The Water-Method Man

'He's got a nice sense of humor, though,' Biggie told the girl, and then - to me, in German so they wouldn't know - 'I miss a sense of humor, skiing. There isn't anything humorous about it.'

'You haven't seen me ski,' I told her.

'Why are you here?' she said.

'I'm taking care of a friend,' I said, and gave a guilty look around for Merrill. 'He's drunk and he's got diabetes, and right now he's lost. I really ought to try and find him.'

'Why haven't you, then?'

I kept on, privately, in German, 'Because you came in, and I didn't want to be away for that event.'

She smiled, but looked away; her friends seemed angry with her speaking in German, but she continued. 'It's a funny place to pick up girls in,' she said. 'You couldn't have been trying very hard or you wouldn't be in a place like this.'

'That's true,' I said. There's no chance of picking up girls in here.'

'No, there isn't,' she said, with a look to say she meant it. But she smiled. 'Go find your friend,' she said. 'I won't go away yet.'

And I was just about to do that, wondering where to look first. Under the darker Keller tables, where poor Merrill might be lurking insane or lying in a diabetic coma? Upstairs in the Tauernhof, conducting a drunken urine test, botching his test tubes over the sink?

Then I noticed how quiet the table behind the girls was - how some men sat intent on some intrigue. The silhouette of a large dog crept up behind the girls, approaching our table. Herr Halling, poised at the bar with his finger to his lips, about to spitshine a shot glass, was pretending not to notice anything. Then, into the dull light, at a level with our table, a dark shadow of a ski pole extended slowly, the wrist-thong end dipping like a wand toward the space between the elbow (on the table) and the breast of the winner of the women's giant slalom.

'This friend,' I said shakily to Biggie Kunft, 'is not himself.'

'Find him, then,' she said, truly worried.

'I hope you have a nice sense of humor too,' I told her.

'Oh, I do,' she said, smiling very warmly. And she leaned a little closer to me across the table, and touched the back of my hand a little awkwardly. Conscious of what big hands she had, she usually kept them folded. 'Please go make sure that your friend's all right,' she said. Then, into the exaggerated gap between her breast and her elbow, the wrist-thong of a ski pole came dancing; leaning forward, as she was, her breast pushed tight against the velour, she was a target only a fool could miss.

'I hope you'll forgive me,' I said, and touched her hand.

'Of course I will,' she laughed, as the snare seized her and the wrist-thong tugged her breast into her armpit, oddly askew, and Merrill Overturf, behind her, weaved up to his knees, his ski pole bending like a fishing rod with a heavy catch, his eyes all glazed and terrible.

'Boob loop!' he screamed.

Then the girl athlete from Vermont demonstrated her catlike co-ordination and wonder-mother strength. Biggie slipped her breast free of the wrist-thong and seized the end of the pole, swinging her legs out from under the table and across the bench top, where her heavy thighs jarred Merrill Overturf off balance and dropped him on his rump. She was up on her feet, then, and obviously experienced at handling a ski pole, which she thrust repeatedly at Merrill who writhed on the floor, trying to free his twisted fingers from the pole's basket, trying to fend off the gouging pole point with the bleeding heel of his hand.

'Oh blood, Boggle! I've been stabbed!' - while Biggie finally pinned him, one of her tall fur boots resting heavily on Merrill's chest, the point of the pole puckering Merrill's belly.

'It's a game, it's a game!' Merrill shrieked at her. 'Did I hurt you? Did I? Not on your life, I didn't. No, I did not hurt you ... no, no, no!' But Sue 'Biggie' Kunft poised over him, with just enough weight on the pole to keep Merrill pinned and threatened with disemboweling, while she flashed me an angry, betrayed look. 'Talk to her, Boggle,' Merrill pleaded. 'We saw you on TV,' he told her. 'We loved you.'

'We hated the interviewer,' I told her.

'You were simply beautiful.' Merrill said. 'They tried to make your winning sound just lucky, but you were clearly above that bullshit.' She stared at him, amazed.

'It's his blood sugar,' I told her. 'He's all mixed up.'

'He wrote a poem about you,' Merrill lied, and Biggie looked at me, touched. 'It's a nice poem,' Merrill said. 'He's a real poet.'

'... who used to be a pole-vaulter,' Biggie said suspiciously.

'He used to be a wrestler too,' Merrill said suddenly, crazily, 'and if you hurt me with that ski pole, he'll break your goddamn neck!'

'He doesn't know what he's saying,' I told Biggie, who was watching Merrill holding up his bloody hand.

'I may die,' said Merrill. 'There's no telling what that pole's been stuck in.'

'Pole him a good one and let's get out of here,' one of Biggie's skimates told her.