Chapter Two
So Not Fair
 

I live right in the middle of Aspen—right above a bank on Main Street—because I am a city boy, bred and buttered: if I don’t live on a grid my vertigo comes back. Upvalley they call it up here, 8,000 feet straight up from sea level before you even step on the gondola and go for another 4,000 feet at least. The hotshots, the macho men and women, they like to hike the Fourteeners, the mountains that top off above 14,000 feet, but I’m not there yet. For now, 8,000 feet plus another 4,000 seems high enough, as high as anyone might want to go for no good reason. To me the gondola at the foot of Ajax is just a subway car that goes straight up.
 
Why Aspen? Why not? It seems so far away from New York City and Montauk, the two points on my compass, unless you have a Lear or Teddy’s Gulfstream, which I don’t. Aspen is three-and-a-half hours from Denver by car, a difficult up-and-down drive, but I was tired of fighting my way from the city to Killington in Vermont once or twice a year, of freezing my ass off just so I could slide around on ice, and I was tired of being the worst skier on a hill with windchill of minus infinity. Amanda Madison didn’t ski, she didn’t like snow, and she didn’t like the mountains. Somehow that made Aspen seem that much farther away, especially when you had to go over Vail Pass in winter with chains on your tires and fear in your heart.
 
I got off the Interstate at Glenwood Springs and drove down 82 to Aspen—and to Jimmy’s—without even going home. There was parking this time of year at night so I parked in front, across the street from Genre, another place I like to eat.
 
I was making my way here. People were starting to know me though they knew nothing about Amanda Madison or Tom O’Kell or where I had come from. I had friends at Jimmy’s and a place to go to where people were happy to stay on the surface, to learn your first name without worrying too much about the second. There was even a Jimmy at Jimmy’s, and everyone else in the world named James or Jim or Jimbo signed the walls of the restaurant with a black Sharpie. You never would have known there were so many Jims in the world were it not for Jimmy’s. Jimmy’s had the best selection of tequila in the country and I always ordered it straight up.
 
“You’re that guy,” said a guy next to me. “The one on cable.”
 
The brand-new brand-name fleece was bright-red and said “Aspen/Snowmass” on the chest in white letters. My guess is the guy was another tourist with too much money and too little time. He had it written all over his vest and on his face: you could see he was single now, no ring, with money, and he was ready to tell his friends back wherever they were about how he spent his vacation in Aspen, how he goes back there all the time, how pretty soon he was going to get himself a little timeshare or a condo or a fractional, ski on/ski off, of course. He had snow-white hair and plenty of extra flesh that could have been died bronze before the trip so he could show off his Aspen tan in Aspen.
 
“If I were that guy” – I looked at my watch – “I’d be on television right now, wouldn’t I? Talking about some case or something. But I’m not.”
 
I pointed up at the television where the U had first and fifteen against State. The guy in the brand-new fleece looked at his watch and my guess is that when he squinted he could still make out the numbers without knowing the time. It was just a guess but a pretty good one.
 
“You’re right,” he said. “I guess everybody in the world looks like somebody famous. People tell me I look like Michael Douglas. The actor. He lives here you know. Got a big ranch or something.”
 
“That’s it!” I slapped him on the back bar-style and picked up my shot. “I knew it. Michael Douglas. Before the face lift.”
 
The fleece was still brand-name and brand-new, and I had a feeling the guy was going to go home and tell everyone how he had seen all the Hollywood stars in Aspen as soon as he found out who was already here. People come to Aspen looking for something though they never want to put it quite that way, and you never hear them put it into words. If you have a life when you go to Aspen then you must be on track – right? – I mean, how could your life be dead wrong when everything about Aspen was so right. If you made it here, even for a visit, then you’ve made it, you have climbed the mountain and you have seen the other side. The stars come here so they can be mortals, so they can dress down and wear their shades and not shave and walk through town without anyone knowing for a fact that they’re here. But that’s a game, too. Most of them want to be seen, to be known, like that time Michael Jackson went shopping wearing a ski mask at The Sharper Image just around the corner. Can you believe that? Michael Jackson wearing a ski mask in Aspen just so no one will notice him, keeping a low profile after his latest problem with young boys.
 
Nobody comes to Aspen to hide, but nobody told Michael Jackson.
 
Or how about the guy in the Elk Club, members only, telling some local babe about his hard luck, how his marriage has split up and his life is in the crapper, and then the local babe dumping him by saying: “Why don’t you get a life?” And the guy turning out to be Kevin Costner, “Dances With Wolves,” the same Kevin Costner who flies in hundreds of people like Oprah for his wedding at his place up Independence Pass. I don’t know if the story about the local babe is true, but I hope it is, because even in Aspen the stars have to come down to earth for supplies.
 
“I’ll have what he’s having.”
 
I turned the other way and it was Tony Rochette, the CEO who turned an idea for steak and blooming onions into a franchise that goes around the world. And here it comes: Tony Rochette blubbering even before he can get to that first drink.
 
“What’s the latest, Tony?” I said.
 
“She hates me,” he said. “I hate me.”
 
“She doesn’t hate you,” I said. “And you don’t hate you, either. You follow?”
 
“Oh yeah she does. And I do, too. It’s the one thing we both can agree on.”
 
“She got half,” I said. “That’s enough. That doesn’t mean she gets to eat you alive.”
 
“That’s not it,” Tony Rochette said. “That’s not what this is about.”
 
“It’s what it’s always about.”
 
“It’s not the money.” Tony Rochette said. “Not any more. It’s about this. How I feel in here.”
 
He pounded his chest once with a closed fist. I could feel the thump through the bar tool.
 
“Don’t beat yourself up,” I said and I wasn’t kidding.
 
He knocked down the first tequila and there was the second in front of him before he knew any better. He knocked down the first half of the second one and now his lips were shaking before the words came out. Tony Rochette was telling his story over and over, all over town, even when he got his nails done up at The Mountain Club. Everybody kept hearing, over and over, about how his life is ruined since he left his wife, how nobody loves a guy worth – what? – $300 million dollars.
 
I wanted to tell Tony Rochette that he was not the center of the universe, despite the money, that other people had problems, like the problem I had now with Sam Albright. I was going to tell him but he was bumping his head against the bar just enough to hurt and his shoulders were jiggling up and down in the emotional equivalent of a dry heave. I liked Tony Rochette when he was sober but blubbering at the bar at Jimmy’s meant you had crossed some kind of line. It was something him and me were going to talk about the next time I got him sober.
 
I ordered another one of Jimmy’s tequilas and sipped at it and let the warmness of it move through me like a river. I was going to sit here and drink shots until Sam came in because I have always found tequila to be useful in the line of duty in lieu of courage. That might surprise you if you watched my show on cable, or if you read my first book about the O’Kells, if you know the former prosecutor Arnold Bagdikian always looked like he was afraid of nothing. But with women it was different – I was different. That’s why Amanda Madison and I had been going back and forth for years, and that’s why I needed at least one more shot after this one before I gave it straight to Sam, the speech about true love and how I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but there was this woman that I still loved, from another life, and that I was sorry, Sam – that I feel like hell about it, but there it is.
 
Her name?
 
You don’t need to know her name, I would tell her, because it makes no difference. It’s the love that knows no name.
 
I knew halfway through the second shot and the tequila was helping me feel that it was so not fair to Sam. That’s the way the locals talk in Aspen, they would say something was so not fair, but in Aspen when things go south or sour the locals just move on to something else: the place is built for leaving, for never staying in the same place for very long. It’s like a stream, like that place where the Roaring Fork and the Frying Pan Rivers come together in Basalt and bubble up and then move on to God knows where, as if you will never find out where it ends.
 
“Where’s Sam?” I said to the bartender, a happy guy named Donavan with a goatee.
 
“She’s off tonight,” Donavan said. “Why? You miss her? You love her?”
 
“Doesn’t everybody?” I said.
 
“Every guy with a woodie,” Donavan said, “or a new bottle of Viagra. A lot of the women who come in here miss her, too.”
 
“She was supposed to meet me here,” I said, “and she’s late.”
 
Donavan poured me that third shot without me asking.
 
“On me, partner,” Donavan said. “Sammy likes you, you know. She likes you a lot. She thinks you’re different.”
 
“Really?” I said. “Must be because I was never married.”
 
“She says you’re the smartest man she’s ever met,” Donavan says. “That you seem to know something about everything.”
 
“Jack of all trades,” I said.
 
“What do you do now?” Donavan says. “Just hanging?”
 
“By a thread,” I said.
 
“I’ve heard rumors, you know,” Donavan said. “All over the valley. People say you’re some kind of mystery man. I tell them to take people for what they are, for what’s right in front of them.”
 
“Especially across a bar,” I said.
 
My words were coming out slower now, like I couldn’t stop pulling on the syllables. I knocked the third shot back like I was still sitting on the floor or a college dorm and the whole wide world went into a little spin in my head. When the room stopped moving there was Sam Albright about two inches from my face. She was so close I smelled her before I saw her, before I could not get her face into focus. When she kissed me full on the lips the room started to spin again.
 
“Sorry, Arnie,” she said. “My car again.”
 
“You should let me –”
 
“No way, Jose. You’re not my Daddy.” Sam rubbed up into me and whispered into my ear. “At least not that way.”
 
I knew where this was going, the same place it always went with Sam. She was my anti-Amanda, my antidote to the woman who had everything, the soul mate, the one you were supposed to be with to begin with. Sam had big blonde hair of an unnatural color and the whitest teeth I have ever seen, so big and white I tried to count them once before she almost bit my finger off laughing. She had a Barbie-doll figure, if you can imagine Barbie going off her starvation diet a week before and leaving just the right layer of meat behind. She was big—tall, I mean—and I loved that about her, and I loved her even more when she was wearing her black pumps the way she was wearing them tonight with the miniskirt jeans. When guys came to Jimmy’s they hit on Sam every time, and she had a way when she was behind the bar of not looking anyone straight in the eyes even though all the guys were looking at her, all of them (every one) taking in this slice of tummy when her shirt rode up, seeing that little rodeo star tattoo in the small of her back where her jeans were slung down. She was older than the average Aspen bartender, old enough to make you wonder—to make me worry—if she would ever get out from behind the bar.
 
But Sam never worried for too long about anything. She was kissing me on the neck between my ear and my shoulder when she saw Tony Rochette banging his head on the bar beside me. Before you knew it the warmth that was Sam had the loveless CEO in a bear hug, her hand cupping his chin to move it up off the bar and onto her shoulder.
 
“Donavan?” she whispered to the bartender. “Call Tiny.”
 
“Sam,” Tony Rochette said. “Oh Sam.”
 
“It’s okay, honey,” Sam said to Tony Rochette. “Baggie and me are going to get you a cab.”
 
Tony Rochette was not dead drunk. It was worse than that, like the tequila had let loose the demons of self-pity until they snapped the synapses and taken full control of his body. But Sam, bless her heart, was not about to let him sit there and make a $300 million fool of himself (again) just because he could. If a stranger hit on her then Sam would never say hello to him again, but once she knew you for what you were at Jimmy’s then she would fight to the death to protect you. That’s what I loved about her – and that’s what was going to make this so damn hard.
 
“Thank you, Sam,” Tony Rochette said when we had him in the cab. “I love you. Wish I had a woman like you.”
 
“I love you too Tony,” Sam said and she meant it. “Tiny will take you home now.”
 
Tiny was the only Tiny I ever knew who really was tiny. He topped off at about 5 feet nothing and he could not have weighed more than 112 pounds. But Tiny had been a featherweight boxer at the Air Force Academy, and he always managed to get his cargo into the hangar.
 
“You need some money?” I said.
 
“You shitting me, Baggie?” Tiny said. “Do you have any idea how much this son of a bitch pays me when he finds out it was me took him home?”
 
“No.”
 
“I have a name for it,” Tiny said. “I call it ‘this month’s rent.’”
 
I slammed the door on Tony Rochette and Tiny drove Tony Rochette off in his Rocky Mountain Checker with the anticipatory studs in the new snow tires. I was hoping Tony Rochette might be half-sober by the time they made it up Red Mountain, where the other one-half of one percent lives.
 
Sam wrapped her body into mine as the Checker wove down Hopkins and in the purity of the clear mountain air I could feel her and smell her, all of her. I would know that smell anywhere, without even seeing it, and it worked on me like a potion. The smell in the air with Aspen Mountain twinkling behind us made me forget this night was going to be different.
 
“You’re beautiful, Sam,” I said. “You’re a beautiful creature.”
 
“You’re drunk, Baggie,” she said. “Three tequilas to the wind. And I’m going to take advantage of you.”
 
She kissed me with all of her mouth: whatever motor skills I had left left me except for the one that never took a vacation. That one. Sam never had any trouble splicing my cables.
 
“Mmmmm,” Sam said. “Baggie and Tequila taste good.”
 
What I remember next is what she takes off and what she leaves on once we get to my apartment. She takes off her top and her nipples get hard as ice under my fingertips, the way they always do. I squeeze her there and Sam melts. When I do that she gets louder, in word and deed, telling me how good that feels goddamit, huffing while she unbuckles me. I rip off her thong – I rip it apart – but I leave the heels and the miniskirt, and I spin her around so she is facing away from me when I go to town. When Sam comes with me she comes late and hard, with her arms and her legs pointing away to all the four corners, like a snow angel that has to be real.