The mud season that kept Buster and Jimmy from getting any outside work done was now over. The rush was on to get the place ready—to transform it from its muddy derelict state to something resembling a set in a John Ford movie—which was what the tourists liked. Horses were curried, washed, and re-shod. The gravel parking lot was dragged level, potholes filled. Dust and mites were beaten out of old Navajo blankets and were laid across the chairs on the porch in case a customer wanted to put his feet up while toking on a Cubano Esplendido. Buster could stick his nose up all he wanted at the pony ride industry, but Jimmy had a sweet little deal on Lame Horse Mesa. Telluride’s second homeowners, many escaping the summer heat of Chicago, New York, Dallas, and Houston provided her with steady business from June to October. These people, many of whom suffered awkward and fearful childhoods, found themselves emboldened by their success in later life, eager to remediate their past teenage intimidations. Jimmy’s hokey ad in the area’s yellow pages “for an Authentic Western Experience” dog whistled to that. The Trail Ride package came with a grilled chicken dinner and cowboy singing for one hundred twenty-five bucks a head. For the fly fishermen, she led pack trips to not-so-remote mountain lakes that she personally stocked with her favorite named fish—cutthroat. An overnight belly-boat trip cost five hundred per and she never had an empty slot on the calendar—not just because the fishing was great, but Jimmy’s odd character and foul mouth were the stuff of legend at Telluride Mountain Village dinner parties. She didn’t accept credit cards. It was an all-cash deal, and Jimmy took great pride in the fact that she had never paid federal income tax and only took 40 percent from Buster’s tips jar for herself.
Buster’s knowledge of every plant, flower, bird, and animal—stemming from his time with Ned Gigglehorn and Doc Solitcz—held him in good stead with Jimmy’s clients. Despite the fact that Jimmy had guided these horse rides all her adult life and fielded thousands of questions from snotty-nosed rich kids, she took great pride in never having bothered to know the real name of any bird or plant in Colorado. She preferred to make them up on the fly.
“That there is a Speckle-assed Pudsucker,” she would tell a precocious seven year-old boy from San Antonio. “That there is a Periwinkled Pipewiper. We cowboys use it for toilet paper in a pinch,” she would tell a five year-old girl from Darien, Connecticut. “That there is a Feral Nutlicker,” she once informed the wife of the retired CEO of Exxon when asked to identify a coyote.
A black Land Rover pulled into the parking lot. Jimmy slung her portable oxygen tank over her shoulder and got up from her desk to meet her nine o’clock—the Mallomars of New York. It was serendipity that Marvin and Dana Mallomar had found their way here. The couple had considered Aspen, Steamboat, and Santa Fe. She liked Aspen, but he didn’t like competing socially with the film people. He liked Steamboat, but she didn’t like the fact that there were only two Chinese restaurants in town and both of them were Mandarin. She liked Santa Fe, but he got “a vibe” that the local Hispanic population had, what he called, a “hard-on” for Anglos. That led them to undiscovered Vanadium. Perusing a real estate brochure that only seemed to highlight the limited activities in the area, Mallomar spotted Jimmy’s already-mentioned ad for an “Authentic Western Experience.” Once assured that horses didn’t carry Lyme disease and that his wife could have their picnic food prepared by a caterer, Mallomar signed on for opening day.
Jimmy’s fast draw was only second to her “fast take” on people, and there was no one faster from the hip or more deadly than Jimmy. Under the wide brim of her sombrero, she snuck sly peeks at the Mallomars and, in an instant, had all the information she needed to trap her unwitting subjects in the amber of her misanthropy.
To Jimmy’s lights, the mister was overweight. That meant he indulged himself and was slothful—two more things Jimmy could not abide. He also wore Levis. People around here wore Wranglers. And cinching his flabby waist was an expensive hand-tooled silver belt, “the kind they sold in Aspen and Santa Fe to faggots,” she explained later to Buster. Jimmy didn’t abide with ostentation, either. When he took off his hat to wipe away the perspiration, she noticed a D-Day formation of tiny circles where he’d had hair seedlings punched into his head. Men around here were compliant with their baldness. Vanity was another thing Jimmy could not abide. Then there was the matter of his face. It reminded her of a horse she once knew with a “Roman nose.” A nag with a Roman nose meant it had a stubborn or obstinate personality—two more things that Jimmy could not abide.
As for the wife, she was attractive and a lot younger than Mallomar. That probably meant she married him for his money. Jimmy did not abide women who married men for their money. Women who married men for their money lowered men’s opinions of all regular workingwomen. And Mrs. Mallomar didn’t wear underwear under her tight-fitting Hermes riding breeches—the outline of her genitalia showed through, like the track of a young antelope in a dry streambed. Jimmy did not abide with immodesty in dress and deportment. And she did not abide with Mrs. Mallomar trying to catch her husband’s eye so they could have a private little laugh at her manly expense. But as far as these Mallomars were concerned, she would bear their effrontery with absolutely no visible sign of indignation, for they were just visiting. Tourism, she intuited, had the potential for being Vanadium’s second act after mining.
Jimmy unplugged her oxygen, wrinkled up her brown parchment face into a smile and extended her hand to shake.
“Good mornin to ya’ll! Ah’m Jimmy.”
At the sound of Jimmy’s mannish voice, Mrs. Mallomar let loose a little snort through her nose like a stupid third grade girl. Mallomar looked at his wife sternly and turned to Jimmy.
“She’s a little nervous. Never been on a horse before,” Mallomar said, covering.
“Don’t you worry, honey. We got a horse for ya’ll that’s like sittin’ on a rockin’ chair,” she rasped. “Or like sittin on a vibrator if that’s more to yor likin’,” she camouflaged with an emphysemic hack and a phlegmy spit as she walked away from them to the corral. “Hey, Buster!” Jimmy bellowed. “Come over here and meet your clients!”
Buster was in the corral lifting a pannier onto a mule that held their ’88 Grgich Chardonnay, fresh baked baguettes, a marinated eggplant with tarragon chicken, arugula with shaved parmesan, and some brownies—all demanded by the Mallomars and created by Mary Boyle—who, after finally losing the Buttered Roll, was now the head cook at the High Grade. Buster swung himself up on Stinker and rode over to meet the man who was going to change his life.
“Buster, this here’s Mr. Mallomar and his missus, Mrs. Mallomar.”
“Mornin’ ma’am,” Buster said tipping his hat to Mrs. Mallomar, who ever so slightly arched her back. Mrs. Mallomar deigned not to reply, letting her body do all the talking. Buster struggled, but maintained steady eye contact—unaware that Mallomar was watching to see where his eyes went. “Mornin’, sir.”
“Mornin’,” Mallomar grunted, dropping the g because he was in the West.
Mallomar had begged his wife to be more conservative in her choice of clothes, especially her blouses and sweaters. But she had a beautiful body and didn’t care if everybody knew it. It was all hers—if one didn’t count the little lift she had for her thirty-fifth birthday. Dana’s appearance, which had once been a source of pride for Mallomar, was now his bane. When they were together, people seemed to forget that he was the one who gave twenty million dollars to Cedars Sinai for the Children’s Burn Unit, or that he was the one who scooped Modigliani’s “Nude on a Divan” out from under the noses of the Bass Brothers at Sotheby’s for the Met, or that he was the one who brought a secret message to the Pope from Catholic venture capitalists meeting in Montenegro during the UN occupation—get rid of Milosevic and we’re in. No one ever remembered his being there if she was there. Wherever they went together, all eyes followed her beautiful breasts like they had an important message for the world.
“All right then, trail ho!” Jimmy said, in her most fake upbeat. Jimmy grabbed Buster as they mounted up and hissed. “The missus is allergic to wheat. Don’t let her eat any, or she’ll swell up like a Spanish wine bag.”
And with that, stirrups were adjusted, liability releases were signed, and the three headed out on the ten-mile trail to Hope Lake, which was a real place and not a metaphor for anything. Mr. and Mrs. Mallomar bickered most of the way up.
“I don’t know how comfortable this saddle is,” Mrs. Mallomar whinged.
“It’s a saddle. It’s not a lounge chair,” Mr. Mallomar snidely shot back.
Then there was the difference of opinion as to how the mountains were formed. Mrs. Mallomar felt that they had been pushed up from plates under the surface. Mallomar didn’t agree.
“These peaks are old volcanoes, for Chrissake. And these valleys you see here were scoured by receding glaciers.”
“What fucking Discovery Show did you watch? The volcanoes are in Maui.”
“Okay, let’s ask somebody who lives here,” Mallomar said. “What do you say, Clem?”
Buster turned around in his saddle to answer. The volcano answer sounded good. He sort of remembered somebody saying something about that. But it would be a long day if he aggravated the missus so early in the ride, so he replied in the way Mrs. Stumplehorst might have if she were sitting in his saddle at this moment.
“Ah b’lieve the good Lord cr’ated ’em.” Buster smiled sweetly and turned back around in his saddle. Mrs. Mallomar didn’t use any more four-letter words after that. As a matter of fact, the ride went smoothly for the rest of the way. Buster was able to lean back in his saddle and enjoy himself. He puckered up and whistled to a lark bunting perched in a juniper, he warbled to a mountain chickadee and screeched teasingly to a pine Grosbeak. Mrs. Mallomar was at it again—rolling her eyes to her husband—as if to say, “Get a load a him.” Mallomar refused to be a co-conspirator in his wife’s snobbery and wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of a response.
Mallomar had taken five hundred milligrams of Elavil and a Percocet with his egg white omelet that morning and really didn’t feel like tilting the little bubble in his psychoneural carpenter’s level. The Mallomars had been having marital problems as of late and dabbled in many kinds of therapy. Like much of life, things boiled down to “the chicken or the egg” concept of cause and effect. Was Mrs. Mallomar a substance abuser because their marriage was in trouble, or was their marriage in trouble because Dana was a substance abuser? Was Mallomar’s uncontrollable anger a result of a troubled marriage or was the troubled marriage the reason for his uncontrollable anger? After a combined four hundred man-hours of therapy discussing these things and much more, they were still at an impasse. To be fair to their psychiatrist, despite a great deal of shouting, accusing, and soul baring, Mallomar never told the complete truth about himself. Even though his tax return had him listed in prosaic terms as a venture capitalist, he was really an accomplished actor. This was the secret to his success—the roles he had performed to the world: The Great Charging Bull, The Humble Before the Great, The Hale Fellow Well Met, and the award-winning Sentimentalist. How convincing he could be as that character when speaking of the Truly Important Things in Life: Family, Health, and the Belief in a Greater Power. Mallomar didn’t personally believe in any of it himself, but the performance he offered to the world, standing upstage and bellowing to the cheap seats until his lungs burned, had so much conviction that no one ever had the impertinence or cynicism to call him on it. That is, except Mrs. Mallomar. She knew him for the emotional fraud that he was—no matter how he tried to convince her otherwise. The fact that she didn’t believe in him anymore was particularly galling. Angered by this inner dialogue, Mallomar wrapped the reins tightly around his fist and gave his horse a commanding giddy-yap and went ahead of his wife, making her gag in a cloud of his dust.
That was typical, Mrs. Mallomar thought. From her dusty vantage point she fumed in silence as she watched him steer his horse around every rock and bush—as if the horse didn’t know where the hell it was going. Yes, and as if she didn’t know where she was going. She got along fine before she met him. She even made some decisions on her own. Controlling bastard. She chortled at how the fat of his hairy neck folded back on itself like a shar-pei. If she divorced him, she’d get half of everything since 1994. He’d fight it. Marvin knew how to fight dirty. He’d probably bring up how they met.
At lunch by the lake, Buster watched nervously as Mr. Mallomar sullenly picked the grapes out of his salad. Mrs. Mallomar, in the meantime, was segregating the wheat croutons from hers.
“Didn’t anyone tell you I was allergic to wheat?”
“It’s just four fuckin’ croutons. Don’t make a Federal case out of it,” Mallomar said, slapping at caddisflies as if they were yellow jackets.
“Uh, would you like me to take a picture of you two as a mo-min-toe?” Buster said, noticing Mr. Mallomar’s camera.
Mrs. Mallomar shrugged listlessly.
“Why not?” Mallomar put his food down and moved closer to his wife who stiffened. After several attempts to satisfy Mallomar’s specific sense of composition, Buster was finally told to snap the picture. Unfortunately, after he did, he fumbled the camera and it fell to the ground. It would have survived if Stinker hadn’t stepped on it.
“Jiminy. Sorry,” said Buster.
“What’d he do?”
“His horse stepped on the camera.”
“Just as well,” said Mrs. Mallomar.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Mallomar.
“It means…maybe I don’t feel so compelled to capture every sad, banal moment of my fucking life. Copy that, Bunky?” Mallomar just stared at her. Buster shifted uncomfortably.
“She’s kidding,” Mallomar said. “Where can I take a leak?”
“Men’s, to the left. Ladies’, to the right.”
Mallomar blinked, not getting the tried and true guide’s joke.
“Anywhere you please,” Buster said, by way of clarification. Mallomar couldn’t believe that something like that wasn’t, in some way, regulated. So to get things rolling, Buster walked off a discrete distance from Mrs. Mallomar behind a juniper where Mr. Mallomar joined him. Both men unzipped and when it became clear that they were passing water through disparate-sized equipment, Mallomar—the possessor of the smaller—felt the urge to compensate.
“I financed a search engine, drlivingstonipresume.com. Ever hear of it? The IPO opened at four and an eighth and shot to sixty-five by twelve-thirty the same day. Six hundred and fifty million.”
Buster didn’t seem to fully grasp the extent of Mallomar’s Wall Street derring-do. He just smiled pleasantly, shook, and zipped up.
“Six hundred and fifty million. Ain’t that the number a Chinamen they got over there?”
Mallomar just looked at him dumbfounded. Was he kidding? On the ride back down, Mrs. Mallomar complained about Buster’s horse’s gas. Then she complained that Mallomar had been given the good saddle. Not wanting to hear her whine about this for the next five miles, Mallomar asked Buster if he’d mind stopping to switch them. Buster politely obliged. They remounted and continued down the trail. Mrs. Mallomar had a light-hearted moment commenting on Mallomar’s jiggling love handles and belly. Mallomar smiled good-naturedly, but Buster could see his jaw muscles tighten as if he they were receiving electric shocks.
“They have the death penalty here in Colorado?” Mallomar said, looking at his wife.
But Buster wasn’t paying attention. He was leaning over in his saddle, scrutinizing tracks in the trail.
“What’re you looking at?”
“A doe and her fawn were coming down here this morning prolly headed for the lake. Now look at this here. A big cat cut their track.”
Mallomar was agog.
“A cat?”
“Mountain lion.”
“What do you think’s going to happen?”
“Somebody’s gonna get et,” Buster said casually.
“What did he say?” Mrs. Mallomar said, not wanting to miss out on anything.
“We just found some mountain lion tracks,” Mallomar said, appropriating. “A lion. He cut the track of a couple of deer. Probably gonna eat them.”
“Oh my god…does he know we’re here?” Mallomar looked to Buster. Buster nodded.
“Oh, yeah,” Mallomar said. He enjoyed stoking her fear. It got her mind off of him for a while. “Have you ever shot anything with that thing?” Mallomar asked, gesturing to the Krag .30-40 in Buster’s scabbard.
“Yessir.”
“Mountain lion?”
“No, sir.”
“What exactly?”
“Ev’r year ah get tags to shoot a couple elk and a mule deer. Keep some of the meat for m’sef and swap out the res’ for other things ah need—flour, saddle equipment…what not. Don’t need much.”
Buster was telling the truth. It was Jimmy who wouldn’t stoop to eat game and preferred hunting with her truck.
“You don’t use cash?”
“Well, of course. Ever’body got to have cash!” Buster guffawed. Mallomar guffawed, too—looking at his wife to make sure she got the joke.
“How much, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Beggin’ your pardon?”
“What’s your nut? How much do you need to get by on?”
Buster recalled from Mrs. Humphrey’s Manners for Men something about never talking about another fellow’s money. But he also didn’t want to make Jimmy’s client think he was uppity.
“Well, my goal’s twelve hunnert.”
“A week?”
Buster leaned back in his saddle and hee-hawed.
“No, sir, a year!”
Mallomar just looked at him in disbelief.
“Very interesting,” was all he could muster saying, “Very interesting.” It was as if Mallomar had been struck by lightning. How simple life could be, if one’s wants were simple. “What else can you point out to me?”
Buster continued to point out the tracks of at least a half-dozen other animals—from chipmunks to black bears. He taught Mallomar how to tell the difference between a crow and a raven. He told him why ranchers didn’t mind having coyotes around, but happily shoot porcupines. Now showing off, Buster identified skunkgrass, pigweed, beargrass, and kinnikinnick. He lowered his voice with reverence when they rode through remnants of an old growth forest. And always the gentleman, he stopped to pick a posy of columbines, bluebells, and paintbrush for the missus.
Mallomar found it peculiar that he did not take exception to Buster’s attention to his wife the way he did with other men. He found it even more unusual that he found himself—though older, smarter, and richer—actually looking up to Buster for some reason—even admiring him. As the corral came into sight, his heart sank. The ride was over. He didn’t want it to be. He looked over at Buster. He had his hat tilted back on his head, right leg hooked over his pommel rolling a cigarette. Mallomar chuckled to himself and shook his head. Only hours earlier, he had considered Buster an unalloyed idiot. Now, he was surprised to find himself wondering what Buster thought of him.
When they arrived at the stable, Mallomar gave Buster a $200 tip that he’d folded into a packet the size of a stick of Wrigley gum. He’d seen a wiseguy tip the maitre d’ at Sparks Steakhouse that way and decided to make it his own. To Mallomar’s chagrin, Buster put it in his pocket without checking to see how much it was.“Much obliged,” he said casually.
“That was a great ride,” Mallomar said.
“Glad ya lahked it,” Buster said as he slid off Stinker’s saddle.
“You, uh, never stared at my wife’s ass when it was slapping up and down in the saddle. I appreciated that.”
“No problemo.”
True, Buster had not stared. The thought did occur to him, however, as to what it might be like to have sex with Mrs. Mallomar. But his mind entertained the sinful notion no longer than it took a grouse to flush and vanish into the darkened ponderosa. He wanted Destiny and a ranch. It was best to keep his aim steady on that.
“Look at her over there,” Mallomar said discouragingly and pointed in the direction of Mrs. Mallomar. She dumped her bouquet in the horse trough then moved to the side mirror of the Land Rover to freshen her makeup.
“She doesn’t get any of this.”
Buster didn’t feel he should comment.
“Tell me, what would you do with a woman like that?”
Buster looked away. “Ah really coont say, sir. Alls ah know about’s horses.”
“Okay then, what would you do with a pain-in-the-ass horse like that?”
Buster pushed his hat up exposing a fine line of dirt across his forehead. It looked like the line drawn by a coroner with a black magic marker just before sawing the skull in half for an autopsy. And that was what Buster wished would have happened before he opened his big mouth.
“Well sir… Ah’d bite down hard on her ear. They don’t like that.”
Buster realized his faux pas as soon as the words launched off his dust-covered tongue. Normally, he spoke no more than a dozen words a week, but somehow being around Mallomar, discussing the Internet and showing off about his tracking skills, made Buster feel smarter than he was—like he had been given membership in a whole new level of society. In anticipation of Mallomar’s reaction, Buster reached into his pocket to give his tip back. But Mallomar just looked at him with no more expression on his face than a man wearing a brown paper bag with the eyes cut out.
“You’d think a man with as much going for him as me…could find someone who loved him.”
And with that, he turned and walked back to his car.