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“We were really tired.”
“Yes.”
And randy.
God. She had never been so randy, had never been carried away by impulse in that manner, not since she was very young and very stupid. Rosemary glanced at his face again, startled to realize that in addition to not knowing his name, she didn’t know his age.
He patted the mattress beside him. “Why don’t you come up here?”
“I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”
He raised one black eyebrow. Which left her no choice but to attempt it, dignity be damned.
She rose to her knees, wincing a bit when her skinned flesh came into contact with the carpet. Her back and shoulders were stiff, her hands throbbing. She held one up. Her knuckles were chapped, two of them cracked and raw. Casualties of cold and altitude.
She rearranged the sheet into a more proper sort of shame-toga. He took her hand and helped her to sit. His hands were chapped, too, his fingers ashen from abuse, his knuckles swollen. His wrists were fine-boned, his forearms overdeveloped.
He climbed, of course. Everyone on Everest climbed.
He had the sort of face that was all planes and angles, high cheekbones, clean-shaven. No gray hair. He could be twenty, or he could be older than her.
“How old are you?” she blurted.
“Thirty-two.”
“Oh.” Younger. Young-ish. You had sex with a younger man.
Doctor Doom lifted one evil eyebrow again, and Rosemary wished to sink into the floor and disappear.
“So I’ve noticed this thing happens with climbers on Everest.” He smiled. His teeth were white, a few of them slightly crooked, a small gap between the two in the front. “It starts with telling yourself that you’re tired, but it’s not important. You can keep going. And you’re cold, but it’s not a big deal. You’re warm enough. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you get a little higher, and you start telling yourself, yeah, there’s not as much oxygen to breathe, but you’re still breathing. You’re hungry but it doesn’t matter too much, you’ve got enou
gh fuel in your body to keep going. Right?”
This time, she nodded her assent. He had a lovely voice, low and gentle. A generous face.
“You make this shift,” he continued, “where you get so used to overruling your body’s demands that you don’t even recognize you’re doing it anymore. Then you come down off the mountain, kind of numb, going through the motions, but at some point, bam!” He tapped the bed with one fist, which made her notice that his other hand was still trapped in hers.
She’d forgotten to stop holding his hand.
Rosemary let go.
He smiled again. “It catches up to you. You figure out that you’re starving, dirty, cold, tired, all at once. That you’re alive, you know?”
“The id takes over.” She’d observed it after other climbs. The sheer physical relief of having a clean body, a bed to sleep in, an endless supply of hot food. “People make impulsive decisions.”
“Yeah, and when you’ve survived something—like we survived something, the two of us…I’m just saying, it’s normal. What happened. Last night.”
“We needn’t be ashamed.”
“Right. That’s the gist of it.”
“Yes, well, thank you. For saying that.”
“You’re welcome.”
