Mountain Change

I was wiping down the control panel of the funicular when my phone buzzed, and I knew before I looked who it was.

"Okay, breathe," I told the empty station. "Just breathe."

It was Oscar. Thirty-six, from Denver, the guy I'd been talking to on that forum for three months. The message said he and a coworker were checking into the lodge Friday, and he'd come by my place Saturday night once his friend turned in.

I read it four times. Then I went up the stairs to my apartment over the station and started cleaning like a man expecting a white glove inspection.

The thing nobody around Pineview knew about me was that I liked wearing lingerie. I'm thirty-three, I run a cable car up a mountain, and I own exactly one black lace bra and one black skirt, and they live in a box under my bed like contraband.

Friday morning I dug the box out and laid everything across the bed just to look at it. My hands were shaking a little.

"It's just clothes," I said out loud. "It's just clothes, Fenton."

It didn't feel like just clothes. It never had.

* * *

The lodge sits at the bottom of my funicular line, so I see everybody who comes through town. Friday afternoon I was in the lobby dropping off a package for the manager when the doors opened and a group came in stomping snow off their boots.

I knew him right away. Oscar from the photos, but taller in person, wearing a red knit cap he tugged off immediately. A woman beside him, maybe thirty-one, was already asking about the hot tub hours.

"She's Vickie," Oscar had told me online. "She thinks I'm here to ski. Please, please don't blow this."

He spotted me and went still. Just for a second. Then he gave me the smallest nod in the history of nods, and I nodded back, and my heart was pounding so hard I had to grip the front desk.

"You okay, honey?" Nathalie asked me later at the bar. She's twenty-nine, my best friend up here, and the only soul on earth who knows about my box under the bed.

"There's a guy," I said.

"There's always a guy with you. There's never a guy FOR you, though."

"Well. Maybe this one." I turned my glass in a circle on the bar. "He's here for the weekend. With a coworker. We're going to... I don't know. Hang out. Tomorrow night."

Nathalie leaned on her elbows and grinned at me. "Hang out. Sure. In your apartment. Where you keep that box."

"Nathalie."

"I'm happy for you! I'm thrilled. You've been lonely up here for three years, Fenton, and I've watched it." She squeezed my hand. "Just be careful, okay? And text me when he leaves, or I'll come knocking."

* * *

Saturday crawled by. I ran the cars up and down the mountain and watched the clock like it owed me money.

At nine that night I texted Oscar: Vickie asleep?

His answer came fast: In her room with a book. She's out by 10, guaranteed. Then: I'll be there by 10:30. Are you sure?

I typed and deleted three replies before I settled on: Sure as I'm going to get. Apartment above the station. Blue door.

At ten-thirty exactly there was a knock at the blue door, and there he stood in the cold, holding a small gift bag with tissue paper sticking out the top.

"You actually came," I said, stepping back to let him in.

"You actually answered the door." He stomped snow off his boots on my mat and held up the bag. "I brought you something. Sorry it's a little crushed, I've been sitting on it in my coat pocket all day like a weirdo."

"You didn't have to bring anything, Oscar."

"I know. That's why I did." He looked around my little apartment, the kettle, the mountain photos, the door cracked open to the bedroom, and then back at me. "Fenton. Hi. God, it's weird to actually be in a room with you after all those messages."

"Weird bad?"

"Weird good. Really good." He handed me the bag. "Open it."

I peeled the tissue paper back and my throat went tight. A satin chemise. Deep red, thin straps, soft as water when I touched it.

"Oscar..."

"You said in your messages you only had one bra and one skirt. I did the math on that and it seemed like a crime." He was watching my face carefully, ready to take it back. "If it's too much, no harm, we pretend I didn't."

"No. It's..." I held it up against myself without meaning to. "It's exactly my size."

"I memorized it," he admitted. "I'm kind of embarrassed about how thoroughly I memorized it."

We stood there grinning at each other like two fools, and then he said, quietly, "Do you want to put it on? I can wait out here if you'd rather."

I thought about the box under my bed. Three years of doing this alone with the blinds shut, never once letting another living soul see.

"I'd rather you didn't wait out here," I said. "Come on."

* * *

I changed in the bathroom first, because I couldn't do it with eyes on me yet, and came out in the chemise and the heels I'd bought years ago and worn maybe six times. Oscar was sitting on the edge of my bed, and when I came through the door he stood up slow.

"Oh," he said.

"It's too much, isn't it. I look ridiculous, I knew I should have..."

"Fenton. Stop. Turn around? Just once, slow?"

I turned around, burning with it, that old mix of shame and wanting that I'd never found a name for. In the mirror I caught myself, the red satin, the black heels, and I almost didn't recognize me, and I almost liked what I saw.