|
|
Chapter Two
“You
don’t have to go home…. but you can’t stay here!”
Dave the bartender kept repeating the phrase in the singsong voice of a
man whose long workday is finally nearing an end. He was urging Nate
and the few other stragglers to drain the last of whatever libation
they had been enjoying and move on towards the neon bathed exit
of the Last Dollar Saloon. As Nate was stumbling through the double
doors of the Dollar and into the snow flurries outside, the fact
that he hadn’t arranged for a ride home began to set in. He pulled
the hood of his anorak over his head and peered around to see if he
recognized anyone who might be heading back to Dillon but instead
found the same group of drunken tourists he’d just seen inside most
of whom
were so hammered that he hoped for everyone’s sake they were
staying right there at the lodge. The only other people in sight
were a jocular group that he knew to be cooks and lift ops that
lived right across the highway in the employee housing barricks. They were ahead
of him on the stairs playing some final grab ass and pinch bottom
before the fact that they had to be up in a few hours to go back to
work dawned on them and sent them staggering off in various couplings to their
company issue cots or whatever they had.
It was unusual, Nate considered, as he made his way up to the
parking lot, to be anywhere on Keystone Mountain and not be able to
rather quickly locate someone heading back to Dillon. Or at least
down the highway in that direction. Half the lodge staff lived there
or in Silverthorne beyond and different shift workers seemed to be
coming or going at all hours. Nate could have arranged for or caught
a ride earlier if he had known he was going to need one later but
since Radekal hadn’t yet decided to leave him hanging by heading
off to a Jacuzzi with a new blonde friend, he hadn’t made any
arrangements. Radekal had driven them up there in one of their other
roommate’s cars since he didn’t mind drinking and driving as
much as Nate did. The only vehicle Nate owned currently was still in
Hawaii and being driven around the islands by god knew who. The only good thing
about that arrangement was that it made not drinking and driving an
easy decision in Colorado. The end result of this however was that
Nate often found himself riding with other people who had been
drinking instead of driving himself which he wasn’t sure was that
great a trade off. Of course if drunks made good decisions, he and
Radekal would have headed home hours ago and he wouldn’t be
schlepping by himself through the snow.
Nate put a hand in a pocket and
fingered Radekal’s new
blonde friend’s mom’s gold American Express card. He was passing the main entrance to the lodge and valet kiosk
and wondered if he shouldn’t just turn the card in at the front
desk. The girl, who’s name Nate never caught (but clearly wasn’t
Dr. Gussie Friedman which was the name on the card) had been using
it to pay for their drinks all night and left it sitting on the bar.
This served as further proof to Nate that the card wasn’t hers as
she claimed since she wasn’t even used to having it enough to stuff it back
into her tiny purse when she was done signing for everything. Nate
was sure that the bartender had never even looked at the name and
Nate had pocketed it when he noticed it still sitting there as he got up
to leave. He figured he'd give it to Radekal in the morning although the
fact that Radekal had left with the girl tonight didn't hold any promises
he'd be seeing her on the morrow. Such was life and tourism in Summit County.
Radekal, a fellow always appreciative of the charitable acts of
others that seemed to befall him regularly, had evidently felt that, even though the girl was clearly
not a junior at Princeton like she had claimed and more likely a
sophomore at some East coast private high school, the drinks she'd
been so generous in purchasing for them should be repaid in some way and it was the least he could do to
accompany the young lady back to her condo as requested and see what
fell out.
“I’d
be keeping my eye out for the parents,” Nate had advised, when the new friend had tottered off for one last visit to the restroom
and Radekal was sliding off of his barstool preparing to escort her
away into the night. “With a daughter who looks like that and my
gold card missing, I’d have my antennae tuned in. Tuned in and on
red alert for someone just like you. If I was a momma that is.”
“You
are a momma.” Radekal had said, pulling his wool cap and earflaps
down by the strings. “You’re your own momma. I’ll see you
later maybe. But don’t wait up.”
Nate didn’t plan on waiting up since he had an opening breakfast
shift at Red’s that started in just over three hours. If that is, he could even
get home and into his rack in the first place.
As he crossed the parking lot and made his way towards the traffic
light, which Nate knew from experience was the best place to stand
if you were thumbing for a ride, he heard giggling off to the side
somewhere and eventually located a couple between the parked cars
who appeared to be wrestling with fits of laughter and each other in
one of the snowdrifts at the lot’s edge. Nate would have dismissed
them as drunken fools and kept on walking except that he recognized
the foghorn voice of the male protagonist in the fracas as belonging
to O’Dowd. O’Dowd was one of the dishwashers at Red’s and,
more importantly to Nate at the moment, a guy who lived with a bunch
of other dish divers in one of the
condos near Nate’s building in Dillon. Nate wandered over and leaned
on the hood of a pick up waiting for the wrestling match to reach a
stopping point so he could inquire if they might be eventually going his way.
O’Dowd, a curious, ageless sort of cat with a deviated septum and
a honking voice, was currently
engaged in a losing battle with a woman almost twice his size.
Straddled high on his chest between two meaty corduroy thighs and having snow systematically packed in
his face, O’Dowd seemed to be enjoying himself. He eventually
battled and squirmed his way onto his side and was spitting and
wiping the slush out of his eyes with the back of a mittened hand
when he noticed Nate looking down at him and stopped squirming. The
girl looked over as well and, as the giggling suddenly stopped, only
the couple's panting and the ticking of the halogen lights above could be
heard in the quiet of the falling snow.
“Hey,
you work at Grenedines same as me?” O’Dowd finally said licking
more mush off his lips. “Get this wench off of me will ya?”
“Wench?
Oh it’s wench now is it? You were trying to grab my boobs a minute
ago. Your friend show’s up and it’s wench all of a sudden?”
The girl fashioned another healthy handful of slushy drift and cream
pied it into O’Dowd’s glistening mug.
“I
told you I’m wearing mittens,” O’Dowd protested as he writhed
and sputtered between her knees. “How could you tell what I was
grabbing for? Let me up Goddammit.” He blinked up imploringly.
“Come on waiter dude! Grab a handful of boob and roll her off me
will ya? I can’t breath down here.”
“Sounds
to me like you might deserve what you’re getting,” Nate said,
pushing away from the pick up’s hood and turning to go. “I’ll
see you tomorrow at work okay O’Dowd. Take care of yourself.”
Nate
made it out to the two lane and took his place just beyond the
traffic device down the highway toward Dillon. He stood on the shoulder
enough out of the way so he wouldn't be picked off by a careening
drunk but where he still be seen. Hitching was legal in Colorado
unlike Hawaii, which was the last place he’d been forced to practice
it with any regularity. Despite this, it had actually been pretty
easy to get around on the islands even though a person wasn’t
legally allowed to stick out their thumb. Nate had figured out
almost immediately after arriving there that if a guy just stood by
the road, especially if he had a surf board, some local or another
would pull over long enough for him to jump in the back of what ever
rusted junker they were driving. Later, after
he’d purchased just such a junker himself, he’d often pull over
to let all manner of scruffy characters clamber into the back of his
jeep. The culture was actually very similar here in Summit County
except that it was skis instead of surfboards that the shoulder
standers had by their sides and it was often really cold out which
made the matter more urgent. Most people hitching in both places
however were usually just trying to get to and from work or to the
beach or ski hill and most people picking them up were locals who
might recognize them from the lift lines or bars and had hitched at one
time or another themselves.
The snow had begun to fall heavily now and was sticking to the road
as the temperature dropped. Since the bars had just closed, there
was a fair bit of traffic on the highway however and it only took a
couple of light changes before a rusted red Sirocco with tinted
windows and studded tires clicked to a stop just beyond where Nate
stood. The passenger door opened as Nate jogged up and a nappy headed girl fumbled
with the seat controls until she finally figured out how to lean her
seatback forward and press herself against the front dash so Nate
could scramble across behind her and into the crawl space that passed
for a back seat. He settled in sideways with his knees pulled almost
to his chin. What felt like the hard plastic of a ski boot was digging into his back.
“Whash
going on mate?,” the driver, who Nate had seen was a blonde ruddy
faced fellow, said in a
slurred outback voice that Nate didn’t recognize. “We’re headed to an
after houresh down in Shitterhorne. There’sh probly a beer back
there if you want to crack a roadie. Just don't chunder on my boots…..! Whoa now what the fuck is
this?”
As Nate was trying to get situated in the cramped space he noticed
the unmistakable strobe of emergency lights flashing blue and
getting steadily brighter on the iced over back window. The shrill
chirp of a police siren began to pierce the night
directly behind the Scirocco. Nate reached behind his back and
wrenched the ski boot away from his kidneys so he’d be more
comfortable and settled back to enjoy the show. Chances were good he wasn't going anywhere for a while.
|