Diana peered up at the trapdoor, imagining the beauty of the snow and trees she could see from above. Pain, sudden and sharp, unexpected, stabbed at her. Jack... the strength and warmth of his arms with all this cold and snow around them.
She started as Lane said, “Wait’ll you see it up there.”
“Can you see much out the window?”
“Only the universe.” She smiled, then shook her head. “Liz says nobody likes to climb the ladder with luggage, so cabin rules are, last to arrive has to sleep up there. You can’t imagine how incredible it is.”
Diana looked at the trapdoor again, with a surge of anticipation.
Lane said, “Do you want to take your luggage up and see it? I’ll help.”
“Diana honey,” Vivian called. “Time to take Vivian to her awful fate.”
Diana waved at her. “I have to take Viv into town,” she said to Lane. “She’s staying at Harrah’s with a friend.”
“She is? Why aren’t they staying here? Oh, of course. The friend’s of the male gender.”
Diana smiled. “Exactly.”
Lane shrugged. “I wanted to come up here and get away from all that for a while, too. We’ll go up when you get back, then. Or are you going to stay and gamble?”
“No,” Diana said, deciding immediately. “I’ll be back.”
Liz helped Vivian into her coat. “Let’s get you to your den of iniquity, my dear. I’m sure John is so excited he’s had to put on his baggy tweeds. Is he any good at all?”
“Good for hours,” Vivian crowed, tugging playfully on a curly lock of Liz’s hair, light brown and shot through with threads of gray.
“Bullshit! How would you know? You couldn’t last fifteen minutes these days, you old bag.” Liz poked Vivian in the shoulder.
“You want a screwing contest?” Vivian shouted. “You just let me know, you broken down old broad!”
Chris said resignedly, “Always they talk like that. Even when we were kids. Worse.”
Diana shrugged into her jacket, smiling, noticing Lane’s grin.
Vivian said, “Try to be nice to my Diana, Liz. She’s a very delicate child these days.”
Diana, furious, stared at Vivian.
“What do you mean, delicate?” Liz asked, looking from Diana to Vivian with amused, interested dark eyes. “Is she pregnant?”
Diana laughed in spite of herself, and Vivian said, with a soothing glance at her, “She just needs rest and relaxation from all the cares and worries.” She addressed the group. “Will I see all of you again at the casinos?”
“We’ll be in,” Chris said.
Outside the cabin, Diana turned on Vivian. “How dare you do that to me. Liz I barely know, those other people are total strangers. I should’ve known better than to come up here, I knew this was a hare-brained—”
“Honey, I haven’t said anything much — ”
“Anything
much
? You talked to Liz on the phone, set this up. How much did you tell her?”
“Nothing much at all, honey.” Vivian climbed into the car. “Don’t be mad at Vivian who loves you. Just let yourself enjoy this, Diana. Isn’t the cabin marvelous? God, I’d be enjoying that great fireplace and that fabulous view right along with you if it weren’t for John being up here. And Liz, God love her. There’s nobody quite like Liz.”
“They’re skiers,” Diana said sulkily, slamming her car door. “They’ll nag me to try it again. Skiers are like that. I hate skiers.”
Vivian reached to her, took her hand. “If you really don’t like them, really don’t want —”
Diana squeezed her hand, released it. “I didn’t say that. I just meant—”
“They seem like very nice people. That Lane’s a knockout. If you like slim gorgeous women,” she added humorously.
Diana chuckled. “She’s a lawyer.”
“God, even more disgusting.”
Diana started the car. “Madge and Millie seem okay, but Chris—it gets harder all the time for me to be around intolerant people.”
“Don’t mind Chris. She’s just a pathetic old maid, dried up inside and out. She was a boring old woman by the time she was nine, take it from Vivian. Too bad you won’t try skiing just one more time. If I had your body I’d live in ski clothes. It’s a better way to meet men than on a stupid golf course.”
Diana said wearily, “I don’t play golf anymore.” She changed the subject. “God, it’s black up here.”
“You haven’t played golf in six weeks, to be exact. You’ll have to come out of the convent sometime, dearie. Just to take care of the bodily necessities. How long do you think you can go without sex?”
“Forever,” Diana said grimly.
“Not you. You’re not that kind of woman. You need somebody loving you.”
“Wrong. After Tommy I didn’t have sex or even want it for months and months, more than a year. The whole time I lived with Barbara. Everybody I dated got only the pleasure of my company.” Diana squinted through the darkness, her headlights picking up walls of snow sheared into stratified layers by snow plows, and the symmetrical shapes of pine trees.
“Not wanting sex isn’t a bit strange after what you went through with that drunk. I was like that after Joe the schmoe. But it’s easier to do without in your twenties. Women need it more when they get older. Forty-two isn’t such a bad age, either, I can tell you. Although I wouldn’t mind being thirty-three again.”
“Thirty-four.”
“Thirty-four. You’re so attractive. I don’t even like to let you near John, if the truth be told. Though he tells me he prefers his women well-padded, thank God. I’ll tell you now that it’s over with Jack, at least I hope it’s over, I don’t know what you saw in that piece of male fluff. Good- looking, yes, but that’s all. Not much wonder he’s done everything but throw himself under the wheels of your car to get you back. He’ll never have anything like you again.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Diana said evenly, steering the car carefully around the curves, watching for ice patches in the road.
“Anymore? You haven’t talked about it at all. I don’t know what you think friends are for. You’ve done your mourning for him, six weeks is more than he deserves. But no, nine hours to Tahoe and all I get is your long face. I felt like stopping the car and performing a mercy killing.”
Diana laughed.
“That’s better. Are you still taking the pill?”
“Yes Viv. Yes, mother.”
“Jason at work is panting after you.”
Diana shrugged.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He bores me.”
“So why are you taking the pill, my little nun in a convent?” Irritated, Diana did not answer.
“Well, it’s intelligent, whatever your reason. You might meet someone up here.”
“If I do, I don’t intend to hop into bed with him.”
“Phooey. I was in bed with John two hours after I met him.”
Diana glanced at her friend in amusement. “John’s lasted longer than any of your other… enthusiasms, I will say that.”
“Why shouldn’t I do what I feel like doing? All the men do. I’ve done my biological duty, I’ve produced a child. Now my vagina’s strictly for fun. Nothing is forever, Vivian’s learned that much after her two disasters. Wait’ll you hear the joys of divorce San Francisco style from Liz. Twenty years, for God’s sake. If I ever thought two people would go to the undertaker together it was Liz and George. Till George leaped out of his shorts over some hot blonde thing in his office. God, men can be such bastards, such pricks.”
Diana had reached the intersection of Highway 50, and she waited for an opening in the Saturday night traffic streaming toward the casinos.
“You need a love affair, Diana. A good love affair.”
Diana pulled onto the Highway. “I had one. Jack was more fun than anyone I’ve ever known. I never knew what he’d do next. He was like a man-child to me.”
“I’m sure,” Vivian said with ill-disguised sarcasm. “I mean a real love affair. Mind-blowing sex, all you do is go to bed and come till you’re vanilla pudding.”
Diana laughed. “Viv, you’re bad.”
Vivian grinned lasciviously. “It’s good to be bad.”
“I can’t believe how built up it is now,” Diana said, gazing at glittering blinking miles of neon along Highway 50.
“I always thought your feeling for Jack was more protective than anything else. I can’t imagine him burning up the sheets.”
Diana sighed. “You have a one track mind tonight.”
“I’m just used to all your little tricks by now, how you change the subject.”
“You’re straying into private territory, that’s all. I loved going to bed with Jack.” She added affectionately, “I’m just not the blabbermouth you are.”
“How would you know if he was any good? You’ve had precious little experience for this day and age.”
“Viv, we’ve been through this before. I don’t think experience is important. I just don’t. I didn’t need the three men before Jack to know how good it was with him.” The dark tower of Harrah’s came into view. She stared curiously; the hotel had been built since the last time she was here.
“Three men? Your marriage hardly counts. It’s a wonder you didn’t leave that drunken fool of a Tommy still a virgin. And that McDonnell-Douglas engineer— At least tell me this, Diana. Was Jack that good in bed? Really?“
“Yes, for me. Really.”
“Men are really good in bed when they want more than their own pleasure, when they really, really love women. That makes them sensitive.”
“Jack was sensitive. He loved women.”
“Was that it, Diana?” Vivian asked softly. “Were there other women?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Diana bit off the words.
“You’re the most honest person I’ve ever known. Too honest, you never spare yourself anything. You’re so quiet, you look so tired all the time—I know you’ve got to work this through but don’t exhaust your strength when you have friends who love you and want to help.”
“Thank you, Viv,” Diana said, tears stinging her eyelids.
She knew she had no choice but silence. How could she explain, justify her feelings to anyone? There had to be something wrong with her. How else could she explain the coldness she had discovered in herself after five years of loving Jack Gordon?
She could not forgive him. After six weeks, she could not even consider forgiving him. Agonized by his absence, she had been sullen and waspish in his presence; he had called, rung the apartment buzzer, accosted her in the apartment garage and at her office. Her mind shuttered from him, angry at his hurt, she had refused to listen, turned away repelled when he tried to touch her. Every shred of feeling for this man she had loved better than any other in her life had vanished.
There was more evidence: You never wanted children, she accused herself. Yes, Tommy was a drunk, but that had been an excuse. She had been happy when Jack declared that he wanted only her; living with him unmarried had given her the excuse to avoid discussion or admission that she did not want children—that there was a cold and unloving core in her, that there was something wrong with her.
With Vivian’s luggage in the care of a bellman, Diana kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Vivian held her at arm’s length. “Aren’t you going to stay? And play? Say hello to John?”
“You and John will have your own hellos to take care of,” Diana teased. “I’ll be here in the morning.”
“Liz won’t have a phone in that place, she thinks she’s roughing it. All it does is make things awkward.”
“I’ll find you, don’t worry.”
“Why not stay and play?” Vivian coaxed. “You can’t meet —I mean, you’ve got to get out and around and — ”
“The cabin was your idea, remember? If I’m going to be spending the next four days there, I’d better be a little sociable, don’t you think?”
“You’re right, honey. But get out of there as much as you can. Nothing interesting can possibly happen in a cabin full of women.”
Chapter 2
“Is that what I hope it is?” Lane had walked into the kitchen.
Diana unpacked a paper bag. “Vodka, and this was the best of the wine they had chilled.”
Lane inspected the two wine bottles. “Very nice. Good.”
She rummaged in a drawer for a corkscrew. “Which one do you want opened?”
“You choose. My father’s the wine-lover. Anything I know, he taught me.”
“Are you close to your father?”
“Yes. Very close.” She watched Lane work the cork out with expertise.
“Why don’t we take your luggage up now?”
“I’ve been looking forward to it.”
With a brief word of explanation to the other women who were gathered around the fire animatedly talking, Diana picked up her bag and followed Lane, climbing the ladder with ease.
She stepped into a room filled with silver light from the window, illumination from the sky and snow. In the shadowy light she saw a brass bed, a sharply sloping ceiling, a small dresser and closet. Lane removed the glass from a kerosene lamp on the nightstand, struck a match to the wick. The pool of yellow light revealed details to Diana: a bright gingham quilt and fluffed up pillows, a circular braided rug, the raw wood of the ceiling.
“Turn out the light and come over to the window.”
Diana blew out the lamp and the room again filled with silvery light. “Oh,” she breathed as she reached the window.
The sky was spread with stars, a glittering endless carpet. Trees, stark and white with snow, stood fantastically against the sky. Snow lay in dramatic sculptures, huge drifts casting immense powerful shadows.
“Incredible,” murmured Diana, circling Lane with an arm in an involuntary seeking of physical closeness in this icy grandeur.
They stood silent. Then Lane said, “It’s good to share the newness of this as well as the beauty.”
“You’ve never been here before?”
“No. Madge has asked me to come many times. She’s the only one here I know.”
Diana smiled. “Do you think you can resist the temptation to strangle Chris?”
Lane answered with an easy smile. “I meet Chrisses every day. But it’ll be nice having someone around to change the subject.”
“I’m good at it,” Diana said wryly. “I suppose we’d better get down there and be sociable,” she said regretfully, staring out the window, releasing Lane.
“Let me show you the rest.”
A part of the pine wall slid back on a pulley system, revealing a narrow room with twin beds and a dresser.