Michael sighed.

"Don't sigh as though you wished I was a thousand miles away. Aren't you going to kiss me?" She stood up.

"Eva," Michael said wearily, "I nearly got killed this afternoon and I can hardly move . . ."

"You don't care whom you kill, do you, yourself, my husband . . ."

"Please," he said, taking off his coat and throwing it on a chair. "I'm dead tired and I want to go to sleep."

"Your face is a mess," she said, without sympathy.

"I know."

"You're not taking proper care of the property."

"I'm going to sleep."

"I didn't come down here to watch you sleep," she said.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't do anything . . ."

She began to pace up and down the small room, the coat open and swirling around her, making her look like a giant, ferocious cat. "I'm getting tired of being rejected. By you. By my husband. You want to kill yourself-fine. He wants to kill himself-fine. Maybe the sooner the better for everybody. Maybe I won't even wait. You're not the only two men in the world. Just for your information, and you can pass it on to your beloved, perverted friend, my husband, if you wish, there's a man who's come over from Austria three times in the past year to ask me to marry him."

"Good for you, I wish you every happiness."

"I'm tired of this miserable little town and these piddling mountains," she said, pacing wildly. "Of these dull, heavy American peasants. Of drunken brawlers with their mangled faces . . ."

"Be reasonable, please . .

"I want to live among civilized human beings. I thought maybe you'd help pass the season . . ." She was almost snarling as she spoke. "But I'm afraid I made a mistake. You're a little more intelligent than the rest, perhaps, and better educated, but you're like them all. After the first fine careless rapture"-she threw out the phrase mockingly-"the same old middle-class, timid censoriousness, the same hypocritical cowardly morality. So, you're too tired to go to bed with me. Other nights, other excuses. Go to bed with my husband. I'm sure he'd be pleased and so would you and maybe when he dies next week or next month he'll die happy and leave you his fortune in his will."

Michael slapped her. She stood stock-still, her lips drawn back, and laughed. "So, you're too tired to go to bed with a woman, but you're not too tired to hit one. You're going to regret that slap, Mr. Storrs." She swept out of the cottage, leaving the door open behind her. The wind blew in, cold and raw, and Michael shivered. He walked slowly over to the door and closed and locked it, then took off his jacket. He was too tired to get undressed and fell on the big bed with all his clothes on.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

The ringing of the telephone awoke him. He groaned as he got off the bed to go into the living room to answer it. His muscles had stiffened even more during the night and the wind had blown open a window and chilled him as he lay on top of the covers, and he wished he had awakened in a warmer climate.

Bright sunlight streamed in through the windows as he limped toward the telephone. The clock on the mantelpiece showed that it was a quarter to ten. He hadn't slept that late in years. He had a vague memory of involved, disturbing dreams, luggage lost in airports, dark passages leading to the wrong exits.

"Hello," he said into the phone.

"Michael. . ." It was Andreas Heggener.

"Good morning." Michael tried to sound cheerful and wideawake.

"I hope I didn't awaken you."

"*I've been up since seven," Michael said, lying to conform with what he hoped was the public image of himself as an energetic, principled, hard-working citizen. "How are you feeling today?"

"Fine. No fever and no cough. I was just wondering if you could manage to take me down to New York tomorrow instead of waiting. I'd like to get the whole foolish business over with as soon as possible."

Michael ran his hand over his face and scraped the stubble of beard and felt the scabs of the scratches from the branches of the tree he had crashed into. He would have liked to be more presentable for New York, but he said, "Fine. What time in the morning?"

"Nine okay?"

"Nine it is. I'll get it squared away with Cully."

"Oh . . ." Heggener said. "Eva says she's not in the mood for skiing today."

"Neither am I," Michael said. He wasn't in the mood for Eva, either. "See you tomorrow morning." He hung up, wondering if the imprint of the slap he had given her the night before was still visible on her cheek and if Heggener had noticed it.

He went into the bathroom, glanced at himself hastily in the mirror for a moment, was not pleased with what he saw, then patted some cold water gingerly on his face, which made very little difference in the way he looked or felt.

He put on fresh clothes, and, too lazy to make his own breakfast, drove down to the cafe across from the ski school. Dave Cully was sitting, scowling as usual, over what might have been his fifth cup of coffee. Cully waved to him to sit down and scowled some more when he heard Michael order a large glass of orange juice, waffles with bacon and eggs and coffee.

"People like you drive me crazy," Cully said. "I eat one bran muffin I put on two pounds and you eat like that and I bet you don't weigh an ounce more than when you were twenty years old."

"Two pounds less," Michael said smugly.

"It should be against the law," Cully said. "Your face sure is a mess." He said it as though it made up, at least in a small way, for Michael's metabolic processes. "The way I heard it you're lucky to be alive."

Michael shrugged. He didn't want to discuss his hobbies with Cully. "The way I hear it," he said, "we're all lucky to be alive."

When his meal came, he buttered the waffles generously and poured maple syrup over them. He ate hungrily, remembering that he had skipped dinner the night before. Cully watched him with a look of sour longing and ordered another cup of coffee, black.

"If you'd been killed," Cully said, relishing the theme, "most of the folk here would have been real sorry, but've said, Well, the stupid sonofabitch was asking for it, and it'd be forgotten in two days. If one of the local boys'd crashed, they'd have lynched Jerry Williams. And I'd've held the rope. Going in for any more crap like that?"

"Depends upon what comes up," Michael said.

"One day, Mike," Cully said soberly, "your luck is going to run out."

"The crowds will cheer."

"No, they won't," Cully said. "I know I won't and neither will most of the people in this town. I don't know whether you know it or not, but you're well-liked here. Except for the goddamn Porsche, you haven't put on the dog and everybody's admired the way you've brought Heggener around. Except maybe the doctors." He grinned.

"And Madam Heggener," Michael said.

"Oh." .

"The franchise has just about run out, Dave," Michael said. "You better look around for another victim."

"Well," Cully said, "you had a longer run than most. We've got a good racing class here and they're fun to ski with. I could switch you and . . ."

Michael shook his head. "Thanks, but I've decided I'm not cut out for the life of a ski teacher. I'm resigning my commission, Dave. I'll give you back my jacket during the week."

"No hurry. You going to leave town?"

"Only for a couple of days. I want to make sure I'm not kidding myself and that Heggener is really on his feet before I go. And I certainly don't want to be paid for skiing with him" What he didn't say was that for some good reasons, like feeling that he was rescuing a valuable man from despair and death, and some bad reasons, like proving Eva Heggener was wrong, no place on the face of the earth that Sunday morning held more interest for him, bound him more securely, than Green Hollow. "Still, Dave," he said, "whenever you get overloaded and need someone to fill in for a couple of days, you can always call on me."

"Thanks," Cully said. "I'll remember that. Oh, I have some news for you-Norma's having another baby."

"Congratulations," Michael said.

"Wait till we see if I can raise the money to send the kid to college before you congratulate me," Cully said, but Michael could see he was pleased at the prospect of a third child. "This time we're aiming for a girl. Norma's mother says girls're more trouble than boys, but they sweeten the atmosphere around the house. While we're talking about it . . ." He hesitated and gulped at his coffee, and Michael could see that he was approaching a difficult subject. "I never believed that stuff about you and Norma before we were married. I guess I should've told you sooner, but I was a little chicken. I knew nothing'd gone on between you. She was a virgin the night we were married." He grinned sheepishly, as though admitting to a youthful peccadillo that he had gotten away with, unpunished, a long time ago.

"Did you tell the Ellsworths?"

"No." Cully smiled again. "I didn't want to destroy my wife's reputation in the eyes of her family."

Michael laughed. "Dave," he said, "you've done a lot for me here when it would've been just as easy to run me out of town and I want to thank you for it."

"Horseshit," Cully said gruffly. "I hired a competent ski instructor. That's what they pay me for. Now, get out of this restaurant. I can't stand the sight of you eating like that."

He was ordering more coffee when Michael left the cafe, smiling.

Exactly at nine the next morning he drove up to the Heggener house. He saw the door to the garage was open. Heggener's Ford was there but Eva's Mercedes was gone. There wasn't any barking, so he guessed the dog was gone, too. Heggener was waiting for him, dressed warmly. For his trip to the city, he had given up the Tyrolean hat and was wearing a soft black felt hat, which sat squarely on his head. As Michael carried Heggener's bag to the Porsche, Heggener said, "This is hospital day. Bruno coughed all night and Eva's taken him to Burlington. She doesn't trust the local veterinarian and she's heard of a wonder animal doctor in Burlington. She should be given a yearly retainer by the American Medical Association for her devotion to disease." He smiled forgivingly, as though his wife's hypochondria in respect to husbands and dogs was a charming little quirk of character. There was no hint in his manner that he knew anything of what had passed between Eva and Michael two nights before.

The Porsche ate up the miles of highway smoothly. Heggener said he liked to go fast so. Michael held the car at eighty-five, while keeping a careful watch in the rear-view mirror for police cars.

"In the old days when I returned to Europe as a young man," Heggener said, "there was no speed limit and I had a beautiful Alfa with a custom built body and if I went slower than a hundred and twenty miles an hour I felt I was dawdling. Driving was a sport then, but I suppose we must always expect civilization finally to interfere with our pleasures."

He sat in silence for a while, erect, the black hat nearly touching the roof of the little car. Then he said, "Michael, I've been thinking about you. You're not going to spend your life teaching skiing, are you?"

"No," Michael said. "In fact, I'm not even going to spend another day teaching skiing. I told Cully I quit yesterday."

"You did?" Heggener said flatly. "Are you leaving Green Hollow?" "Probably not until the end of the season-if then," Michael said. "When I leave more or less depends upon you."

"Does it?" Heggener sounded surprised. "In what way?"

"If, when you get out of the hospital, you still want to ski every day with me," Michael said, "I'll hang on."

"That is most kind of you. And Eva?"

"I imagine she'll be looking for another instructor."

"I see." Heggener nodded. "She does have a reputation for being difficult to please."

"Well-earned." Michael couldn't hold back from saying it.

Heggener smiled again, the same smile as when he had spoken about Eva's predilection for hospitals. Then the smile vanished. "I feel sorry for her," he said. "She didn't know what she was getting into when she married me. The atmosphere of sick rooms, a small town, America. . . . She feels out of place here, it is not congenial to her. She is bored. She has kept her Austrian passport, you know, although she is married to an American. She is constantly warning me that she is only in passage here, she is not rooted. When I die, she will be on the plane for Europe within a week."

"You're not going to die." .

"We shall see," Heggener said calmly.

Again he was silent for about ten miles, looking out at the countryside. "Winter shows the bare bones of a country," he said. "And the bones here are magnificent. I admire many things about Europe, but I am rooted here. I am not divided." He was quiet for a while, as though reflecting about roots and divisions. "About you," he said. "After the season . . . what do you intend to do?"

"I have no plans."

"For a man your age, with your abilities," Heggener said, "to have no plans is a little sad, wouldn't you say, if not downright un-American . . He smiled, to take the sting out of his pronouncement.

"Both," Michael admitted.

"If I were to say that perhaps I have a plan for you, Michael, would you consider it an unwarranted intrusion on your privacy?" "Of course not."

"My manager, Mr. Lennart, is leaving in April," Heggener said, "with no regrets on either side. He has been offered a much better job in a big hotel in Chicago and I have begun to have some doubts about his complete honesty. What I have been considering offering you is the position of manager."

In the rear-view mirror, Michael saw a white car that might be the police coming fast over a hill. Until the car swept down and past him, he didn't speak. Then he said, "It's very thoughtful of you, Andreas, but I don't know the first thing about running a hotel."

"It's not as complicated as people think," Heggener said. "I have a good staff and one of the boys who has been with me three years is ready to move up to the position of assistant manager and would be of great help. You like Green Hollow and the town likes you. The duties would leave you a great deal of time to ski. In fact, you would attract guests by being available to ski with them, which Mr. Lennart is not. You are easy with people and as you showed with Rita, who, by the way I am sorry you did not get to sing in our bar instead of Mr. Davis's, you have an idea of what might please our clientele that would help us considerably. I would be prepared to offer you a decent salary plus a percentage of the profits, which are also, I am happy to say, considerable. As part of your training I would finance trips to Europe to see how other hotels I admire are run and in any case, your vacations would be quite long, since the hotel is a seasonable business. Of course, I don't expect you to give me an immediate answer. You have all the time you want to tell me yes or no." "Have you spoken to Eva about this?" Michael asked. One thing was certain-if Eva Heggener was to be in a position to tell him what to do and what not to do he would decline with thanks.

"No, I haven't spoken to her," Heggener said. "From our discussions, it would seem that she will be gone from now on for longer and longer periods. In any case, where the business is concerned, it is I who make all the decisions. It would be understood that she would leave you severely alone."

Michael could imagine what those discussions must have been like. They would be more likely to drive a man into a hospital than any bouts of coughing, with or without blood.

"Let's talk about it," Michael said, "when you get back."

"Of course," Heggener said and put his chin down on his chest and dozed until they reached the hospital.

Michael felt a twinge of pity as he saw Heggener put into a wheelchair, already somehow diminished, with a no-nonsense nurse pushing him swiftly and efficiently out of sight to God knew what pain, what tests, what probing and predictions.

ooooo He checked into the Hotel Westbury, because it was on Madison Avenue near where he had lived and he had often dropped into the bar for a drink. It was the cocktail hour and the bar was crowded with couples, released and joyful after the day's work and he felt a pang of self-pity because he was alone and there was nobody in the city to welcome him and feel the evening was improved because he had arrived in town. On an impulse that he didn't examine, he called Tracy's number. The phone rang and rang and he was about to hang up, not knowing whether he was relieved or sorry that she was not at home, when the phone was picked up at the other end and he heard her voice, a little breathless, saying, "Hello."

"Hello, Tracy," he said. "I was just about to hang up."

"I just came in," she said. "I was coming up the steps when I heard the phone ringing and I ran, as you can tell by the way I'm breathing." She laughed. "Where are you?"

"Around the comer. At the Westbury."

"Oh." Suddenly she sounded cautious.

"Am I too close for comfort?"

"Don't start in like that," she said warningly.

"Sorry."

"Are you all right?"

"Why shouldn't I be all right?"

"I mean calling me like this-out of the blue. And in the city. Are you all right? All in one piece?"