Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

"Thank god for Chuck—or was it Steve?" I thought as I navigated my Subaru Forester along the ever-narrowing road—becoming more a track than a road—along the side of the ridge curving around on the northern side of the Massanutten bowl. It was getting dark, and I wanted to get to Reg3's cabin while I could still read the directions on the paper he'd handed me. I'd left the office right after Reg3 had. I was senior enough to come and go as I wished, and I rarely went before churning out ten hours of work. So I didn't feel at all guilty leaving early on the Friday of a three-day weekend. As it was, the rest of the office had started thinning out as soon as they heard the ping of the elevator taking Reg3 out of his realm. I went home and packed and was on the road south by 2:00 p.m.

I was thanking my earlier guys, whoever it had been who had given the advice, for telling me that, if I only had one car, even in the Washington, D.C., region, it should be four-wheel drive. The Forester wasn't flashy but it was reliable and I'd passed several nice sports car—and more than one SUV—in snow-bound ditches off to the side of Route 340 on my way down here. As it was, even the Forester was beginning to chug and catch occasionally on this spur road.

But then there it was, or rather they were. There were several undeveloped lots near the end of this spur road, but there, right where the directions said I would find it, was Reg3's log cabin, sitting well above the road on a pretty steep driveway. The driveway was asphalted, and it wasn't covered too badly with snow yet, that I could see, so I revved up the motor, turned left, and muscled the car up to inside a doorless carport underneath the log cabin, the first of two identical ones side by side on the road.

I had a slight scare right before I reached the base of the driveway. I was looking up at the house and rise of the driveway, estimating whether I should attempt the climb, when a blur of dark green slid out of the trees and onto the road to the left of me. Whatever it was, it almost hit the fender of the Forester before it turned and lurched back into the tree line. "A hunter, I wondered?" But I didn't think they would permit hunting inside the perimeter of the resort.

I called the house I was looking up at a log cabin because Reg3 had done so, but it wasn't the rustic structure I had expected. It was built of logs, yes, but it was one of those sleek Lindal cedar houses of thinner, more varnished logs and soaring roofs with large expanses of glass. My first thought was whether I was going to be able to keep warm in it.

That thought evaporated as soon as I entered the house. It was toasty warm, as if someone had come ahead and turned up the heater—a heater that worked efficiently. It wasn't hot, though, and my second thought of whether I'd have energy to set up a fire in the three-story rock fireplace I could see off to the right from the foyer was erased quickly as well. Logs were laid in the fireplace and, making sure the flue was open, lighting the fire was my first order of business before taking my coat and boots off.

The house was smaller on the inside than it appeared on the outside, this because most of the interior space, the living room to the right and the dining room to the left soared up two stories into a steep-roof ceiling in one open space. On the left, behind the dining room, was a large kitchen. Above the kitchen was a loft bedroom and bath, a balcony opened from the bedroom on one side to the living room and on another to the dining room. Two rock walls, more columns, separated the living room from the dining room. A staircase rose up to the loft directly from the foyer, climbing between the rock columns. Behind the living room was a commodious bedroom and bath. Completing the footprint to the left of this, behind the kitchen, was a screened porch. A rock wall faced both the far wall of the porch and the bedroom at the rear of the house, as the footprint for the house was cut right into the mountainside behind.

The house was tastefully decorated, but not overly decorated, in Southwestern style. There was beer in the refrigerator to complement the groceries I'd brought, and the built-in wine refrigerator was completely stocked. This was an expensively outfitted, but no-frills man's abode. I would feel the personality of Reg3 radiating from the house. In an off-hand manner, Reg3 had told me to be free with the liquor I found. I hadn't realized I'd find so much. There was a well-stocked bar between the dining room and the kitchen as well.

I found how to turn the music on and how to dim the lights. I didn't find any curtains to cover the soaring double-paned windows in the living room and the dining room, looking out, over the front deck, to the twinkling lights of the bowl of the mountain and the white stripes of the ski runs rising up the southern rim, across the bowl. I also figured out how to control the DVD part of the large-screen TV plastered to the rock chimney rising above the fireplace, and, just in a robe and with a glass of wine beside me and a flickering fire in the fireplace, I clicked into one of the several male porno DVDs I'd brought with me. I settled down to slowly masturbate my tensions away to a vid with a top who fondly and stirringly reminded me of the Rod of my experience of some twenty years earlier.

After my third glass of Shiraz and second ejaculation to the DVDs, I'd gone to sleep on the couch facing the fireplace. The fire was out and the DVD screen showing a pulsing blue when I woke. I closed up and went up to the loft, where I'd decided to sleep rather than in the first-floor master bedroom because the view out of the tall windows in the living room and dining room gave me a feeling of soaring out over the valley below.

I had intentionally not permitted myself to do any thinking about where I was and where I was going this first evening. I'd do my thinking over the next three days.