Gabriel Cousins adjusted his Revo goggles against the sting of the night air. The snow was falling harder now, flakes thick and heavy, settling on his jacket and the top of his skis. He stood at the summit of Mount Werner—a place he had helped transform from a sleepy, rugged peak into a world-class ski resort. For three decades, he’d enjoyed more than just his favorable investment in Steamboat Springs Ski Resort. Plenty of runs down the mountain, sometimes in spots with untouched powder kept secret for exclusive guests; the hot mineral springs; gourmet meals at Ragnar’s, and après ski drinks and lively conversations with business tycoons and beautiful women in front of the massive fireplace.
But tonight, the mountain, blanketed in glowing white, was eerily silent except for the faint whistle of wind.
Looking down toward the resort now, he saw lights in the lodge and thought how comfortable and warm it would be inside there for the few guests who had remained. It had been buzzing earlier—guests in their designer ski suits, glasses of champagne in hand, laughing as though the world weren’t actually ending.
Probably by now even management had gone home, Gabriel thought, but before leaving they would have graciously lit the fire, stocked the bar, and removed all newspapers from the lounge area. Everyone had seen enough headlines (The End is Nigh, Doomsday Countdown) and advertisements (Going out of business sale on emergency food supplies, hand-crank radios, mylar thermal blankets). People had grown so used to living with these increasingly dire news
stories that when the final day finally came, it felt, to many, easiest to just continue with their work, their hobbies, their lives for the hours remaining.
The tram operator had looked concerned when Gabriel checked in for the final run of the night. It took a minute but Gabriel finally remembered the young man’s name: Skip. But he didn’t need Skip’s or anyone else’s pity.
Only three people entered the tram– Gabriel and another man and a woman in a fur-trimmed hood. He’d seen their names on the tram operator’s list: Klaus Becker and Minika Sturm. As the three of them stood there, waiting for the tram’s bumpy start, the woman had unzipped her hood and let a flood of blond tresses fall on her pink snowsuit, leaned into Gabriel. He could see a tear bubbling on the lower lid of each eye. “It’s okay,” she whispered though she looked like it was anything but.
Before Skip could start the tram, another resort worker, identified by his gray and green wool hat, walked up.
“Come on, your chariot awaits. Seat’s already warmed up for you in the van.”
“Sounds tempting but I’ve got to wait til these folks come back down,” Skip said.
“Ordinarily I’d call you a lucky guy.”
“I am lucky,” Skip said. “Carla’s waiting for me at home. We took a 1.5 liter magnum of Chateau Lafite Rothschild from the fancy liquor store in town. Why not? Others were doing the same and the shelves were nearly empty.”
The tram started with a jolt. Gabriel leaned out to hear the last snippets of the men’s conversation.
“Worth ten billion I hear. He’s all over the news these days. Well, he was before the world started winding down …” Skip’s words still floated up, quieter. “Hedge funds. Shorting stocks. He has a big place up here – on the other…” The sentence trailed off as the tram climbed higher.
The skies were darker now, snow falling more heavily. There’d been an unusual amount of snow, all of it clean and white and sparkling when it fell from the sky like diamond rain.
When the tram stopped, Gabriel let Klaus and Minika off first. Minika moved in for a hug but Gabriel eluded her then watched the two of them skiing down the slope. Skip would cross their names off the list and be annoyed Gabriel hadn’t yet appeared. Let him be. He and the other guy would argue about whether or not to leave, convince themselves Gabriel had skied past them, they’d missed his downhill run. And so the two men would leave while Gabriel remained at the top of Mount Werner.
Steamboat had been a sleepy town when Gabriel first came here as a college student from Missouri. He’d worked as a waiter in the Yampa Valley Diner & Grill then three decades later turned that diner into a 2-star Michelin restaurant.
A pal of his had owned the mountain, rather the pal’s father had, and one night smoking weed, they’d had this grand idea. A resort. A natural. He could almost remember the smell of that weed, that’s what they called it then. A far cry from today with creatively named strains for insomnia, inflammation, mental fog, social anxiety. Lord, Gabriel thought, folks today even talk about terpenes and flavonoids. Weed wasn’t nearly as good as the stuff available now but at least it wasn’t laced with fentanyl. People were kinder then, weren’t they?
It was the summer of love. He and his friend Dirk Simmons had hitchhiked from Kansas City to Steamboat, slept one night in an open field when the ground was frozen and sparkling with ice when they woke.
Looking down the mountain now, Gabriel could see a bit of the fire blazing in the lodge’s massive fireplace and pictured its surround made of local sandstone. It stretched floor to ceiling, with an oversize opening and ornate glass-and-iron door that had been made by a local artisan his first wife had found. The door depicted this mountain on which Gabriel now stood, and two skiiers caught mid-run. Even without facial features in the black wrought-iron, they seemed to be smiling, flying down a black diamond slope, free as birds of the forest, free as they would ever be in their lives.
An owl hooted to his right. He lifted his goggles to see if he could spot the bird among the nearby trees. Yes, there he was: a beautiful boreal, the large square head and yellow eyes.
The owl hooted again, low wood-woods, and Gabriel answered it. He used to know all the bird calls. Had kept a life list – that was somewhere in his massive oak desk back at home. He hadn’t added names to it for over ten years, he supposed. But oh, the birds he’d seen: the pink-headed fruit dove in Bali, the Himalayan Griffon in Annapurna, the huge condor he’d witnessed one morning on a hike in the Andes with the young woman who would
become his last wife. Number 4.
The thought of all those women made his chest hurt, and he wondered for a moment if he might be having a heart attack. That would be fine, he thought. A fine way to go on the night when the world ends. But the pain passed, and the owl hooted again and this time Gabriel
didn’t answer.
The last decades had been filled with work. Long hours with board meetings and investor calls. “Business” trips to Aspen and Davos and Bohemian Grove. Meetings with the President. He was proud to think that he’d squired each of his wives, except the last, to the White House. At least he gave them that, he thought.
The snow was coming down thicker now, making it harder to see the lodge let alone the owl. Maybe the bird had flown off or retreated into a hole in the tree. He hadn’t seen many birds this year, he only now realized. He’d seen headlines about that too: Timing changes in bird migration thanks to declining habitats, not to mention shrinking ice sheets and forest fires and earthquakes in New Jersey.
After a while he just had to ignore it. The birds would come back. Some scientist would figure out a solution for each of these crises; isn’t that what mankind did? His field was finance, and sure he’d been happy to invest in every environmental protection business he could. There
were companies focused on large-scale decarbonization and UV surface disinfection and trash bins that decrease harmful waste. Turns out, none of it was enough. And after a while he stopped reading about wildfires and increasing global warming and acidifying oceans. He discovered that if he focused solely on his work – making money for other people and himself –he was happy. And why not be happy? Life was short, his father had always said.
His father had seen his father die in Auschwitz. Changed his name when he came to Philadelphia. Kept moving on to the Midwest, maybe to hide? Gabriel had grown up in a white, Protestant suburb of Kansas City. Once his father had wanted to build a house in a development owned by J.C. Nichols. They’d told him no, he couldn’t build in that neighborhood because he was Jewish. Later, unbeknownst to Nichols, Gabriel invested in the developer’s rival and put him under.
Not that Kansas City hadn’t had its own share of criminal activities. From the Pendergast machine to the Finney bond scandal. What Gabriel did by comparison, manipulating the stock market, investing wisely, was innocent as a kid’s birthday cake. And just as fun.
He raised his goggles. One last run, he thought. At this point he didn’t even care about going home. The house was beautiful but empty. All the Murano glass sculptures and Chihuly chandelier, the Persian Tabriz rugs, meant nothing.
Perhaps wife #4 would come back. He pictured their bedroom, her clothes strewn on the floor and stuffed into the Gucci luggage he’d bought before their last trip – to Costa Rica.
They’d had a fight, one he hadn’t expected, about a small matter, but she had gone. She was volatile; something he liked about her except when that volatility was aimed at him. They’d had fights before – she’d spent too much, stayed out with her girlfriends too late, ignored him when he wanted to make love. But she’d never left.
A strange sound pierced the cold night air. He realized with a start that it was his own laughter.
Where did she think she was going with that Gucci luggage anyway? Maybe she’d checked into the resort right below him. Using his credit card of course, the black American Express.
The snow kept falling, enveloping everything in a blanket of pristine white. The flakes had grown larger and more abundant, swirling in the frigid air.
He could barely see the lit lodge now. It had become a ghostly silhouette hardly discernible through the veil of snow.
The world was hushed except for his breathing, serene, as if nature itself were holding its breath to see what might unfold. The air was filled with a sense of anticipation, a feeling of being cocooned in the snow almost as he had been in his crib with its thin white sheets his mother washed and rewashed. There is a promise of safety, as if instead of dying, the world is being reborn in the snow’s downy embrace.
It has all been magical, he thought, looking first up into the sky shedding its skin then down toward the lodge where Crystal might or might not be.
He couldn’t bear to start again with another woman but then – another eerie laugh coming from who knows where inside him – he wouldn’t need to, would he? He’d been a failure at marriage, at parenthood (neither of the twins from Wife #2 had spoken to him in
years), at everything except making money.
He closed his eyes, heard his father’s voice through the snow.
We will be safe here. But we must blend in. We must work hard to blend in and provide for ourselves. Not cause trouble. Make ourselves invincible. Never again.
And so Gabriel had done what his father ordered. Worked hard. Made himself invincible.
Except…
Only now did he realize that maybe vulnerability was what had been missing. Maybe if he’d been more open with his wives, his children. Open about his own fears and weaknesses. Maybe they wouldn’t have left him. Maybe he hadn’t had to be invincible. He was certainly vulnerable now, that was for sure. And it felt beautiful and safe in an unexpected way.
Standing in the cold, pure white snow falling all around him, on the last night of the world. Totally alone except for the owl. He tightened his grip on the ski poles, adjusted his goggles, and pushed off the mountain into whatever eternity there might be.