Scruples Two (44 page)

“All right, Gigi,” he replied meekly, and set off down the mountain. Now that they had passed below the wide snow field at the peak, a chilly little wind sprang up. Slowly they continued their laboriously measured progress downhill. As soon as they reached the treeline, the freedom of the snow field disappeared. Fir trees, their branches heavy with snow, grew several dozen feet apart on either side of what had now become a recognizable trail, making it necessary for Zach to angle a bit more sharply downward in his horizontal descent and make more frequent turns.

“Hey, let’s rest for a bit, Zach, I’m out of breath,” Gigi said as she stopped next to him, laughing shakily with a mixture of pride and excitement. She could ski!

“Just lean uphill against me, I’ll hold you. Oh, Gigi, isn’t this everything I thought it would be? Aren’t you glad you came?” She smiled up at him in agreement, covered with snow from her harmless falls, her cheeks burning, her eyes greener than he’d ever seen them, and he couldn’t resist putting both his arms tightly around her and kissing her full on her lips.

“Zach … stop,” Gigi gasped.

“Just one more kiss,” he murmured, “don’t want you to get frostbite,” and kissed her again, a long, dangerously pleasurable kiss, his lips so warm on her cold mouth that Gigi could feel herself weakening toward him.

“Zach! Stop that and keep going,” Gigi insisted, determined that he wasn’t going to be allowed to break her rules just because they were on a mountain.

He looked at her with eyes filled with helpless longing, but set off again. As they descended slowly, reaching the middle of the mountain, along the relatively straight trail, the afternoon sun fell still lower in the sky and the snow began to develop an icy crust. The ruts made by earlier skiers were deeper and deeper as the trail grew narrower and there was less room to maneuver. Zach now skied only some fifteen feet before he stopped to wait for Gigi, a painfully plodding process. Ahead of them were more trees, endless trees growing fairly close together, and they had no idea where the trail would open out into another field of snow. No other skiers had passed them for at least a half hour; the waiting silence was almost ominous, as if they were now alone on the mountain.

“I think we should try to go a little faster,” Zach said.

“Right,” Gigi agreed grimly.

Zach descended thirty feet, making small, short, checking turns to keep from picking up speed, and stopped to wait for Gigi. She didn’t possess the natural coordination to waggle the way he did, but she released the tree she’d been holding, bent her knees, spread her arms and followed him determinedly. She teetered dangerously and just managed to regain her balance several times before she stopped by skiing directly into Zach, who was resting by leaning uphill against a tree. He grabbed her and steadied her.

“Great! You’re doing great!” he said.

“This has definitely stopped being fun.” Gigi felt her legs shaking. She’d give anything to be in a kitchen again, with a dozen hot stoves to slave over, in secure professionalism.

“I know, Gigi, I never thought the beginner’s trail would get this narrow. I’m sorry, sweetheart, it was a dumb idea but we’re still doing fine. Look, I can feel you getting nervous, uptight. Unclench your muscles or you’ll hurt yourself.” He took off his mitts and put them under his arm, took her head and clasped it on both sides with his big warm hands. For minutes he just warmed her cheeks and ears and she snuggled into the comforting bulk of his body, feeling safe and relaxed. Zach put his woolen ski cap on her head, for she had forgotten to wear one. “But you’re still so cold, darling, so cold,” he said, worried, and bent his body as if he could encompass her in his shelter, holding her tightly and kissing her nose and her eyes and finally her lips because he knew they were cold too. “Gigi, sweetheart, my little darling, I love you so terribly much … you’re my girl, please say you’re my girl, Gigi, you know how I love you, there’s no one else for me in the world, tell me you’re going to be my girl.”

Zach continued to cover her face with kisses as he spoke. He, who knew all the great poetry of love, was too moved to find anything more eloquent to say to Gigi. He’d believed that he was self-sufficient, until Gigi. He needed her so much it frightened him, and he fought that fright. Although his words were pleading, he kept his tone demanding, confident, as if all of his power were still intact. Gigi trembled in his massive embrace, trying to release her head from the vise of his hands, feeling herself on the verge of giving in to his insistence, of surrendering finally to his urgency, of agreeing to be his girl. She saw the unmistakable spark of total intention in his eyes and, tensing again, she thought suddenly that it wasn’t fair, it just was not fair of him to be attacking her emotions now when she was stuck up here alone with him in this strange, frightening, remote place.
Not fair!

“No!” Gigi cried, using all her strength to twist her head away. Unexpectedly she broke out of his grasp and immediately started to slide downhill backwards, her skis moving so swiftly that there was no possibility of trying to control them. Stunned into immobility for a second, Zach started after her, but her momentum had carried her too far for him to catch up. Gigi, arms flailing helplessly, shouted in fear.

“Fall down!” Zach yelled. “Fall down!” All of Gigi’s lessons left her mind and automatically she screamed and fought to stay upright as she went faster and faster downhill until she crashed at full speed into a tree on the opposite side of the trail. She crumpled in a heap into the high-piled snow on the side of the trail. In seconds, Zach was lying on the snow next to her.

“Gigi!” he implored. “Gigi, are you all right?”

She was sobbing in pain, and unable to speak with the shock.

“Gigi, does anything hurt?” he entreated. “Gigi, talk to me!”

“It’s my leg … I think it’s broken … no, don’t touch it! Don’t try to move me! For Christ’s sake, what are we going to do? Oh, I
hurt!”

“It’s all my fault! Oh, Gigi, it’s all my fault!”

Gigi’s sobbing doubled as the acute pain in her left leg grew worse. His face agonized with remorse and guilt, Zach looked back, as far up the mountain as he could, but all the way up the trail above them there was nobody to be seen or heard. He checked his watch and realized with horror that it was later than he thought, almost four o’clock.

“I’m going to get help. Do you understand, Gigi?”

“Don’t leave me here alone!” she sobbed.

“I have to, Gigi,” he insisted, “it’s too dangerous to wait.” Still weeping, she set her teeth resolutely and nodded. Zach stripped off his parka and heavy sweater and managed to bundle Gigi’s torso and neck with them without disturbing her legs. He brushed the snow off her cap and pulled its wool down over as much of her face as he could, so that it didn’t come into direct contact with the snow. “If you hear anybody coming, scream for help as loud as you can, understand?” Gigi nodded again, tears rolling down her cheeks. Zach struggled upright, wearing only a thin wool shirt tucked into his ski pants, bareheaded and barehanded, for his mitts had been lost up the mountain as he dashed after Gigi. He took a deep breath, looked back at her wordlessly, beseechingly, and set off, skiing under tight control, for he’d be no use to Gigi if he hurt himself. He made no stops as he made his cautious way down the trail through the trees, but as soon as he had reached the open slopes beyond the narrow trail, lie leaned forward from his ankles, his knees deeply bent, as he had seen Nick do earlier and skied the steep fall line like a demon, his mind empty of everything but the need to reach help for Gigi. In minutes Zach had reached the bottom of the mountain, shouting as he came to a stop. Within seconds two ski patrolmen were on the lift with a sled to bring Gigi down.

“Jesus, Zach, what’s wrong?” Nick yelled, skiing over quickly through the crowd. Zach was standing alone, looking upward desperately, his fists clenched.

“Gigi’s leg … I think it’s broken.”

“Shit! The poor kid! But it happens every day on the baby slopes, they’re the most dangerous place to be. Too crowded.”

“We went up the mountain.”

“Zach, you
asshole!
How could you take her up there? You wanted to ski the fall line, that’s fucking
criminal!”

“It wasn’t that.”

“You just skied the fall line, you shit! I watched you come down, man, totally dumb reckless, but I thought you’d gone up alone.”

“To hell with the fall line, Nick, I didn’t notice. Do you see the sled yet?”

“They just left, it takes time to get to the top.… Christ, how
could
you let her go up with you?”

“I don’t know … I thought … a beginner’s trail
… stupid, so fucking stupid!
I’ll never forgive myself, Nick.… I didn’t dream it would get so narrow.”

“That’s why they call it a trail. Come on in the ski hut, you’ll freeze out here.”

“I’ll come in when she’s down.”

“Christ!” Disgustedly, Nick gave Zach his ski cap, found a blanket to throw over his shoulders, and stood waiting with him until the ski patrol came smoothly down the mountain with Gigi covered with blankets, strapped flat to a wide sled.

“We’re taking her to the hospital,” one of the ski patrolmen said, tossing Zach his parka and sweater. “Just the leg, she’ll be okay.”

“We’ll follow you,” Nick said, seeing that Zach was speechless with relief. The two men followed the ambulance into town to the hospital, where dozens of victims of ski accidents had already been treated that day. They sat in the waiting room, silent and tense. After three-quarters of an hour, a busy nurse came up to them, speaking hurriedly.

“It’s a nice, clean fracture of the fibula. Boot-top, mid-shaft. She should heal without problems,” the nurse announced. “We’ve doped her up and she’ll be out of pain for hours, the fracture’s been set, Doctor put her in a walking cast, these are her crutches. She’s badly bruised, but that’s normal. Here are more pain pills, one every four hours, enough to last three days. She can navigate, I showed her how to handle the crutches, but she needs rest more than anything now. Here are her X rays. You pay at the desk going out.” She rushed off before they had a chance to ask any questions. Zach strode rapidly toward the desk.

An orderly, pushing Gigi in a wheelchair, appeared at the swinging door, skillfully dodging two more skiers who were being carried in by the ski patrol. She had a cast on her left leg from her ankle to below her knee, her ski pant flapping where it had been slit up the front. With her white, exhausted face she looked like a rag doll who’d been forgotten by a careless child.

“How do you feel, you poor kid?” Nick asked as he took the bar of the wheelchair.

“Not too bad. The doctor thought it was one of the cleanest fractures he’d seen all week,” Gigi said faintly. “Very complimentary, as if I’d done it nicely on purpose.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“No, but I feel goofy … must be the drugs. They have an assembly line going in there … amazing, orthopedist’s heaven … but not recommended.”

“Did he happen to tell you what the fibula was?”

“Nope, just said I’d been lucky, considering. No big deal.”

“Gigi.…” Zach, back from the desk, stood holding the X rays, looking down at her abjectly, his hands at his sides. Gigi took absolutely no notice of him. “Gigi?” he asked again, in deepest distress.

She looked straight ahead, right through him. “Nick, can you take me back to the lodge, please?”

The two men exchanged glances and helped Gigi transfer from the wheelchair to the car in silence. At the lodge they steadied her as she insisted on using her crutches, inching along as she practiced walking, putting her weight on her broken leg as briefly as possible.

“Oh, really, what an absolute bloody
bore,”
Pandora groaned as they entered the small bedroom. “I wondered where you’d all got to, so I hitched a ride back. I should have guessed … beginner’s luck.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll be fine. Happens all the time,” Pandora said briskly.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll help you off with your clothes,” Pandora offered in an exasperated tone.

“Thanks.”

“Guys, out. I can manage, I’ve done it before.”

Soon Gigi was settled in bed in her red flannel pajamas. Pandora had cut the left leg short so that there was room for the cast. The room, as are the rooms of most ski lodges, was overheated, and Gigi had declined a sweater. Pandora put on her after-ski velvet trousers, silk blouse and soft furry boots, took her bag, and went down to the bar of the lodge, looking for action.

“Where’s Zach?” she asked Nick, who was perched on a barstool. She sat down beside him.

“Up in our room.”

“How come?”

“He’s not in the mood to join this merry throng.”

“For pity’s sake, why not?”

“He feels responsible because he took Gigi up the mountain.”

“Good Lord …” Pandora laughed incredulously. “She didn’t tell me that, in fact she didn’t say anything much. How absurd of her. Talk about your know-nothing amateurs! It’s just as much her fault as his. You’ll never catch me doing something as clearly stupid as that.”

“Have you considered joining the Red Cross?” he asked coldly, as she ordered herself a drink.

Nick and Pandora sat drinking at the bar in glum silence. It was typical of Pandora, Nick mused, to regard a broken leg as if it were a social gaffe she was too well-bred to make. He wished he had never told her that Zach had taken Gigi up the mountain, although she’d be bound to learn it sooner or later. The questions he’d asked himself about Zach’s feelings toward Gigi had been resolved by the guy’s absolute anguish over Gigi’s accident. The lunk was in love for the first time in his life. And who could blame him?

A number of the women in the bar were glancing in Nick’s direction, recognizing him. Ignoring Pandora, he fell into conversation with a pretty redhead who was sitting on his right. Irritated, Pandora finished her drink and ordered another. This was going to be a wonderful evening, Nick flirting with every girl in the lodge, relishing his role of just-treat-me-like-a-regular-guy, playing it modest and charming to all the dreary little star-fuckers while Zach lurked about gloomily in his room.