by Ciaran Cooper

My brother’s already got seven points when I hit him in the face and he smashes into the headboard.  I almost lose my grip on my pillow, but I chalk up on it before I hit him again.  He’s laughing and I keep bouncing to keep the power in my swing.  If he gets to ten I lose.  He gets up still laughing and starts bouncing on the other bed, the one near the window.  We can see the town lit with neon below us and the mountains and ski slopes way out there in the clouds.  Outside it’s snowing.  We want to go skiing; our dad told us it was a ski trip, a vacation, but instead he’s at some business meeting downstairs and now we have to wait for it to get done.  He’s in one of the grand ballrooms where my brother and I were running around behind all the curtains till a security guard caught us.  My brother wouldn’t run, the scared fucker.  I told him just take off, but I had to come back for him, so they got us both.  They called our dad and he was really pissed off, because they had to get him out of a lecture or something.  They’ve got all these slide presentations and the rooms are dark and most of the people there are sleeping.  I don’t know how long it’s going to take and it’s a total drag waiting.  My brother’s reaching for the ceiling, which he can barely touch, trying to score another point.  I take a swing and miss.  The space between the beds is getting farther as the game goes on because the beds are on wheels that slide, even on the carpeting.  Outside the window it’s cold and peaceful and the heavy white flakes stick to everything, but here inside the room it is not peaceful even though we’re laughing.  I’m trying to kill my brother with every swing.

When our dad came to get us from Security he was wearing a bright yellow name tag on his suit coat.  It said Presenter next to his name and even though I was scared and he was yelling at us and telling me I’m supposed to be in charge, I’m the older one and he should be able to count on me blah blah blah, and the veins in his neck were purple he was so mad, I couldn’t help feeling proud.  I stared at his name tag until he grabbed me by the arm and said are you listening to me, son? and I said yes, and he said to the security guard that he’s sorry for the trouble and he led us out of the small office with all these camera monitors and told us we couldn’t leave our room for the rest of the day.

In the hallway outside Security is where my brother and I saw our dad’s old secretary.  Her name’s Ingrid.  She used to give us colored pencils and paper with the company logo on it when our dad took us to work with him sometimes when we were small.  My brother and I would sit at our father’s desk and draw.  But sometimes we’d get so bored we’d run around the hallways or break something by accident.  Ingrid got divorced two years ago and moved to another city to work at a different branch of the company.  She’s really pretty.  She’s got long blonde hair and big boobs and she wears perfume. Our mother never wears perfume.  I got her some for Christmas one year—Charlie—and she wore it once just to make me happy, but she says it irritates her skin so she can’t wear it.  She keeps the bottle on a high shelf in the bathroom though, just to let me know she loves me all the same.  But Ingrid was telling us that we shouldn’t misbehave because it’s a big day for our dad and if we’re bad then we can’t go skiing.  I was like, whatever, we didn’t really do anything wrong, just playing tag we’re so bored, but I didn’t say anything.  I didn’t want to piss him off any more than we already had.  I just stood there as the elevator door closed and stared straight ahead.  But then I saw my dad’s hand in the reflection as the mirrored door slid shut.  He was holding Ingrid’s hand, just for a second, right behind me and my brother, but when I turned to look they were just talking about making dinner plans with some people from the Dallas office.  I couldn’t tell if my brother saw it too, but he was really quiet and he wouldn’t look at our dad when we got back to the room.  We have our own hotel room because in two months I’ll be thirteen, so we’re old enough to behave ourselves our dad said, and besides, he needs his own space to get prepared for all the important meetings he’s got.  He’s supposed to give a lecture on what it takes to be a top salesman.  He said it would be just one day of meetings and then his lecture and then we could go skiing, but this is our third day of nothing to do.

My brother bounces once more really high and then lays out in the air before falling on his back.  It’s a really great drop, totally cool, so I drop my pillow and flop down on my back too, then up again, half turn in the air, and land on my stomach.  We start rating each other’s dives like they do in the Olympics.  I give him a 9.8 for a flip onto his back.  He only gives me an eight for a ceiling touch double bounce ass land, and I complain to the judges.  After a while he says let’s quit, I’m hungry, so we take the thirty dollars our dad left us this morning and we get grilled cheeses and chocolate shakes in the restaurant downstairs.  They even have gambling machines in the restaurant.  After we eat, I convince my brother to sneak into the big room where they have all these slot machines.  We spend almost ten dollars in quarters but then my brother hits the jackpot.  We are so rich, we’re psyched.  He’s scooping the coins into a big plastic cup, but there’s bells ringing and a light flashing and sirens going off and all the noise of the coins dropping, so a security guard sees us.  We grab the cup and run while some of the coins are still spilling out.  The dumbass stops to get the rest of the coins before chasing us.  We make it to the elevator before dumbass does and push the eleventh floor.  Then I push twelve through forty and we get off and run to our room.

We decide to find an arcade to spend our quarters at, but my brother’s telling me the money is his.  I tell him it was my idea and I helped us get away, and without me we wouldn’t even have it, so he says fine, fucker, take half.  I find an arcade in the yellow pages then call to see where it is.  We can walk there I tell my brother and I draw us a map from the man’s directions.  We divide up the quarters and the change from dinner, all except for one extra quarter that I let him have, the big baby.

We walk down the street in the snow.  It’s freezing outside and we don’t have gloves or hats.  We were gonna buy ski gloves and those cool ski hats with our dad, but he isn’t even done yet.  We just walk along backwards so we don’t totally freeze till we get to the intersection where we have to turn, and we can see the arcade up ahead.  We run for it, and by the time we get there, my brother’s head is totally white.

Inside there’s tons of kids and cool games everywhere.  They’ve got air hockey and foosball and kung-fu video games.  They even have Centipede—the kind with the spin ball and the extra bombs if you press the red button in time—so we’re psyched.  They also have a juke box, and my brother plays ACDC, his favorite new band—Back in Black then Highway to Hell.  It’s cranked really loud.  We’re both playing the same games, always him first, competing for the highest score.  He likes this one called Galaga with the spaceships that fall out of the sky and try to hit you. When the music stops he puts another quarter in and plays the same songs till some teenagers say why don’t you play something else and we say shut up and we play them again anyway.  Finally the other kids are starting to bother us, so we leave before we get in a fight.  We’re out of money anyway except for a ten-dollar bill, and I tell my brother we should go get pizza.

It’s getting dark out now and it’s snowing even harder than before, so after we get pizza we run the whole way back to the hotel.  We look for our dad in the lecture hall but everything is turned off and empty.  Then we check the gambling hall and the restaurant but he’s not in there either.  Next we go upstairs to check his room but there’s no answer.  My brother’s starting to freak out and I can tell he wants to cry like the time we waited forever in the parking lot after swimming lessons until it got dark and our dad never came.  We didn’t have money for a pay phone because we spent it on gum, so we had to walk home, my brother crying like a baby the whole way.  He wants to cry like that, I can tell, but I tell him to quit it and we both just get mad at each other.  Finally we go back to our room to see if our dad left a note and to see if we’re in trouble again, but there’s nothing, so we lay on the beds and watch TV.

TV sucks.  There’s nothing good on, just re-runs of Gilligan’s Island and Little House on the Prairie.  Not even a western even though we’re out west, as far west as we’ve ever been in our lives.  Reno sucks.  Lake Tahoe sucks.  Gambling sucks.  This whole trip sucks.  Even our dad sucks.  I just want to go skiing.  My brother keeps getting up to flip the channels, like there’s gonna be something good on if he just keeps looking, but there isn’t.  They keep interrupting whatever show is on to say there’s a blizzard warning tonight.  They say the main roads are closed and no one can go into the mountains without chains on their tires.  Now this really sucks, because I know our rental car doesn’t have chains.  I get more and more pissed off every time the message flashes across the screen.  I’m so mad at our dad I yell at my brother and tell him to stop fucking with the TV.  After that we’re fighting and we’re throwing everything, even the little bars of soap from the bathroom.  After a while the room is trashed.  The beds are on their sides because we turned them into forts, and the lamp is broken into a million pieces.  My brother spits in my face when we aren’t play-fighting anymore, and I jump on top of him and smack him good.  We both have swollen faces and hands, and I know we’re gonna get into serious trouble when our dad comes back, but neither of us cares.  We just lay there on the floor in our underwear and socks, watching the TV flicker on its side by the window until all the channels sign off for the night and just the American flag is waving on the screen with the stupid National Anthem playing.

Our dad knocking on the door is what wakes me.  I hear him say open up, boys, open the door.  Outside, the day is really bright.  Fresh snow is covering everything and the sky is clear and blue.  I can see the mountains in the distance.  The clouds are sliding off the peaks and everything looks fake it’s so beautiful.  I’m totally psyched to finally go skiing, but then I look around the room and almost shit.  We are so dead.  I kick my brother and he says fuck off, but then he sees the room and hears our dad and he knows we’re in deep trouble.  Outside the door our dad is laughing and talking to someone.  I pull on my jeans and open the door, trying to hide the mess behind me.  My brother is trying to put everything back together.  He kicks the pieces of the lamp under the dresser.  Our dad is standing in the hallway with Ingrid and another couple behind him.  Our dad’s hair is wet from the shower and he’s wearing blue jeans and a sweater.  Ingrid’s also in jeans and a sweater, but her hair is perfectly blow dried.  The other two people I recognize but I don’t remember their names.  My father begins to introduce them to me but stops when he sees my face. 

What happened to you? he asks.  Then he pushes past me into the room and starts yelling when he sees what happened.  Ingrid and our dad’s friends are standing inside the doorway looking at all the damage and my brother and I are saying we’re sorry over and over, but it does no good.  We’re in for it now.  After a while our dad stops yelling at us about being responsible for our actions and acting like grownups for once, not like little boys.  He’s speechless finally, which is good in a way, but it only makes him madder.  His friends tell him we should all go down for breakfast and hit the slopes while there’s still time left in the day, but our dad starts lecturing us again until Ingrid takes his arm and says something in his ear.  Then he tells us to get dressed, clean up the mess, and meet them in the restaurant in half an hour.  And don’t you dare be late, he says as he walks out.

In the restaurant our dad is in a better mood but he’s not really talking to us.  He introduces us to his other friends, Tino and Terry.  Tino’s the district sales manager for the western region.  Terry’s his girlfriend.  Now I remember them.  We met a couple of years ago when we were at the office with our dad.  Tino was in town for business and our dad took us all out to lunch downtown—Tino, Terry, Ingrid, and us.  He didn’t invite our mother, and I remember she was really upset when she found out we went to a French restaurant and he didn’t even ask her.  It was business for Christ’s sake, he said, but that made her even madder.

My brother and I order pancakes and we try to say as little as possible because our dad says he hasn’t made up his mind yet whether to let us go skiing with them after our little prank.  We don’t even try to argue with him that it wasn’t a prank, we just got bored and then we got angry.  We tell him we don’t know how it started it just did.  Oh, like spontaneous combustion, he says, it just started, just like that.  I stare into my pancakes and say nothing.  My brother sips his coke.  His left eye is swollen and bruised.  I got him really good after he spit on me.  Finally Tino says let’s not let it ruin a day of fresh powder, so our dad pays and we go back up to our rooms to get ready for skiing.  When we meet in the lobby my dad says he forgot his cigarettes and he sends me up to his room to get them.  I slip the key in the lock and shoot in quickly.  They’re not on the nightstand where he said they were, so I look around.  The room smells like perfume, so I look in the bathroom.  The hotel hair drier is sitting out on the sink, not on the shelf where it goes, and my dad’s cigarettes are sitting on the back of the toilet.  I open the pack, and start pulling them out.  I flush all of them except one down the toilet and head back downstairs.

At the ski lodge, we’re choosing hats and gloves to buy.  My brother gets a pair just like mine and I call him a copycat and our dad says cut it out or we’ll have to wait in the car while they ski without us.  I shut up quick but give my brother a look that says I’m taking you out first chance I get and then we both begin to smile we’re so psyched to finally be skiing.  I don’t say anything to my brother about the perfume or the handholding in the elevator, and then I forget about it myself while we’re choosing skis and getting our lift tickets. 

My brother and I are swinging our legs from the ski lift, riding up higher and higher.  Tino and Terry are on the chair in front of us in matching light blue snow suits.  Tino’s short and round and he looks really funny in his suit.  Terry looks better but her ass is huge.  They’re both good skiers so they head to the top of the hill with me and my brother while our dad stays behind on the bunny slopes where he’s getting lessons in snow plowing and turns.  Ingrid stays with him even though she already knows how to ski.  She says she was on her college ski team.  We can see them below us as we pass overhead, and Terry yells yoo hoo! hey! up here! as we float over them toward the clouds.  Our dad looks up for a second and waves.  Then he forgets where he’s going and wipes out.  Ingrid’s laughing and the instructor is saying something to him as he tries to get up and then falls down again.

At the top, Tino and Terry say the best runs are on the back of the mountain, so we follow them out through the knee-deep powder to a slope that runs along a ridge and then fans out toward the bottom before turning toward the bunny slopes and the lodge.  From the top you have to cut a sharp left turn or you’ll head right for the trees and a cliff on the other side.  It’s a long drop and there’s signs everywhere warning skiers not to go past the orange markers.  On our second run my brother and I are taking all the runs at Olympic speed.  We’re rating each other as we go, jumping over moguls and weaving through the wooded trails.  We lose Tino and Terry after a while and we have the whole mountain to ourselves.  Each time we get onto the chair lift, we can see our father snowplowing below us.  We don’t yell anything to him and he doesn’t see us.  He doesn’t notice when the lift stops and we’re hovering above him.  He doesn’t notice we’re there when he leans over and kisses Ingrid on the lips then slides his hand around her waist.  My brother and I don’t say a thing, not to him and not to each other.  We just sit there and wait for the lift to start moving again, carrying us up and away.

After lunch, we’re all standing outside the lodge and Tino and Terry and Ingrid are trying to convince our dad to try a real run.  Ingrid says you’re doing great, you’ll be fine, just stick close to me.  Tino tells our dad that from the top you can ski over to the back of the mountain and find some easy trails.  So after a little more convincing, we all get onto the chair lift and head for the top.  Tino and Terry take off first.  They head straight toward the black diamond run and are gone.  Our dad is shaky on his skis and doesn’t look confident.  Ingrid is holding his arm and reminding him to snowplow his way down.  My brother and I are waiting behind, letting them clear the way so we can head for the moguls again.  Our dad turns downhill and starts gaining speed.  Ingrid stops for a second to adjust her bindings and our dad’s way out in front of her now.  He’s trying to snow plow but he’s not slowing down.  He’s heading for the orange markers.  His arms are flailing.  He’s forgetting to plant his poles and his skis are parallel, not angled like a snowplow at all.  He leans forward a little to keep his balance and that just gives him more speed.  Ingrid looks up and starts yelling.  She takes off after him and my brother and I start off slowly behind her.  She’s yelling to our dad to turn his tips, but he’s moving too fast to hear her.  He flies right past the orange markers and heads out of control toward the cliff.  She’s screaming now and trying to catch up to him, but he just keeps going. 

My brother and I are following behind but we still don’t say anything, and Ingrid doesn’t see us because she’s focused completely on our dad.  She’s screaming at him to just fall down, just fall down, but I don’t think he can hear her.  From here, her screams sound like laughter and our dad looks like he’s just clowning.  From the ski lift overhead we probably look like a family on vacation together.  From far away, we probably even look happy.