“You don’t need to hone yourself,” Marcie said inside his head. “You already are.”
I knew that, he realized. Then why call?
I love you, that’s why.
To call he’d have to go down the mountain. But couldn’t tell Curt he was going. Or Curt would say call 911 about the crashed plane.
“In the old days,” Curt had once joked, “guys left for months on hunting trips. No cell phones back then. No talkin with the wife every day, back then.”
No, Steve had thought, just the pure white light of every moment in elegant untouchable nature. Skies thick with birds, prairies dark with antelope and bison, nights bright with many thousand stars, cold clear water in every creek … “Yeah. I wish we could be back there.”
Curt had glanced at him, surprised. “You would be back there?”
“Thinking it over, what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost, I think we lived better back then. Trouble is, we didn’t understand the universe. Inside the body. Inside life.”
Curt had looked away, back at him. “And we do now?”
IT SEEMED A BAD OMEN to Zack that Curt had shot the first elk. When he was supposed to be finding the elk for them. Not that Zack wanted to be guided. Or be with Steve. What he really wanted was to be alone. Why, after all these years? These ten days they’d looked forward to, every year.
“Keeps us in touch,” he’d said. But did it?
He hadn’t told Steve about last Friday in Malibu, the two Vegas toughs who showed up at his front door the morning before he flew to Bozeman. “You got a week,” they said. Plus their boss Haney the Rat calling Zack every day. “Pay us or we drop the bomb on you.”
The Vegas guys don’t invite you to the high money tables because they like you. You were stupid to think they did. It was because they needed you there to pull the suckers in, to legitimize the place. And because maybe you’d be stupid enough to lose your own money there too. Like you were inciting everybody else to do.
Other gamblers, the rich spenders and wannabees, so idiotically impressed that Zack was there. The future Hall of Famer, the famous linebacker, the TV sports guy with the solid shoulders, strong jaw and winner’s smile. The guy everybody trusted because they thought football makes you noble. Giving gambling a veneer of cool respectability.
How they fought for a chance to kiss his ass. What was wrong with people?
Now despite all this he owed the Vegas guys two million. No big deal in real terms. But no more gorgeous hookers. No more frothing hot tubs with two magnificent women fighting over his prick.
No matter what Steve recommended, Zack had to cash out his portfolio, pay Haney the Rat and the other Vegas guys their two million before they got mean. And the transactions should please Steve, with all the commissions he’d get.
Like so much in life, you do what you have to.
But how do we find happiness? Despite all the lies of modern life, the ads, the TV, the corporations and politicians, the distractions and “entertainments” that turn us into serfs?
What is good, and what evil? When cocaine is money, does that change how we see it? When money’s an option, don’t we embrace and defend what we used to call sin?
And come to love it.
Why was he worried?
What am I here for, he’d used to wonder. But could never find an answer so gave up asking.
Is it true, that you have to do what you have to?
The bullet snapped past his head.
STEVE WAITED ten minutes after Curt and Zack had gone to their tents before he shouldered his rifle and headed down the mountain. The snow was deep and the air very cold, burning his cheeks and the inside of his mouth when he opened it.
But it felt lovely, prehistoric, primal. Just him and the night and the cold and the mountain. The ancient battle. Which in the end life always lost.
For now it was joyous. The black trunks and white snow, the delicate mist of crystals sifting down from the boughs, the air a razor in his nostrils, So good. A challenge: live or die.
“Way too much snow,” he said when he finally reached Marcie. “We may have to leave camp, go down.”
“You poor thing … Are you staying warm?”
“It’s warm in the tent. And once you’re out hunting you don’t mind the cold.”
“If you have to go down, you’ll be home sooner?”
“Yeah, why? Everything okay?”
“No worse than before. No, yes. It is. It is worse.”
His chest went hollow. “What?”
“Those securities you were going to sell? Merrill Lynch says we can’t cash them.” She said nothing for a moment, gathering herself. “They’re worthless.”
“They can’t be! They’re cash equivalent. Oh shit.” He turned from the phone, staring at the black firs against the white night, his chest crushed by this news as by a bullet, something he could not survive. “Oh Jesus Marcie.”
“So all your clients …”
“Zack – I put all his money there.”
“You put lots of people’s money there.”
“How will I ever …”
“It gets worse.”
He shook his head, as if she could see him. “It can’t.”
“The Lefkowitz deal just fell through.”
“Fuck!” Her 1.2 percent broker’s take on a $9.3 million apartment, next month’s rent and expenses down the drain. “Why?”
“Parnell found them a place. Gramercy Park for God’s sake!”
The air burned his throat, pierced his lungs. For an instant he thought of the climb he had to make back up the mountain to camp. When what he wanted was to sit down and die.
“Steve, what are we going to do?”
“Don’t give up, baby. Don’t give up. I’ll be home soon.” He shut off, wondering how he could tell her not to give up when he already had.
STEAL FROM A THIEF
AFTER FOUR CUPS of whisky when Zack had crawled into his tent he hadn’t even bothered to turn on his ebook, not caring about what went on in some imaginary world. Over-weary, weirdly unsettled, he wanted to talk to Monica but there was no damn service up here.
The griz, the wrecked plane, the cocaine.
The meeting next week that would decide his future.
Steve’s bullet smashing into the aspen.
What had Steve been shooting at? There’d been no elk, no nearby tracks.
He thought of the two Vegas debt collectors who’d shown up at his door last week. One tall and muscular with a tiny mustache. The other short and swarthy, light on his feet.
He could’ve taken them both out, but what then? And then it’s in the news …
He’d tell Steve to sell his auction rate securities. Get those assholes off his back.
He tried to find a more comfortable position in his sleeping bag but kept sliding off the foam mat. A root underneath bit into his ribs, he pushed it down but it kept popping back up.
How many years had Steve been like a brother? Believed in Zack when nobody