Footprints in the Snow

"I have a cabin up at Massanutten. Why don't I give the key to that to you and you can go up there this weekend and just sack out?"

Reg3 was standing by my desk, having stopped in his periodic soaring through the offices, to notice that I was still in a morose mood. I was taken aback, though, both because he noticed and because he was suggesting that I could be two and a half hours away from Washington, D.C., at a snow-covered skiing resort, even on a weekend.

The word "soaring" had fallen into my mental depiction of Reginald Walker III's visitation to his Lobbyist firm's offices because it was descriptive. These offices were located in a Crystal City, Virginia, high rise overlooking a runway of the Ronald Reagan National Airport and, beyond that, looking to the dome of the capitol building and the Washington Monument obelisk across the Potomac. Despite his seventy years, Reg3 was still a soaring hawk, lean and mean and floating above it all, including his office staff, ready to swoop down and tear at someone's guts and dine noisily and lustily. No one in the office was fooled by the sweat-stained gym outfit he was wearing to "check in" on his office staff. He'd just been playing a vigorous game of squash, yes, but it had been with some senator or congressman or oil company lobby representative, and Reg3 had come away with more lucrative winnings for the firm than just a sports win.

By all appearances, Reginald Walker III was a one-man band of one legislation-influencing victory after another. Showing great stamina, he had been this energetic the entire twenty-six years I'd known and worked for him since I'd come out of graduate school at the age of twenty-four. But of course he didn't do it alone. His lobbyist victories were based on detailed research to provide a barrage of facts and secrets that Reg3 used to dive in for the kill just at the right time, at the right pressure point, and with the right argument.

I was one of those researchers. For twenty-six years I'd gotten little more credit than a nod and a vacant smile when I'd provided the information, enlightening or damning, it didn't matter which, that had enabled Reg3 to change some wavering senator's or congressman's vote on an oil bill. Yes, I'd been rewarded richly in monetary terms and in the perks of working in a high-powered firm in the nation's capital. But Reg3 was a hard and demanding boss—and he was all business. And he was ruthless in dealing with any employee whose impropriety led to his firm or himself being placed at a disadvantage in gloves-off, go-for-the-jugular lobbyist negotiations.

Reg3 was good at identifying who had really contributed what and to hand out generous bonuses appropriately and fairly, but he wasn't the one to know anything about the life of one of his employees outside of the office or to stop at someone's desk, note the family photos, and enquire after someone's wife or children. He expected an employee's life to be dedicated to him, Reginald Walker III.

Which made it all the more surprising that he noticed that I had been moping around the office for days—or, more surprising—that he cared enough to notice it and to offer me the keys to his mountain cabin and the permission to be more than a two-hour drive from his beck and call for a string of nights in a row. It was a Friday morning on the cusp of a three-day holiday weekend.

It actually sent a chill of apprehension up my spine. I had come to count on his disinterest in my life beyond the office. There was no framed photo of a smiling wife and children on my desk. If my boss had been more the observant and caring kind, I would have had to conjure up such a photo. There wasn't a photo because there was no wife and children. There only was a procession of younger men, men I picked up in gyms for their looks and their muscles and for their sexual preferences, men who were looking for someplace to live as they passed through the area from job to job—often, in my case, as personal trainers at the gyms I belonged to.

I was morose because the latest in a twenty-five-year string of these, Brad—the last in a progression of Brads and Chucks and Steves and Rods—had moved on, and not too amiably. I was fifty years old. I had reached a phase of looking for some form of stability, more a relationship than a progression of encounters that seemed like one-night stands even if the man fucking me was in my bed every night and had his own bureau and closet in my bedroom.

If Reg3 was more observant of a man who had worked for him for twenty-six years and had taken more interest in the few hours I spent away from his office and service, he certainly would have noticed that I was gay and opened my legs for a succession of bulked-up younger men. He couldn't have failed to link this with a chink in his office's armor to be discovered and used by the ruthless opposition at any moment—just as Reg3 didn't hesitate to use such information on the opposition himself, using data that underlings like me provided him.

"Are you sure, Mr. Walker?" I asked. "I would love to get away for a few nights, but with the wintery conditions out—and Massanutten could be completely snowed in—I would be out of touch."

"I'll be out of town myself for the long weekend, John," Reg3 said, not really focusing on me, his mind, as was often the case with him, skipping ahead to the next item on his agenda. But he obviously was serious, as he already was fiddling with a ring of keys attached to a loop in the waistband of his gym shorts. I held the prize in my hand while he wrote down the address of his mountain house and directions on a pad of paper on my desk.

He wasn't a bulky man, more lean and sinewy, but his hard-bodied musculature, clearly revealed in the T-shirt and gym shorts he was wearing—was apparent and proved out how active and energetic he was even at his age. My eyes couldn't help but follow the tight line of the meat of his thighs and calves as he leaned over my desk and wrote out the directions. There was a musky scent to him that brought to mind not only that he'd only recently come from a vigorous squash match but also that, at seventy, he was still a vital, virile male. It went with the territory of being a ruthless lobbyist in Washington, I thought.

Going to Massanutten really could put me out of touch with the rest of the world. The ski resort was a two-and-a-half hour four-wheel-drive trek in the snowy conditions of this Martin Luther King Holiday long weekend to the southwest of Washington, across the line of the Blue Ridge Mountains and nearly to Harrisonburg. I had been to the Massanutten resort before, but only in the summer months. It was one of the earliest minor ski resorts—mostly artificial snow and short runs—within a vacation-home strike for a busy and harried, but affluent, worker from the nation's capital. It had been designed and marketed heavily, but had been overtaken in sales decades ago by resorts offering better snow, longer trails, and more luxurious amenities. So, despite being one of the first, from the early sixties, it was only about half subscribed and a time share could be picked up for the price of taking over the payments.

Massanutten was a Native American name that I had always thought of finding the meaning of—but never did. I did know it had been a sacred mountain for the Indians, the last peak running south on a spur off the Blue Ridge and pretty much running down the center of the Shenandoah Valley. I had always assumed it had been chosen for this spiritual purpose because of its shape. Although I was told it wasn't, I had initially thought it had been a volcano of ancient days, the Blue Ridge being the oldest mountain chain on the North American continent in geological terms. It looked like a small, long-dormant volcano to me, with its bowl exposed by a collapse of the rim on the eastern side. The result was a natural bowl at elevation with steep rims on three sides—which now supported short ski runs. The higher-rise time-share condos were located in the bowl and on the lower slope of the rim to the west along with the central club building, and the separate houses ran around on the slopes to either side and then down the mountain on spurs off the main road rising up to the bowl from the eastern side. Reg3's separate cabin was at the end of one of these spur roads half way up the northern rim.

For me, Massanutten would be an ideal retreat. They didn't need artificial snow this week. There already were several inches on the ground in the valley below, most likely more already on Massanutten Mountain, and more snow was in the forecast. This was Virginia, the upper south. It didn't take much snow and ice to make the roads hazardous, because there wasn't much reason to invest heavily in snow-removal infrastructure, especially in the rural and mountainous areas between Washington and the middle Shenandoah Valley.

I needed the isolation a snowy Massanutten Mountain promised—not to ski, but to hunker down in front of a fire and replan my future. Brad had been a life changer for me. For months I had thought—and planned on—Brad being permanent. He was at the upper edge of his bodybuilder phase. He still had great muscle tone, but he was balding and slowing down. He hadn't done anything more professionally than work in, and work out in, gyms. He had passed forty, and he'd need to find something to settle down to more permanently. I had offered him that, with me, and I thought he was good with it. But there was another man, a younger man, a richer man than me. And in just a few moments of screaming and packing, Brad had crushed my plans and dreams and was out of my life.

I was too old to go through this again. I needed to get away and rethink all of this. I was doing something wrong. I had no idea what it was. It wasn't my ability to support a man or my looks or my body or my talent as a bottom—at least yet, I knew. I had to rethink everything. The offer of a long weekend on a snow-bound mountain fell into my lap like manna from heaven.

"Thanks, Mr. Walker. I appreciate this."

"Don't mention it, John," Reg3 said, as he let loose of the edge of the paper he'd written the directions on and then gone over with me. And "don't mention it" fit the circumstance. His mind and attention already were someplace else—somewhere else for his brief hovering over the busy, heads-down staff in the office on a Friday morning in his periodic flight overhead to check out that all were busy and productive before he went on to his next squash match or hunting trip or bar cruising activity that only looked like he was at play when he was actually adding up the billables of his successful lobbying work.

I stood up and watched him float on down the corridor between the small office spaces, holding the precious key and directions in my hand. My name wasn't John. It was Sean. I'd worked for Reginald Walker III for twenty-six years, and still he couldn't remember my name.

I wasn't surprised. It went with the focused-on-cut-throat-business, dynamo that was Reginald Walker III.

* * * *

"Thank god for Chuck—or was it Steve?" I thought as I navigated my Subaru Forester along the ever-narrowing road—becoming more a track than a road—along the side of the ridge curving around on the northern side of the Massanutten bowl. It was getting dark, and I wanted to get to Reg3's cabin while I could still read the directions on the paper he'd handed me. I'd left the office right after Reg3 had. I was senior enough to come and go as I wished, and I rarely went before churning out ten hours of work. So I didn't feel at all guilty leaving early on the Friday of a three-day weekend. As it was, the rest of the office had started thinning out as soon as they heard the ping of the elevator taking Reg3 out of his realm. I went home and packed and was on the road south by 2:00 p.m.

I was thanking my earlier guys, whoever it had been who had given the advice, for telling me that, if I only had one car, even in the Washington, D.C., region, it should be four-wheel drive. The Forester wasn't flashy but it was reliable and I'd passed several nice sports car—and more than one SUV—in snow-bound ditches off to the side of Route 340 on my way down here. As it was, even the Forester was beginning to chug and catch occasionally on this spur road.

But then there it was, or rather they were. There were several undeveloped lots near the end of this spur road, but there, right where the directions said I would find it, was Reg3's log cabin, sitting well above the road on a pretty steep driveway. The driveway was asphalted, and it wasn't covered too badly with snow yet, that I could see, so I revved up the motor, turned left, and muscled the car up to inside a doorless carport underneath the log cabin, the first of two identical ones side by side on the road.

I had a slight scare right before I reached the base of the driveway. I was looking up at the house and rise of the driveway, estimating whether I should attempt the climb, when a blur of dark green slid out of the trees and onto the road to the left of me. Whatever it was, it almost hit the fender of the Forester before it turned and lurched back into the tree line. "A hunter, I wondered?" But I didn't think they would permit hunting inside the perimeter of the resort.

I called the house I was looking up at a log cabin because Reg3 had done so, but it wasn't the rustic structure I had expected. It was built of logs, yes, but it was one of those sleek Lindal cedar houses of thinner, more varnished logs and soaring roofs with large expanses of glass. My first thought was whether I was going to be able to keep warm in it.

That thought evaporated as soon as I entered the house. It was toasty warm, as if someone had come ahead and turned up the heater—a heater that worked efficiently. It wasn't hot, though, and my second thought of whether I'd have energy to set up a fire in the three-story rock fireplace I could see off to the right from the foyer was erased quickly as well. Logs were laid in the fireplace and, making sure the flue was open, lighting the fire was my first order of business before taking my coat and boots off.

The house was smaller on the inside than it appeared on the outside, this because most of the interior space, the living room to the right and the dining room to the left soared up two stories into a steep-roof ceiling in one open space. On the left, behind the dining room, was a large kitchen. Above the kitchen was a loft bedroom and bath, a balcony opened from the bedroom on one side to the living room and on another to the dining room. Two rock walls, more columns, separated the living room from the dining room. A staircase rose up to the loft directly from the foyer, climbing between the rock columns. Behind the living room was a commodious bedroom and bath. Completing the footprint to the left of this, behind the kitchen, was a screened porch. A rock wall faced both the far wall of the porch and the bedroom at the rear of the house, as the footprint for the house was cut right into the mountainside behind.

The house was tastefully decorated, but not overly decorated, in Southwestern style. There was beer in the refrigerator to complement the groceries I'd brought, and the built-in wine refrigerator was completely stocked. This was an expensively outfitted, but no-frills man's abode. I would feel the personality of Reg3 radiating from the house. In an off-hand manner, Reg3 had told me to be free with the liquor I found. I hadn't realized I'd find so much. There was a well-stocked bar between the dining room and the kitchen as well.

I found how to turn the music on and how to dim the lights. I didn't find any curtains to cover the soaring double-paned windows in the living room and the dining room, looking out, over the front deck, to the twinkling lights of the bowl of the mountain and the white stripes of the ski runs rising up the southern rim, across the bowl. I also figured out how to control the DVD part of the large-screen TV plastered to the rock chimney rising above the fireplace, and, just in a robe and with a glass of wine beside me and a flickering fire in the fireplace, I clicked into one of the several male porno DVDs I'd brought with me. I settled down to slowly masturbate my tensions away to a vid with a top who fondly and stirringly reminded me of the Rod of my experience of some twenty years earlier.

After my third glass of Shiraz and second ejaculation to the DVDs, I'd gone to sleep on the couch facing the fireplace. The fire was out and the DVD screen showing a pulsing blue when I woke. I closed up and went up to the loft, where I'd decided to sleep rather than in the first-floor master bedroom because the view out of the tall windows in the living room and dining room gave me a feeling of soaring out over the valley below.

I had intentionally not permitted myself to do any thinking about where I was and where I was going this first evening. I'd do my thinking over the next three days.

* * * *

Virtually the first thing I noticed when I woke up the next morning and stood, naked and stretching at the balcony overlooking the dining room, the downward-sloping and wooded front yard of the cabin, and the valley below were the footprints on the snow on the driveway, leading up from the road below and then back down again. It had snowed several inches in the night. The footprints weren't there when I had driven up the driveway—I was sure of that. Of course, however, being sure didn't stop me from wondering how observant I'd been while muscling the Forester up the incline. They would have been right there in front of me, though. If they'd been there last evening. Not that it mattered if there had been footprints when I arrived. It had snowed in the night, a significant accumulation. No, they were fresh footprints—probably sometime this morning.

"Strange," I thought, "for someone to be walking up to houses out here near the end of a spur road." While mulling this, I saw the blur of a black SUV pass by on the road before me. This shouldn't have surprised me, but it seemed that I should recognize the vehicle from somewhere—but I didn't. It was bigger and boxier than most SUVs were these days, but it didn't look old.

I ruminated about both of these sightings while I sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and chewing on a bagel. I came here to think deep thoughts about my life, but I found myself thinking about unexplained footsteps in the snow. And that blur of black of a car this far back on a spur road. There was that cabin next door, of course. That would explain that. Maybe even explain the footprints, although the houses were on the same level, with no obstructions between them. It wouldn't seem that someone going between the two houses would need to go down one driveway and up the other. Maybe someone was in residence in one of the other houses on the road and had some responsibilities for this house. The heat had been on and up to a comfortable level when I had arrived. Maybe there was a caretaker here of sorts. Reg3 hadn't mentioned one, though.

I found myself ruminating on what such a caretaker might be like. Would he be old or a young, fit man? I tried not to think that it might be a woman.

Then I thought back onto the previous evening. I'd slouched in a sofa, facing the fireplace, the lights dim, although there had been light, watching gay male porn DVDs, and jacking off—several times because I was highly sexed—in front of a nearly full-wall expanse of glass and no drapes.

I rose from the kitchen table and padded out to the living room. I was barefoot and only wearing sleeping pants. I told myself, as I carried my coffee cup with me, that I was only going to take in the view across the bowl of the mountain and down the valley, through the widely spaced tree trunks in the front yard, but when I got to the window, I looked down at the floor of the deck that ran across the width of the cabin. The footprints in the snow came across the deck and stopped in front of the window.