Vanessa’s patter, interjecting little appreciative comments at all the right moments, acting like eager tourists on an all-inclusive sightseeing tour. “You must really love it up here,” Lachlan finally says.
His observation seems to surprise her. She grips the leather steering wheel as she leans into a tight turn, the corner of her glossed lip anchored between two perfect white teeth. “I didn’t choose the place, it was chosen for me,” she says finally. “I inherited it. It’s not about love, it’s about honor. But yes, it’s awfully lovely up here, too.”
She accelerates until she’s flying around the curves on the road, and flips on the radio. An old Britney Spears song comes on. In the back seat, Lachlan groans. “You don’t like Britney?” Vanessa asks nervously, then turns to me. “What do you guys listen to?”
What would a yoga teacher listen to? Indian sitar? Whale song? Jesus, too clichéd. I wait too long to answer. Her hand hovers over the knob, ready to change it.
“I really only listen to classical and jazz,” Lachlan interjects from the back seat, sensing my struggle. “Growing up in the castle in Ireland, that’s all we had around. Records, yeah? Not even a CD player. My grandmother Alice was a close friend of Stravinsky’s.”
I suppress a laugh. He’s overreaching with the faux aristocratic intellectualism. I reach over and turn the music up, just to annoy him. “He’s a snob,” I whisper to Vanessa. “Top Forty is fine.”
Lachlan jabs my shoulder, hard. “I prefer the term aesthete. I’m sure you would understand that, Vanessa? You seem like a woman of discriminating taste.”
“I have to confess, I know nothing about jazz.”
Lachlan settles back in his seat and props a foot on the console. His sneakers are brand-new and blindingly white and far too trendy for a poet-professor. A detail he didn’t consider. “I didn’t mean jazz necessarily. It just strikes me that you’re an artistic type. You have that air about you. Surrounding yourself with fine things. You have an eye.”
Vanessa blushes, rather pleased with herself. She believes in his bogus flattery, the vain fool. “Thank you! Yes, that’s true. But I still like Britney.”
“There you go.” I flash Lachlan a look. “If you’re seeking a fellow snob, you’re not going to find one with her. We’re not changing the station. Right, Vanessa?” I reach across the seat and grip her forearm possessively and she glances at me and smiles happily. She’s enjoying us fighting over her. We’ve inflated her ego to dirigible size so that she can float, self-satisfied, above us.
Lachlan throws his hands up. “I’m outnumbered. I give up.”
But the debate is moot now because Vanessa suddenly veers right into a parking lot and screeches to a stop at the bottom of a trail. “Here!” she chirps.
We peel ourselves from the car, accept granola bars and water bottles from Vanessa’s pack, then start up the trail. It’s a dirt path, just a few feet wide, winding up through the pines. The trees are dense enough to block out the sun, and as we climb it grows dark and damp, the air smelling of moss and earth. It’s so quiet here that the only thing I can hear is the breeze in the tops of the trees, the creak and groan of ancient wood wavering in the wind, the crackle of pine needles under our feet.
The trail is steep and I find that I’m struggling. My muscles are sore from all those yoga workouts and I’m not used to the altitude and soon I’m regretting having come. Lachlan moves slowly, picking his way across each rock and stick as if he’s afraid to get his shoes dirty. Within minutes, he’s fallen woefully behind. Vanessa stays with me, glued so tightly to my side that my hand keeps banging into hers. I notice that she’s got welts all over the backs of her hands.
Halfway up, we come to a clearing with a view overlooking the lake. Tahoe spreads out before us in all directions, today the inkiest of blues, the water rippling like a harp that’s just been strummed. Overhead, cumulus formations tunnel toward the heavens and below us the dense pines march, green