't mind my asking, what is it?"

"I suppose you could call it business," Michael said uncomfortably. "It used to have to do with dollars and cents."

The manager came into the room and announced a call for Eva.

She went to the office to answer the call and Heggener looked after her, his eyes sad, as though he didn't expect her to return.

Heggener played idly with the cognac bottle, twisting it on the table. "I suppose," he said, "you've heard that I'm dying?"

"I've heard."

"I'm a medical rarity," Heggener said, almost with relish at the distinction. "I have tuberculosis. Nowadays almost instantly curable by antibiotics. But I seem to have the honor of being afflicted by a new, clever, resistant strain. I am for the moment in a state of remission. If it weren't for Eva, I'd gladly just turn my head to the wall and go. But she means a great deal to me. More than I show to anyone. Maybe more than I show to her. She has her seasonal young men," Heggener went on matter-of-factly. "You, I would say, are infinitely more acceptable than the ones who have gone before you---"

"Mr. Heggener---" Michael began.

"Please don't protest, Mr. Storrs. I have gone through too much and have worn too thin to indulge in that worst of passions--jealousy. She is more like a beloved daughter to me than a wife." He stopped, then spoke after a pause. "By the way, do you hunt, Mr. Storrs?"

"What has that got to do with it?" Michael asked, bewildered.

"I have hunted a great deal in my life. It is one of my passions. I have no patience with the pseudo humanitarians who eat steak and deplore the killing of game. Which would you rather be--a stag shot down with one shot on a green hillside or a poor castrated steer dragged squealing into a slaughterhouse? Well, I won't argue the case. However, as I was saying, I am a hunter and I killed a man. An accident, naturally, such as happens every hunting season. One of my best friends. Unfortunately, he had degraded my wife. We both attended his funeral. This was in Austria, some time ago. The deer are plentiful in Vermont. Perhaps we can hunt together when the season opens. Eva says you are considering staying here permanently. I'm sure you would not regret it if you decided in our favor. The autumns here are magnificent."

Eva came back into the dining room, her black gown swishing around her legs, the pearls and the gold broach shining in the firelight.

"Anything wrong, dear?" Heggener asked.

"Nothing," Eva said. "The Hortons. They want to know if we have rooms for them over the holiday."

"Charming family," Heggener said. "Charming. And now, dear, if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you helped me upstairs and turned on a little Brahms while we prepared for bed. Ah--Eva has told me you play backgammon. Perhaps we can have a game soon. And now good night, and thank you for a most enjoyable evening."

"I thank you," Michael said stiffly. "Good night, madam. Good night, sir."

"Good night, Michael," Eva said. With her husband leaning on her for support, she led him slowly out of the dining room.

Michael sat stiffly for a moment, then rubbed his eyes wearily. From above he heard the opening strains of the Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn. He looked up at the ceiling and smiled wryly, then dropped his head on his chest and sat staring into the fire, listening to the faint music from the room two floors above him.

•

For the next several evenings, Michael had gone to bed early, to be fresh for the morning. He had not been disturbed: There had been no nighttime visits from Eva; and the Heggeners had dined in their rooms, so Michael had eaten alone and spent the evenings reading. He had seen Heggener walking, with his cane, once or twice, at a distance, but they had not spoken to each other since their dinner.

Michael had skied twice more with Eva, but she hadn't said anything about her husband and Michael had not brought the matter up, though he was both eager and reluctant to know more about the frail Austrian gentleman. In his mind, he couldn't quite accept him as an American. No American had ever confided to him that he had shot a very good friend because he had degraded his wife.

For a couple of hours one morning. Michael skied alone. As he was going down to the footpath, he spotted Heggener.

"Good morning, sir," Michael said, as he came to a stop just above the path. "You're up awfully early."

Heggener shrugged. "Sleeping is not my strong point these days. Oh ... I have a message for you. Two, to be exact. Eva can't ski today. Too busy, she says. I'm not quite sure at just what. I was to tell you if I happened to run into you. And, two--your friends arrived."

"So early?"

"They said they drove all night. A very handsome lady. By the way, how're you getting back to the hotel?"

"On foot, I'm afraid," Michael said. "I came out in Cully's truck."

"Good," Heggener said. "Then we can walk back together. If you don't mind."

"My pleasure," Michael said politely and got out of his skis and put them over his shoulder. They started walking back toward town, Heggener moving with surprising briskness, taking deep, satisfying breaths of the cold, thin air.

"Ah, the mountains," Heggener said, sighing. "I'm devoted to everything about them. The crispness of the air, the color of the shadows, the sound the snow makes under your boots. A morning like this makes me nostalgic for my own skiing days. My last run was from Zermatt, under the Matterhorn from Switzerland down to Cervinia. It was a day like this. Blue sky, cloudless, perfect snow, no wind. Just about two years ago. I was feeling up to anything, like a young boy. I always made a point of being in good shape to start the season. I respect the mountains; one must not take them lightly. Before the season started, I climbed, did an hour of calisthenics a day, ran.... For a man my age--I don't like to boast, but I was considered a formidable skier. I loved the mountains, but, as I said, I respected them. I never believed that any run was worth a death. Do you know Cousteau's phrase 'the euphoria of the depths'?"

"Yes."

"That day, under the Matterhorn, I felt the euphoria of the heights."

"I know what it's like," Michael said thoughtfully, engaged with his own memories now.

"Euphoria," Heggener said. "Even the word sends a tingle up your spine. It is a wilderness word--you wouldn't ever think of using it to describe anything that might happen to you in a modern city. Joy, perhaps, ecstasy, but euphoria never. Euphoria is a word that needs silence." As if speaking the word had hushed him, he walked on another 20 paces, the only sound the crunch of their boots on the snowy path.

"Cousteau caught something there," Heggener said finally. "The relationship between exaltation and danger. The prerequisite, you might say. The danger of drowning in the depths, the danger of uncontrolled speed, daring the mountain, outrunning avalanches." He laughed lightly. "I'm older now, I no longer can ski, I can speak wisely about a run not being worth a death, but I have ridden avalanches down precipices in my time. I had a friend, a magnificent skier, and he died that way--going into an avalanche slope. It took twenty-four hours to find the body. Still, when we did find him, I swore there was a smile on his lips." He had spoken softly, elegiacally. Now his tone turned matter-of-fact. "On that day, I had a slight cough. When I got back late in the afternoon, coming down to Zermatt after a marvelous Italian lunch, the cough became more annoying. My wife insisted upon my seeing a doctor. The doctor insisted upon X-raying me. They are neurotic about lungs in the Alps. He diagnosed tuberculosis. Not an advanced case, he assured me, I'd be skiing again the next year. It happened he was wrong. Not the first doctor to make a wrong prognosis." Heggener shrugged, made a little, uncharacteristic dandyish wave with his cane. "So here I am on foot, plodding along."

Michael stopped walking. "How far is it to the hotel from here?"

Heggener stopped, too, and looked at him. puzzled. "A mile and a half, maybe a little more. Why?"

"If you can walk more than a mile, what's to prevent you from skiing? Slowly, of course."

Heggener laughed. "My doctor would refuse to see me again."

"He's not doing you any good as it is, is he?" Cruelty was to be preferred to manners today.

"It's possible," he said, "that I could do a little mild skiing. As long as there were someone to pick me up when I fell."

"Look," Michael said. Although the man had, to all intents and purposes, just about threatened to shoot him the night they had met, he could not help but admire the candor and courage and grace with which he was facing his fate. And the stoical finality with which Heggener had described his last run down the mountain touched him. "Look--I'm being paid for a whole day's work by the ski school. Your wife usually skis only in the afternoon, and not every afternoon, at that. I'd be delighted to take you out."

Heggener nodded. "What have I got to lose?" He spoke almost gaily. "If it's a nice day tomorrow, I'll take you up on your offer." He looked up at the sky. "Sun," he said, "shine tomorrow." He laughed, sounding young and full-bodied.

They were in the town now. With his cane, Heggener saluted the shopkeepers standing in front of their establishments, and tipped his hat to two ladies who were wheeling baby carriages. Everyone seemed to know him and smiled warmly at him and told him he was glad to see him back.

"Contrary to most people my age," Heggener said, brushing some snow off his mink collar, "I do not applaud the approach of spring. Winter is my season. Luckily, we are far from spring. Which brings up another point, Michael. Do you really intend to stay the entire season?"

"As of now, yes."

Heggener nodded. "Eva told me that you had not yet said yes or no about the offer of the little cottage on our property. I sincerely hope you will accept it. I gather that you can afford to stay at the Alpina as long as you like, but living in a hotel for three months at a time, even one as spectacularly comfortable as mine"--he smiled deprecatingly--"can finally be dreary. I must admit that Eva and I are not being completely unselfish. I have to go out of town on business, or to Boston to the clinic, sometimes for weeks at a time. I worry about leaving Eva alone. During the season, as you may have heard, the town is visited by some extremely undesirable young people--ski bums who live by stealing--whole groups of young people who shoot up on heroin and indulge in other modern amusements of a similar kind. Has Eva happened to tell you why we are having the house redone completely?"

"No."

"Last spring," Heggener said, "we were in New York for a few days and only Hulda, the 70-year-old maid, was in the house. A gang of young men and girls broke in. The dog must have been barking, so they shot him. Shot him. Bruno is a replacement. Then the gang tore up the house, ripped every cushion, broke all the china, smashed the doors to the cupboards, sliced the clothes hanging in the closets, everything. Then, as a final touch, they shat on the floor. Hulda slept through it all. Now I keep a pistol in a drawer, a useful German P38. Having you nearby would tend to discourage any further depredations. If you do move into the cottage, I will show you where I keep the pistol. Have you ever used one?"

"No."

"No matter. You never have to use it at more than ten feet if you want it to he effective. At ten feet, it's almost impossible to miss."

The idea of using a pistol at ten feet did not make Heggener's offer of a place to live any more attractive, but Michael felt that it was impossible to refuse.

"I'll move in when you tell me it's ready," Michael said, without hesitation.

As they neared the front steps of the hotel, they heard the sound of a piano being played from within. "My friend Antoine," Michael said. "He's a professional. It there's a piano anywhere, he'll find it."

Heggener cocked his head appreciatively, listening. "Schubert. He plays very well."

"Poor bastard. He got into a ruckus in New York in the bar he was playing at and the police came in and they found out he didn't have a work permit and the boss fired him and he can't work in New York anymore."

"What times we live in," Heggener said sadly. "You have to have the permission of the Government to play the piano."

They went in together. "Thank you for a most pleasant promenade." Heggener smiled wryly. "Until tomorrow morning, if the sun shines...."

Michael watched him climb the steps, with effort, then went downstairs to the bar, which was located in the basement. Antoine was bent over the piano, playing intently, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip, his sad, dark eyes squinting against the smoke.

"Antoine," Michael said, loudly enough to be heard above the music.

Antoine stopped playing and bounded up and embraced Michael, without losing his cigarette.

Michael and Antoine talked about New York, Green Hollow, the snow. But then Antoine started in on his immigration problems. He was terrified that he'd be sent back to France, that he'd have to leave the country that he'd learned to love. Michael agreed to help him by financing him for a few months.

"I knew I could depend upon you," Antoine cried and bounced down to the piano stool and hit three resounding triumphant major chords.

"By the way, where's Susan? Sleeping off the ride last night?"

"Not a bit of it," Antoine said. "She is a woman of demonic energy. She's skiing. She couldn't wait."

"How is she?"

Antoine sighed. "Elusive."

"I thought you told me you were just friends."

"She may think that," Antoine said darkly. "I am more demented about her than ever. She is a glorious and infuriating woman."

"Will she be back for lunch?" Michael asked.

"Who knows? She never tells me her plans."

"Well, if she comes back," Michael said, "we'll have lunch together. The food here is very good."

"I will never leave here."

As Michael started upstairs, Antoine swung the stool around and began to improvise on the sad melody Send In the Clowns.

•

Michael was drying himself off after his shower when there was a knock on the door. He threw on a terrycloth bathrobe and opened the door. Eva was standing there, looking businesslike in a plain skirt and sweater. "May I come in?" she asked.

"I'm not exactly dressed to receive company."

"It won't take long." She came into the room and faced him, unsmiling. "You're doing something unforgivable," she said.

"What are you talking about, Eva?" Having one sock on the bed and one on the floor might be careless, but it could hardly be called unforgivable.

"Tempting my husband to believe he could ski again. You ought to see him now," she said accusingly. "He's stretched out on the bed as pale as a sheet, gasping for breath. I forbid you to mention the subject again."

"Eva...." Michael said. "Nobody forbids me anything. Not even you."

"You'll kill him," she said flatly.

"I doubt it. In any case, he's a grown, highly intelligent man and he knows how he feels better than either you or I and it's up to him to make decisions that concern him. I happen to think that a little easy skiing will help him, if not physically, then at least psychically."

"Up to now," Eva said sardonically, "you have successfully hidden the fact that you have a degree in psychiatry. You've talked to him twice and you think you know him. I've been married to him for twelve years and I assure you, you don't. You talk about a little easy skiing. That's because of your ignorance. He does nothing easily and never has---"

"Listen," Michael broke in. "Maybe I was wrong to suggest it, but now that he's got the idea, he's going to ski, whether he does it with me or with somebody else."

There was a soft rap on the door. "You have company. We'll discuss this some other time," Eva said.

Michael went and opened the door, leaving Eva standing rigidly in the middle of the room. Susan Hartley was standing there, in ski clothes, her hair blown from her morning on the mountain.

"Hi, lover," she said and kissed Michael before she saw Eva behind him. "Oh."

"That's all right." Eva said. "I was just leaving. I hope you had an enjoyable morning on the slopes." She had transformed herself in the flick of an eye to the mistress of the establishment, but her voice was cold. "That's a pretty outfit you're wearing." Susan was in an all-white ski suit. "The color becomes you." The manner in which she said it made it plain that she did not think that the color became Susan at all. "I'll leave you two now. I'm sure you have many things to talk about."

She marched stiffly out of the room. Michael closed the door behind her gently.

"Did I interrupt anything?" Susan asked when they were alone.

"A medical discussion," Michael said. "Nothing."

Susan looked around the room. "What a shining morning. I feel like a new woman already. Can you see it?"

"The white flower of the hillside."

"Approve?"

"Unreservedly."

"The beautiful lady didn't. Approve, I mean." She made a little grimace.

"Don't jump to conclusions."

"I sensed an aura of ... ownership." Susan looked obliquely at him, half-smiling.

"Her husband owns the hotel," Michael said stiffly.

"I know that. That isn't what I sensed. I sensed romance."

"You'd sense romance in an ad for surgical trusses. The lady is not romantic. I'm her hired help. I'm her ski guide."

"There is guidance and guidance." Susan laughed good-naturedly. "I'm waiting for something."

"We're having lunch in a little while."

"That's not what I'm waiting for." She approached him, playing at being extravagantly coquettish and batting her eyelashes. She had her sports, Susan, skiing outdoors and flirting within. She held out her arms.

He embraced her, kissed her lightly on the mouth, uneasily conscious that he was naked under the robe, broke away.

He tried to talk to her about Antoine, about how he had told him that he was demented about her. Susan made it clear that she wasn't demented about him. Then she teased Michael about Eva and about how he was catnip to the ladies. As he was asking her to leave his room so that he could dress for lunch, there was a knock on the door.

Michael pulled the robe tightly around him and opened the door. Antoine was standing there, holding a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

He stepped gaily into the room, then stopped abruptly when he saw Susan. "Oh," he said, "I see I'm short a glass." He started back toward the door. "I'll go get another one...."

"No need," Michael said. "There's a glass in the bathroom."

He heard Antoine say accusingly, "Susan, you said you wouldn't be back until dark. What're you doing here?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" Susan said airily. "I was learning how to make parallel turns."

Michael poured for the three of them and lifted his glass. "To deep snow and sunny days," he said.

Susan looked demurely at him and with two hands held the glass to her lips, like a small girl innocently drinking her morning milk.

•

That afternoon. Michael took Antoine to The Chimney Corner, an easygoing bar where everybody talked to everybody else.

Jimmy Davis, the owner, with whom Michael had drunk on many long winter evenings, came over and Michael made the introductions.

They ordered whiskies and Davis himself brought them over. "That piano in tune?" Michael asked.

"I wouldn't know," Davis said. "Nobody's played on it yet this year. Why? You want to give us a concert?"

"My friend, Antoine here, might play us a tune. He's a famous pianist from France."

"Be my guest," Davis said to Antoine. "A famous French pianist might just be what we need to tone up the joint."

"What do you know?" Antoine said. "It's actually in tune." He began to play Stormy Weather, because he knew that Michael liked the song. They stayed late at The Chimney Corner. Antoine played to the delight of the customers and Michael chatted with Davis and several others he knew.

•

The next morning, Heggener was standing in the sunshine in front of the hotel, holding his skis and poles, waiting for Michael. "Ah, Michael," he said. "It's such a lovely morning I wanted to get all the sun I could."

They drove silently to the bottom of the lift in Michael's Porsche.

Once on top, Michael slowly and carefully led Heggener down the easiest of the runs. Heggener skied easily and stylishly, fully controlled. He breathed normally when Michael stopped to let him rest and there was no sign of effort on his face. It was hard to believe that this elegantly dressed and graceful man had been declared doomed by the doctors and had not been on skis for two years.

They made only two descents that morning. Michael didn't want to take Heggener back to his wife exhausted. Heggener looked pleased with himself and there was good color in his cheeks and he agreed immediately when Michael said he thought the two runs were enough for the first time out.

"How do you feel?" Michael asked as they were driving back to the hotel.

"Tingling," Heggener said gaily.

Michael felt a sudden surge of admiration and something more than admiration for the courageous and complex man sitting erect, his fears secret, beside him.

When they got back to the hotel, Michael went up to Antoine's room and found Davis there. Davis had been impressed with Antoine's playing and wanted him to play six nights a week, from ten o'clock until one in the morning. Davis offered him meals, a small room in the back that he could live in and $75 a week.

Antoine accepted the offer and agreed to start the next night.

•

When the weather was fine, Michael skied every morning with Heggener. He was surprised at how much pleasure it gave him to see the man get stronger and stronger with each passing day. While they still stayed away from the Black Knight, they ran all the other slopes, doing three, then four a morning, with Heggener moving more swiftly and with greater assurance every day.

On a clear, sunny morning, when they had done four runs and Michael had suggested that it was enough, Heggener had shaken his head and had said, "I'd like to do one more."

Michael hesitated, then said, "If you feel up to it...."

"No problem," Heggener said.

So they went up in the chair lift again. As they soared above the trees, Heggener said, "Have you noticed something?"

"I've noticed that you're really skiing," Michael said.

"Not that," said Heggener. "Haven't you noticed that not once today have I coughed? Last night I threw all my medicines away. It may be meaningless; but then again, it may not. And I've put on two pounds this week. That, too, may be meaningless and it may not."

They rode in silence. Michael was so moved that he didn't trust himself to say anything. Somehow, he thought, by luck, I have come to the right place at the right time.

•

A week later, Michael was ready to move into the cottage. He drove to the big house to announce his arrival. It was the first time he had gone there and he rang the front doorbell and waited. The door was opened by Heggener.

"Come in, come in, neighbor," he said. As usual, he was impeccably groomed and dressed, his white hair and beard carefully brushed, his face, which was now tanned, freshly shaved. He was wearing a shirt and tie and a loose corduroy suit and his brown shoes were polished to a high, rich gleam.

"Eleven o'clock," Heggener said. "What should our pleasure be at this time of the morning? Would you object to a bloody mary?"

"Not strenuously," Michael said.

Heggener went over to the sideboard, where there were bottles and glasses, an ice bucket and a silver pitcher filled with tomato juice. His movements were deft and precise and his hands were steady and he obviously enjoyed bartending. He gave a drink to Michael and lifted his own. "Prost," he said.

"Prost," Michael said.

"Ah," Heggener said, after the first sip. "The perfect thing for eleven o'clock. Eva thinks it is a barbaric drink, but I have begun to grow a bit tired of her Austrian wine. Sit down, sit down," he said and went over to the backgammon table. He sat in one of the wooden chairs and motioned to Michael to seat himself in the other. "I understand," he said formally, "that Eva has been trying to prevail upon you to stop our skiing together."

"She has mentioned it once or twice."

"So she tells me." Heggener sipped at his drink. "I trust that our--ah--divergence of opinion has not made you uncomfortable."

"If I thought it was doing you any harm, I'd tell you so," Michael said.

"She is a determined woman," Heggener said, "and is used to having her way. But she has an absurd faith in doctors. A faith that I have given up for some years now. Oh. I almost forgot to give you the key to the cottage. Will one key do you?"

"Until I lose it," Michael said. He was sure that another key existed and that Eva had it.

"I may not be able to ski with you next week, Michael," Heggener said. "Eva is insisting that I go to New York for a series of tests. There is a doctor there whom she has heard of...." He shrugged. "There is always a doctor she has heard of," he said, and there was a note of weariness in his voice. "We had the worst scene of our marriage the night I threw away all my medicines. She accused me--and, I'm afraid, you--of shortening my life. I tell you this because I don't want you to be surprised if she turns on you."

"Thank you," Michael said. He didn't say that nothing that Eva would do or say could surprise him.

"I have not yet given in. But in the end--for the sake of peace...." He left the sentence unfinished. "But, on the brighter side, it will give you more time to ski with that beautiful Miss Hartley. It's amazing that she isn't married. A young lady as pretty and delightful as that."

"She prizes her freedom."

Heggener nodded. "It is a state that one can overvalue. It is the old saying--giving up the good in search of the best. You, I understand, are still married. I'm not prying, am I?" he asked hastily.

"Of course not. As far as I know," Michael said, "my marriage is public knowledge. We've been separated for quite some time."

"Am I wrong in feeling that you miss her?"

"No," Michael said slowly, "you're not wrong."

"If it's painful for you to speak about it, we can talk of other things."

"She demanded that I give up something it was impossible for me to give up," Michael said. He knew so much about the man opposite him who was now his friend and his responsibility that it seemed to him only just that Heggener should know more about him. "Somewhat as your wife thinks about you, she thought that I was shortening my life. It all started on our honeymoon, when I took a bad fall in a ski race because I was skiing above my talent, taking risks...." It was coming out in a gush now, in a relief from pressure that had been building up ever since he had left Tracy. "And she had the bad luck to be on the spot when I was doing some sky diving with friends and two of them were killed. She asked me to give up just those moments that made me feel that life was worth living. If I had given in and had stayed with her, our marriage eventually would have been worse than any divorce."

"Everyone to his own destructive necessary passions," Heggener said. "Yours, mine, Eva's, your wife's. We live by them, we die by them. We are understood and misunderstood by them. When we believe we are shouting, we are screaming soundlessly, as we do in dreams. My dream is a young wife, whom I can no longer serve, except as a refuge. In our day, we like to believe that we can explain all behavior--sane, insane, almost sane. In the case of the gay and high-spirited young woman I married, there were explanations--though it was years before I learned them. But after the first manifestation, she left me and disappeared entirely for two months. I consulted with her father, who, by the way, is an old rascal and not to be trusted at any time. He told me Eva's mother had committed suicide, as had her brother. That much, at least, I found to be true. The father also told me that as a child, when Eva was denied anything, no matter how trivial or impossible, she would fall into convulsions or merely run away from home until she was brought back by the police. Genes, I'm afraid, play their role in all this, but it is difficult to know what the role actually is or the moment when a particular gene is triggered into disastrous action. There are long periods when Eva is serene--overcontrolled, the pressure building up silently and secretly. They are periods of peace and beauty. But she is always poised for flight, as she was as a child. And if she escapes, I know she will be destroyed and I fear I will be destroyed along with her. If I were an honest man, I would have counseled you to leave the first night I talked to you. Eva is on the verge of madness. Verge is the wrong word. She slips across the border, slips back. I use what measures I can to hold her. Psychiatrists, clinics that are too expensive to be called by their correct name--asylums. You are this year's measure, my poor friend. I am selfish. I should tell you to get into your car and drive off once and for all. But I won't. Perhaps you cannot save her, but I feel you are saving me." He put down his glass on the backgammon board with a sharp, decisive click and stood up. "I would be most grateful if you would be good enough to drive me to New York for the tests."

"Of course," Michael said, standing.

"Oh," Heggener said matter-of-factly, "I nearly forgot. I told you I would show you where I keep my pistol." He went over to a fragile inlaid little writing desk near the door of the living room and pushed a small button that was almost undetectable on the side. A drawer slid out. He picked up the pistol from where it was lying on a soft piece of flannel. "I am happy to say that it has never been fired. Eva, I must tell you, does not know of its existence." He put the weapon carefully into the drawer and snapped the drawer back into place. He made a little stiff bow and went out of the room, leaving Michael to find his way to the front door alone.

•

Michael was unpacking his bags in the cottage when Eva came in. She was wearing a red cape, with the hood up, protecting her hair. She looked decorous in her cape, and rustically sensuous, like a Watteau shepherdess, and certainly not mad. It occurred to him that perhaps Eva was not the mad one in the family, that it was the elegant, soft-spoken aging man, the confessed murderer in the white-pillared mansion with the concealed, loaded pistol, who was involving him in some cunning lunatic scheme and was even now chuckling to himself about how he had taken in a credulous and easily deceived stranger.

"I see you left the key in the lock," Eva said. "Were you expecting company?"

"You."

"I am under instructions from my husband to see to it that you have everything you need," Eva said, smiling. "Do you?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Aren't you missing something?"

"What could that be?"

"This, for example." She went up to him and kissed him, her mouth open, her tongue sliding over his. For a moment, he stood rigidly, trying not to respond, remembering what Heggener had just told him, but the touch of her lips, the feel of her body against his made him forget or not care about anything else and he held her hard and ran his hands over her, under the cape, on the thin silk fabric of her blouse.

"Damn it, Eva," he said, shaken, "we shouldn't do this."

"Why not?" She took off her cape and threw it carelessly over the couch.

"Your husband is why not. If I had met him before I met you, I'd never have---"

"You say that now. Anyway, my luck, you met me first."

"I like him," Michael said. "More than that. I admire him. His courage, his gentleness...."

"I admire him, too. But that's another department. We have some very well-defined conditions in our marriage. You fit one of those conditions admirably. Shall I go in and see that the bed is made properly?" she asked, mischievously.

"Can't we wait for tonight?"

"There's nothing wrong with tonight. And nothing wrong with right now. Don't try my patience, Michael. I really should be offended at your lack of gallantry."

"There's nothing gallant about us," Michael said bitterly. "We fall on each other like two wild animals. We're not lovers, we're antagonists."

"Whatever you wish to call it, my dear," she said sweetly. She started toward the bedroom, but stopped, because there was a knock on the door.

Michael opened the door. Susan was standing there, holding an azalea plant. "I brought you a housewarming gift," she said as she came into the room and Michael closed the door behind her. "Although," she said, nodding politely and greeting Eva, "the house seems to be pretty warm already."

"Good morning, Miss Hartley," Eva said coldly. "That's a very pretty plant. Although, in general, I dislike azaleas. They hang on so long. One grows tired of looking at them."

"When Michael gets tired of looking at this one, he has my permission to throw it out. I won't know--I'm leaving tomorrow."

She looked around the room. "What a charming little house. Don't you think you might offer the ladies a drink of welcome?"

"Sorry." Michael said. "Of course." He opened a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

Susan sat down gracefully on the little sofa, pushing Eva's cape gently to one side to make room for herself. "No ice, please," she said. "Just a little water."

"I don't like whisky," Eva said. "Don't you have some wine in the house, Michael?"

"I'm afraid not," Michael said.

"I must tell the boys at the hotel to bring you a case," Eva said. The implication beyond the remark was clear and the little smile that played around Susan's mouth told him she had caught it.

He poured a drink for Susan and himself.

"Michael," Susan said as she drank, "Antoine is giving me a farewell dinner tonight at The Chimney Corner. And, of course, you're invited. And you and your husband, too, madam."

"I'm afraid we're busy tonight, Miss Hartley," Eva said. "Please convey my thanks to Antoine."

Susan finished her drink quickly. "Well, I must be pushing off. Congratulations again, Michael, on your cozy little nest. See you around eight. Goodbye, Mrs. Heggener. And thank you for how beautifully everybody at the hotel treated me. I look forward to coming back."

"I'm sure all the help will be pleased to see you again, Miss Hartley." There was just the slightest emphasis on the word help.

Susan went out, supple and springy, and neither Michael nor Eva spoke until they heard the sound of her car driving off. Then Eva said, "There is only one rule in this house. You are not to entertain that lady here."

"In that case, thank you for everything and I'll find someplace else to live. I'm peculiar--I like to make my own rules." He began to throw the things he had just unpacked back into the open suitcase.

Eva watched him for a moment, then went over and held his arm. "All right, you bastard," she said. "No rules."

•

The dinner at The Chimney Corner was surprisingly good and Susan was in high spirits, just a little tipsy and preparing for the city with green eye shadow, little circles of rouge on her cheekbones that made her look like a child's doll and a new streak of blonde in her hair. The room was full and Antoine was playing marvelously. Michael stayed late and thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and Antoine's playing. And Antoine didn't look as melancholy as he usually did.

During a break, he told Michael, "Things're looking up. I bared my heart to Davis and he's been talking to people and he says he's pretty sure he'll get the Immigration to give me a green card and a work permit in a couple of weeks. He's got connections everywhere, Jimmy. He's not much on paying, but he's great on connections."

"That's the best news I've heard in a long time," Michael said.

•

The next morning, Michael took Heggener up the mountain. On the way up, Heggener said, "Eva has kindly agreed to let me wait until next Wednesday before going to New York. Do you think you can take me down?"

"Of course," Michael said.

The skiing was good and Heggener seemed inexhaustible, his color high, a small, pleased smile on his lips when he stopped. It seemed foolish to Michael that a man who looked so formidably hale should have to go into a hospital, but he said nothing to Heggener.

"Ah, that was a nice morning," Heggener said, as they drove up to the big house. "It will help get me through all those doctors' hands--at least for a day or two."

Eva was waiting for Michael and said she wanted to skip lunch and take advantage of the good snow and the sunlight, so Michael and she went right off, leaving Heggener, standing between two of the white pillars, waving amiably at them.

They spoke very little while they were on the hill but concentrated on whipping around other, slower skiers and working on technique. If it were always like this, Michael thought, I'd stay on here forever.

In the middle of the afternoon, Eva said she'd like something to eat and they went into the lodge and had a sandwich and tea. "Eva," Michael said, pouring his tea, "I must tell you once more that I think you're wrong in insisting that Andreas go into the hospital."

"I hope you haven't told him that."

"I haven't. But he looks so well--and he skis like a boy of twenty."

"Michael," Eva said sharply, "you don't know the harm you're doing."

"Harm?" he said incredulously. "He's getting stronger every day."

"He thinks he's getting stronger. And you're encouraging him. He's beginning to hope again."

"What's wrong with that?"

"The hope is false," Eva said dogmatically. "When he has a relapse, which can be any time now, it will shatter him. And you'll be responsible."

"What do you want me to do--tell a man who's just beginning to reach out to life again that he's living a dream, that he must just sit wrapped up in blankets and wait to die?"

"Obviously," Eva said ironically, "you know better than all the doctors."

"Maybe I do," Michael said stubbornly.

"If you won't do it for him," she said, "do it for me."

She was exasperating him with her tenaciousness, her serene belief that only she could possibly be in the right. "We have a certain arrangement," Michael said, brutally. "I ski with you for pay and make love to you for pleasure. There's nothing else in the contract."

"You know," she said thoughtfully, refusing to be insulted, "I believe you have an ulterior motive."

"What ulterior motive?"

"You're deliberately trying to shorten his life," she said.

"Oh, my God! Why would I want to do that?"

"To reap the rewards," she said calmly.

"What rewards?"

"Me," she said. "The rich widow, who is passionately attached to you, or at least to your useful body, and who would, after a decent interval, be delighted to marry you."

He stood up. "The fun is over for the day," he said, controlling his fury. He strode out of the room. Crazy, he thought, crazy. The man is right. I should leave this town right now. But the thought of never having that soft, practiced Viennese body in his arms again was intolerable and he knew he would not leave.

First Look at a new novel

"Half past 12 and we're still talking, he thought. But he'd be damned if he'd make the first move."

" 'Mrs. Heggener wants you, and what madam wants, we supply. It's not a favor. She's hard to please.' "

" 'Eva has her seasonal young men. You, I would say, are infinitely more acceptable than the others.' "

The conclusion of "The Top of the Hill" will appear in the October Playboy.