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honcho of the cat crew. Hans drives cat, too. They groom slopes all night, but sometimes ski with us in the morning before they go home to get their beauty sleep. They live in the ugly trailer next door and got into this habit last year when they didn’t have their own TV,” Lisa explained.
    “Not true,” Eric said. “We had a TV. We just liked yours better.”
    “Size matters,” added Hans.
    “Why aren’t you at work?” Lisa asked them.
    “Big storm predicted, so we’re all pulling the late-late shift,” Eric said.
    “Big storm…’” Hans said with a big smile, and rubbed his hands together.
    Then Hans and Eric turned and walked into the living room. From the kitchen, Jill and Lisa could hear the music from their movie.
    Lisa took out two cans of Health Valley soup and poured them into a pan. “Sorry. It’s not Campbell’s like we used to eat. Your uncle Howard caught me buying Campbell’s and made me switch brands,” she said. “Something about angry chickens.”
    “Yeah, you can’t be eating angry, conventionally raised chickens.” Jill laughed. “What were you thinking?”
    Just as Lisa put the sandwich on a plate in front of Jill, Jill’s phone beeped once. Jill picked it up and checked the text message. “Listen to this: ‘Jill, I don’t understand why you left. I see from Visa that you’ve purchased gasoline from here to Colorado. Please come home, Jill. Talk to me.’”
    “Oh, poor David,” Lisa said, dripping with sarcasm. “He doesn’t understand why you left.”
    Jill hit a few buttons and said, “There. I just sent him the picture. That should help clear it up for him. Hey, what’s your P.O. box? I’m going to ask him to send me a box of my stuff and some money.”
    “One thirty-eight. Tell him to be generous.”
    “I smell melted cheese!” Hans called out from the other room.
    “Woman, where’s my supper?” Eric shouted.
    “Eat shit, you guys!” Lisa shouted back. Although she shouted it in jest, her chest felt lighter, as if a pressure valve had just released some of the anger she was feeling toward Jill’s husband. She turned her attention back toward Jill. “So, I’ve been thinking about some of your choices,” she said as she poured the soup into two bowls.
    “I need to work. The bank notified David of unusual account activity, so, thinking my wallet had been stolen by the person who must have kidnapped me, he canceled the card and changed our account information. I’ve got a little less than fifty dollars to live on while that gets straightened out, if it does.”
    “So, how about a winter working on the mountain? Ski patrol?”
    “You have to walk on water to get that job,” Jill said.
    “Usually,” Lisa replied. “But a spot just opened up.”
    “Well, my body still feels weak from everything it’s been through. I couldn’t do the skiing part for a while, but I’m definitely capable of wrapping knees and handing out bags of ice.”
    Lisa walked over to the kitchen window and looked out. “Tom, the patrol director, lives with Slick Eric and Hans over there in the Kennel.…”
    “The Kennel?”
    “One-to-one human-to-dog ratio,” Lisa explained. “Promise me you’ll never go there.” She could just imagine Tom or Eric smelling Jill’s weakness and preying on it.
    “Twist my arm,” Jill replied.
    “You remember Tom? He was a senior when we were juniors? Blond hair … sort of looked like Shaggy on Scooby-Doo …?”
    Jill nodded. “Oh, yeah, we looked for his tongue once when he thought he bit it off during a big wipeout, remember?”
    “Oh, yeah.” Lisa laughed and poured herself a glass of water.
    Just then, Hans walked into the kitchen on his way to the bathroom.
    Lisa blocked the doorway. “Oh no, you don’t, sprinkler system. Go pee all over your own bathroom floor,” she said.
    “Um, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hans replied.
    “Seriously, the small lake you left in there last time—the lake so large I