All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,45

I don’t have any real interest in talking to you ever again.”

We were still staring, but now that was a formality. It was him who was obliged to look away first, and after a moment or two he did. He lowered his eyes and nodded, and then he turned slowly and started walking toward the door.

“What are your plans?” he asked over his shoulder.

“My triathlon is next week, then I’m going back to New York.”

His hand was on the knob now. “Be well,” he said.

“I wish you good luck,” I said. “And, if you ever do run for president, I’ll say nice things about you.”

He turned to face me, his hand still on the door. His eyes looked cloudy, like maybe he would cry. Not here, in front of me, but later.

“Will you mean them?” he asked.

I just smiled. I didn’t need to say it. We both knew the answer.

KATHERINE

BEING ON A HORSE always reminds me of my father.

My mother is petrified of horses, always has been. She doesn’t care for animals at all. As I recall, she once told me if a cat looked at her in a particular way she would need to be hospitalized.

But my father loved horses especially, loved everything about them. There were stables less than a mile from our house when I was a girl, and I cannot count how many Saturday afternoons we spent there together, Dad and me. My mother would make us pancakes for breakfast and then—if it was a nice day—the two of us would walk, hand in hand, to see the horses. When I was little, we would ride together, me snuggled into place in front of him on the saddle. I can still smell the oil embedded in the leather and the ever-present poop from the stables and the aftershave my father used, all mingled together. If you asked me to describe my childhood, at least the best parts of it, I would describe the way those Saturday afternoons smelled.

I began to ride competitively when I was nine and continued until Dad went away. He encouraged me to continue but my heart wasn’t in it. Besides, even if I wanted to, Mother wouldn’t have allowed it. There was no way she was going to traipse from one stable to another, one horse show to another; she wouldn’t even allow my riding boots in the house. “They’ve been wading in the crap,” she would say. They remained in a plastic bag in the garage when I wasn’t wearing them.

When Marie and I got to Aspen, the first thing I wanted was to go riding. At Buttermilk Mountain, they offered horseback riding and private lessons. I suggested to Marie she try it.

“I don’t know, boss,” she said. “If it doesn’t have a motor, I’m not sure I can drive it.”

“Listen,” I told her, “first of all, as long as we are here let’s drop the title ‘boss.’ You’re here to enjoy yourself just as I am. Secondly, if you have never used a mode of transportation that doesn’t require a key to start, you are in for a day you will never forget.”

“Katherine,” Marie said, sounding frightened. “I barely know how to ride a bike. There’s no way I can ride a horse.”

I considered that for a minute. “All right, here’s the deal. On this trip, I am going to help you and you are going to help me. Before we go home, you are going to learn to ride a horse, which I will help you with, and in turn you will help me figure out what makes life worth living. When we have both succeeded—when you can ride a horse and I can answer that question—we’ll go back to New York.”

Marie was just staring at me. Then she blinked, and then blinked again, and then a few more times without changing expression. Finally, she said, “So you’re saying we might be here awhile.”

“That’s right.”

She looked concerned.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“What should I tell Adam?”

Her fiancé, who also worked under me at the bank. Sometimes you can take advantage of things like that. “Tell him I said I need you here,” I said.

She thought a moment. “I didn’t bring that much stuff,” she said.

“Have you seen the stores in this town?”

“Katherine,” she said, “I can’t afford to shop in Aspen.”

“Let me handle that part,” I told her. “Your job is to figure out what makes life worth living. If you do, whatever it costs will be money extremely well