The Runner Read Online Free Page A
Author: David Samuels
Alaia’s condominium apartment is a temple to skiing, with pictures of skiers on the
walls, and skis and ski boots propped up against the sliding glass doors through which we can watch skiers heading down the slopes. We shared toasted tuna fish sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch. He approaches the details of the Hogue case with the same obsessive nature that he brings to his discussion of property values in Telluride. Somehow, his obsession with Telluride real estate and Jim Hogue’s story merge together in his mind, in a way that seems at first like a symptom of mental confusion. As I stay with it, the two stories merge together in a way that reveals greater synchronicities at work.
“Did I tell you about the sofa chairs?” Alaia wondered. Hunched over his bowl of tomato
soup, he lifts another spoonful to his mouth, and then continues his story.
“Jim was our property manager from 2003 until the beginning of 2006, and so for two
and a half, almost three years, he managed this condo for us. He would take care of it for a nominal fee. We turned down a sixty-thousand-dollar asking price for a parking space for this condo when we bought it, because I figured I could do better things with sixty thousand,” he explained, laying his soup spoon down on the table. Like fantasists, or liars, obsessives are a particular kind of person. Normal conversation makes their skin itch, until finally, the hour gets late, and the other guests falter, and then they are free to talk about the one subject that is actually worth caring about, and which is big enough to encompass the universe. He fidgeted for a moment before resuming his pitch.
“And take the gondola. I mean, it’s right there. So why blow sixty thou? Anyway,
realizing that in the interval, parking spaces went up to over a hundred thousand dollars in value, I’m thinking, well, if I build this project, one of the ways that I’m gonna sell it is if I give parking spaces to people, so why not give them two?” he said. The immediate subject of Dr. Alaia’s
obsession is a $20 million dollar condo project that he is shepherding to completion in Mountain Village. Jim was Dr. Alaia’s right-hand man.
When they met, Jim was doing work for Alaia’s neighbor, Sheila Murphy, who owned
and then sold the condo next door. “He told me that he was a distance runner, and that he loved to run, that he’d been in the Olympic trials,” Dr. Alaia remembers. “Oh yes, and that he was a chemical engineer, and that he had got his chemical engineering degree from the University of Texas. Which, of course, was totally untrue.” As he talks about Hogue it is clear that Dr. Alaia’s mind is still confused about which parts of Hogue’s biography are real, and which are fiction.
“My presumption was that he came to Telluride and fell in love with the place,” he told me. “He spent a couple of years in Italy, which I also don’t think is true.”
Hogue and the Alaias soon fell into a comfortable routine, with Hogue managing their
condo and doing repairs, and helping out paying guests when they were away. When the family came to town, they took Hogue out to dinner. When I asked how Dr. Alaia’s bond with Jim had developed, the doctor smiled and sat up straight in his chair.
“Well, there you hit the nail on the head,” he answered. “You must remember that all this
time, lot thirty-one was sitting there with trees on it, doing nothing. I had spent all of my time doing the due diligence on that, three single-family detached condominium lots, ski-in/ski-out right across the road, right in the face of Oprah Winfrey’s old house.”
If it is hard sometimes to figure out what exactly Dr. Alaia is talking about, it is clear that Hogue saw him as a meal ticket and succeeded in ingratiating himself. After hiring a local
architect named Jerry Ross to do the plans for the three cabins, Alaia began using Hogue as a contractor, paying him small sums of money here and
walls, and skis and ski boots propped up against the sliding glass doors through which we can watch skiers heading down the slopes. We shared toasted tuna fish sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch. He approaches the details of the Hogue case with the same obsessive nature that he brings to his discussion of property values in Telluride. Somehow, his obsession with Telluride real estate and Jim Hogue’s story merge together in his mind, in a way that seems at first like a symptom of mental confusion. As I stay with it, the two stories merge together in a way that reveals greater synchronicities at work.
“Did I tell you about the sofa chairs?” Alaia wondered. Hunched over his bowl of tomato
soup, he lifts another spoonful to his mouth, and then continues his story.
“Jim was our property manager from 2003 until the beginning of 2006, and so for two
and a half, almost three years, he managed this condo for us. He would take care of it for a nominal fee. We turned down a sixty-thousand-dollar asking price for a parking space for this condo when we bought it, because I figured I could do better things with sixty thousand,” he explained, laying his soup spoon down on the table. Like fantasists, or liars, obsessives are a particular kind of person. Normal conversation makes their skin itch, until finally, the hour gets late, and the other guests falter, and then they are free to talk about the one subject that is actually worth caring about, and which is big enough to encompass the universe. He fidgeted for a moment before resuming his pitch.
“And take the gondola. I mean, it’s right there. So why blow sixty thou? Anyway,
realizing that in the interval, parking spaces went up to over a hundred thousand dollars in value, I’m thinking, well, if I build this project, one of the ways that I’m gonna sell it is if I give parking spaces to people, so why not give them two?” he said. The immediate subject of Dr. Alaia’s
obsession is a $20 million dollar condo project that he is shepherding to completion in Mountain Village. Jim was Dr. Alaia’s right-hand man.
When they met, Jim was doing work for Alaia’s neighbor, Sheila Murphy, who owned
and then sold the condo next door. “He told me that he was a distance runner, and that he loved to run, that he’d been in the Olympic trials,” Dr. Alaia remembers. “Oh yes, and that he was a chemical engineer, and that he had got his chemical engineering degree from the University of Texas. Which, of course, was totally untrue.” As he talks about Hogue it is clear that Dr. Alaia’s mind is still confused about which parts of Hogue’s biography are real, and which are fiction.
“My presumption was that he came to Telluride and fell in love with the place,” he told me. “He spent a couple of years in Italy, which I also don’t think is true.”
Hogue and the Alaias soon fell into a comfortable routine, with Hogue managing their
condo and doing repairs, and helping out paying guests when they were away. When the family came to town, they took Hogue out to dinner. When I asked how Dr. Alaia’s bond with Jim had developed, the doctor smiled and sat up straight in his chair.
“Well, there you hit the nail on the head,” he answered. “You must remember that all this
time, lot thirty-one was sitting there with trees on it, doing nothing. I had spent all of my time doing the due diligence on that, three single-family detached condominium lots, ski-in/ski-out right across the road, right in the face of Oprah Winfrey’s old house.”
If it is hard sometimes to figure out what exactly Dr. Alaia is talking about, it is clear that Hogue saw him as a meal ticket and succeeded in ingratiating himself. After hiring a local
architect named Jerry Ross to do the plans for the three cabins, Alaia began using Hogue as a contractor, paying him small sums of money here and
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