Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

dug into her neck while Michael leaned on his elbows at the edge of the pool, reminding her very much of a self-satisfied old walrus.
    “You’re lucky we didn’t take you to Harbin,” he said.
    “What’s Harbin?”
    “Another hot springs.” Ben was moving on to her shoulders now. “North of the city. Clothing optional.”
    “No thanks.”
    “She’s a priss,” said Michael.
    “I’m not a priss. I’ve been to clothing-optional places.”
    “Yeah. The ladies’ spa at Canyon Ranch.”
    She shot him a withering look. “No … smart-ass … I went to Lands End with you and Brian once.” She flashed briefly on her now-nomadic first husband, wondering, as she sometimes did, where on this continent his beloved Winnebago had landed.
    “You went,” said Michael, “but you didn’t get naked.”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “Trust me. I would’ve remembered.”
    What was that supposed to mean? “I just don’t think,” she added as pleasantly as possible, “that people my age should be inflicting their naked selves on the landscape. It’s not generally appreciated. It’s the same reason I don’t litter.”
    Ben chuckled but didn’t comment.
    “Lots of people at Harbin are older than us,” Michael said.
    “Oh, well … yum! Why didn’t you tell me? Can’t wait.”
    Michael chortled. “Hopeless.”
    “It’s all good,” Ben offered noncommittally, ending the discussion as he finished off her shoulders with an amiable whack. “Wanna see our property now? It’s on the way back to town. I’d like to try to get to the slopes by noon.”
    She wondered if she and Michael were starting to get on Ben’s nerves.
    T HEIR LAND WAS ONLY A mile or two down the road, but, just before they reached the turn-off, the guys decided they shouldn’t go there without the dog.
    “Why?” she asked. “Are there wild animals or something?”
    Michael chortled. “Lotta help the doodle would be. It’s the critters that eat the dogs around here. We just take him with us for ceremonial purposes. It feels more like home every time he pees on the property. For that matter, every time we do.”
    “You don’t plan on living here, do you?”
    “Just for a few weeks at a time,” said Ben, looking over the seat at her. “A month or two at the most, maybe. It’ll be our getaway.”
    “It’s already your getaway. That’s the wonderful part.” She knew they were nowhere near being able to afford to build something.
    The dog went berserk when he saw them again, though they’d been gone only for a couple of hours. They loaded him into the car and headed back to the turn-off. The road, which had recently been plowed, ascended in a leisurely switchback fashion that didn’t bother Mary Ann in the slightest until Michael ordered her not to look back.
    “Oh, fuck,” she said. “Not another cliff.”
    “No. I just wanna save it until we get there.”
    What he was saving she finally saw after trudging up a roadside bank to the promontory where their land lay. There was nothing precipitous here to work her nerves, just the gentle falling away of the pines to the long, narrow valley that contained Pinyon City. She couldn’t see the town, though, or even a single house. There was a range of saw-toothed mountains in the distance, but no evidence of the highway that had brought them here. The hum she had mistaken for traffic had turned out to be wind in the trees.
    “The living room will go here,” Michael told her, pointing to a flagged stake in the snow. “The big window will face that way, so we can look directly at Pinyon Peak.”
    She asked, perhaps indelicately, how they planned to get up here from the road, and what they would do about water and sewage.
    “We’ll have to dig a well,” said Ben. “And put in a septic tank and a driveway. It’s no biggie.”
    It seemed like a huge biggie to her, but she didn’t say so. Michael now had his arm around Ben, who’d just thrown a pinecone for Roman, and the two of them were watching the dog bound through the snow like a four-legged Muppet. She had the sense that it wouldn’t matter to either of them if they were never able to build here. This was just the canvas on which they could paint their modest dreams, and, as such, it could always be the beginning of something, not the imperfect, inevitable end.
    O NCE B EN HAD LEFT FOR the slopes at Kirkwood, Mary Ann and Michael camped out on opposing sofas in the living room. Michael had told her that he was