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No. The safe was there, sealed up tight.
Maybe he’d done something right in a previous lifetime after all. He spun the dial, stroked the blue cover of his U.S. Passport in glorious reunion, lifted it up to see what was under it, and—
Shit.
No money clip, and as soon as he beheld the blank space where it was supposed to be, fat with Nepalese cash and a Chase Platinum credit card, he remembered taking the money clip out of the safe to pay for the food when they sent it up.
He’d left it in the room.
So basically, he was boned.
He walked back to the sink and gathered up his toiletries in one hand. He had a bottle of shampoo, a toothbrush, and a passport. He had a pair of jeans, Adidas sandals, a T-shirt, and a nubbly Patagonia fleece jacket with a cigarette hole burned into one wrist.
Not much. But more than most people had in Nepal, and more than enough to get him back to New York with a little help.
He left the room door open behind him.
When he knocked at Rosemary’s room, she called, “Who is it?”
“It’s Kal.”
She opened the door. “You didn’t have to bring me your mobile. I’d have been happy to wait until you were showered and—”
“Yeah, so, bad news about the phone.” He spread his hands. “I got robbed.”
“Pardon?”
“It seems I left my keys in the door last night. Someone waltzed in, stole all my stuff, waltzed back out.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
He checked her face, amused despite himself. Getting robbed sucked, but hearing Princess Rosemary tell him it was unfortunate with her prim mouth frowning and her eyes liquid with concern almost made it worthwhile.
Was it normal that he found her most endearing when she frowned at him? Or, for that matter, that her lecture about condom usage had made him semi-hard?
He blamed Helen Mirren. Ever since he’d stumbled on that old photo shoot of her naked in the bathtub…
“Have you contacted the police?”
Kal rounded up his straying brain cells. “I could, but I don’t think I’m going to. I figure whoever’s got my stuff probably needs it more than I do.”
“That’s a generous perspective.”
She wouldn’t think it was so generous if he told her he never planned to need his alpine boots again, much less the suit, the regulator, the mask. He was going home, and he didn’t expect to visit Base Camp ever again. He’d get back to helping run the restaurant and the grocery store, driving old ladies around the city, dropping his kid sister, Patricia, off at school, making sure Sangmu stayed on top of her college applications. There was plenty to do in New York, a hundred ways he could make himself useful.
Next season, some other Sherpa would wear Kal’s stuff on the mountain, somebody who would take the money he earned as a guide home to feed his kids.
Kal hoped all that fancy baffle technology and 800-fill goose down kept the guy warm.
“You’ll need a police report when you contact your embassy,” she said. “Or a report of some kind, I imagine.”
“I’ve still got my passport. I stashed it in the safe. Usually I put my money and credit card in there, too, and my phone, but last night I guess I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.”
Rosemary’s hand crept to her earlobe. “You should at least mention it at the front desk,” she said after a beat. “They’ll want to know they have a security problem.”
“Will do. And I’ll have to tell them about it anyway when I explain how I’ve run into a problem paying for my room.”
“Ah.”
