Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

“They say if the mirror crack gets into your eye, then you see everything as ugly and misshapen. Worse if it gets into your heart. Then your heart freezes, and you don’t feel anything ever at all. From the look of him, I’d say that Kay has got a piece in his eye and his heart. And nothing would make the coldness pass, except what the Snow Queen has-that perfect white powder that makes you dream when you’re awake. He won’t be leaving her, not while there’s snow from her to ease his pain.”

I hadn’t realized that it was this bad. But maybe, I told myself, he’s just sick, and then maybe he can be cured. Maybe I can get him past the craving for the white powder. I knew that I was going to try. “Where do I find the Snow Queen?” I asked the old man.

He pointed to a boat tied up at the dock. “Follow the river,” he said. “She could be anywhere that people need dreams or a way to get out of the cold. Give her my love.”

“You’re better off without her,” I told him. “You’re better off than Kay.”

There wasn’t much to keep me in town. I had needed an excuse to get out of there for a long time. Too many memories. Too many people who thought they knew me. It took less than a day to tidy things up so that I could leave, and there wasn’t anybody I wanted to say goodbye to. So I left. Looking for Kay was as good a reason as any.

I spent most of the summer working as a gardener on an estate in the country. The old lady who owned the place was a dear, and she’d wanted me to stay on, but the roses kept reminding me of Kay, and finally one day I told her I had to move on. I had enough money by then to get to the big city, where movies are made. That’s where they sell dreams, I figured. That’s where the Snow Queen would feel at home.

I got into the city in the early autumn, and since I didn’t know anybody and had no place in particular to go, I just started walking around, looking at all the big houses, and all the flowers on the well-tended lawns. A gardener could always get a job here, I thought. It was always summer. I stopped to talk to one guy in shabby work clothes who was busy weeding a rose bed near the sidewalk.

“New in town, huh?” He was dark, and he didn’t speak the language very well, but we managed to communicate, part smiles and gestures, and what words we knew in each other’s tongue.

“I’m looking for a man,” I said.

He grinned. “That-or a job. Aren’t they all?”

I shook my head. “Not any man. One in particular, from back home. I think he’s in trouble. I think he has a problem with… um… with snow. Know what I mean?”

“A lot of that in this town,” said the gardener. By now I was helping him weed the rose bed, so he was more inclined to be chatty. “He hooked on snow-why you bothering?”

I shrugged. “We go back a-ways, I guess. And he’s-well, he was an okay guy once. Tall, blond hair, good features, and a smile that could melt a glacier. Once upon a time.”

The gardener narrowed his eyes and looked up at nothing, the way people do when they’re thinking. After a moment he said, “This guy-does he talk like you?”

“I guess so. We’re Danish. From the same town, even.”

He looked at me closely. “Danish…” Then he snapped his fingers and grinned. “Girl, I know that fellow you’re looking for! But I got some bad news for you-you ain’t gonna get him back.”

I wiped rose dirt on my jeans. “I just want to know that he’s all right,” I mumbled.

“Oh, he’s better than all right. He’s in high cotton. He’s on the road to rich and famous. See, there’s a movie princess in this town, getting ready to shoot the biggest-budget picture anybody’s seen around here in a month of Sundays, and she was looking for a leading man. Not just anybody, mind you. She had to have a fellow who talked as good as he looked. Well, that’s not something easy to find in anybody, male or female. But they had auditions. For days, girl. Every beach bum and pool shark in this town showed up at the gate, ready to take a shot at the part. Most of them talked pretty big to the newspapers. Pretty big to the interviewers. But as soon as they stood beside Miss Movie Princess, and the cameras were rolling, they started sounding like scarecrows. She was about ready to give up, when all of a sudden this guy talks his way past the guards, without even so much as a handwritten resume. ‘It must be boring to wait in line,’ he told the receptionist, and he smiled at her, and she forgot to call Security. I got a lady friend, works for the Movie Princess, so I get all the news firsthand, you know what I’m saying?”

I nodded. “Most of it,” I said. “Listen-this guy-was he tall and blond? Regular features?”

“Oh, he was a hunk, all right. And he talked just like you do.”

“It’s Kay!” I said. “I know it is. Look, I have to see him.”

“Well, the thing is, he got more than just the part in the movie. He got the girl, too. So now he’s living up in the mansion with Miss Movie Princess, and my lady friend says it looks like it’s going to be permanent.”

“I have to know if it’s him,” I said. “Please-he’s like-he’s like my brother.”

The gardener believed that-more than I did. “All right,” he said. “Let me talk to my lady friend, see what I can do. They’d never let you in the gate, dressed like that, and with no official business to bring you there. But we might be able to get you up the back stairway to see him. I got a key to the servants’ entrance.”

He took me back to the gardener’s office, and fixed me something to eat. Then I helped him with the bedding plants while we waited for dusk. That evening we went up to the mansion in the hills, in through the back garden, and through the unlocked kitchen door. I just want to see that he’s all right, I kept telling myself. Maybe he’s happy now. Maybe he’s settled down, stopped the drinking. Maybe he’s got his smile back, like in the old days, before it became a sneer. If I see that he’s all right, I can go home, I thought.

At least, I’d know for sure.

I didn’t notice much about the house. It was big, and the grounds around it were kept as perfectly as a window box, but it didn’t make me feel anything. I wondered if living in a land without seasons would be as boring as a long dream. I don’t have to stay, I told myself.

“In there.” My new friend had stopped and shined his flashlight at a white-and-gold door. The bedroom. “You’re on your own from here on out, girl,” he whispered, handing me the light. Soundlessly, he faded back into the darkness of the hallway.

I waited until his footsteps died away, and then I twisted the doorknob, slowly, as soundlessly as I could. Another minute passed before I eased inside. I could hear the regular breathing of the sleepers in the room. In the moonlight from the open window I could see two large pillars in the center of the room, and on either side of the pillars were white-and-gold water beds in the shape of lilies. I crept closer to one of the beds. Long blond hair streamed across the pillar, but the bare back and shoulders were muscular. Surely it was Kay. I switched on the flashlight, and let the light play over the features of the sleeping man.

“What the hell!” He sat up, shouting in alarm.

It wasn’t him.

The Movie Princess was screaming, too, now, and she had set off the alarm that would bring her security guards into the room. Suddenly everything was noise and lights, like a very bad dream.

I lost it.

I sat down on the bed and began to cry, for the hopelessness of it all, and because I was so tired of noise and lights and a world without seasons. The Movie Princess, seeing that I wasn’t a crazed admirer, told her guards to wait outside in the hall, and she and the man asked me what I was looking for. When I heard the blond man speak, I realized that he was from Minnesota. “Close but no fjord, my gardener friend,” I thought. I guess we all sound alike to outsiders.

I told them about Kay’s disappearance, and about my need to find the Snow Queen, which appalled them, because they were not into that sort of lifestyle, but they agreed that my purpose was noble, since I was trying to save a friend from the clutches of the powder dreams. They gave me money and jewelry to help me on my trip, and the Movie Lady insisted that I put on one of her dresses, and take her wheels, as she called them, to speed me on my way. They didn’t have any advice for me about where to look, but they told me to stay cool. A funny wish, I thought, from people who choose to live where it is always hotter than copper pennies on a woodstove.

I sped away through the night, not really knowing where I was going, and wondering who to ask about the Snow Queen. I found myself going down streets that were darker and narrower, until I no longer knew which way I was going and which way I had come. I came to a stop to think about what to do next-and then the decision was no longer mine to make.