Impasse (24 page)

Whoever I want to be.

Clay's winning streak had continued during her mourning period, and she was eager to get back to the life he'd outlined for her. She craved his direct approach. It worked. He'd told her to mourn for a while—it was necessary and healthy. No big spending. No rebound man for comfort. And it had been the sort of lonely hell losing a spouse was bound to be. Cards, flowers, and backward-looking sympathizers only mired her in the loss, reminding her of it every day instead of helping her get past it.

Hello, so sorry for your tragedy; that must suck
.

Clay had been supportive, calling at intervals to check in. He gave her time to grieve, but he also gave her permission to stop grieving. And, having done her time, she found herself actually growing excited to get back to life. Clay had assigned her a coming-out date, something tangible to look forward to, a specific night upon which it would be socially and emotionally acceptable to move on. And that night was tonight.

As the sun set outside, Katherine selected a burgundy dress. Not red. Too playful. But not black, either. Mourning was officially over, and the dress she wore on her first evening out would be her colorful line of demarcation.

Wine tasting at the Arbor was a job for her tallest, most uncomfortable shoes—strappy, four-inch, open-toed sandals. Margery had left an invite for
Katherine Stark and Guest
at the door. Margery understood the need to dust oneself off and get back on the horse, and a night of casually elegant company and wine would be Katherine's mount.

She missed wine. She'd laid off during the search; a depressant was just a bad idea in a time of crisis.
But now I can drink
. She was lonely, too; the compulsive masturbation had also taken a respectful hiatus, although she slept with her arms wrapped around a pillow, and sometimes her legs.
There will be real men at the party.

But a guest?

Whoever she brought, people would talk. Clay, however, had a plan. He'd escort her to the party to “get her out of the house.” Once there they'd play it cool. No flirting. They'd almost ignore each other, like at the birthday party. She'd be free to mingle, perhaps even interact with other men at a level somewhere between
friendly
and
flirty
on the flirting scale. She would be available to test the waters, but at the end of the night, her safe date would be sure she got home without prompting any gossip. It was perfect. And it was all detailed in an instructive step-by-step text she'd received from Clay that morning.

Katherine examined the fit of the burgundy dress on the sharply defined lines of her body; she'd worked out compulsively since the disappearance—another Clay commandment. The dress's padded upper gave her modest chest some shape, the midsection hugged her trim waist to form a dramatic hourglass, and her sculpted calves were visible below the hem. All very nice.

No. Not nice. Fucking fabulous.

She enjoyed using the word
fuck,
even if she was just thinking it. It was especially fun in an empty house with nobody around.

“Fuck,” she said to the mirror. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She was flirting with herself, she realized.
Beyond flirty.
She considered touching herself again, but she wasn't sure she wanted to go to the party spent. One thing was for sure—she was definitely ready to get back to life.

 

CHAPTER 28

Blake was slightly less unpleasant than Stu had at first thought. After the third day, he stopped threatening to leave Stu to die whenever Stu begged for a rest stop. And by day five, Stu was no longer slowing their progress. After a week, they started making up for Stu's initial night of vomiting and first few slow days. And by the time they pushed open the door of Blake's hand-built cabin, they were right on schedule. Just in time for the snow.

Blake's cabin was not much larger than Stu's roofless shack. And although there were tin eating utensils, salt, sugar, chicken broth cubes, soap, and a few other necessities, there was no larder full of food or propane stove. Stu had to admit, the place was not so very different. But after a week in the tent, the modest cabin seemed downright luxurious. After two weeks, it felt perfectly comfortable. And after a month it was home.

The division of labor was simple. Stu split wood and kept the fire going. Blake walked the trapline.

“What do you trap?” Stu had asked on the first day.

Blake tapped his temple, then listed all his prey in a single breath. “Beaver, coyote, arctic fox, red fox, lynx, marmot, marten, mink, muskrat, otter, rabbit, red squirrel, flying squirrel, ground squirrel, woodchuck, weasel, and the occasional wolverine.”

“What about bear?”

“You don't look for bear. You avoid them.”

“Wolf?”

Blake nodded carefully. “Ah, yes, the wolf. I've trapped wolf before.”

“Why weren't they included in your initial list? You rattled it off so assuredly that omitting them couldn't have been an oversight.”

“You don't miss a thing, do you, counselor?” Blake chuckled, but he walked out without answering the question.

When Blake returned from his rounds, he threw dead animals to Stu, who earned his keep by skinning and cleaning them. Most were small, martens and minks, but the beaver were bigger, and one coyote was the size of a dog. He only ruined one pelt, a mink worth “a half day's pay” according to Blake. Stu's host swore a blue streak but immediately threw Stu another and made him try again. With Blake standing over him watching every cut and pull, Stu had gotten that one right.

For the more distant traps on the line Blake was gone overnight. He built snow caves, which Stu found fascinating. Instead of fearing the snow, Blake punched it in the gut and slept right in its heart.

“Aren't you afraid the thing will cave in and suffocate you?”

“Not if you build it right,” Blake muttered.

Stu immediately had to know how it was done.
Edwin's
had a diagram, but after Blake marched Stu for a day into the hills to tend a distant trap and try it, Stu discovered that
Edwin's
was missing from his pack. He had to try to build one from memory. They slept in his third attempt that night, and it neither collapsed nor suffocated either of them.

On their way back, Blake saw three deer and pointed them out to Stu. They were distant, and Stu sighted them in with the .30-06 scope. They moved through the frosted trees with a stiff-legged walk that belied their fluid speed when running.

“We'll get one of those later,” Blake promised.

When they returned from the trapline, Stu found
Edwin's
sitting in the middle of the bed with a note in Blake's spiky handwriting tucked inside that said,
I won't always be there … Edwin
.

They played cribbage on a worn cross section of pine log Blake had converted into a board by driving nail holes into it in two parallel spiral patterns. The pegs were red-headed and blue-headed wooden matches with their ends whittled to fit in the holes. Two of each color. They played with a tattered deck of cards with an Indian casino logo. The two of diamonds was missing, and the nine of clubs was torn so that it was always clear who had it. Several other cards were identifiable unless they were held tucked behind another card to hide their wear and tear. The quirks of the deck changed the strategy in a way that Stu found interesting, and they kept track of their wins and losses by carving notches in the wall with their knives. Blake jumped out to a large lead, but Stu learned quickly and soon was catching up.

On good days, they threw the hatchet at the woodpile, and Stu was surprised to find that the heavy head stuck nearly every time. The secret was to adjust the rotation with the distance. It took practice, but they had time. Blake carved point values into different logs in the stack so that it became a woodsman's version of darts.

Stu found that even the rapidly shortening days felt long without meetings, phone calls, clients, a commute, and a chatty wife. Blake talked much less than Katherine, both because he was a more private person and simply because he was a dude. There was a lot more time in life than he'd ever thought, and Stu fell into a ritual to keep himself busy. Early fire. Morning coffee. A trip to the latrine. One game of cribbage. Fresh meat for breakfast, or they'd mix up powdered eggs and pancakes if Blake brought nothing back from morning rounds of the nearby small traps. It was always better when they got a rabbit. Their diet was largely lean protein. While Blake was out, Stu would read one chapter of
Edwin's
. After breakfast Stu chopped wood with the full-size ax. He shoveled snow if snow needed shoveling. Then he broke the ice on the water barrel and topped it off by carrying buckets of water from the creek thirty yards away. Once a week he felled a nearby tree so it could dry out for use as firewood. Each tree he took down also widened the clearing around the cabin. The snow was deepening, and he shoveled paths around the cabin to keep them clear, or packed them down by walking them.

One day he was shoveling paths and just kept going until he'd shoveled the entire clearing. It took three solid hours. His arms were sore and his back was tired, but it felt good to do manual labor after a decade of life behind a desk.

When Blake returned, he'd stared, amazed. “Jeezus, man, how the hell did you do that?” he muttered. “Better yet, why?”

There was infrequent conversation. Mostly about trapping or the unpredictable weather. Blake had a saying: “If you don't like the weather here, wait twenty minutes.” The default discussion was whether they should play another game of cribbage; the answer was always yes, which avoided the need to find something else to discuss. Blake had stories about epic snowstorms, trapping tales, and a meticulous description of the building of the cabin, but he was comfortable with dead air, too. If he had nothing to say, he could sit for an hour without a word. One morning he took Stu out on his rounds to show him the trail of the deer they'd sighted. He pointed out tracks in the snow, broken branches, and scat. Then he put up a makeshift blind just off the path and went into meditation mode. Not to be outdone, Stu matched his silence, sitting motionless with the .30-06 cradled in his lap for most of the day. It was cold, but Stu was determined not to give up first. When the deer came, Blake simply nodded at him.

They had venison steaks for lunch. The deer was harder to skin than the smaller animals, but well worth it, and Blake was excited enough about Stu's first kill to help him field dress it. The next day, Stu built a smoker. He'd been itching to try it since he'd read chapter seven in
Edwin's
on preserving food. Then he began drying strips of venison. The key, he discovered, was to keep feeding the coals green chips, but not to allow flames to flare up, a delicate balance that he had to keep for twenty-four hours to get the meat smoked correctly. The first batch wasn't too good, but the second was so delicious that Blake declared it a worthy ingredient for a pemmican trail mix he threw together with dried berries.

Soon Stu was walking the trapline with Blake, miles every day like it was nothing. And when Blake got sick for three days, he went alone.

For the first month Stu worried about what was happening back home, each day remembering bills that were overdue or calculating client deadlines he was missing, or speculating about when Katherine might presume him dead. He fretted to himself, mostly, but eventually mentioned it aloud enough times that Blake felt it necessary to weigh in.

“Why don't you shut the hell up? There's nothing you can do about it till spring.”

To his surprise, Blake's crude logic appealed to him and, as soon as he accepted it, his urban worries were buried under the Alaska snow, with the exception that he still ached knowing that Katherine was suffering.

 

CHAPTER 29

Clay picked her up at seven, and Katherine made sure to answer the door without her long coat in order to give him an eyeful.

“Does this look okay?”

“You look fucking great, Kate. Good work. You'll definitely impress tonight.”

Her heart fluttered. There was the
F
word again. And he was still taking the liberty of calling her Kate, which she hadn't let anyone—not even Stu—do since she'd declared herself a professional photographer during college.

She grinned. “Oh? Who do I have to impress?”

“You never know.” He winked. “But I'll tell you when to do so.”

Stu insisted on driving Katherine's new Audi for her. They'd decided that she only needed a two-seater, and she smiled secretly as he made the little thing get up and dance, even as she suggested he slow down.

The Arbor was located in Fairhaven, across the bridge. Margery's gourmet food and wine bar was also near the water, but the feel was completely different from Stationbreak. Creeping vines hung everywhere, and a massive brick wall covered with ivy served as a backdrop for stools huddled up against huge round tables that sat eight or more people in casually elegant attire. The chandelier globes were shaped like wine bottles and wineglasses. Margery furnished high-class restaurants the way lesser women experimented with different rooms in their homes, Katherine thought.

Their names were on the list. Clay signaled for wine, and the waiter offered them several varieties. Clay chose for her. Nothing for him. Margery flitted over to greet them.

“Katherine. So good of you to come, considering.”

“Considering what?” Katherine gave her a disarming smile.

“Of course. Not talking about that tonight.” Margery made a lip-zipping motion. “And, Mr. Buchanan. What a surprise and a pleasure. Welcome to our humble establishment.”

The place was anything but humble, and she knew it. Clay glanced about. “It's quaint,” he joked.