Gil nodded.
“Not to worry. It’s all fixed.”
“It’s all fixed?” said Gil; he didn’t have the money for new mufflers.
“And there was a little bumper problem. That’s fixed too.”
“What do I owe you?” asked Gil. Right words but wrong sound: he was instantly aware of the dismay in his tone, of failing to sound successful.
“All taken care of.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Do what?” said Boucicaut. “Didn’t cost a cent.”
“How’s that?”
“Friend of mine’s got a lot of spare parts and a welding torch.” Boucicaut kicked the wood-stove door closed with the toe of his boot.
What kind of friend had mufflers for a 325i hanging around? Gil was wondering whether to ask or just let it slide, when Boucicaut noticed the baseball gloves on the table. “Where’d you find those?”
“In the closet,” said Gil. He waited for Boucicaut to ask what he’d been doing in the closet.
But Boucicaut did not. He just took another drink from the bottle, and handed it to Gil.
Gil finished the bottle. It went to his head, hot, harsh, challenging. “What did you want me to help you with?”
“No big deal,” said Boucicaut. He went to the table, picked up the trophy, turned it in his hand. “You like practical jokes, right?”
“Depends.”
They took Gil’s car, Gil driving, Boucicaut navigating. The scraping sound was gone, the car again riding as quietly as it had the day he’d driven it off the lot. They drove west, out of town, into the storm.
“What are you sniffing at?” Boucicaut said.
“Nothing. Where are we going?”
“Ski country,” said Boucicaut. He had another pint. They passed it back and forth. “I bet you’re a skier, Gilly. Successful guy like you.”
“No.”
“Golf? Tennis?”
“No.”
“Thought all you corporate dudes were into shit like that.”
Gil felt a strong urge to confess that he wasn’t a corporate dude, that he didn’t even have a job, that he was done: to spill everything to Boucicaut. He overcame it. “Too busy,” he said.
Boucicaut laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, hard. “Too busy makin’ money, right? Son of a bitch. How much’re you worth, anyway?”
“Give me a fucking break.” Gil realized he had shouted the words.
There was a silence. Then Boucicaut said, “Easy, old buddy.”
They climbed out of the rain and into falling snow, up in the highlands where winter lingered. Ahead lay the light of the access road, and beyond it the mountain, the top a shadow in the night, the bottom lit like a pearl for night skiing. It was all new to Gil, not just the development: even the shape of the mountain had changed.
“Hang a right,” said Boucicaut.
Gil turned onto a road barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It mounted a rise, swung into thick woods, and then began climbing steeply up and out of sight, around the side of the mountain. The tires whined in the mix of mud and snow. Gil stopped the car.
“We’ll never get up that.”
“Sure we will,” said Boucicaut. “Just pop the trunk.”
“What for?”
“So I can get the chains.”
“I don’t have chains.”
Boucicaut laughed and got out. Gil popped the trunk. In the rearview mirror he watched Boucicaut, reddened by the taillights, pulling out a set of chains. Gil felt questions stirring in his mind, raising their heads like sea worms in the sand, only to be flattened by a calming wave: Boucicaut was taking charge.
Boucicaut got back in the car, slamming the door on a swirling funnel of snow. “Let’s go.”
Gil drove up the side of the mountain, the chains digging in like teeth. After a few condo clusters came the chalets, at first close together and big, later farther apart and enormous, almost all of them shining an outside light or two, but dark within.
“This is where the New Yorkers stay,” said Boucicaut. “Jews. They never come up this time of year, no matter how much snow’s left. Cut the lights.”
Gil braked, switched off the lights.
“Did I say stop?” Boucicaut said.
“You want me to drive with no lights?”
“Why not?”
“I can’t see a thing.”
“You have turned into a city boy, old buddy.”
Gil drove, very slow. He saw nothing but black snowflakes striking the windshield, their edges green from the instrument lights. But Boucicaut, silently, with little movements of his hand, showed him the way. Gil hunched over the wheel, peering into the darkness. Boucicaut sat back, tipping the bottle up to his mouth once or twice. The chains crunched unhurriedly through the snow.
A yellow light glimmered in the distance. Boucicaut put the bottle down. The light grew bigger and brighter: a lantern light, mounted on a post. “Close enough,” said Boucicaut.
Gil stopped in the middle of the road. From his pocket, Boucicaut fished out a key ring loaded with twenty or thirty keys. Flipping through them, he felt Gil’s gaze. “Screwed every maid in the valley,” he said. “For fun and profit.” He selected a key and slid it off the ring. “Just pop the trunk again and sit tight.” Boucicaut got out, walked toward the light. For a minute or two his silhouette moved behind a curtain of black snowflakes. Then the light went out, and he was gone.
The wind rose, made aggressive noises in the trees and around the car. Gil ran the motor to keep warm. After a while, he switched on the radio, pressed AM, hit SEEK. He caught a few bars of different songs he didn’t know, rap, lite, country, rock. Then, faint, crackling, distorted: “… two on, two out, top of the sixth, with the score…”
Gil set the station, jacked up the volume. The game faded away, like windblown voices. Another station ballooned across the frequency, playing some stupid oldie. Gil slapped the dashboard, hard enough to make his palm tingle. That felt good, so he did it again, a little harder. The game returned for an instant, almost lost in I’m- gonna-love-you-all-night-long bullshit: “… and he rings him up-Rayburn didn’t like that call one bit. He’s…” And it was gone again. Gil’s hand was raised to strike the dash once more, when a bear-sized shadow loomed in front of the car.
Not a bear, although there were probably bear still in these woods, but Boucicaut, carrying a big box, or a stack of smaller boxes. Gil slid down the window. “You have to play it so fuckin’ loud?” said Boucicaut. “I could hear you all the way up to the house.”
Gil shut off the radio. Boucicaut moved around to the trunk. The rear end sagged for a moment. Then he was at the window again. “Don’t go away,” he said.
“Where would I go?” said Gil. “I’m lost.”
Boucicaut laughed. Gil started laughing too, a laugh that gathered momentum and took on a life of its own. He clamped it off.
“Got that bottle?” said Boucicaut.
Gil found it on the floor. Boucicaut took a hit, then Gil, then Boucicaut again. “Save me some, old buddy,” said Boucicaut, walking off in the darkness.
Gil switched on the radio, pressed SEEK. SEEK couldn’t find the ball game. He swallowed some more Canadian, then punched in the FANLINE on his autodialer. The number rang and rang.
“Fucking answer,” he shouted down the line.
