Come Winter

One Foderman

Sandy was in the lead.

She skied around each bend in the trail like a lunatic, long blond hair flying out behind her, dark-blue shiny parka reflecting sun and sky, jeans wet with snow — “Yaaaaaaaaaaaah!” she yelled, and went flashing around another curve and out of sight. David, immediately behind her, made the same tight turn and disappeared behind the same clump of snow-laden pines. Some ten yards above them, I was suddenly alone on the steep trail, the mountain empty and still, not a whisper of wind, not a branch crackling, the only sound the chatter of my skis and the reverberating boom of stark-naked terror.

Don’t let anyone tell you fear doesn’t have a noise all its own, and a smell of dust besides. I once mentioned that to my friendly neighborhood shrink, Dr. Krakauer, and he said, “Ahh, yes, Peter? Und vhy precisely does it zmell of dust, eggs-actly?” It smelled of dust right that minute, dust that rose suffocatingly in my throat. Peter, I told myself, you are going to take a flying leap over one of these moguls and break your neck. (Ahh, yes, Peter? Und vot eggs-actly are moguls? Moguls are closely spaced, hard-packed mounds of snow, Dr. Krakauer.) Or else I was going to miss the turn Sandy and David had just negotiated with Grace and Style (those well-known vaudeville performers) and end up in the hospital with multiple fractures of the skull. God, I was scared.

The turn was coming up too fast, preceded by a pair of immense moguls that stoutly defended a ribbon of trail as narrow as the Khyber Pass. I chose the mogul on the left, dipped, swung up over it with my heart in the hood of my parka, yanked myself around it like a rank beginner, almost crossed the tips of my skis, almost flew headlong through them to fulfill the prophecy of busted cerebellum, managed to right myself, and came around the corner with arms flailing, poles thrashing, boots apart, knees shaking — and there ahead, not ten feet from where I clattered awkwardly into view, David and Sandy stood serenely by the side of the trail, watching. Breathlessly, barely in control, I skidded to a snow-spraying stop that almost knocked over both of them, not to mention myself.

“What kept you, Peter?” Sandy said, dead-panned.

“Thought you’d never get here,” David said.

“Very funny,” I said. “What’s the name of this trail? Death’s Row?”

“Suicide Gulch,” Sandy said.

“Hangman’s Noose,” David said.

“Ready to go?” Sandy said.

“Just hold it a second!” I said, and both jackasses burst into hysterical laughter. I merely ignored them. I checked my bindings, adjusted my hood, blew my nose, fussed with my zippers and fidgeted with my gloves until I figured they were all laughed out. Then, with deliberate calm and considerable courage, I dug in both poles, pushed off, and headed straight down the fall line like Jean Claude Killy on a Sunday outing. Behind me, I heard Sandy give a small yelp and take off in pursuit.

I skied beautifully, I must admit it.

It was one of those incredibly clear bright days, the sky impeccably blue and flawless, the trail fast, winding between tall shady stands of pine and spruce. Confident now, determined to race Sandy’s tail off even if it meant soaring like an eagle over moguls, blazing fresh trails through the woods, or booming the mountain nonstop, I experienced that sometime sense (but oh so rare!) of oneness with the terrain, snow and body acting and reacting subtly and surely, southern sun on my face, the wind of my own speed, hushed whisper of skis, twisting and bending and gliding like a ballet dancer on a frozen cloud.

There was a solitary skier on the trail ahead of me, a dumpy little man in a long black parka, black woolen hat with a little orange pompom. I skied around him effortlessly, passing him on the left, giving him wide berth, and then studied the terrain ahead and saw a flat stretch of wide-open, almost level ground glowing in the sunlight, the snow glittering with miniscule pink and blue and yellow crystals. I carved a wide turn, came to a stop, and then turned to look up the mountain, striking the same nonchalant pose Sandy and David had earlier affected. Above me, the skier in black was having a little difficulty, picking his way cautiously and gingerly down the trail, flanked on either side by giant trees in painful silhouette against the sky.

A saffron banner suddenly streaked into view at the crest of the slope. Head bent, blond hair flying, hips and knees and poles working, Sandy darted and danced down the difficult trail, David close behind her, while below the skier in black mustered his courage and pushed himself over the top of a mogul and started a descent in something closely resembling a beginner’s snow-plow. Sandy’s speed was dazzling. She used the fall line like a thread pulled tight between her body and the bottom of the mountain, spotting the skier in black a scant second after she came over the top of the mogul he had just navigated. He must have seen her in the same instant. Both swerved, Sandy to the left, the other skier to the right, toward the woods. Standing below, witnessing all of it, I simply could not believe what happened next.

Instead of stopping (he was surely moving slow enough to stop), instead of trying to stop, even sitting to stop, the skier in black continued impossibly and inexorably toward the woods. The effect from below was nearly comical. Here was this dumpy little man moving in slow motion toward the looming trees, but in such a deliberate way that it seemed he was hoping to find a warming hut in there, and maybe a nice cup of hot chocolate besides. David, speeding past, turned his head for a quick look at this athletic phenomenon, just as the little man with the orange pompom on his hat skied slowly, steadfastly, and directly into the forest, crashing obviously through hanging branches in a shower of falling snow, disappearing entirely from sight.

Sandy pulled to a stop beside me.

“Guy up there just skied into the woods,” I said.

“Yeah?” she said, and looked up the slope.

David, grinning, coming down toward us, yelled, “Hey, did you see that?”

“I missed it,” Sandy said.

“Guy skied right into the woods there,” David said.

“Maybe he prefers skiing into the woods,” Sandy said, and shrugged.

“We’d better get the Ski Patrol,” I said.

“Yeah,” David said.

“Last one to the bottom sucks,” Sandy said.

It was later that we discovered the skier’s name was Emmanuel Schwartz, and that he had broken his leg in three places when he went off the trail into the deep snow.

I had never heard of Semanee Peak until Sandy’s call at the beginning of December. When the phone rang, I was drinking a beer with an egg in it, my favorite antidote for the thrice-weekly, fifty-minute hours I spent with the inquisitive Dr. Krakauer, a man eager to discover the cause of my now-famous recurring nightmare. My usual pattern was to come back to the apartment after my 4:10 sessions (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays), kick off my loafers, crack open an egg, drop it into a cold glass of Heineken’s truth serum (which I’d learned to drink on Greensward, lo, those many summers past), toast the mad physician’s determination, and then swallow the egg whole, pretending it was his left eyeball, and washing it down with beer. I would then collapse on my own friendlier couch before tackling my schoolwork. School was N.Y.U. My apartment was on Lex and Twenty-third. Dr. Crackers had his office on Ninety-sixth and Madison. So much for geography.

Old Sandy was calling from Bennington, and telling me in a rush that she had heard of a great place in the heart of America’s vast snow country, and wouldn’t it be great if the three of us could go out there skiing for the holidays. I told her immediately that I didn’t particularly care for the new voice she was cultivating, a phony breathless murmur, far inferior to her natural voice, which itself was deep and resonant, but which modulated sometimes into a high, exuberant girlish squeal that reminded me of those days five years ago, when we had tried to train a gull (and succeeded) and sworn loyalty to each other, and spent together the best summer of our lives. But Sandy at twenty was determined to develop a more sophisticated image, I suppose, even if it meant lowering her voice to a barely audible whisper and sounding somewhat like a boozy whore in a Third Avenue bar. As far as I was concerned, she was quite sophisticated enough, as slender and leggy as she’d been at fifteen, with narrow hips and tiny breasts that were perfect for today’s breezy bra-less look, long pale-blond hair framing a face that had lengthened somewhat in maturity, vivid blue eyes (more artfully made up now to emphasize their luminosity), narrow nose flaring suddenly at the nostrils, feral mouth curving outward and away from her teeth. I didn’t know why she needed that phony voice.

“My voice is my voice,” she said. “If you don’t like it, Peter, you know exactly what you can do.”

“It doesn’t sound like your voice.”

“Whose voice does it sound like?”

“My cousin’s.”

“Which cousin?”

“The one with throat cancer.”

“Peter, that’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Speak up, I can’t hear you when you whisper.”

“Do you realize I’m calling long distance?”

“It sounds like you’re calling from a long long distance.”

“Do you want to go to Semanee, or don’t you?”

“I’ll ask David.”

“When?”

“I’ll be seeing him tonight.”

“Okay, ask him,” she said, and hung up abruptly.

I met David for dinner at O’Neal’s, across the street from Lincoln Center, where he played every Wednesday night with the Chamber Music Society. He was dressed for the performance, wearing black dinner jacket and tie, blond hair combed sideways and casually across his forehead, shirt front studded with the Schlumberger set I’d given him last Christmas. He looked freshly shaved and talced, resplendent in black and white, and he made me feel like a shabby bum, even though I was wearing imported Italian pants from Bloomingdale’s, and a crew-neck sweater that had cost me forty dollars of my father’s hard-earned loot. Come to think of it, I always felt shabby in David’s presence.

He had stopped lifting weights immediately after The Summer of Rhoda (as Dr. Krakauer in his inverted Teutonic way was fond of describing it), but those years of jerk-and-lift had provided him with a trim body that required very little care and maintenance, somewhat like a concrete lawn painted green. I don’t think he washed any more often than I did, but he always looked so goddamn clean and neat. It was discouraging. At twenty-one, my face had finally grown into my nose, which doesn’t mean it had shriveled up and been sucked into the nostrils to disappear entirely from sight, but only that it had finally filled out enough to disguise what I’d always considered a fairly prominent proboscis. My acne had cleared up, too (good steady fucking from various sources works wonders, I am told by noted dermatologists), and I usually felt very comfortable with my appearance, typical example of red-blooded young American manhood — except when I was with David, at which times I felt like a shlump. One indication of the solidity of our friendship was the fact that I could tolerate his clean good looks without vomiting. If there is anything I normally can’t stand, it’s somebody who’s better-looking than I am. Not to mention more talented. David, that rat, had been a great flute player (or flutist, or flautist, or whatever) even when he was just a kid at Music and Art. But he had gone on from there to Juilliard, and then had landed the chamber music gig, and was also playing here and there around the city in various symphony and studio orchestras, making a small fortune doing what he liked best in all the world. Me? I was breaking my ass in pre-med at N.Y.U. because do you know what I wanted to be when I grew up? A psychoanalyst like the mad butcher of Ninety-sixth, the world-renowned Dr. Krakauer.

“Where the hell is Semanee?” David asked.

“In the heart of America’s vast snow country,” I said.

“Is it a good area?”

“According to Sandy, it’s terrific.”

“Can we get rooms?”

“If we move on it right away.”

“When does your Christmas vacation start?”

“On the fifteenth.”

“And Sandy’s?”

“The twelfth.”

“I have a concert on the eighth of January,” David said, “but nothing between now and then.” He bit into his hamburger, nodded, and said, “I think it might be fun. What do you think?”

“I think so, too.”

“Is Sandy still dating that jerk from Rutgers?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because like, man, if she intends bringing along excess baggage... ”

“No, she said the three of us.”

“Just the three of us?”

“I think so.”

“Can you find out for sure? When will you be talking to her again?”

“I’ll call her when I get home.”

“If it’s really just the three of us, I’d like to go,” David said.

“I’ll find out. By the way, she’s trying a new voice this week.”

“What happened to the French accent?”

“She decided it was phony. You should hear what she’s got now.”

“Crazy girl,” David said, but he was smiling affectionately.

So there we were at Semanee Lodge at the base of Semanee Peak eight days before Christmas, watching Emmanuel Schwartz pole-vaulting across the room on his new crutches. He was wearing on his round face the somewhat sickly, apologetic, guilty smile worn by anyone who’s ever had an accident on the slopes, and he was wearing on his left leg the badge of his dishonor, a cast that ran from his toes clear up to his hip. Someone had already scribbled “Poor Manny!” on it with a red marking pen, but aside from that the cast was as pristine white as the sheepish grin that curled up under Schwartz’s nose, its opposite ends disappearing into apple-red cheeks.

He was, this Schwartz, a round little man all over. I supposed he was in his early thirties, moon-faced, partially balding, with sloping shoulders and a pot belly, buttocks like bowling balls, fat little hands and thick thighs (the one we could see, the one without the cast), waddling forward on his crutches, grinning his silly smile in his open red-cheeked face, a man of curves angularly hobbling across the room toward the fireplace where the three of us sat toasting our feet.

“Something, huh?” he said, by way of openers.

David seemed totally absorbed in the scientific discovery that steam was rising from his socks, and Sandy was reading Story of O in tattered paperback. The main burden of conversation fell to me.

“Yes, really something,” I said.

“I wanted to thank you,” Schwartz said, easing himself down into a chair opposite me, and then propping his crutches against the fireplace wall. “You’re the people who went for the Ski Patrol, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we are,” I said.

“I wanted to thank you,” Schwartz said.

“Don’t mention it,” I said.

“I had no right being on that trail. Much too difficult for me.”

David looked up from his socks and said, “Well, a lot of fun in skiing is the challenge.”

“Oh, yes,” Schwartz said.

“A man’s reach should always exceed his grasp,” Sandy said, without so much as glancing up. She had abandoned her Breathless Whisper the moment we arrived at Semanee, probably because it didn’t carry too well across the hills and dales, and whereas her voice was low-pitched now, it was at least her normal speaking voice, thank God.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Schwartz said.

“I’m Sandy,” she said, and smiled over the top of her book.

“David.”

“Peter.”

“Manny,” he said, and shook hands with me, and then reached over to shake hands with David, and then tried to get to Sandy’s extended hand, but his leg wouldn’t permit it, so he just waggled the fingers in compromise, and she waggled her fingers back at him.

“Have you three been skiing long?” Schwartz asked.

“Sandy’s been skiing since she was six,” David said.

“Really? Yes, of course,” Schwartz said. “You’re a very good skier. I saw you on the mountain even before the accident You’re very good.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said, and put down her book.

“Me, I’m totally uncoordinated,” Schwartz said. “I don’t know why I ever got involved in this cockamamy sport. I’ve been skiing for five years now, and all I do is get worse. Maybe I’m lucky I broke my leg. The way I feel now, if I never see snow again for the rest of my life, it couldn’t be soon enough.”

“Lots of skiers feel that way after an accident,” David said.

“Is that a fact?”

“Sure, but as soon as they heal, they’re right out there on the slopes again.”

“It has to do with machismo,” Sandy said.

“Well, I don’t feel I have anything to prove,” Schwartz said. “The way I started skiing was my brother Morris rented a house up in Manchester, Vermont, because there was a girl he was interested in, and she was an avid ski nut. So he went up there, and the house had about two dozen rooms in it, and also seven million flies, and he asked if I wanted to come up some weekend. To keep the flies company, I guess. Once you get up there, I don’t have to tell you, you feel stupid as hell being so near a mountain and not at least trying to ski. So I tried to ski. So here I am five years later with my leg in a cast, and me an obstetrician.”

“Oh, are you a doctor?” Sandy said.

“Yes,” Schwartz said, and smiled modestly. “The irony is my brother Morris married that ski nut, and she’s had two babies since and neither of them go skiing any more.”

“The babies?” Sandy said.

“No, no, Morris and Judy,” Schwartz said, and laughed. “There’s a basic injustice there, don’t you think? That my brother Morris should introduce me to the sport and then go home to have babies, while I’m still single and breaking my leg in a profession where I have to deliver babies standing up.” Schwartz smiled quickly at Sandy and said, “I’m the one standing up, not the babies.”

“What’ll you do now?” Sandy said.

“Who knows?” Schwartz said, and shrugged. “Sit in the park, catch up on my reading, maybe give a guest lecture or two in a wheelchair. Some of the interns they got today could use a few lectures on how to deliver babies, believe me.”

“I’ll bet it’s not as simple as it looks,” David said.

“Who said it’s simple?”

“I said it looks simple. Reach in, grab the head, bite the cord, slap the kid, that’s it.”

“Sure, sure, as simple as that,” Schwartz said, and laughed. “Did you ever have to deliver a breech baby?”

“I never had to deliver any babies at all.”

“It’s a lot harder than delivering groceries, I can assure you,” Schwartz said, and laughed again, and suddenly I began liking him.

The day I decided to become a psychiatrist, I vowed that I would never consider myself anything more than a mechanic of the mind. It was refreshing to discover that Emmanuel Schwartz, M.D., considered himself nothing more than a mechanic of the womb, so to speak. His laughter expressed genuine modesty about his profession, and yet I was willing to bet he could deliver babies sideways, upside down, or backwards with equal ease.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” Sandy said, and Schwartz laughed even more heartily, and managed to knock over his crutches at the same time. David picked them up for him while Schwartz fumbled for a handkerchief in the zippered pocket of his pants, thanking David between gusts of laughter, murmuring, “Oh, dear, oh that was funny,” and finally tilting his head back and spreading his handkerchief tentlike over his face to dry his eyes.

I hadn’t thought Sandy’s quip so outrageously comic, but then I suppose I’m accustomed to expecting nothing less than perfection from her. Smiling now, pleased by Schwartz’s reaction, she said, “Are you here alone, Dr. Schwartz?”

“Manny,” he said from under the handkerchief, the cloth puffing out as he spoke. “No, I’m here with a friend. Seymour Foderman. He’s a lousy skier, too,” Schwartz said, and burst out laughing again.

“Who’s a lousy skier?” a voice behind us asked, and Schwartz yanked the handkerchief from his face, and all four of us turned, and there stood Schwartz’s twin, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

“Speak of the devil,” Schwartz said. “Seymour, meet David, Sandy, and Peter. My friend the gynecologist — Dr. Seymour Foderman.”

They were, Foderman and Schwartz, most certainly the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the medical profession. Like Schwartz, Foderman was round and dumpy, pear-shaped, with the same apple-cheeked moon face and pale-blue eyes, sloping shoulders, fat behind and meaty thighs. Wearing a green jersey turtleneck and baggy-kneed ski pants, he put his hand on Schwartz’s shoulder, and said, “Has he been maligning me again?” and even his voice was remarkably similar to his friend’s, high and somewhat nasal, with the unmistakable cadences of the native New Yorker, Bronx variety. “I happen to be a very good skier,” he said, and Schwartz said, “Oh, an expert, without doubt,” and they grinned at each other, and I realized they were about to launch into a form of dialogue developed over the years until it was second nature, as symbiotic as the relationship between gynecologist and obstetrician, two old buddies working their shtik like a pair of standup comics — except that one of them was sitting with his leg in a cast.

“Manny, on the other hand, is exceedingly clumsy,” Foderman said.

“Seymour skis with all the agility of an arthritic,” Schwartz said.

“Oh, certainly, but look who fractured his leg.”

“At least I fractured it with precision.”

“Yes, precisely in three places.”

“If you’re going to break your leg, do a good job, I always say.”

“You did an excellent job,” Foderman said. “I understand you’ll be on crutches till the Fourth of July.”

“Even longer.”

“I’m sure your patients’ll be happy to postpone parturition.”

“Indefinitely,” Schwartz said and grinned at Foderman, who grinned back. Unobserved by either of them, Sandy watched the exchange, and a thin fast smile broke on her mouth. I knew at once that her imagination had been captured by these medical twins, and that something rare and exciting would happen before we left Semanee.

I didn’t know what.

Dr. Krakauer doesn’t really talk with a German accent. I only do him that way when I’m relating analytic atrocity stories to Sandy and David. Nor is he monosyllabic, like some psychoanalysts; we usually engage in rather lively dialogues up there in his secret laboratory on East Ninety-sixth Street. Some of these have to do with the embarrasing fact that I was still wetting the bed when I was twelve years old. Dr. Krakauer attributes this to my father’s affinity for booze, his theory being that my nocturnal irrigation was a form of revenge expressed in liquid terms, the punishment fitting the crime, so to speak. But most of our conversations have to do with Rhoda.

KR: The nightmare seems definitely related. I should imagine you’d see the relationship for yourself by this time.

ME: It’s too simple.

KR: Who says it has to be complicated?

ME: I don’t need an analyst to point out the obvious.

KR: If it were really so obvious, you wouldn’t continue to dream about it.

ME: Dreaming about it keeps me off the streets.

KR: Nor would you make bad jokes about it.

ME: At forty dollars an hour, I can make all the bad jokes I want. Do you know the one about the man who comes to an analyst’s office and starts brushing imaginary bugs off his coat?

KR: Yes, I know it. Tell me about the nightmare.

ME: I’m sick and tired of the nightmare.

KR: So am I. But until we can deal with it...

ME: You deal, I’ll shuffle.

KR: I would like you to relate in detail the dream you had last night.

ME: It’s the same dream I had Tuesday night. Don’t you keep notes?

KR: Yes, I keep notes.

ME: Then take a look at them. It’s the same dream.

KR: Does it start on the Fifth Avenue bus?

ME: Yes, it starts again on Fifth Avenue bus.

KR: And?

ME: And there’s the same satchel on the seat beside me.

KR: What kind of satchel?

ME: A black satchel.

KR: Can you describe it?

ME: A small black satchel. Like a tool box.

KR: Is it a tool box?

ME: No, it’s a satchel. A black leather satchel.

KR: Does it remind you of anything?

ME: Yes. It reminds me of a black leather satchel.

KR: Why should it frighten you, then?

ME: I don’t know.

KR: Are you frightened before you open it?

ME: Yes. I’m frightened the minute I see it.

KR: Then, why do you open it?

ME: Why does a man climb a mountain? Because it’s there.

KR: Is that why you open the satchel? Because it’s there?

ME: Yes. And also, there’s the bus driver.

KR: What about him?

ME: He’s watching me. I have the feeling that unless I open the satchel, he’ll think I’m afraid to open it.

KR: But you are afraid to open it.

ME: I don’t want the bus driver to realize that.

KR: What does he look like?

ME: His features are vague.

KR: Is he a young man?

ME: No.

KR: An older man?

ME: About your age. Eighty-nine or ninety.

KR: I’m fifty-eight. You know that.

ME: Really? You look a lot younger.

KR: Why should it matter what the bus driver thinks?

ME: He’s driving the goddamn bus, isn’t he?

KR: So?

ME: If I don’t open the satchel, he’s liable to crash into a lamppost or something.

KR: Are you afraid of him, or afraid of what you might find in the satchel?

ME: Both.

KR: What do you find in the satchel?

ME: Human hair.

And then we usually go into the whole boring nightmare again, which Sandy says is a farce because there’s no such thing as a rape victim, and Rhoda must have wanted what happened to her or she wouldn’t have come with us into the forest, and besides, she damn well seemed to be enjoying it while it was happening.

Monday morning, December 18, was clear and bright, but exceptionally cold. Sandy came into my room at seven-thirty, looking as though she’d deliberately dressed for the impending holiday, hugging herself and shivering in red ski underwear and a bright-green robe. I was still in bed, huddled under three blankets. The windows were covered with thick rime, and the wind outside was howling from Nanook of the North.

“Move over,” she said, “I’m freezing,” and took off the robe and crawled into bed beside me. “Don’t get any ideas,” she added, cuddling up against me.

“I haven’t an idea in my head.”

“You are nice and warm, though.”

“Thank you. Where are we skiing today?”

“I thought the north face.”

“Today?”

“Why not?”

“We’ll freeze out there. Let’s save it for a warmer day, Sandy.”

“Okay, but I’m getting bored with the trails on this side.” She put her arms around my waist, hugged me hard, said, “Mmmmmm,” and then said, “What’d you think of Superman and Fartz?”

“Foderman and Schwartz.”

“Right, right, I’m very poor on names.”

“They seem like nice fellows.”

“Oh, charming.”

“Didn’t you like them?”

“Adored them. Peas in a pod.”

“They do look a lot alike, don’t they?”

“Except for Schwartz’s leg, they’re mirror images,” Sandy said, and suddenly began chuckling against my shoulder.

“What?”

“I just thought of something funny. Wouldn’t it be a riot if Foderman broke his leg, too?”

“Oh yes, hilarious.”

“The opposite one. Then they’d really be mirror images.” Laughing, Sandy hugged me again, and then said, “Listen, I think I’m changing my mind.”

“About what?”

“I think I’ll seduce you.”

“Not a chance. I’m a screaming fag. I don’t dig girls.”

I knew what her reaction would be, I know that girl so goddamn well. She exploded with raucous laughter, just as I’d anticipated, and then rolled herself on top of me, and straddled me, and grabbed my shoulders and began kissing me repeatedly all over my face, noisy exaggerated kisses intercut with more laughter, “A fag, huh?” and a kiss on the tip of my nose, “Yes, Sandy,” solemnly, and a laugh, and a wet kiss on my left eye, which I closed just in time, “Better quit then,” a loud smacking kiss on my ear, “Yes, please, Sandy, it would only become embarrassing,” another kiss on my cheek, and then my chin, “No use, is it, Peter?” and more laughter, “Hopeless, Sandy.”

She gave me a last wet kiss on my forehead, and then got out of bed, and put on her robe, and said, “Hurry up, Peter, it looks great out there,” and went back to her room to get dressed.

I’ve always suspected that David hears life instead of seeing it. He has often compared skiing to a musical composition, wherein there is a simple statement of theme, with subsequent development and variations, and finally a restatement in full orchestral voice. Mathematically and musically, he’s probably correct. There is an undeniable melody and rhythm to the lift line and the chair ride up, that first sugar-frosted glimpse of the summit, the soft snowclad foothills spreading below as far as the eye can see, the choice of downhill trails, the plunge of the fall line, the force of gravity intimidating the downhill ski — a theme stated once in the morning after breakfast and developed endlessly throughout the day.

The variations are weather, visibility, and snow. Subtly or blatantly, they work on the mountain to twist the basic melody and rhythm into something unpredictable each time down — a flat white universe above the tree line, with neither sky nor shadow; a patch of glare ice around a treacherous curve; a sudden bare spot, rocks and branches jutting like tank traps out of a thin veil of snow; a drop in temperature that freezes release bindings and turns the feet aching cold inside the prison of their boots; a clawing wind that attacks the face and seeps into the goggles, the eyes suddenly wet, the trail suddenly blurred; a stretch of heavy wet powder on a runout, the skis abruptly catching, the body’s forward momentum inviting disaster.

And at day’s end, the restatement. The melody learned by heart, the rhythm ingrained, the danger heightened — most ski accidents occur in the waning hours of the afternoon, when weariness and lassitude combine with fading light and over-confidence (the melody learned too well, the rhythm taken for granted) to give the mountain an instant’s edge, which is all it needs to splinter bones and shatter skulls.

Semanee Lodge at 4 P.M. was humming with after-concert conversation, ice in cocktail glasses clinking counterpoint. Beginners and Intermediates excitedly discussed the day’s clarinet glissade (“Did you come down King’s Row? God, it was sheer ice!”), expressed outrage at the oboe obbligato, condemned the ad libitum solo, and generally created a cacophonous clatter, in the midst of which (like a bored Heifetz, Cliburn, and Casals) the three of us sat by the fireplace with our feet up on the screen, socks steaming. Hans Bittner, owner of the lodge, three-time Olympics Gold Medal winner, Austrian expatriate and shmuck extraordinaire, flitted from group to group offering professional solace and advice (“Ah, yes, of course, you caught an edge”) and, spotting us in serene contentment by the blazing fire, naturally decided we were unhappy and hastened to perform his hostly duties. Five-feet eight and a half inches of muscle and sinew topped with an ocean of blond hair, green eyes glittering, white teeth flashing in his suntanned wolf’s face, Bittner skied ski-less to the fireplace, and brought his heels together like a storm trooper on an unannounced visit.

“Well, then,” he said, “How was your day, my friends?”

The trouble with the way Bittner talked was that he sounded exactly like my world-famous imitation of Dr. Krakauer. Which meant that every time he launched into his formal, precise, heavily accented brauhaus number, one or another of us invariably had a coughing fit.

“Yes?” he said. “It was good? It was bad?”

“It was marvelous,” Sandy said.

“A little cold,” I said.

“Ah, yes, a little cold,” Bittner said, and David began coughing. “Maybe it will be warmer tomorrow, though. Also, we will expect some snow.”

“Good,” Sandy said. “There were a lot of bare patches up there.”

“Ah, yes, well, heavy traffic for the holidays, you understand.

“Ah, yes,” Sandy said, and David developed double pneumonia.

“That is a bad cough you have,” Bittner said.

“Ah, yes,” David said, coughing.

“You should wrap the throat. Tomorrow. On the slopes. Put a wrapper on the throat.”

“You hear that, David?” Sandy said. “You should put a wrapper on the throat.”

“Keep it covered up,” Bittner said.

“He’ll do that,” Sandy said. “Thank you.”

“You are meeting enough people?”

“Yes, plenty, thank you,” I said.

“Well, then,” Bittner said, “enjoy your dinner.” He smiled with all his teeth, did an abrupt about-face, and walked across the room to where some enthusiastic beginners were wildly recounting the perils of the baby slope.

“You are meeting enough people?” David asked.

“Ja, ve are meeting all zorts of pipple,” I said in my Dr. Krakauer voice.

The plain truth of the matter was that we didn’t need people. We were sufficient unto ourselves. All we needed was a setting. Semanee Lodge provided that in abundance. It was, as Sandy had promised, the very model of a perfect ski lodge snuggled into the base of a mountain: stone walls, high-beamed ceilings, huge areas of glass opening on the slopes, fireplaces blazing everywhere you looked, big floppy chairs and sofas in reds, oranges, and yellows, fat cushions scattered on rug-covered floors, candles burning in red translucent holders on pegged coffee tables, several noisy bars with excellent bartenders imported from the Costa Smeralda, a sauna downstairs, an indoor swimming pool, spacious rooms (I hate small rooms when I’m clomping around in ski boots), quilts on the beds, and oh those exciting Magic Fingers machines — if you like our brochure, please write c/o Hans Bittner, and he will complete the list for you in greater detail.

Dr. Krakauer feels that I’ve created in the three of us a substitute family unit, with Sandy endlessly playing the mother role, and with David and me alternately playing the father figure. There may be a smidgin of truth in this. I suppose that if one had to select a pater familias at random, David would be a far better choice than my own dear dad, who is hell-bent on drinking himself into that great big liquor store in the sky. The saintly Crackers, however, misses the boat when he supposes this is your ordinary, everyday American tribe, eating its way across the nation at Howard Johnson stops and peeing in Mobil restrooms. Whatever else we had going for us (good looks, intelligence, wit, humor — he said modestly), we also shared an unshakable sense of loyalty one to the other, all for each, and a communication that was almost mystical. I do not ordinarily believe in gypsy ladies or fortune cookies, but there were times when the three of us could sit by a fire (as we were doing now), saying nothing to each other, and yet knowing exactly what each of us was feeling or thinking. I don’t know many family units that can do that. In fact, I don’t know any family units that can do that. In fact, and here is where Krakauer’s crystal ball begins to cloud, the important thing about the relationship the three of us share is not so much that it’s a family, but only that it’s a unit. And I mean exactly that — a unit. Three people acting and reacting as one person.

Before we arrived on the scene, there was zilch. The moment we debuted, bowing and curtsying to the world at large, there was a single, indestructible, forever-united entity. The day we took that fishhook from a gull’s throat (we never did name that stupid bird) many summers back, we stumbled upon a source of energy previously unknown to mankind, scientifically labeled SDP in honor of the trio that had isolated it, a rare mixture of earth, fire, air, and water (plus a pinch of salt), an elixir which when quaffed by its three happy discoverers charged them with the power of Zero Plus Three Equals One, and caused all previously celebrated relationships to dim by comparison. Abelard and Héloïse; Aramis, Porthos, and Athos; Hart, Schaffner, and Marx — all such gangs-in-miniature paled to insignificance before the blazing intensity of this newly formed city, state, nation, galaxy, universe.

We liked each other a lot.

It was Seymour Foderman who launched Operation Machismo. We take no credit for its inception.

We had enjoyed a delicious meal prepared by a chef (Bittner assured us) who had once worked at the Lorünser in Zürs. Wherever he’d worked, he knew his way around Austrian cooking the way a mugger knows his way around Central Park. A pair of honeymooners was sitting at the table adjacent to ours. We did not know their names, but we instantly dubbed them Mr. and Mrs. Penn R. Trate. Mr. Trate was most certainly an IBM’er, wearing a reindeer sweater made by Stein Eriksen’s mother, and après-ski slacks designed for fatassed young executives on the move. He undoubtedly lived in New Canaan, commuted to White Plains, and entertained thoughts of one day displacing Tom Watson as head of the company. He was sporting, I swear to God (the last red-blooded American extant), a crewcut and he kept fumbling across the table for Mrs. Trate’s right hand, which, together with her left, was occupied in slicing the bratwurst. It was our contention that Mr. and Mrs. Trate had not yet consummated their marriage. Mrs. Trate looked terrified. A pert-nosed, brown-haired Wasp with enormous breasts hidden under a Minnie Mouse jumper, she toyed with the bratwurst as though it were the realization incarnate of all her phallic fantasies, while Mr. Trate clutched for her hand reassuringly. At one point, we swore we overheard her murmuring, “Please, not while I’m eating,” but that may have been an extension of our own little fantasy.

Satiated intellectually and gastronomically, we headed for one of the more intimate lounges (all leather and wood, an orange acorn fireplace with stovepipe rising to the roof) and had the good fortune to find Foderman sitting alone by the fire. He spotted us the moment we came in, signaled us to join him, and immediately asked if we would like some brady. Mindful of the risk we were taking (his generosity might necessitate a similar gesture from us in the future), we sat with him and allowed as how we might all enjoy a little Courvoisier.

Foderman without Schwartz was bagels without lox. Deprived of his conversational foil, he said nothing, watching instead for a waiter, like a black man trying to hail a cab on Madison Avenue. It was David who decided he might as well try breaking the ice.

“Did you ski today?” he asked, a perfectly reasonable opening gambit, considering the fact that we were in the heart of America’s vast snow country.

“Yes, I did,” Forderman said. “Ahhh, here he is now.” The waiter, another Austrian import, padded up and listened intently, head cocked, as Foderman ordered the cognacs. Then he smiled in perfect imitation of Bittner, and went back to the bar. A heavy silence descended, threatening to smother the fire in the acorn.

“Where’d you ski?” I asked.

“Oh, all around,” Foderman said.

“Enjoy yourself?” David asked.

“No,” Foderman said. “It’s no fun skiing alone.”

“On the contrary,” Sandy said. “There are only two things a person can enjoy doing alone. And one of them is skiing.”

“What’s the other one?” David asked, and grinned.

“Reading, smart-ass.”

“I thought you were going to say masturbation,” Foderman said, and blinked.

We looked at each other.

Foderman cleared his throat.

“Well,” David said.

There was another silence, lengthier than the last.

“It’s a shame Dr. Schwartz broke his leg,” Sandy said.

“You said it,” Foderman said.

“Have you skied together before?” I asked.

“Oh, all the time.”

“Where do you go?”

“Vermont, mostly. We belong to a ski club. We get on a bus at Fordham Road in the Bronx, and it takes us right up to Manchester. Drinks on the bus and everything. We go almost every weekend.”

“Are you married?” Sandy asked.

“Manny and me? No, we’re just good friends,” Foderman said, and smiled at his own little joke. He sobered immediately and said, “We’re both bachelors. Neither of us has found the right girl yet.”

“How old are you?” David asked.

“Thirty-five. There’s still hope, huh?”

“Do you want to get married?” Sandy asked.

“Is that a proposal? If so, it’s the nicest one I’ve had all day,” Foderman said, and smiled again. The waiter arrived at that moment, and put the cognac snifters on the table. Foderman passed them around like an old man doling sweet wine to his children’s children. Rolling her glass between her palms, Sandy said, “are you a good skier, Dr. Foderman?”

“Seymour, please. Yes, I’m very good, if I say so myself.”

“How would you classify yourself?”

“Advanced Intermediate.”

“I see.”

“I’m not an expert, you understand. But I’ve been skiing for a long time now, and I can handle myself. Advanced Intermediate is what I am. I can come down any trail on the mountain. In control.”

“That’s very good,” Sandy said.

“Drink, drink, you’ll wear out the glass,” Foderman said, and raised his snifter. “L’chayim.”

“L’chayim,” Sandy said.

“L’chayim,” David said.

“L’chayim,” I said, and shrugged.

We all drank.

“Where did you people ski today?” Foderman asked.

“What were the names of the trails, David?”

“Foxglove, King’s Row...”

“Hoarfrost, Sunglade...”

“I came down those trails,” Foderman said. “They were very interesting. Fang’s Row was a bit icy, but I don’t mind ice. I used to ice skate a lot when I was a kid on Bronx Park East. Manny says I like skiing on ice better than snow.”

None of us said a word. To a good skier, ice, snow, rocks, grass, and broken glass are all one and the same. You ski them. Seymour Foderman was a professed Advanced Intermediate, a definition suspect in itself, similar to a garbage man calling himself a Sanitation Engineer. It was Sandy who decided to get off this boring conversational tack.

“Are you from the Bronx, Dr. Foderman?” she asked.

“Seymour. Yes. Born and raised there. Right now I live on Mosholu Parkway. Near DeWitt Clinton High School. Do you know it?”

“Where’s your office?” David asked.

“In Manhattan. Eighty-first and Park. Do you people like skiing on ice?”

There is no discouraging amateurs. I looked at Sandy, and Sandy looked at David, and David looked at me.

“Ice is nice.” David said.

“I like ice,” Sandy said.

“I like ice with a little scotch and soda,” I said.

“A very good skier I know,” Foderman said, marching in where angels, “told me that the only thing you have to remember about ice is not to try to turn on it. Just ride it out, he said. Keep the skis flat, don’t try to edge, just ride it out.” We were all staring at him now. “That’s what this very good skier told me.”

“He’s probably right,” David said.

“Has that been your experience?” Foderman asked.

“You should do one of two things if you hit a patch of ice,” Sandy said, leaning forward.

“Yes?” Foderman said.

“You should either keep the skis flat, don’t try to edge, just ride it out... ”

“Yes, that’s what this man told me.”

“Or else you should dig your edges in hard and make your turn.”

“Oh. He said not to turn.”

“Well, that’s up to you,” Sandy said.

“The choice is yours, you see,” David said.

“I suppose it’s a matter of choice,” Foderman said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“It would seem better, though, to just ride it out.”

“Mmm,” Sandy said.

“Not that I’m afraid of ice,” Foderman said.

“If you fall on ice,” David said, “it’s harder than if you fall on snow.”

“Especially if you land on your head,” I said.

“My uncle landed on his head once,” Sandy said.

“Skiing?” David asked.

“No.”

“What, then?” Foderman asked.

“We never found out,” Sandy said. “The accident deprived him of the power of speech.”

“That’s a pity,” Foderman said. “He probably injured something in the interior hemisphere. That’s what controls speech.”

“Yes, probably,” Sandy said.

“My aunt got kicked by a horse once,” I said.

“In the head?” David asked.

“No,” I said.

“Where, then?” Foderman asked.

“In Central Park,” I said.

Foderman laughed and said, “You three are regular cards. I’ll tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind skiing with you tomorrow.”

I hadn’t recalled any of us extending an invitation, but it seemed Foderman had accepted it nonetheless. Before we could protest, he immediately said, “What time do you usually go out?”

“Early,” Sandy said.

“Very early,” David said. “We have an early breakfast, and off we go.”

“So do I,” Foderman said. “I like to beat the lift lines.”

“We thought we might try the north face tomorrow,” I said, hoping to put the fear of God into him.

“I’ve been dying to try the north face,” Foderman said.

“Mostly expert trails over there,” David said.

“I can come down any trail on the mountain. I came down the Nosedive at Mansfield. You think there’s anything here I’m afraid of?”

“We wouldn’t want you to break your leg, Dr. Foderman,” Sandy said.

“Seymour,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to break any leg.” He paused, smiled, and then said, “Okay? Shall we try it?”

Sandy studied him for several moments. Then she returned his smile and said, “Sure, Seymour. Let’s try it.”

It was raining on Tuesday morning, and so we were spared the ordeal of leading Foderman down the treacherous (or so we had heard) north face. I had spent another restless night tossing and turning with The Rape of Rhoda, as Dr. Krakauer calls it, he being wrong on two counts: the dream is not about Rhoda, and Rhoda wasn’t raped. I think I’ve read just about every piece of literature available on rape, and rape victims, and the psychology of the rapist, and the attitude of the police toward rape, and if what happened in that forest five years ago was rape then I am Jack the Ripper and David is Bluebeard. I keep telling that to the Ninety-sixth Street Sage, but he never listens. I sometimes think he sits behind me and knits. Once, I think I caught him taking a quick five-minute nap.

ME: Sandy and David both agree. I mean, we haven’t gone into a goddamn reconstruction of it, word for word and action for action, but we certainly talk about it every now and then, and it seems perfectly clear to us that no one did anything to Rhoda she didn’t want done. She shouldn’t have been drinking beer, to begin with, she never could drink, and she said she hated the stuff, so why the hell was she drinking it? And she wasn’t crippled, you know. Nothing prevented her from getting up and walking out of the woods on her own two feet, if that was what she wanted to do. So why did she stay? Sandy says it’s because she smelled what was coming, and was excited by it, and maybe even provoked what happened, incited us to, you know, do what we did. I mean, we were all as innocent as she was, none of us had had any appreciable sex experience. That’s a very excitable age, you know. I was just sixteen that summer, you know. I don’t suppose you were ever sixteen, but you may have read Aichhorn on adolescence and gotten a secondhand impression of what it’s like to be young.

KR: (Silence)

ME: Have you read Aichhorn?

KR: (Silence)

ME: Dr. Krakauer?

KR: Yes?

ME: Have you?

KR: Certainly.

ME: Certainly what?

KR: Certainly, I have.

Sly old fox. Forty dollars an hour, and he sits behind me with his knitting, napping while I natter. Never did admit he’d been catching forty winks, which at those rates was a dollar a wink. Well, maybe he hadn’t been sleeping at all, maybe he’d been pulling the old Mute Analyst gag. But if he had been sleeping, it was his own fault. He was the one who insisted we go over the rape (or whatever it was) ad nauseum, as if it had been the trauma of my life, instead of just a normal adolescent experience, a loss of innocence, so to speak. I was as bored with it as he was, but I didn’t sleep on his couch, and I didn’t expect him to doze off while I was backtracking at his request. If Rhoda lost her innocence that summer, it was time she had. For everything there’s a season, man. A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted. Rhoda had been planted well and deep. (Sandy’s a girl, and she ought to know what a girl feels and thinks, and she says Rhoda enjoyed it.) So there was Krakauer, trying his best to pluck up what had been planted, and snoring away on my time besides. It burns me up every time I think about it.

There are some skiers who will ski in any kind of weather. Hailstones can be coming down out of the sky, pots and pans can be falling on their heads, never you mind. Down the mountain they come with moronic grins on their faces, braving the elements, telling themselves they’re having a gay old time out there getting hit in the face with all kinds of shmutz. Sandy, David and I may have been sex-crazed rapists, but we were not insane enough to go up on that mountain during the monsoon season. Cognizant of the fact that the snow might all be washed away by dusk, we prayed briefly (but devoutly) for a blizzard-inducing drop in temperature, and then called for a taxi and prepared to spend the rest of the day in town.

Town.

Visualize (if you must) a one-street metropolis set into the crotch of two sloping hills. Conjure a haphazard collection of boxlike buildings made of cinderblock and concrete, the flaking wooden trim uniformly painted green. On one end of town was the local garage, with a yellow tow truck backed in against a high wall of snow and a mechanic in grease-stained coveralls standing just inside the open overhead doors, staring out at the rain. At the other end of town was the diner: aluminum sides and rain-snaked windows, a white 1964 Cadillac parked below an orange neon sign that sputtered INER. Between these, a dozen stores and shops were strung out along the main drag, their windows dressed with holiday tinsel and crap — MERRY CHRISTMAS in red and green on a sagging string, SEASON’S GREETINGS with the tops of cardboard letters mounded with cardboard snow, the bottoms dripping with cardboard icicles. Real icicles hung from copper drains as green as the town’s unanimous trim; real snow was banked along the sidewalks, rapidly turning to slush, caked with soot from a train that chugged along a siding behind the stores, the tracks angling away and disappearing into the mountains. Mean-looking men in Stetsons, jeans, and boots walked silently through the pouring rain, their hands in their pockets, their heads ducked low. That was town.

We went through it in five minutes, dodging from doorway to doorway. Standing on the corner of Forty-second and Broadway, we peered out glumly at the rain.

“Well, what do you want to do now, Marty?” Sandy asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” David said. “What do you want to do?”

“How about some Christmas shopping?”

“What’s today?”

“The nineteenth.”

“Six more shopping days left.”

“What would you like for Christmas, Peter?”

“Peace on earth.”

“Be realistic.”

“A Mercedes 280-SL.”

“What color?”

“I was going to get him one,” David said. “Now you spoiled the surprise.”

“I’d like a new parka,” Sandy said.

“What’s the matter with the one you’re wearing?”

“I didn’t say I needed a new parka, I merely said I’d like one.”

“Shall we shop around?”

“With such a wide selection of boutiques, we’d be foolish not to.”

Sandy has always maintained, and I believe she’s right, that you should never steal anything if you really need it or want it. Dr. Krakauer thinks Sandy is a psychopath. I think Dr. Krakauer is a nut. (He has never, by the way, dared to call me a psychopath, because that’s the day I’ll walk off into the sunset, thereby causing the abrupt termination of the Dr. Conrad Krakauer Endowment Fund.) The only time I ever stole anything was when I was in the sixth grade at Ethical Culture. The thing I stole was Mrs. Kingsley’s hairbrush. I don’t remember what I did with it.

Sandy stole quite often. I have been with her in Saks or Bonwit’s when she’s ripped off some really impressive items without blinking an eyelash, and each time I was so excited I nearly wet my pants. As we walked up the main street of this bustling cosmopolitan center, rain pelting us, silent cowboys striding leanly past, I found myself growing an erection of enormous proportions, and I knew it had only to do with anticipation of the caper Sandy was about to pull. David, walking on the other side of Sandy, looked extremely thoughtful and a little nervous. I wondered suddenly what the violinist, violist, and cellist in his quartet would say if they knew their flute player was at this very moment about to become an accomplice in a spectacular heist. I began to giggle.

“Shut up, Peter,” Sandy said.

The crime of the century, as it evolved, was brilliant and daring. Sandy’s earlier escapades had all been variations on the hit-and-run technique; you don’t mess around with store detectives in Bloomingdale’s or Bergdorf’s. But I sensed (and it turned out that I was correct) that in a one-horse town like this, simply stuffing a parka into her bloomers would be tantamount to taking candy from a baby. Sandy had to do this job with Dash and Swagger (those well-known tap dancers) or not at all. She was wearing a blue woolen hat soaked with rain, and her blue parka was similarly drenched. Blue jeans and a blue turtleneck completed her outfit. The impression was one of total blueness, and it must have occurred to her that a quick look would convey this same impression whether she was wearing her parka or not. The first thing she had to do (and I doped this out as the Great Parka Robbery unfolded, second-guessing her along the way) was get rid of her own parka before we arrived at the scene of the crime. The department store she’d chosen to honor was midway between the garage and the diner and she searched now for a suitable spot to dump the wet blue parka, finally coming upon an alley alongside a package store. The alley was narrow and dank, a water spout sloshing away near a collection of garbage cans and empty whiskey cartons. Taking off her parka, Sandy folded it neatly, packed it inside the top carton in a stack of four, and gently closed the cardboard flaps over it. Stripped for action, she moved swiftly through the rain, David and I following, toward the department store up the street.

The store was larger on the inside than it had appeared from out front. Two long open counters, flanking a center aisle, ran the length of the building to the shoe department at the rear. A dozen or so shoppers wandered between and around these counters, picking over the merchandise, a dazzling display of jeans, shirts, underwear, socks, buttons, sweaters, ties, and sundries. The aisle on the left, near the cash register, was equipped with a rack holding women’s skirts, slacks, and dresses, men’s suits, pants, and sports jackets. Along the left-hand wall was a rack loaded with overcoats, topcoats, car coats, mackinaws and (lo and behold!) ski parkas. Sandy walked directly to that rack, immediately found the parkas in her size, picked out a blue one and took it off its hanger. She tore off the sales tags, stuffed them into the pocket of her jeans, and then put on the parka and zipped it up. Taking the wet woolen hat from her head, she wiped it over the front and shoulders of the parka to give it at least a slightly wet look. Then, putting on the hat again, she walked immediately toward the cash register and said, “May I see a salesman, please?”

It was not until she reached the other side of the room that I realized the entire operation had been witnessed by a girl standing at the end of the aisle.

The girl looked very much like Rhoda.

She was not Rhoda, of course, not unless Rhoda had dyed her hair red since that summer five years ago. But she was about Rhoda’s size, with the same chunky figure in green ski pants and parka, the same freckle-spattered face, the same somehow middle-aged stance, though she could not have been older than twenty-two or — three. Our eyes met across the long length of the aisle. She said nothing. It was too late to warn Sandy. Her plan was in motion, and if this girl decided to blow the whistle, there was nothing we could do about it. I nudged David. He looked up from his nervous examination of a black parka on the rack, saw the girl standing there motionless, staring at us, and immediately turned his back to her. Sandy was returning with a salesman, blithely rattling on about a darling parka she’d seen on the rack, which she was certain would match perfectly a pair of bell-bottomed ski pants she’d bought in New York. The salesman, a tall, loping cowboy-type wearing a gray flannel suit, a string tie, brown high-topped boots, and a prissy mustache, asked Sandy if she had the pants with her, and she said no, but she was pretty sure of the color, all she was worried about was the size, and into the valley of death rode the six hundred.

Eyes prying through the portages of the head like brass cannons, so to speak, the girl in green watched with a tight little smile on her mouth, hands on her hips — Christ, if she didn’t look like Rhoda. Unaware of her presence, totally oblivious to the artillery across the straits there, the gun muzzles lowering to zero in on the range and bearing, Sandy pointed out the parka she liked while David and I hunched our shoulders and drew in our heads, expecting an imminent explosion. The salesman took a slick yellow parka from the rack, commented that it was the new Wet Look, and then said, “Would you take off your own parka, please?” Sandy’s own parka, of course, was the one she’d swiped from the rack not five minutes before, such was the daring of her scheme. I certainly appreciated her sang-froid and panache, but I was afraid my admiration would not be shared by the green-garbed minion of law and order watching from the end of the aisle as Phase II of the heist went into effect. David’s lip was beginning to tremble; his embouchure would never be the same again. Sandy took off the stolen blue parka (Would the salesman notice that her turtleneck was wet after our run through the rain?) and handed it to me. I glanced toward the girl in green. She was still there.

Putting on the yellow parka, Sandy asked, “What size is it?”

“That’s a small, miss.”

“I think I need a medium,” she said.

“Oh no, it fits you beautifully,” the salesman said. “Don’t you think it fits her beautifully?” he asked me.

“No,” I said. “It’s a little tight.”

“That’s what I thought,” Sandy said, and unzipped the parka. “Would you have it in the next size?”

“Not in that color, no.”

“That’s the color I need,” Sandy said. “To match the pants.”

“I really do think it fits you,” the salesman said.

“No, it’s a little tight,” Sandy answered, taking it off and handing it back to him. She removed the blue parka from my hands, noticed for the first time the panic-stricken look on my face, smiled graciously at the salesman, and said, “Thank you very much.”

“Try us again,” the salesman said.

Sandy was zipping up the blue parka. She was facing the end of the aisle at which stood the green sentinel of justice, and she must have seen the girl, but her face revealed nothing. “Thank you,” she said again to the salesman, and the three of us started for the front door.

Behind us, I heard the girl in green say, “Sir?”

My step quickened. Sandy, sensing something was in the wind, or probably in the air over our heads already, not realizing the something was a 155-mm howitzer shell about to explode in flying pieces of shrapnel, began walking more swiftly. We had reached the door when the girl in green said, “Do you have this in my size, sir?”

In the town’s sole saloon, where we’d gone to call for a taxi after picking up Sandy’s old parka, we drank beer and wondered aloud why the girl hadn’t ratted.

“Maybe she didn’t see anything,” Sandy said.

“She saw,” David said.

“No question about it.”

“Then why didn’t she tell the salesman?”

“Maybe she didn’t want to get involved.”

“That’s the trouble with the world today,” Sandy said. “Nobody wants to get involved.”

“She reminded me of Rhoda,” I said.

“Everybody reminds him of Rhoda,” David said. “My aunt from Milwaukee, who’s six-feet four-inches tall and a basketball center, reminded him of Rhoda.”

“I have never had the pleasure of meeting your aunt from Milwaukee,” I said.

“Aunt Marian?”

“Never.”

“She’s seventy-two years old. The minute you set eyes on her, you said she reminded you of Rhoda.”

“He has a Rhoda complex,” Sandy said.

“Well, this girl very definitely looked like Rhoda.”

“She had red hair,” David said. “Rhoda’s hair was black.”

“Anyway, Rhoda’s in Europe,” Sandy said.

“How do you know?” I asked, surprised.

“I met her.”

“Where?” David said.

“In Doubleday’s on Fifty-seventh.”

“When was this?” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know, a few months ago. She was leaving for Europe.”

“How’d she look?”

“About the same.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Yes, she said she was leaving for Europe.”

“Where in Europe?”

“Paris, I think. Or Rome. Or London. I really didn’t pay too much attention. Rhoda always bored the hell out of me.”

“Did she say anything about... you know.”

“About what?”

“That summer.”

“No.”

“Did she seem embarrassed?”

“Why should she?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and shrugged.

“She seemed fine,” Sandy said. “She was looking for a French-English dictionary. Paris, it must’ve been.”

“Why was she going to Paris?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Weren’t you curious?”

“Nope.”

“I can just see Rhoda in Paris,” David said.

“Did she ask about us? About David? And me?”

“Nope.”

“Well, what the hell did you talk about?”

“We met in the back of the store, where they’ve got all the paperbacks. She said, ‘Hello, Sandy,’ and I didn’t recognize her at first because she was wearing glasses...”

“Has she still got those braces on her teeth?” David asked.

“No,” Sandy said. “When I realized who it was, I said, ‘Hello, Rhoda, how are you?’ and she said she was fine and that she was looking for a French-English dictionary because she was leaving for Paris at the end of the month. And I said, ‘Paris, how exciting!’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ Then I said, ‘Well, I’ve got to run, it was nice seeing you,’ and she said, ‘Good-by, Sandy,’ and that was the end of the meeting.”

“I wonder why she was going to Paris,” I said.

“Didn’t she want to be a writer?” Sandy asked.

“She wrote for the school newspaper,” I said. “Feelings. That was the name of her column.”

“That girl in the store,” David said. “You don’t think she told the salesman after we left, do you?”

“I doubt it. He’d have come out yelling bloody murder.”

“She sure seemed interested in what was going on.”

“She probably thought it was a movie,” Sandy said.

“What do you mean?”

“Lots of people see something happening, and they think it’s a movie. They eat their popcorn, and go home afterwards, and forget all about it. It wasn’t real, it was just a movie.”

“That’s nonsense,” David said.

“I know what she means,” I said. “I sometimes feel that way myself.”

“About what?”

“Well... life. Things that happen. They don’t seem real.”

“Good thing you’ve got a shrink, man,” David said, and laughed.

“You the people who called for a cab?” the bartender yelled.

“Yes,” Sandy said. “Is it here?”

“Outside now.”

“Thank you.”

We paid for the beer and went out to the waiting taxi. The rain had stopped, and there were snow flurries in the air.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Hans Bittner said into the microphone, “I am pleased to announce that the forecast is for ten inches of fresh powder before morning.”

A cheer went up from the assembled guests. We were sitting in the downstairs lounge, a room furnished in pseudo-Arlberg with cookie-cutter shutters at the windows, orange-and-green curtains printed with little girls in dirndls and peasant blouses, wide-planked oak tables, and a trio of daytime ski instructors doubling as nighttime musicians and wearing lederhosen. The combo sat beaming in suntanned splendor behind Bittner at the microphone pleased as kirsch that snow was falling and would continue to fall till morning. Ski instructors without snow are as worthless as last year’s calendar, but these three respectively (if not respectably) played accordion, violin, and drums, insurance of a sort against washouts or droughts. They never would have made it at the old Fillmore East, or even at the Bitter End, but here in the heart of America’s vast snow country, they were able to get away with their oom-pah-pah gemütlich crap since people will always applaud a trained seal playing “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” not because he’s a horn virtuoso but only because he’s a seal. In any case, Volkmar, Max, and Helmut (for such were the gentlemen’s names) sat grinning on the bandstand behind Bittner, instruments at the ready, as he concluded his announcement, and launched into an introduction.

“You have all seen our lehrers coming down the mountain, and you have no doubt noticed,” Bittner said, “that they are not too bad on their skis, eh?” Bittner paused after this choice bit of litotes, anticipating the modest grins of his instructors and the appreciative nods of his audience. “What some of you may not know, however, is that they are all accomplished musicians...”

“Oh my, yes,” David murmured.

“... who are ready now in celebration of the marvelous snowfall to play for your entertainment and the relaxation of your muscles in dancing so you will be ready for the challenge of the mountain in the morning.”

“Period,” Sandy said.

“New paragraph,” I said.

“So,” Bittner said, “without further encouragement, I am happy to put you now in the talented hands of Volkmar, Max, and Helmut, which you will find as dependable as how they are on the slopes with skis on their feet.”

Bittner grinned, moved the microphone closer to Volkmar and Max, who rose now with accordion and violin while Helmut behind them began beating out the tempo on his bass drum. As if on cue in the ballroom scene of a movie about Old Vienna, with Strauss sitting at the piano and a man in livery and white wig tapping his stick on the floor and announcing, “Their noble presences, the Duke and Duchess of Austerlitz,” Mr. and Mrs. Penn R. Trate appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the lounge, she in long blue-and-white Pucci silk, hair piled on top of her head, he sporting a red velvet smoking jacket, black trousers and black patent-leather Gucci slippers. Descending into the lounge with an air of bewilderment hardly suited to their standing in the court, they passed our table with a brief nod, and allowed one of the waitresses to seat them near the wall. The waitress was a sweet little townie named Alice, with whom I had been conducting a running flirtation since we’d arrived at Semanee. She was wearing dirndl and peasant blouse to match the wee tots on the curtains, but she filled the garments much more realistically. The band was playing something très Austrian. It was going to be a fun night.

We sat through perhaps a half hour of tunes known only to those fortunate enough to have been born in Kitzbühel, interspersed with rousing old American favorites like “Roll Out the Barrel” and “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” David listened intently to the trio, apparently gauging their ability, and then abruptly rose and left the table. Sandy and I both assumed he was going outside to vomit. He returned some ten minutes later, carrying in his hand an instrument he played as well as the flute, an alto recorder, which came apart in three sections and was easily packed in suitcase or coat pocket. Without saying a word to either of us, he brushed a strand of hair off his forehead and walked toward the corner of the room, where the trio was cowering in anticipation of an attack from the restless crowd.

I have always admired David’s sense of self, and it is nowhere more in evidence than when he is about to perform. Completely secure in his musicianship, he comes out onto a stage the way Muhammad Ali steps into a ring, imparting to an audience the certain knowledge that someone is going to get knocked cold. The very way he held the recorder, his arm dangling loosely, his fingers in a relaxed grip somewhere below the neck, immediately communicated to the assembled guests that he was a professional. The instrument seemed an extension of his arm and hand; he held it with such intimate familiarity that one automatically assumed he could play it in his sleep. The trio looked up fearfully as he approached; was he the forerunner of the mob reprisal they were expecting? David climbed onto the bandstand, smiled pleasantly, and then shook hands with each of them in turn. The Austrians now looked puzzled. He held a brief conference with them while they listened intently, nodding all the while, and then he smiled again, approached the microphone, and silently beat off a fast four/four tempo with his left hand.

From the moment they began playing, there was no doubt that David was about to metamorphose this shambling street band into some semblance of a musical unit. He had obviously given them the chart (all that Teutonic nodding was acknowledgment that they knew and could play the chord pattern he was laying down) and then had established the tempo, and now he launched into a definitive demonstration of what the recorder can sound like in the hands of an expert with a rhythmic and harmonic background behind him. In the ensuing twelve-and-a-half minutes of inspired jazz, David and those Austrian shlumps sounded as if they’d been rehearsing together for months. The three lehrers seemed shocked by their new-found ability, and kept looking at each other in fear and ecstasy, like snow bunnies who suddenly discover their skis are actually running parallel. David, oblivious to everything but the beat and the chords behind him, unaware of the crowd out front, leaned into the microphone with his eyes shut and blew that fucking wooden horn into a silence as deep and as reverent as a nun’s fantasy.

With each new intricate lick, he led the audience down a garden path, and then pulled the trellis down around its ears, shattering whatever preconceived musical cliché it had anticipated. Each time he teased a melody that seemed historically familiar, like the outcome of World War II, he so transmogrified it that we were forced to accept the Japanese as victors. His tone was as volatile as his melodic line. He shrilled notes that sounded like the second coming of the birds, whispered them like the words of spent lovers, dove deep to the bottom of the sea in a fat round bell, soared high into the stratosphere where the air was thin and you flew at your own peril. Fingers moving over the open holes in the instrument, lightly covering, tapping, lifting, covering, each note clean and sharp and true, he brought the improvisation to a frenzied climax, and then abruptly signaled the band to stop with a swift downward jerk of the recorder, bringing the audience back to its senses as sharply as if he’d snapped his fingers.

Startled for an instant, shocked by the absence of a sound they’d have followed even unto the mouth of a cannon, the guests burst into belated applause and would not let him leave the microphone until he began another number.

David was a star, and the night had finally taken off.

Dancing with Sandy, listening to David, I felt certain that the two people I loved most in the entire world had quietly conspired to make my life serene and complete. The sound of the amplified recorder, liquid and lyrical, flooded the ersatz Austrian room, while Sandy, in yellow blouse and long quilted skirt patterned with miniscule daisies, floated in my arms, her cheek against mine, her golden hair dusting my hand.

“What do you think of our friend?” I asked.

“I always knew he’d make it,” Sandy said.

“Yes, but did you think he’d make it this big?”

“This is only the beginning,” she said. “He’ll play the Palace one day, that boy.”

“Right now, he’s playing only for us,” I said.

“I know.”

“Schwartz is watching you.”

“Mm.”

“So is Foderman.”

“Goodie.”

“Did he ask about the north face again?”

“I haven’t talked to him.”

“Maybe he forgot all about it.”

“Not a chance.”

“I think the violinist has eyes for David.”

“How do you know?” Sandy said, and craned her neck for a look.

“He keeps batting his lashes.”

“Maybe he’s got a nervous tic.”

“My dog had a nervous tick once. Kept jumping all over him and biting him everyplace.”

“What’s the violinist’s name?” Sandy asked.

“Volkswagen?”

“Volkmar, shmuck. And that’s the accordion player.”

“Must be Max, then.”

“Max is on drums.”

“Helmut’s on drums.”

“Who’s on first?”

“What’s David playing now?”

“Left field.”

“Seriously.”

“Listen, dolling, they’re playing our song.”

“Come on, Sandy, what is it?”

“How do I know? Ask David.”

“I can’t. He’s playing.”

“What’s he playing?”

“Hard to get, I think. Look at that old devil Max flirting over the bridge of his fiddle.”

“If he diddles like he fiddles,” Sandy said, “David’s in for a rough time.”

“David can take care of himself.”

“I’m sure he can. He once played for a ballet company, didn’t he?”

“Here comes Foderman,” I said.

“What? Where?”

“Heading this way. I do believe he’s going to cut in.”

“Don’t you dare let him!”

“Chivalry, my pet.”

“Chivalry, my ass.”

“Probably wants to ask about the north face.”

“He can ask later. Don’t you let him cut in, you hear me?”

“I hear you, sweet talker.”

“Don’t desert me.”

Foderman’s hand fell gently on my shoulder. “May I?” he asked.

“Why, of course, Seymour,” I said, and stepped away graciously.

“Good evening, Seymour,” Sandy said, and moved into Foderman’s arms, and threw me a stiletto over his shoulder.

I had, I swear to Allah, no ulterior motive in abandoning Sandy to the gynecologist from Mosholu Parkway. I merely enjoyed throwing her off the roof every now and then because it gave me so much pleasure to see her land catlike on her feet each and every time. But now, as I walked away from the dance floor, I noticed Alice the waitress standing at the bar and listening to Schwartz (who sat on a leatherette stool with his left leg propped up on a hassock) and was reminded again of my eagerness to sample the viands in her famous restaurant, word of which had been ballyhooed far and wide by the ski-meisters and busboys here at Semanee. Black-haired and blue-eyed, nineteen or thereabouts, with exuberant breasts and a restless behind, she was obviously itching to dance in her dirndl to the captivating rhythms of David and the Three Shleppers. Why, then, was she wasting precious moments listening to Schwartz lecture about his fascinating fracture, his forefinger conducting a guided tour along points of interest on the now entirely scribbled-over cast? I decided to liberate her.

“Say, Manny,” I said, ambling over, “I haven’t signed your cast yet.”

“That’s right, you haven’t,” he said.

“May I borrow your pen, Alice?”

“Hello, Peter,” she said, and batted her lashes at me the way Max the violinist was batting his at David. She unclipped a ballpoint pen from the scooped throat of the blouse where it had been snuggled warm and deep, and I accepted it gratefully.

“Well, now,” I said. “Let me see.”

“Make it something funny,” Alice said.

“Would you like something funny?” I asked Schwartz.

“Why not?” he said. “We could use a little humor in this farchadat world.”

“How about ‘I love Alice. Signed, Peter.’?”

“That’s funny?” Schwartz asked, and shrugged.

“It’s nice,” Alice said, and smiled.

“I’ll think of something while we dance,” I said. “Be right back, Manny.”

“Take your time,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Better tuck this back in there,” I said, handing Alice the pen.

“You can hold onto it,” she said.

“Which one?”

“Fresh,” she said, and smiled again, and I thought, Ah yes, we are moving into that rarefied atmosphere where intellectuals flit on gossamer wings and wit is batted about like a badminton bird.

Bittner didn’t like my dancing with his waitress. He was sitting with the Trates, telling them all about the pleasures of skiing deep powder, grinning as we glided by, and suddenly the grin dropped from his face. Gaping, blinking, he silently debated whether rebuking an employee was tantamount to rebuking a guest, weighed in the positive value of my best friend having finally brought this mortuary to life, and apparently decided a dancing waitress was better than nobody dancing at all. Delighted by his good business sense, I pulled Alice a little closer.

The movie started along about then.

It was exactly what David, Sandy, and I had been discussing in the bar that afternoon. About things not seeming real sometimes. About everything suddenly looking and feeling like a movie. I don’t understand it completely. I don’t understand, for example, why whenever I go to a play, even though there are real people on the stage, moving in a real set with real furniture, I always know they’re actors, a small part of my mind always reminds me that it’s all make-believe. But when I’m in a movie theater watching the filmed images of people who are forty-seven times bigger than I am, they somehow get reduced to proper scale and the whole thing (it’s only film, it’s only celluloid) takes on a dimension closer to reality than either a stage play or real life. That’s the part that gets me. That a film should seem more real than life itself.

The opposite of that phenomenon was exactly what began happening the moment I pulled Alice in against me. The reality started going by too fast, things began happening on the periphery of my vision and my consciousness, so that actual happenings seemed projected on multiple screens in a new technique that enabled me to be a part of the action without really being a part of it, a simultaneous observer and participant, a voyeur spying on himself over closed-circuit television in a locked closet.

I once read a book by a writer whose name I forget, where he had one of his characters lapse into third-person present whenever he thought about himself, and always in terms of a movie in which he was the star. After I finished the book, I realized why the author had done that. He had the hero talking in first-person past throughout the book (except during those movie fantasies), but he had him die at the end of the book, you see, and a man who’s dead can’t be writing about himself in the first person, past or otherwise. The writer used this film technique at the end, so that his hero could step out of and away from himself (and also out of the first-person narrative) while he was getting killed. It sounds very complicated, but it was no less complicated than what I was feeling at that very moment in time and space — that I was in a film and watching it at the same time.

Dr. Krakauer has suggested that this is not unusual in my generation, which was brought up on visual images. Sitting glued to the boob tube, we watched the products of other men’s imaginations, and maybe, just maybe, thought we were exercising our own imaginations, and maybe, just maybe, thought we were a part of what was happening on the screen. Maybe that screen, because it was in the familiar environment of our own living room or playroom, became real to us — as real as the cooking smells coming from the kitchen. Dr. Krakauer holds forth at great length on topics that interest him (I suspect he’s an inveterate movie buff), but he rarely clarifies for me feelings that are puzzling and sometimes, to tell the truth, quite frightening. As I danced around the room with Alice’s breasts pressed hard and soft against me and my right hand sliding down toward her buttocks, I think I was a little frightened by the movie snippets flashing on those multiple screens everywhere around me. It was like losing control. I hate to lose control.

Max, the expert Austrian skier and amateur violinist, is apparently inspired by David’s tootling, moves closer to him at the microphone, and in response to his just-completed lick, unleashes a violin response that is not half bad. David, as startled by the outburst as he might be if his toy poodle began reciting Chaucer, picks up on the string solo, and tries to encourage a musical dialogue reminiscent of those great old trumpet duels between Elman and James. Were Max a better musician, the result might be electrifying, recorder and violin bouncing ideas off each other, nourishing each other, hand-in-glove, so to speak. Max being what he is, however, the result is more like tongue-in-cheek, even though he plays as if possessed of a musical demon, frantically fingering, bowing, plucking, and echoing David’s intricate work.

David seems grateful to be bouncing his music off anything at all, even Max, who is only slightly less dense than a brick wall. He keeps encouraging Max with little appreciative nods of the head and little beckoning dips of the recorder in his hands. Max reaches the climax of his career when the audience bursts into sudden applause. He almost collapses in tears, bows from the waist, grins sheepishly, and stands by sweating as David polishes off the one-sided duel with a wildly extravagant cadenza that almost brings down the roof. Max bursts into laughter. David laughs with him, and then they hug each other cheerily, like a pair of Russian wrestlers who have just thrown six Chinese out of the ring and into third row center. Assuming undisputed leadership of the band, David signals for Volkmar and Helmut to continue playing (wonderful little musical aggravation you’ve got there, David) while he and Max wander over to the bar to celebrate the success of their debut.

“Oh, I’m sorry they’re not playing any more,” Alice said.

“Well, the other fellows are playing,” I said.

“Yes, but they’re not as good.”

“Who needs music anyway?” I said.

“Mmm, hey, uh, listen,” she said.

“Mmm?”

“I work here, you know.”

“That’s right.”

“So, uh, like, take it easy, okay?”

“What time do you quit?”

“Why?”

“Thought we’d take a little moonlight stroll.”

“There isn’t any moon,” Alice reminded me. “It’s snowing.”

Snow moves past the windows in silent spirals on another screen, flickering in the illumination of spotlights on each corner of the lodge. There is an inverted sense of outside being inside, as though those lighted panes of glass, stretching from floor to ceiling, with their flashing swirling broken ribbons of snow form the outer walls of another building, the room within and beyond bright with streaking white, while we, Alice and I, are outside watching. There is life in that house. I long to be inside that house where snowflakes dance.

Daisy petals flutter by, Sandy’s quilted skirt flaring out from her long legs as she and Foderman waltz past to Helmut’s pounding three/four beat. On the accordion, Volkmar is playing something I know, a song I heard when I was a child, but which I cannot place. I hear Sandy say, “Oh, Seymour, how you dance!” and he laughs and whirls her away, and I still cannot remember the song, though Volkmar is playing it again from the top, something, something. I swing Alice around and we oom-pah across the floor, close to the table where the Trates are listening intently to something Bittner is telling them.

We are tight on their faces, the screen here has exploded in close-up. There is a frightened expectant look in Mrs. Trate’s eyes, as though Bittner is about to tell her something she is already determined not to believe. Penn Trate sits at crewcut attention, every bristle on his close-cropped skull alert and listening, eyes drilling Bittner’s face. There are state secrets being exchanged here, Bittner is telling them that the prime minister is at this very moment being held prisoner in the cellar. Beads of sweat stand out on Bittner’s forehead, rivulets of sweat run down his finely chiseled cheeks and into the collar of his turtleneck shirt. His eyes brighten. He pauses, says something effectively concise, and Trate bursts into laughter. Mrs. Trate flushes a bright crimson, and Bittner slaps the table and throws back his head in appreciation of his own dirty joke. In very tight close-up, Trate’s hand closes on his wife’s in promise. I dance by with Alice and press against her, and wonder what is happening in that brightly lighted other room hung with glowing white streamers.

They are sitting at the bar, David and Max. They have ordered steins of beer, and they clink the glasses together now, and Max slurps the foam from the top of his glass, and puts his arm around David, and laughs again, Alice is fitfully rubbing her breasts against me. Mr. and Mrs. Trate rise from the table, where Bittner is still laughing, and come out onto the floor and begin waltzing delicately and beautifully. I am oddly touched by their unexpected grace. I feel somehow they should be dancing not here in this room to this melody from childhood I cannot remember, but there instead in that brilliant room beyond. Sandy and Foderman have moved to a distant corner, the screens are multiplying geometrically, my field of vision, my conscious grasp is fragmenting into a thousand splinters.

Dizzily we waltz while Alice insistently tells me she works here, I’d better take it easy, her breasts exploding against me like midnight suns. Foderman has his hand on Sandy’s knee, she covers his hand with her own exactly the way Trate covered his wife’s hand not two minutes ago on another screen. At the bar, David and Max have ordered two more steins and again Max slurps the foam off, dipping his tongue into it, and Sandy laughs in bright contralto from across the room while the Trates dance by and Alice moves in with her crotch and the music stops and the movie ends.

The nightmare begins only later.

I close the satchel as soon as I realize there is human hair in it. The hair is black and thick, it seems alive, it seems ready to leap out of the bag at me. I snap the bag shut and look at the bus driver, who is laughing. I rise and pull the cord, and walk swiftly to the back of the bus. Everybody on the bus is laughing now. I get off and stand on the sidewalk.

The city is empty.

I am the only person alive in the city.

It is very windy, and scraps of paper are blowing along the streets. I walk for miles and do not see a single soul. The wind is very loud, and when I call out to see if anyone else is alive, my voice cannot be heard over the wind.

I am walking in Central Park. There is a girl sitting on a bench, unbuttoning her blouse and licking her lips. She is wearing bright red lipstick. She seems retarded. She keeps licking her lips and unbuttoning her blouse, opening it finally over tremendous white breasts. The tips of her breasts are painted with red lipstick, like her mouth. She opens her legs, and I can see thick black hair under her skirt. I try not to look.

A man appears suddenly on the bench beside her. He whispers something to her in a foreign tongue. The girl begins laughing. The man lifts her skirt. I try to move away, but I am frozen to the path. I try not to watch what they are doing, but it is impossible to turn my head or lower my eyes. The girl is still laughing, her head thrown back. The lipstick on her breasts has smeared, and she looks as if she is bleeding. I am sure she is in pain, but she continues to laugh.

That is the nightmare.

A person’s dreams never seem frightening to anyone but himself.

We were eating breakfast at eight o’clock that Wednesday morning in a small sun-drenched room off the main lounge, the mountain outside dressed in pristine bridal raiments, posing like a virgin before the sky above and behind, stretched as taut as a photographer’s blue seamless. We always ate a good breakfast because sometimes we skied right through lunch. Sandy, especially, ate like a truck driver. Slender, fine-boned, delicate, sometimes even fragile-looking, she could put away four eggs and a dozen sausages with ease, meanwhile devouring six slices of buttered toast and drinking a half-gallon of coffee. Her concentration while eating was stupefying. She did not speak, she did not look up from her plate, she became a polished chrome piece of machinery, ball-bearinged elbow working arm and hand to shovel food into grinding mouth, phenomenal. Hunched over her plate in white sweater and blue jeans, stolen blue parka draped over the back of her chair, she worked busily at demolishing the remnants of her meal, reaching and grabbing and chewing like Henry the Eighth, and didn’t even notice Foderman when he approached the table.

“Well, well,” Foderman said, “good morning to you all.”

David, smoking a cigarette, looked somewhat fatigued after his night of revelry with the ski-meister cum violinist. “Good morning,” he said briefly.

“Ready for the north face?” Foderman asked, and pulled out a chair and sat opposite Sandy, who merely grunted and reached for another piece of toast. “How are you this morning, Sandy?”

“Fine,” Sandy said, chewing.

“That was some very nice playing you did last night, David.”

“Thank you.”

“I enjoyed myself enormously.”

David nodded.

“I’ve already had breakfast and seen to Manny’s needs,” Foderman said. “He’s getting a little crotchety, talking about going home already.”

“Can’t blame him,” I said.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Foderman said, “I really need this vacation. If Manny goes back East, I may just stay on.”

“How long had you planned to stay?”

“Till New Year’s. What’s today’s date?”

“The twentieth.”

“That gives us another what? Ten, eleven days? I can use them, believe me.”

“There,” Sandy said, and shoved away her plate, and stretched her long legs under the table, her buckle boots colliding with Foderman’s. “Have you got another cigarette?” she asked David.

“Help yourself,” he said.

“Help yourself to cancer,” Foderman said.

Sandy dismissed the comment with a small tolerant shrug, shook a cigarette from the package, and lighted it.

“I have a patient this very minute dying of terminal cancer at Montefiore Hospital,” Foderman said.

“Please, I just finished eating,” Sandy said.

“It’s not a joke,” Foderman said. “You can get killed a lot easier with what you’re holding in your hand there, than coming down the worst trails on this mountain.”

“I’ve come down the worst trails on this mountain, and I’m still alive,” Sandy said, and exhaled a stream of smoke.

“That’s exactly my point,” Foderman said. “Smoking is a lot more dangerous than skiing.”

“Besides,” David said drily, “you haven’t come down the worst trails yet. The worst trails are on the north face.” He looked at Foderman meaningfully, perhaps hoping to see him turn pale with fright.

“Take my advice, Sandy,” Foderman said.

“Satan, get thee behind me,” Sandy said.

“Sure, sure, it’s a big joke,” Foderman said, and shook his head. “You should have to visit her every day of the week. You’d change your mind about smoking, darling, believe me.”

“All right, all right,” Sandy said, and stubbed out her cigarette.

“Good girl,” Foderman said.

Both David and I looked at her in surprise. We were not accustomed to such acquiescence.

“What’ll you give up next?” David asked. “Booze?”

“Pot?” I said.

“Screwing?” David said, and Foderman blushed.

“Who’s for the slopes?” Sandy asked, rising.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” David said.

“Okay, so here I am. Peter?” she said, and then turned to Foderman. “Seymour?”

“Anytime you’re ready,” he said.

“Anytime you’re ready, C.B.,” I said, but Foderman didn’t know the joke. The whole thing was getting to be a joke. None of us knew whether Foderman could ski fresh powder, and here we were accepting his invitation to accompany us on the north face. I kept waiting for Sandy, or David, or somebody (maybe even me) to say, “Look. Seymour. Buddy. The north face is pretty hairy and maybe we ought to try it on a day when we won’t be up to our hips in powder, farshtein, Seymour? It’s a different technique, Seymour. Let’s wait till the trails are packed a bit, okay?” But no one said a word (not even me) and we clomped out of the breakfast room and down to the ski room, where we buckled our boots and put on our parkas and picked up our skis and poles and then went outside.

God, it was gorgeous.

I felt as if I were walking into that room I’d seen through the windows last night. There was no wind at all. The air was still, the mountain was hushed except for the distant sound of lift mechanisms, and far away on the access road the jingle of snow chains on a solitary automobile. We walked in silence, the four of us, skis angled onto our shoulders, poles dangling. At the base of the T-bar servicing the baby slope, we dropped our skis, dusted off the bindings, scraped thick caked snow from the bottoms of our boots with the baskets of our poles, and then stepped into the skis.

“Seymour,” Sandy said, “let’s take a few runs to warm up, okay? Before we try the north face?”

Foderman, crouched over his skis, fastening the safety straps around his ankles, said, “What you’re really saying is you want to see how I ski before we go over there. Am I right?”

“Don’t try to put anything past old Seymour,” David said.

“Am I right?”

“We’re only concerned for your safety,” Sandy said.

“Have you ever skied powder?” David asked bluntly.

“Powder shmowder,” Foderman said. “I’m an Advanced Intermediate.”

“Mm,” David said, and blew his nose.

“Well,” Sandy said, “there is a difference, Seymour. Since the trails on this side of the mountain’ll be packed before they get to the ones on the north face, why don’t we plan on spending the morning here? Okay?”

“You’re the leader,” Foderman said, and stood upright, and put on his mittens, and clapped his hands together.

The first thing he did was fall off the T-bar.

A T-bar, as I once tried to explain to Dr. Krakauer, is one of the machine-powered devices used to lift skiers to the top of a slope. T-bars, J-bars, and Pomas all pull a skier up the mountain. A chair carries him up. (If he is not careful, a basket carries him down.) The J-bar looks like a J, with the upright stem attached to a strong narrow wire in turn attached to an overhead cable supported by spaced stanchions and running over greased wheels. You lean against (but do not sit upon) the short tail of the J, with your skis flat on the ground in a packed snow track, and the machine literally pulls you up the mountain. A T-bar is similar to a J-bar, except that it is designed to accommodate two skiers, who lean side by side against the crosspiece of the inverted T, and are likewise pulled up the mountain while they chat about snow conditions and temperature and how long the lift lines are. A Poma is a flat metal disc attached to a strong narrow wire, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like the J-bar, it is designed to pull just a single skier, the difference being that you lean against a Poma by putting the metal disc between your legs and up against the crack of your behind. If you are not careful getting on or off a Poma lift, it can carry away your family jewels, provided you have any.

In giving my brief lecture to Dr. Krakauer, I explained that the T-bar, J-bar, and Poma lifts have always seemed to me the most dangerous in any ski area, despite the fact that they usually service novice slopes. Chair lifts are much easier to use (although they seem to strike terror into the hearts of beginners), and gondolas are the easiest of all, but these generally go only to the highest reaches of the mountain. Now Foderman, anxious to prove that I was after all the seer of the uphill ascent, promptly fell off the T-bar. He was riding up with Sandy, and he almost pulled her down with him, but she managed to keep her balance, and then yelled back at Foderman to get out of the track since David and I were coming up on the bar immediately behind and were faced now with the choice of running into Foderman or jumping off into the deep snow on either side of the lift. Foderman, lying athwart the track in a hopeless tangle of poles and skis, glanced anxiously over his shoulder as David and I approached. We were midway between the loading station and the top, so the chances of an attendant stopping the lift by pressing his emergency button were totally nil. Inexorably, like old age, we crept up on Foderman while Sandy kept shouting for him to crawl out of the track. Foderman was not about to do any crawling. Panic-stricken, goggles askew, woolen hat precariously perched like a yarmulke on the back of his head, one ski in the air, the other twisted behind him, the straps of both poles looped over his right wrist, he looked back at us so plaintively that we’d have been something more heinous than puppydog murderers had we not immediately abandoned ship and dumped ourselves into the snow. Which, of course, we did, David to the right of the track, I to the left. The bar behind him now cleared of immediate danger, Foderman sighed in relief and then came to the startling realization that yet another pair of skiers was approaching on the next bar, and another pair on the bar behind him, and so on ad infinitum. Faced now with impending disaster on the scale of the Titanic, with women and children jumping over the side everywhere, Foderman recognized he had better get himself out of the way fast. Scrambling, clawing, flailing to the accompanied dulcet cries of the approaching skiers, he finally rolled out of the track not an instant too soon.

“Hello there, Seymour,” David called.

“Hello, David,” Foderman called back sheepishly.

He spent the next five minutes getting back into his left ski, which had released when he scrambled out of the track. David and I waited patiently, and then skied to the bottom with him. Sandy had gone to the top, had skied down, and was waiting for us.

“Seymour,” she said, “that was ridiculous.”

“I know,” he said.

“Seymour, if you can’t ride a T-bar, how do you expect to ski the north face?”

“I know,” he said.

“Seymour, you must never do that again.”

“I know, I know,” he said.

He did not do it again.

We rode the T-bar to the top of the novice hill (no accidents this time) and then skied over an almost flat connecting link to the double-chair that serviced a hill marked with a blue square. At most ski areas, the trails are marked either with a green circle (for “Easiest”), a blue square (for “More Difficult”), or a black diamond (for “Most Difficult”). The three of us had skied this “blue square” hill before, though, and it was impossible to consider it “more difficult” than anything but a parking lot. Wide and gently sloping, free of moguls, covered with good packed snow, I could not conceive of anyone in the world having trouble with it — rank beginner, paralytic grandfather, or even Foderman. He and I examined the terrain below as we rode up in the chair together, at which time he told me that his first instructor had been a man who favored the Throw-the-Baby-in-the-Water approach. Equipped with a repertoire of nothing more than snow-plow turns, Foderman had been taken to the top of a mountain while still a novice, had been pointed down the fall line, and told to find his way to the bottom, hit or miss, kill or be killed. That first trip down must have been a hair-raiser for everyone on the slopes. The wonder of it all was that Foderman had not crashed through the base lodge and continued on south to New York via all of Vermont, part of Massachusetts, and a corner of Connecticut. But he had, he insisted, learned a great deal from the experience. He realized on that day that he was not afraid of the mountain and that he could come down anything it had to offer. He then went on to apologize for having fallen off the T-bar, claiming such a thing had never happened to him before in all the time he’d been skiing. I assured him we all had our little mishaps every now and then, bad starts invariably led to good skiing the rest of the day, we were blessed with sunshine and lovely snow (sounding more and more like a preacher), it would only be a short while before we were warmed up enough for our assault on the north face.

“Oh, sure,” Foderman said.

Sandy and David were waiting at the top.

Foderman and I skied off the chair, and then walked over to them. You can tell a lot about a skier by the way he walks in his skis, and Sandy was watching Foderman very carefully as we approached. His recent tumble off the T-bar had been something less than encouraging, and she must have been entertaining second thoughts along about now (as I most certainly was) on the advisability of taking Foderman along. We went through the usual skiers’ ritual of blowing noses and zipping up pockets and adjusting clothing, and then Sandy asked, “Have you been down here yet, Seymour?”

“Oh yes, all the trails here,” Foderman said. “They’re very easy.”

“Mm,” David said.

Foderman lifted the goggles away from his face, de-fogging them, and then said, “I’ve been down from the top on this side, you know.”

“Well, before we go to the top,” David said, “let’s take a few runs here, okay?”

“I don’t normally fall off T-bars, you know,” Foderman said, and smiled. “In fact, I was just telling Peter that’s the first time it ever happened to me in my life.”

“Mm,” David said.

“Well, let’s go,” Sandy said, and poled in, and took off.

David followed her without hesitation. Foderman glanced at me inquiringly, and I nodded to him. This was to be the first real glimpse I’d had of Foderman in action. A pole clutched tightly in either hand, knees bent, skis parallel but wide apart, he planted himself solidly, looked straight down the mountain, and, without using his poles to shove off, leaned forward on his skis until he began a downhill plunge. Plunge it was, make no mistake. I watched in awe as he went straight down the fall line, never changing position, never traversing, never turning. Foderman was the kind of skier I normally dread and avoid. Foderman was a tank.

Schwartz, of course, on that day he’d crashed into the forest had been something of a tank himself, but nothing compared to the juggernaut that was Foderman. Foderman gaveth not a damn for man or beast. Foderman was Patton’s Third Army knocking over trees and houses, pushing aside boulders, splashing into rivers, squashing the countryside flat. Squat, burly, built low to the ground, poles as rigid as mounted cannons, boots as wide apart as fixed caterpillar treads, nothing but a Molotov cocktail (and perhaps not even that) could have stopped Foderman the Fearless on his headlong descent. To the vast amazement of Sandy and David, who were skiing close together, carving beautiful link turns across the mountain and certainly not expecting an avalanche, Foderman went speeding past like an iron statue assembled by a junkman, and then executed a screeching stop that tore up half the hillside. Grinning from ear to ear, he lifted his goggles onto his hat, raised one pole, and signaled for David and Sandy to hurry up and join him. I had still not started down the mountain. It took me another ten seconds to recover. Still shaking my head, I shoved off.

The three of them were in conference on the side of the trail when I finally caught up.

“... the way I always do it,” Foderman was saying.

“Yes, Seymour,” Sandy said, “but there are trails that won’t allow such daring.”

“Daring, my ass,” David said. “Recklessness, you mean.”

“I’ve never had an accident in all the time I’ve been skiing,” Foderman said, offended. “I can stop on a dime.”

“Seymour,” Sandy said.

“If you don’t want me to ski with you, say so.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“She’s saying you ski like a goddamn idiot, Seymour.”

“Quiet, David.”

“Sure, I’ll be quiet!” David said, shouting. “Let him ski however the hell he wants to. Let him kill...”

“Don’t you worry about me, David,” Foderman said.

“You? I’m worried about myself!” David shouted. “Did you see him, Peter?”

“I saw him,” I said. “Seymour, what you did was very dangerous.”

“I’m standing here, no?” Foderman said. “I came down faster than either of them, and I’m standing here in one piece. So what’s so dangerous?”

“You’re a menace, that’s what so dangerous,” David said. “First you force me off the T-bar, then you come down the mountain like a locomotive...”

“A tank,” I said.

“Yeah, a tank,” David said, nodding. “Right! A goddamn tank! What do you think you are, Seymour, a goddamn tank?”

“I’m a gynecologist,” Foderman said with dignity.

“Yeah, well I’d hate like hell to have you looking up my cooze,” David said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“We promised Seymour we’d ski with him,” Sandy said.

“Well, you ski with him, then. Let him hit you from behind!”

“I didn’t hit anybody,” Foderman said quietly. “I was in perfect control all the way down, and I stopped on a dime.”

“Seymour,” Sandy said.

“On a dime,” Foderman said.

“Seymour,” she said, “do you want to ski with us?”

“Yes,” Foderman said.

“Then shut up.”

On the chair ride to the top, which we were ready to assay after three runs from the midpoint, Foderman and I sat with our faces tilted to the sun, and he said without preamble, as though we had been discussing it for the past half-hour and were only continuing the conversation, “It would be easier if I could tell her.”

My eyes were closed, the sun on my face was warm, the chair was moving silently on its greased cable, skiers below sent small snow-squeaking sounds into the air.

“This patient,” Foderman said. “But how can I tell her? How can I say, ‘Rose, you’re dying’? Can I deprive her of hope? She’s been my patient for eight years, she was seventeen years old when she first started coming to me. Now she’s twenty-five, and she’s dying of cancer, and I can’t tell her. I go in every morning, and I say, ‘Hello, Rose, how are you feeling today?’ And I tell her what medication we’re using, and I tell her there are certain symptoms we can expect, but that we’re prepared for them and will cope with them, and I encourage the thought that she’ll be healthy enough one day to walk out of the hospital and lead a normal, productive life. What else can I tell her? I’ve tried everything. I can’t save her. She’s going to die, Peter.”

“Well,” I said, and didn’t know what else to say.

“What am I, an intern?” Foderman asked. “Is this the first time I’ve had to look at death? Of course not! But do you know what I said to my associate? To Alan? This was just before I came out here, just before I started the vacation. I said, ‘Alan, all the years I spent in medical school were a waste.’ Well, what’s the sense of all those years I spent if I can’t save somebody I like? Peter, that’s why I became a doctor, to save the people I like. If I can’t even save the people I like, who cares about those shleppers who come in the office with a vaginal itch? Damn it, I want to save the people I like.”

I turned to look at him. Foderman was shaking his head. I remained silent. It occurred to me that what passed for humorlessness in him may have been grief instead. He was mourning in advance for deaths yet to come.

“What am I supposed to tell her?” he asked. “‘Rose, you’re dying’? Is that what I’m supposed to tell her? There’s an Arab saying, Peter. I have no respect for Arabs, but there’s a saying they have. ‘Show them the death, and they will accept the fever.’ Arabs don’t know their backsides from medicine, but they do know evil, and that’s what they’re talking about here — the lesser of two evils. If you show people the most horrible thing they can imagine, they’re willing to settle for anything else instead. It doesn’t matter how terrible the fever is, it can never be as awful as the death. ‘Show them the death, and they will accept the fever.’ Show them starvation, they’ll settle for hunger any day of the week. Show them Hitler, they’ll fall in love with Attila the Hun. Without flicking an eyelash, they’ll accept the fever every time because anything’s better than the death.” Foderman sighed heavily and turned his hands over in his lap, palms upward. “But can I tell Rose she’s dying? Can I say, ‘Rose you’re going to die’? If I show her the death, if I say, ‘Look, Rose, look at this hairy stinking thing coming to get you, look, Rose, I spit on it,’ will she then be able to spend her remaining days in peace? Will she accept the fever? I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, Peter.”

A sign on the stanchion just ahead of us informed Foderman (and indeed all skiers approaching the summit) that the thing he should do right that minute was RAISE SAFETY BAR, PREPARE TO UNLOAD, KEEP SKI TIPS UP. He had seen the sign himself. As I raised the bar, he swung his poles off the hook, and then shook his head again. We reached the platform and skied off the chair.

When I am skiing, I think of nothing but the snow and the way my body is reacting to it. Everything else leaves my head, there remains only a single-minded attention to the task of getting down the mountain in one piece. Considering the element of danger involved, I suppose such intense concentration is mandatory. I suppose, too, that this is what makes skiing such a relaxing sport. Like the snow itself, the mind becomes clean and white and empty, blank except for its occupation with the mountain. All other problems vanish.

KR: You mean to tell me you have problems?

ME: You know I have problems. That’s why I’m here.

KR: I was beginning to wonder exactly why you’re here.

ME: Well, that’s why I’m here. Is this going to be one of those days?

KR: One of which days?

ME: Where you goad me into anger?

KR: The anger is already there.

ME: No. The anger’s only there when I’m here.

KR: Very well. What are you angry about now?

ME: I was trying to tell you about this trip I’ll be taking. I don’t know why you had to twist it into something else.

KR: You said all your problems disappear when you’re skiing.

ME: That’s right.

KR: And I asked you what your problems were.

ME: No. You made some smart-ass sarcastic remark about not realizing I had any problems. And wondering why I was here.

KR: I was merely suggesting that if skiing can solve all your problems, there’s no need to come here three times a week.

ME: I didn’t say skiing solved all my problems. I said it was impossible to think about problems while I’m skiing.

KR: Ah, I see.

ME: You saw all along. Please cut the crap.

KR: Has it ever occurred to you that you’re extremely rude to me?

ME: Never.

KR: Well, you are.

ME: Gee, I’m sorry. Would you like to lie down here beside me and neck?

KR: Would you like me to?

ME: That’s a joke. I thought you knew all the analyst jokes.

KR: Yes, I know most of them. Why are you rude to me?

ME: Because you never understand what the hell I’m trying to say.

KR: Does anyone understand what you’re trying to say?

ME: Yes.

KR: Who?

ME: Sandy. And David.

KR: When you tell me they understand you, all I get is that you understand yourself.

ME: That’s not true. We’re very different people.

KR: But very much alike.

ME: I should hope so.

KR: Why?

ME: We’re friends.

KR: Do you have any other friends?

ME: Of course.

KR: Who?

ME: Rhoda was a friend.

KR: Yet you raped her.

ME: We did not rape her.

KR: Let’s for the moment drop the protective pronoun, shall we?

ME: What?

KR: The “we.” Let’s talk about you. Did you rape Rhoda?

ME: No.

KR: Then what happened? How would you classify what happened?

ME: I don’t know what happened. We were all good friends, I don’t know what happened. We got along fine until that day.

KR: What happened on that day?

ME: We went into the forest. It was too hot on the beach, so we went into the forest.

KR: And?

ME: We started kidding around, and it led to sex.

KR: To rape.

ME: No.

KR: Did you force yourself upon Rhoda?

ME: We were just...

KR: You, let’s talk about you. Did you force yourself upon Rhoda?

ME: Rhoda liked me a lot.

KR: You’re not answering my question.

ME: I could’ve laid Rhoda anytime I wanted to. Why would I have raped her?

KR: I don’t know why. Why did you?

ME: We didn’t. Sandy was always very kind to her. We were all very kind to her. We taught her how to swim. We took her everywhere with us.

We took Foderman everywhere with us. All over the mountain. His courage was his only asset. Because of his frontal approach, his insistence upon a direct confrontation with the fall line, we never had to wait for him to catch up; he was invariably at the bottom of any trail before we were even halfway down. The problem was in channeling his energy. Foderman wanted to fly, and whereas we were in sympathy with what is, after all, one of the basic allures of skiing, we felt he should learn to walk before he tried his wings so outrageously. I honestly didn’t know why we were bothering. For although I was beginning to know him a little better, I can’t say he added any fun to the proceedings. As a matter of fact, he was a downright drag.

Sandy’s patience with him was puzzling and a trifle annoying. She cajoled him, she scolded him, she encouraged him, she placated him, she ignored us. At one point, she did a startling imitation of him, somewhat like an instant television replay, in which she fixed herself in his rigid pose and went tearing down the mountain full tilt to execute a sudden stop inches before she would have crashed into four startled skiers standing by the side of the trail. “Loosen up, Seymour!” she shouted over and over again, and Foderman would reply, “I am loose!” and then squat over his skis and rumble down the mountain, God help anyone in his way. She tried to show him that skiing could be fun, that those long flat things attached to the feet could actually be moved at the discretion of the skier; that once they were set on a course it wasn’t necessary to assume speed and direction had been predetermined by some almighty being. “You can ski up the mountain, you know,” she said, and he said, “Up the mountain?” and she said, “Sure, watch,” and pointed herself at a huge boulder half-poking out of the snow, and skied down on a collision course toward it, traversing the hill. “Watch out!” Foderman yelled, and Sandy merely sidestepped the boulder by climbing in motion up the hillside away from it, a possibility that had never occurred to him. “Come on,” she said, “let’s run a little,” and she began dancing up and down the hillside in a traverse, flattening the skis to slide down, and then edging to climb up, always in motion, never losing speed, gamboling like a mountain goat. Foderman could not believe such versatility was possible. He tried the exercise with clear foreboding, and then fell back upon what he knew best, a battering-ram charge on the main portal of the castle, never mind this frolicking up and down, never mind having any fun. (“Are you having any fun?” David sang, and I picked up the next line of the song immediately, “Are you getting any lovvvvving?” and we both burst out laughing while Foderman far below shrieked into his emergency stop.)

On the chair alone with Sandy, I said, “What do you think?”

“Oh, he’s getting there,” she said.

“It’s more fun without him,” I said. “I didn’t come all the way out here to be a ski instructor.”

“I’m enjoying it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and shrugged. “Maybe I think the stupid bastard will break his leg if we don’t watch over him.”

“The one opposite Schwartz’s.”

“What?”

“You said...”

“Right, right. Be no fun at all if he broke the same leg. Which one did Schwartz break anyway? I forget.”

“The right one, I think. Or the left.”

“Sure that eliminates all the possibilities?”

“Reasonably sure.”

“Try to be a bit more adventurous, Peter. Take a gamble. Right or left? I’d hate for Foderman to end up with the wrong broken leg.”

“Well, if he breaks the right one, we’re safe.”

“How so?”

“How can the right one be the wrong one?”

“Wild laughter and applause,” Sandy said.

“You didn’t think that was funny? I thought it was very funny.”

“Oh my, yes.”

“At least as funny as a broken leg.”

“What is your obsession with broken legs, Peter dear?”

“Mine? I was about to ask the same question.”

“I have no interest whatever in broken legs. Just talking about them makes me nervous.”

“Yet you were the one who raised the matter of broken legs, Sandra dear.”

“I beg your pardon, you were the one.”

“Me? I have a morbid fear of broken legs.”

“I have a morbid fear of turtles,” Sandy said.

“To me, a broken leg is like a broken promise,” I said.

“More lusty applause, cheers from the balcony.”

“You didn’t think that was literary? I thought it was very literary.”

“That’s one of your shortcomings, Peter. Thinking.” She tapped her temple with a gloved forefinger. “Nothing upstairs, Peter.”

“Dr. Krakauer agrees with you.”

“He does? I retract my statement.”

“He says if I thought a bit more, I wouldn’t have to act-out all the time. Acting-out is neurotic.”

“I should think so. I prefer indoor performances myself.”

“Sandy, dear...?”

“Yes, Peter dear?”

“Do you know what acting-out is?”

“Of course I do.”

“What is it?”

“You’re the one who’s spent four years on a couch...”

“Three years.”

“And you’re asking me what acting-out is? Go ask Dr. Crackers.”

“What does he know about true love?”

“Ahh, Peter, what does anyone know about true love?”

“True love is a fountain.”

“True love is a broken leg.”

“There you go, Sandy. Back to broken legs. You know what I think?”

“There you go, Peter. Back to thinking.”

“How else would I know I exist?”

“Try stopping on a dime.”

“Thinking is safer.”

“Not the way you think.”

“Actually, I’m a very good thinker.”

“Actually, you’ve got a bad lisp. Has anyone ever mentioned that to you?”

“Not until this moment.”

“Think about it,” Sandy said.

“Listen,” I said, “let’s get rid of Foderman.”

“Sibling rivalry, Peter?”

“I admit it, Dr. Crackers.”

“Well, let’s try it a bit longer, okay?”

“We’ve already tried it a bit longer. He’s a pain in the ass.”

“I want to see what happens,” Sandy said.

Nothing happened.

By the end of the day, I was convinced we’d done our best with Foderman, but that it was impossible to teach an old dog new tricks or even to force a horse to drink from water to which he has been led. David was equally discouraged. Only Sandy seemed to have enjoyed herself. In the ski room, when Foderman asked, “Shall we try the north face tomorrow?” Sandy cheerfully replied, “I think you’re ready for it, Seymour.”

David and I looked at each other sourly, and went upstairs to the bar.

I was on my third scotch and soda when Alice the waitress wandered into the bar. Sandy had gone to her room for a nap after her strenuous day of coping with Foderman the Intrepid, and David had gone downstairs to play ping-pong with Max the Meister. I felt totally abandoned, deserted, ditched, and depressed. Alice, much to my surprise, was not dressed in her customary dirndl and blouse. Instead, she was wearing tight black ski pants and a black jersey turtleneck shirt. Nipples poking and peering into the room, she spotted me where I was nursing my drink, and immediately perambulated over.

“Hi, Peter,” she said.

“Hi, Alice.”

“Have a good day?”

‘Terrific,” I said. “Where’s your costume?”

“What? Oh. This is my day off.”

“Did you ski?”

“Yep.”

“Have a good day?”

“Terrific,” she said, and grinned.

“Want a drink?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said, and climbed up onto the stool beside me. To the bartender, she said, “A whiskey sour, straight up, please.”

“Right, Alice,” he said, and winked at me.

“What was that for?” Alice whispered.

“What was what for?” I asked.

“The wink. You didn’t say anything to him, did you?”

“What about?”

“Last night.”

“What would I say?”

“I don’t know,” Alice said, and shrugged.

“All we did was dance.”

“That’s right.”

“So what would I say?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay.”

“Then why did he wink at you?”

“Maybe he saw us dancing.”

“He wasn’t on last night.”

“Maybe somebody else saw us dancing and told him about it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with dancing,” Alice said.

“Who said there was?”

“Even close dancing.”

“Of course not.”

“So why did he wink?”

“I honestly don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Him? I wouldn’t ask him the right time.”

The bartender came over with the whiskey sour, put it on the bartop, smiled, and said, “Here you go, Alice.”

“Thank you, Robert,” she said. She waited until he had returned to the other end of the bar, and then she whispered, “If I was stranded on the Sahara without a watch, I wouldn’t ask him for the right time.”

“I gather you don’t like him.”

“You gather right,” she said, and lifted her glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” I said.

“He almost raped me once,” Alice said conversationally.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” she said, and drank. “That animal.”

“Must have been terrifying.”

“Terrifying? It was disgusting.”

“I’ll bet it was.”

“No goddamn self-control,” she said, and shook her head. “It’s not that I’m a virgin, you know...”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, I’m not. But there is a limit, you know. I mean, you expect a person to have at least a little self-control.”

“Certainly.”

“That’s what I like about you.”

“My self-control,” I said, nodding.

“Yes,” she said, and drank again. “Robert has no self-control at all.”

“Well, he probably finds you very attractive.”

“Oh, sure,” Alice said. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Nobody.”

“But he practically tore off my clothes. I mean, what the hell is that?”

“Terrible,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “Could I have another one of these?”

“Sure,” I said, “Robert, another round, please.”

“In his grubby little room over the slaves’ quarters,” Alice said. “I don’t even know why I went up there.”

“Why did you go up there?”

“He said he wanted me to hear a new record he had.”

“Pretty shabby trick.”

“Shabby? You said it. Started getting crazy the minute he closed the door. He’s got a hundred hands, he’s not a bartender for nothing.”

“Tch,” I said.

“I was just so embarrassed, I didn’t know what to say.”

“What did you say?”

“What could I say? I put on my panties and left.”

“I don’t blame you one little bit.”

“So now he winks,” Alice said.

“Whiskey sour, and a scotch on the rocks,” Robert said, and put down the drinks.

“Thank you,” I said.

Robert nodded, glanced at Alice, and then reluctantly went back to the other end of the bar.

“Cheers,” Alice said.

“Cheers,” I said, and we both drank.

“Mmm, good,” Alice said.

“Did you find it cold out there today?” I asked.

“Cold? No. Cold?”

“In that outfit, I mean.”

“This outfit?”

“Yes. Didn’t you get cold?”

“No.”

“I thought you might have got a bit chilly.”

“No,” she said. She sipped a little more of her drink, and then said, “Oh, you mean because I’m not wearing a bra.”

“Yes.”

“I never wear a bra when I’m skiing.”

“Neither do I.”

“I like to feel free and easy when I’m skiing.”

“So do I.”

“A bra is a pain in the ass,” Alice said.

“I’ll bet it is.”

“You’re a nice person, Peter,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“I felt very free and easy with you.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re not wearing a bra,” I said.

“What?” she said, and then smiled and said, “Fresh.”

“Listen,” I said.

“Um?”

“Would you like to come to my room and hear a new record I have?”

Alice peered at me over the rim of her glass. Then she put the glass down on the bartop, and smiled slowly, and said, “You won’t try to rape me, will you, Peter?”

It was like a movie.

We came into the room, and I locked the door.

“Why are you locking the door?” she asked.

“I don’t want anyone to interrupt us,” I said.

“All we’re going to do is listen to a new record.”

“I don’t have a new record. I don’t even have a record player.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Why don’t we sit and talk a while?”

“We were sitting and talking in the bar, why’d we have to come up here to do the exact same thing?”

“It’s more private here.”

“You are going to rape me, aren’t you, Peter?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I can tell.”

I offered her a drink, and she refused the first time, and then I offered her a drink again when the silence seemed to lengthen interminably, she sitting in the wing-back chair near the frost-rimed windows, I perched cross-legged on the bed, and this time she accepted. I went to the dresser and carried the bottle of scotch into the bathroom and I said there was no ice, and she said she didn’t care for any ice, it was very hot in the room. I put a little tap water in both scotches and then I carried them back into the room and handed her one of them, and she sipped at it, and kept watching me over the rim of the glass and she said again, “It’s very hot in here, Peter.”

“Well,” I said, “they always keep the rooms very hot at ski lodges.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”

“I guess it’s because you can see all that snow and ice outside and it makes people feel better if the room is hot.”

“All it does is make me feel uncomfortable, that’s all.”

“Well,” I said, “why don’t you take off that shirt?”

“Uh-uh,” she said, and sipped at her drink and kept watching me over the edge of the glass. “What is this?” she asked. “Scotch?”

“Yes, it’s scotch.”

“I was drinking whiskey sours in the bar. Will I get sick?”

“No, you won’t get sick. It doesn’t matter about mixing drinks, that’s a lot of crap.”

“Naughty language,” she said, and smiled. “It is hot in here, though.”

“So take it off,” I said.

“Uh-uh,” she said. She stretched out her legs, and then kicked off her fur-lined boots, first one and then the other. “Mmm,” she said, “that’s better.”

“It’d be even better if you took off the turtleneck,” I said. “I mean, because the room’s so hot and all.”

“Yes, it is,” she said, “but I don’t think it’d be appropriate for me to sit around in just my ski pants.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to get excited, Peter.”

“We’re good friends, Alice. I don’t see anything wrong with you taking off the turtleneck since it’s so hot in the goddamn room.”

“Well it is hot,” she said.

“Well, why don’t you take it off, then?”

“Well, okay, but remember your promise.”

“What promise?”

“Your promise not to rape me,” she said, and put her glass down on the floor, and pulled the turtleneck up over her breasts, but not over her head, sat sprawled in the wingback chair with the shirt bunched up above her breasts, black against white. She picked up the glass, and I got off the bed and walked to where she was sitting with her legs outstretched, and stepped over her legs so that I was standing with my own legs apart, straddling her.

“Let me help you,” I said.

“No, thanks,” she said, “I’m fine this way.”

I pulled the shirt up over her head, and threw it on the floor. She looked up at me, and said nothing, and put her glass down on the floor beside the chair again, and then picked up the shirt and tossed it onto the bed. She lifted the glass, still saying nothing, and sipped from it.

“That’s better,” I said.

“I’m glad you think it’s better,” she said.

I was still standing in front of the chair, staring down at her, my legs apart, her long legs stretched out between them.

“Well?” she said.

“Nice,” I said. “Look at your nipples.”

“I’ve seen them, thanks.”

“Look at them anyway.”

She looked down at her breats and said, “So what?”

“Get up,” I said.

“I’m fine right where I am, thanks. Get me another drink, please.” She extended the glass to me, and I took it from her hand and poured more scotch into it and was starting for the bathroom when she said, “I don’t need water, thanks,” and I brought the glass back to her and she accepted it and said, “I don’t want a scene with you like I had with Robert.”

“Oh?” I said. “Did you take your shirt off for Robert?”

“Of course not, what do you think I am?”

“I seem to remember you had to put on your panties before leaving his room.”

“Who told you that?”

“You did.”

“No, I couldn’t have put on my panties because they were ripped.”

“How’d they get ripped?”

“Robert ripped them.”

“Are you wearing panties now?”

“No, just ski underwear.”

“What color?”

“Red.”

“Why don’t you let me see them?”

“No, I don’t think long johns are very attractive,” she said.

“I feel certain you look magnificent in long johns, especially with that sweet little ass,” I said.

“Naughty language, Peter.”

“Come on, take off the ski pants.”

“It’s too much trouble.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Thanks, I’d rather leave them on. You’ll only get excited. You won’t be able to control yourself.”

I was standing by the dresser and looking at her where she sat sprawled in the chair, lazily sipping at her drink, smiling at me over the glass. I moved to her, gently took the glass from her hand, and reached behind me to put it on the dresser.

“I’ll rip them off,” I said.

“You’d better not try.”

“I’m warning you, Alice.”

“What’s so special about seeing me in my long johns?” she asked, and stood up and unzipped her ski pants at the side, and then lowered them to her knees and sat in the chair again and said, “Help me.” I pulled the elastic bottoms off her feet and then tossed the pants over to the bed, alongside the black jersey shirt.

“Now stand up,” I said.

“What for?”

“I want to see you.”

“You can see me fine just the way I am,” she said. “Give me my drink, please.”

“You’ve had enough to drink.”

“No, I haven’t. Give it to me.”

“Get up,” I said.

“I’ll get up, but only because I want my drink,” she said, and rose immediately. Moving flatfooted to the dresser, resembling a healthy dancer wearing rehearsal tights, she picked up the glass of scotch, and, I knocked it from her hand. She did not appear at all startled. She looked down at the glass and the spilled whiskey on the rug, and then lifted her head and said, “What a waste of good scotch,” and put her hands on her hips and said, “What now?” Her eyes were mocking and challenging and bright, but her lips were trembling.

“You know what now,” I said.

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Now you take off the underwear.”

“Now I put on my clothes and get out of here,” she said, and went for her pants and her shirt. I grabbed her wrist and swung her away from the bed. Still holding her wrist tightly, I forced her to her knees and with my free hand unzipped my fly.

“That doesn’t scare me,” she said.

“What doesn’t?”

“That thing.”

“What thing?”

“That.”

“What do you call it?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you call it?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t scare me.”

“Then take it,” I said.

There was no difference between her and Rhoda. They were identical. Willing rape victims.

Sandy was right.

Schwartz was the one who started telling doctor jokes after dinner. With his broken leg propped up on a chair (the left one, by the way, and now decorated with a scrawled endorsement from yours truly: Schwartz for President! Signed, R. Nixon) we sat around the acorn fireplace in the small lounge and Schwartz told the old chestnut about the proctologist examining the patient who’d swallowed a glass eye, rearing back (so to speak) in surprise and saying, “I’ve been looking up ass-holes for fourteen years, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone looking back!” Everyone laughed politely, except Foderman, who was apparently hearing the joke for the first time, and who collapsed in gales of uncontrollable mirth. Thus encouraged, Schwartz told another medical story, this one about the immigrant who visits a doctor because his wife has been having so many babies, four or five in as many years, and he doesn’t know how to stop her alarming reproductive rate. The doctor realizes the poor man knows nothing about contraception and explains the use of condoms to him, telling him he must absolutely put one on his organ each and every time he contemplates intercourse. Well, a month later, the immigrant comes back and tells the doctor his wife is pregnant again, and the doctor looks at him in surprise and then chastisingly says, “Did you put the condom on your organ, as I told you to do?” And the immigrant says, “I don’t have no organ in the house, Doc, so I put it on the piano instead.”

This one, too, convulsed Foderman, which led Sandy to throw in a quickie about the girl who comes to the doctor and says, “I haven’t fenestrated in a month, and I think I’m stagnant,” to which the doctor replies, “You mean you haven’t menstruated in a month, and you think you’re pregnant,” and the girl says, “All I know is my boyfriend reached a climate and he wasn’t wearing a phylactery.”

David, who had heard all of these jokes around the pool hall at the Philharmonic, yawned politely and glanced over his shoulder toward the bar, where Max Brandstaetter (for such was our violinist’s full name) was in deep conversation with Robert the Rapacious Barkeep. I thought David might get up and wander over for a beer and some musical discourse, but instead he said, “Do you know the one about the man who comes to a doctor with an infection of the big toe?”

“No,” Schwartz said, “tell it.”

“Tell it,” Foderman said, grinning in anticipation, and leaning forward in his chair.

“Well, this man comes to a doctor with a bad infection of the big toe, an open sore dripping pus, terrible mess. The doctor examines him, takes some smears, and announces in surprise that the man has gonorrhea of the big toe. ‘This is the first time in my life I’ve ever had a patient with gonorrhea of the big toe,’ the doctor says, and asks the man’s permission to report it at the next medical convention.”

“I never heard of it, either,” Foderman said, chuckling. “Gonorrhea of the big toe.”

“Well, at the medical convention, the doctor gets up before his colleagues and says, ‘I wish to report an astounding phenomenon. In June, I treated a man in my office for gonorrhea of the big toe,’ at which point a doctor in the audience raises his hand and says, ‘Excuse me for interrupting, but in June I treated a woman in my office for athlete’s twat.’”

Sandy and I burst out laughing simultaneously, but Foderman and Schwartz sat in stunned silence. (Had Alice been present, she would most certainly have said, “Naughty language.”) Foderman looked at Schwartz, who finally smiled. Taking his cue, Foderman also smiled, though he was blushing a bright pink.

“There must be a thousand doctor jokes,” Schwartz said at last.

“A million,” Foderman said, and all conversation jolted to a halt.

“Well, I think I’ll have a beer,” David said, and rose and walked to the bar, where Max greeted him effusively.

KR: Have you ever thought David might be homosexual?

ME: Don’t be ridiculous.

KR: Is the idea repellent to you?

ME: Abhorrent.

KR: Why?

ME: Because I know he isn’t.

KR: Have you ever discussed it with him?

ME: Never.

KR: Why not?

ME: Because if you know how to spell “cat,” you don’t look it up in the dictionary. I know David isn’t a fag.

KR: How do you know that?

ME: He sleeps with girls, that’s how I know it.

DR: Might he not also sleep with boys?

ME: No, he might not also sleep with boys.

KR: If you’ve never discussed it with him, how do you know?

ME: He’s my best friend. He would have told me.

KR: Perhaps he knew you would find it abhorrent.

ME: I do.

KR: Yet you’ve slept with David.

ME: I’ve been in the same bed with him, if that’s what you mean.

KR: Yes, of course that’s what I mean.

ME: And Sandy was with us.

KR: Sandy slept between you.

ME: Yes.

KR: On every occasion?

ME: On every occasion. Besides, it hasn’t happened that often.

KR: How often, would you say?

ME: Three or four times.

KR: When was the first time?

ME: Sometime after that summer.

KR: The summer of Rhoda?

ME: Jesus, I wish you’d stop calling it that. A lot of other things happened that summer, too. You don’t have to label it like the Pleistocene Age or something.

KR: Is it that summer you’re talking about?

ME: Yes, that summer.

KR: And the first time you, David, and Sandy slept in the same bed together was shortly after that summer.

ME: In the fall sometime. November, I think.

KR: Where?

ME: At Sandy’s house. Her mother was away with Snow White for the...

KR: Snow White, did you say?

ME: Yes, this guy she was going with at the time. I forget his real name. We used to call him Snow White.

KR: Why?

ME: Because he turned lobster red in the sun.

KR: I don’t see the connection.

ME: Forget it.

KR: In any case, Sandy’s mother was away with him.

ME: Yes, for the weekend. And Sandy called us up, and we stayed in the apartment with her.

KR: Was there only one bedroom in the apartment?

ME: Of course not.

KR: Then why did you all sleep in the same bed?

ME: What’s the matter, doctor? Are you shocked?

KR: Hardly.

ME: It goes on all the time, you know. This is now Doctor. We aren’t back in the Middle Ages, you know.

KR: It went on in the Middle Ages, too, I understand.

ME: And anyway, it wasn’t what you think. It wasn’t sordid or... shocking. It wasn’t shocking. I don’t know why the hell you’re shocked.

KR: I’m not.

ME: That’s right, you get all kinds of lunatics and perverts in here, don’t you?

KR: All kinds.

ME: It was, in fact, a very good experience.

KR: I see.

ME: You don’t believe that, do you? Well, it was. Grown-ups have some crazy ideas about...

KR: Grown-ups?

ME: Yes.

KR: You’re twenty-one, Peter.

ME: I know I am.

KR: That makes you a grown-up.

ME: I’m trying to say we weren’t grown-ups at the time. This was five years ago. And it wasn’t an orgy or anything like that, the way grown-ups always think of... of any arrangement that isn’t quite conventional.

KR: On the contrary, there are many grown-ups who have exactly such unconventional arrangements. They are not the exclusive property of the young.

ME: I’m not talking about a ménage à trois, Doctor.

KR: I didn’t think you were.

ME: Nor even a folie à trois.

KR: You’ve been reading.

ME: How else would I be able to follow you?

KR: In any case, you feel it was a good experience.

ME: Yes.

KR: For all three of you?

ME: Yes. Well, how do I know? It was good for me. I enjoyed it.

KR: You enjoyed making love to Sandy?

ME: I still do.

KR: Did David enjoy it?

ME: I never asked him.

KR: I thought you talked about everything.

ME: We didn’t talk about that.

KR: Why not?

ME: It was something the three of us shared together, there was no reason to beat it to death afterwards. We did it because we wanted to do it, and we enjoyed doing it, and that was that.

KR: And apparently you enjoyed it enough to repeat the experience again and again.

ME: Three or four times. We don’t make a habit of it.

KR: Why not? If it’s so enjoyable...

ME: I don’t think you understand the relationship between the three of us.

KR: Perhaps not.

ME: If we feel like going to bed together, that’s what we do. There aren’t any set rules, Doctor. This isn’t a club.

KR: It sounds somewhat like a club.

ME: All I’m trying to say is there aren’t any set rules.

KR: I can see that. If, for example, you and David wanted to go to bed together, there’d be no rules against that, either, would there?

ME: The matter has never come up.

KR: But if it should. I don’t suppose there’d be any rules against it.

ME: David’s not a fag, Doctor. Let’s just get that straight. David is not a fag.

KR: Fine.

At some point during that tiresome evening we spent in the lounge, Schwartz announced that he was leaving in the morning; he was sick and tired of sitting around all day with nothing to do, he would be better off in New York City, where at least his brother and his wife could come over to play Monopoly with him. Foderman offered to play Monopoly with him right there at Semanee, but Schwartz said, “What fun is Monopoly with only two people? No, Seymour, I’m going home tomorrow. I’ve already made the airplane reservation.”

A general gloom settled over the crowd. The crowd, as such, consisted solely of Seymour Foderman. Sulking like a vaudeville performer who has just been told that Zeigfeld wants only his partner and not the act, trying bravely to maintain a stiff upper lip in the face of Schwartz’s desertion, Foderman began talking about the north face, and about how eager he was to try it in the morning. I think he wanted to make Schwartz jealous. I think he was saying, “Look, Manny, who needs you? You want to go home, go ahead. I got these nice bright kids I can ski with, they’re going to take me over to the hardest part of the mountain, who needs a cripple like you hanging around and complaining? Go on, go home. Go play Monopoly with your brother and his dreary wife, who cares?” But he was hurt.

David wandered over from the bar with Max in tow, to tell us that the instructors were getting up a game of broomball on the ice-skating rink, and would we care to join in? Broomball is hockey without skates and without a puck. Instead, each member of the team, equipped with a broom and wearing his normal footwear, runs around the ice trying to knock a basketball into the goal. The idea is to fall on your head and break your cranium. Sandy told David that one of her least favorite leisure-time activities was playing broomball, and I told him I would have been happy to join them if I hadn’t just had broomball for dinner, thank you, and off he went to slip and slide.

“The north face,” Foderman said, “is supposed to be more difficult than Ajax.” He paused significantly and said to Schwartz, “Ajax. At Aspen.”

“How do you know how bad Ajax is?” Schwartz asked.

“I heard about it. And I also heard about the north face here.”

“Who cares?” Schwartz said. “By this time tomorrow, I’ll be sitting in front of my nice fireplace, burning cannel coal and listening to Beethoven’s Fifth.”

“Aren’t you even curious about it?” Foderman asked.

“Certainly, I’m curious. You can tell me all about it when you get home.”

“I could tell you all about it tomorrow.”

“I won’t be here tomorrow.”

“I’m saying if you stayed.”

“I already made a plane reservation.”

“You could cancel the reservation.”

“Listen to this guy, will you?” Schwartz said.

“He’s concerned about you,” Sandy said gently.

“Sure. He’s so concerned, he runs off skiing all day long. While I sit around twiddling my thumbs.”

“Manny, it isn’t my fault you broke your leg,” Foderman said.

“I know it isn’t. Who said it was your fault?”

“I’m only suggesting,” Foderman said, “that you could have a good time here even with the broken leg. That’s all I’m suggesting, Manny.”

“I could have a better time in New York.”

“Doing what? Playing Monopoly?”

“And also seeing a certain person who called here today to find out how I was.”

“Ah. So that’s it.”

Schwartz nodded.

“Well, I hope you have a good flight,” Foderman said. “What time are you leaving?”

“The car is picking me up at eight.”

“I’ll help you with your bags,” Foderman said.

“Thank you, I would appreciate it.”

Foderman rose, seemed about to say something more to Schwartz, but instead turned to Sandy. “Shall we meet for breakfast?” he asked. “After I get Manny on his way?”

“If we’re going over to the north face,” Sandy said, “we ought to get started as soon as the lifts are running.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Schwartz said. “I can put myself in the car.”

“You’ve got a broken leg there,” Foderman said. “How’re you going to manage by yourself?”

“There are bellhops, don’t worry. Have your breakfast and go try the north face.”

“Are you sure?” Foderman asked.

“I’m sure, I’m sure.”

“What time will you be eating, Sandy?”

“Seven. But don’t expect conversation from me.”

“What I could do,” Foderman said, “is have breakfast with Manny and make sure his bags are all out front. And his skis.”

“You don’t have to bother,” Schwartz said. “Look at him, will you? A regular Jewish mother.”

“Well, we’ll talk about it in the morning,” Foderman said.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Have a good sleep, eat your breakfast, and go ski the farshtinkener north face. I’ll see you in the city.”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” Foderman said again. “Good night, everybody.”

“Good night already,” Schwartz said.

Daybreak Thursday morning was one of the most spectacularly beautiful I’d ever been privileged to witness. Awakened early by my persistent you-know-what, I dressed and went downstairs through the silent lodge, and then ventured outdoors in those last few moments before night’s candles had burnt out and jocund day stood tiptoe on the misty mountaintops. I had seen many dawns before, of course; in the city where the sun lumbers up over the rooftops like a bloodstained mugger; at the shore, where it springs out of the ocean like a Japanese dancer in silks; in the country, where it blinks like timid semaphore through the foliage and then runs molten behind the silhouetted trees. But I had never before seen it in the mountains, and I was truly stupefied.

It was a religious miracle.

I fully expected Jesus Christ to come over the summit to the accompaniment of heraldic trumpets.

Instead, a solitary skier came down the novice slope.

The skier himself (or herself, it was difficult to tell from this distance) was something of a miracle in that the lifts were not yet running, and he (or she) must have climbed to the top of the slope. Since dawn was just breaking, this meant that the uphill ascent had been made in near-darkness, not a difficult feat but certainly an energetic and unusual one. I automatically assumed that the skier coming down the slope was an insomniac, and I began to construct a little fantasy involving him (or her) lying in bed counting ascending chairs in a fruitless effort to drop off to sleep, finally saying the hell with it, and coming out to sidestep or herringbone to the top. It did not take much skill to come down the wide, gently angled hill, but the skier was obviously a good one, wedelning with graceful ease, wearing green parka and pants that seemed in perfect calm harmony with the sun-pink snow.

The skier was a girl.

As she came closer, intent on the slope, plunging directly down the fall line (such as it was) in short clicking beautiful tight motion, I saw red hair streaming from the sides of her green wool, tasseled hat and thought for a moment That’s the girl from the department store, and then thought No, it isn’t, and then she was fifty feet above me, and then thirty, and twenty, yellow goggles covering half her freckled face, ten feet, five, Yes, it was the goddamn girl who’d witnessed the theft, and she carved a quick short stop and looked up at me.

“Hey, hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said.

She lifted the goggles off her face. Her eyes were the color of her parka, a lime green. “I hate to be corny,” she said, “but haven’t we met before?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

“Sure,” she said. “You were shopping,” she said, and winked.

“I think you’re mistaking me for someone else,” I said. “How’s the snow?”

“Gorgeous,” she said.

“Well, have a good day,” I said.

“Sure,” she said. “You, too.”

Getting Schwartz off to the airport was a monumental operation. We had got a later start than intended, waiting forty-five minutes for breakfast because something was wrong with one of the kitchen stoves, and the chef was working at half his normal speed. By the time Sandy’s flapjacks and sausages came, it was almost ten minutes to eight, and she was ready to kill. I knew exactly how she felt; breakfast is the one meal I want when I want it. The three of us ate ravenously, and then went outside to join Foderman and Schwartz, who were waiting for the airport car and fussing over Schwartz’s luggage and skis. Schwartz was traveling with six (count ’em) six matched suitcases; someone had apparently told him he was spending four months in Europe. The luggage was piled against the side of the building, his boots in a black carrying case, his skis bagged and leaning against the wall. Foderman counted the luggage, and then counted it again, and said, “Six pieces, am I right, Manny?”

“Six pieces, right.”

“And the skis make seven.”

“Seven, right.”

“And the boots. That’s eight.”

“Eight, yes.”

“Make sure they give you eight baggage checks.”

“Would you like to pin a little note to my coat?” Schwartz asked. “With my name and address on it? And who to call in an emergency?”

“I’m only worried because of your leg,” Foderman said. “Whose luggage is this?”

“The other people who are going in the car.”

“Where are they?”

“Paying their bill.”

“Did you pay your bill?”

“I paid it.”

“Where’s the car?”

“It’ll be here.”

“I don’t want you to miss the plane.”

“I won’t miss the plane.”

“It wouldn’t be fun sitting around an airport with a broken leg.”

“The car’ll be here, I won’t miss the plane.”

“Did you pack everything?”

“Everything.”

“I’ll check the room later, just to make sure. Anything you missed, I can take home for you.”

“I didn’t miss anything, you don’t have to check the room.”

“Just in case. Have you got your ticket?”

“In my pocket.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Let me see it.”

“For Christ’s sake, Seymour, it’s right here in my pocket!”

“Just in case.”

Schwartz reached under his overcoat and into his jacket pocket and pulled out his airline ticket. “All right?” he asked.

“Put it away now,” Foderman said. “Before you lose it.”

The car arrived at a quarter past eight. Foderman counted the luggage again, and then supervised the loading of it. Sandy was beginning to get a bit impatient by then, anxious to ski over the north face before the lift lines grew impossibly long. But Foderman checked the skis on the roof rack, making sure they were strapped on solidly, and then counted the luggage in the trunk again, and then said, “Your boots! Where are his boots, driver?”

“They’re in the back there,” the driver said. “Alongside the spare.”

“I don’t see them,” Foderman said.

“I put them in myself,” the driver said.

“Then, were are they?”

“Right there. The black bag.”

“Okay,” Foderman said, and nodded curtly and went around to the side of the car to help Schwartz in. Schwartz handed me one of his crutches and then leaned on Foderman’s shoulder for support, and eased himself onto the seat. Foderman held the broken leg as Schwartz swung it into the automobile, and then asked, “Have you got enough room, Manny?”

“Plenty of room. There’s only the three of us going.”

“Where are they, anyway?” Foderman asked nervously. “They should be out here by now.”

“They’ll be here, don’t worry.”

“Listen, ah, Seymour,” Sandy said, and looked at her watch.

“In a minute,” Foderman said. “I want to get him settled.”

“I’m settled already,” Schwartz said. “My bags and boots are in the trunk, my skis are on the rack, my ticket’s in my pocket, and I had a very nice bowel movement this morning. Go enjoy yourself, will you please?”

“I wanted to wait till you left,” Foderman said.

“There’s no need,” Schwartz said. “Get him out of here, will you?”

“Come on, Seymour,” Sandy said.

“Have a good flight,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself,” David said.

“Thank you, thank you. Maybe I’ll see you in the city.”

“Call me when you get home,” Foderman said. “Call me tonight.”

“Okay.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

As we walked away from the car, Foderman shook his head and said, “I wanted to wait till he left.”

As it turned out, our haste to get to the other side of the mountain was entirely unnecessary. We battled the lift line to the midway station on the southern side, and then transferred to the double chair that took us to the summit. Foderman kept looking over his shoulder toward the base, as though hoping to catch a glimpse of Schwartz departing. (Foderman was beginning to get on my nerves.) From the summit, we skied over two links and four downhill trails to the base on the northern side, complicated are the ways of mountains. It was ten-thirty by the time we got there. The chair lift to the summit of the north face was not operating. There were strong winds on this side of the mountain, and the empty chairs were bouncing and bobbing with each fresh gust.

Sandy stopped a Ski Patrolman and raised hell with him, demanding to know why someone on the other side of the mountain hadn’t informed anyone that the goddamn chair on this side of the mountain wasn’t working. The Ski Patrolman snippily informed her that he was merely a Ski Patrolman and not responsible for the operation of lifts or announcements concerning the operation of lifts. Sandy told him to drop dead. The problem now was how to get back to the other side. We held a brief consultation with a group of other disgruntled skiers, and learned that there was a milk run around the base of the mountain (mostly walking) which would eventually lead us back.

It was one-thirty before we got around to any serious skiing. The lift lines were incredible. Because the north face was closed, all of the skiers were on the southern half of the mountain. I clocked a half-hour wait for the lower chair, and a forty-minute wait for the one to the summit. We caught a quick hamburger in the restaurant up there (imaginatively called Skytop) and then started down a narrow chute far over on the right, heading for the Poma that serviced a remote area dotted with bowls and laced with interlocking trails and a network of T-bars. It would be possible, we thought, to ski there all afternoon, from T-bar to T-bar, down a different trail each time, over difficult but uncrowded terrain.

Foderman began having trouble almost at once.

The chute would have seemed his meat and potatoes, a long straight drop angled at about forty-five degrees and opening into a wide run-out. But traffic had made the chute a bit icy, and whereas Foderman’s mechanized cavalry charge might have chewed it up under normal conditions, he lost his balance shortly after he began his descent, and his right ski slipped out from under him when he tried to straighten up. He went into one of those crazy windmilling falls that are as terrifying as they look, skis, arms, legs, poles cartwheeling down the mountain in a cloud of snow, the skier helpless in the grip of gravity, his only hope being that one or both skis will release before he breaks his legs. Foderman’s right ski was the first one to pop. His left boot snapped out an instant later, with such force that it tore the safety strap. The runaway ski went hurtling down the chute, hit a mogul halfway down, and took off into the air like a flung javelin. Foderman continued his rolling, bone-jarring descent, right ski falling on its short restraining strap, banging him across the shins and arms. The other ski, the free one, the one without a rider, went sailing past Sandy, missing her by three inches and almost tearing off her head. It landed in the woods with branch-rattling force, embedding itself deep in a snowbank, quivering as if in terror itself. Foderman finally came to a stop when he hit soft snow at the bottom. Lying flat on his back spread-eagled, poles still on his wrists, the right ski loose under him, the left boot buried, his face white with fear and crusted snow, he sucked in air and waited for us to ski over to him.

“You okay?” Sandy said.

Foderman grunted.

“Hey! You okay?”

Foderman grunted again.

“I think he’s hurt,” David said.

Foderman shook his head.

“Get that ski from under him,” Sandy said.

“We’d better pull him out of the way here,” I said, and glanced anxiously toward the top of the chute.

“Loosen that strap, David.”

The safety strap was fastened around Foderman’s ankle with the usual push-clip, caked now with snow. David cleared the metal, snapped it open, and slid the ski out from under him.

“Let’s move him,” I said. “Before somebody else comes barreling down here.”

“Suppose he’s hurt?” David said. “You’re not supposed to move... ”

“Not hurt,” Foderman mumbled.

“It speaks,” Sandy said, and Foderman began laughing.

By actual count, Foderman fell twenty-seven times that afternoon. The man was indestructible. He fell on his back, his left side and right side, the front and rear of his head, his knees, his elbows, his behind, his chest, his ear, his nose, and probably his pecker. The falling got to be a habit. I think the son of a bitch was enjoying it. We were prepared for him to fall whenever the going got rough, of course, but now that Foderman had the hang of it, he fell at every conceivable opportunity. If the terrain was flat, Foderman fell. If it was gently rolling, he fell again. He fell in deep powder, he fell on packed surfaces, every time we turned around, bang! there was Foderman on the ground. It might have been comical if we hadn’t wasted half the day getting over to the north face and back again, and then wasted more time in the ski shop buying a new strap for Foderman’s left ski, and were now wasting the rest of the day getting him on his feet and helping him into his bindings and dusting him off and wiping his nose and pointing him down the mountain toward his next tumble.

It was Sandy who, leaning over Foderman after one of his more spectacular falls, suggested that his bindings were too loose. Foderman, lying flat on his back and out of breath, said, “No,” and shook his head.

“They’re too loose,” Sandy insisted. “That’s why you’re falling all the time.”

“Had them adjusted this morning,” Foderman said, panting.

“Well, whoever adjusted them did a lousy job.”

“The ski shop adjusted them.”

“Have you got a wrench, Peter?” Sandy asked.

“What are you going to do?”

“Tighten his bindings.”

“The bindings are all right,” Foderman said.

“Then why do you keep popping out of your skis?”

“How’s this?” David asked, and pulled a short stubby screwdriver from his pocket.

“Fine,” Sandy said, and accepted the screwdriver and then crouched over Foderman’s skis. “I think the left one’s okay,” she said. “It’s the right one that keeps releasing.”

“They were both adjusted this morning,” Foderman said, and sat up, knees bent, to watch Sandy as she brought the screwdriver to bear on the head of the binding’s turnscrew. I once told Dr. Krakauer that the moment someone invented a foolproof release binding, skiing would lose much of its excitement, my theory being that the inherent possibility of fracture was what attracted so many people to the slopes. Krakauer, as usual, missed the point. A binding, I went on to explain, held the boot rigidly fastened to the ski, a shotgun-wedding essential to the translation of leg motion into ski motion. If the binding was too loose, the spring mechanism could be triggered by the slightest bump or turn, and the ski would release prematurely. If, on the other hand, the binding was too tight, there would be no release at all, even in the worst spill. Since something’s got to give in a bad fall, the leg (being merely flesh, bone, and blood) has priority over most of the skis on today’s market (they being constructed of plastic, metal, laminated wood, and what-have-you). There are machines that “scientifically” adjust the settings on release bindings according to the weight of the skier, and presumably these machines guarantee maximum maneuverability and safety — you come out of your bindings only when the pressure is severe enough, but not before.

Sandy did not have a machine on the mountain. All Sandy had was a screwdriver. It occurred to me (but fleetingly) that she was now adjusting only the binding on Foderman’s right ski, and I recalled (but fleetingly) that we’d done a lot of joking about Foderman breaking the leg opposite Schwartz’s. The right leg. Her face was intent as she twisted the screw.

“Not too tight now,” Foderman said.

“Just a half turn,” Sandy answered.

But she had already turned the screw a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

“Not too tight,” I warned.

“He keeps falling out,” Sandy answered. “It’s more dangerous that way.”

“Yes, but... ”

“Shut up, Peter,” she said, and turned the screw another full circle. “There,” she said. “That ought to do it.”

“I hope so,” Foderman said, and clambered to his feet. He looked down at his skis, nodded, said, “Thank you,” to Sandy, and then brushed off his pants.

“Straight to the bottom, okay?” Sandy said. “Last run. And no falling, Seymour.”

“No falling,” he promised, and grinned broadly.

He kept his promise. He did not fall again. I kept waiting for him to fall because I was certain the binding would not release. I was positive he would break his right leg. Sandy, skiing in the lead, kept glancing back over her shoulder, anticipating, I am sure, the same thing I was. But he did not fall, and when we reached the bottom I sighed in relief, I think.

In the lodge that night, Hans Bittner announced that four inches of fresh powder were expected before morning. “And that’s only fitting, my friends,” he said, “because this, as you know, is December twenty-one, and that’s the first day of winter.”