The Courting of Molly Swenson

With Seconds to spare I climbed into the starting gate, reached over the timing wand and planted my poles in the downhill snow. Beside me my opponent from the Exploding Hamsters did the same. I shuffled my skis rapidly back and forth, the alternating tips of my green Olins jabbing beneath the starting wand to melt a film of water for a faster start.

Below me the red-and-blue gates of the dual giant-slalom course wound down the slope like a pair of frantically mating snakes only to disappear behind a solid windbreak of pines. Even farther below lay the Beaver Creek base lodge, its deck crowded with brightly clothed skiers soaking up the afternoon sun. And beyond that, way down in the distant bottom of the Eagle River valley, sprawled the town of Avon, ugly stepsister to the Cinderella city of Vail.

"Come on, Jase," said Wally Ratcliff. "Remember, all you gotta do is finish."

"Right," I said. The icy ruts around the gates shone like burnished steel.

"We're not going to be last anymore," said Wally. "This week we've got a real woman."

And that was the key. Every team in the Vail-Beaver Creek league was required to have at least one woman, which meant that every team had exactly four men and one woman. The men all ran the course in about the same time, give or take a couple of seconds. But a fast woman could beat a slow woman by ten seconds or more.

The official rules were simple: One run per racer, with the five individual times adding up to the team total. If any member missed a gate or skied off the course, the team would be disqualified. The unofficial rules were simpler: He who has the fastest woman wins.

•

I sneaked a quick look over my shoulder. Sure enough, behind Wally stood the woman he'd promised us. She was short and bouncy in a banana-yellow jumpsuit and matching earmuffs, and she smiled with what I hoped was tomboyish recklessness. Wally had told us that she was a Vail ski instructor. But if she were that good, why hadn't any of the other teams latched on to her?

"Ready," said the starter. "Five, four, three, two." The electronic timer shrilled its piercing signal: beep, beep, beep. I leaned out over my poles, kicked my heels into the air and blasted downward, my boots ticking through the timing wand to start the clock. The Hamster and I skated furiously for five steps and then tucked into the first ruts.

I whipped through the gate. A quick gliding step, and I chattered through the second rut. I took another step, not quite wide enough, and entered the third gate too high. My edge gave way and dropped me to the bottom of the rut, as hard and rough as an ax-hewn log, but my skis molded to the uneven surface and slung me onward. Step, gate, step, gate, faster and faster down the course, breathing harder at every turn. I tucked tight for the finish line and, at the last moment, popped my tips to break the beam.

Skidding sideways, I looked back at the electronic timer: 25.3. Two tenths of a second behind the Hamster. I jammed to a stop beside my teammates Fritz Heflin and Manny Trevi.

"Nice run," said Fritz. He used his pole to flick a few loose flakes off his trademark skis, a pair of Red Sleds. Fritz was studying fire science at Colorado Mountain College and lived in a room above the Avon firehouse. He wore expedition-weight underwear and shopped for the rest of his clothes at the Salvation Army. He would wear pretty much anything just so long as it was red.

"Mmmm," said Manny, who wasn't big on the spoken word. He'd recently changed his last name from Trevino to Trevi. Some people thought he was putting on airs, but those of us who knew him figured he was just trying to save a syllable.

The three of us leaned on our poles and stared up the slope.

"Racing fourth," blared the loudspeaker, "are Danny Johnson for the Exploding Hamsters ... and Karl Marx for Welcome Wagon."

Karl Marx was Wally's race name this week. The rest of us had been, in order of start, Rene Descartes, John Locke and David Hume. Every week, for as long as we'd been racing and losing, we'd adopted a different set of names. We were too embarrassed both to lose and to have our names associated with a sponsor as lame as Welcome Wagon.

Our local Welcome Wagon was a gang of blue-haired women who forced themselves on unsuspecting newcomers and showered them with discount coupons and unsolicited advice. The Welcome Wagon woman would always insist on visiting the "lady of the house" in order to recommend the "best" stores, restaurants and services. In fact, she recommended only those businesses that paid Welcome Wagon for the advertising. What made it so lame was that Welcome Wagon passed itself off as a folksy public service. It was actually a nationwide corporation that raked in millions. And, unlike other local sponsors, Welcome Wagon insisted we ski under its name.

"They're off," boomed the loudspeaker. Manny looked to the sky and crossed himself.

"God bless Karl Marx," said Fritz.

"Forgive him, Lord," I added. "He didn't really mean that about the opiate of the masses."

Unfortunately, Wally was a genuine Wally in every sense of the word. He was short, nearsighted, pudgy and severely uncoordinated. And although nearly 30 years old, he was still working as a bellhop at the Poste Montane. To make matters worse, he insisted on wearing the longest skis that he could find, usually something upwards of 220 centimeters.

Today, despite our pleading, he'd worn his downhill racing skis. Downhill boards aren't much help on a giant-slalom course. They're so stiff that they just begin to loosen up at 40 miles an hour, and they carve a natural turn that's so long and gradual it resembles nothing so much as a straight line.

The Hamster rounded the corner, swishing through each gate with the graceful rhythm of someone who's raced since childhood. He popped across the finish just as Wally skidded into view, boards clacking like an armload of kindling. Wally twisted violently, his feet and knees pointed in one direction, his upper body in another. Between gates he sprang upright, straightened and twisted the other way, forcing his reluctant skis to shudder through yet another turn far tighter than they'd been built for.

"Two more gates," said Fritz. "Just two more gates."

Wally came out of the last rut canted over onto his inside ski. He windmilled desperately but continued to tilt inward. He hit on his side and the snow exploded. One ski popped out, and then the other. A split second later Wally emerged headfirst, sliding on his belly, and crossed the finish line to stop the clock.

The rules of skiing say nothing about finishing standing. Or even with all your equipment.

"Hmmpp," said Manny.

"Way to go," shouted Fritz.

I said nothing, torn between wanting to congratulate him and wanting to kill him for wearing such enormous skis.

"Racing fifth," said the loudspeaker, "are Susi Fallows for the Exploding Hamsters ... and Ludwig Wittgenstein for Welcome Wagon."

Wittgenstein was our woman, the female who would finally make Welcome Wagon a winner. We exchanged high fives all around.

"So, Wally," I said. "How come nobody else nabbed her?"

"Beats me," he said, knocking the snow out of his goggles. "But as soon as I saw her, I knew she was exactly what we needed."

We'd gone through a guest woman a week since the beginning of the season. Most had failed to finish, much less ski fast. Fast women were an endangered species at Vail--Beaver Creek. Few women chose the cold, impoverished life of the ski bum, and the fastest had been grabbed before the season began.

"Where did you say she teaches?" asked Fritz.

"Up at Vail," said Wally.

"That's funny," said Fritz. "She must be new."

As a fire science major, Fritz spent his free time pounding the moguls at Vail, a streak of tattered red on his beloved Sleds. He devoted the rest of his time to worshiping at the feet of female ski instructors.

(continued on page 130)Molly Swerson(continued from page 80)

"No," said Wally, "she's been teaching tots all season."

"Tots?" Fritz stumbled as though the word were foreign.

"Bambinos?" Manny questioned in disbelief.

"Day care?" I said.

Skiing for Tots was a glorified nursery school at the base of the gondola. The tots shuffled around on short skis inside a fenced playground decorated with painted plywood knockoffs of famous cartoon characters. The playground itself was so flat that it didn't even have a lift. Tots instructors spent most of their time finding lost mittens or unbundling their tiny charges for trips to the potty.

Susi Fallows ripped the last few gates and popped a ski through the timing beam. The Hamsters cheered, smug to the last man. Our woman Wittgenstein was nowhere to be seen.

"Welcome Wagon," said the loudspeaker, "has DQed."

Manny groaned and pointed. Far off to our left, well off the course, a small yellow figure hurtled down the mountain in wide, out-of-control turns. On the still air came the sound of sobbing.

The Hamsters, the most successful league team in recent memory, exchanged two-handed rapid-fire high fives, as though they were real hamsters running in an exercise wheel. Then they formed a circle, stuck their gloved paws together in the center and gave their famous hamster-in-the-microwave shout. It started low and built to a high-pitched squeal. "Squueeaakk!"

Off they skied, down to the base lodge to drink and celebrate some more. And we, who wondered what it was like to win, slowly followed.

•

We skipped the base lodge with its pet-shop atmosphere of happy Hamsters and apres-ski tourists. We drove down to Avon to the one place where we could always count on being at least semidepressed--the Hole in the Wall.

We pulled into the lot in Fritz' red pickup, decorated with four FIREFIGHTERS ARE HOT bumper stickers, and parked next to the other salt-stained pickups, beaters and Blazers. Dumping our skis in the frozen rack out front, we clomped in and tramped over damp sawdust and empty peanut shells to a corner table. Fritz ordered a pitcher. Nobody felt much like talking.

A few out-of-place tourists sat at the bar in their apres togs, sipping mixed drinks and Coronas with limes. Next to them were some big boys in insulated coveralls, just down from the molybdenum mine at Climax, as well as several bearded claim workers from Leadville. Near the bar, two Vail lift operators threw darts. One of them toed a line of silver duct tape, leaned forward and flicked a dart into the triple 20.

"Come on, guys," said Fritz. "Cheer up. Remember why we race."

There was a long silence.

Manny broke the tension. "Why?"

"For the fun of it," said Fritz.

We stared at him.

"Hey," said Fritz, "next week's the last race of the season. Who should we be this time? How about famous totalitarian dictators? I've got dibs on Stalin--he's a Red."

No one answered.

"Famous medieval martyrs?"

"What we need," I told them, "is a woman."

Wally winced.

In the far corner the identical Swenson twins were shooting eight ball. Tom, the one with crooked teeth, twisted a cube of blue chalk on his cue tip while Tim lined up an easy shot into the corner pocket. Tim struck the ball solidly, but it nicked one cushion and bounced back and forth in the mouth of the pocket. Both twins exclaimed loudly over the miss, fishing for a sucker for a money game.

The fun-loving Swenson twins were the main reason that the Secret Service--assigned to protect Gerald Ford's home at Beaver Creek--no longer permitted its agents to come to the Hole in the Wall. A few weeks earlier, two off-duty agents had been drinking near the pool table when the twins began to work them over. Without ever looking, the twins poked them with pool cues on the backswing and occasionally sent the cue ball popping off the table in their general direction, apologizing all the while. Finally, the four of them had headed out to the parking lot to have it out mano a mano.

The fight itself was disappointing. Federal cutbacks have really hurt the quality of Secret Service training.

Rumor had it that two new agents had been assigned as replacements, but nobody had actually seen them yet. The agents spent their working hours hiding with walkie-talkies, staking out Ford's house and the dead-end road that led up to it. They watched the house year-round, whether or not the ex-president was there. In their free time they skied.

With a blast of cold the door swung open and in sauntered Molly Swenson. She strode to the bar, a vision of pure Rocky Mountain beauty. Her cheeks and nose were red with cold, her blue eyes glistened with windblown tears and her cracked lips shone with a thick layer of Carmex. Her sun-damaged hair, flecked with snow, hung halfway down the back of her stained sheepskin coat. She wore loose wool pants and a scuffed pair of caribou boots, and she smelled of all the right things--woodsmoke, strong coffee, damp German shepherds and scorched ski wax.

She nodded slightly to her two older brothers and ordered a double whiskey--neat.

"Now that," I said, "is a real woman."

"Not a chance," said Fritz.

Barely 20, Molly had already been the ruin of more than one man in Eagle County. The entire sprawling Swenson clan, from the old man all the way down to Molly and the twins, had been born with a streak of recklessness a mile wide. Molly had used that streak to become a first-class downhill racer at Battle Mountain High School, headed for a state championship until the coach kicked her off the team for skipping practices. The coach said she lacked discipline. Truth was, Molly raced for the thrill of it, the adrenaline rush of pushing to the edge of disaster and then riding that edge all the way to the bottom. The more she practiced, the less thrill there was. So she stopped practicing.

Still, she was good enough to win a ski scholarship to the University of Colorado down in Boulder. She stuck it out for a year and then dropped out to rock climb, windsurf, bungee jump and ski extreme--all of which cost money. She moved back to Vail and began dating Todd Brenner, a senior guide for Vail Mountain Outfitters. Todd had made two assaults on Everest and spent an entire winter camping in Alaska's Brooks Range. Neither prepared him for Molly.

Within three months he'd spent half his life savings, lost two thirds of his mountaineering equipment, smashed his white-water kayak, fallen while ice climbing and broken an axle on his Blazer on a boulder 12,000 feet up the Gore Range. No one was surprised that Todd couldn't afford her. But every outdoorsman among us was horrified to learn that even he couldn't keep up with her.

With that, Molly's social life ground to a halt. No man in Eagle County would date her. Soon word spread to Summit County and the rest of the high country. She became known across the entire western slope as a beautiful untouchable, a divine curse, the ultimate widow-maker. Men traveled from miles around just to gawk. They stared at her as though standing on a trail face-to-face with an eight-foot mountain lion or a record timber rattler.

Molly turned to the tourists, who were willing but weak. Vacationing stockbrokers, bankers, lawyers, surgeons and wet-behind-the-ears MBAs flocked to her. But their desk jobs and motorized stair machines had in no way prepared them for a night out with Molly. They rarely survived the pre-dinner drinks, full-course dinner with wine and afterdinner drinks--much less the night tobogganing, snow tag, snowball fights, tequila shots and frantic jitterbugging and Western stomping. None of them had made it as far as her bed.

And woe betide the foolish, hung-over tourist who tried to ski with her the next day. Molly had a special fondness for jumping cornices in the Back Bowls and blazing off-piste through the trees. She loved to schuss the Volkswagen-size moguls of Tourist Trap, or do a fullspeed tuck under the logs that had been felled by Vail Associates to block off Hairbag Alley once and for all. Molly had become a pillar of the local orthopedic-surgery industry, with a steady stream of would-be suitors hauled down the mountain on sleds.

"Seriously," said Wally, "how are you going to get Molly to race? She hasn't raced on a league team for years."

"Easy," I said. "I'll use psychology."

I was the egghead of our team, the guy with the B.A. in history from Colorado College. "I'll use the one surefire way to get exactly what you want."

"Which is?" prompted Fritz.

"Ask."

Fritz groaned. "I know women," he said. "It'll never work."

I pushed back my chair and began my long walk toward Molly. Most of the truly stupid things men do they do out of peer pressure. Two boys on a playground who would be just as happy to shake hands and walk away will pound each other senseless if egged on by their friends. Which is why women hate going to football games. Grown men are fine by themselves, but they tend to degenerate in groups.

As I walked, I felt my friends' eyes hot on my back. Through the soles of my ski boots, my feet recorded the fine texture of the sawdust and the crunch of each peanut shell. My mouth went dry and my tongue thickened as if I'd crawled through the desert for weeks on end.

I sat down on the stool next to Molly. She turned and arched a perfect eyebrow, outlined by a thin white scar.

"Hi," I said.

"Jase," she answered.

"Buy you a beer?" I blurted and immediately regretted it.

She had a full shot of whiskey in front of her and two untouched beers by her elbow. As I sat there, a second whiskey arrived. The bartender nodded toward the other end of the bar, where a tourist in a Day-Glo lime-and-pink jacket smiled meaningfully. Molly beamed back.

She pushed the newly arrived glass toward me. "Whiskey?"

"No, thanks," I said and prepared to launch into my appeal.

Tim appeared on the other side of Molly and swiped a mug of beer. "Thanks, Sis," he whispered. He looked at one of the tourists and lofted the beer. "Cheers," he said in a fake English accent and went back to the pool table.

"Molly," I said, "I'd like to ask you something."

"Something personal?"

"Not exactly. We've known each other a long time, right?"

"Sure," she said. "I'm a native, and you're damn near one."

"I was wondering if you could do me a favor."

"Maybe. But then you'd owe me." She sipped her whiskey. "What's the favor?"

Tim left the pool table and walked down the bar to the tourist in lime and pink. "So," I heard Tim say, "interested in my sister? No promises, but if you buy me a beer...."

I shifted my attention back to Molly. "Well, I was just wondering if maybe, you know, you could kind of help me out."

"Like what?" she asked. Her eyes were the deep blue of a mountain lake, emptied of life by acid rain.

I stammered. "Like maybe ski for us."

"Jase, Jase," she said. "You know I don't ski league."

"I know, but maybe as kind of an end-of-the-season joke...."

A keen sense of humor ran in the Swenson family. "Which team?"

"You can always race under an assumed name," I said.

"Which team?" she asked a bit louder.

"Well, it's kind of a public-service organization."

Molly stared expectantly.

"Welcome Wagon," I said.

"No." She tossed back the rest of her whiskey. "No way. I will not race for anything as uncool as Welcome Wagon."

A heavy paw fell on my left shoulder. "Sis?" asked Tom, lisping through his crooked teeth. "Is this guy bothering you?"

Of all Molly's brothers, Tom was her favorite. A few years back, a biker had started picking on Tom, calling him a "re-tard." Molly had picked up a pool cue and broken his jaw.

"Geez." I stood and carefully removed Tom's hand. "Remember me? Jason? We played football together at Battle Mountain High?"

"Oh, hey," he said. Tom had been a ferocious starting guard who could never remember his blocking assignments. Before each game he wrote the plays on pieces of tape and wrapped them round his wrists. Unfortunately, we usually played on muddy fields and the plays soon became illegible. The coach made it my job, on every down, to tell Tom his blocking assignments.

"Sure I remember you," said Tom, and then added hopefully, "Wanna go out in the parking lot?"

"Nope," I said. I walked back to where the rest of the team was waiting. They'd been watching and didn't need an explanation. Wally ordered another pitcher. We talked about how the Broncos might do next fall and what we'd do after the end of ski season. Fritz was flying to Mexico for a week of beach and cantinas. Wally was driving home to see his parents. And Manny and I were just going to kick back, maybe rent a car and run down to Vegas.

"Here," said Tom. He tossed a loose mass of twisted metal in front of me. It jangled as it hit the tabletop. Spoons, forks and knives from the bar's kitchen were bent around one another like links in a chain, along with two twisted keys, an unraveled coat hanger from the rack by the door, several unidentifiable bits of metal and an out-of-state license plate.

"Now do you want to go out in the parking lot?"

Tom had always taken great joy in twisting things. As a child he'd broken most of his toys, mangled the antennas on the family TV and ridden stolen bicycles into brick walls while pretending to be a crash dummy. His destructive instincts had served him well on the football team. But on the ski team it had been another matter. Rather than ski around the gates, Tom had insisted on knocking them down with forearm slams.

The twisted pile of metal reminded me of something I'd seen before. I turned it over. The pieces slumped into a new shape and a vague memory tickled my mind.

"Hey," yelped one of the tourists, "that's my license plate."

Tom turned to him, ever hopeful. "Do you want to go out in the parking lot?"

It came back to me then. Art history. Twisted pieces of naked metal by Moore, Calder and Oldenburg. "Art," I told Tom. "This is a work of modern art."

"Yeah?"

The tourist stepped between us. "You half-wit," he said in disbelief. "You ripped off my license plate."

I leaned around the tourist. "Definite talent," I told Tom. "Listen, when can we talk about this?"

"Uh...." Tom was momentarily taken aback.

The tourist grabbed Tom by the arm.

"You're going to pay for this. Those plates cost me 40 bucks apiece."

The bartender broke in. "All right, guys. You know the drill. Take it outside."

The two of them walked out the door followed, of course, by the rest of us--Tim, Molly, the miners from Climax, the claim workers from Leadville, the lift operators and team Welcome Wagon. And the fight? Well, they just don't make tourists like they used to.

•

At 11 P.M. I reported to my job at the Poste Montane at Beaver Creek, where I worked the night desk. I figure that there are two kinds of jobs in life--real jobs and rock-and-roll jobs. Real jobs require concentration. Rock-and-roll jobs you can do just as well while listening to Megadeth.

Night desk at the Poste Montane was simplicity itself. It also meant that whenever it snowed I was awake and ready for first tracks. I checked the reservations for late check-ins. Zip. Then I took two requests for wake-up calls, filled out the day's accounting sheet and entered the numbers in the computer. By one A.M. I was snoozing in the back room.

At 5:30 A.M. the alarm jolted me awake. I scurried into the kitchen, set the coffee to brew and microwaved frozen muffins and ham-and-cheese croissants for the hotel's complimentary breakfast. I munched down two croissants--strictly verboten for the hired help--lighted a couple of logs in the lobby fireplace and set the side table. I finished just in time to start the wakeup calls.

Outside, thin flakes drifted steadily down on the 14 or 15 inches that had built up overnight. I went out and kicked through the new-fallen snow. The flakes burst apart, filling the air with glittering dust.

•

The twins were right where I figured they'd be, waiting for the quad chair to open. Both had on their powder skis, long GS boards with lots of surface and the steel edges rounded to nearly nothing. They wore neon jackets to make it easier for the tourists to follow.

I cocked the bindings on my Olins and tossed them down on the corrugated snow groomed by last night's Snow Cats. I snapped on my skis and began to stretch. Moments later the lift attendant removed the crossed bamboo poles and motioned us toward the detached quad chair. "Do us a favor," he said to the twins. "Ski inbounds."

We sat. The chair rattled down the chute, clamped onto the moving cable and swept skyward. No one pulled down the safety bar.

"So, Tom," I said, "have you thought about last night?"

"Sure have," he said, smiling. He had a purple shadow under one eye. "Boy, was that fun."

"No, no," I said. "Art. What do you think about art?"

"Art who?" cut in Tim, as clever as always.

"Noah's Art," said Tom.

"Art O'Choke," said Tim.

"Art Vark," said Tom.

I chimed in. " 'Art Crane."

They stopped laughing. The quad chair rose and fell over several lift towers. The only sound was the low, vibrating hum of the steel cable as it ran through the tower pulleys.

"Tom," I said, "I really liked the sculpture you did last night. I thought it was ... interesting."

"Especially with the license plate," said Tim.

I ignored him. "I could dig up some books, show you some famous art made out of nothing but twisted metal."

Tom looked from me to Tim and back again.

"Well," he said, "maybe."

We passed the last tower and descended. With a clang the quad chair detached from the cable and slowed to a crawl. The three of us stood and then skied a hundred yards or so down the mountain. Our skis ran silent beneath the new-fallen snow.

"Help you make tracks?" I offered.

Tim shrugged. "Sure. We'll even give you a lift back to town."

We leaned on our poles, watching the quad chairs come over the rise. Six or seven came up empty. But the next chair was full--four male tourists in bright one-piece powder suits. They skied a short distance, stopped and waited. The following chair brought up two more.

"Victims?" asked Tom.

"Victims," said Tim. "Dead in our sights." He shoved off down the mountain, whooping loudly. Tom and I followed with a couple of loud yahoos.

We glided through the knee-deep powder, rhythmically bouncing from side to side, carving endless S-curves in the untouched snow as we wove our tracks in a smooth triple braid. We looked and sounded like a bunch of locals on our way to a secret trove of champagne powder. And the tourists followed.

Turn after turn, the green tips of my Olins broke the surface and plunged below like a porpoise sewing stitches in the sea. I felt no bottom, no edges, no vibrations. All was smooth and quiet. The only clues that I was even moving were the wind in my face and the dark pines rushing up the mountain toward me.

At the bottom of the first pitch, Tim pulled up. Tom and I curved to a stop beside him. "Whooo-wheee!" yelled Tim. I sneaked a quick look back up the slope. The tourists were hot on our heels.

Tim shoved off again, but this time he cut onto an old burn that ran at right angles. We followed him, still whooping and hollering. In the new snow, the tourists had no idea they'd even left the trail.

At the bottom of the burn, Tim cut onto the lower half of an avalanche chute and then into a meadow. Still the tourists followed. Down we skied, lower and lower, lower than the lowest chair at Beaver Creek. For several hundred yards we slalomed through a pine forest, cutting between the individual trees, their boughs bent with snow. Tom nicked a branch and it sprang up, powder exploding in all directions. The tourists fell behind at the edge of the forest, but we knew they'd follow our tracks. They no longer had a choice.

We flattened out onto an old logging road. Up ahead, three Swenson cabs were parked in the clearing, ski racks on top, white clouds of exhaust pumping out the tailpipes. Old man Swenson leaned against the lead cab and lighted a fresh Marlboro from a dying butt.

"Morning," he said, and then to the twins, "I was beginning to wonder if you boys had give it up altogether." The old man took a deep pull and forced smoke out his frozen nostrils. I figured the three of them had woken before dawn and driven up the cabs. Then the old man had hauled the twins around to the lifts at Beaver Creek and doubled back to wait.

Tim and Tom sat in the open doors of their cabs and pulled off their ski boots. Each had a pair of work boots waiting warm and toasty under the cabs' heaters. They laced up their work boots, popped the trunks and stuffed their neon jackets and ski boots out of sight.

The first group of tourists would recognize the twins, of course. But the second, third and fourth groups wouldn't. Each new group that followed the tracks would just make that many more tracks. And the number of unwitting Swenson cab customers would swell exponentially until the ski patrol discovered the cutoff and blocked it with bamboo poles.

I tossed my Olins up onto Tom's cab. "Hey, Tom," I said, "you don't mind a little company, do you?"

"Nope," said Tom.

But it was Tim who clamped a hand over my skis. "You're riding with me," he said. "Or you're not riding."

"I'd rather ride with Tom, if it's all the same to you."

"My cab," said Tim, "or no cab." He locked my skis to his rack.

Just then, the six tourists skidded around the corner. From the looks on their faces, they weren't any too happy.

"My God," said Tim, slapping his forehead. "You guys didn't cut off the trail and follow us, did you?"

No answer.

"Damn," said Tim. "Well, we were about to start work anyway. Anybody need a cab back to Beaver Creek?"

There was nothing for miles but empty woods.

The Swensons were decent about it, though. They clamped on the tourists' skis for them and gave them advice on the best runs and the best places to eat. Having swindled them in the first place, they now buttered them up for tips.

I sat up front with Tim, with two tourists in the back. He kept up a cheerful patter as we crawled down the twisting road. When we hit the highway he tuned the radio to easy listening and cranked up the volume. Like most locals, Tim believed that tourists gave bigger tips under the mind-numbing influence of easy listening. The radio blared the theme song from Flashdance. One of the tourists hummed along.

"So, Jase," said Tim. "What's up?"

"Not much. You know, the usual."

"No, no," he said. "What are you trying to pull on my brother? What's with all this art stuff?"

"Nothing," I said. "I just think he's got a lot of hidden talent."

Tim flicked on the turn signal for the exit to Avon and Beaver Creek. "I'm a scammer, Jase," he said. "You know that. I make 'em up and I make 'em happen. And I can smell 'em a mile off."

"There's nothing," I said.

Tim made the turn and looped back under the interstate. "There better not be. I'm watching you, Jase. I got my eye on you."

We crossed the bridge over the Eagle River and began our climb to the lifts.

Later that afternoon I rode the bus to the Vail library, checked out three coffee-table books with glossy photographs of twisted metal sculptures and took them back to work. I saw Tom twice over the next four days, but both times he was with Tim. So I just said hi and went on my way.

Wednesday night I met Fritz, Manny and Wally down at the Hole in the Wall. We held our meetings on Wednesdays and raced on Friday afternoons.

"So," said Wally, "is Molly going to race?"

"Probably," I said. I figured with the season ending they'd have a few weeks to get over my lie. And if we didn't get Molly, there wasn't anyone else who'd make a difference.

"Really?" said Fritz.

Just then Molly breezed in the door. Fritz opened his mouth, but before he could speak I grabbed his arm and spoke low. "She just doesn't know it yet."

"Shit," said Wally. "Come Friday we won't have anybody at all."

"DQed before we even start," said Fritz.

"Look," I said. "I've got it under control. OK? It's almost in the bag." I shoved back my chair and headed across the room.

Molly took her usual seat at the corner of the bar, her back to the pool table. She shucked off her sheepskin coat, tossed back her hair and unzipped the top of her blue synthetic-fleece pullover.

"God, it's hot in here," she said to the bartender.

"That's the way they like it," he said. Like most bartenders, he had long since resigned himself to the way things were.

I slid onto an empty stool. "Double whiskey for the lady, draft for me."

"Thanks," said Molly. She smiled the way she'd smile at any other sucker who bought her a drink.

We chatted about how warm it was getting, the slush in the Back Bowls, the softening moguls on Birds of Prey. I asked her what she was going to do after the lifts closed. She said she was thinking about going down to Argentina for the summer, maybe climb, maybe teach skiing at Las Leñas. Maybe even pick up an Italian accent for her Spanish.

"Cómo te va, ché?" she asked, marking the words like an Argentine. Her laughter was smooth, unself-conscious.

"How about you?" she said.

"Probably work through mud season. Maybe take a week off and go down to Vegas with Manny Trevi."

"Sure," said Molly, "but what're you going to do long-term?" She had a breathtaking way of cutting straight to the personal. "You don't belong here anymore, Jase. You've got a good education--Colorado College, the Harvard of the Rockies. So what're you going to do with yourself?"

Some people are practically born with deep callings. They fall out of a tree at six and decide right then and there that they want to be a doctor. Or they get elected president of their first-grade class and hang their hat on becoming a lawyer. But me, I'd never really had any deep desire to become anything in particular. And yet, at the same time, I've always had the feeling that there was something important out there waiting just for me, a custom semi cruising the highways of life with my name for a hood ornament. And someday, if I waited long enough, it would come hurding down on me, blasting its air horn, and crunch to a stop.

"Don't know," I admitted. "How about you?"

"I don't know, either. I was always so caught up in the things I was doing--climbing and skiing and camping--that I never really thought about it. I mean, when you're 200 feet up a granite face, and you look down between your feet and see that it's a clean drop, you don't really worry about next year. That moment's the only thing that matters. And I'm not knocking it. But sometimes I wonder about the rest. What'll I do when I'm 60? Do I even want to be 60?"

"I know what you mean."

She laughed again, easy. "Must be a sign of old age."

"What about Tom?"

"What do you mean, 'What about Tom?'"

"You know," I said. "What's he going to do, drive cabs all his life? Tim's smart, he'll always find something. But as for Tom ... I just don't know."

"And what business is that of yours?"

"None. I just worry about the big guy."

"No, you don't. Give me a break, Jase. You'd burn him in a minute if it got you somewhere."

"Molly, Molly...."

"Don't Molly me," she said, standing. "And I'm not going to ski for your lame little team, either."

I reached for her sheepskin coat, but she snatched it away. "I can help myself," she said, and stormed out.

•

When I got off work the next morning, I grabbed my skis and headed for the lift. I was doomed anyway, so I figured I might as well get in a few runs and try not to think about tomorrow's race. The detached quad had a line backed up, so I trudged around the end of the base lodge and headed for the triple chair. The triple took cross-country skiers up to their mountaintop trails and was a good way to beat the crowds.

I nearly dropped my Olins. There stood Tom about to get on the lift. No Tim, no Molly. Just Tom. A stranger sidestepped up the hill a few yards behind him.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Wait up!"

I ran up the hill, snapped on my skis and skated up beside Tom and the stranger just as the chair swung around. The chair's front edge clipped me behind the knees. I sat down hard and the three of us were scooped into the air. The stranger sat between us, gripping the bucking chair.

Tom reached a big hand under his neon parka. "Beer?" he said and held up two bottles.

"Sure." I reached over the stranger, took one and twisted off the cap. We clicked bottles in front of the stranger, who grimaced in annoyance. Tom chugged his. I took a little more time with mine.

"So," I said, "I've got those books I told you about. The ones on art?"

"Yeah?" Tom seemed only mildly interested.

"Yeah. I've got them at the front desk at the Poste Montane. And there are some pictures you really gotta see." I tilted my head back for a final swig.

"Empty?" asked Tom. I nodded. The chair rose toward the second lift tower. Off to the left, at the end of the highest cul-de-sac, squatted Gerald Ford's house. His backyard pool was protected by a blue vinyl cover.

"Bet you can't hit Ford's pool from here," said Tom.

"Yeah?" I said. "Bet what?"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said the stranger.

"Well, you ain't me," said Tom, and let fly. His bottle sailed up against the empty sky, tumbling end over end like a football. With a distant pop it shattered on the concrete pool deck and sent shards of brown glass rattling across the taut vinyl cover.

"Damn," said Tom.

"Close," I said. "What do you bet I make it?"

"Secret Service," said the stranger to Tom. "You're under arrest."

Without a moment's hesitation Tom slipped a paw behind the agent's back and shoved him off the front of the chair. The agent pitched forward into space. His boots caught momentarily on the ski rest and then his skis snapped off on the bottom of the chair. Flailing helplessly, he fell through more than three stories of empty air. He hit on his back with a muffled whoompf, punching a crater into the groomed slope. His skis and poles stabbed into the snow around him.

He lay still for a moment or two. Then he stumbled to his feet, shaking his fist and cursing.

After we quit laughing I realized the seriousness of our situation. He would ski down to the lift operator and have him telephone the ski patrol up top. Meanwhile, we were trapped on this lift. Which meant we were going to spend at least a night in jail. And Tom, who'd had other run-ins with the law, might be staying a while longer.

On the other hand, I'd have today and tonight to work on Tom. And Molly would surely come to visit.

We crested the last rise. Ahead of us at the top of the lift, our welcoming committee was strung out across the skyline, five or six ski patrolmen and a couple of instructors. The lift operator leaned his head out the window of his hut and slowed our chair to a crawl. Three more ski patrolmen hurried out of the warming shack.

Far below us a narrow gash ran between the trees. It had been cut years before to clear room for the lift towers. But it was far too steep and rocky to be used as a ski run.

"Hold on to the chair," said Tom. I grabbed the side rail and before I knew what he was doing, he bailed out. He seemed to fall forever, his skis floating below him, his jacket puffed with wind, his body spread-eagle as he rotated through a slow half twist. He hit on his skis on the 50-degree slope, his upper body slamming backward as he disappeared in a cloud of powder. A split second later he rocketed out of the cloud, still struggling to pull himself forward onto his skis. He dinged one rock and then another as he used raw strength to lever himself forward. Then, just as he regained his balance, he sailed off a 15-foot cliff. He landed, tips raised, and slalomed out of sight.

My pitching chair lurched forward at full speed, pinning me back in my seat. One rat had escaped the trap. They weren't about to lose the other.

Five ski patrolmen escorted me down to the base lodge, where the snarling Secret Service agent identified me. An Eagle County deputy snapped on the handcuffs.

•

"Just tell me who you were with," said Mark, "and you're out of here." They'd pulled in deputy Mark Cluff because we'd gone to high school together. They figured that would make it easier.

"I already know it was one of the Swenson twins," said Mark.

I sat on the edge of my bunk, silent.

"Tim or Tom?"

Nothing.

"Which one?"

Still nothing.

"Coffee?"

"Cream," I said, "no sugar."

He left to make the coffee, more for himself than for me. They'd taken away my watch along with my belt, pocketknife, billfold and shoelaces, but I knew I'd been there awhile. This was my second shift of questioners.

Another deputy let Mark back into my cell. Mark handed me a cup of instant with a light-yellow dusting of artificial creamer.

"You're in a heap of trouble," he said. "Conspiracy. Aiding and abetting. Assault on a federal officer."

"Attempted vandalism," said the other deputy, "on the president's pool."

I spoke slowly, enunciating the words to help them understand. "I didn't do anything."

"Big trouble," said Mark. "Federal trouble. You want to reconsider and call a lawyer?"

I shook my head.

"Then do you waive right to counsel and agree to talk of your own free will?"

I shook my head again.

"Look," said Mark, "I know how it is. You don't want to rat on a friend. Right? So here's what we'll do. You just nod your head. Was it Tim?"

I stared straight ahead.

"Was it Tom?"

I didn't even blink.

"Did he have crooked teeth?"

I shrugged.

"Come on, Jase," he said. "Don't make me put you on a lie detector."

"Come on, yourself," I said. "Eagle County doesn't have a lie detector. And even if it did, everybody knows they're not admissible in court."

"Is that so, Mr. Smarty-pants?" said Mark. "Well, we'll just see about that."

Mark questioned me most of the night. At dawn he turned me over to the third shift. But I could tell their hearts weren't in it. After all, if I wouldn't talk to a classmate from Battle Mountain High, who would I talk to? Funny thing was, I didn't know myself why I didn't just tell them Tom had done it. Sure, it was the ex-president's pool and, sure, it was a federal agent. But there wasn't any real harm done. What would they give him, a couple of months?

Finally, they left me alone. The rough wool of the cot's Army surplus blanket was riddled with black-edged holes from old cigarette burns. I crawled under the blanket, shoes and all, and fell asleep.

•

Keys ratded in the lock. I pried open my eyes to a painful squint.

"Visitor," said the day-shift deputy.

Molly stood at the door, her blonde hair cascading over a new teal racing jacket. She carried a pan covered with aluminum foil. "Hey," she said. "I brought you some lunch."

"Hey yourself." I thought for a moment about how I must look, unshaven and smelly, my hair sticking up like a mangy porcupine. But then, it didn't really matter anymore. "Thanks."

The guard locked us in.

She walked over to the cot, the cuffs of her black ski pants swishing together. She sat down beside me and handed me the pan and a spoon. I tore off the aluminum foil and a steam cloud of spices rose up and scalded my face. The pan was full of thick brown sauce, slabs of dark meat and chunks of carrots and potatoes. I ate halfway to the bottom before I came up for air.

"Tasty," I said. "What is it?"

"Moose stew. Dad was driving down the interstate last night when he saw one of those hazardous-waste trucks from Denver flatten a moose. So he circled back and beat the game warden to the steaks."

Just to be scenic, the government had built Interstate 70 right alongside the Eagle River. Unfortunately, this meant that every animal on the wrong side of the interstate had to cross the road to get a drink. Several hundred game animals later, the government had added a special moose underpass. But somehow, they'd never quite figured out how to teach the moose to use it.

"It's great," I said.

"Listen." Molly lowered her voice. "You haven't told them anything, have you?"

"Nope."

"Swear to God?"

"Swear to God."

"Cross your heart and hope not to be castrated?"

"That, too," I said.

"You're not just hiding in here, safe from us Swensons, while you wait to testify against my brother?"

"Absolutely not."

Molly sat there looking at me for a long moment, as cold as a winter trout. "You know," she said finally, "I believe you."

"Thanks."

"I'm going to bail you out. And if you aren't lying, you'll be more than happy to walk out of here with me."

Ten minutes later the day crew gave me back my shoelaces, belt, pocketknife, billfold and watch. They warned me not to leave the county and turned me over to Molly.

She'd parked the family pickup out front. I hopped in the passenger side, still clutching the pan of stew, and Molly fired up the engine. She didn't talk again until we'd turned onto the highway, headed up-valley.

"You may not have known it, Jase, but they pulled in both the twins for dumping that Secret Service agent. They showed him a lineup. And he picked out Tom."

"Yeah? Then how come I just sperit all night being questioned?"

"Because," she said with a smile, "they showed him a couple more lineups. And this time he picked out Tim. He thought he'd picked out the same man both times."

That's when it hit me. "He didn't know there were two of them."

"Nope," she said. "And unless he could identify just one of the twins, they had to let both of them go. That is, just so long as you didn't spill your guts."

"Which I didn't."

She leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. "That's why my skis are in back. Just this once I'm going to race."

I sat in dazed silence as we rattled up the hill toward Beaver Creek.

"God," she said under her breath. She spat out the words. "Welcome Wagon. Who would've believed it?"

•

Fritz, Manny and I waited at the bottom of the course. The air seemed suddenly crisper, and the red and blue of the gates stood out sharply against the snow. We had ourselves a woman.

Once again we'd been paired with the Exploding Hamsters. So far, they were two seconds ahead in total time. But they hung their heads, sullen. They'd seen Molly at the top of the course. Susi Fallows was fast, no question about it. But Molly was in a class all her own.

"Racing fourth," rasped the loudspeaker, "are Danny Johnson for the Exploding Hamsters ... and Wally Ratcliff for Welcome Wagon."

For the first time ever we were skiing under our real names. Manny had even persuaded Wally, after a wedgie or two, to race on a normal pair of skis. In the lift line Wally had shuffled around on his borrowed 207s. "They're too short," he'd said, but Manny had stared him to silence.

We looked up the course.

"Come on, Wally," I said. Just finish."

"Umm," added Manny.

The Hamster whooshed into sight. He rounded the corner and ripped past the top gate, his inside shoulder thrust stylishly forward. A dozen yards behind him Wally skidded into view. His skis rasped across the iced ruts like chalk shuddering across a blackboard. Wally ran three gates without any problems but clipped the fourth one. His weight shifted to his inside ski, his outside leg waved helplessly in the air. He twisted his body, arms spread wide. Inch by inch he forced his ski back down to the snow.

He brushed by the last gate and tucked the finish.

"Time?" he asked, gasping.

"We're four seconds down," said Fritz. He'd raced first and kept track of the totals. "Molly has to beat Susi by at least four seconds."

"Easy," I said.

"Remember," warned Fritz, "she hasn't raced in three or four years." But he was grinning like the rest of us. I did a happy sideways shuffle. Molly mania was setting in.

Down the hill from us the Hamsters huddled in silence. No exercise-wheel high fives. No microwave squeaks.

"Racing fifth," boomed the speaker, "are Susi Fallows for the Exploding Hamsters ... and Molly Swenson for Welcome Wagon."

There was a crackling pause.

"And ... they're off!"

I craned my neck, staring up the slope toward where they would appear. Everyone else did the same. The wind died. An eerie silence fell over the slope. No skiers came down the other runs, no birds flew, no tree branches creaked. The finish banner hung slack.

Molly appeared in a flash of teal, flowing effortlessly around the gates. There were no telltale roosters behind her skis, no skritch of steel on ice. She merged with the ruts, and they in turn accelerated her through the curves. I had never seen anyone carry that much speed down a course.

We stood gaping, too stunned even to cheer. And that was when it happened. One moment she was charging a gate and the next moment she caught an edge and smashed face first into the snow. One ski popped high into the air, came down on its side and slithered toward the woods. Her goggles and hat remained behind as she tumbled and slid, trying to brake herself with her remaining ski. She slid past the next gate--on the wrong side.

Susi Fallows rounded the corner, skiing with good technique. The Hamsters burst into their microwave cheer. "Squueeaakk!" They turned to do their exercise-wheel high fives.

Then they froze.

Molly had scrambled onto one ski and was half leaping, half sidestepping back up to the gate. Susi passed Molly at full speed. A fraction of a second later, Molly rounded the gate on the correct side.

Susi had a lead of at least ten yards. But Molly skied with her left foot and sprinted with her right, like a child riding a scooter. As soon as she regained speed, she lifted her right leg in front of her and raced on her left alone. She swooped through each turn, taking one normally and the next balanced precariously on her outside edge, her left thigh bulging with the strain. But most incredible of all, she was gaining on Susi.

On the inside of the second-to-last turn, Molly whipped past Susi. She slammed through the final gate with her shoulder, uprooting it entirely, and then tucked until she was practically sitting on her left ski, her right leg stretched in front of her. She flashed across the finish, breaking the beam with the toe of her extended boot. She had beaten Susi by an entire gate.

We whooped like madmen, all of us, the Hamsters and Welcome Wagon both. Molly skidded into our midst, blood trickling down her face where her goggles had cut her. The four of us crowded around in a group hug. Seconds later, the Hamsters piled in as well.

"I'm sorry, Jase," said Molly, and she began to cry.

She had beaten Susi by a full two and a half seconds. Not enough for us to win.

•

After we'd showered and dressed, team Welcome Wagon gathered at the Hole in the Wall for an end-of-the-season drink. We began with a toast to Molly. Two hours later the table was littered with empty pitchers. Fritz waved a hand in the air, "'Nother pitcher." The barmaid tried to sneak back two of the empties, but Manny and Wally hung on to them. "Don't take our pitchers," said Fritz. "Bring us another one."

Molly nursed a double whiskey neat, with ice on the side. She absentmindedly rubbed one of the ice cubes against her lower lip, stitched across the middle where her ski had hit her. A line of butterfly bandages held together the cut along the outside of her eye.

"I'm sorry, Jase," she said.

"Don't be sorry," I said once again. "You were great."

"Kee-rist," said Fritz.

"I really am going down to Argentina this summer," said Molly. Her fingers touched mine beneath the table. "You want to come?"

And suddenly, there it was, that custom semi on the road of life, bigger and blacker than I'd ever dreamed. I knew I couldn't afford her and I didn't even know how long I could keep up with her. It might be only a matter of weeks before we ran through my savings and broke half the bones in my body. But there it stood, idling impatiently by the side of the road, with my name spelled out across the hood in huge chrome letters. And it seemed to be asking me one single question: Was I going to climb in and ride, or had I just been tanning my thumbs all these years?

I grasped her fingers beneath the table and squeezed.

A heavy paw slammed down on my left shoulder. Was that it? I thought. Was that all there was before I died?

Jase," said Tom.

"Tom," I answered. But I didn't let go of Molly's hand.

"You know," he said, "while you were in jail, I looked at some pictures in those books of yours. I can do stuff like that."

"Not now, Tom," said Molly.

Tom huffed off into the snow, slamming the door behind him.

I stared into her eyes, as deep and clear and blue as any high mountain lake, and saw only my own reflection. The acid rain had dissolved the bones of those who'd gone before.

From outside there came a groan of bending metal. Jesus," said Fritz. He jumped to his feet and stared out the window. "He's wrapped my Sleds around my bumper."

Tom reappeared in the doorway. "Jase," he said, cheerful once again. "I forget. Which skis are yours?"

"The green Olins," snarled Fritz.

I closed my eyes then and kissed Molly full on her swollen lips. The rough black threads of her stitches caught on my lower lip for a moment, and then her warm mouth closed over mine, softer than I could ever have imagined. From outside there came a flat crack like a rifle shot. Still kissing Molly, my eyes squeezed shut against the world, I watched in my mind as my Olins napped into splintered wood and twisted steel.

"I'm sorry," said Molly.

"Don't be," I answered and kissed her again. 'Just buy me a new pair when we get to Argentina."

"She storde to the bar, a pure Rocky Mountain beauty. 'Now that,' I said, 'is a real woman.'"