Mountain Lines: A Journey through the French Alps by Arlan Jonathan

Author:Arlan, Jonathan [Arlan, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2017-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

When we got up the hill, the hotel was still unstaffed. I tried knocking again, but no one came. Colin tried. Nothing. Then he noticed that the door was unlocked (it may have been unlocked the whole time), so we pushed it open and let ourselves in. Tiptoeing up a flight of stairs and into a kitchen, we startled a woman with headphones corked into her ears.

“Sorry,” I said. “Is anyone working here?”

“I am.” She spoke with an accent, Australian maybe, and looked at me with the biggest, blankest eyes I have ever seen.

“We’ve been knocking for a while.”

“I guess I didn’t hear you,” she explained.

“No, I guess not.”

“I’m not supposed to have anyone coming today. Did you call ahead?”

“No. I don’t have a phone. We made the reservation online.”

“Through the website?”

“I don’t remember. My friend did it.”

“The website doesn’t work sometimes.”

“I think it was through a booking site.”

“You should have booked through the website. You get a better rate.”

“Do you have a room?”

“I don’t know. Let me have a look and see.”

She walked away and I looked over at Colin, who was held rapt by a giant plastic relief map of the area.

“They have those all over,” I said. “They make the mountains look much smaller than they really are. Nothing seems as hard on those. Probably a good thing.”

She came back and said, “I have a room for two, but it’s quite pink.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

She was not lying about the room. Not only was it quite pink, it was also adorably decorated with lots of small pillows and puffy hearts and lacy curtains. I placed my muddy bag and walking sticks in a corner as delicately as I could, careful not to soil the whole room.

“Also,” I said. “I have a favor to ask. I’m afraid the refuge we are supposed to get to tomorrow will be full before we get there.”

“You want to call ahead?”

“It’s just that my French is pretty bad, and over the phone it can be difficult.”

“I can give it a shot.”

She and I went back upstairs to the phone, where I gave her the number from my guide book and squirmed while she tried, in a French worse than mine, to put a hold on two beds for us. Finally, she switched to English, which the person on the other end apparently understood just fine.

“They are full tomorrow night and the night after,” she said, smiling.

With that familiar feeling of failure tightening in my chest, I went downstairs to lay out the bad news for Colin. But when I opened the door, I found him stretched ridiculously across one of the dainty twin beds, sound asleep.

I lay down on the other bed, unable to sleep. I ran through our options in my head. There were a few to consider. From Landry, the route split in three directions, the variants all meeting up again after a few days, about sixty miles to the south. One route stayed low and wound through a handful of small villages.

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