The Ascent

Chapter 2

1

MARTA CORTEZ COME AT THE END OF THE WEEK,

looking pretty with her hair pulled back and her naturally tanned face fresh and without makeup. She hummed to herself, and the sound was pleasant enough to instantly brighten the entire apartment.

“Look at you.” She sighed, pausing in her long-legged stride. “You’re in one of your bitter moods.”

“How’d you get in? I thought I locked the door.”

“Don’t be so combative.” She practically swished through the apartment, her arms burdened with brown grocery bags and a swinging leather purse, and went straight for the kitchen.

I was on the deck, the balcony doors open, watching the distant glint of traffic creeping across the Chesapeake Bay. I maneuvered my wheelchair around and thumped over the rubber threshold stripping of the deck into my apartment. Even with the breezy summer air filtering in, there persisted the underlying stink of stale sweat and old, musty books throughout the place—a smell I’d once found comforting, the way some people find libraries comforting, though which recently alerted me to my own hermitic lifestyle. With the exception of Marta’s weekly visit to bring me groceries and playthe occasional game of backgammon or chess, my tiny Annapolis apartment entertained no visitors.

“This place is a mess,” she said, emptying the bags of groceries into the refrigerator. “Can’t you clean up a little?”

“It’s homey,” I retorted, surveying the room. Clothes clung like foliage to the sofa, while towers of paperback novels and DVDs teetered on nearly every available flat surface, including the leveled shade of a lamp—a potential fire hazard. A half-empty bottle of Macallan scotch, along with an assortment of used rocks glasses and champagne flutes, stood atop a stereo speaker. Empty food containers from various local delivery joints had cropped up like tiny civilizations seemingly overnight. In particular, a carton of reeking Chinese food balanced on a collection of DVDs that in turn perched atop a mountain of books on the coffee table in the middle of the room: a cumulative testament to just how pathetic I’d become. “Anyway,” I continued, ignoring the mess, “I’m still getting the hang of this chair. It’s hard to get around and clean up.”

“I thought you were on crutches now.”

I glanced at the pair of crutches propped in one corner of the room, a ratty old Hawaiian shirt draped over one of the cushioned supports. “Ask some of the neighbors, and they might attest to seeing a man in his late thirties, skin pasty, a bad dresser, stumbling around the lobby on a pair of crutches from time to time. But they’d also no doubt relay the embarrassed and frustrated look on the man’s face.”

“You’re an asshole, Tim,” Marta said matter-of-factly. Then, some musicality coming to her voice, she said, “I got you a surprise.”

“Oh yeah? What is it, a housekeeper?”

She appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking almost seductive in a pink halter top and a pair of too-short black shorts from which her brown, coltish legs seemed to slide like shafts of daylight. Marta and I were friends and had never dated. Although one night several years ago after spending a few hours getting hammered at a Main Street bar, we’d returned to this very apartment where, midway throughwatching a Coen brothers movie, we’d kissed. The kiss transitioned into clumsy groping, resulting in Marta bare-chested on my sofa, me on top of her with one hand down her pants—which was the exact position we woke up in the next morning. We were mutually humiliated, and I hadn’t kissed her nor seen her breasts since that night.

She crossed the room and tossed a DVD case in my lap.

“Rear Window,” I said. “Hysterical. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you’ve got a lousy sense of humor.”

“Did you see the boats?” she said, returning to the kitchen.

“What boats?”

“They’re gearing up for some big race. People from all over the country are in town. You should see the size of the boats down at Ego Alley.”

Ego Alley was what the locals called the downtown dock, where all the silver-haired, retired Annapolis moguls coasted by on their enormous boats, their chests puffed out, while bikini-clad, amber-skinned women decorated the decks. If one were to look closely at these men, it was almost possible to spot a fan of peacock feathers sprouting from their asses.

I piloted my wheelchair back onto the deck, snatching the bottle of Macallan as I went. Sure enough, I could make out a cluster of white sails farther down the shoreline. Uncorking the bottle, I brought the scotch to my lips and took a quick swig. Marta had stopped reprimanding me for drinking while on pain medication, knowing damn well I’d sooner give up the meds than the whiskey. When she caught me now, she would only shake her head like someone who’d just heard of a terrible automobile accident on the news.

It had been six months since the incident at the cave and four months since the last of my surgeries. The result was a steel plate and a dozen or so stainless steel screws drilled into the bones of my left leg. Such things were beyond the assistance of simple pain medication; such things were beyond mere pain.

“Is this a new one?” she called from inside.

I craned my neck to find her standing in the vestibule, holding an envelope.

“Another one from New York?”

“They’re always from New York,” I reminded her.

“You didn’t even open it.”

I took another drink from the bottle and watched a pair of Jet Skis carve white tracks of froth across the surface of the bay.

Marta came up behind me, fanning herself with the envelope. “Can I open it?”

“Be my guest.”

She tore open the envelope, depositing a pigtail curl of white paper into my lap, and read the contents of the letter out loud. She’d gotten only partway when she stopped reading and said without humor, “What’s the matter with you? These guys are making a great offer. They want to fly you out and discuss it. Oh, shit. What’s the date?”

“Don’t really know.”

“Damn it. They wanted you to go out last week. You missed it.”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Right,” she said. “Nothing matters. This letter doesn’t matter and neither do any of the others that came before it. There’s a stack of them in a shoe box under your bed, you know.”

“I thought you threw them away.”

“Why would you think that? You never asked what I did with them, and I never told you.”

“Why are you making a big deal about this all of a sudden?”

Marta crinkled the letter into a ball and dropped it in my lap. I could tell, even without peeling apart the ball, that it had been typed on expensive paper. Probably watermarked, with an upraised crest in the header.

“Because it’s been too long,” she said, slipping into the apartment. “Too much time has gone by, and you haven’t done anything to get back on track.”

I turned the wheelchair around and followed her inside. “It was never my intention to get back on that track.”

“Well, you need some track. This place is a dump, and you’re running out of money.”

That much was true. Since the accident, I hadn’t been able to teach at the college. I’d attempted to provide students with an online seminar for the semester—something I could teach via the Internet and a digital camera three nights a week—but I was not a very good lecturer. And it was next to impossible to teach an art class over the Internet. Fortunately I was able to take a sabbatical while I recuperated, and I’d spent the past six months watching DVDs and in the evenings crutching from bar to bar through downtown Annapolis.

“I told you,” I said, not knowing if I’d ever said these words to her or not, “I can’t do it anymore. It’s left me.”

“Are you so sure? When was the last time you even tried sculpting something?”

“Before the accident, I was sculpting every day in class—”

“I don’t mean at the college. I mean for real, in real life. Not something that takes you fifty minutes to mold out of clay. I’m talking about the kind of sculpting you used to do before I knew you. The work that made you happy and got your face on the cover of that magazine you’ve got framed …” She glanced at the empty square of wall beside the front door—the spot where a crooked little nail jutted erect, suddenly so obvious I was surprised she hadn’t noticed earlier. “Why did you take it down?”

“It accidentally fell and broke,” I said. This was only partially true.

Seemingly defeated, she flopped onto the sofa. She looked like she wanted to hit me. Instead, she shook her head, something like a coy smile teasing the corners of her mouth. She brought her hands up and rested her chin on them. A spray of freckles covered her arms.

“Let’s play,” I said, placing the bottle of Macallan on the floor. I started setting up the chessboard that sat on the coffee table between us.

“No.” Marta stood.

“What?”

“I’ve got a date.”

“No shit?”

“You always sound surprised.”

“I always am. Who is he?”

“He’s no one you know.”

“That’s not what I meant. What does he do?”

“He’s a bartender.”

“Maybe I do know him.”

“Ha. Seriously, he’s just a nice guy, nothing fantastic. But I’m not getting any younger.”

“So you’re thinking a bartender’s the way to go, huh?”

“Cool it. I’m watching my life tick by.” And for whatever reason, this statement caused something to turn over inside her—that much was evident by the change in her expression—and she cocked her hip and looked at me from beneath her brow. “What the hell possessed you to explore the cave on your own that day?”

In all this time, she’d never asked the question. Right now my answer was a long time coming. “Guess I was just looking for something,” I said, continuing to set up the chessboard. I would play by myself if I couldn’t convince Marta to stay.

“Looking for what?”

I shrugged. “Can’t answer that.”

“Can’t? Why not? Someone holding a gun to your head? Or is it some vast government secret?”

“The latter one sounds cool. Let’s go with that.”

“Christ, Tim. Sometimes you’re just goddamn impossible.”

I almost told her about Hannah right then—about how it was Hannah’s ghost that had helped me out of the cave and beckoned me toward the highway. I would have never found that highway on my own, and I surely would have died in that cave if not for Hannah.

But I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to discuss such things, because that story was connected to another story, a current story, and I didn’t want to tell that one at all. Given the physical and psychological stress my body had been under at the time of the accident, seeing Hannah’s ghost was easily explained away. Her image was a figment of my imagination, summoned from the depths of my memories to the forefront of my world while in a state of excruciating pain and the onset of hypothermia. I could have claimed to have been led from the cave by Elvis, and it could be blown off with a subtle grin and a wave of the hand. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was where the story led me—to the here and now—and how such claims were no longer dismissed as easily.

Because since the accident I’d seen Hannah in my apartment. Most recently, three nights ago, standing outside on the balcony …

“What’s wrong?” A furrow creased Marta’s brow. “You look frightened all of a sudden.”

My palms were sweating. I swallowed and my spit felt granulated, like sand. When I spoke, my voice cracked as if I were going through puberty all over again. “Guess I was just thinking back on the whole thing.”

“It must have been horrible. But it’s over now. You escaped. You’re alive.”

I cleared my throat. “Stay. Just for one game.”

“Stop it.” She came and kissed the top of my head. It was such a motherly act that I felt a pang of nostalgia for my childhood. “I have a date and I need to go. I’ll stop by and see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Unless you get lucky tonight. You know how sharp those bartenders can be. By the way, tell him I said hello, whoever he is.”

“You’re a regular riot. There’re fresh cold cuts in the fridge. Try to stay out of trouble.”

I winked.

She left.

2

WHEN NINE O’CLOCK ROLLED AROUND. I WAS STILL

thinking of Hannah. The apartment had grown cold and dark, and the air that came in through the balcony doors carried with it the gritty scent of the Chesapeake.

I sat in my wheelchair and watched the first hour of Rear Window until my memories got the better of me; I began to trick myself, believing I saw Hannah in the periphery of my vision. Once, as Jimmy Stewart looked out across his courtyard with a telephoto lens, I thought the face of the leotard-clad dancer in the opposite apartment bore Hannah’s face. This was stupid, of course … but I still reversed the DVD and paused it on that frame nonetheless.

After a time, I rolled out onto the balcony with the Macallan. It was good scotch; I approved of the cozy chateau emblem on the label. I sat and drank, watching the sodium lights twinkling farther down the stretch of beach toward downtown. Directly over the water, which was now a vast blanket of darkness, stood the Bay Bridge, bejeweled with the countless headlights of automobiles.

I’d lied to Marta earlier when I said I thought she’d thrown all those letters away. I knew very well she’d tucked them inside that shoe box under my bed. I’d gone through them a number of times since, though not with any sense of remorse or regret at having missed the opportunities. In fact, I felt very little emotion when I looked at them, except maybe for a sense of anchoring, of stabilizing, the way a ship gets tied to the docks when it growls into port.

They were letters requesting my services as an artist and a sculptor. Usually they came from multinational conglomerates and faceless corporations throughout the country’s major metropolises, requesting some titanium twist of modern art for their marbled courtyards. Or some board member I’d never heard of from a company of equalanonymity would pen a letter, explaining he’d read such and such an article and would love to have me chisel the bust of their CEO in granite, something they could prop on a pedestal in their lobby.

Over the past few years, these requests dwindled dramatically but not to the point of extinction. The latest—the one Marta had read this afternoon on the balcony—was from a textile company in Manhattan. The company’s vice president was infatuated with the number three, the letter explained, and it was this man’s desire to hire Timothy Overleigh to design a wrought-iron numeral to be displayed in his office. His reasons for choosing me were appropriately threefold: the magazine on whose cover I’d once been pictured was called Three Tiers; I was once named the third best sculptor in young America by the Washington Post; and lastly because of the sum of the letters in the abbreviated form of my first name.

I finished off the last of the Macallan and was feeling pretty good. When I squinted, the lights along the shore blurred and spread out in a greasy smear. The chill from the strong breeze caused my injured leg to ache. I turned the chair around and, thumping over the rubber doorjamb, rolled back into the apartment.

Hannah stood across the room, mostly hidden in the dark.

My breath caught in my throat. I felt the empty liquor bottle slide from my hand and strike the floor with a hollow thud. Suddenly I forgot all about the pain in my left leg. Unable to move, I sat frozen in the wheelchair, staring across the room, trying to dissect the shadows to better view my wife.

“Hannah.” It came out in a breathy whisper, the sound of it—the foolishness of it—forcing rational thought to override my panic. She wasn’t there, of course. She was dead. Hannah was dead. She was—

I watched her move along the far wall, an indescribable shifting of depth, until she reached the section spotlighted by the moonlight coming in through the balcony doors. I anticipated her coming into relief the moment she crossed that panel of bluish light … but shenever did. She vanished before she reached it, dispersing into granules of dust in the darkness.

“Jesus,” I uttered, my voice choked and nervous. I forced a laugh; it came out as a bark.

I decided to get the hell out of the apartment for the night. My eyes locked on the pair of crutches leaning in one corner of the room. It was not difficult to maneuver on the crutches, although they certainly provided less comfort than the chair, and I quickly rolled over to them and dragged myself out of the wheelchair while leaning against the television for support. I winced as I carelessly banged my left leg against the credenza, a million fireworks exploding before my eyes, then took a number of slow, deep breaths as I situated the crutches into the sockets of my armpits. Upright, I balanced precipitously for a moment before lunging toward the front door.

My apartment was in walking distance of downtown but not crutching distance, so I had the building’s doorman wrangle me a cab. It was a feat getting into the cab’s backseat, even with the assistance of the doorman and the cabdriver—both of whom spoke little English and looked as though they may have hailed from the same South American country—but I was soon shuttled off and deposited at the city dock.

It was a beautiful night, and the streets were alive. I could faintly hear live music issuing from a number of the closest taverns and beyond that the distant growl of boat engines. The bars along Main Street would be packed at this hour, and I was not in the mood to have my leg bumped by drunks in Navy whites, so I hobbled down an alleyway to seek out a more reclusive haunt hidden from summer tourists.

The Filibuster was as reclusive as one could hope for. A narrow, redbrick front fitted with iron sconces, boasting none of the typical Annapolis fanfare in its windows—goggle-eyed ceramic crabs or miniature rowing oars crossing each other to form an X—the Filibuster was easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it. Brom Holsworth, aretired Department of Justice prosecutor, owned the place ever since I could remember. Inside, it was musty and dark, the walls adorned with yellowing photographs of disgraced Washington politicians, many of whom Brom helped to disgrace.

Tonight, as expected, the bar was only mildly populated. I nearly collapsed on the closest barstool and, leaning my crutches against the wall, let out a hefty sigh.

The bartender was a nice enough kid named Ricky Carrolton. His face seemed to light up when he saw me. “Been gone so long, I was beginning to think you jumped off the Bay Bridge.”

Something about his comment bothered me. “Downtown’s more crowded than usual,” I said quickly, trying not to let my discomfort show. “What’s the deal?”

“Regatta race starts tomorrow morning. Didn’t you read today’s paper?”

“I only get the Sunday paper.”

“We’ve even been getting some of the stragglers all the way down here.” As Ricky spoke, he fixed me a whiskey sour. “Out-of-towners, most of them. All the hotels are busting at the seams. Good for business, though, I guess.”

“How’s Brom?”

Ricky set the drink down in front of me. “Laid up with the gout.” He nodded toward my crutches. “When are you gonna get off those? You seem to be moving around better.”

“I’m biding my time.”

“Doc keeps giving you pain meds as long as you’re a cripple, huh?” Ricky said, laughing. “I dig it.”

A hand fell on my shoulder.

I turned, expecting to see someone I knew, but this man was a stranger to me. Perhaps one of the out-of-towners Ricky had just spoken of.

“Your name Timothy Overleigh?” the man asked. He wasa large, barrel-chested behemoth, with grizzled white tufts of hair spooling out from beneath his mesh cap and pepper-colored beard stubble covering the undulations of his thick, rolling neck.

“Who wants to know?” I retorted.

The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward a darkened corner of the tavern. “Guy in the back,” he said, turning his rheumy eyes from me so he could scan the collection of liquor bottles that climbed the wall behind the bar.

I peered across the room and could make out the shape of a man seated by himself in a corner booth. The lighting was too poor, however, to get a good look at his face.

“Oh yeah?” I said. “He say his name? It’s a bit of a hike for a guy on crutches, particularly when he’s not comfortable with the idea of leaving his drink behind.”

“Didn’t say no name,” grumbled the man, who sat two stools down and lit a cigarette.

Over the past several weeks, I’d become rather adept at using one crutch. I did this now, holding my drink in my free hand, and made my way to the darkened corner.

As I approached, the man’s features seemed to materialize out of the gloom. He was a good-looking guy, in a somewhat ordinary sort of way, with high, almost feminine cheekbones and a small slash for a mouth. His eyes were large, deeply set, and black like a bird’s. He had long black hair pulled back into a ponytail.

He lit a cigarette and grinned with just one corner of his mouth. Then I recognized him—not fully enough to recall who he was but enough to know I had seen that grin before.

“It is you,” he said, the cadence of his voice equivalent to a low, breathy gasp. “I looked up and thought, shit, that’s Tim Overleigh sitting over there, his leg all fucked up. And I was right.”

“Holy shit,” I uttered, realizing who he was.

“Holy shit, indeed,” said Andrew Trumbauer, his one-sidedgrin widening.

In disbelief, I mumbled, “Last time I saw you—”We almost died,” he finished.

3

I FIRST MET ANDREW TRUMBAUER IN A WHOLE

other life. I can still picture him coming out of the ocean and strutting toward Hannah and me, this strange creature whose skin is so pale it is nearly transparent. His scarecrow-thin body beaded with seawater, his bare feet dotted with white sand. That grin overtakes one corner of his mouth, cocking it upward into an almost comical gesture of aloofness, and he raises a mesh bag of dog biscuits. He’s got a pair of goggles around his neck, the band pulled so tight it appears to be choking him, and he is so horridly, morbidly pale I imagine I can see his skin start to sizzle and turn pink, then deepen to red as he approaches from the other side of the beach.

4

I SAT DOWN IN THE BOOTH ACROSS FROM ANDREW.

still somewhat shaken.

“You remember, don’t you, Overleigh?” he said, his voice remaining low and breathy. The way the shadows played off his face, he was a patchwork of dark hollows and blaring white flesh. My name sounded comfortable coming out of his mouth, too, as if no time had passed between us. “How we almost died?”

“Of course.” The words were automatic—I had no idea what he was talking about. It occurred to me that the last time I saw Andrew Trumbauer was at Hannah’s funeral three years ago.

“That was something,” Andrew muttered, blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling.

“No, wait,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

Andrew frowned. It was a grotesque gesture, his face too thin to accommodate it properly. Instead, the corners of his mouth seemed to sink to twin points, and his chin wrinkled into a walnut. “You don’t remember?”

“No, I have no—”

Then it all came rushing back to me: leaving the funeral service in the gray, rain-soaked afternoon, Andrew behind the wheel and me in the passenger seat, Andrew turning at the last minute as the power line snapped, spitting fire as it whipped the ground, the car nearly running over the downed line …

“The power line,” I said, my voice distant. I’d almost forgotten about it, the other events of that horrible day overshadowing all else.

Andrew leaned back in his seat, a look of satisfaction overtaking that vague little frown of his. Something glittered in his eyes that caused me to turn my gaze down at my drink.

“I’m sorry,” he said after the silence between us grew too long. “That was a shitty thing to bring up right off the bat like that.”

“It’s okay.”

“You look good,” he said.

I smirked. “Liar. I know I look like shit.”

“What happened to your leg?”

I told him about the caving accident and admitted that it had been foolish to undertake such an excursion alone. “The bone came right up through the skin. I was a mess. I’m just lucky a car happened to stop after I made it out to the highway. Was probably the only car around for miles.”

“Talk about luck,” Andrew said, although he didn’t seem too impressed.

“Six months later,” I went on, “and I’ve learned my lesson. For the time being.”

“Thing about lessons,” Andrew said, “is that there’s always a new

one to learn.”

I bummed one of his cigarettes and said, “What the hell are you doing out here, anyway, man?”

“Regatta race.”

“You’re in it? Get the fuck outta here. You have a boat?”

“Not my boat. I’m one of the crew.”

“You can sail?” But I knew this was a stupid question. Andrew Trumbauer was one of those guys who did everything from hiking the Grand Canyon to rafting down the goddamn Nile.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never gotten involved in the race yourself,” he said, thankfully ignoring my question. “You live down here, don’t you? You’re an adventurer at heart. Doesn’t take those crutches and a busted leg for me to see that—I know you. And you’ve never sailed the Regatta?”

I shrugged. “Been a busy few years.”

“That’s a sad excuse. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?”

I considered this. After Hannah’s death and the disappearance of my artistic talent, I’d submerged myself in the world of extreme sports—skydiving, spelunking, white-water rafting. But I knew nothing I said could compete with anything Andrew had done. So I said, “I once ran out to get my mail in the middle of a downpour without my rain slicker. It was risky, I know, but that’s just the kind of guy I am.”

Andrew smiled. This time the expression looked more human. “You still sculpting?”

“Actually, no. I gave it up.”

“You make it sound like you just quit smoking.”

“No, I still do that from time to time.”

Andrew’s smile died. “Wait—you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“As a heart attack.”

“Jesus, man, why? You were brilliant.”

“It’s … it’s a lot of mitigating factors. Complicated bullshit.”

“Life is full of complicated bullshit. Yours is no different than anyone else’s.”

I felt my heart flutter. For some stupid reason, I said, “I see Hannah.”

Andrew stared at me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. “What are you talking about?”

“Forget it.” I waved a hand at him.

“Tell me.”

I sighed, watching a group of older men shoot darts. After what felt like an eternity, I said, “You’ll think I’m crazy, but I believe she’s been haunting me.”

“How’s that?”

“I first saw her that night in the cave.” I explained how I’d gotten free of the cave and found the highway, following what I thought was Hannah’s ghost. I didn’t know if I expected Andrew to laugh or clap me on the shoulder and tell me I needed psychiatric help, but he did neither; he merely watched my lips move while I talked and never interrupted. “After that, I kept seeing her in my apartment. Out of the corner of my eye. But every time I turn to look, it’s a coatrack or a pile of clothes. And every time I flip the lights on, she vanishes.” Once again, I waved a hand at him. It seemed a sane gesture, one I was required to do in relaying such a bizarre story. “It’s stupid, I know. But it’s been bothering me.”

“Why?” said Andrew.

I didn’t know quite what he meant. “Because it’s fucking unnatural.”

“No.” He fluttered some fingers before his face. “I mean, why is she coming to you now? She’s been dead for three years.”

“Never mind,” I said. “It’s all in my head. I’m dealing with a lot of shit about her death.”

“Maybe it’s a warning. Like she’s trying to tell you something from beyond the grave.”

“Or maybe it’s that I’ve been spending too much time alone with my thoughts.”

“And back in the cave?” he said, cocking one eyebrow.

“Back in the cave I was in agony, and I was nearly hypothermicand dehydrated and whatever else you can imagine. I could have imagined I’d been rescued by Bigfoot, and it would have seemed perfectly natural at the time.”

Andrew sighed and rubbed at his upper lip with an index finger. His eyes never left mine. “You’re such a realist. You remember all that crazy shit we used to do?”

I nodded. I remembered it well.

“Realism will be your downfall.”

I snorted and said, “That makes no fucking sense.”

“Everything makes sense. Listen,” he said. His voice had adopted a less breathy tone. “I believe in fate. And I believe fate had me run into you here tonight.”

“Why would fate go through the trouble?”

“So I could apologize.”

His words surprised me. “Apologize for what?”

“For all the time we lost after Hannah’s death. For disappearing for three years. And for siding with her in the separation.”

I glanced away and watched the smoke coil up from the tip of my cigarette. “It was only fair. You were Hannah’s friend, too. And I was an asshole. I was fully to blame for the split.”

For whatever reason, I waited for Andrew to tell me that wasn’t the case, that both Hannah and I were equally to blame, but he didn’t. If he had, it would have been a lie. Hannah leaving me was my fault, not ours.

“Have you ever heard of the Canyon of Souls?” he asked. It was like something straight out of an old movie—particularly the way he leaned over the table and whispered to me in a conspiratorial tone. “Have you?”

“No.”

“It’s a canyon, an ice canyon, slick like a buffed flume, that runs under the earth, and no one on this planet has ever been able to successfully traverse it from one end to the other. Hell, no one’s ever even seen it. No one, Tim.”

I felt a frozen finger touch the base of my spine. Suddenly I was no longer sitting here in the bar; I was back in my apartment, watching the molten shadows shift in the darkness from across the room. I was back in the caves, too, with my leg all fucked up and the stink of my own inevitable death filling my nostrils. I thought of Hannah’s hand coming down through the opening in the cave’s low ceiling, hoisting me up. Of Hannah’s visage appearing through the desert trees, beckoning me toward a road I could not see …

“No one,” I heard myself echo.

“I’ve done a lot of shit. I’ve been all over the world. Look at this.” He rolled up one sleeve and revealed a puckered, shiny panel of flesh along his forearm, roughly the diameter of a tennis ball. “You know what did that? You have any idea?”

“No idea.”

“Bull’s horn. Gored in the streets of Pamplona. Shit, I’ve eaten the hearts from live snakes in Vietnam while drinking shots of bile. I’ve seen the wildest sex acts you could image in the remotest parts of the world—shit with donkeys and mules and some unbelievable thing called the ‘elusive transplant.’ That stuff’s old for me now. I’m going big-time.” He winked, and I thought I could hear his eyelid snap. “I’m going to touch the other side.”

I surprised myself by laughing. “That’s cool. Seriously.”

“I’ve got everything set,” he said, leaning back against the red vinyl cushion of the booth. “I want you to come with me.”

For some reason, I had been expecting this. “You’re crazy. You’ve always been crazy. I can’t compete with that.”

“What’s the matter? You broke your leg so now you’ve given up on life? That’s disgusting. Hannah would be disgusted with you.”

The mention of her name stung me. “I’m in a different place now.”

“What were you doing in that cave by yourself?”

It was the same question Marta had asked me earlier. However, this time I found it much harder to avoid giving an answer. “I wasn’t

thinking. It was stupid.” I chewed ravenously at my lower lip. “Where is this Canyon of Souls, anyway?” “Nepal,” he said. “The Himalayas.” I brayed laughter. “You’re out of your goddamn mind.” “The whole thing will take a month. You’re experienced—you’ve been ice climbing, and you’re familiar and comfortable with the equipment.”

“I’ve got a busted leg.”

“Fuck that,” said Andrew. It was his turn to laugh. “It’s not until next year.”

“I’m a teacher—,” I began.

“No, you’re not. You used to be an artist who gave up art. You used to be an athlete, but now you’ve apparently given that up, too. So what’s left?” His eyes were frighteningly alight. “What’s next?” My response came out small, strangled. “I … don’t know …” He pressed his lips together until they turned white and bloodless, his nostrils flaring. I briefly wondered who had been more afraid in Pamplona—Andrew or the bull.

“Remember that first night in Puerto Rico? Remember what it felt like to fly?” he said finally.

I finished my drink and crushed out my cigarette. “I could never keep up with you. Never.”

“Neither could Hannah. But she tried.”

5

ANDREW CONVINCED ME TO STAY FOR A FEW MORE

drinks, and there was no further talk of Nepal or the Canyon of Souls. There was no further talk of Hannah, either, which was just fine by me. We tossed darts, drank Maker’s Mark, and pumped countless quarters into the jukebox, Andrew favoring the Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. After a while, I’d lost all inhibition and was feeling no pain. I

felt I could slam my injured leg in a car door and laugh.

Around midnight, after returning from the restroom, I found our booth empty and the tab paid. There was no sign of Andrew; it was like I’d imagined the entire evening. I staggered over to the bar and asked Ricky if I was dreaming.

“Ain’t dreaming,” he said, “but you’re pretty darn well sloshed. I’ll call you a cab.”

Back at my building, I opened the door to my apartment and hobbled into the stale-smelling little box without bothering to turn on any lights. If Hannah was here, crouching in the dark, then I’d just let her be. Anyway, I was drunk.

I stumbled into my bedroom where I peeled off my clothes and crawled beneath the blankets on my bed. The bedroom window was open, and a cool breeze stirred the curtains.

As sleep drew nearer, my thoughts clashed into one another. At one point, I was crawling through a tight space, the walls hugging my shoulders and forcing my head lower and lower until my chin pressed against my breastbone. There was shallow water on the ground, freezing my hands and soaking through the knees of my pants, causing my teeth to chatter in my skull. I crawled, not knowing where I was going or even where I was.

Then I struck a wall—the end of the tunnel—and fear began to suffocate me. I tried to back up but couldn’t. I attempted to turn around, but the chamber was too narrow. Claustrophobia settled around me like a warm, wet blanket.

I’m going to die down here. I’m going to die down here. I’m going to die down here—

I awoke with a scream caught in my throat, the sound of a distant boat horn bleating in the night. The curtains still undulated in the night’s breeze.

I ran one hand over the mattress and realized I’d wet the bed.