I’ve been a skier for over twenty years, although I’m usually not able to get in more than a week in any given year. As a remainder of a dying breed, particularly in my age group, I’ve been forced to befriend many boarders. There’s some low-grade friction – don’t chop up my moguls and I won’t steal your powder – but after hours, at the lodge, we’re all bound by a common love of a good day on the slopes. We warm the chill in our bones with Jagermeister and the replace the lactic acid in our legs with Sierra Nevada Pale.
It was early in the evening, and I was talking to Kelly, a petite red-head that hit jumps and rails better than most of the guys on the hill. She was good, sponsored even. Her boyfriend was a cool guy as well, but in terms of skill, her aerials surpassed his even on his best day.
In walks M, and many of the wool-clad heads turn to follow the click of her heels. She’s definitely not a skier or a boarder: not a spot of gore-tex on her, slender, lithe, draped in a loose black dress, intentionally uneven hem and plunging decolletage. She’s the only one in the bar in stilettos. She saunters up to Kelly and give her a familiar hug. Kelly sees me eyeing M, and performs the introduction before disappearing to hang with her boy.
M models for G—— off and on, but for the time being, is just trying to stay local and avoid work at all. She lives with four other girls, including Kelly, sleeping in late and getting fired from various mundane jobs. And she’s blazingly gorgeous. Tall and slender with dark eyes and a skin tone on the light side of olive. Her teeth gleam white and her eyes sparkle when she laughs, tiny, intense points of light in a sea of almond and black, she is young and her skin is firm and she cocks her head to the side for a three-quarter profile when she’s talking to you.
We make plans for the next weekend, same place, I’ll pick her up at her place at ten. When I arrive, she’s splayed languidly out on her bed, barely awake. Late night last night, she says, wine? We sip wine and she whines elegantly about having to work, and earn money to live, and how that’s bullshit, and that she should have to do such a thing. She floats halfway into the closet change, allowing me to catch glimpses of her bare shoulder and upper back as she slides into a new outfit.
Tonight is going to be hell. She has no drive, no motivation, a complete disdain for working for anything, an overwhelming sense of narcissistic entitlement. She has no respect anything she has, as she’s only ever been given things and never achieved them. Although she wasn’t like this the week before, I can see in retrospect I voluntarily overlooked the indicators, choosing instead to focus on her beauty.
As we stroll into the bar, those I know fire suggestive grins, didn’t know you had it in you, B, she’s high caliber smiles, before letting their eyes molest her for a precious few seconds. Soon after our first round of drinks, she’s off talking to other friends, other guys, already halfway to drunk, the martini mixing with something else previously ingested, inducing a inexpert tongue and slightly lolling eyes. I let her go, chatting with with some of the boys, getting knowing slaps on the shoulder.
She returns, and pulls me out to the patio.
“So you know, when we were talking the other night, how I liked how you said you don’t judge what other people do?” She slurs the so_ and _said.
“Well, I don’t know about that – I definitely judge peoples’ actions, but but I’m not about to step in and stop them from doing whatever they want unless it affects other people, like me or my friends. I mean, I don’t smoke weed, but if you want to, more power to you, I’m not going to give you shit about it. Have a ball – it doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“Right, well, so, I wanted to ask your a favor.” Looming puppy dog eyes.
“Shoot.” I have a pretty good feeling my answer will be ‘no.’
“I’m out of coke, and my connection here doesn’t have any.”
Funny how I just used drugs as an example … perhaps I was picking up on something. “I see. And?”
“I know another guy, but he’s not here.” She spills some of her martini without noticing. “Downtown.”
“So you want me to drive you downtown, a half hour into a date, do pick up coke?” Her face curls down, hurt. Somewhere down deep I hit a nerve.
“You’re judging me. You don’t have to do it, you know.”
“I know I don’t. I just want to know if you’re going to try to drive down there if I say no. If you want to get all coked up, that’s your call, but that doesn’t mean I’ll help. But I’d rather drive you myself than have you go alone, particularly in your state.”
“Lissen, I’m sssorry I brought it up. I juss thought, you know, that you’d do it, because, you’re nice and you don’t judge people.”
“There’s a fine line between nice and pushover. What you want to do affects more than just you. It affects me if I go, and everyone else on the road if I don’t. If you want to go, let’s go. But know the reason I’m doing it is I don’t want you to put yourself into more of compromising position that you’re already putting yourself, and I don’t want you driving, for your sake and others. If you want to go, let’s go.”
“Do you think I’m a bad pershun?” The question rises in inflection and intensity at the end, she’s armoring herself.
“You want judgement? Fine. No, I don’t think you’re a bad person, but you have some issues. And what pisses me off is not that you want to snort up, but that you could have taken care of this beforehand, or not done it this one night, or even waited until late in the evening. But you waited until I picked you up and bought you drinks, and you wander off to talk to other people, and only come back when you need a driver. How about some courtesy? Yeah, you have issues, but no, you’re not a bad person. Just inconsiderate.”
I’ve spoken too strongly, at some point, I injured her, and she’s burying it, beginning to apply a mask of indifference.
“Okay, whatever. Less juss have another round and you can take me home.”
“Okay. Fine.”
Not my kind of snow.