We stopped to rest by the side of the trail after we had crossed the field of moguls, huddling close as the fog swirled around us, an enveloping specter that seemed to have been summoned from some cold, dank crypt to which it was eager now to drag us.
“Everybody okay?” Mary Margaret asked.
“Yeah,” Sandy said briefly.
“We’ll be out of this soon,” Mary Margaret said. “The worst part is just ahead. Let’s stick very close together. Okay?”
KR: We’re making progress here, Peter, you’re coming to a better understanding of yourself. But I don’t think you yet realize how threatening the relationship between you, Sandy, and...
ME: I don’t find it threatening.
KR: It’s threatening because it keeps alive this concept of infantile omnipotence.
ME: I don’t know what that means.
KR: It means that together you feel you can do whatever you want to do and get away with it.
ME: That’s ridiculous.
KR: Isn’t that what happened with Rhoda? You destroyed her and then...
ME: Destroyed her! Jesus!
KR: Yes. You destroyed her, and you got away with it. There was no punishment, there was only reward — a tightening of the bond between the three of you, a confirmation of your omnipotence. Well, you’re not all-powerful, Peter. You’re three very troubled youngsters who...
ME: I don’t want to hear this.
KR: I know you don’t. I’d like you to listen anyway. Your occasional contact with the other two...
ME: Don’t call them “the other two!” We’re not accomplices! We have names!
KR: Have you?
ME: Yes. Sandy, David, and me.
KR: I didn’t hear your name.
ME: Don’t make it sound as if I don’t exist without them!
KR: I would like you to exist without them. Don’t go on this trip. The three of you together again for an extended period of...
ME: We’re always together.
KR: No. You see each other only occasionally, you nourish your conglomerate ego only enough to sustain it. It has, in a sense, been latent since that summer five years ago. I wouldn’t like to see it emerge again full-blown. Peter?
ME: I’m listening.
KR: Please don’t go on this trip.
ME: I’m going.
KR: Must we risk everything we’ve accomplished so far?
ME: Jesus Christ, what the hell do you think can possibly happen?
KR: The same thing that happened five years ago.
ME: Rhoda won’t be with us, Doctor. Remember?
KR: You’ll find another Rhoda.
ME: One Rhoda was enough, thanks.
KR: I would hope so. That’s why I’m begging you to stay home. I don’t think you can survive another victim.
ME: Well, this has all been very illuminating, Doctor. I’m certainly glad you decided to speed me on my way by suggesting that my friends and I are hatchet murderers.
KR: I suggested nothing of the sort. Nor am I concerned with your friends, who might do well to seek psychiatric help of their own. I’m concerned only with you. You’re my patient. If you act-out another of your...
ME: Here we go with the acting-out again.
KR: I hope not. Because this time you might destroy someone other than your intended victim.
ME: Who?
KR: Yourself.
We were on one of those treacherous trails that clung to the edge of the mountain, four feet wide, a sheer drop on our left. We inched down it slowly, checking constantly to regulate our speed. We could not see the chasm below; I didn’t know whether or not I was grateful for that. Mary Margaret, in the lead, kept shouting directions back to us. I was convinced (or at least I was praying) that once we got through this winding passage, we would be in the clear.
“Hold it,” Mary Margaret said.
Ahead of me, David checked sharply, eased up, and then slid to a gentle stop where Sandy and Mary Margaret were standing against the mountain wall. I followed his maneuver and joined them. Mary Margaret was taking off her gloves.
“My hands are freezing up,” she said. “Just a second, okay?” Tucking both gloves under her arm, she brought her hands to her mouth and began blowing on them. “I think this is the end of it,” she said. “There’s a glade just beyond the next turn, and then we’ll be out of the clouds. Everybody okay?”
“Why’d you break Foderman’s leg?” Sandy asked suddenly.
“What?” Mary Margaret said, startled. One of her gloves slipped from under her arm. She stooped to retrieve it, bending at the knees, looking up at Sandy in surprise.
“You heard me, honey,” Sandy said.
“I thought we...”
“Yeah, what’d you think?” David said.
Mary Margaret stood up immediately. The fog swirled around, hiding the cliff edge not three feet from where we were pressed against the wall of snow. “You’re kidding me,” she said, and grinned.
“Uh-uh,” Sandy said.
“You can tell us, honey,” David said. “You really did do it on purpose, didn’t you?”
“I already told you...”
“Yeah, but that was bullshit, wasn’t it?”
“I tried to jump over him...”
“No, no, no, honey, you’re a good jumper, don’t give us that.”
“I panicked.”
“Sure, you did,” Sandy said.
“That’s the truth,” Mary Margaret said. “Peter,” she said, “you know that’s the truth, don’t you? You saw what happened.”
“Yes,” I said. “I saw what happened. You skied right through him. You wanted to break his leg.”
“So what?” Mary Margaret said in sudden defiance. “Who cares about that silly Jew bastard?”
“We care about him,” Sandy said.
“We care a lot,” David said.
“We care enormously,” I said.
She was hurrying to put on her gloves now. I think she was afraid of us. I think she was afraid we might throw her over the edge or something. I think she figured this was some kind of kangaroo Nuremberg court that had found her guilty and was now about to punish her. Her green eyes were wide with fright. The whole thing was kind of amusing. I mean, what the hell, we weren’t going to shove her off the goddamn mountain! But her fear was exciting. I watched it flashing in her eyes, and I could hardly keep a smile off my face. She had the right glove on now, and was fumbling with the left, right hand clutching the woolen cuff of the other glove, gorgeous naked left hand thrusting into the fur-lined mouth, when suddenly the glove slipped from her grasp and fell to the snow an inch from the edge of the precipice. She hesitated before stooping for it, convinced that we would push her over the edge if she placed herself in such a vulnerable position. It was really funny. Her fear of us was really funny.
“Go ahead,” Sandy said, “pick it up.”
“You’ll freeze your sweet little hand,” David said.
“Listen, you guys,” Mary Margaret said. “Cut it out, will you?”
“Cut what out?” I said.
“Pick up your fucking glove!” Sandy said.