Chapter 13

I spent Friday writing the short story of the genie and the gang bangers. I gave the tale a happy ending, which was unusual for me, usually focused on the dark. But the moral of the story, as all fairy tales need one, was that the choices we make lead to the life we live, and that a happy ending really is in our control.

In the evening I met up with Chris and Rick and a few of their workmates at Tiffany's. I relaxed into the casual exchange while they downed gins and beers. After their cronies took off, I joined Chris and Rick at Rick's flat. Rick went directly to bed. A hotel maintenance worker, he was on-call at 4:00 the next morning. Chris and I played Tavli late into the night, since, as an accountant she had weekends off and the holiday week to come. I didn't mention leaving before New Year's, but, truth was she most likely didn't care if I took off. I didn't tell her about going to Oregon for New Year's because I wasn't sure if I was yet, since staying in Colorado may be a better choice then getting back involved with Lee.

As excited as I was to see him, be with him, I felt apprehensive. While Lee provide me the ground I'd been missing with his attention alone, he wasn't exactly the greatest influence. After vacation, back in L.A., I'd have to limit our time together to racquetball, cycling the strand, productive activities that were cheap, or free. It was time to stop accumulating debt I couldn't reciprocate right now, and never, really, in the way I knew he wanted. Come the New Year I was done with weed, gorging on extravagant meals, unwittingly leading Lee on by accepting his invitations. It was time for me to make it on my own, and become who I wanted to be with. And that wasn't Lee, knowing he'd continue using, compulsively consuming, and modeling the addict I knew I had to abandon to actualize the life I still hoped for.

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"—you're not even up yet. It's 9:00 already. I told you to be ready. I wanted to be on the road to my parents by now." Chris woke me from a sound sleep and nearly gave me a heart attack when she came into the bedroom Christmas Eve morning.

I bolted upright. "Sorry. Give me one minute." I got out of bed, slid on my jeans and a warm wool sweater over Marc's flannel shirt, then picked up my backpack off the cedar chest. "Let's go," I shot Chris a quick grin, called Face to come, and snatched my camera case off the kitchen counter as I followed her out the glass doors.

We sandwiched the dog as we piled into her white Chevy pick-up and headed over the Rocky Mountains to the tiny town of Delta, Colorado, where Chris was born and raised and her parents still lived. We were expected tonight for their annual Christmas Eve dinner.

I grew up watching the Christmas specials with John Denver sledding through the snow covered Rockies on the way to a family feast. I always wanted to be with him in that sled. L.A. in December is usually seventy-five degrees and sunny. My family celebrated Hanukkah, but it never had the cachet of Christmas. The sparkle of colored lights, the tree with all the presents underneath, I liked the glitter and glamor of it all. So I came to Colorado year after year to be a part of that scene. And though I never saw John Denver up here, it was one of those rare occasions I wasn't on the outside looking in.

A light snow started to fall and flakes flurried around us as Chris speed along I-70. I was glad for the chance to be with her alone. Rick was on-call all week for the rush of incoming skiers.

"Hey, Ray," Chris said. "I wanted to tell ya I'm sorry about Canada last spring, the entire road trip after your friend's wedding actually. I never should have agreed to it when I was so depressed after closing my firm."

"I'm sorry, too. I think we fed into each other's depression. You're okay now though, back on your feet with this Beaver Run gig, right?”

“The job certainly helps me feel better about myself. Well, that and Prozac.”

I smiled, again heard Lee's rejoinder the last night we were together. “Well, you seem really happy. Rick seems really nice. I'm glad you found someone to be with. I should be so lucky."

"Well, what about that guy you met from your ad? Lee, isn't it?"

"We're just friends. I like him a lot. He's a blast to hang out with." I smiled, picturing Lee's adorable baby face. "He says he wants more, but he's dangerous, Chris, an obsessive, like me. We could never be more than a fix for each other." I paused, took a deep breath and sighed to shed the truth of my words. "He professes to be an ex-gambler, but is in debt for close to half a million. He just got divorced from a two year marriage, and on top of all that he's a addict in denial. My gut tells me he's a little too screwed up to get seriously involved with."

"Aren't we all." She pressed in the lighter. “But Rick and I are better together then either of us are alone.” She retrieved a pack of Marlboro Lights that was sliding back and forth on top of the metal dashboard, pulled out a cigarette, lit it and took a drag. "He's an alcoholic, ya know." She threw the pack back on top of the dash and reached behind her then pulled open the small back window a crack, but smoke still lingered in the cab. "He's full blown. Functioning, but an alcoholic nonetheless. I don't have to become one because Rick is."

I'd seen her put away two gin and tonics and at least a beer or two at Happy Hour night after night, which wasn't usual for Chris. I'd never known her to be a big drinker. "Well, whatever you're doing seems to be working for you. I hope it lasts."

"I don't know about Rick and I being together for the long run, but I am 35 years old and this is the first real boyfriend I have ever had. I am not going to be too critical. Live and let live. Carpé Diem, and all that,” she quoted Robin William's in Dead Poet's Society. Chris took a final drag off her cigarette, rolled down her window and threw out the butt. Even though she closed it in seconds, icy air filled the inside of the truck and I shivered. "Look Rachel, Lee is the first guy you've been excited about in years. So he's not perfect. As you have said to me many times, we are all fatally flawed in one way or another. But a different way to see us is that we're all works in progress."

I smiled. Chris had never been profound, but was bordering that edge, throwing my own words back at me, with a twist. But living for just today was a fool's play. She'd been smoking since I'd known her, and would end up with lung cancer someday. If she missed that bullet, her weight issues, and now drinking excessively, daily, would certainly lead to major health problem not too far down the line. Regardless that she ignored her choices today would impact her future, and likely the lives she touched, they most certainly would. Whether with diet, career, sex and/or in love— continually making poor choices and you're basically fucking your future self.

It stopped snowing by the time we got to her parents' sprawling ranch set in the middle of a hundred and fifty acres of chaparral wilderness. The dogs greeted us as we got out of the truck. Three chocolate Dobermans in their prime surrounded Face, but only Duchess, the youngest, would engage in play. The other dogs turned their attention to Chris and I and mooched for affection as they followed us into the house.

Chris exchanged hugs and kisses with family, and then her slender, attractive mother and her roguishly handsome father hugged me as if I were theirs. Her bear of a big brother, Jim, gave me a quick, tender embrace. Her older sister, Caroline, stayed on the suede couch and said 'Hi,' then inquired about my drive from the 'tar pit.' Six months pregnant at just 21, with a two year old son already in tow, Caroline eloped at 18 with the high school quarterback who permanently injured his knee his first game for Denver State. They'd been living on the government dime ever since.

For the next ten minutes straight she slammed L.A. for wrecking their economy and stealing Colorado's water. "I'm for turning off the tap and watching them all fry down there." Caroline took another big bite of apple pie drowning in vanilla ice cream, and either didn't care or was unaware of the health issues of being what looked like a hundred pounds overweight during pregnancy. "If they had any brains they'd all go back to where they came from, leave the place to the Beaners, Jews and Fags."

"When the barbarians come to your gate, you're welcome here, Rachel," Jim said with shy smile.

"Thanks, Jim." I returned his smile and turned back to Caroline. Though I'd tolerated her slams over the years, they were getting uglier, longer, and words began spilling from my mouth. "People leave towns like these because technology and globalization are wiping out manufacturing jobs and killing the need for U.S. labor. They come to L.A. for work, and they don't leave whether they find it or not because it's better to be warm and broke than freezing alone back in the old home town that everyone moved to L.A. to get away from." My reasoning fell on deaf ears as Caroline's eyes veiled. She looked down at her plate then took another big bite of pie. Everyone was looking at us, and I felt bad for creating the riff, sort of. "Believe me, I too wish everyone stayed in Michigan, or New York, or Colorado, and you had your water and we had our land of plenty back." I sighed, slamming myself for engaging with her at all as I got up to greet Chris' grandparents, then joined the women in the kitchen to help prepare and serve dinner. The men watched football.

Glass eyes on the embalmed heads of clueless animals mounted on the walls of the guestroom glowed in the dim light from the lamp on the end table, next to the bed covered in bear skins. A buzz would surely help me dispel my disgust among the stuffed heads of deer, elk and even a mountain lion slaughter by man with gun looking to feel powerful. I slid a joint from my camera bag pocket and cracked the double hung window. Icy air flooded in as I lit the J and inhaled sharply, the heat of the smoke warming me inside and out. I moved the chest near the open window and sat on it to exhale directly thought the window opening, but it really didn't matter if smoke lingered in the room. Most everyone in Chris' family smoked cigarettes, including Caroline, even while pregnant. Their house was so saturated with tobacco smoke, the scent of weed would be indistinguishable.

It was one continual party for five straight days. Town folk streamed in and out daily, sharing in the holiday cheer. It snowed only that first night but it was cold, ten degrees or less most days. Other than brief walks with the dogs, and quick trips to the video or liquor store, we stayed inside. Chris and I helped cook and serve the meals, and in between played Tavli, watched movies and cable TV, and ate and ate and ate.

Initially I embraced the festivities. But it got harder to maintain cheerful after being introduced by her grandma to party-goers as 'Christine's little Jewish friend' for the twentieth time. I considered correcting her, confess to being an atheist, but that would only arouse judgment, and suspicion. Judaism, though foreign, was at least religion. Admitting to being a non-believer I'd be damning myself to the outside, obliterating one of the primary reasons I came here year after year.

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