A Real Break: Thin Air and Steamy Novels

My wife and I have just returned from a week in Aspen, Colo., the famous ski resort and cultural center in the Rocky Mountains.

We spent most of our time eating, reading and sleeping. The Denver Post was delivered to our door every morning, but at 7,995 feet, the sea-level world, where almost everything happens, seemed remote and unreal.

Of more immediate interest was the throwaway Aspen Times, which reflected the anxiety of a small resort town overwhelmed by its popularity. It told of clashes between environmentalists and developers, the high cost of housing (houses were advertised for as high as $6 million), and the catastrophic effects of major construction projects.

One problem Aspen doesn’t have is smog. It lies at the base of Aspen Mountain, surrounded by some of the highest peaks in the Rockies. The air is fresh, the sun brilliant. Rain clouds drift over it periodically, dropping a light, brief rain that washes the sidewalks and cleans the air; half an hour later the sky is blue again.

I have more of an affinity for the seashore than the mountains; the mountains make me claustrophobic. Also, my cardiovascular system is not efficient at high altitudes. But my wife had made the high bid in a silent auction for a week’s residence in an Aspen condominium. It was during the final week of the summer music festival, and she wanted to go.

We flew from Burbank to Denver, took a shuttle flight to Aspen, rented a car and drove into town. Our condominium was on the outskirts of it, at the foot of the mountain. We had two bedrooms and two baths, with a large sitting room. Fortunately, a bookshelf held half a dozen paperback novels. I hadn’t brought anything to read but a book of T. S. Eliot poems.

In the office of the condominium I suddenly felt faint. I saw white spots. Sweat broke out on my face and body. I could feel it against my shirt. It rolled in large drops down my face. I was afraid it was a reaction to the thin air. But I remembered that we had had only a light breakfast on the airplane. My blood sugar was probably low. I took two glucose tablets and the symptoms soon abated.

I was alarmed, though. In the condominium I lay down. Pain stabbed at my heart. I was afraid I would have to go home. It was a dilemma. If I went home it would spoil my wife’s holiday. If I didn’t, and died, she would have the nuisance of disposing of my body in an alien place. I decided to stay; and by dinner time I was all right.

We drove the few blocks to the center of town, and tried to park near the mall. Every space was taken for blocks around. We kept circulating and finally found a spot that had just been given up. It took us four days to realize that we might as well just walk from the condominium.

We ate dinner at a Swiss restaurant on the mall. Afterward we stopped at The Chocolate Factory and bought some chocolate, on the excuse that it would come in handy if my blood sugar fell again. I never eat candy, but I allowed myself one chocolate-almond cluster every night before bedtime.

That night I read Irving Wallace’s “The Golden Room,” a hilariously sexy novel about two spinster sisters who ran the world’s most elegant sporting house in Chicago at the turn of the century. The air seemed too thin for T.S. Eliot.

Meanwhile, my wife was reading “The Sisters,” by Pat Booth, which, I found out later when I read it, is a novel about two English-born sisters, one a millionaire writer of novels like “The Sisters,” and the other a superstar actress. The older woman hates the younger with a psychopathic passion and tries to destroy her with unrelenting vengeance for imagined wrongs. The story is punctuated, every few chapters, by an interlude of breathless, explicit, ingeniously inventive sex.

When she finished it my wife told me I probably wouldn’t like it except for the sex parts, which suggests that she has no understanding of my taste.

In escaping from our everyday working world, we were wallowing in sensational erotic literature; but there was one compensation: We never once turned on television.