CLARA
It’s a beautiful morning. I am minutes from death.
Earlier, I checked out. Hardly said a word to the clerk. Didn’t even look at the total on the bill.
My next stop was a nearby supermarket, where I found the aisle with the household goods. Light bulbs. Tape. Screwdrivers. Then, there. Box cutter.
I paid and left.
After that, an Italian café. Expensive, as you would expect in Aspen. It was quiet, and I told the hostess I wanted to have some breakfast.
I wasn’t hungry, but it seemed at least ceremonial to treat myself. I ordered an omelet, which ended up just cooling in front of me as I picked around the edges. The waiter was very concerned I didn’t enjoy my food, but I assured him the problem wasn’t the food. He must have read something on my face, because he asked if I was okay.
I told him that was an impossible question to answer and then ordered champagne. He asked if I meant a mimosa, but I said no. Just champagne.
And there I sipped and considered my life, such as I could remember. The culmination of all I’d become, the hours learning, experiencing, and forgetting. The moments of laughter and pleasure, which were too few. The relationships, the people, even the pets I’d once had. All the living things that had floated around in my world, all for different lengths of time, plunging to various depths within me. Some leaving marks, others not. Everything I experienced that added up to what became Clara Stowe, the 34-year-old woman who sat in an Italian restaurant alone, not even eating her last meal.
I’m back in the car, making the short drive to the Maroon Bells, my final stop. My journal rests on the passenger seat. I had this romantic image of leaving it on the rock where I died, but it has a better chance of being read if I leave it in the car. I don’t know why the book being read is important to me. I think I’m ready to be dead, but not yet forgotten.
It’s almost Halloween, a holiday I haven’t celebrated in years. Halloween promptly followed by the Day of the Dead.
The aspen trees are a blaze of yellow, with evergreens spotted throughout, unchanging. I open the moon roof. Crisp air swirls around me, sun beats down. I navigate the hairpin turns cautiously, because plunging off the road is not the plan.
Finally, I arrive, and the Maroon Bells don’t even look real. They are a Disney photo, airbrushed perfection, streaks of snow and rock against the bluest of skies. I pull into a gravel lot, which is occupied by three other cars.
I get out and survey the scene. The lake is calm, not a hint of a breeze. Small ripples erupt here and there, little creatures coming up from beneath. Or insects landing for a drink.
Though I can barely make him out, on the far side of the lake, a man is fishing.
I had hoped to be alone.
I locate my rock, the one where I’ll be standing when I do it. I have it perfectly planned. Shouldn’t take longer than ten seconds, if I do it right. Then all I have to do is fall forward, into the lake, and breathe in the depth of it all.
Then I will be at the next stage. The stage of existence I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. I’ll have accomplished my greatest achievement.
The responsibility of my death.
Suddenly, two children scurry from the hidden side of the rock, up and over. Siblings, perhaps. Blond and joyous, girls. One of them, the larger of the two, stands on the top, the place where I’m supposed to stand. The other scampers, tries to get to the top, but is denied by her sister’s stomping feet. Squeals of laughter. Shouts of life.
King of the mountain.
I turn my head and locate the parents standing nearby, hand in hand, facing the Bells. “Look at this,” I imagine them saying. “Look at where we are. Isn’t this beautiful?”
Now, I have to wait.
Strange that this fills me with a flush of impatience. “What’s the rush, Clara? What do you really think will be on the other side?”
The father turns his head and sees me, offers the slightest nod. I smile and nod back. He doesn’t notice the box cutter I’m palming it out of view. Don’t want to alarm him. His children are closer to me than they are to him, after all.
So I walk, taking a nearby path that extends from a trailhead and winds to the south. A half hour should do it, most likely. I’ll check back then, see if I have the rock to myself.
It only takes minutes before I’m deep in the trees, and the shade brings on a sharp chill. But the cold feels good, making my senses more acute. Leaves crunch beneath me. Bare branches rustle in a sudden light wind above.
Deeper into these woods.
The smell of soil. The musk of moist, decomposing vegetation.
And then something else. A new scent, so deeply familiar.
Citronella.
My pulse quickens, and I push deeper still, yanking aside branches and stepping over the bodies of trees fallen long ago. I don’t know what I’m looking for, or if I’m even looking at all. I’m following this smell, and it’s almost as if it exists as a single line of direction, a trail of bread crumbs left for me to follow.
The woods draw tighter around me, closing in.