the roast goose, Harry realized that they had not yet discussed her book but had rambled on about art, literature, music, cooking, and much more, without once finding themselves at a loss for words. When he finished his cognac, he was reluctant to let the night end so soon.
She shared that reluctance. “We've been Frenchmen for dinner. Now let's be tourists.”
“What do you have in mind?”
The Crazy Horse Saloon was an all-out assault on the senses. The customers were Americans, Germans, Swedes, Italians, Japanese, Arabs, British, Greeks, even a few Frenchmen, and their conversations intertwined to produce a noisy babble frequently punctuated with laughter. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, perfume, and whiskey. When the band played, it generated enough sound to shatter crystal. The few times Harry wanted to speak to Rita, he was forced to scream, although they were just two feet apart, on opposite sides of a minuscule cocktail table.
The stage show made him forget the noise and smoke. The girls were gorgeous. Long legs. Full, high-set breasts. Tiny waists. Galvanizing faces. More variety than the eye could take in. More beauty than the mind could easily comprehend or the heart appreciate. Dozens of girls, most bare-breasted. All manner of costumes, most skimpy: leather straps, chains, furs, boots, jeweled dog collars, feathers, silk scarves. Their eyes were heavily mascaraed, and some wore sequined designs on their faces and bodies.
Rita said, “After an hour, this gets to be a bore. Shall we go?” Outside, she said, “We haven't talked about my book, and that's really what you wanted to do. Tell you what. We'll walk to the Hotel George V, have some champagne, and talk.”
He was somewhat confused. She seemed to be sending conflicting signals. Hadn't they gone to the Crazy Horse to be turned on? Hadn't she expected him to make a pass afterward? And now she was ready to talk books?
As they crossed the lobby of the George V and boarded the elevator, he said, “Do they have a rooftop restaurant here?”
“I don't know. We're going to my room.”
His confusion deepened. “You're not staying at the convention hotel? I know it's dull, but this is terribly expensive.”
“I've made a tidy sum from
In her room a bottle of champagne stood beside her bed in a silver bucket full of crushed ice.
She pointed to the bottle. “Moet. Open it, please?”
He took it out of the bucket — and saw her wince.
“The sound of the ice,” she said.
“What about it?”
She hesitated. “Puts my teeth on edge. Like fingernails screeching against a blackboard.”
By then he was so attuned to her that he knew she wasn't telling him the truth, that she had winded because the rattle of the ice had reminded her of something unpleasant. For a moment her eyes were faraway, deep in a memory that furrowed her brow.
“The ice is hardly melted,” he said. “When did you order this?”
Shedding the troubling memory, she focused on him and grinned again. “When I went to the ladies' room at Laperouse.”
Incredulous, he said. “
“It's very late in the twentieth century, you know.”
Mocking himself, he said, “Yes, well, actually. I've noticed women sometimes wear pants these days.”
“Are you offended?”
“By women in pants?”
“By me trying to get you out of yours.”
“Good heavens, no.”
“If I've been too bold…”
“Not at all.”
“Actually, I've never done anything like this before. I mean, going to bed on a first date.”
“Neither have I.”
“Or on a second or a third, for that matter.”
“Neither have I.”
“But it feels right, doesn't it?”
He eased the bottle into the ice and pulled her into his arms. Her lips were the texture of a dream, and her body against his felt like destiny.
They skipped the rest of the convention and stayed in bed. They had their meals sent up. They talked, made love, and slept as if they were drugged.
Someone was shouting his name.
Stiff with cold, crusted with snow, Harry raised himself from the bed of the cargo trailer and from the delicious memories. He looked over his shoulder.
Claude Jobert was staring at him through the rear window of the snowmobile cabin. “Harry! Hey, Harry!” He was barely audible above the wind and the engine noise. “Lights! Ahead! Look!”
At first he didn't understand what Claude meant. He was stiff, chilled, and still half in that Paris hotel room. Then he lifted his gaze and saw that they were driving directly toward a hazy yellow light that sparkled in the snowflakes and shimmered languidly across the ice. He pushed up on his hands and knees, ready to jump from the trailer the instant that it stopped.
Pete Johnson drove the snowmobile along the familiar ice plateau and down into the basin where the igloos had been. The domes were deflated, crushed by enormous slabs of ice. But one snowmobile was running, headlights ablaze, and two people in arctic gear stood beside it, waving.
One of them was Rita.
Harry launched himself out of the trailer while the snowmobile was still in motion. He fell into the snow, rolled, stumbled onto his feet, and ran to her.
“Harry!”
He grabbed her, nearly lifted her above his head, then put her down and lowered his snow mask and tried to speak and couldn't speak and hugged her instead.
Eventually, voice quivering, she said, “Are you hurt?”
“Nosebleed.”
“That's all?”
“And it's stopped. You?”
“Just frightened.”
He knew that she struggled always against the fear of snow, ice, and cold, and he never ceased to admire her unwavering determination to confront her phobias and to work in the very climate that most tested her. “You've good reason this time,” he said. “Listen, you know what we'll do if we get off this damned berg?”
She shook her head and shoved up her misted goggles, so he could see her lovely green eyes. They were wide with curiosity and delight.
“We'll go to Paris,” he told her.
Grinning, she said, “To the Crazy Horse Saloon.”
“George V.”
“A room overlooking the gardens.”
“Moet.”
He pulled up his own goggles, and she kissed him.
Clapping one hand on Harry's shoulder, Pete Johnson said, “Have some consideration for those whose wives don't like frostbite. And didn't you hear what I said? I said, 'The gang's all here.'” He pointed to a pair of snowmobiles racing toward them through the snow.
“Roger, Brian, and George,” Rita said with obvious relief.
“Must be,” Johnson said. “Not likely to run across a bunch of strangers out here.”
“The gang's all here,” Harry agreed. “But where in the name of God does it go next?”
