One by One

I stand there, holding my breath, when suddenly a huge snore rips through the silence, and I let out a shuddering laugh. Someone is in there at any rate, even if it’s not Topher.

Downstairs is quiet, last night’s log fire just glowing embers behind the wood burner’s glass door. I open up the vents and stick another log on top of the ashes, and then I begin clearing up the debris of the night before.

Snoop is no worse than a lot of the other groups that stay here, but I don’t know why today I feel particularly jaded as I pour thirty-year-old brandy down the sink and pick melted Camembert out of the dining room rug. Someone has been smoking inside too, in defiance of the rules—there is a cigarette butt stubbed out in a dish of Danny’s painstakingly made petits fours. That’s what sets my teeth on edge, I think. I remember him making those miniature Florentines; mixing them, baking them, carefully dipping each one into precisely tempered chocolate, laying them out to set. Treating them like the little masterpieces they were. And now someone has used them as a makeshift ashtray.

It takes me a while to shake off the cloud of anger, but by 7:00 a.m. my mood has lifted a little. The rooms are clean, the fire is crackling, the oven is on for sausages, and the bircher muesli is standing in a big crystal bowl on the side, along with huge pitchers of fresh-squeezed juices and jugs of milk and cream. There is still no noise from above, which means I can afford ten minutes to sit down with a coffee and my phone. Normally I’d be checking the snow forecast, or scrolling through Twitter—but today I find myself opening up Snoop and idly flipping through lists of my favorite artists, figuring out who’s online, who’s listening to what, as I sip my coffee. There are some amazing people on here, proper celebs mixed with people who are just fascinating personalities, and Danny’s right, there’s something incredibly addictive about pressing play on the song they are actually listening to at this precise moment, knowing that you are beat for beat in sync with each other. It’s midnight in NYC and lots of the people I snoop on are playing late-night come-down music, which is not what I’m looking for at this time of day, but then I hit a cool little vein of British celebrities who all seem to be up and listening. Why are they awake six a.m. UK time? Couldn’t they sleep? Maybe they always get up at this time.

I’m washing up the serving bowls that are too big for the dishwasher, tapping my feet to “Rockaway Beach” by the Ramones, when the sound begins to break up. As I’m digging my phone out of my pocket to check the headphone connection, the song drops out completely. Damn. I stare at the screen. The Wi-Fi is still showing a strong signal, but when I click on the Snoop tab a little pop-up message appears. We can’t get no satisfaction. (Please check your internet connection.)

I sigh, turn off the app, and begin washing up again, this time in silence, but before I have done more than a couple of plates, there’s a tap on the window to my right, and I look across to see Jacques from the bakery down the valley, holding a stack of baguettes and a giant bag of croissants. I pull off my rubber gloves and open the door, breathing white into the cold morning air.

“Salut, ma belle,” he says around his cigarette as he hands the bread over, and then he takes a long drag of his Gitane and blows the smoke over his shoulder.

“Hi, Jacques,” I say in French. My French isn’t perfect, but I can hold a conversation. “Thanks for the bread. What do you say to the forecast?”

“Ah, well, it isn’t pretty,” he says, also in French, taking another long, thoughtful drag and looking up at the sky. Jacques is one of the very few people who actually grew up here. Almost everyone else is an incomer, either a tourist or a seasonal worker. Jacques has lived here all his life; his father owns the bakery in St. Antoine le Lac, and Jacques will be taking over for good in few years when his dad retires.

“Do you think there will be the possibility to ski today?” I ask.

Jacques shrugs.

“Perhaps, in the morning. But the afternoon…” He holds his hand out and makes the rocking motion the French use to signify that something might go one way or the other. “There’s heavy snow coming. You see the color of those clouds over La Dame?”

La Dame means La Dame Blanche—the big peak that looms over the whole valley, casting a near permanent shadow over the chalet. Now, as I look up at the top, I see what he means. The clouds that gather up there are ugly and dark.

“But it’s not just that,” Jacques says. “It’s the wind. It makes it difficult for the guys in the avalanche-control teams. They can’t get out to start the small falls, you know?”

I nod. I’ve seen them doing it on fine days, after big dumps—setting off small charges to safely release the buildup of snow on the upper slopes before it can get to critical mass. I’m not sure how they do it exactly—sometimes they seem to use helicopters, other times it looks more like some sort of gun. Either way, I can imagine that the wind makes it too hazardous and unpredictable.

“You think that there is a danger of falls?” I ask, trying to hide my uneasiness.

Jacques shrugs again.

“Serious ones? Unlikely. But there will be slopes closed this afternoon for sure, and I wouldn’t plan any off-piste skiing.”

“I don’t ski off-piste,” I say shortly. Well, not anymore.

Jacques doesn’t respond to that, he just looks thoughtfully up at the slopes and then blows out a ring of smoke. “Well, I must be going. See you later, Erin.”

And he crunches off through the soft-fallen snow towards the funicular. I feel my stomach shift with the lingering chill from my dream as I watch him go, and then I turn back, into the warmth of the kitchen.

Inside, I am stacking the bread on the table when the sound of a croaky, sleep-hoarse voice comes from behind my shoulder, making me jump.

“Monsieur Bun the boulanger’s son?”

It’s Danny, leaning against the counter, squinting at the bright morning lights.

“Jesus.” I put a hand on my chest. “You startled me. Yes, it was Jacques. He says there’s going to be more snow.”

“You’re shitting me.” Danny rubs a hand over his stubble. “There’s not going to be any more of the stuff left up there. Will we get any skiing in?”

“I think so. This morning he reckons. He says the runs will probably be shut in the afternoon—avalanche risk.”

“It’s already on orange,” Danny says, referring to the colored scale published by Météo France. Orange is level three—“considerable risk” of avalanche occurring—and means off-piste skiing is inadvisable, and some of the steeper slopes are probably going to be shut. Red is level four and is when the whole resort starts to close. Black is level five and means risk to settlements and roads. Black is like, Make sure your last meal is a good one, but the control teams don’t let it get to that point if they can help it.

I’m gathering up the tray of coffee cups when Danny speaks again, his voice casual.

“Who’s Will?”

The question is a shock—enough to make me stumble, and two of the cups slide off the tray and shatter on the floor. By the time Danny and I have gathered up the shards, I’m composed enough to answer.

“What do you mean? There’s no one here called Will.”