The Top of the Hill

First Look at a new novel

Synopsis: Michael Storrs, a successful management consultant, is obsessed with challenging death. His dangerous sports hobbies have deeply affected his marriage with Tracy Lawrence. After a boating accident in which both he and his father-in-law are almost killed, Tracy asks for a separation. Some time later, Michael is injured in a barroom fight while defending his friend Antoine, and while he's in the hospital recuperating, Michael decides that he must quit his job, leave the city and retreat to Green Hollow, Vermont, a ski resort that he remembers fondly.

In Green Hollow, Michael checks into the Alpina, a pleasant hotel owned by the Heggeners. The first night of his stay, Eva Heggener invites herself into his room and it is soon apparent that hers is not a business visit. She spends most of the night with Michael, who finds her wonderfully sensuous and voluptuous.

The next day, he contacts David Cully, head of the local ski school, for a job as a ski instructor. At Eva's request, he is assigned to be her private teacher. As the days pass, Eva and Michael routinely dine together in the evening and enjoy each other at night. One evening she announces that her husband will be arriving the next day and invites him to join them for dinner. Michael accepts.

Andreas Heggener turns out to be a very distinguished gentleman in his mid-50s who had been quite an active skier before his illness. He has a rare form of tuberculosis, he explains, and is often away at hospitals and clinics for tests. When Eva leaves the table to take a call, he frankly refers to his wife's "seasonal young men" and comments that this time she seems to have made a good choice.

Michael and Eva skis together in the afternoons, but since Heggener's return, the night visits have temporarily stopped. As he gets to know Heggener better, Michael suspects that Andreas is much stronger that the doctors say and he suggests that perhaps he could do some mild skiing. Although at first reluctant, Heggener agrees to try. Eva, however, is furious at the suggestion.

Michael starts skiing with Heggener in the mornings and with Eva in the afternoons. To everyone's surprise, Andreas gains strength from the exercise, and one night, in a moment of optimism, he throws out all his medications. Eva, however, continues to be outraged and accuses Michael of trying to kill Andreas so that he can have her for himself. Infuriated by her accusation, Michael storms out. He knows he should get out of this crazy, complicated mess and leave Green Hollow. But he also knows that he cannot leave and forget Eva so easily.

Part III The Following Saturday afternoon, Michael drove to the hang-gliding school to take part in an exhibition that Jerry Williams had planned. The wind was still bad but had abated somewhat and Michael decided it was manageable. There were about 12 young men, all very much of the same mold and manner as Williams, and all of them, aside from Michael, with their own gliders.

"Hi, Mike," (continued on page 152) Top of the Hill (continued from page 143) Williams said as Michael came up to the shed. "I was afraid you weren't coming, either."

"What do you mean, 'either'?"

"There were supposed to be twelve more fellas," Williams said, "but they dropped out. Too much wind, they said. And these guys here just took a vote and they decided nine to three not to go up. There goes my big event," he said bitterly. "How about you?"

Michael looked up at the sky again. "I've come down in worse. If the three other guys will come up, too, I'll go first."

"You're a pal, Mike," Williams said gratefully and went to talk to the others as Michael got into his jump boots.

"OK," Williams said, when he came back. "You got three customers. I got the kite for you tuned like a watch," he said. He was lending Michael his machine.

At the top of the hill from which they would have to take off, the wind was whistling, first from one direction, then changing abruptly to another, and the other men moved around nervously and one of them said loudly, "We're crazy to take off in this crap."

Michael helped Williams assemble the glider, then methodically got into the harness, felt the controls and, without hesitating, made his run off. There was the old wonderful, weightless sensation, and he grinned as he felt the air buoy him up, but then the turbulence began and he sideslipped, recovered, felt himself being dragged down fast, fought it, saw the ground coming up at him with alarming speed, sideslipped again and saw that he was going into a stand of bare-limbed trees. He crashed into a tree, to the sound of metal being crushed and the tearing of fabric. When he came to, he found that he was hanging on a gnarled branch. He moved his arms and legs cautiously. No broken bones. But his face was wet and warm and he knew it was blood. Under him he saw Williams making a loop in a long rope. Williams threw him the rope and Michael secured it around the branch. Then he freed himself from the wreckage and slid to the ground.

"You owe me for one kite," Williams said.

"Worth it," Michael said. "It was a nice ride."

"You are a cool son of a bitch," Williams said.

•

As Michael was looking at his face in the mirror, the phone rang. It was Eva. She had invited him to have dinner at the house that evening with her and Heggener, but Andreas had gotten a chill and was running a fever and she had put him to bed. "So much for the medical opinions of both of you," she said tartly and hung up.

He went over to The Chimney Corner to hear Antoine play, and it was almost midnight before he left. When he arrived back at the cottage, it was dark. As he turned on a lamp, he saw Eva sitting on the sofa, wearing her lynx coat.

"Good evening," he said. "Why didn't you turn on the light?"

"I wanted to give you a happy surprise," Eva said. She herself did not sound happy. "How was your evening?"

"Pleasant. Very pleasant. How's Andreas?"

"Not good," she said flatly. "Not good at all. His fever is up to nearly a hundred and two." She said it accusingly. "But he's asleep now. It will be a miracle if he's well enough to go to the hospital without an ambulance."

Michael sighed.

"Don't sigh as though you wished I were a thousand miles away. Aren't you going to kiss me?" She stood up.

"Eva," Michael said wearily. "I nearly got killed this afternoon and I can hardly move...."

"You don't care whom you kill, do you? Yourself, my husband...."

"Please," he said, taking off his coat and throwing it onto a chair. "I'm dead-tired and I want to go to sleep."

"Your face is a mess," she said, without sympathy.

"I'm going to sleep."

"I didn't come down here to watch you sleep," she said.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't do anything...."

She began to pace up and down the small room, the coat open and swirling around her, making her look like a giant, ferocious cat. "I'm getting tired of being rejected. By you. By my husband. You want to kill yourself--fine. He wants to kill himself--fine. Maybe the sooner the better for everybody. Maybe I won't even wait. You're not the only two men in the world. Just for your information, and you can pass it on to your friend, my husband, if you wish, there's a man who's come over from Austria three times in the past year to ask me to marry him."

"Good for you. I wish you every happiness."

"I'm tired of this miserable little town and these piddling mountains," she said, pacing wildly. "Of these dull, heavy American peasants. Of drunken brawlers with their mangled faces--"

"Be reasonable, please--"

"I want to live among civilized human beings. I thought maybe you'd help pass the season...." She was almost snarling as she spoke. "But I'm afraid I made a mistake. You're a little more intelligent than the rest, perhaps, and better educated, but you're like them all, after the first fine careless rapture"--she threw out the phrase mockingly--"the same old middle-class, timid censoriousness, the same hypocritical cowardly morality. So you're too tired to go to bed with me. Go to bed with my husband. I'm sure he'd be pleased and so would you and maybe when he dies next week or next month, he'll die happy and leave you his fortune in his will."

Michael slapped her. She stood stock-still, her lips drawn back, and laughed. "So you're too tired to go to bed with a woman, but you're not too tired to hit one. You're going to regret that slap, Mr. Storrs." She swept out of the cottage, leaving the door open behind her.

•

The ringing of the telephone awoke him. He groaned as he got off the bed to go into the living room to answer it. Bright sunlight streamed in through the windows as he limped toward the telephone. The clock on the mantelpiece showed that it was a quarter to ten.

"Hello," he said into the phone.

"Michael...." It was Heggener.

"Good morning." Michael tried to sound cheerful and wide awake.

"I hope I didn't awaken you."

"I've been up since seven," Michael lied. "How are you feeling today?"

"Fine. No fever and no cough. I was just wondering if you could manage to take me down to New York tomorrow instead of waiting. I'd like to get the whole foolish business over with as soon as possible."

Michael ran his hand over his face and scraped the stubble of heard and felt the scabs of the scratches. He would have liked to be more presentable for New York, but he said, "Fine. What time in the morning?"

"Nine OK?"

"Nine it is. See you then."

•

Exactly at nine, he drove up to the Heggener house. He saw that the door to the garage was open. Heggener's Ford was there, but Eva's Mercedes was gone. Heggener was waiting for him, dressed warmly. For his trip to the city, he had given up the Tyrolean hat and was wearing a soft black-felt hat, which sat squarely on his head. As Michael carried his bag to the Porsche, Heggener told him (continued on page 170) Top of the Hill (continued from page 152) that Eva had taken Bruno to the veterinarian. "She's heard of a wonder animal doctor in Burlington. She should be given a yearly retainer by the American Medical Association for her devotion to disease." He smiled forgivingly, as though his wife's hypochondria in respect to husbands and dogs were a charming little quirk of character.

•

The Porsche ate up the miles of highway smoothly. Heggener said he liked to go fast and Michael kept the car at 85, while keeping a careful watch in the rearview mirror for police cars.

They drove in silence for a while. Then Heggener said, "Michael, I've been thinking about you. You're not going to spend your life teaching skiing, are you?"

"No," Michael said. "In fact, I'm not even going to spend another day teaching skiing. I told Cully I quit yesterday."

"You did?" Heggener said flatly. "Are you leaving Green Hollow?"

"Probably not until the end of the season--if then," Michael said. "When I leave more or less depends upon you."

"Does it?" Heggener sounded surprised. "In what way?"

"If, when you get out of the hospital, you still want to ski with me, I'll hang on."

"That is most kind of you. After the season ... what do you intend to do?"

"I have no plans," Michael said.

"If I were to say that perhaps I had a plan for you, Michael, would you consider it an unwarranted intrusion on your privacy?"

"Of course not."

"My manager, Mr. Lennart, is leaving in April," Heggener said, "with no regrets on either side. What I have been considering offering you is the position of manager."

"It's very thoughtful of you, Andreas, but I don't know the first thing about running a hotel."

"It's not as complicated as people think. I have a good staff and one of the boys who has been with me three years is ready to move up to the position of assistant manager and would be of great help. The duties would leave you a great deal of time to ski and, in fact, you would attract guests by being available to ski with them, which Mr. Lennart is not. I would be prepared to offer you a decent salary, plus a percentage of the profits. As part of your training, I would finance trips to Europe to see how other hotels I admire are run; and, in any case, your vacations would be quite long, since the hotel is a seasonal business. Of course, I don't expect you to give me an immediate answer. You have all the time you want to tell me yes or no."

"Have you spoken with Eva about this?" Michael asked.

"No, I haven't From our discussions, it would seem that she will be gone from now on for longer and longer periods. In any case, where the business is concerned, it is I who make all the decisions. It would be understood that she would leave you severely alone."

"Let's talk about it," Michael said, "when you get back."

"Of course," Heggener said.

Michael felt a twinge of pity as he saw Heggener put into a wheelchair, already somehow diminished, with a no-nonsense nurse pushing him swiftly and efficiently out of sight.

•

Michael checked into the Hotel Westbury, because it was on Madison Avenue near where he had lived and he had often dropped into the bar for a drink. It was the cocktail hour and the bar was crowded with couples, released and joyful after the day's work, and he felt a pang of self-pity because he was alone. On impulse, he called Tracy. The phone rang and rang and he was about to hang up, not knowing whether he was relieved or sorry that she was not at home, when it was picked up and he heard her voice, a little breathless, saying, "Hello."

"Hello, Tracy," he said. "I was just about to hang up."

"I just came in," she said. "I was coming up the steps when I heard the phone ringing and I ran, as you can tell by the way I'm breathing." She laughed. "Where are you?"

"Around the corner. At the Westbury."

"Oh." Suddenly, she sounded cautious.

"Am I too close for comfort?"

"Don't start in like that," she said warningly.

"Sorry."

"Are you all right?"

"Why shouldn't I be all right?"

"I mean, calling me like this--out of the blue. And in the city. Are you all right? All in one piece?"

"I'm fine," he said. "I'd be better, though, if you joined me for a drink."

There was a long silence. "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Michael?"

"No."

She laughed. "In that case, give me a half hour."

He hung up and took the elevator to his room and shaved, not very well, being careful to avoid opening the scratches on his face, but well enough so that he wouldn't look as though he had been sleeping out in the wilderness since she had been him last. He showered and put on some clean clothes and remembered to wear a tie she had given him for Christmas some years ago, which was a color she said she liked on him.

Then he went down to the bar, found a small table and said with satisfaction to the waiter, "We'll be two," and ordered a martini.

When she came into the room, the men turning their heads, as usual, to watch her and the women looking secretly damaged, he rose to greet her. He kissed her cheek, which was cold from the walk and fragrant.

She frowned as she looked across the table at him. "What in the world happened to your face?"

"I ran into a tree," he said. "Hang gliding."

"Oh, Michael," she said sadly. "Still?"

"I was careless," he said. "For once."

"For once," she said, her voice dead. "As usual. Do people know where to find me to tell me when you've been killed? After all, I'm still your wife."

"I'll have a dog tag made up and hang it around my neck," Michael said, displeased, "saying, 'Please call my wife, in case of decease,' with the telephone number, and 'I may not make The New York Times.' "

From there on, the evening was all downhill.

When he asked her if she had found any men who interested her, she said coldly, "You know I won't say anything on that subject."

Michael noticed that her drinking habits had changed. Previously, when they were together and she found him drinking a martini, she would always say, "The same, please." Now she was drinking straight vodka on the rocks. At just what moment in the time between had she changed? Never to know.

And he longed for her, achingly, overpoweringly, but no word he could say that night could please her. And the truth was, no word she said to him pleased him.

They went to a restaurant on 61st Street where they had dined well in the past and where they had been warmly welcomed by the whole staff. But now the management had changed and nobody recognized them and the meal was awful.

And still he longed for her. The (continued on page 208) Top of the Hill (continued from page 170) strangeness between them, the sense of their being two new persons facing each other, only intensified the longing. And that, above all, he could not tell her.

When he walked her home and asked if he could go up with her, she said coldly, "I don't go in for one-night stands," and they didn't kiss good night and neither of them inquired when they could see each other again.

After he left her, he went back to the hotel and had a whiskey. He knew that he couldn't sleep, though he had awakened early and had driven more than 300 miles that day. The desire she had aroused in him had now become general, vengeful. Suddenly, he remembered Susan Hartley's number. She was home and did not sound surprised to hear from him. She gave him her address and he spent most of the night with her. She was a delicious girl, but he kept seeing his wife's face as she said, "I don't go in for one-night stands."

He didn't stay in Susan's bed until morning. He went back to his hotel, got into his own bed and slept fitfully and dreamed of his mother, which he had not done for many years.

•

He awoke late, with a huge and senseless erection, feeling bruised and as though he had a hangover, though he hadn't drunk all that much the night before. He called the hospital, but Heggener, he was told, was in X ray and could not be reached.

He decided to go back to Green Hollow. It was nearly midnight when he arrived at the cottage. When he got there, he saw a car he did not recognize parked, without lights, near the gate. He drove on a little farther and parked the Porsche deep in the shadow of an embankment and walked quickly back to the gate. Keeping as quiet as he could, he went up toward the mansion, staying on the soft, wet side of the road, so that his footsteps were noiseless. Almost instinctively, as he came to the big house, he bent over to make himself as invisible as possible. There was no barking and he remembered that Eva had taken Bruno to the veterinarian. He could see a light in the big bedroom at the front of the house and then the beam of a flashlight in the little library that led off the living room. He saw two dark figures moving around in the library, where, he knew, there was a small wall safe. The front door was slightly ajar. He slipped into the dark hallway and then went into the living room and started feeling his way among the familiar pieces of furniture to the desk where the pistol was kept. There were footsteps on the staircase that led down to the hallway and then a sudden flare of light as the hallway chandelier was switched on. He heard something being knocked over in the library and the crash of glass, then saw two figures running past the French windows that opened onto the porch.

"Stop!" he shouted. "Or I'll shoot." He ran toward the desk and was feeling for the spring to open the drawer when a shot rang out from the hallway and he heard the whistle of the bullet as it passed over his head and smashed a windowpane. He dropped to the floor and screamed, "Stop! Stop!" Eva was standing outlined in the doorway against the hall light. She fired again. He crawled behind a couch, yelling, "It's me, Eva, Michael." She fired again and again, wildly, the bullets thudding into furniture and ricocheting off the walls. In a minute, she had used up all six cartridges in the revolver. Then he stood up and turned on a lamp. "For the love of God," he shouted, "what do you think you're doing?"

She wavered unsteadily on her feet, looked down at the pistol in her hand, then dropped it on the floor. "I heard noises...."

"You let them get away," Michael said angrily. "And you damn near killed me."

"I heard noises," Eva repeated dully.

"It's OK," he said. "They're gone now." He went over to her and put his arms around her. She was in a nightgown and shivering. "There, there...." He tried to comfort her.

"This damned house," she moaned. "Stuck away in the woods, I'm always alone when I need anybody...." But she didn't cry and she didn't sound frightened, only angry. She declined Michael's offer to take her to the hotel for the night, so he offered to stay in the house in case she needed anything.

"I don't need anything," she said and turned and went steadily up the staircase.

When he heard the door of her room slam, he bent and picked up the pistol. It was a small, pearl-handled revolver. Despite what Heggener believed, there was more than one weapon in the house and there easily could have been a death because of it. He pocketed the gun. Eva might have a dozen boxes of shells secreted upstairs.

He went into the library and turned on the light. Except for the broken window through which the men had escaped and a table that they had knocked over in their flight, nothing seemed to have been touched. The painting hiding the wall safe was neatly in place.

Michael went back into the living room and inspected the damage Eva's fusillade had caused. It was considerable. For a moment, he considered phoning the police, but that would mean keeping Eva/up all night answering embarrassing questions about whom exactly she was shooting at. He decided not to call, and settled in an easy chair and tried to sleep.

He was sure he hadn't slept at all, but he was awakened by Eva, shaking him. He blinked up at her from the chair. The morning sunlight streamed in through the windows. Eva was dressed and her face was calm. "I have to leave now for Burlington to pick up Bruno. Thank you for being so vigilant in guarding my safety." Her tone was ironic, because she had had to shake him to wake him.

He stood up, still groggy. "Before you go," he said, "I have to have a word with you about what happened."

"It was very simple," she said calmly. "Criminals broke into my house and I routed them."

"What I want to say is, I don't think you ought to let the police in on it. Criminals or no criminals, they won't take a kindly view of all that shooting. They'll badger you for weeks."

"I would gladly have killed them," she said calmly.

"You damn near killed me."

"I thought you were still in New York. It was stupid of you not to let me know you were coming."

"I yelled my name ten times."

"I didn't hear you," she said, staring hard into his eyes. She turned quickly and left the room.

As Michael left the house and walked slowly down the graveled path toward his car, he wondered if despite the noise, she hadn't heard him calling his name after all. And he realized that she hadn't asked anything about his trip or about how her husband had taken it. He went out the gate and got his car and drove to the cottage. He reached in to take out his bag. He had his hand on the grip and was raising it, when he let it drop back. Then he went into the cottage and packed the remainder of his belongings and put them in the car. If Eva Heggener was to be protected, she would have to find someone else to do the job.

•

Michael decided that he needed to get out of Green Hollow to settle his nerves.

He went from one ski village to another, going up when the lifts opened in the morning and ending the day when they closed in the late afternoon. He skied in a snowstorm, in sleet, in powder, on ice, always at full speed, then, when night fell, got into the car and drove on to the next village, where he would take a room at a motel, gulp dinner and fall into bed, exhausted. He avoided talking to anyone and lived in his ski clothes and took them off only when he went to bed. He slept without dreams, awoke early, barely looked to see what the weather was, went grimly to the mountain to ski, as though the mountain were his enemy, to be defeated only by speed and relentless onslaught. He didn't fall once in the whole week he spent on that purgative downhill voyage and when the week ended and he knew from calling the hospital that Heggener was expecting him to come and drive him back home the next day, his body, at least, was singing and his face was so burned and whipped by sun and wind that he looked like a lean and dangerous Indian brave, after a long and hazardous raid.

He drove all night so that he could pick up Heggener early the next morning. Heggener was waiting for him just inside the hospital entrance, looking a little pale because the tan had gone from his face in the seven days.

"My God, Michael," Heggener said when he saw him, "what have you done to yourself? You look absolutely gaunt."

"I took a little skiing holiday," Michael said, as he stuffed Heggener's overnight bag in beside his piled luggage.

"How was the snow in Green Hollow?"

"I don't know," Michael said. "I've been in Stowe, Sugarbush, Mad River, Big Bromley, other places."

They got into the car and started off.

"How was it?" Michael asked. "In there, I mean."

"Not so bad," said Heggener. "They believe I'm well on the road to recovery." He smiled. "But they want to see me again in a month." He made a sound of distaste. "Enough of illness. How about you? Have you come to a decision about the hotel yet?"

"I'm afraid not, Andreas. I'll need some more time, if you don't mind. If you can't wait, please make other plans."

"I can wait," Heggener said.

They were on the open highway winding north when Michael asked, "Did Eva tell you what happened?"

"I haven't spoken to her," Heggener said quietly.

"She didn't call?"

"No. I imagine she was busy. With Bruno coughing and all." He permitted himself a small smile. "What did happen?"

"There was a burglary. Or, rather, an attempted burglary." Then he told Heggener the whole story.

"Good God," Heggener said, "Eva handling a gun! Where did she get it?"

"I don't know," Michael said. "It's a little pearl-handled .22 thing. I have it in my bag. I didn't call the police. No real harm was done and Eva was in no condition to answer questions by policemen."

"That was considerate of you, Michael," Heggener said softly.

"I've moved out of the cottage and I'm not staying anywhere at the moment. But if you want me to hang around and ski with you, I'll check in at the Monadnock."

Heggener considered that for a moment. "I do want you to hang around and ski with me. I want it very much. I'm going to say thank you now and then not say it again." His voice trembled as he talked and Michael made a point of keeping his eyes steadily on the road.

•

When they reached Green Hollow, Heggener surprised Michael by saying, "Why don't we have dinner at The Chimney Corner to celebrate our homecoming? Do you know--I've never been there, in all the time I've been in this town. I'll call the house and tell Eva that I'll be home around ten. I'd like to enjoy a little quiet dinner with you and since Eva doesn't know I'm coming, there won't be anything to eat in the house."

"Whatever you say. I'm starving," Michael said and drove up to The Chimney Corner and parked.

It was early. The restaurant was almost empty and Antoine had not yet come in.

Michael had a drink at the bar while Heggener went to telephone. When Heggener came back to the bar, he looked grave.

"Anything wrong?" Michael asked.

"Not really," Heggener said. He ordered a whiskey. "I talked to Hulda. Miraculously, she heard the ring of the telephone. Trouble must have improved her hearing."

"What trouble?"

Heggener sipped at his whiskey before answering. "Eva's gone," he said quietly. "Packed and gone. With Bruno."

"Gone where?"

"Hulda doesn't know. She says there's an envelope for me."

"Well, then, the hell with dinner." Michael got off the barstool he was sitting on. "I'll drive you--"

Heggener put a restraining hand on his arm. "No hurry," he said. "I invited you to dinner and I was looking forward to it. What's the best dish they have? And if you can prevail upon the headwaiter to bring the wine list, I'd like to order the best bottle of Bordeaux they have in their cellar."

The dinner was good and Heggener pronounced the wine excellent. He ate slowly and everything on his plate and then ordered coffee and brandy for both of them and a cigar for himself. He dawdled over the brandy and lit the cigar with loving care. Looking at Andreas, sniffing his brandy and lolling comfortably back in his chair, no one, Michael thought, could possibly think that here was a man who knew he had a message waiting for him just 15 minutes away that might, conceivably, alter the entire course of his life.

As they were leaving the restaurant, Heggener said, "It looks as though it's going to be a fine day tomorrow. I would like to get back on skis."

"At whatever time you say."

"I'll call you in the morning," Heggener said as they pulled up to the house.

•

Heggener called Michael at the Monadnock at nine the next morning. "Michael," he said, his voice calm, "it is a fine day, as I thought it would be. The skiing should be perfect. Is ten o'clock too early for you?"

"I'll come and get you."

"No need. The Ford is in the garage. I'll meet you at the lift at ten."

Promptly on the hour, Michael saw the Ford drive up to the parking lot. Heggener got out and took his skis off the rack and carried them over his shoulder, swinging his poles jauntily as he came to the bottom of the lift. He looked fit and straight, and as if he had spent a peaceful and comfortable night.

On the chair lift going up, Heggener breathed deeply, with evident relish. "I am finally getting the hospital smell out of my lungs," he said. "Oh, Eva's Mercedes arrived this morning. She kindly arranged to have it driven by a chauffeur from Kennedy."

"Kennedy?" Michael said.

"Yes, she has flown to Austria." Heggener spoke offhandedly, as though reporting that his wife had gone to Saks Fifth Avenue on a shopping expedition. "In the note she left me, she said she is not coming back here. If I want to see her, I must go to Austria."

"Are you going?"

Heggener shrugged. "Perhaps when the season is over. Wives endure, snow melts."

But much later in the day, when, after hours of hard skiing, they were sitting in the lodge having tea, he said, "If I go back to Austria, I am sure I will die. I know that it must sound foolish to you, but I'm a superstitious man and when I am dying in my dreams, it is always somewhere in Austria."

•

It was the last thing he said on the subject. They continued to ski every day when the weather was good and they played backgammon in the evenings for small stakes. They often went to The Chimney Corner for dinner.

Late one night at the bar, Antoine said accusingly to Michael when they were alone, "So. When you were in New York, you saw Susan."

"How do you know?" Michael asked.

"I called her and she told me. And you did more than see her. The doorman at her apartment house is a friend of mine and I called him. He remembered you and said you stayed almost a whole night. I hope you had a good time."

"I had a very good time," Michael said angrily. "And it's none of your business."

"You are a disloyal friend and dangerous to introduce to anyone," Antoine said and got up from the bar and walked out.

After that, whenever Michael went into the bar, he and Antoine merely nodded coldly to each other.

•

The weeks passed and the end of the season approached and Heggener's face turned a skier's deep tan and he seemed to glory, to Michael's profound relief, in his regained health. It was a good time, Michael felt, for himself as well as Heggener, peaceful and relaxed, with all problems held in abeyance and neither of them asking any questions about the future.

Automatically, as soon as he got out of bed every morning, Michael looked to see what the weather was. Today it was snowing hard, the snow driven in sheets by a northeast wind. He telephoned Heggener and said, "No skiing today. Build a big fire and sit near it and read a good book. I'll do the same."

Michael read all morning, lying on his bed and feeling deliciously lazy. He had two drinks before lunch and a half bottle of wine as he ate.

The drinks and the wine and the food made him sleepy and he gave himself the luxury of a nap after lunch. When he awoke, it was dark and still snowing. He turned on the light and picked up the book and was about to begin reading when the phone rang. It was Dave Cully. "Mike," Cully said, "is Mr. Heggener with you?"

"No," Michael said. "Why?"

"I just got a call. Heggener's Ford is in the parking lot by the slope. He went up at three-thirty this afternoon."

"Holy God! Alone?"

"Alone. I'm organizing a search party," Cully said.

When Michael got to the lift, Cully, two boys from the patrol and Dr. Baines were waiting for him.

"The damn fool," Michael said to Cully, who was riding in the lift with him.

"It'd just about stopped snowing at three o'clock," Cully said. "I guess he thought the storm was over."

"Did anybody see what run he took?"

Cully shook his head. "There was hardly anybody else on the mountain. The lift was closed at four because it began to really come down again and the wind was beginning to blow up hard."

At the top, they divided up, the two boys of the ski patrol with the sled going down one run and Cully, Michael and Baines going down another. They skied slowly, their big flashlights searching the storm. It took them an hour and a half to get down the first run and the ski-patrol boys reached the bottom of the lift the same time they did. Neither party had seen any sign of Heggener. They went up again and again divided up, this time going down two different runs, stopping every minute or two to call out Heggener's name. From the other run, Michael could hear the voices of the two boys, faint through the trees. The shouts echoed in the darkness, but there were no answering cries.

More than an hour later, they were all down at the bottom of the lift again. The storm was getting worse, the wind rising.

It was torture, bitterly cold, going up now, inch by slow inch, and Cully and Michael sat hunched in grim silence, their gloved hands under their armpits to keep them from freezing. There was only one more slope they had not covered and when they got to the top, Cully asked Michael, "Did he ever do the Black Knight with you?"

"Never," Michael said.

Now they all went down the Black Knight together, painfully slowly. They worked their way down to the turn in the forest and followed the trail past the boulder and then all the way down to the lift. They knew as the wind howled through the cables that they couldn't go up again that night.

It was ten past one in the morning and Heggener had been out in the cold since three-thirty the afternoon before.

Outside, the wind rose higher and higher, shaking the windows in their frames. The wind began falling at dawn, the light the color of steel coming in through the lift-house windows. "OK, let's go up now," Cully said. "But it's still going to be slow."

They put on their boots, parkas and gloves and went out into the suddenly still, steel-cold air, where they got into their skis, none of them saying anything, their faces grave. There was a thermometer on the outside wall of the lift house, but Michael refused to look at it.

•

Cully was the one who saw the handle of the ski pole, just barely sticking out of the piled snow and moving in little circles. It was about ten yards into the forest, on a line with the big boulder in the middle of the trail.

"This way," Cully shouted and traversed swiftly between the trees and knelt beside the snowdrift above which the pole was making its slow little circles. He was digging frantically with his hands as the others came up to him. In a moment, he had uncovered a gloved hand, gripping the pole and moving. Michael was digging, too, and felt something hard under the snow. Carefully, he removed handfuls of snow from whatever it was. It was the top of Heggener's head, his blue wool balaclava helmet frozen stiff. A second later, as through a thin white veil, Heggener's face appeared. His lips moved, but there was no sound.

"That's all right, Andreas," Michael kept saying as he held Heggener's head while the others cleared the piled snow off the stiff body, "everything's all right."

Now the others had the snow off him and Cully was feeding him little sips of hot coffee from the Thermos bottle he had in his pack and Michael could see by the position of Heggener's right foot that the leg was broken and that somehow Heggener had managed to get his skis off and to dig himself a hole in the snow.

Roughly, tearing at Heggener's cement-stiff clothes, Baines bared a patch of Heggener's skin and injected a shot of camphor, for the heart. Heggener groaned and shut his eyes, which had been staring unblinkingly up into the limbs of the tree that had sheltered him. He groaned again as they put him on the sled, his leg in first-aid splints, and covered him with blankets. Then the ski-patrol boys took off down the slope with the sled, going straight down without making any turns, one in front between the shafts, the second boy behind, holding the ropes to brake the sled.

Michael waited behind while Baines put on his skis. "Unbelievable." Baines kept shaking his head. "He's still alive."

At the bottom, Cully and the two boys put Heggener into the back of Cully's station wagon. When he saw Michael, Heggener tried to smile and raised his hand a few inches and waved his fingers weakly. "Sorry, Michael," he whispered. "Terribly sorry."

"Don't try to talk, Andreas," Michael said.

Michael went over to the Porsche and wearily put his skis on the rack and got behind the wheel and sat there, for a minute, in silence, too tired to move, as the motor coughed, caught on. Then, maneuvering very carefully, he drove to Baines's office.

Baines and his nurse and Cully had gotten Heggener's clothes off and Heggener was lying on a white operating table covered with a sheet and Baines had given him a shot of morphine and was gently moving his ankle. Heggener was almost out, but when Michael came into the room, he smiled at him drowsily and murmured, "You were right, Michael, that run was not for me." Then he dropped off to sleep.

"He'll live," Baines said. "Fifteen minutes more...." He shook his head and did not finish the sentence. "I don't know how or why, but he'll live."

•

When Michael and Cully came out of the doctor's office after waiting until the cast was plastered on Heggener's leg and Heggener was in a drugged sleep and the nurse had called for the ambulance from Newburgh, the sun was high over the mountains and the sky was blue and the wind had shifted to the south and was soft against the skin, and there was the splash of running water as the snow melted. Cully squinted up at the sky, took a deep breath. "Winter's over," he said. "One more winter. I never know whether to mourn or celebrate."

"Celebrate, Dave," Michael said. "Celebrate."

•

"They were very kind to me this morning," Heggener was saying, his right leg, in its cast, propped up over a wire frame at the bottom of the hospital bed. "They took me off the critical list."

He had been on the list for three days, but now the pain had almost disappeared in the injured leg and all his vital signs were back to normal. Michael had been allowed in to see Heggener for only a minute or so a day and Heggener had been warned by Baines not to waste his strength trying to talk. Now his color had returned and he seemed comfortable, breathing deeply in the soft warm wind, with its smell of spring, that came into the cheerful, bright room through the wide-open window.

It was Saturday morning and Michael had his jump suit and boots in the car, ready to go sky diving at noon.

"You look especially fine this morning," Heggener said. "As though you're looking forward to a pleasant afternoon."

"I am," Michael said. "I'm going to have a good lunch and then take a long walk through the woods." Somehow, he felt that it would be unwise to tell the man in the bed about the sky diving. Perhaps after it was over. "Dr. Baines is very pleased with you, too."

"For what?"

"For being alive."

Heggener chuckled. "Many people seem to manage it," he said.

"He said it was touch and go there for a while," Michael said seriously. "If you had fallen asleep--"

"I made a point of not falling asleep," Heggener said. "I haven't been in the mountains all these many years for nothing. When I found that I was able to crawl to the shelter of that tree and could dig a hole for myself, I knew I had a chance. I discovered I had no wish to die. So I took the necessary steps to avoid doing so, like moving at all times and keeping my eyes open. You know, I heard you calling my name and tried to call out to you, but the wind was making such a noise. I must admit, for a while after that, it was difficult for me to keep my eyes open."

"What made you do it, Andreas? Go out alone, in bad weather, down that particular slope? You knew how dangerous it was, didn't you?"

"I knew it was dangerous," Heggener admitted. "But just how dangerous it was going to turn out to be--no. I had received a cable that afternoon. From Eva. In it, she said that if I didn't come to Austria immediately, she was going to sue for divorce and marry someone she was seeing there." He sighed. "I couldn't stand staying in that big house alone that afternoon and felt like doing something physical--testing. Some ultimate test. I've wanted to do that run just one last time and that afternoon seemed like the most fitting time to do it."

"Are you going to Austria?"

"Perhaps if nothing had happened on the mountain, I would have skied down and gone home and packed my things and flown to Europe the next day," Heggener said, his voice just above a whisper, "but lying there, helpless, with the snow drifting over me, I made my decision. There are some things in life--like life itself--that you must make enormous, heartbreaking sacrifices to preserve. In this case, what I was preserving was myself. I will be desolate, perhaps, for a long time, without Eva, but I will be my own man and in the long run, I will be free of her and my obsession with her. So," he said, smiling faintly, "a night out in the snow can help clear the mind and set things in their proper perspective. Well, I've talked enough. I know how boring visits to a sickroom can be. Go and enjoy your lunch and your long walk in the woods."

Michael leaned over the bed and kissed Heggener's forehead. He left the hospital, feeling invigorated, young and glad to be alive in the fresh spring breeze.

He drove to the airfield. There were about 1000 people who had assembled to watch the exhibition. He saw that Williams and the other men he was going to jump with were already talking in a little group out on the runway where the plane was standing. He reached back for his jump suit and boots, then let them drop onto the back seat. He got out of the car and walked through the crowd toward Williams.

"I have to talk to you, Jerry," Michael said. "Alone."

"What's up, Mike?" Williams asked.

"I'm not jumping," Michael said quietly.

"Oh, Christ," Williams said. "You don't mean to say you're chickening out?"

"That's exactly what I mean to say," Michael said. "I'm chickening out. I've given up jumping. Among other things."

"Mike, you're the last man in the world I'd've thought would do something like this."

"Until a few minutes ago," Michael said, "I'd have thought the same thing. I learned a lesson this morning. It took some time to sink in, but I learned it." He waved to the men around the plane and walked back through the crowd to the Porsche. He got in and drove back to the hospital.

Heggener was having his lunch and looked up in surprise when he saw Michael enter the room. "Is anything wrong?" he asked, looking anxious.

"Nothing at all."

"I thought you were going to have lunch and go for a long walk."

"That's exactly what I'm going to do," Michael said. "But I have a question to ask you first."

"What is it?"

"Is that job still open?"

"Of course."

"I want it," Michael said.

"You've got it," Heggener said soberly.

Michael went downstairs and called Tracy collect, because he didn't have any change on him. He smiled when he heard Tracy's voice and heard the operator ask if she would take a collect call from a Mr. Storrs in Vermont.

"Certainly," he heard Tracy say.

"Go ahead, sir," the operator said. "You're connected."

Connected was the word for the morning, Michael thought, as he said, "Hello, Tracy, how are you?"

"I'm fine." Then she said worriedly, "Are you all right?"

"Never better," he said. "I want you to do something for me. I want you to drive up to Green Hollow as soon as you can. I'm planning to build a house here and since you'll be using it, at least on weekends and holidays, I think you ought to be in on choosing the site."

"Oh, Michael." He heard her gasp. "Is it going to work?"

"If it doesn't," he said, "it will be one tremendous try."

"What do I need up there?"

"A warm and forgiving heart."

"Idiot." He heard her laugh. "I mean clothes."

"Whatever you have on at the moment will be perfect," he said. "And thank you for paying for the call. I'll make it up to you somehow."

Then he went and had the lunch and the long walk in the sunny woods he had promised himself.

"When he came to, he found that he was hanging on a branch, He moved his arms and legs cautiously."

"And he longed for her, achingly, overpoweringly, but no word he could say that night could please her."

"Michael went back and inspected the damage Eva's fusillade had caused. It was considerable."

This is the final installment of "The Top of the Hill."