Another Slice

 

Right from the start Morgan didn’t feel right about her.  It shouldn’t have mattered: He owned his side, she owned hers.

But she was unsettling.  Not the dog.  Risa.  And not because she was smashingly beautiful: tall, slim, long blondish-brown hair, freckled surfer-girl smile.  A Christie Brinkley look-alike.  (Morgan fancied himself as looking a bit like Matthew McConaughey.)  No, she was a knockout, but you got used to that in Aspen.  And she wasn’t particularly stuck-up.  (You got used to that, too.)

It took him a while, but Morgan finally figured out what it was:  Risa just didn’t care about him.  She just didn’t care.  He was a good-looking guy, and he’d been around forever, which meant that he could’ve helped her settle in, get to know town, but she just wasn’t interested in him.  And you’re supposed to have a sort-of special realtionship with the person you inhabit a duplex with, if they’re at all presentable.

You’re supposed to borrow sleeping bags, burn steaks together, rag about the neighbors, but she wouldn’t do any of that stuff.  He could’ve stood on the tramp in the middle of the backyard, poured gas on his head and lit himself on fire, and she would’ve just smiled– waved maybe, one of those vapid homecoming-queen waves– and gone on brushing the dog.

There.  Admit it.  That was the problem: the dog.  All Risa Wentworth cared about was the stupid little dog.  A dirty-white, ten-pound bichon frisé.  Risa looked like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, and the only person she spent any time with– at all– was that stupid mutt.  Who crapped all over the yard, chased away the delivery guys, and kept Morgan awake half the night with its incessant yapping.  And not even barking.  Barking– at bears, at rabbits, even– he could’ve understood.  But Tyson yapped.  At nothing.

So it was really the dog.  It wasn’t like there was some other guy.  Well, there were other guys, of course.  For example: every time something broke on her side of the house.  Then some guy would magically appear.  Stuff Morgan could’ve fixed in his sleep– or at 4 am, when he wasn’t asleep anyway, because of the stupid dog– but she never asked.  No, some other guy would show up– someone Morgan knew, most likely– and Risa would smile and hop in her mini-Cooper convertible with dear little Tyson by her side and zip off down the street, while the poor schlub changed out a light bulb, or re-tiled the bath, or whatever.

What these guys got out of it, Morgan never knew.  Because the guy’d be long gone– job done– by the time Risa and the dog returned.  (Not that Morgan was spying on her, or anything.)  And there were never any thank-you dinners for Mister Fix-It, as far as Morgan could tell.  He never saw anybody’s car out front, late at night.  Anybody’s.

Which was, quite frankly, pretty damned odd.  Think about it:  Here’s this healthy young woman, unbelievable looks, with brains to match (from what he could gather), and in the two years since she’d moved in, she hadn’t had a single overnight guest.  In Aspen.  Amazing.

But she must’ve gone out on dates.  Even Morgan went on a date with her once.

Once.  The first summer.

One night– it was his idea– one night they did Mozart and Brahms at the Tent, then dinner at a new restaurant in town.  Turned out, she’d gone to Julliard, herself, and wasn’t impressed with the conductor, and she knew the owner of the restaurant across the street, and she’d rather have gone there.  And then she had to get to bed early.  For what, she didn’t say.  (Morgan didn’t even know if she worked.)

A week later Morgan tried again:  How about driving up to the Grottoes?  Lunch, and maybe a swim?

But no, that wouldn’t work.  People were always giving her a hard time about bringing Tyson up there.  (Who’d said anything about Tyson?)

Then how about the rodeo, Wednesday at Snowmass?  Butch’s Lobster Bar afterwards?

Well, no.  She was opposed to roping animals.

Also (of course) to boiling them.

After that, Morgan gave up.

*

So it came as a surprise, one night in late January, when she burst through his door without even knocking.  That was a first.

“Morgan, thank god!” she panted.  “I need you so bad.”

Which sounded even better.  But it turned out to just be the damned dog again.  Tyson had disappeared, three days before.

“I called the police,” she explained, standing there in an oversized Gentlemen of Aspen rugby top and knee socks, like a cover for Maxim, “animal control, the radio stations.”  She dropped down, exhausted, onto Morgan’s lumpy couch.  “He’s vanished.”

Morgan himself had just gotten off a plane from Phoenix, so she couldn’t blame him, but he glanced around the room anyway.  Sort of instinctively.  Risa shook her head.

“I already looked,” she said.  Then she bit her lip and added, real quick, “I mean, I have a key, so  I thought you wouldn’t mind…”

So she’d already been in the house.  To– so to speak– snoop.  Like maybe he’d killed the dog, himself.  Maybe he’d faked going to Phoenix, hid out, and snuffed the little darling himself.  That made sense, right?  Tyson couldn’t possibly have gotten caught by a coyote, or run over by a snowplow.  No, Morgan must’ve killed him.  Who wouldn’t, after all the sleepless nights?

And even if he could prove he’d really been in Phoenix the whole time, he’d still be the prime suspect, right?  Maybe he’d hired a hit man.  Had him do the job while he was out of town.  The perfect alibi.

Morgan had just been unpacking when she’d come barging in, and he’d just popped open a much-needed Margaux, so he magnanimously decided to not feel insulted.  He offered her a glass, suggested a soak in the hot tub, but she wasn’t in the mood.  (Face it:  She was never gonna be in the mood.)  And she kept glancing around the room, like she’d forgotten to look somewhere.  (Maybe the laundry hamper.  No: Morgan didn’t have one.)

And then all of a sudden she gasped, opened the sliding-glass door out onto the deck, rushed out, and started prying the cover off of the hot tub.

But alas (thank god!): no dog.  That would’ve been a bummer.  Not something to come home to, no matter how much you hated the thing.  (Think of all the scrubbing you’d have to do.)

So: no dog, so she left.  Just like that.  Leaving Morgan holding two brimming glasses of wine.  She just turned on her heel and walked out.  Traipsing snow across his living room.  Not that he cared.

Twenty minutes later, after Morgan’d phoned her, told her how honestly sad he was about Tyson’s disappearance, and promised to call if he should think of anywhere else to look, he slid into the hot tub with the blushing Margaux and a slender Monte Christo, and pondered on the question: If you were a dog, and you lived with the mysterious-and-stunningly-beautiful Risa Wentworth, where would you run off to?

And the only answer he could come up with was: You wouldn’t.  You just wouldn’t.  She was the most captivating, cultivated, and yeah, most frustrating woman he’d met in years.  A friend once described her, approvingly, as “a Vogue model you could take rafting.”  No way you walk out on that.

So Tyson must’ve been kidnapped.

Or smooshed by a snowplow.

Or eaten by a coyote.

And it was just as Morgan got comfortable with that notion, unwinding in his hot tub, that his attention was drawn to the absence of a large terra-cotta pot that should’ve been perched on the railing just a few feet away from him.

Strange:  Morgan could’ve sworn that it’d been there when he’d left town the week before.  The pot had held a single oversized marijuana plant that he’d nurtured, trimmed, and tweaked for about three years, and then he’d somehow forgotten to bring it inside last fall and it had frozen.  Had Tyson’s kidnapper taken the pot, as well?  Not unless he had a forklift.

Well, life was full of mysteries, and this one would just have to wait.  He leaned back in the water, opened his mouth, and swallowed a few more snow flakes.

Aside from the dog, all was well with the world.  He’d just returned from ten days in the desert, where he’d helped yet another eager disciple “hurdle another hurdle,” “take his game to the next level.”  (Hopefully: for good.  Back-sliding, recidivism, recurring self-doubt was always an issue.)  And he had the next two weeks completely free.  If he’d had a girlfriend at the moment, they could’ve driven over to Cordillera for the weekend. He had an unused comp there, and the food was great.  With the snow coming down like it was, the back bowls at Vail would’ve been awesome.

*

Turned out, it snowed for two days straight, and Morgan, not having a girlfriend at the  moment, stayed home and concentrated on the skiing right here.  Highland Bowl, Temerity on Wednesday.  Aspen Mountain, McFarlane’s on Thursday.

He happened upon his ex-sorta-girlfriend Mandie at Eric’s, après-ski on Thursday.  Mandie Granderson, aka The Fair Amanda, was the prettiest red-headed physical therapist in Aspen Club history, and she also taught part-time.  She was in her ski-school uni, and she didn’t bother to introduce the two women she was sitting with, so they were probably a semi-private.

Which was sort-of what their relationship had been: semi-private.  It’d never been exclusive, Morgan’d never committed enough, and in the end, Mandie decided that maybe she preferred women, anyway.  Whatever.

“Sorry about the pot,” were the first words out of her mouth.

What?

The pot.  The pot pot.  Turned out, she’d brought a few friends over to Morgan’s house the previous Saturday night– Wintersköl Saturday– to watch the torchlight and the fireworks from the hot tub.  Which was totally okay.  (She still had a key.  Like Risa.)

“We were kinda wrecked,” Mandie explained.  “And that little dog of her’s…  What’s her name?”

“Risa,” Morgan supplied.

“Right,” Mandie sniffed.  “Très chic.  She speaking to you yet?”

“We speak,” Morgan frowned.

“Anyway, it was an accident.  The fireworks started, and the little mongrel went crazy.  And of course, Little Miss Perfect wasn’t around, so we just leaned over the railing and yelled at it to shut up.  Like that woulda worked.  But it was too dark, anyway.  And I guess one of us must’ve nudged the pot…”

She made a swan-dive motion with her hand.

“It was dead anyway, right?  The plant?  You shoulda brought it in last fall.”  Mandie stood there in her ski-school uni and shrugged.  “Shut the dog up, anyway.”

“Shut the dog up?”

“Yeah,” she smiled.  “Not a peep out of him, after that.  Between the fireworks and the falling plant, we must’ve scared the shit outta him.”  She laughed the throaty laugh that, up til that moment, he’d always loved.  “You think?”

No, Morgan didn’t think.  Morgan didn’t want to think.  Morgan didn’t even want to consider.

“Anyway,” Mandie went on, oblivious, “the pot’s prob’ly okay.  Just buried a little.  So don’t trip over it, is the only reason I mentioned it.”

But that’s not what Morgan was worried about.  The more he thought about it…

But what were the odds?

Obviously, he’d never liked the dog…  And he wouldn’t have been real upset if Risa eventually found it in a ditch somewhere.

But it was a whole different ballgame if Tyson had gotten himself squashed by his pot.  His pot pot.  Then he’d get the blame.  Definitely.  Whether he’d been there or not.

*

He didn’t exactly rush home, but when he did get back home, an hour or so later, he poked his head out the back door– cautiously– and craned his neck up, to see if Risa’s lights were on.  Which they weren’t.

It was cloudy, with no moon, so it was plenty dark outside.  The coast, as they say, was clear.  So in his darkened side of the house, he changed into his cold-weather work clothes, opened the back door again– quietly– and grabbed a shovel.

Now, in the wintertime, the back yard just sat there collecting snow.  Maybe the occasional discarded mattress.  Neither he nor Risa had any reason to go out there, except to fill the bird feeders.  Tyson the dog would bulldoze a few trails when he went out to poop, and the neighborhood kids might build a snow fort or a ski jump out behind the trampoline frame, and there were always a few deer tracks back by the chokecherries, but the rest of the huge yard was just a fairly-flat blanket of untouched snow, 3 or 4 feet deep.

Except for the noticeable lump right in front of him, underneath the deck, which he assumed was the pot.  His pot pot.

It had snowed a ton since Saturday night, so first he had to shovel off all the new snow around the large terra-cotta pot.  And damn, it was quiet.  You could hear the snowcats working up on Strawpile, and not much else.  Just pushing the shovel through the soft, unpacked snow sounded loud.  If Risa ever got home and looked out the window…

He didn’t want to think about that.  He shoveled a good two feet of new snow, then got down on his knees and started digging with his ski-gloved hands.  Sort of like avalanche training.

Eventually he’d scraped away enough so he could try manhandling the thing.  The pot had landed perfectly upside-down, so getting a grip on the rim wasn’t real easy.  (And the dirt inside was frozen solid, so the thing was pretty damned heavy.)

He tugged and he twisted, slammed his shoulder into it…

All the while trying not to make a sound…

Til all of a sudden it popped free, and the damned thing flipped over and sent him sprawling out across the snow.

In the very next instant, the backyard lights snapped on– one of those Stalag 17 sorta moments– and he saw, lying at his feet, the broken, dried-up stalk and frazzled roots of his 3-foot-tall pot plant, 10 inches of rock-hard potting soil, and a very pale, totally pancaked…

… little dog.

Even in the cold, and the glare of the klieg lights, it was hard to mistake the wrenching scream coming from Risa Wentworth’s upstairs window.

…

Tags: Chapter 2 by John
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Which only got worse, of course.  He couldn’t bring himself to go over to her side right away, and apologize.  And by the time he finally did, either she wasn’t home or she just wouldn’t answer the door.

So, shell-shocked though he was, and adjusting to the notion that he could indeed ”lose everything,” Morgan nevertheless forced himself to join the rest of the boys for their climb, that night.  Nothing exceptional.  Just a bunch of the guys, being sociable.

A simple skin-up, ski-down the front of Aspen Mountain.  They were all a bit slower, going up, than they’d been twenty years ago, and there was less idle gabbing, more heavy breathing, and they usually didn’t smoke any dope nowadays, til they got to the top, but other than that it was the same old climb.  You get to the Sundeck, after maybe pushing the last 200 yards, and then drop, pull out whatever food-stuff you’d packed, count off ten or twenty deep breaths, and try to recover.  Convince yourself that you weren’t in such bad shape.  Then lean back, relax, and enjoy the companionship. 

Which was when Ed Nelson, who would always be assistant police chief (and assistant high-school hockey coach), offered the almost obvious advice: “Ask for a jury trial.”

To which everybody else nodded their heads.  Justin would’ve been the go-to guy for legal advice, but he hadn’t shown up.  Which was odd.  He hadn’t even called anybody.

“A jury trial, and pack it with bachelors,” added Lindsay Cummins, who would always be the assistant middle-school principal (and junior golf #2 in the summer).

Which caused all of them, with the exception of Morgan, to burst into uncontrollable laughter.

“A jury trial,” Ed went one better, “pack it with bachelors, and make sure they know all about Risa.”

Which led to even more laughter, and lots of knowing nods.  Morgan looked around at them all, sitting at the picnic tables outside the Sundeck, as comradely and comfortable as if they were watching a ball game in somebody’s living room.  (Except that it was zero degrees out.)  Paper plates, botas, the tin-foil trays of brownies that Ed always brought.  Everybody seemed satisfactorily buzzed, and perfectly content, except for Morgan, who couldn’t help asking, “Am I missing something?”

To which there was an immediate, deafening silence.  The other guys took a sudden interest in the surrounding landscape.  Which was, admittedly, remarkable:  Elk Mountain and Conundrum Peak to the south, Highland Bowl just across the way, the Williams Range crystal-clear and looking so close in the bright, cloudless sky.  Like they hadn’t seen it all a thousand times before.

“I don’t think jury trials help anymore,” someone finally said.  “I had jury duty last month, and I didn’t even recognize half the people there.”

To which there was unanimous, sadly grudging agreement.  Ruing the loss of “the old Aspen,” where everyone supposedly knew everyone else (and we were all one happy family), was a long-standing way to criticize whatever it was about the new Aspen that you didn’t, personally, like.

“And the bachelors you did find, they probably wouldn’t know about her, anyway,” somebody threw in.

Which meant what, exactly?

But before Morgan could ask, Lindsay jumped up and mimed shaking off the cold, and as if on cue, all the other guys hopped up and started packing up, too.  In what had to be near-record time, they’d flicked on their headlamps, policed the area, jumped into their skis, and headed off down Two-Leaf.  Leaving Morgan standing there, speechless.

What the hell was that all about?

*

He never did get an answer.  When they reached the bottom, after a pleasant-enough 2-mile cruise, everyone just grunted goodbyes and headed for their cars.  Granted, it was close to midnight, and they weren’t the all-night party guys anymore, but even so, there was something that everybody seemed to know, except for him.

Something about Risa, and from the looks on their faces, something pretty strange.  What did they know that he didn’t?

And then it struck him.  All these guys– Ed, Lindsay, everybody– they were all bachelors.  Was there something that every single guy in town knew about Risa, except for him?

But he didn’t get much time to gnaw on that, because the message light on his phone was flashing when he got home.  The caller ID said it was from the Forest Service.

Which would be little Debbie.  Debbie Samms.

Debbie was the daughter of the girl he maybe should’ve married, a long time ago.  Back when he and Pam were in their 20′s, and Morgan was no-where near thinking about marriage.  (Not that he was any closer, now.)

But that’s what Pam had wanted, and no hard feelings (sort of), but she finally just walked away.  Found a guy from St. Louis who actually had a career and was willing to commit.  And now little Debbie, their daughter, was a pretty 21-year-old, fresh out of C.U. and living in Aspen for the first time, herself.  Working for ACES– the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies– living in the Forest Service dorm on Seventh Street, giving snowshoe/nature tours at Snowmass and thoroughly enjoying being outdoors most of the time.

Debbie and her mom had come out to visit nearly every summer, when she was a kid.  Without her dad, who was either always working or preferred not to deal with somebody like Morgan.  Which was fine:  Morgan took Little Debbie and Pam hiking, biking, fishing and stuff.  They even went gold-panning once, the three of them, up Castle Creek, with dinner plates they’d lifted from The Shaft (a mining-motif family restaurant).  Never found a thing, and Morgan ruined a good pair of boots, but little Debbie still had the pans.

They had a special relationship, Morgan and Debbie.  He was never “Uncle” Morgan.  He was more like another father, or a big brother when that’s what she needed.  She told him her secrets, such as they were.  And Morgan, in return, had shown her the secret rock up Lincoln Creek that absolutely nobody else knew about.  The place he could go and hide, if he ever needed to, and nobody ever could’ve found him.  Without a helicopter, at least.

The phone call had come in around 11:00, and it was the dorm, all right, but it wasn’t from Debbie.  A troubled young man’s voice mumbled something about an accident, and the hospital, and Debbie not wanting to worry her parents.

Morgan didn’t even bother to pick up the phone: The dorm was only six blocks away.

He hopped into his car, then remembered that he still had two Christmas presents for little Debbie back in the house.  (She’d gone home to St. Louis for the holidays, and he’d planned on giving her the presents when she got back, but somehow they hadn’t hooked up.)

So Morgan shuffled back into the house, walked into the guest room to grab the presents off the bed, and stopped mid-stride.  The carpeting in the middle of the room was soaked clean through.  Totally squishy-wet.

He flipped on the ceiling light, and poof! went the breakers.  All over the house.  (On Risa’s side, too, most likely.  Sepp had kept the electrical pretty basic.)

So he clumped down to the basement, re-set the breakers.  Which, fortunately, seemed to stay on.  Then he went back upstairs, left the guest-room ceiling light off, and checked the ceiling with a flashlight.  Sure enough, it was dripping away.  Which meant: the roof, somewhere.  And if it was happening now, in mid-winter, it was probably gonna be bad.  And get worse,

But he didn’t have time to deal with it now.  So he dashed Risa a note, slipped it under her door.  Hoped she didn’t have an early-morning appointment, cuz her alarm clock wouldn’t be working.

*

A few of her roommates were still hanging around the common room at the dorm when he showed up.  Kind of subdued, but awake enough to tell him that Debbie was already at the hospital.

So he left the presents in her room, one of the girls gave him some of Debbie’s clothes to take with him, and he slid back into his car and headed for the hospital.

Now, as far as most Aspenites are concerned, if you absolutely have to go to a hospital, it may as well be Aspen Valley Hospital.  It’s small, state-of-the-art, super-friendly, keeps a very tolerant open-door policy, and even the food’s pretty damned good.

When Morgan arrived, he knew most everybody there, and they weren’t surprised to see him.  He’d been there often enough over tyhe years, with young Debbie, to joke about having a room with her own name on it.  (Most families in town say the same thing.)

During ski season, especially, you can usually count on one fracture expert and one concussion guy to be on duty.  The concussion guy just smiled and said, “It could’ve been worse.”

They’d put Debbie in a private room, given her a sedative, and let her fall asleep.  And pieced the story together from the two young people who’d brought her in.

Seems that they’d been out in the parking lot at the dorm, earlier that night.  The Forest Service has this… policy… against smoking in the dorm.  So they’d gone outside to smoke a number and check out the full moon, after which they decided it was a perfect night for some hoops.  Basketball.  Seeing as how with all the snow, the backboard was only eight feet off the ground.  (And even though it was maybe five degrees above zero.)

Once they found the ball, and got a little warmed up, Debbie did some reverse lay-up thing, and all of a sudden her feet slipped out from under her, and before she knew it, she’d landed smack! down on the back of her head.  Hammer-on-concrete hard.  And she just lay there, unconscious, til they finally woke her up, got her to her feet, and helped her inside.

Scary.

Most everybody who enjoys the outdoors knows the warning signs for concussion, and knows you don’t take chances, so packing Debbie into a car and getting her to the hospital was a real simple decision.

The official diagnosis was subdural hematoma.  When Morgan looked in, the back of her head was a mass of clean bandages, but her eyes looked like she’d just gone two rounds with Hillary Swank.  The X-rays and CAT-scan were negative, but you could never tell with a rap to the head.  They were going to keep her under observation for 24 hours, then probably let her go home.  More probably, to Morgan’s place, so he could keep an eye on her.

So there wasn’t much more for anyone to do, right away.

Which meant that Morgan could just thank everybody, and go back home for a while.

Which he did.

Which just gave him more time to think.

Which can often be not the best thing in the world to do.

And his thoughts, unfortunately, turned right back to the problem with Risa.

Yesterday, when he’d gone back to apologize, he knew she’d been in there.  Probably conjuring up the day he got marched out of town.  (They used to say: “getting run outta town on a rail,” but Aspen didn’t have a train anymore. So he guessed they’d have to drive him.  Drop him at the 7-Eleven in Basalt, which was right over the county line.  The coffee there was terrible.)

Justin had said: “Be prepared to lose everything.”

On the spur of the moment, Morgan picked up the phone and dialed.

“Private number,” Justin mumbled, when he finally picked up.  After about ten rings.  “It’s 3:00 in the morning, so this had better be good, Morgan.”

And Morgan, who hadn’t really expected Justin to answer, had to hustle himself into dialogue mode.

“Justin,” he stammered.  “Sorry to call.  I was just thinking…”

“Which, in itself, is often good,” interrupted Justin, who even half-asleep always had to get the optimum sentiment in.

“Right…  Anyway, when you said, ‘Be prepared to lose everything…’  That was just a figure of speech, right?”

“No.”  Morgan could hear Justin’s crisply-starched sheets crinkling, as he pushed himself slowly up in his bed.  “In the sense that hyperbole, to which I assume you’re referring, is indeed a figure of speech.  But that would be implying that I was intentionally exaggerating.  For effect.”  Justin paused a moment, to emphasize the gravitas, the seriousness, of the matter.  Then he lowered his voice: a few decibels, and half an octave.  “Which I wasn’t.”

“Oh.”  Dumb (dumbfounded) silence, from Morgan’s end.

“Morgan, ‘Be prepared to lose everything’ was offered as practical, worst-case-scenario advice,” Justin sighed.  “Tell you what:  First thing in the morning… (pause)… after the sun’s come up… call Bev.  You know, your insurance agent?  Call her, and then get back to me.  Okay?”

And then there was a click, and then nothing but silence from Justin’s end.

Which left Morgan sitting there, holding the phone, with several hours awaiting him before the sun arose and announced the opportunity to call the insurance office.  Which he wasn’t looking forward to.  Years and years before, the guy who’d founded the agency (and who’d long since happily retired from it) had confided to him: “The first rule of insurance: ‘You’re not covered.’”

So he had that to think on, for several more hours.  So how, exactly, was he gonna while away the time?

By checking the guest room, for starters.  Making some coffee, and deciding whether he should rip up the ceiling right now.

And he was supposed to be the wisdom guy.  The answer man.

After which rueful thought, he leaned back on his lumpy, too-soft couch and fell promptly, soundly asleep.

…

Tags: Chapter 4 by John
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The rest of the evening didn’t go too well.  Morgan was probably suffering from shock.  Risa definitely was.  Together, they went through the motions of unearthing poor Tyson.  Flicking clumps of dirt and snow from his matted hair, wrapping his flattened body in a beach towel, carrying him inside.  All that, under the harsh white glare of the overhead lights, without a word.

What, after all, was there to say?  He’d killed her dog.  Even if he felt bad about it.  Even if he’d been 700 miles away when it happened.  It was his pot.  It’d fallen off of his deck.  He should’ve moved the thing last fall, just like Mandie’d said.  Risa didn’t need to hear about him forgetting, ex-sorta-girlfriends, fireworks, all of that.

They just did what they had to do, out there in the cold, and brought Tyson’s body into Risa’s kitchen, and she laid the swaddled mess onto the table, and they stood over it for a while in silence, and then Morgan whispered how sorry he was– again– and left.  Walked out and closed the back door.  Quietly.  Trudged back out into the snow, retrieved the now-empty pot and carried it back under the deck, stowed it away in a corner.

The backyard lights winked out.  He glanced up at her lighted bedroom, sighed, leaned the shovel against the wall, and let himself in his own back door.

*

And yet, the true impact of that evening’s events didn’t fully unfold until two weeks later, when the papers arrived from her lawyers.

Registered mail.  Never a good sign.

The whole thing seemed rather vague, but apparently they wanted him to apologize.  Repeatedly.  Or at least lavishly.  Which he thought he’d already done.  (And for what, exactly?  That was the vague part.)  Maybe he hadn’t done it often enough, or profusely enough.

So, being a courageous and fair-minded soul, he took a few deep breaths, walked over, and knocked on her door.  And she opened it, and almost meekly invited him in.

It felt almost like a funeral, a wake, in there.  She wasn’t in widow’s weeds, exactly, but the whole thing seemed oddly surreal.  Like there should’ve been candles burning, old women weeping quietly into their shawls.  (There were, actually, two other women there.  Women he’d never seen before.)  He walked in, sat down on the couch, and after that his recollections got kinda jumbled.

He remembered first noticing how nicely she’d done the place up.  He’d hardly been inside her side of the building since she’d moved in, but she and the various Mister Fix-Its had definitely taken the place up a few notches.  It looked like a layout in Aspen Magazine, or something.  Made his side look like the lawn-chairs-and-linoleum in the old Limelight lobby.

After that moment of wonder, he remembered them making small talk: how good the skiing was, how he’d been thinking of going to Vail, the back bowls and all that, and things were going swimmingly– much better than their one-and-only “date,” in fact– and the other two women were just sitting there, staying out of it…

… and then somebody brought up Tyson.

And that’s when the yelling started.  Morgan couldn’t recall who started it, but he did remember how steamy-hot she got, how her long light-brown hair got all sweaty and stuck to her forehead, how she started breathing really heavy.  So they must’ve been going at it pretty good.  (And in front of two total strangers.)

He didn’t remember her actually throwing anything, but he did recall how her eyes flashed– like they were on fire– when he said whatever it was that had really hacked her off, for good.  Then she did, in fact, throw something.

She picked up a plate of cold Brussels sprouts (why would you have a plate of cold Brussels sprouts lying around?) and heaved it straight across the room at him.  Hit him from ten feet, like a pie in the face.  What a throw!  She must’ve had brothers growing up, to throw that good!  And he hated Brussels sprouts!  Even the smell, much less having them smack you in the face.  How’d she know that?

He remembered storming out, then.  Hard to forget that part.  He probably shouted something like “I hate Brussels sprouts!”  Or maybe “I hate you!”  And left the door open.  Or maybe not.  He didn’t remember.  Tough guys in the movies always left the door open, he knew that.

The other two women just sat there, stunned.  Like: “Does this sort of thing happen often, around here?”

*

Morgan had no sooner plopped himself down on his own (now that he noticed) embarrassingly threadbare couch– to sulk, naturally– in the middle of an afternoon when he could’ve been out skiing or hiking up Buttermilk or helping old ladies across Main Street, than Justin Winship came waltzing in.

Justin Winship, lawyer to the rich and famous, counselor to the stars.  With a wedge of Brie, a cold Montrachet, and a just-baked baguette.  Justin’s sense of timing was sometimes annoying, but you couldn’t turn down a good, gooey Brie.

So Justin came gliding in, looking as always a lot like the movie star Hugh Grant.  The same mussed-up brown hair, the same rumpled preppie clothes (and low-cut duck shoes), the same dopey smile, always barging in, oblivious.

“See you haven’t re-decorated,” he chirped, dumping the victuals on the kitchen counter.  He made a show of scanning the living-room floor.  “And you’re still saving the shag carpet for the Smithsonian.”

He commenced scouring the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew, and, as always, managed the conversation quite well without any help from Morgan.

As it happened, he’d just gotten in from Banff.  The skiing was excellent– thank you, Captain Morg– but he’d really been up there working.  Some boy-band dweeb had gotten mugged at a made-for-TV celebrity dog-sled competition, and Justin’d been called in to threaten retaliation.

“Turned oot,” he explained, flaunting a newly-acquired Canadian vowel, “turned out, it was a Playboy photo shoot, and the kid drooled all over the wrong girl, and her boyfriend threw him through a plate-glass window.  Moron could’ve been looking at major reconstructive…

“But look at it this way, I told him…”

Justin found the corkscrew.  In the dishwasher.  He held it aloft, triumphantly.

“I pointed out to him: His career’d been going nowhere.  He’d probably be headed to jail, if he hadn’t been in some hospital for a year.  I’ve heard the medical care in Canada is first-rate, by the way.  So I cleaned him up, I even managed to win him the race– after I’d promised the other guys more than I should’ve, by way of a few ersatz bunnies–”

(Only Justin would use a word like “ersatz.”)

“… and I convinced the young woman that she really should fall in love with the little shit, if I could get them a cover on People magazine.”

He popped the cork, resoundingly.

“How’s that for full-service?”

After all that, all Morgan could manage was a nod, and a glum “You got any more get-outta-jail cards on you?”

Justin paused, then walked gingerly into the living room, bottle and glasses in hand, and peered down at Morgan’s dejected face.

“Is this about the dog?” he pursed.

And Morgan looked up, looking like Matthew McConaughey having a very bad day.  “You heard about it in Banff?”

“That’s all they’re talking about,” Justin beamed.  “So I had to rush right back.  And just when I’d arranged a serious back-rub from Miss February.”

He poured out the glasses, handed one to Morgan.

“Actually, I ran into Lindsay,” Justin said quietly, settling himself into the sofa, “and he said you were kinda shook up.”

Not as shook up as he was now.  Morgan took a sip of the wine.  It was all starting to come back to him.  The re-done apartment, the mood of mourning, the sympathetic other women, the argument, the Brussels sprouts, him storming out.  (Had he shut the door?)

He took another slug from his wine glass.  The upshot was: that she’d said something like, if he wasn’t prepared to say he was sorry, then she’d have to find a way to make him say it.  And he’d answered: I said I was sorry, a dozen times.  What’re you gonna do?  Sue me?

And she’d said: Yeah.  If that’s what it takes.

And he said: What it takes, for what?  For not apologizing twenty times?

And she said: No.  I’m gonna sue you for…

And here she’d turned to her two silent friends, as if for moral support…

I’m going to sue you for negligence.

Oh, for cryin’ out loud, he’d said.  You’re gonna sue me over a goddamned dog?

Which, admittedly, he could’ve phrased better.

Yeah, she snarled at him, starting to get really cranked.  (He remembered now: That’s when her eyes had started flashing.)  You created an unsafe environment for Tyson.  My dear little… my dearest, dearest… friend… on the whole planet.  So I’m gonna sue you for…”

And they stood there, in her House Beautiful living room (except for the 10-foot ceiling), they stood there glaring at each other, panting, squared off like two prizefighters across the ring, just waiting for the bell.  And the two other women were ringside, spectators just waiting to see who’d land the next punch. 

“I’m gonna sue you… for a million bucks!”

What?!

A million bucks?! he’d said, not believing his ears.  You’ve gotta be kidding.  He didn’t know whether to laugh, or to bend down, pick up one of the Brussels sprouts, and throw it back at her.  “You may as well have me declared a mass murderer… a child molester… a menace to society… while you’re at it,” he suggested, hopping mad now.  “Have me run out of town–

“Good idea!” she shot back.  She glanced at her friends, a mad grin on her face, then turned back to him.  “Thank you!  I’ll do that!  Get you run out of town!

And things degenerated from there– if that was possible– til he yelled, “I hate you!” “I hate Brussels sprouts!” and stormed out.  Slammed the door, or not.  He didn’t remember.

The end result, either way, was that Risa Wentworth was gonna go back to her lawyers and have them sue his chafed-off butt for a million bucks, plus tax, plus shipping and handling, plus whatever else they could think of.  And while she was at it, she was gonna ask the judge to sling Morgan Somerville out of town on his ear.  Forever.  Permanently.  No take-backs.

And Morgan had– apparently– said: Fine.  Just try it.  Said it in front of witnesses.

Which Justin didn’t want to hear.  Justin Winship, attorney for the wealthy and the well-connected, not the hapless and the soon-to-be homeless.  The soon-to-be-kicked-out-on-their-ass.  All because they were too high-minded to just get down…

… and grovel, occasionally.

*

You see, if you hadn’t lived in Aspen for long, you wouldn’t know that there was actually a for-real, once-upon-a-time precedent for this sort of “frontier justice.”

Back in the high-spirited, hippies-versus-townfolk 60′s, there’d been a throwback old judge by the name of Guido who liked to offer unwanted miscreants– anyone from penny-ante shoplifters to dirtbag dope dealers– what he liked to call ”the option”: Do hard time in the county jail, or have the deputy sheriff escort you, immediately, to the county line.  It was simple justice, and it worked.  And if it could work back then, it could work now.  At least Risa seemed to think so.  And Justin couldn’t argue with it.

Especially since Morgan had all but agreed to it, himself.  In front of witnesses.

“So you actually managed to make things worse,” concluded Justin, after he’d heard the whole story.  And after he’d also concluded that those two unidentified women in Risa’s apartment, just now, were probably her lawyers.

Justin drained his wine, set his glass down on the coffee table.  Maybe, he suggested quietly, maybe Morgan should just walk right back over to Risa’s, and apologize.  Try it again.  Whatever it took.  Now.  Just go over there and do whatever.  Get down, grovel.  Beg.  Say he was sorry.  Offer to paint her front door.  Middle of winter: paint her front door.  Anything.

He stood up, a lawyer well-versed in getting clients out of hopeless jams, and for all his world-class aplomb, he still looked pretty damned stunned.

“You know, I’ve represented a lot of losers over the years.  Guys who’ve done incredibly stupid things.  Some of them I get off, some of them I don’t.  And here’s what I tell them:  ‘Be prepared to lose everything.’”

To which Morgan could think of absolutely nothing to say.  So he just sat there.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Justin muttered, as he walked to the door.  “It’s a full moon, so we’re doing a skin tonight up Aspen Mountain tonight.  If you’re up to it.  8 o’clock, gondola.”

To which Morgan just nodded.

“And I’ll tell Ed to leave his dog home,” Justin added.  “I didn’t know you hated animals so much.”

Right then…  Right then, Morgan should’ve realized that he was in trouble.

…

Tags: Chapter 3 by John
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RISA AND THE DOG, AND THE ASPEN

TWO-MILLION WINNER-TAKE-ALL

 

Set in the present, in my hometown of Aspen, Colorado, our story concerns a good-looking, amiable young guy named Morgan, who winds up being held responsible for the accidental death of his beautiful next-door neighbor Risa’s dog.

Risa decides, in a fit of pique, to sue Morgan for a million bucks, and while she’s at it, to ask the judge to throw Morgan out of town forever.  (A cheap and effective form of  frontier justice which worked well here, up through the early 1970′s.)

Morgan, in a panic, grasps at the idea of winning a clandestine 2-million-dollar winner-take-all golf tournament– held on the Aspen Golf Course– to salvage something out of the mess.

Complications, as they say, arise.

What follows are the first four chapters (40 pages) of the book.  Hope you enjoy them.

…

Tags: About RISA AND THE DOG... by John
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<  CARTOON  >

We’re sitting in the back row of the historic Wheeler Opera House, in Aspen, Colorado.  The vintage 1889 fire curtain hanging from the proscenium arch depicts the then-recently-completed wonder of the age: the Brooklyn Bridge.  Sitting in front of us (we see only the backs of their heads) are a young man and a young woman, who’ve come here to see a play.  The young woman, tilting her head slightly towards her boyfriend, whispers,

“Shhh!  It’s about to start!” 

<      <>      >

 

CHAPTER 1

 

Morgan Somerville lived in the sole surviving “pre-architect” duplex in Aspen’s otherwise fashionable West End.  Slapped together in the 50′s by a Swiss ski instructor who’d steal from his own grandmother, the forget-about-plumb dark-brown shoebox had big doors, little doors, Dutch doors, sliding-glass doors, big windows, little windows, the porthole from somebody’s sailboat, two saggy second-floor decks, and a flat roof that was only flat in the sense that the ocean is flat.  Most folks assumed it was the fifty coats of shellac that kept the whole thing from collapsing, but to some it also served as a weathered reminder of the stove-in-from-a-helluva-lot-of-snow sort of place Aspen once was.

“The Quiet Years,” those times were called.  Post-1893, when price of silver plummeted and the population of the once-famous mining town fell well below 1000, when there was one schoolhouse, two trains a week, people made their own clothes, their own whiskey, and every Model-A pickup lay rusting under ten feet of snow.

This was followed by the boom years, or “Aspen as we know it.”  Post-World War II.  When the young men of the 10th Mountain Division came back to stay, when skiing was born, nightclubs were built, a bunch of pretty girls showed up, and life soon became about as much fun as a human being could have.

Then, as now, the only serious concern– after the skiing and the nightclubs and the girls– was finding a place to live.  Because no matter how much you enjoyed scaling 14,000-foot peaks, drinking with great artists, listening to world-class music, fishing gold-medal trout streams, and hobnobbing with the best and the brightest, you still had to put a roof over your head.  And even in the summer, a teepee up Hunter Creek wasn’t gonna cut it with the girl of your dreams.

Whom you’d probably just met at the Tippler.  Or Johnny C’s, or the ‘Horn, or any of the other 20 hotspots in town.

There was always– and there always would be– a shortage of places to live.  The rich & famous would always find a cozy lodge, or a “condo,” or a house up on Red Mountain, but for the common folk, there would always be more jobs than beds.  So when you found one– an empty bed, or better yet, a whole room– you held onto it until somebody threw you out, or you found something nicer.

So when Morgan arrived in town, many years ago now, his first order of business– wisely– had been to find a place to live.  If only for the first winter.  And little did he know that his first-ever, supposedly temporary house of squalor would wind up being his own home-sweet-home for literally decades to come.

Because, on almost Day One, he happened upon…

Chez Sepp.

Not that it was called that.  It was too dumpy, too much of an eyesore even back then, to merit a name.  But that’s what it was: a no-nonsense molasses-colored 2-unit motel thrown together by an irascible old goat named Sepp, whom nobody in town could stand.  Morgan rented the slightly smaller, far crappier half, along with two other newcomers who felt immortal enough to risk sleeping in an oil-based firetrap.

And by the following spring, after one roommate couldn’t hack the long winter and the other went back to law school, Morgan found himself all alone in his two-bedroom side of the house, but Sepp decided to keep him on– at reduced rent– for the simple reason that Morgan was nice to him.

Which was more than you could say for anyone else in town.  Most folks, to be honest, pretty much hated Sepp Wepner.  “Crusty old shit” sounds quaint, but in a small town, when people hate you, they just hate you, and time isn’t likely to change that.

Morgan, though, was actually nice to the guy.  He’d talk to him, help him out with repairs, walk him home from The Onion when he’d had too much to drink.  Go over and watch TV with him.  Stupid sitcoms, which he didn’t much like.  He’d sit there drinking schnapps, which he didn’t like, either, til the old guy fell asleep.  And then Morgan would turn off the TV and put out the smoldering cigarette, so the whole place didn’t burn down.

So it was just the two of them, and Chez Sepp slowly, either by fate or by simple inertia, became “home.”

And, in spite of its about-to-cave-in appearance, the place had a lot of really great things going for it.  It had the biggest backyard in the entire West End.  It had a detached two-car garage (which they wouldn’t let you build today), so Morgan’s garage band really had a garage to practice in.  It had hot tubs out on both of the rickety decks.  It had towering cottonwoods lining both sides of the yard, bushy red chokecherries along the whole back alley.  Real, couldn’t-kill-it-if-you-tried grass, and the soothing patter of water in the small, street-side ditch.  It was 8 blocks from the grocery store, 8 blocks from the post office, and more importantly, some days, it was 6 blocks from the liquor store.  Anything else could wait.

He could lie on the trampoline and count a thousand stars.  Have downvalley friends sleep over, when it was snowing too hard to drive home.  Have the mailman stop by, for a bike ride to the Bells.  Play wiffleball under the backyard lights.  Host an Easter egg hunt, or a volleyball tournament, or freeze the whole thing and play hockey.  And it was amazing how many neighbors returned books that he didn’t know they’d borrowed.

And even as the years rolled by, and town grew more crowded and “cosmopolitan,” the squirrels kept stowing their pine cones under the hood of his jeep.  The bears still got into everyone’s trash.  The geese still commuted ‘cross town, morning and night.  People were still surprised when it snowed, first week of June.  And Morgan could still take off fly-fishing, on foot.

Life… was… pretty… damned… good.

But time does move on, and eventually the end came knocking for dear old Sepp.  Lung cancer, the doctors said.  Either from the smokes, or from the part-time asbestos-removal business.  It was astounding, in a way, that anything could’ve killed him.  He’d been that sort of tough-as-dryrot-to-get-rid-of old coot.

As surprising as Sepp’s death may have been, it came as an even bigger surprise when a lawyer informed Morgan that he– Morgan Somerville– was the sole beneficiary of old Sepp’s estate.  Most likely for simply having been– to repeat ourselves– simply nice to the guy.  Because, it turned out, there was no long-abandoned wife, no long-neglected children, no half-forgotten brother back in St. Anton.  There was nobody.

Unfortunately, there were also no thousands of shares of IBM, no real-estate holdings up in the Yukon, and no 20-dollar bills boarded up in the walls.  Just their humble abode, “Chez Sepp.”

Plus the estate taxes.  And the property taxes.  And the water bills, and the trash and the sewer and all the other taxes and gambling debts and bar tabs that seem to pile up in a place like Aspen, by irresponsible old loners like Sepp.

But at least Morgan got the house.  Both sides of the house, free and clear.  And as Morgan didn’t need to be reminded, the most important requirement in Aspen (after your brains and your health and your ski stuff) was having a place to hang out.  And so, rather than getting tossed out on his ear by some snotty young heirs who’d want to tear the place down, he’d managed to acquire the place– for the rest of his life– basically for free.

Which was totally unheard-of, except for the trust-fund types.  He could live at Chez Sepp– heck, he could re-name it Chez Morgan– he could throw mattresses out the back door in mid-winter, paint the place Broncos’ orange and blue, crank up the band every night of the week, and nobody could tell him not to.

In the end, though, he wound up selling off half of the building, just to pay off the creditors.  He had a chat with a banker friend about financing it, but he felt safer just selling Sepp’s (slightly nicer) side of the place and living without the worry.

He found a couple he’d known a long time– the husband worked at the post office, the wife ran housekeeping at The Gant– and sold them Sepp’s half for a pretty fair price.  And everything went along hunky-dory, for quite a long time.

But then they had a baby, and then they had a second, and their side started to feel a bit cramped.  So they decided to move down to Carbondale, and sold their side of the house to…

… And that’s when the trouble started.  Because that’s when Risa showed up.  Risa and the dog.

…

Tags: Chapter 1 by John
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