Trace

48

Private jets look like toys against giant white mountains that soar around wet black pavement. The linesman in a jumpsuit and earplugs waves orange cones, directing a Beachjet as it taxies slowly, its turbine engines whining. From inside the private terminal, Benton can hear Lucy's plane arrive.

It is Sunday afternoon in Aspen, and rich people with the fur coats and baggage of the rich move around behind him, drinking coffee and hot cider near the huge fireplace. They are heading home and complain about delays because they have forgotten the days of commercial travel, if they ever knew about those days. They flash gold watches and large diamonds, and they are tan and beautiful. Some travel with their dogs, which, like their owners' private planes, come in all shapes and sizes and are the best money can buy. Benton watches the Beachjet's door open and the steps lower. Lucy skips down them carrying her own bags, moving with athletic grace and confidence and without hesitation, always knowing where she's going even if she has no right to know.

She has no right to be here. He told her no. He said when she called, No, Lucy. Don't come here. Not now. This isn't the time.

They didn't argue. They could have for hours but neither of them has a temperament suited for long, loopy dissents filled with illogical outbursts and redundancies, not anymore they don't, so the) tend to fire quick, rapid rounds and put an end to it. Benton isn't sure it pleases him that as time passes he and Lucy have more traits in common, but apparently they do. It is becoming more apparent all the time, and the analytical part of his brain that sorts and stacks and dispatches without pause has already considered or maybe concluded that the similarities between Lucy and him could explain his relationship with Kay as much as it can be explained. She loves her niece intensely and unconditionally. He has never quite understood why Kay loves him intensely and unconditionally. Now maybe he's beginning to know.

Lucy shoves the door open with a shoulder and walks in, a duffel bag in each hand. She is surprised to see him.

"Here. Let me help you." He takes a bag from her.

"I didn't expect to see you here," she says.

"Well, I'm here. Obviously, you are. We'll make the best of it."

The rich in their animal pelts and animal hides probably think Benton and Lucy are an unhappy couple, he the wealthy older man, she the beautiful young girlfriend or wife. It crosses his mind that some people might think she is his daughter, but he doesn't act like her father. He doesn't act like her lover, either, but if he had to wager a bet, he would bet that observers assume they are a typical rich couple. He wears neither furs nor gold and he doesn't look conspicuously rich, but the rich know other rich, and he has a rich air about him because he is rich, very rich. Benton had many years of living quietly and invisibly. He had many years to accumulate nothing but fantasies and schemes and money.

"I have a rental car," Lucy says as they walk through the terminal, which looks very much like a small rustic lodge of wood, stone, leather furniture, and Western art. Out front is a huge bronze sculpture of a rampant eagle.

"Pick up your rental car then," Benton tells her, his breath a pale smoke drifting on the bright, sharp air. "I'll meet you at Maroon Bells."

"What?" She stops on the circular drive out front, ignoring the valets in their long coats and cowboy hats.

Benton's hard, tan, handsome face looks at her. His eyes smile first, then his lips smile a little as if he is amused. He stands on the drive near the huge eagle and looks her up and down. She is dressed in boots, cargo pants, and a ski jacket.

"I've got snowshoes in the car," he says.

His eyes are fixed on hers, and the wind lifts her hair, which is longer than when he saw her last and a deep brown touched by red as if it has been touched by fire. The cold stings color into her cheeks, and he has always thought that looking into her eyes must be something like looking into the core of a nuclear reactor or inside an active volcano or seeing what Icarus saw when he flew into the sun. Her eyes change with the light and her volatile moods. Right now they are bright green. Kay's are blue. Kay's are just as intense but in different ways. Their varying shades are more subtle and can be as soft as haze or as hard as metal. Right now, he misses her more than he knew he did. Right now Lucy has brought back his pain with a fresh cruelty.

"I thought we'd walk and talk," he tells Lucy, walking toward the parking lot as he announces intentions that are not negotiable. "We need to do that first. So I'll meet you at Maroon Bells, up there where they rent the snowmobiles, where the road's closed off. Can you handle the altitude? The air's thin."

"I know about the air," she says to his back as he walks away from her.