David Gates - Preston Falls

''Mo-ther?" Mel says.

The way Willis feels — he's buzzed, no question — they can all take a flying fuck. This will never be over.

When it clears up, late in the afternoon, Willis takes Champ and Tina for a walk to the top of the hill. Jean claims she's got stuff in the house to take care of; Mel, friend of the rain forest, stays inside cultivating her boredom; Roger's having yet another time-out, this time for calling Mel a cunt.

On the path, sunbeams slant with false cheer through the dripping trees. At last, breathing hard, they stand in wet grass on the hilltop and look across at other hilltops. "Shit, it's already fall up here," Champ says.

"Hey, this is the North Country, bro," Willis says, meaning he's man enough to take it. In fact, he's been trying not to notice the few red leaves.

Back at the house, Champ and Tina go upstairs and Willis gets a start on stacking that wood. When they come down, an hour later. Champ tries to tinker with his top, gives up and insists on taking them out to dinner, to celebrate Willis's quote liberation.

Jean's not thrilled, but she's also not thrilled at the prospect of getting a dinner together for these people she just got a big lunch together for. She calls the Bjorks to ask if that invitation to swim still holds and if it could possibly be stretched so the kids could stay for dinner. Jean is never this pushy, but the Bjorks owe them one: last summer the Willises took the Bjork kids overnight so Arthur and Katherine could go to a resort on Lake Champlain for a twenty-four-hour Marriage Intensive.

The Bjorks live on 82nd between Central Park and Columbus; God knows why they chose Preston Falls for a weekend place. Though their house is great: a big old two-and-a-half-story Federal on Watson Road. White clapboards, dark-green shutters, red barn, pond with a dock and a sandy beach — your basic $750,000 country retreat, which they probably got for like one seventy-five because it's in Preston Falls. He's a something at ABC and Jean's forgotten what she does. Lawyer? They

put up with the Willises because otherwise it's down to the locals, whom Katherine calls "a bit rough-hewn." Jean knows what she means. Once, at an auction, Mel befriended a pretty, grubby little girl who called her father "fart-face" and got smacked across the mouth by her three-hundred-pound mother, whose sloppy arms were as big around as the child's waist. Sorry, but Jean has zero regard for these people.

Willis herds everybody into the Cherokee: Jean shotgun, Mel in back between Champ and Tina. Roger refuses to sit on his mother's lap and share her seat belt but climbs over everybody into the wayback, where of course he starts whining about getting carsick. (The dirt roads are in washboard mode, because the town can't afford to grade.) At the Bjorks', the kids disappear and the adults do their dance. Stay for a drink? Gee, wish we could. Willis notices that Arthur Bjork's got this fucking cap on: P inside a star, from some old Negro League team. (He recognizes it because he once priced these caps himself.) Watching him and Champ together might be fun, but only in retrospect.

"Why don't I go in back with Tina," Jean tells Champ. "Be a little more room for your legs."

"No-no-no-no-no," says Champ. "Plenty of room. Fuckin' Taj Mahal back here."

"Taj Mahal?" says Tina.

"Really, do take the front," Jean says. "I never get to ride in back."

"Well, if that's your dream."

"Yes, that's my dream," she says.

For the next two hours they drive around Vermont and New York State, looking for a place Champ thinks has the right vibe: nothing log, nothing steakhousey, nothing too seventies (by which he seems to mean big windows with plants) and nothing that calls itself an "inn." And no Mexican. He tells Willis about a document that says a George Bush of the CIA briefed the FBI about something the day after Kennedy was shot; the CIA claims this was a different George Bush, but researchers managed to track down that George Bush and he says it wasn't him. Willis catches bits of what Jean's talking about back there with Tina: shit about kids and school, how lucky she is that her sister will be around while Willis is away. But he knows she must be ready to jump out of her fucking skin; Jean hates just aimlessly driving.

At last Willis remembers this place called the Old Tuscany, on the access road to one of the big ski areas on the other side of Manchester. He and Jean ate there once and it was okay. Pretentious enough to be

PRESTON FALLS

camp: maybe that's the vibe. He pulls over onto a sandy shoulder— "What are we doing?" Jean says — and makes a U-turn. Champ tries to find a Christian station, but Willis heads that off and gets Hot Country, which Jean dislikes but will usually sit still for.

"Isn't that a new awning?" says Willis, when they finally get to the entrance. White canvas with gold trim and a lion rampant.

"I wouldn't know," says Jean.

Champ breaks into song: It's a neeeew awning. Doodle-a-doodle-a. Neeeeiv awning. .

"Champ missed his calling," says Tina. She doesn't go on to say what his calling might have been.

Champ and Tina, goosing each other, follow Jean up the flagstone walk while Willis gives the keys to a shaven-headed kid with white shirt, black bow tie, knife-creased black slacks and running shoes you're not supposed to notice. A red-faced alcohoHc in Swiss Guard's uniform (the idea seems to be Tuscany = Italy = the Vatican) pulls back the heavy, studded door, thick as the Manhattan phone book, and in the dark foyer the greeter lady waits at a rostrum whose bronze lamp lights her book. Do they have reservations? "Who wouldn't?" says Willis, affecting to quail before a suit of armor in the entryway. She gives him the smile he's extorted.

Some guy in black takes them to a table and hands around upholstered menus, and somebody else comes to turn the water glasses right side up and pour ice water from a sweating metal pitcher. Then yet another guy arrives and asks if they'd care for drinks. "Definitely," says Willis. "I'm a very caring person."

When the drinks arrive — martini, martini, martini, Pellegrino— Willis says, "Now that I have you here." He feels in his pocket. "It's not much, but hey — what is?"

"Now what the fuck is this about?" says Champ.

Willis shrugs. "I don't know. Anniversary? Labor Day two years ago, I remember you were up here and you said you'd just met this amazing person. Little did I know you wouldn't screw it up — I mean, so far."

"You dick," Champ says. "What are you, trying to guilt me?"

"So who does the honors?" says Willis.

"Shit, now I will have to pick up the fucking check." Champ pokes a thumb at Tina. "Better let my animal companion open it. Everything I am today, I owe to her."

"Sure, blame me," says Tina.

It's not until Tina's actually got a fingernail under the wrapping paper that it hits Willis what an incredibly bad idea this was.

"Now what have we here?" says Champ when Tina holds up the box of Touch Thins. Willis doesn't dare look at Jean but hears her take a breath.

"Well, you know," Willis says. "I just figured the madness has to stop at some point, right?" He's alluding to overpopulation; even Champ looks puzzled.

"Would you excuse me, please?" says Jean. She gets up and goes off toward the rest rooms.

Willis figures his best stance at this point is unremitting joviality. "There, ah, should be something else in there?" he says. "An envelope, perchance?"

"Is Jean all right?" says Tina.

"Hey," he says. "When you gotta go, you gotta go."

"Now what have we here?" says Champ. Which he's said already. He picks up his butter knife and slits the envelope.

Willis waits, then says, "That confirms you guys for the second weekend in October, which should be pretty near peak foliage. If you had plans for then, better start weaseling out of them."