Chapter 1
< 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!”
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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.
…
Aspen, CO