“Well, I’m alive,” he says, easing himself into the chair across from my desk.

“You look like somebody tried to hang some Sheetrock down your spine.

Is anything broken?”

Dan takes a deep breath and winces.

“Only my eighth and ninth ribs. My instructor said I looked like I was trying to ski on the damn things.”

Poor Dan. I try not to smile. As fat as he is, breaking a rib would be like trying to pop a balloon inside a bale of cotton. He must have fallen hard.

Dan’s having a rough time. He got involved with a prostitute he once had represented; his wife kicked him out; and now he’s hurt himself.

Dan fingers his rib cage.

“The first two days I thought I was going to have a heart attack. When I’d fall, which was every five minutes, I couldn’t get up. I’d flail around on the snow hyperventilating.

It scared the hell out of the rest of the class.

My instructor said that if I fell one more time, she’d leave me out in the snow to die. I’ve never worked so hard in my life just to stay upright!”

I don’t want to laugh, but it’s impossible not to.

“Did you meet any women?” I ask, knowing they were the principal inducement. Years of beer commercials convinced him to take the trip despite his fears he was too old and fat. Maybe he would meet, if not snow bunnies, a bored housewife chaperoning a church group.

“Hell, no,” he wheezes, “I was too ac hey and tired at the end of the day. The one night I made it to a bar I nodded off during the one conversation I had with a woman.”

I cackle, knowing that I’d have been just as bad or worse.

“When did you break your ribs?” I ask, realizing his injuries could be more serious than they sound. Guys our age can break a bone, develop pneumonia, and be dead within a week.

“Probably the second day, but everything else was hurting so bad by then, I thought the pain was normal. My thighs felt like somebody was coming in while I was asleep and hammering on them. My shoulders were almost as bad because of trying to get around using those damn poles.