“Everybody should be eating, eating, eating!” Bakari commanded when he entered the dining tent hours later. We’d finally stopped for the night at Arrow Glacier Camp, 16,076 feet. Such a big number. Yet still three thousand feet to go, most of it in a single day.
Tomorrow we would cross the Western Breach.
I was feeling okay about it, though. Maybe because I’d been so distracted by the way Richard had looked at me earlier, how he’d talked about my art. The men I dated never looked at any part of me very closely except for my naked ass. And that wasn’t even a criticism. I loved them in partfortheir shallowness, didn’t I? It helped me stay skating safely on the surface of things. It felt stupid even calling it dating, though. Fucking. I fucked different people for a little while here or there. Fucking and going to the movies and to museums. They were nice guys; some of them were even good huggers. But that was it. In the end, it all felt so empty and lonely. I did a good job of pretending otherwise, but that was the truth.
“Kito will check everyone’s numbers, and then we should get to bed,” Bakari said. He ladled soup into his bowl and took a grilled cheese sandwich from the buffet. “We start at four a.m. tomorrow. To be ahead of sunrise in climbing the breach.”
“Ahead of sunrise?” I asked quietly. “Wouldn’t daylight be helpful?”
But no one seemed to be listening. Everyone was worried about their numbers, me included. I was feeling much worse than I had all day—unsteady, exhausted.
“Okay, who’s first?” Kito held out the pulse oximeter.
“Let’s get this over with.” Van reached for it, closed his eyes, relaxed his hands, and took a couple of deep breaths. “Ninety-three over eighty-five!” he said, beaming. “Pulled back from the edge! I feel so much better.”
“The body does adjust!” Kito said. He sounded relieved himself. “That’s why we have to be so sure to go slowly. Gives everyone a chance to come back.”
Scotty called out his numbers: 90 over 98. Then Brooks and Richard. All solid. Then me: 86 over 115. I did not say them out loud.
My numbers had crashed. I had a blinding headache, punctuated by waves of dizziness. But when you feel so consistently subpar for days, it’s hard to register when things get worse. A pulse ox lower than 85 meant mandatory evacuation. I wasn’t there yet, but I was uncomfortably close.
“Ninety over one-oh-five,” I lied, pulling my finger out.
When I glanced up, Richard, who was sitting next to me, had a taut look on his face. He must have seen my real numbers. I wanted to ignore his concern. But it was like being handed a poisoned glass of water when you were dying of thirst. The liquid disappeared inside me before I had the chance to consider the consequences.Love me. Love me.My need felt frantic.
The idea of Richard had crept in to undermine me. I needed that summit, now more than ever.
“Ah, we’re catching up to her finally!” Van joked.
The other men laughed somewhere out in the ether, too. But the world felt muffled and far away. Was that anxiety? The altitude? “She’s still moving faster than the rest of us,” Scotty said.
“Way faster,” Brooks added, then raised his hands. “But we’re not calling a first-place finisher until we’re all the way to the top.”
“Thank you, Brooks, for maintaining your title of most competitive man on the planet,” Richard said.
“No, no,” Bakari said. “The mountain is always the only winner.”
***
There’s a subway station at the end of the block. My apartment is only a couple blocks away, but Richard doesn’t know that. It’s a subway I could ride somewhere, anywhere other than here.
“We should go,” I say, gesturing vaguely. Ending the night there, before anything happens between Richard and me, is the right thing to do.
Richard seems surprised. Or maybe he’s just disappointed. I am, too. But then he nods. “Oh, okay. Yes.”
I realize he thinks I’m saying the two of us should go somewhere else—together. Somewhere more private. He’s willing todo this without any debate. Cheat on his wife of—what—thirty years? Maybe I am not the first time. I try to brush the thought aside, but now there’s a tear in our delicate fabric.
“This is me,” I lie when we reach the subway station.
Richard looks down the steps as if he has no idea what’s hidden in such a strange subterranean space. It seems possible he’s never ridden the subway.
“Let me at least drop you off at home,” he says, running a hand through his hair. His face is flushed. Mine must be, too. “My driver is around the corner.”
“Your driver?” I ask. “We took an Uber to Joyface.”
Richard smiles a little sheepishly and stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, he was, um, outside your studio. I texted him to follow and meet me there.”
“Why didn’t we—”
