The Midweek Trainer for Tara
By MATT REED

We had been sitting in Kevin’s truck for the last half hour at the turnoff to the Mt. Rose Highway. The heater was on and Kevin was talking on the phone to his girlfriend, while I, with an imaginary pistol, pretended to pick off highway officials darting back and forth between their pickups. They were wearing blue and white parkas with big DOT emblems on their backs and their hood flaps undone so they could yell across the storm to each other. It was no easy hunt. They spent very little time in the open, running with their heads down against the blowing snow.

The highway was packed with idling SUVs, filled with people sipping coffee and staring blankly out of the gigantic binoculars made by their windshield wipers. One of the morning DJs called it, “The Storm of the Century.” Kevin cupped his hand over the phone. “Someone should tell him the century’s only three years old.”

It was a big storm. It had dropped four feet of snow up at Tahoe and two and a half feet down here in Reno, and they were saying that two more feet were on the way. I-80 going over Donner Pass was closed, as was Kingsbury Grade going over to South Lake Tahoe. The Mt. Rose Highway was the only way for us to get to work. Kevin had been my ride for the past two seasons. He was only two years out of college and growing a nice blonde and red scruff on his chin, but was still clean cut for the most part—washed hair, one earring. He wasn’t a bad instructor. I, myself, had been teaching at Mt. Rose for 17 years and was wearing sunglasses that morning out of habit. We likely wouldn’t get up to the mountain, but that was all right. It would give me another day to weigh my options. I had recently been given quite an opportunity to save my job.

One of the highway officials made a circular motion with his hand, meaning the road had just closed. It took some time for the line of cars to move. When it was our turn to pass him at the turnaround, Kevin, still on the phone with Nancy and now frowning, cocked an imaginary shotgun and blew the guy away. The highway official, his beard frosted by snow, gave us the finger and his best I’m-only-doing-my-fucking-job look.

Kevin hung up the phone. “What did Nancy say?” I said.

“She said the schools were closed, too, and that she’s practicing for her maternity leave by lying on the couch and watching The Jetsons.”

“So, you're free,” I said. “That was close, huh?”

“She also said she's going to meet us there.”



During the Christmas rush earlier in the season, Kevin and I had managed to jockey our students onto the same chair. I had Yuan. He wore soaking-wet blue jeans and a smile. His eyeglasses had fogged up on the way over to the chair and were now completely opaque. He turned to me like he could see me. “We do parallel turns now, Jeff?” I had taught him two days before and I was glad he was back. He was a fighter. Kevin had Hannah. She wore a bright yellow ski-school bib over her snowsuit, and a red helmet that slid part way over her eyes. Her skis, dangling a full foot above the rest of ours, scissored for most of the ride. “Don’t swing your skis, please,” said Kevin. “You’ll knock them off.”

“No, I won’t," she said. "I’m being careful.”

He squeezed her knees together. "Stop, okay?" Hannah squirmed for a while. Kevin was getting edgy. Until recently he had kept up the instructor schtick pretty well. He was charming, pretty good at leaning on his ski poles, and staying halfway vague about technique. He had a lot of private requests and most of them were from 13-year-old girls or kids of single mothers. He had some talent.

"Do you know what Nancy asked me last night?" he said, talking over Hannah. "She asked me how much longer I was going to work up here."

“Ooh,” I said. “What did you tell her?”

"It's not funny, man. I told her instructing was a legitimate job and that she had no right to ask me to change who I am."

"Well, it's essentially a moral question, right?” I said. “How much of an asshole do you want to look like?” Yuan, who had been watching, pointed at Hannah. "I have son her age. You teach children, right? You like children?"

I pointed to Kevin. "He's going to have a kid in April."

Kevin pulled his hand off Hannah’s red helmet and smacked me across the face. Nancy's pregnancy wouldn't be common knowledge for another month. That’s when she’d begin to show through her sweaters at school and Mrs. Rosenblatt would pull her aside to tell her that an unmarried mother wasn't a suitable role model.

"You have baby?" said Yuan. “Congratulations."

"Yeah, well," said Kevin, "We'll see."



Reno was weathering the storm like it usually did—struggling back. Half of downtown was dark, while the other half glowed yellow and open behind snow drifts. The roads were slick, but people were out on yet-to-be-cleared sidewalks that had shrunk to the width of footpaths.

By 10:30 we had picked up burritos, made a stop at the liquor store, and were just settling into the back row of the Parklane Theater for the first matinee of the day. Kevin and I were still in our ski pants and Sorrels. Nancy sat next to us, stuffed into a burgundy sweat suit and a powder-blue fleece that didn’t zip up quite right. She was wearing small, round glasses and she had pulled her hair into a ponytail—like she used to do when she jogged. She also took up a whole second seat with gloves, hat, scarf, down jacket, burrito (extra sour cream, extra guacamole), and a large lemonade. She didn’t look comfortable. She was short and now her belly was too big for her feet to reach the chairs in front of us, so she sat, slumped with her legs sticking out. Kevin and I had our feet up. A twelve pack of Sierra Nevada sat between us with the cardboard leaves popped open.

“Need anything?” I asked.

“Ha,” she said. “You don’t know the half of it.”

I looked at Kevin. He was sitting in the middle and staring at the previews. He clearly didn’t know what to do with her, either.

The Parklane Theater was an old cineplex. A lot of the seats rocked back but didn't rock forward, and the carpeted parts were yellow and gray where once there was a celestial pattern. Heads stuck out here and there above seat backs. A bunch of non-chaperoned kids across the aisle were giggling about something that wasn’t on the screen, but it was early and most of the school kids hadn’t mobilized for the theater yet. We did have an usher (bow tie, black sneakers, acne) who would march down one aisle, make two 90-degree turns, then march back up the other aisle. It seemed like a cool job—wandering around a theater, leaning against the back wall every now and then. He was the same 16-year-old kid who had torn our tickets and hadn’t noticed the large rectangle that the 12 pack had made under Kevin’s uniform jacket. There was also a guy up front with a cowlick and two kids, whose head spun around every time we popped open another bottle.

The movie was Shrek.

“I didn’t realize the whole thing was going to be a cartoon,” Kevin whispered.

“You said you didn’t mind seeing it,” said Nancy. “We can go watch something else if that’s what you want.”

“Well, I like this movie a lot,” I said. “A lot.”

“No. No. This is fine,” said Kevin. He looked at me and held his index finger over his lips. In truth I hadn’t been paying much attention to the movie.



I had actually been expecting to be written up when Devin called me into the Ski School office earlier that week. I had been conducting a “safety meeting” with a lift attendant and her brand new glass pipe in the parking lot that afternoon and missed the two o’clock lineup. So I walked in ready to mix my bright eyed ‘n bushy tailed act with a deep, sorrowful apology.

Next to Devin, who looked like a Mafia boss behind his desk, was John, the food and beverage manager, and Cal, the general manager. Both tall and skinny, they seemed to be sharing the part of consigliere, not quite sitting and not quite standing, but leaning on whatever piece of furniture was handy. There was a chair in the middle for me. “Jeff, have a seat,” said Devin.

“This isn’t an intervention, is it?”

John and Devin laughed. Cal did not.

Devin was reluctant to speak. “Hey Jeff, I’ve known you for a long time, right? I mean you were here before me. You talked me into buying you a beer with my first tip. You get more private requests than any other instructor in the ski school. You’ve pretty much trained the ski school staff we have now. You're practically an institution.”

“What we’re trying to say,” interrupted Cal, “is we’d like you to stick around, but we think it’s time to change things up.”

The deal, he explained, was that they would create a new position for me—Midweek Ski School Trainer (I could even put it on my résumé for future job applications)—and I would be in charge of teaching other instructors how to teach. It would be part time and I would have close to zero contact with the general public. They said it wouldn’t be too bad because this late in the season weekdays were pretty light, and that either Cal or Devin would be there to check up on me. Then, at the end of this season, they’d see about next season. But there were conditions. I would have to take care of myself. No more trouble. I would have to curb the partying and I would not be allowed in the bar. This was why John was there.

“I mean it,” he said. We had been hired the same year and I had once seen him plunge his head into a cooler filled with ice and beer. “I’ve told Angie and Peter and Denis and the wait staff to radio me if you so much as step inside Timbers. We’re serious about this.”

“How does that sound?” said Devin.

“That sounds great,” I said.



By halfway through the movie a small army of empty green bottles stood at our feet on the polished concrete floor. “Watch out,” I said. “Those things are loud.”

“I know that,” said Kevin. He had to go the bathroom. He planted his feet between several of the bottles in preparation to get up, then knocked one over. The bottle went clink, then clink again as it rolled into the leg of a chair. It was silent for a moment then there was a drum roll of grooved glass on concrete, until it went clink and hit something else. The guy in front with the cowlick spun around. “Come on, you guys,” he said, shouting a whisper. “This is a movie theater.”

“Are you talking to us or your kids?” I asked. Nancy put her hand over her face.

“I’m talking to you,” he said. But there was little we could do about a runaway bottle and he settled back into his seat.

Kevin moved past Nancy. “I hate guys like that.”

“You mean fathers?” I said. He punched me in the arm.

When Kevin was gone I slid into his seat, next to Nancy. It was hard not to love her. She still had the same soft skin and she had even put on a little lipstick this morning—a light pink that was only noticeable up close. She jumped when I took her hand. “Hey there, Jeff.”

“Hi, Nancy,” I said.

“Are you making a move on me?”

“Me?” I said. “Never. Did Kevin tell you that I was promoted to Midweek Trainer?”

“That’s quite a career move for you.”

“Yes, thank you,” I said, bowing my head. She laughed quietly with that deep grin that showed her molars. I was thankful. She was still who she was, despite being pregnant now and responsible—she still appreciated those of us who enjoyed ourselves. “I came over here to tell you that seeing how the mountain’s closed and I have these newly developed supervisory skills, I’ve decided to be your and Kevin’s relationship counselor for the day.”

“I think we can manage on our own,” she said. She pulled her hand away, but faked a stretch to do it.

“I'm serious. Kevin wanted me to tell you that from now on he would like to be introduced to your students as Mr. Nancy Watts. Got that? Mr. Nancy Watts. He said he’s tired of bumping into your students and having the kids looking at him like he’s Snuffleupagus.”

“He said that? Well, sometimes he does act like my imaginary friend.”

When Kevin came back he wrinkled up his forehead at me, then took my old seat. So we sat like that—me in the middle with the two of them on either side, watching a large green man and a donkey tromp through an imaginary forest. Both Kevin and Nancy, it seemed, were happier with the seating arrangement than they should’ve been.

“I was just telling your girlfriend about my promotion,” I said.

“You mean your sentencing?” said Kevin.

“You really know where the bruises are, don’t you? We agreed that I should be your relationship counselor for the day.”

Nancy leaned over. “I didn’t agree to anything.”

I put a hand on each of them. “You need to stop pissing each other off,” I said. “Kevin, you need to start coming home earlier. And Nancy, you can’t pile all of your work crap on him, and expect him to want to come home. You two are all you have. Do you know that? Guys, you’re having a baby. It’s snowing out there. This is big.”

When the usher made his next lap, Cowlick reached across his two kids and flagged him down. They whispered for some time. There were a few glances up toward us. The whole thing finally ended with a nod from the usher, and he made his way back up to us, slowly. He stepped a few chairs into our row. “Hey, the guy up there asked if you’d keep it down, this being a kids movie—” Then he stopped. He stared at our feet. I felt sorry for him. “Geez, guys, that’s a lot of beer.”

Kevin explained, “We’re working through some issues.”

We had been kicked out of plenty of places before, just never a movie theater. But the rules were the same: obey the bouncer, and try to impress him with your cooperation—even if he does weigh 85 pounds. We had to give him credit. For a young guy he was patient. He gave us time to put on our parkas and gloves. He also made a deal with Kevin that the pregnant lady could stay and we could keep what was left of the beer if we vacated immediately. So we followed him out of the theater.

The lobby was littered with 10 year olds and popcorn. At the door, kids were stomping off snow and lone parents haggled with groups of children at the refreshment stand. All of the school lunch rooms in Reno had apparently reconvened for the day in the Parklane Theater.

I asked Kevin, “You recognize any of them?”

We got a few stares. The uniform parkas were an obnoxious blue, made so that we were easy to spot on the hill. But we were a familiar sight to the kids. That is, we looked like disobedient schoolchildren being pulled across the playground to the principal’s office. We were childhood gone to seed. One kid walked into me as he was talking to his friend. He blinked at me. “Hey watch out, doofus.”

The usher was really a nice guy, good at his job, calm. He would probably go somewhere someday—maybe even manager. He pushed a pair of lobby doors open for us. “I’m sorry, guys,” he said. “I just don’t want to lose my job.” I gave him absolution and he told us he was sorry one more time.

In the parking lot we sat in the cab of Kevin's truck for a while, waiting for it to heat up. There had been another small dusting of snow while we were in the theater, so we got out and swept off the windshield and windows, then climbed back in to wait for the truck to heat up some more. We didn't know if Nancy was coming out or not. Kevin looked soft—his face was red and I noticed for the first time that he might be gaining weight.

A trickle of people emerged from the front doors of the theater. Nancy was one of them. Several teenage girls passed her in a group—all of them pretty and wearing quilted jackets and furry mittens. If you knew her, you’d know she wasn’t too different from them. But right now, her down coat hung over her belly, and she was practically directing traffic with it as she paced underneath the awning, looking for us.

“You ever have a kid?” Kevin asked.

"No," I said. "I was never with a girl for that long."

“You regret it?”

“Not as much as they would have.”

After a few minutes she gave up, stepping sideways off the curb. She walked carefully, taking smaller than usual steps across the snow. Every once in a while her hands would go out, and she’d take a moment to steady herself. We watched her do some methodical zigzagging through an island of parked cars, then finally put a hand on her own car and climb in.

Once we were out of the Riverside parking lot, I aimed Kevin’s truck toward downtown, looking for other parking lots and neighborhood streets to drive through. This was safer. I could see straight with one eye, but not two, and there were more cars on the road than I had planned on. Reno was coming back to life. The sky had cleared and snow was starting to drip off some of the traffic lights. The storm of the century was fizzling. Kevin had asked that we not go back home yet. Second Street was loaded with bars and we could spend the rest of the day there, maybe stop in somewhere and play blackjack. Then, when we got back that night we could tell Nancy that traffic was really bad. “I mean really bad,” I would say, and she would forgive Kevin because I was so funny. This was a good plan. It had certainly worked before.

But as we lined up in traffic at a stoplight about halfway there, I made a U-turn. The roads were still slick and the back end of the truck slid wide, glancing off a parked Toyota. "Hey, Jeff," said Kevin, "you just hit that."

"I know," I said. In the rearview mirror I watched a police cruiser slowly weave out of the idling traffic and pull up alongside the Camry, then turn on his flashers and accelerate when it was obvious I wasn't stopping. I swung onto a neighborhood road. The snowplows hadn’t gotten to the smaller streets yet and this one was rutted and uneven. One moment the truck dipped and I was a foot taller than Kevin and then there was a jolt and Kevin was a foot taller than me. These were not normal road conditions. This was not a normal drive home.

The plan was to get Kevin there and hold him in their kitchen. Then after some yelling, he and Nancy would quiet down, move closer, and maybe talk. It would be a difficult moment to explain to this eager but probably well-meaning cop behind me, and to Devin, who would ask for my jacket and pass when I told him. I imagined myself standing guard in their kitchen, eating something out of their pantry, while in the other room, they made clumsy love around her pregnant belly. I smiled across the truck to Kevin. He had one hand on the dash, and one gripping the seat back. He was twisted, looking out the back window. “He made the turn,” he said.

“I know,” I said. I stepped on the accelerator and the truck bucked up and down. “But we have to get you home.”