Marcia shrugged. “No sense in running up the score beyond that anyway, right? It’s poor sportsmanship.”
They walked to the porch of the cabin and went inside. The cabin was bigger and fancier than most houses. A Los Angeles stockbroker and his wife had built it as a mountain retreat. The stockbroker told Hank that he had imagined they would be retreating to the mountains during the summer to escape the heat, and coming during the winter to ski. Maybe they would visit during the fall to see the leaves on the deciduous trees on the lower altitudes and smell the sap of the tall pines up near the house. In the spring they might come to do some trout fishing in the mountain streams that fed the lake. This fall the cabin was for rent.
When Hank had looked online and seen the photographs of the interior of the house and its furnishings, he had e-mailed and then called the owner to strike a deal. He wondered why the rent was so reasonable.
Shortly after the cabin was completed, the stockbroker’s wife had observed that coming all the way up here from Los Angeles took nearly all day, and the homeward drive took most of another day, much of it through places that weren’t scenic. That meant weekends were too short to make the trip worth taking. After that she had announced that the longer trips he proposed had turned out to be boring. There was nothing to do, with just the two of them in such an isolated place.
The cabin had not decreased the man’s stress. He had spent so much money and effort to build the cabin that he had no choice but to try to recoup the expense by renting it. It was easy to rent out a cabin on a mountain lake in August when it hadn’t rained in Los Angeles for eight months and the temperature on Wilshire Boulevard was 105. It was even easier to rent during the winter holidays, when people wanted to ski. But it was not so easy after the kids were back in school and the weather in Los Angeles had reverted to being paradisiacal.
When Hank drove Marcia up to Big Bear to the cabin for the first time, he said little about the place except that it was “just right.” He appeared to be preoccupied during the shopping trip in San Bernardino. Hank had stayed in mountain cabins before, so he knew enough to bring all the supplies he could fit in a car.
When he drove up to the right address, they could see the view of the lake was beautiful. Hank said nothing as he took Marcia up to the front door. He simply unlocked the lock and swung the door open so she could see the gleaming black Steinway grand piano sitting across the large living room.
Marcia stepped past him in silence like a woman stalking something that might get up and take flight. She walked across the room, ran her hand along the mirror-smooth black wood, sat on the bench, opened the keyboard cover, and sounded a note. Then she played about seven bars of Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Major. Finally, she stood up and ran to Hank. She hugged him hard, and when she pulled away from him, he could see she was crying. After a few seconds she whispered, “I love you.”
The log house was well designed, well made, and pristine. The place had probably been occupied no more than sixty days since it was built. The furniture, fixtures, and appliances had barely been used. The stockbroker had bought the piano in Los Angeles in the hope that his daughter would come up with her parents frequently and play, but she had come a few times and used the trip as an excuse to give her fingers a rest. Hank and Marcia moved in to the master bedroom upstairs, where there was a window that had been designed to frame the view of the lake.
They hiked the trails in the mornings. In the afternoons Marcia played the piano and Hank read, and occasionally took the canoe out to explore the lake. In the evenings they cooked, watched the cabin’s television set, and used the computers. They to ok baths in the oversized whirlpool tub and slept on the new California king bed.
Hank made Marcia spend a few hours each day practicing ways he had devised to deal with emergencies. He coached her in telling the life stories of Henry and Marcia Dixon so she would never be caught with a version that contradicted his. When she was flawless at it they tried it again, this time to be sure they didn’t tell stories using the same words.