Contaminated by heaven,
he ascended, parched,
damned if he did,
damned if she didn’t.
Now, Chapstick imprints her lips
on the petal-dented Duralex glass
from which she sips her fendant.
Her sink-washed cutoff shorts
hang drying on the line on the balcony
after their afternoon’s climb to Les Ruinettes.
He followed her up the mountain
like a happy pack mule,
gazing at her firm hams
and the lovely brown calves
planted in hiking boots
and wool socks.
Her sweat entranced him.
The uncertain gravity became her.
The thin air clutched
the hollowed half bowl of greens and browns,
topped by close but distant
crumb boulders of recent avalanche.
“Over there,” he pointed. “That’s Mont Blanc.”
July wild flowers spread
like a skirt below them
to where the cow bells
rang their gentle jests.
“They’re turning that pasture into a golf course.”
“It’s a shame. It’s so beautiful and unkempt now,” she said.
“They need the money. They need it to be
more than a winter resort.
They’re starting a music festival too.”
He sunblocked her shoulders.
He gave her a bandanna to cover
the elegant little part line of her scalp.
“Be careful. You’ll fry in half an hour. It’s powerful.”
Now, after lamb chops and salad,
baguette slices with
shaved Emmental,
then some raspberry cream tarte and tea,
she lays splayed in her jammies across the sofa,
reading a day-old Herald-Tribune.
“The world seems far away,” she says.
“Either it’s not real, or this isn’t.
I don’t want to find out which.”
She smiles sleepily. She burps.
“Excuse me,” she says.
The little boom box plays Wayne Shorter’s Adam’s Apple,
the sax raw and earnest.
“What time does he get in tomorrow?”
“Two-ish. I’m meeting his train in Martigny.
I can’t wait to see him again,” she says.
“It’s only been two months,
but it feels like two lifetimes.”
She rises, stretches, yawns.
“I’m bushed,” she says,
delivering an efficient goodnight kiss on the cheek,
all the less flirtatious for its directness.
“You’re so nice to have us.
I can see why your grandmother loved this place.”
“I’m glad I finally got to show it to you.” he says.
He hears down the narrow hallway
the toilet, her toothbrush.
He hears the irritable whine of her closing bedroom door.
Through his window
a furtive chill.
He pulls the duvet over his fevered neck,
closes his eyes,
and welcomes the sweet, swaddling torment.
