Chapter 24

     Harrison continued to stare a long time at the speakerphone, then stood up from his alabaster Jacuzzi, reached for his robe and climbed out and stepped over the phone onto the rosewood decking.  A penthouse retreat was for him the equivalent of the “up state Connecticut farm” to his circle of friends.  He especially liked to spend late evenings sitting in the deep, one-hundred- and five-degree tub that guests usually found intoxicating, exhausting  and irresistible.  Tonight’s guest was no exception.  Mary Lou, an old Miami U. friend, flared her nostrils and stood up through the foam and said,

     “Sweetheart, this ‘ol tub is the best sex tease I know.” 

     Harrison turned back and gazed at the dimpled belle of the south whose breasts he thought could tame wild elephants.  “Teasing is over, Mary Lou.  Your Harry needs to get wild and relax.” 

     “Oh, you… you’re just a kid at heart.” 

     Harry stood up, looked down at his package, and grinned, “Yeah… just a kid.”

     “Ice is not my thing, Sam,” came Max’s muffled exclamation as Samantha looked on and the guide held vigil on the belay.  Fifty feet below was Max, clinging to the indigo blue crevasse by his ice axe.  He kicked his crampons into the sky-colored world of ice and moved up another few inches. 

     “You never cowered at the belays on El Capitan,” quipped Sam. 

     Max sighed, reached, crunched.  “That was something akin to rock as I recall.  Ice is ice.”  He moved another few feet up the un-friendly crevasse toward the two small faces peering at him from what seemed like miles above him.  The Swiss air and crystal-clear sky framed his two companions like angels.  Guardian angels…even better, he thought as he pushed his weary body up once again for another few feet.

     “We should perhaps start back after this,” said Ruddy. 

     Sam smiled down at Max.  ”I so enjoy seeing him never giving up.”  She turned to Ruddy.  “You know about those things, don’t you?” 

     “The climbing?” 

Sam grinned and lifted her climbing helmet, running fingers through her hair.  “That too.”

***

     Zermatt’s infamous “Base Lodge Bar” wasn’t much of a room for socializing when compared to the time, money and effort bar owners would go to in America to create an ambiance to guarantee the rent.  The climbing hut atmosphere was, however, just right for the night that was about to be a changing point in the lives of Max, Sam and Ari.

     “Damn.” Cursed the waiter as he quickly placed the lit candle on the table.  He quickly brushed the hot wax off his hand, smiled at Sam and Max and ran back into the kitchen. 

     “Think it hurt that much?” asked Sam. 

     “Probably, given he’s German…” replied Max in a hesitant, but good-humored way. 

      Sam shifted in her seat, gazed about the room, took a drag on her cigarette, and placed her gaze on Max.  “And?”

     “And, what?” answered Max.

     “And you think, dot, dot, dot, c’mon.  There’s more, right?”

     “Just a simple judgment, Sam.  That’s all.”

     Sam leaned across the table and flashed a flirtatious smile, “You have never just had a ‘simple’ judgment since I’ve known you.”

     Max took a sip of his hot toddy and smiled.  “Well, maybe I’m more exhausted today than you’ve ever known me and all I can muster is ‘simple’… my darling.”

     Sam grinned.  “I was proud of us today.”  She leaned back and blew smoke rings into the air.  Each one grew, until suddenly they were framing the young man with the camera hanging around his neck, and whose eyes peered down at her from the overflowing balcony seating. 

Holding her gaze on the young man and with a flirtatious glint in her voice she said,           “In the mood?” 

Max glanced quickly at her and away.  “It’s a bit early, isn’t it?

“Not for him.”

Max paused, and then followed her focus to the balcony.  “Just another photographer dreaming on?”

Sam’s smile slowly disappeared.  “Not just another photographer, Max.  He was in Mexico.”

Max took another look and jokingly said, “How do you know that?”

“He wants me, Max.”

Max nursed his drink one more time.  “Doesn’t everyone?  Rather judgmental on your part, wouldn’t you say?”

Sam stood, lifted her drink and took Max’s hand.  “Time to find out.”

As she yanked Max’s hand, Max realized she was serious. 

“Sam!”

“This will only take a minute,” prompted Sam.  She led him up the timbered stairway, past photographs of the climbing elite that had graced the Matterhorn over the past seventy-five years, past the wooden chairs where climbing bums, doctors, lawyers sat shoulder-to-shoulder with their impressed women of sorts and on through the crowded room to a table being vacated by two hand-in-hand anxious women with a different kind of climbing in mind.

Ari had followed Sam’s impulsive move up the stairs.  He suspected she was on to him.  He turned his back to them and grinned the frightening thought that he was about to be confronted.   And…he knew he had somehow planned it that way. 

The voice from behind him was at once seductive and demanding.  “I suppose you’re going to deny it, right?” whispered Sam.

“Deny it?” answered Ari as he turned to face her.  He grinned once again.  “If I do Samantha, you won’t believe me, right?”

Max cautiously observed the two from his place on the opposite side of the table.  There was something eerie and tense about Sam’s smile as she replied, “Correct.”  

She crossed her legs.  “White roses have a way of being remembered, and… a flashing red light from a gardenia is equally memorable.”  She leaned forward from her adjoining table “Aren’t you going to offer me one of your cigarettes?”

      Ari took the appropriate pause, reflection and little-boy grin.  He reached across with his open pack of Gauloises.

     “Oh, French,” said Sam almost secretively.

     Ari nodded and offered one to Max. 

     With a de-fusing glance toward Sam, Max took one, smiling.  “Sam is particularly fond of foreign cigarette smoke, aren’t you darling?”

     Sam turned to Max with a coy roll of her shoulders.  “Depends on who is smoking them.”  She kissed him on the cheek and as she pulled away, her eyes still on Max, she said “How do you like Mexico, Mr…”

     She turned and Ari lit her cigarette.  “Ari.  Just call me Ari.  Mexico?  Depends on what takes me there.”

     As Sam took a long drag, she looked deep into Ari’s stoic eyes.  “Certainly not toilets.  Right, Mr. Ari?” 

Ari paused as she exhaled a large smoke ring, sending it rippling around his face.         Sam had all the smugness of a cat that had the mouse.

Ari knew he was no ordinary mouse. “Not unless they can deliver pictures of extraordinary mystery,” he quietly volunteered.

Max had remained silent, but now his experience and instinct told him the verbal volleying of the two players was about to become more than a game.  He just knew the momentary stare-down was about to erupt into a jump over the net… the ball be damned.  Max stood up, trying to make light the situation.   “Ari you’re one crafty guy.  You were the one in the bathroom?  The Winnebago?  The tuxedo at Pasolini?  He extended his hand, “Let me be the first…”

Sam lunged across the table like a tigress for the kill,  “For Christ’s sake, Max… let me!”  She hit Ari with a right cross that would have demanded Tyson’s attention.

Ari fell off his chair into the next table, exploding beer and coffee onto his head and shoulders. 

Max grabbed Sam as she was about to jump the defenseless Ari.  “Jesus, Sam.  NO!!

Sam’s anger roared like a lioness about to rip and gorge her prey.  

Ari frantically rose, laughed, quickly grabbed his camera and fired off a continuous series of shots as he slithered away into the crowded room. 

Max mustered all the strength he had to restrain Sam who by now was stumbling toward Ari’s exit, across people, chairs, tables and broken glasses.  Suddenly, Max lunged forward, pivoted and shot his shoulder into her midsection, lifting her over his shoulder like a sack of wheat and stumbled breathlessly through the room, declaring… “That’s the show for tonight, folks…”  As he passed the gaping natives, he translated the same exit speech into German as they gazed in disbelief at what they were seeing.