There is a place I have been where the nights form little altars. And on them love can be made long into the dawn. A place where our heads are so woozy with the chemicals of our love that drugs and alcohol can only serve to heighten our imbalances. A place where our hearts get torn out of our chests and smashed underheel like extra tomatoes in the back parking lot of a busy supermarket. In this place everybody's feet run dripping red and our hands are full of bloody hearts and every one of us has grapefruit-sized holes in our chests.

We meet them under the best of circumstances. At those times in our lives when love itself may hold some promise and we're as full of ourselves as we are of them. And they respond. Maybe it's the swaggering overconfidence of our youths. And maybe all of our gods in their creations conspire for these things to be. And we love. And we share and feel. And then they rip our hearts clean out of our chests and show them to us one last time before they crush them underheel. Maybe you've been there too.

Chapter I

I came off the mountain and went back into the ski school to stash my skis at the end of my last day of work for the season. Dawn was sitting on a bench reading a novel of some sort. She looked up at me and down again, then up at me again, and she smiled.

"Nice to see you again, Billy. It really is. How's it going?" She was a little shy about it, but I'd always figured her for an upstate New York woman and hearing her speak in full sentences especially talking to a guy, was refreshing enough to make me take notice.

"Hi Dawn! How's ski teaching treating you now?" Dawn was going to be working the "extended season" for another couple of weeks and still lived in employee housing provided by the resort for its "active" workers. I had just gone "inactive" and had moved into a condo very near where we were talking now.

"OK enough. There's still work but I'm not really very busy."

"I dunno... you're sitting on a bench reading a book. You look alot busier than most of us. What are you reading? Is it any good?"

"I don't know... I just started it. I think it's about a female serial killer who lures men into her Miami mansion and tortures them and stuff. Then I think she dismembers them and throws their bodies and parts into the canal behind her house."

"Coooool! How many has she killed so far?" I asked loosely.

"Well, only a couple, but they're being really graphic about it and taking their time to set up the atmosphere... You know... make it believable."

"Oh, it sounds pretty believable. Really believable. In fact, I believe it already." I looked right into Dawn's dark eyes, and held her gaze for exactly long enough to think up something else to say.

"You know, if you don't mind my saying so, your black lipstick looks really good on you. You have the face and the hair to make it work."

She just stared at me. Maybe three seconds worth. But we held gaze and didn't let go.

"Uh, Dawn? Are you... blushing?! How are you gonna finish a book about a mass murderess if talking about makeup makes you blush like that?"

"You think I'm beautiful, don't you?" she shot back without a millesecond's thought.

"Why yes! I do."

"And you'd make love to me in a heartbeat if we were alone together, wouldn't you?"

"Well, maybe."

"So tell me, Billy. Does your whole body blush like that when women talk openly to you or just your face?"

Guesswork, pure and simple. My tan is so dark from successive months out on the snow at high altitude that I could turn beet red from carbon monoxide poisoning and still get misdiagnosed as a Jamaican. But I wanted to share her wit more than I needed to duel with it.

"Hey! Let's find out!" and I yanked my shirt tail up revealing most of my abdomen.

"Good Gawd you're skinny! Do you eat? Food?" and authentically gawked at my belly button. She probably noticed how lilly white it was as well.

"Wanna have dinner with me, Dawn? Right now?"

"I really can't afford it. Like I told you on the bus the other day, I'm pretty strapped."

"Let me rephrase this, OK? Wanna date me?"

"Sure. That'd be great. Are you sure?"

"What do you like to eat?"

"I eat everything." she said slowly and reached down to slip her book into a studded black leather satchel with backstraps on it. She got up to leave with me and together we walked to dinner.

"Why do you want to date me?" she asked and then put a cherry tomato in her mouth and started sucking on it. The effect from her cheeks and lips was aimed right at my eyes. Right at the man.

"How do you do that?!" I was truly surprised as well as curious. "Were you saving a tomato for just the right moment? That's too cool! I wanna date you because you're just too cool!"

"No, Billy. Really. Why do you want to date me? Are you attracted? Lonely? Married and bored, or what? Why do you want to date me?"

"I'm single, available, and attracted. Sure I'm lonely. But that doesn't have anything to do with whether I'm dating anybody, or even married, for that matter. I'm lonely habitually. I just dig the feeling. Like the way you dig black lipstick."

Dawn started blushing. Really blushing deep red. And then a slow smooth smile came over her face as she looked right into my eyes. Like she was waiting for some dawning recognition in my gaze. It took a second or two for the first dawning to happen.

"You can do that whenever you want, can't you?! Goddammit, you can blush at will!"

"Honestly, you're such a guy!"

"But I can... like,... I can tan at will. It just takes longer." There comes a time in guy-girl talk when the guy would best defer to higher power or simply look stupid. I wasn't into looking stupid and I was ready to sit there in awe of her Cool. At that moment, in that one period of time, I was completely ignorant of whether all women were this cool, or just the one sitting right in front of me. I started looking around the restaurant to see if all of a sudden every woman in there was just too cool.

"Don't you worry about skin cancer?" she asked blithely. It was more a challenge than outright concern for my health.

"I smoke... and I'm probably too stupid to worry about it."

"I smoke, too. I worry about it but I guess it doesn't scare me as much as it should. Secondhand smoke could kill me just as fast so maybe I don't worry about it so much anymore."

We stared into each other's eyes for a moment.

"I'd kinda like to smoke some pot. Do you have any?" She said it at exactly the same volume and tempo as she did any other sentence.

"Yeah, I do. At my place. It's the next building over from here. You can see it through the window. I'm right above the pool."

"Cool! Is the pool heated? Are people using it this time of year?" she asked with genuine excitement.

"It's heated. There's a coupla hot tubs there, too." I volunteered.

"Do you have a tee shirt and a pair of shorts I can borrow? It would be too cool to catch a buzz and then sit in a hot tub! Let's do it!" It was the first time I saw such genuine emotion unchecked in this higher power. She was just plain into it.

Dawn had the run of my tee shirts and lit up on The Dead '93 Summer Tour shirt. My cut-off blue jeans fit her I mean perfectly, and she remarked that we wear the same size clothes. She even tried on my leather pants. They fit her as well as they fit me but she said her tastes run a bit tighter in pants.

We were sitting in the hot tub pleasantly buzzed and looking up into a starry moonless night with steamy vapors jumping off the water into the cold.

"So what are you thinking about, Billy?" Dawn asked with quiet stability, the kind that women might reserve for their men in a hot tub on a starry night in borrowed clothing.

"Tell me, Dawn. Let's say two people tell each other what they really expect out of a relationship. Do their words actually mean anything? Do they to you... to a woman?" I asked.

"Not really. I don't think so. I can change my expectations as quickly as I can change out of your tee shirt and pants. You can too. I'd make you mouth the words though. Just to hear you say it. I might not even listen but I'd make you say it." She paused for maybe a breath. "Just like you're about to make me say it. You are, aren't you? You wanna hear me tell you all about my expectations in a relationship with you."

She looked up at the sky briefly. Then she pierced purposefully into my eyes and crossed her arms. "Fine. You go first."

I looked up at the same portion of the sky she'd glanced at, staring there as if I were looking at a flying saucer coming to take me back home. And I said slowly, "I want to share and feel. I want to be shared and be felt in return. That's all I want." Then I looked deeply into her dark eyes and said, "But what I really expect is to be loved and appreciated. Then I expect you to rip my heart out, give me a good look at it, and then I expect you to stomp on it a coupla times; maybe a few more times just for good measure. See? I have simple expectations."

She bolted upright in the tub and stared back at me incredulously. She lit up a slinky, knowing smile that matched the brightness in her eyes. This time when she talked she was animated.

"You're still in love, aren't you?! Aren't you?! You can say it. It's not going to chase me out of your hot tub." She looked like a federal prosecutor standing over the jury after a summation, and didn't move a muscle. Not even a twitch.

"I wouldn't know Love if it walked up behind me and kicked me in the ass." It was all I could croak, hopefully loud enough for the jury to hear. "For all I know, Love is getting hacked up and tossed in a canal behind a Miami mansion."

"I dunno, Man" she replied in mock doubt. "To share and to feel. To be shared and to be felt in return. To be appreciated. To have your beating heart ripped out and stomped a coupla extra times for good measure. Sounds like you've got a pretty good handle on the subject" she said dryly but with a smile.

She wasn't finished. No. She had just barely gotten going. She sat back comfortably in the tub, making herself at home as it were, and just fired away.

"So somebody gets their heart ripped out. Is it always yours or do you get to do your share of the ripping?" But she cut me a break here and kept going, relegating her question to that of rhetorical. She looked deep into me and took a breath.

"Do you remember your first love? The highschool sweetheart kind? How old were you... fifteen, ... sixteen?" she asked.

"Yes. Both." I answered clumsily. "It lasted two years."

"You loved her, didn't you? I'll bet you never slept with her either. Stop me, Billy. Stop me when I'm off the mark. But you probably slept with her best friend, huh?"

"Well, I ended up dating her best friend for the next four years. This first love started dating around. Her best friend told me about it and then she plucked me ripe...right off the vine."

"And in the end, you dicked her over, didn't you?" she said softly.

"Goddammit woman, how do you do that?!" I was in awe, with saucer-sized eyes. How the hell does she do that?!

"And then the score was Billy one Women one. Why, I'll bet the score's still even, more or less, isn't it? So I have a fifty-fifty chance of either ripping your heart out or having you rip out mine. Or we could take turns ripping each other's hearts out."

"We could develop a healthy sadistic pathology to carry us through life!" I added cheerfully.

"So how come you didn't sleep with her, your first love I mean?" she asked with apparently genuine curiousity.

"Huh?"

"You heard me. How come?" she persisted.

"How come what?" I tried again.

"How come you didn't sleep with your first love? Two years?! Sixteen?!"

"You just want to hear me say it, don't you?"

"If you don't then I will." Her eyes were squinting into me like a lioness piercing the distance.

"Because I loved her." I mumbled barely audibly.

"What's that?! I'm afraid I didn't quite catch that!" she announced.

"You heard me." I said softly.

"It almost sounded, now I'm not real sure about this but... It kinda sounded... maybe something like, BECAUSE YOU LOVED HER." Then she seemed as if she were ready to subside.

"So you play in this game of love and get battered the first time up. You come back strong and get to do some battering of your own. And all these many years later you can still stick your head up your ass and claim you don't know love when it kicks you in the head." Then she really did subside. There was quiet in the dark night.

"So now it's my turn, I guess. Huh Billy?" She shot me a sympathetic look like we don't need to do this if you don't want to. I nodded and took a deep breath. Then I swallowed.

"Billy. I'll rip your fucking heart out before you lay a hand on mine. That's my expectation and it can be yours too. See? Isn't that simple? We both have the same simple expectations!"

Well, if her parents had not named her Dawn, I would have started calling her that anyway. At first I would have suspected her of being extraterrestrial but not every way cool woman needs to be considered an alien much less treated like one. I kept staring at her trying to hold every image and memory I could retain in the shortest time possible. I was trying to soak her up like a sponge.

"Billy, I've got to go home now. You wanna go skiing tomorrow if I don't get a lesson?"

"Sure, Dawn. That would be great!" I was genuinely excited. "There are some towels on the chair over there. I'll grab a couple and we can go back upstairs out of the cold."

Upstairs in my place she dressed and wrote down my number. Heading for the door, Dawn placed the back of her hand gently across my cheek. Then she reached for my heart and let her open palm caress my chest just once, for a fleeting moment. Our first physical contact. The first time our flesh ever touched. And then she was out the door and down the stairs.

I spent the rest of the night weaving expectations that I knew were going to broil me to a crisp or change my life. Most likely both. I lay there all night replaying her, over and over again, picturing her face and smile and eyes. And lips. And hair. Everything I could remember about her. Her words. I played it all over and over in my mind until I finally fell asleep exhausted about the time the sun came up. And there in the convenience of my sleep, I dreamt about her some more.

Sometimes I remember my dreams the best right as I'm waking up, just as we cross over the line from asleep to awake. When my phone rang and pulled me back over that line, I was dreaming that the whole condo complex was on fire and people like me were dragging themselves out and then going to work, or maybe going skiing.

I reached out for the phone and grabbed it.

"Hello" I said way more cheerfully than most people would, but then I had just gotten out a burning building and was on my way to go skiing. I was still shaking out cobwebs and trying to get coherent.

"Hi Billy. It's Dawn. Are you awake yet?"

"Hi Dawn! How's it going?"

"I'm down at ski school. It's pretty slow here."

"So do you think you're gonna get any work?"

"I've still gotta wait around for awhile to find out. You wanna come hang out and then go skiing if nothing comes up here?"

"Sure. That sounds great! Do you want me to bring you some breakfast or a cup of coffee?"

"Naw. We can go get some from here if it's slow enough. Thank you though."

"OK. I'll be there in about fourty five minutes or so. How's that sound?"

"Sounds great! See you then. Bye!"

"'Til then. See ya!"

Hanging up the phone, I thought that since she was calling me before she knew whether she had anything going on at work, maybe she had spent the same kind of night I did. God it was good to hear her voice. Or maybe she wanted to hear what I sound like in bed the first thing in the morning.

I walked through the back entrance to the ski school into a cavernous room filled with racks of boots, skis, poles, and benches. Unless you knew where you were going, this room would look like the inside of a submarine. I found Dawn sitting on a bench reading her book. It was easy, like picking up a mental scent and following it to the source. And she knew I walked into the room well before she saw me. I could already tell.

"That's pretty freaky" I said in deference to finding her directly. And my heart started palpitating like it would back in high school before I knew about love.

"I felt you the moment you walked through the back door. It was pretty strong." she offered in casual reply. "Here. I got us some coffee. Yours is on the bench, there. I brought some cream and sugar since I don't know how you take it."

I took the coffee and its condiments in hand and sat down where the coffee had been. The wood was still warm under me from where the coffee had been sitting. Dawn was wearing some kind of fragrance that seemed like vanilla. Mixed with the smells of the coffee, it was more exotic than anything I could remember.

"I do cream and sugar in my coffee. Thanks!" I said and began putting stuff into my cup. We sat there together on the bench drinking coffee and gazing at each other. Smiling with our eyes at each other. If there had been work for her that morning, neither one of us would have known about it. We were oblivious to everything happening or not happening around us. Her pupils were the size of dimes, with the tiniest portions of iris between them and the whites of her eyes. They sparkled like brilliant stars in the cold dark night sky that encased us the night before. Her lips were full and moist, with black reflective lip gloss. They were shiny. Golden light streamed through the window, surrounding her. Hugging and caressing her. The light was more golden than I'd ever seen in a room. The aromas in the room were passionate in their existence. Colors were overhued.

"Great coffee!" I volunteered and drank more deeply, hoping to clear my head at least a little. All the coffee did was help circulate my blood more efficiently. And spread a variety of the chemicals of love as far and as deep into every crevasse of my body as the blood could travel. It was like getting high, I mean tripping high, and wondering what the hell you just took and how long it's gonna last.

Skiing makes for a great date between good skiers. Dawn was a good skier. In fact, she was alot better than me, and in a picturesque way. She had been doing it alot longer than me. But I was on free-heel telemarks, and I skied in such a completely different manner than an alpiner like her, that I could fake the style and grace that eluded me when I had to stick my heel to the back of the binding. But Dawn had alpine skiing down to a dance. She was so tranquil and balanced. Nothing she did looked out of place. Even her hair was synchronized. Then she would start to flow... a flowing erotic dance I've never seen in a skier. At least one I knew personally.

"So how long have you been skiing?" she asked me on the liftride back up.

"Not long. Maybe four or five years. I was a snowboard instructor up at the Basin before I

ever actually learned to ski."

"Do you like it?" she asked.

"I never really put on alpines as a form of recreation. I only did it for the ski lessons or to get good enough for the next level of instructor certification. I ski for the money. I snowboard for recreation. And the reason I really like boarding is because I'm not surfing. But then a coupla years ago I turned onto free-heel and I stopped alpining altogether except to teach. I go out on my tele's every time I go skiing. I don't even board much anymore."

"What's tele'ing like? I've always wanted to do it."

"It's like skiing barefoot. Or floating down a mountain they way you do in your dreams. It's like making any natural motion you want to, knowing the equipment hasn't locked you into the death seat. I make for a way better tele'er than alpiner, though. So I might be just a little prejudiced. How about you? How long have you skied for?"

She drew in a breath. "Since I was about six. I've done it every winter since I started."

"How long have you been teaching?" I asked.

"Maybe twelve years or so. I started doing it when I was in college. It was the only thing I was making any money at so I stuck with it. And then I came out here to Colorado and it was really the only thing I wanted to do. I gotta do other stuff off-season, but I try to bike alot and rollerblade."

"What do you do off-season for money?"

"Any stupid shit job I can find. It doesn't matter. I'll try to do something around the resort so I can keep the employee housing. This year I don't know, though. I might go get a job at the supermarket and score alotta food."

"Where are you from, Dawn?" I asked hoping I wouldn't be intruding.

"Syracuse. How about you?"

"I'm from Atlanta. That's that place that burned down."

"You don't sound Southern. You sound like you're from California." she remarked.

"But I ski southern. You can tell I didn't start when I was six."

"You ski better than I snowboard. Maybe you can show me how sometime. I'd really like to learn to telemark, though."

I taught this one woman I really liked alot how to snowboard. We did a year's worth of riding and enjoying each other's company. She ended up looking exactly like me when she rode. When we rode together, it looked like His and Her stereoscopy. You couldn't tell which one taught the other how to ride. Looking at Dawn now, I was wondering if she could do the same thing and teach me to alpine like she does. That would look highly cool coming down the slope.

"Telemark is as much style as it is skill. More like dancing than skiing. I learned how to do it by copying this guy whose style is so distinctive it made me wanna take up the sport in the first place. He showed me how to do it. We ski together all the time and he's still showing me how to do it."

I paused a moment, looking out into a stand of firs and saw a motion. "Hey, look! It's a marmot. I guess by this time of year he wants his slope back."

"Back east, like in New York, deer would come out onto the slopes and nail some poor shithead." she said.

"So they took back the slopes when they were ready to start acting like deer? Did they ever take out a snowmobile?"

"Once or twice. I remember once this guy killed the deer and then we all ate it at the next employee party. You know, I spent all night thinking about you." all without missing a beat. She was looking at the marmot when she said it. The marmot just looked up at me in a sniffing curiousity or maybe it was admiring Dawn. It wasn't moving until I managed to say something.

"Did it make you hungry for deer meat? I spent all night thinking about you and it only made me hungrier for you." Well that was all I could come up with, so cut me a break, OK?

"Oh, I love cheese! Are you gonna get cheesy with me, Billy? Are you?"

"Sure! I'm a can of Cheez Whiz and you can break off my head and get high off the propellant. Want me to tell you about your hair? How about your nails? Your eyes? You want cheesy? Check this out. I even dreamt about you after I'd managed to fall asleep."

"Cool! Do you remember anything you dreamt?" she asked instantly.

"Nope. Not a thing. Just your words, your face, your scent, your hair, your lips..."

"OK you can stop now." and she was pretty frosty about it.

I figured I'd just give her a minute or two and then she'd say something. Anything. But she didn't. And at the top of the lift, just as we're getting off, she says, "I gotta go. Thanks for skiing with me. I'll talk to you later. Bye!" And she skied off toward the cold blue sky.

I would have racked it up to The Unexplained, blown it off, and gone to play pool with guy friends. But goddammit all I wanted to do was sit in a quiet place, next to a phone, and spend hours just thinking about her and waiting for her to call. Which is exactly what I did. And it was like a drug-induced Dreamland. I spent hours at a time just sitting there thinking about her and by god just like my dreams I couldn't tell you what ninety percent of it was all about.

This time when the phone rang I got yanked back over the line so abruptly that if I had been dreaming anything at all, it was a world away by the time I picked up and answered.

"So Bill, Man. You wanna go skiing this morning before I go to work?" It was my ski guru Carl.

"Sure, Man. You wanna meet me at the cafeteria? I'm gonna grab some food."

"OK. Give me, like, fourty five minutes I gotta get dressed and crap. And find a parking place. Hey, are the slopes crowded?"

I looked out my window and didn't see a soul on the closest slope. "No man, I don't see anybody at all out there. We got the place to ourselves!"

"You got it. Later, Man."

"Yeah. Later."

So then we're sitting on the sidewalk outside the cafeteria drinking coffee and eating some bagels, and Carl says, "Hey, check out that boarder babe with the green top. I want one. How come I can't score me one?"

So I volunteer, "You can score four or even five of them if you don't mind girls from Hong Kong or the Philippines. You can buy them outa the back of men's magazines. There's a bunch of ads. You might need to teach them to board though."

"But I need money for all that. And if I had any money, I wouldn't be sitting here bitching about it. You know what I mean?"

"I sure do. It means if you had any money you'd be sitting here with your woman bitching about something else. Like all those schmucks right over there." and I pointed at a lift ticket window. Sure enough, there was a bunch of people yapping at each other about whatever the hell it was they were yapping about. "It means that if you had any money, you'd be sitting on the front porch of your new Idaho homestead looking at four thousand acres of wilderness, bitching about you ain't scoring no women. That's just the way you are, and you're doing it of all places, in the middle of a ski resort!"

"Yeah, I guess you're right, man. But these women here are just so... fucked up. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah Man." I paused for a second to look up toward the ski school like maybe I could get one quick eyeful of Dawn before me and Carl split for the top of the mountain. "I guess."

Riding up the lift, Carl breaks out a little wooden pipe, lights it up, and starts hitting on it. He handed it to me but I begged off for no better reason than I was way too high already. I was tripping on chemicals I'd never tasted before. My whole being was woozy and yet I was smelling and seeing and feeling and even skiing with a pronounced accuity the belied the fact I could barely think straight. I'd have a passing thought about Dawn and my heart would start doing an erratic rhythm.

"Carl, man. When's the last time you were in love? I mean, head over heels chemicals in your blood you can't think straight real love?"

"Oh, probably that fucking bitch who dumped me last summer in Salt Lake. Man, like I was all ready to move out there and shit. She fucked me up so bad, man. And you know what? She tried to call me last month just to tell me about her new fucking guy. Is that too fucked up or what?"

"Yeah, Man. That's fucked up. So how did you know you were in love with her? Before she dumped you, I mean..."

"I don't know. She made me tell her. She kept nagging at me to tell her I loved her."

"Wait a minute. You loved her because she made you tell her that? That don't make no sense, bro."

"Nothing about that bitch made any sense, man. All women are like that. They just can't wait to dick you. First, they wait for the right time, and then they dump you for some other guy they've probably been seeing for the last six months anyway. They're fucked up, man. Fuck women. I'm over it."

"But you'd date any one of these boarder bitches in a heartbeat, right?"

"Oh, you know it, man. These little girls are out here just looking for fresh meat. Look at the way they separate from their friends the second they're coming down the slopes. Look at it, man. Those girls over there do it every day. I see them every day out here doing the same thing."

"Hey, wait a minute, man. You mean her? That's Chris' girlfriend, Kelly. She's from New Zealand like he is. She's out here with him. man. That's him right over there. You ever see her without ski clothes on? In real clothes? I met her at a party one night. It was about three o'clock in the morning and she was pretty trashed when she walked in. But I couldn't keep my eyes off her. She looked like an airbrushed Vargas girl. Then she started hitting on me and I took my eyes off her for like, four seconds and when I look back she's hitting on the guy standing next to me. But she talks to me every time we run across each other. Here, check this out. "HEY KELLY!" I yelled across the snow and down to where she and her friends were standing. She looked up and stared a second, then waved an arm at me, smiled, held the pose for a moment, and went back to talking with her friends.

"Man, she's gorgeous! Do you know any of her friends?"

"That's her roommate standing next to her and some chick from Australia that dates the liftee I said hello to when we got on the lift just now. But I know all her friends' boyfriends better than I know any of her friends."

"Gee, that sucks, man."

"No, Dude, that's how I know any of them to begin with. You think I meet women just so I can meet their boyfriends?"

Carl wasn't being much of a help here. So I decided to try something else.

"You know, Carl, every time we talk about women, you end up taking me down really steep and scary shit. It's like you don't think we've done a real day on skis unless you can get me to shit in my pants."

"Dude! We do the same runs every time we ski together. You just talk about women all the time, that's all. If you don't like what we're skiing, make a suggestion and we can ski something else. Hey, no big deal."

"Hey man, check this out. This is important. Check her out. See her? Her name's Dawn and she's a ski instructor. Check it out, man." It was like I was gawking at a bank robbery in progress or something. But there was Dawn standing next to a beginner student, just getting close enough to be able to wave at her and smile and look happy and stuff. She saw me and waved, but with her hat and sunglasses on, it was hard to read any particular expression on her face.

"Oh yeah. She lives in employee housing. Really quiet. Like really really shy or something." Carl observed.

"Have you ever actually had a conversation with her?" I asked with genuine interest. Carl might not know shit about choosing the right women, but he knew Availability as intimately as anybody else around the resort.

"No, she just sits there on the bus and keeps to herself."

"She was my neighbor when I lived in her building. I'd talk to her on the bus and stuff. At first she came off like an upstate New York psychowoman, which is kinda why I'm asking you about her. I figured she might be right up your alley."

Then it was time to get off the lift. And sure enough, Carl dragged my ass down the steepest piece of crud he could find. And as he launched off the cornice at the top, I couldn't help myself just one last time.

"But did you really love her?!" I yelled at him as he sank out of sight.

When I finally worked my way to the bottom, I was drenched from head to toe in sweat. Carl was standing there smoking a cigarette. He looked kind of annoyed.

"You know," he said, "sometimes you gotta confront your demons and just point your skis down the hill. Look your fears in the face and maybe it's not so scary after all. You keep telling your students that. Now it's your turn, huh?" And he turned away and skied off with the cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

And that's all we did for the rest of the day. Point skis, confront demons, face fears, get on lift, and repeat. Man, Carl was right. Adrenaline sure helps you forget about women. Now I know why he does this all the time. Come to think of it, this probably explains the rock climbing too. But still, there's just something screwy about getting a rush confronting your fears just so you can forget about your fears for an afternoon. That's like bicycling your way across a hot parking lot trying to stay cool. Or maybe jumping off a bridge.

"So Carl. How's my skiing coming?"

"You ski like a woman, Billy."

"But Carl. Dude. I ski like you. I'm copying you. You ski like a woman."

"No, Deluded One. I ski like a woman. You ski like a leetle gorl."

We were both right, though. Carl had developed a style of telemark unique to his own slender hips and narrow frame. But I was built almost identically, and his style adapted to my own body rather naturally. At first, he spent about a year trying to get me not to ski like him. But once I started getting good on the skis, he must have figured what the hell, and began initiating me into the Carl School of narrow lippy little turns down anything.

"Naw, man. If I was a leetle gorl you'd be all over me."

"Ya think? What makes you so sure I wouldn't just fuck your mommy?"

"Cause you'd never find her. She spends all her time fucking yer daddy."

"So Billy, man. Wadda you wanna fuck around with an Upstate bitch for? All they ever do is eat at you and then spit you out. It's bullshit. Why bother?"

"But Carl, that's what you say about all women. Upstate women just started dicking you over earlier than the rest. I could say the same thing about Southern women. Or high school women. Shit, I was dicked around by leetle gorls when I was in grade school."

"So Bill, you're from Atlanta, right? Didn't it burn to the ground? That's pretty Upstate, man. It sucks, but I'm from there. I know what I'm talking about."

"So if my condo complex burns down I'm gon' go gitta big ol' gun dontcha know and me an' ol' Billah Bawb gon' head on down to the Ford Theatre. Shoot us sum fuckin' Yankees!"

"OK. There you go. At least you have some idea what you're dealing with."

That night I had some of the most vivid and lucid dreams of my life. They were all "historical dreams", the ones that accurately reinact some part of our memory, like a flashback.

It was all about south Florida. A buddy of mine had scored a job near Fort Lauderdale, and then I scored a job at the same place. So I go down there and room with him and his dog. He's dating an exotic dancer he met in a local gentleman's club. He hangs there alot watching her dance and waiting for her to get off work, and he starts taking me down there with him. All the girls treat me nice, being his friend as well as a paying customer. And this one girl starts hanging out with me every time I come in there. She's tall and blonde, tanned, and usually naked. We make plans to get together outside of her work, and it just never seems to come about, but she does spend alotta time naked doing exotic lap dances and seeing how much glitter lotion she can rub off on me in one sitting. She's studying to be a massage therapist and has hands and fingers that dance over my chest like nothing I've ever felt before. So she's dancing nearly, but not right on me one night and she puts her hand on my chest, right at my heart, just enough to support a little of her weight, and puts her lips a half inch from mine. And she asks me, "How do you put up with this and not wanna kiss me?" She had a tatoo of three little dancing dolphins on her left shoulder and I knew her as Cassie. I did want to kiss her. Over and over. But I wasn't kidding myself in any way shape or form about falling for a good act from a professional performer. But she was the one woman I remember the best of the half dozen or so that I hung out with.

My roommate ended up moving to Texas for his next job, and I kept the apartment and hung out in Florida. His girlfriend and her friends kept coming over to my place after he was gone, and we just partied and went out to bars and hung around as a social group. But Cassie was never one of the group. My buddy's girlfriend told me she thought me and Cassie would make a great couple, but she could never get her to come out with us. Cassie had school and another job, and would usually disappear for about six months every year, usually winter.

She had the same lazy blue eyes I did, and her body and mine were so perfectly harmonized when we danced. She gave me a pair of her leather pants one time. She'd lost a little weight and said they hang on her like a guy's would and they'd look better on me.

So this was the part of my life I relived through my dreams that night. Over and over. And all about Cassie. I never knew what her real name was, or if she told me, I mighta forgot. She was so Cassie that any other name wouldn't have connected; it just wouldn't have dawned on me. But when you spend the whole night dreaming the woman of your dreams who you knew mostly naked and when you were more drunk than not, you start to wonder what her real name was. I wanted her name. I just couldn't remember it.

So I called up my old roommate, still in Texas, waking him up and probably pulling him back over the line from whatever dream world does it for him nowadays.

"Hey man, it's Billy. I'm in Colorado. Did I wake you up?"

"Shit yeah, fuckhead. It's like, uh... it's... hey man it's five thirty in the morning! I'm gonna be late for work! I'm sure glad you called me and woke me up! Now I can take a four hour shower and still get into the office on time! Wadda you need? Are you in jail again? My sister knows this kickass lawyer in Denver."

"No man, I gotta ask you something."

"OK. Go for it. But keep it quick and quiet. My wife's still pretty pregnant and she's sitting here staring at me so make this quick."

"Remember Cassie from the tittie bar?"

"Which bar, man? Here or in Florida? You managed to hit alotta tittie bars, man."

"The one in Florida. Cassandra but everybody called her Cassie. I kept calling her Casseopeia because that's what I thought her name was."

"Oh yeah! The one you liked so much. People thought you'da made a killer couple, man."

"Yeah, that's the one. Do you remember what her real name was?"

"Shit, man, um... Oh, gimme a minute. I'll think of it. It's...aw shit. It's... goddammit dude I just don't remember. Sorry. But I'll call you if I think of it, how's that?"

"Fair enough. But lemme just ask you one more thing. Is there anything particular you remember about her? Something your friends from the bar mighta mentioned?"

"Yeah, man. There sure was. Remember those legs? Those long silky legs you used to go on about when we drove home and you'd throw up on my truck?"

"Yeah I sure do. Sorry about your truck, though."

"She was a skier. An Olympic team skier. She blew out her knee and went into therapy for a coupla years. That's why she was dancing. I think maybe that's why she was in Florida in the first place. Then she got into massage therapy. Man, if I were her, I'd have moved out west. I think she wanted to do sports medicine. Like I did."

"So dude, do you think her name mighta been 'Dawn'?"

"I gotta tell you, man. I really just don't remember. I honestly don't. But if I do I'll give you a call. Hey, I gotta go. I'll talk to you later, OK?"

"Yeah. Thanks, man. Sorry to wake you up. Tell your wife I said hello!"

"Cool. Bye."

"See Ya."

I hung up the phone and I just honestly couldn't believe I woke him up over this shit. And anyway, Cassie had unmistakable blue eyes, just like me, with blonde hair. But gawd how both women made me feel the same way. They looked the same, too. But I couldn't bring a hazy memory of my nights with Cassie into sharp enough focus to see her clearly. Not clearly enough to know her if I saw her on the street right now.

But there were nagging similarities. And whatever I thought about in my private world of male fantasy, it was that much more intense just contemplating that these two women could actually be the same person. All of a sudden I was more intensely attracted to Dawn than any want I'd ever known.

So I sat there in the dark early morning hours trying to figure things out. I'd seen Dawn's eyes way more clearly than I'd ever seen Cassie's, and in better light. And if Cassie had been using cosmetic lenses to go blue, then she probably dyed her darker hair, too. But in my memory, Cassie never had any body hair. Anywhere except her head. Which could have been standard fare for either of her callings. I was pretty sure the tatoo was on her left shoulder though. There were some things that stuck with me about Cassie like photographic images.

Ironically, just as the sun started to toss a coupla deep red rays over the mountain ridge, the phone rang. Really early. And it was Dawn.

"Hi Billy. This is Dawn. I'll bet I woke you up, didn't I?"

"I'm pretty awake, Dawn. What gets you up this early in the morning? Were you thinking about me again?"

"Actually I was. But I've been up for a couple of hours studying for an exam this afternoon."

"Cool! I didn't know you were in school! What are you taking?"

"I'm trying to finish up Physical Therapy. I was a massage therapist for a coupla years and now I wanna move into PT."

"So how's the studying coming along? Are you behind or ahead of the game?"

"I'll do OK. I might call in sick today and just try to study. But hey man, I'd like to see you sometime."

"Come on over and sit in the hot tub after your exam. I'll be around. I'll make it a point, OK?"

"Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I'll see you soon. Bye!"

Aw man! Like what the fuck was I gonna do for an entire day waiting for The Absolute Coolest Woman I've Ever Met to come over and sit in my hot tub?! I just wanted to toss myself into the freezer and then defrost myself fifteen minutes before she arrived. Except I didn't really know when that would be. To be honest, I really didn't know if she'd come by at all.

So I went skiing. Pointed 'em down the hill, too. There were no fears and no demons that I knew that day. All I knew was I wanted Dawn. I wanted Dawn like right now and forever. And whether or not I would really have her, I didn't care. I was more in touch with my wants than ever before in my life and that was the biggest milestone I've ever achieved. It was the pinnacle of a lifetime of realizations. This is the woman I want. And no amount of scaring myself silly with gravity was coming close to overpowering that want.

And I ran across Carl doing an early morning run before he had to go to work. He gestured to me from the side of the slope.

"Hey Buddy! Wanna get stoned?"

"Sure, man. You're out here pretty early. Is the snow that good?"

"Aw, Man. That fucking bitch calls me up at three thirty in the morning drunker'n shit and keeps me on the phone for four hours. I've been up since last night."

"Yeah? What did she want?"

"She's giving me this shit about she's pregnant and I'm gonna be the daddy and shit. She's trying to nail me because I gotta job and her sorry ass boyfriend doesn't and she threw him out anyway."

"And that took four hours? We're talking some seriously slow sentences here."

"No, like, she goes on for about three hours and fifty five minutes trying to tell me how things were so good between us and crap and then she does five minutes of You're a Daddy."

"So man. Has this ever happened before?"

"No, man. And it's like freaking me out. Like what if she decides to move back here? Then I'm screwed. I'm screwed, buddy. This bitch is going to screw me."

"How's this more serious than 'her making you say it'? She's doing it all over again. You know that. Right? You said you loved her because she made you say it. Now you're a daddy because she'll make you say it? Dude. Either you loved her or you didn't. Leave mommy out of it and just say which one it is."

"Aw fuck her, man!"

"Don't tell her, moron! Just tell yourself. And then you can tell her anything you want. Anything. It's just gonna be that easy when you're sure you're not really in love with her. Or you can just fucking kill her. Which would be healthy for you since you're too strapped to hire a hitman."

"No. Seriously. What the fuck am I gonna do?"

"I just fucking told you what to do. Go figure out whether you're still in love with her and then you can do anything else you want to. Just go do it."

"Man, nothing you're saying is making any sense at all. Sorry man, but I'm not following you here. You know what I mean?"

"Just go fucking do it."

"OK, OK. There's nothing to figure out. I can't fucking stand the bitch and there's no fucking way I'm ever gonna let her have a goddamned thing of mine."

"Cool. Very Cool. Now you can go do anything you want and she's not gonna end up ripping out your heart. See how lucky you are? You coulda ended up in love with her. That woulda sucked, huh? She coulda dicked you around until you fell out of love with her. Am I right? I'm just telling you all the stuff you tell me. I'm not saying that it's wrong or anything. I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that you told me all this shit and now if it really works, then you don't seem to have a problem here. So what's the problem here?"

"Well, she's got all my tele gear, man. It's all in her garage and I kinda need the stuff back."

"She's got your baby too, man. If the kid has big feet, then it can use your tele gear instead of the fucking bitch, huh?"

"I'm telling you she ain't got my fucking baby!"

"Of course she doesn't, you moron. She wants your baby and you want your tele shit back. That's when she'll start dicking you around again. You two do this all the time. It's not like nobody notices."

"So I don't get my tele gear back?"

"Do you want your baby or not?! Jesus!" Thick as a brick. And these are the people that make babies!

After I finished skiing, me and Carl went down to the grocery store. I bought a bunch of different kinds of food and cheeses and some wine. I got a Cabernet and a Chablis not knowing Dawn's preferences. Then I went home and made a pretty decent spread of food for a bachelor without much of a clue.

I really really really wanted her to walk through that door. And yet something deep inside me kept saying not to expect too much. There was a little something inside me saying she might not even come over. And a whole bunch more of me kept saying she'll be here any minute. I went through my place over and over until every piece of furniture, every loose souvenir, every spare scrap of paper was moved and shuffled and rearranged at least a couple of times.

And then I heard a faint knock at the door and my heart stopped. Just thinking it might be her started it right up again like I was hooked up to high voltage. And then I opened the door and there she was. We just stared at each other for a moment and neither one of us breathed. She was wearing a pair of tight natural suede pants and a loose pink silk shirt and stood there casually with her hands in her pockets just like a guy would. She was wearing the same vanilla fragrance as the other day. But this time, no makeup and no black lip gloss.

I raised my hands to her two shoulders and put one onto of each of hers, took a breath, and embraced her lightly. As soon as I got my lips anywhere near her ear I whispered, "I'm sorry for the way I acted the other day. I didn't know what I was doing. Won't you come in?" Reaching her hands up and around my back, she rubbed with each hand on muscles that would have taken anybody else half an hour to find.

And then she slipped her hands around to my chest and pushed me away just enough to look me in the face and shouted, "Hey man! Let's party! Wheeooohh! I can't believe that fucking test is over with! I'm a Physical Therapist now!"

She walked in the door and turned to me casually. She smiled and said, "You started acting like an idiot on the lift and I couldn't figure out why you'd do that to me. I didn't figure it out until later, and then it really hit me. You didn't recognize me! You had no clue who I was even after I regurgitated your whole fucking love life! You must have thought I was a psychic! That's so funny, man! But you came on so strong in the beginning! I was so sure you remembered me. I thought your whole rap was so cool because you never said a word. So how's Frank?"

I walked back through the door and closed it. "He's married and pregnant. In Texas. He's good. As a matter of fact, I talked to him this morning. I called him because I started figuring things out and I wanted to know your real name. Did you ever tell me what it was? Then, I mean."

She looked wounded. "Of course I didn't. You kept calling me Casseopeia. It was so cute!"

"Hey, you want some wine? I got some cheese here, too. Help yourself and I'll grab some stuff outa the fridge. You sound pretty stoked to be a PT. That's cool, Dawn! Congratulations!" and I handed her a small plate of sliced vegetables. She was pouring each of us a glass of Cabernet.

"I liked massage therapy alot but the PT thing looked like a way cool gig. Nice wine, man. Here, have some."

"Well would you like some cheese? I've made it a point to have better cheese around...There's crackers right here if you find the cheese, uh,... acceptable." and I smiled at her.

"Like I said, I'm like sorry, man. But now that I look back on it," and she started giggling, "it was hilarious! And you were seriously cute being cheesy and shit." And then she started laughing. And then doubled over laughing. She still had the wineglass in her hand, and I walked over to take it from her. She was convulsing with laughter. She looked up at me with tears of laughter in her eyes and handed me the glass. Then she started slapping the floor with one hand, laughing hard. She began to stand up and I reached out my hand to her. She stood up and straightened out her shirt. "Billy, that's one of the funniest things that's ever happened to me in my life!"

"Why? Because you got all frosty about it? You must hear cheesy shit all the time."

"No. Because it was you and me. And you were hitting on me all over again and didn't even know what you were doing. You don't have to apologize. Not ever. I just think it was the funniest shit of all time, that's all. But weren't you the least bit concerned that some woman in a hot tub can read you like a book without a second thought?"

"I was thinking you were a goddess."

"You thought I was a goddess the first time you met me. That's why I never went out with you."

"And now?"

"I'll date you but I won't be your goddess. The first reason I'll date you is because you want to be with the Dawn you didn't know about and you'd forgotten the Cassie you really wanted."

"And the second?"

"Because Billy and Cassie wanted each other. Did you think I just walk into a club and make all that shit up? Dawn and Cassie are the same person. You already know me as well as anybody else does. I like you, Billy. I always have. But we're not in a nightclub and my name is Dawn. Think you can handle that?"

"What if I'd met you and didn't know about Cassie? Would you be sharing her with me if all I knew about was Dawn?"

"You're not hearing me here. We're the same person. Can you handle that or not?"

"Wow! It's the Dawn in you that scares the shit outa me. That's the part of you that keeps me up all night. That's the part I would fall in love with."

"Same person, Billy. Try to remember that."

So I took her out dancing. Wouldn't you? She danced alot more like a skier than an exotic dancer except for the briefest of moments close to me when she'd let loose. She was a thousandfold more alluring like this. She'd gotten so much better at it and if anybody knew it other than me, it was her. We both had leather pants on, with colors in our shirts, and we kinda stood out from the rest of the crowd. Except that most people in there knew me. Or more likely knew both of us.

I drew close enough to her ear to talk. And I asked her, "Do you ever come in here and hang out? I play pool here alot, but I've never seen you in here."

"No. I was in school all the time and I never got out. This is the first time in maybe a couple of years I've even been on a dance floor."

And we danced a whole bunch more and had a couple of drinks.

"Hey Dawn. Do you shoot pool?"

"Sometimes. The short table over there looks like the popular one. What's it like?"

"Rolls to the left but not as bad as the one upstairs. Mostly they play partners eightball. Wanna give it a shot?"

"Sure. Here, I gotta coupla quarters. You got any?"

I reached out and she gave me two quarters. I dug another one out of my pocket. I placed the three on the rail of the table and in a few minutes we were set up. Dawn broke, but not before every guy in the place had a chance to stop what they were doing and take a gander as she stretched herself over the back railing to take the shot. And that was just the break. They stared at every move she made. Nothing she did was going to go unnoticed. She sank a high ball on the break, and then sank four more. When the fifth ball lazily bounced around the corner pocket and stayed there on the table, she straightened up, licked her lips top to bottom slowly, handed me the cue and shrugged. "There you go, partner. Knock 'em down."

Which was easy enough because the cue ball was about five feet from anything low. My turn came promptly and I finished off the game. By then there were another seven little piles of quarters on the rail, and a bunch of people, men and women, looking to play the winner. And it went on for another few hours until they threw everybody out, turned off the lights, and locked the doors.

Dawn and I walked out of there hand in hand and over to a small lake on our right. It was on the way back to each of our places, and I wasn't sure at the moment to which she or either of us would be returning.

"I'll walk you home if that's where you're headed." I offered. "But this place here is one place we can do our first kiss ever and still be able to find it." Then we embraced and kissed each other like there was no tomorrow. We spent about ten minutes there, and slowly, reluctantly, started walking.

Dawn drew my hand to her and turned to me. "Come back to my place for a few minutes. There's something I want to show you." And we walked on.

We got to her place in about five minutes at a blissful pace, and went up the stairs to a unit next door to where I used to live. She opened the door, reached in, and turned on a light. Then she walked in quietly and beckoned me to do the same.

"Sit down. The couch is over there." and she pointed into the darkness. "I'll be back in a minute." Then she disappeared down the little hall. I sat down on the couch and heard a door open. A minute later I heard footsteps and she came back. She turned on another light and stood there in it. I looked up and saw that somebody else was with her. A beautiful young girl, dressed in a white nightgown with long straight blonde hair, stood there in the hall light and stared sleepily at me with piercing blue eyes.

Dawn just stood there beaming. Then she said, "Billy, this is my daughter Tamara." She looked like a clone of her mother. The one I knew with blonde hair and blue eyes. Standing there, they were the two most stunning women I'd ever seen, struck in a pose that lasts forever once you've seen it. They both stood there looking at me.

"Hi Tamara! Great to meet you. I'm Billy." I uncrossed my legs and stood up to meet the little goddess.

"Sit, Billy. We're fine. So you were our neighbor?" and I wasn't sure which one of them was talking to me. "Cool tunes. You played them pretty loud, though." It was the girl, the young woman, standing next to Dawn.

"Tamara, can I ask you a personal question, dear?"

"Sure, Billy."

"Tamara, how old are you?"

"I'm seven. And a half. How old are you?"

"I'm fourty one. Do you like school?"

"Sure. Do you like work?" Then she turned to Dawn and said, "Mommy, he's beautiful. Where'd you meet him?"

Dawn looked at me and said, "Tam, Billy and I were friends in Florida."

Then she tugged at her daughter and said, "Come on, Tam. Let's get you back in the bed now." and Tamara turned to me.

"Good night, Billy. See ya!" and she walked back down the hall into the darkness.

A few moments later Dawn came back down the hall and sat next to me on the couch. She put a finger up to my lips and pressed hard, staring at me for a second. Then she drew her lips to my ear and whispered, "She's a cool kid. She's everything to me. I wanted you to meet her."

"She's stunning. Absolutely you. Where's her daddy?"

"Pretty much where he needs to be." she whispered.

"Florida?" I whispered back.

"Or not. I couldn't tell you."

"Do you still dance?"

"No. I stopped doing that before Tamara was born."

"Was Tamara's dad around when she was growing up?"

"Tamara's never met her dad."

"Does she ever ask you about it? What do you tell her?"

"I tell her, Daddy doesn't know he's a daddy and it's not like he wouldn't love you. I tell her some people don't know their daddy's and some people don't know their daughters."

"Did you love her father?"

"Maybe. I never told him I was pregnant. I figured it wasn't any of his business. At the time."

"You raised his daughter and it wasn't any of his business? How do you figure that?"

"I'm raising my daughter and it's still nobody else's business."

"Well it's certainly none of my business. I was just asking."

She reached over and pulled me to her gently. She brushed her lips across mine lightly, and told me goodnight. I walked home slowly and with little purpose. Everything I wanted to be around was behind me in that apartment. Everything.