The young man focused on folding his orange nylon tent lengthwise on the rough ground, but he was aware of her, she could tell. He had great peripheral vision. Like a basketball player, she thought.
“Good morning,” she said.
The man stood. He was tall, maybe six one, slender but broad-shouldered. His short black beard was trimmed but not too neatly.
“Ma’am.” He did not smile. She saw for the first time that his eyes were gray, nearly blue but not. Like slate. Eloquent, in that they registered keen intelligence but no warmth. Like a husky. No, like a wolf. Celine studied them for a long moment, unflinching.
“Would you like some coffee? We’ve just made a pot. It’s very good, French roast, much better than the stuff we’ve all been drinking in the diners.”
His eyes did not flicker. “Ma’am, no thank you. I’ve got the makings started.” He glanced at the tailgate of his truck. She noticed the hissing of the camp stove and the Pyrex French press beside it. A bag of Peet’s ground beans. I’ll be damned. Probably stationed in a cosmopolitan city somewhere and grown used to the finer things. But his accent had a touch of country south of Pennsylvania. And he had said “makings.” And the irritating use of “ma’am” suggested ex-military.
“Okay. You probably have oatmeal or eggs or something, too?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes, I see now, that insipid old Quaker on the box. I’m guessing that you make a very fine oatmeal, but prefer ham and eggs. Like the poor man in that Hemingway story, I can’t remember the title.”
“‘The Battler.’”
Celine raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t say ma’am.”
“No, ma’am.”
He held a small stuff sack filled with what must be tent stakes. He was wearing a wedding ring, a simple gold band, scuffed and dulled to brass. There was that. She tried to imagine those eyes looking into the eyes of his beloved. She could not imagine their mineral gray ever holding any real warmth, but of course they might change color in her arms. Celine was now genuinely intrigued. Not only was he erudite but he had wit, if not humor. Probably both. Clearly these people, whoever they were, had a very deep bench.
“I bet you know that I am carrying more than a cup of coffee,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And that if you keep saying ma’am I might pull it out. I will turn into a complete lunatic.” She coughed. It rose in her chest and spasmed her throat. She lifted her arm to cover it, but it gathered force and shook her so violently it spilled her half-full cup. Damn. Her lungs had been so quiet since they’d landed in Denver. The dry air had been good. When the convulsion was over she collected herself and just breathed, pursing her lips. She had great class: She did not apologize to the man or even acknowledge his presence. This was a private matter. She collected herself and gave herself time to return to her normal state of elegance. Then she swallowed a sip of coffee from the bottom of the mug.
Thank God, she thought, he had the tact to keep his mouth shut. He held the bag of stakes.
“Would you like help folding the tent?” she said.
“I think I’ve got it.”
“You know,” she said, “you have an almost perfect cooking setup. Except. Just a sec, I had an idea—” She wrinkled her nose, turned on the heel of her slipper, shook the dregs of her cup onto the ground, and was gone. He blinked. She didn’t take long. Four minutes later she was back.
“You need one of these,” she said. “My son’s camper came with one, so we have an extra. Go ahead, take it. I’d say the coffee gets twice as good.” She held out her hand. He hesitated, took the thing, rolled it over in his rough palm. It was a battery-powered coffee-bean grinder.
“Fuckin’ A,” he whispered.
“I didn’t get that,” she chimed.
His eyes flicked up, a fleeting light—of amusement, or gratitude, or wariness, she wasn’t sure. Maybe all three. He nodded once, in thanks, she supposed, and his eyes found their old level, the one that looked a little like granite. Well, she had years of experience dealing with taciturn men.
“If you know where we’re going, why not just meet us there?” she said.
He didn’t say anything. His expression didn’t change. He was looking at her with the same neutral steadiness. She understood that this was a man who could quiet his heartbeat and would not easily tire at the flat distances seen through a rifle scope.
“I mean if you are not trying to intimidate us. Clearly you want us to know you are here, but you don’t seem that intimidating.” Celine smiled at him. “I mean that in the best way.” She sighed. “Well, I suppose. I should probably be polite and ask you if you prefer camp breakfast or a road café. But that would be letting the tail wag the dog, truly.” She turned to go and turned back.
“What is it?” she said.
“Ma’am?”
“Arrgh.” She smiled again, this time her brightest, true smile. “What am I carrying?”
“Glock 26.”
Celine was in a state as they drove up the shore to the Jackson Lake Lodge. They would eat breakfast there, in deference to their travel companion.
“He’s too skinny,” Celine had said. “He can’t survive on oatmeal boiled on the back of his truck. Don’t look at me like that.”
Pete had not been aware that he was looking at her like anything. “Anyway, he’s clearly on expenses,” she said. “He can order the Lumberjack Breakfast. When we all get there, I think I’ll just have one sent over.”
She did not have one sent over. But she did scribble a note on the back of a pink dry-cleaning ticket and ask their waitress to give it to him. It said, “I couldn’t bear, after all, to think of you eating nothing but oatmeal.” She nodded at the man as he took his table in the corner—the gunfighter’s table, she thought, the one with a clear view of the room and no angles of fire from behind; must be habit—and he read the note and touched the brim of his cap. She and Pete drank their coffee and ate their eggs and pancakes under a massive bull moose who looked out longingly at the young willows at the edge of the shore. Celine just couldn’t get over that the man had known her gun, make and model, through her bathrobe.
“I mean it wasn’t a negligee,” she objected. Either his people had bugged Hank’s house in Denver when she had asked for his gun, which seemed very far-fetched, or he had guessed. “I suppose he knew that a Glock is what I have at home and of all the guns it’s the one I’m most comfortable with. And of course if it had been a 19 it would have been more bulky. So: a 26. He’s not clairvoyant.”
“Hmm.”
“He’s a cocky SOB. He knew The Nick Adams Stories. Probably a frustrated English major who graduated from college qualified to drive a cab.”
They made to leave and stood at the table and Celine waited courteously until their chaperone took his last sip of coffee and plucked up his own bill before proceeding to the cashier at the front. They paid their check and they were half out the door into the lobby and she waited again until she saw the man hand his own ticket to the cashier. Then she said to Pete, “You go ahead, I’ve got to make one last stop.” Which was a euphemism. She headed for the heavy wooden door of the ladies’ room and waved at the young man as he followed Pete out the glass front doors, and then she doubled back and went straight to the waitress. She held her digital camera in one hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “may I have a receipt for breakfast.” Celine could see the restaurant copies skewered on a spindle by the register.
“Didn’t I give you one?” sighed the waitress. “It’s been one of those mornings. My littlest kept me up all night with stomach pains.”