Glacier Gold Read online

  “He told you to fuck off, didn’t he,” Carl says, eyeing me from where he’s lying in his bed across the room. His face is eerily lit by the green neon shine seeping in from outside. There’s hardly a hotel in Fitsch that doesn’t boast a really large, really bright neon sign with its name on its roof.

  “He did, didn’t he,” Jay echoes, raising his head from his pillow too. With his green-tinted hair spikes and somber face, he looks like a zombie contemplating rising from its grave.

  “Did not,” I mumble, letting my phone slip under my blanket.

  Jay and Carl exchange a look. I feel like a kid trying, and failing, to hide the sweets he’s hoarding under his mattress from his parents.

  People have told me I’m easier to read than an open book, and apparently it’s true. It plain sucks.

  “Listen, Justin. We know you don’t like to admit defeat, but this has the potential to ruin your vacation, and by extension, ours,” Carl says, then seems to decide he needs to dumb this down for me. “Just let it go, Justin, okay?”

  “Yeah, let it go,” Jay says.

  “You let the duchess go,” I grumble. That’s what Carl has dubbed Antje. In spite of all his efforts, she didn’t invite Jay into her bed tonight after all.

  Looks like he needs a reminder.

  “Doesn’t look like you’ll get any either, does it, Jay,” I say tartly.

  “The difference being I can handle it,” Jay retorts, sitting up, bristling. “I’m moving on instead of keeping other people awake by watching stupid illegally obtained videos!”

  “I can handle it too,” I say lamely.

  Again, Jay and Carl exchange that knowing look.

  I hate my friends, I really do.

  I’VE TOLD Jay and Carl I can handle it. Only I can’t.

  I thought about Andi when I rubbed one off under the shower earlier. Naturally. And I’ve been watching a couple of the videos I made of him to help me fall asleep. Not a big deal either.

  But I still think about him when I’ve switched off the phone and lie in my bed in the dark, listening to my friends’ snoring, trying to fall asleep.

  Instead of dozing off as would be normal after a day of boarding, and with the jet lag I still have in my bones too, I keep seeing Andi in my mind’s eye.

  Disappearing through the exit of the Glacier Cave.

  Passing me by on his snowboard, guiding it with just that subtle, sexy twist to his hips.

  Walking away from me in the bathroom hallway.

  All the time it feels like he’s on the brink of turning back to me.

  But he never does.

  WHEN WE arrive at the base station of the Gletscher Express the next morning, I instantly spot him in the crowd. He’s hard to miss with his orange-and-yellow instructor gear, his height, and his pretty head. He doesn’t see us; he’s busy herding a group of kids into a car.

  The children’s groups usually stick to the easy slopes in the lower regions of the resort. On the ride up, I tell Jay and Carl I’ll get off at the middle station because I need a few hours on the beginners’ slopes to polish my front flip. They see right through me, but whatever. I let them tease me until I’m out of the car and the automatic doors close on them and their silly remarks.

  I do practice my front flip for a bit, all the while watching out for Andi’s little group.

  After half an hour or so, I stop the practicing. My front flip already is pretty much perfect, and also, my muscles are still sore from yesterday. And I can’t do cartwheels all morning, not with all the Speck and scrambled eggs I’ve had for breakfast. In case I manage to accidentally meet Andi, I intend to impress him with my stylish riding and maybe a smooth line or two I haven’t quite worked out yet, not be sick all over his snowboard.

  I go past a number of Happy Powder instructors with their courses, but none of them is Andi.

  After four rides on the Gletscher Express to the middle station, I stop at the sandwich bar by the exit to have a drink.

  The bar is called Gletschergeist. When I tell the buxom lady at the checkout, Rosi, according to the name tag on her frilly blouse, that I’m happy they’re selling soda too and not just that unspeakable apricot schnapps, she responds with a genial smile and settles down on a stool for a chat. She tells me that Gletschergeist is not just the name of the schnapps traditionally distilled in the Fitschtal, but that the name is really derived from the old legends about a spirit living on the glacier. The moods of this spirit are supposed to influence the weather, she informs me. I observe that the geist seems to be feeling pretty chirpy right now, luckily for me and my friends. On that Rosi warns me in a dark tone that things can change at the blink of an eye up here and advises me to always be careful. Apparently there is a long list of people who have fallen victim to the Gletschergeist and its mood swings over the centuries.

  I buy two Krapfen from the little tray by Rosi’s register for Carl. As she puts them into a paper bag, she asks me where we are staying. When I say the Fankhauser, she tells me Jacob Fankhauser owns half the hotels in Fitsch, and this bar too. It just takes an interested “is that so?” from me for her to proceed to fill me in on every detail she knows about the man.

  Apparently Andi’s father is the mastermind behind the winter tourism in Fitsch. It was he who founded the company behind the ski resort twenty years ago and pushed the project through more or less single-handedly. He coined the phrase “Five Summits of Fitsch” and developed four of the five signature peaks framing the valley. For the Sunnzeiger, the highest of the summits, he set up a heliskiing service for those with some extra cash to spend.

  His latest exploit is the Gletscher Express, a multimillion-dollar masterpiece of cable car engineering. The top station on the Hexnjoch that is housing the five-star Gletscher Hotel was designed by a team of world-famous architects and has won half a dozen international prizes, or so Rosi tells me. It would; it’s a turd-shaped glass-and-steel thing that’s teetering on a rocky cliff, looking like it’ll tumble down the drop-off at any moment.

  Finally I get a short but full briefing on Fankhauser Senior’s private life. Apparently he raised his two sons as a single dad. With a mournful expression that suggests a history of failed romantic moves, Rosi observes there are those men who just won’t be saved from their lonesome ways.

  I can relate to the disappointment ringing in her words, but I need to focus on my own problems. Leaving her to attend to the next customer, a wiry octogenarian who has started prodding his helmet into my butt to signal his unhappiness with the laggy service, I step out into the dazzling sunshine to idly glide through the scenic winter wonderland of Fitsch 2000 some more, scanning the slopes for my target.

  In the end I’m lucky. I spot him at a short T-bar lift about a hundred yards below me, guiding the six kids of his course down the run, looking like a duck with its young. I’ve just stopped my board to look on for a bit when two of the kids crash into each other, both of them taking an epic tumble. Andi stops the group, kicks off his board, and climbs the slope to help.

  As I watch him pick up the kids and check them for damage, comforting them, I find myself intensely wishing I was one of those clueless youngsters.

  And at the same time, I suddenly see that Jay and Carl were right. This is getting me nowhere. Because I don’t want to be the guy who interferes with his job.

  All six kids are crowding him now, shoving each other to get closer to him. It’s because he’s handing out candy. With the day being nearly windless, I can hear his soft, hoarse voice as he admonishes them to be considerate of each other.

  I don’t know why, really, but watching him pat the kids’ oversized helmets, being all responsible and patient and nice with the little rascals, makes my stomach do the strangest things. It’s, like, rising into my chest, squeezing at my heart.

  Hoping it’s just the front flips and the Speck, I quickly move my board to go downhill on another trail.

  I MEET up with Jay and Carl in the sports shop at the base station.
Jay needs to replace a broken binding. While he talks to a shop assistant, I sift through the assortment of scarves on a bargain counter. Carl is hovering around the cashier, feeding off the little chocolate eggs in the bowl on the man’s desk.

  When I pay for my new scarf, satin with a pretty pink checker design, I notice the cashier looks a bit like Andi, especially from behind. He’s more the heavyset type, with wider shoulders and thicker arms, but he’s got the same wavy black hair. I kind of hate him for not having the right face.

  The moment we are out of the shop, Carl says, “That was Andi Fankhauser’s brother, Max. They could be twins, they look so similar, don’t you think?”

  “The cashier guy was Andi’s brother? How do you know?”

  “I asked him,” Carl says smugly. “Their father owns the shop.”

  Why am I not surprised?

  I stuff my new scarf down my backpack and pull out the paper bag with the Krapfen I bought for Carl. His eyes lighting up, he quickly swallows the chocolate egg he’s been chewing on and takes the bag from my hand.

  “Nice, man, thanks! What I mean to say is, why don’t you forget about Andi and give Max a shot instead? He seemed to like you.”

  He did? We didn’t get to talk much when I paid for my scarf. In fact, I got the impression he had a bit of an issue with my choice of color. I notice these things. I guess he couldn’t know picking a pink scarf makes sense for me, seeing as my snowboard has pink butterflies on it.

  “No offense, Carl, but you don’t know shit when it comes to who likes who,” I say. “Or did you ask him about his orientation too?”

  “He had an earring,” Carl says defensively.

  “An earring,” Jay echoes.

  “Okay, het guys, two things. I think I’ve told you before someone wearing an earring so doesn’t mean they’re gay. Second, I don’t care either way, because he isn’t Andi.”

  Carl opens his mouth to say something, but I talk over him. “Third, I didn’t get any vibes from this Max guy at. All.”

  Carl looks a little confused, then swallows and says in a pretty catty tone, “But you’re so getting them from Andi.”

  “I am.”

  For the hundredth time, I see Andi in my mind’s eye, walking away from me.

  It takes some strength, or stupidity, to keep the faith at this point that I’ll get him to talk to me for real, that much is true.

  But he has also looked into my eyes like no one ever did before. Like I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to before now. Peeling back all the layers or something.

  Nobody knows about that moment but him and me.

  Standing here in the hustling main street of Fitsch in blazing daylight next to my two oblivious friends almost makes it seem like a dream.

  I BROUGHT a whole year’s worth of Statistics for Business to Tyrol. I have to retake an exam at the beginning of the next semester. Which is in ten days exactly.

  My mom talked a lot about how it wasn’t a great idea to go on vacation two weeks before an important test. I promised I’d download everything I needed to prepare for the exam onto my laptop and take it along on the trip. I had this idea I might go through stuff in the afternoons.

  Only it turns out that after a day of boarding, I never seem to feel quite up to it. And by night, well.

  I couldn’t know I’d meet Andi. Let alone that it would take such an effort to get into his pants.

  I can’t spend the night with Statistics for Business when the Fitschtalers are doing another gig in the Funk House. It said so in the Fankhauser News, the daily four-page hotel newspaper that lies on the breakfast tables in the restaurant every morning.

  This is another chance for me to finally make some progress with Andi, and I don’t intend to let it pass.

  I want to sleep with him, just once.

  Or maybe twice.

  I’ve mapped it all out in my head. He lives in the west wing of the hotel, in the family’s private quarters on the second floor. He’s sure to have a room of his own there, meaning we won’t have to use the suite and make Jay and Carl spend the night in a bar. Yeah, once we’ve talked and reached an understanding, I’ll join him in his bed for a fuck or two, or maybe three, and then I’ll tell him goodbye and leave this be.

  The point being, the sooner I get this over and done with, the sooner I can start learning for my test. Hell, one way or another I’m going to pass that frigging exam, and then my mom won’t have any reason to ask nasty questions.

  My mom wants to see me succeed. Guess it’s natural. Also I kind of owe her because she has given me a loan to get my degree. She set just one condition: that it would be in economics. She has a bachelor in economics herself, and she always says it’s the perfect foundation for a solid career like hers. She works in a real estate agency in LA, and she keeps saying I can absolutely hope to do the same one day. All I need to do is get my degree. Then I can apply for a job somewhere in the city and work my way up like she did. Just a little less football and much less doodling on the silly tablet and I’d be on track, she would say.

  I’m not quite sure this is true. I know people who are pushing thirty and never slacked and still haven’t landed what my mom would call a real job. Even Carl is working as an intern and lives off the money he made with an app he built when we were still in high school, and he’s this genius that’s all focused and shit. The app is about school recess snacks; it helps optimize the nutritional value of people’s lunchboxes. I wish I could come up with something cool like that. Then I could forget my mom’s plans for my life and this frigging exam.

  I MENTION the files on my laptop and my mom to Jay and Carl during dinner. Shouldn’t have. They make me tell them the whole ugly story, my promise to my mother, her problem with my graphic tablet.

  And now they won’t stop trying to make me study.

  They know my mom from back in our high school days and still seem to live in fear of her. I guess it’s the way she used to tell them things like to not log in to dating apps when we were supposed to be preparing a presentation for class (Jay), or have a tuna mayonnaise sandwich on the corduroy couch (Carl). She has this special knack of knowing what you’re up to and making you feel she isn’t happy with it.

  Well, she’s six thousand miles away right now. And the Fitschtalers are going to play in the club tonight.

  Considering what happened yesterday, some, or Jay and Carl, might say there’s little point in going to that gig. But I can’t not do it.

  I want Andi, and I’ve only got five more nights to make it happen.

  IT’S TEN thirty when we go down to the Funk House. Past time. When we were hanging out at the suite after dinner, I mentioned what I learned about Fankhauser Senior in the morning, and Carl took that as a cue to deliver a lengthy lecture on the history of the Fitschtal. All I remember of it is that a few hundred years back, apparently there were quite substantial deposits of gold frozen into the glacial ice, and that the local farmers used to fight their grim poverty with gold panning. Carl harped on for ages about how fascinating it was to think that the glacier was the foundation of the economic survival of the area to this very day.

  Carl is always interested in socioeconomic backgrounds and shit, and with me being an econ student, he thinks I’m the person to share this kink with.

  I had a few shots of Gletschergeist to tune him out. I bought a bottle in the hotel’s souvenir shop, figuring it might help boost my morale a bit after the bummer last night.

  During the ride in the elevator down to the nightclub, I tell Jay and Carl all about it. Me complimenting Andi on his lederhosen, him leaving me standing there next to that stinky candle, wanting to cry.

  Schnapps is supposed to make you loosen up, and it turns out that’s actually what it does.

  When I’ve told my story, Carl nods soberly.

  “Commenting on traditional clothing can be a tricky thing,” he informs Jay and me. “Locals can be quite touchy about such things. He might have felt you were seeing him as some kin
d of mannequin for the tourists. I’m sure he gets to deal with all kinds of arrogance and presumptuousness from customers on the job. He might have felt you were being condescending.”

  Oh fuck.

  “Come on, it’s just a pickup line!”

  “Let me put it simply, then. It’s a crappy pickup line.”

  At that Jay chimes in, saying, yes, it was the crappiest pickup line in human history, and that next time I should try “Is your name Earl Grey? Because you look like a hot tea.”

  When I ask him how that isn’t crappy, he starts to explain this is witty because it sounds like you’re saying “hottie” while what you really say is “hot tea.”

  When he sees I’m not convinced, he forces another one on me.

  “Can I call you a keyboard? Because you are my type.”

  I have no idea how he ever got a girl into bed.

  But he just did it again, at least kind of. Apparently he met Antje the duchess in the restaurant at the top station this morning while Carl was having his second breakfast and got invited for a quickie in a bathroom stall.

  I shouldn’t be jealous of a fuck in the ladies’, I know, but considering my total lack of headway with Andi so far, yeah. I kind of am.

  WHEN WE enter the Funk House, the Fitschtalers are already playing. Andi is looking his usual mouthwatering self.

  I can’t take my eyes off him as we walk past the stage. And suddenly he lifts his gaze from the keyboard, and our eyes meet. The world stops moving. A split second later, a sharp dissonance jars the harmonies of the Austrian rock song the band is performing. Andi flinches, and the guy with the guitar next to him flashes him a confused glance.

  “Come on, man,” Carl hisses. I’m standing, dazed and unable to tear my gaze away from Andi. He’s focusing on his keyboard again, his hair falling over his eyes, but I could swear there’s another one of those lovely spotty blushes spreading from his neck to his face. Sadly, with the reddish light and Carl ruthlessly pulling me along now, I can’t be sure. And obviously Andi might simply be stressed because he isn’t used to hitting the wrong keys.