Tom’s girlfriend Mary sees dots on the mountain flank. We work out they are skiers heading downward in tight S-curves, the ultimate motion, along a lush blue pleat in the snow. The mountain is colossal. Some sort of palpable convection pulverises your thought and sucks you inward, spits you out. I enjoy being so little. We look carefully and see there are still more dots making their ascent. They are staggering vertically toward a sling of whiteness between one outcrop and the first shoulders of the peak. The biggest slide in the park. They can’t make it. They won’t. In twenty minutes and two more espresso to the unnecessary beat of Jamiroquai, they have.
The girls drink coffee, losing interest in the skiers, maintaining their guise of getting along. It’s not working, the Mary-and-Corinne thing. It’s far from the first time. Tom looks tired and I know he’d rather conserve his best energy for the snow, not Mary’s delights on a narrow bunk. Thankfully Corinne’s seasoned sociability is more pliant. I watch her eyes drift over the peaks then back to her nails, to the grain of the wood, to a declaration of love some teenager has carved there. For a crazy second, I think of eating raw fish. It must be the purity of the elements – the zinging air, the grey rucked wood, Corinne’s flesh.
Another story excerpt, currently out looking for a published home. To be included in my fantastic anthology
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