The Ascent Page 16

  Petras passed behind me, peering over my shoulder. His hand on my shoulder was like an anchor.

  “Some view,” I said.

  “Let’s keep moving.”

  Around the other side of the platform, the mountain abruptly ended. Something like three hundred feet below us ran a narrow, snow-packed pass across the shelf of a glacier. Andrew was poised at the lip of the ridge, overlooking the valley. Beside him, Curtis canvassed the surface of the glacier with a pair of binoculars.

  I could see the sun streaking colors along the surrounding mountains and the reflection of sunlight mirroring on the ice. Farther down the pass was the hint of a crevasse—a barely noticeable depression in the otherwise undisturbed snow—which I estimated to be at least twenty yards across, though it was impossible to tell for sure from our vantage.

  “You guys see it?” Curtis pointed to what appeared to be the beginning of the snow-hidden chasm that ran beneath a buttress of blue stone. “Can’t tell how wide it is, but you can bet your ass it’s deep.”

  “Teams,” Andrew said.

  I zipped my coat to my chin and rubbed my gloved hands together. Petras bumped his shoulder against mine, and I thought my teeth would shatter in my skull. I attached myself to a fixed rope, while Petras and Chad fed a communal safety line down the face of the cliff. Flexing my fingers, I turned around at the edge of the cliff and gripped the line in both hands.

  Petras nodded. “Go.”

  I pitched over the side and rappelled down, my feet pushing off the cliff face as I descended. Glancing over my shoulder, I could seebeyond the crevasse and down the far slope of the glacier where, like a grid of blocks, crumbling seracs the size of automobiles rose from the glacier’s surface and cast bluish shadows along the snow.

  When I touched down on the glacier, the snow was hard like ice. I tugged at the rope and waved to Petras, who looked down at me.

  Once they’d all managed to descend, we trekked across the glacier, heedful of traps or snow bridges bent on deceiving us, until we paused approximately fifteen feet from the edge of the crevasse. This close, it looked wider than I’d originally thought. Forty, maybe fifty feet across. Chad stepped too close to the edge, and Curtis, who was standing beside me rubbing his neck, sucked in air through his clenched teeth.

  “Careful,” Petras called to him.

  Chad raised a gloved hand in response but didn’t turn. He kept walking until he reached the edge.

  “Fucking idiot don’t even have a line tied to him.” Curtis flipped up the collar of his parka. “Think he would have learned his lesson back at base camp.”

  “She’s deep, all right.” Chad peered down into the crevasse. “Can’t even see the bottom.” He looked across the surface of the glacier, following the fault-line negotiation of the crevasse through the snow. It disappeared beneath an icefall at the base of the next peak. “She’s narrower closer toward the base of the mountain. If we’re going to cross her, we’ve got to do it over there.”

  “I say we climb the wall,” suggested Hollinger. He scrutinized a slab of ice that rose maybe five hundred feet to a spire-shaped pinnacle.

  “That’ll take all day,” Chad said.

  “So? You in a rush?”

  Chad shook his blond hair over his eyes and rubbed the snow from it. “Cut it out, will you, Holly? We can toss a rope and scale—”

  Hollinger took a step toward the wall of ice, then disappeared.

  It took my lagging brain several seconds to realize what had happened: a trap had opened up in the glacier directly beneath Hollinger’sfeet, and gravity had sucked him down. I broke into a sprint as Petras nabbed me by the hood of my anorak, jerking me to a halt.

  “No running,” he said, his voice impossibly calm. “There may be more traps. Watch your footing.”

  “Holy fuck,” Curtis breathed, moving past me as quickly as I had been moving a second earlier, and approached the hole in the ground without trepidation.

  I shrugged off Petras’s grip and was at Curtis’s side an instant later.

  The hole in the ground was no wider than a manhole and equally as dark, an optical illusion to stare into. I couldn’t see the bottom—I could only see a narrow shelf perhaps thirty feet down protruding from the wall of the shaft on which Hollinger’s body lay slumped and motionless.

  “He’s there!” I called out to the others. Then I directed my voice into the shaft, shouting Hollinger’s name over and over again. But he didn’t move. I thought I could see blood on the shelf, and his hair looked matted with dark fluid.

  “Keep your voice down.” Petras gently set down his pack at his feet. “The smallest vibration might break the ledge out from under him.”

  “I’m goin’ down,” Curtis volunteered, sliding off his pack.

  “No,” Petras told him. “Who’s lightest?”

  “Me,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  “The fuck does it matter?” Flecks of spittle shot from Curtis’s mouth as he spoke. He and Hollinger had become good friends during the course of our journey.

  “You know it matters,” Petras said.

  I climbed into a harness, while Chad and Andrew secured anchors in the ice. Curtis lowered a second line into the shaft.

  Grabbing me by my waist, Petras spun me around like a rag doll and buckled the harness. “Watch yourself, Tim.”

  “Hurry,” I urged him. Sweat was suddenly cascading down my shirt, soaking the waistband of my underwear.

  Holding on to the line, I eased myself backward into the opening as Petras held me by my forearms. The opening was tighter than it looked; I just barely made it through, the shaft seeming to narrow as my shoulders passed through it. As my head sunk into the opening, I looked up and saw Andrew’s face blotting out the sun. I slipped into darkness, the shaft closing in all around me like—

  2

  BLANKETS FORMING A TUNNEL AROUND US. THE

  bed creaked as she rolled on top of me and kissed my chin.

  “You smell like dust,” she whispered into the hollow at the base of my neck. “I can smell the powdered stone all over you.”

  “I showered twice.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  I pulled the blankets off our heads so she could smell the salty bay air coming in through the open windows. “Better?”

  “Not really.”

  The fishing boats moored in the harbor underscored our love-making with blasts from their air horns as morning broke and they were piloted out into the bay. Afterwards, my eyes grew heavy, and I danced in the place halfway between dreams and wakefulness—the place where I’d entertained my most vivid dreams ever since I was a child.

  Hannah’s soft voice in my ear, not quite ready to let me drift off to that vivid dream place: “Will you look handsome tonight?”

  Eyes still closed, I smiled. “Hmm.”

  “Will you wear the tux?”

  “Hmm.” I could barely remember where I was, whom I was with …

  “You look so handsome in the tux.”

  “Yes …”

  “And you look so peaceful when you sleep. Do you dream of sculpting?”

  Strangely I didn’t. I was dreaming of just the opposite—of smashing things, letting the debris shower me while I stood in the middle of a vacant highway and laughed and laughed and laughed …

  “Do you care if I put some of your work on display tonight?”

  “I thought you said that would be too malapropos?”

  “I did say that, didn’t I? Well, I’ve had second thoughts. You don’t think it would be malapropos, do you?”

  My eyes still closed, I stroked her hair and said, “I don’t even know what malapropos means.”

  “I can’t believe I’m finally opening this stupid gallery.”

  “It’s not stupid. You’ve wanted to do it since before we were married.”

  “I know it’s not stupid. But maybe I’m stupid for wanting it. It’s a lot of work, a lot of time. We hardly see each other as it is, with you always
traveling and sculpting and being famous and all.”

  “It’ll be fine.” I kissed her shoulder, then rolled out of bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The studio. I need to get some work done today.”

  “I thought you weren’t going in today.”

  “Not all day.” I tugged on a shirt and watched my reflection in the beveled mirror run fingers through my hair.

  “Will you pick me up for the opening?”

  “I’ll be just down the street from the gallery. I’ll meet you there.”

  Pouting, she sat up in bed, the sheets piled into her lap, her small, white breasts prickled in the cool breeze coming in from the open windows.

  I kissed her forehead. “No pouting.”

  “Just don’t be late, Tim.”

  I promised I wouldn’t be, but I was. I’d spent the remainder of the day at my M Street studio working on one of the New York projects—a pricy marble piece commissioned by an actor and devout scientologist—and when it began to get too difficult, I broke into one of my bottles of Compass Box. By 6:00 p.m., I’d gone throughhalf the bottle and accidentally lobbed off the upper portion of the sculpture, a section I’d spent the past three days trying to perfect. The chunk lay at my feet on the powder-covered floor like something incriminating left behind at a crime scene.

  At 7:15, the lampposts along M Street blinked on. I had an Elvis Costello CD in the stereo on repeat, and I was lying down on the heater at the back of the studio. In the offices upstairs, I could hear doors being locked, heels and loafers moving down the concrete stairs of the fire exit. Burners of the midnight oil.

  There was a pretty good chance I might have fallen asleep if I hadn’t happened to turn my head and spot my tuxedo hanging from a hook on a closet door. “Shit.”

  Hannah had already given her speech and cut the red ribbon by the time I arrived at the gallery. It was a good turnout; a number of heads swiveled in my direction when I made too much noise coming through the doors. My tux dusted with powdered concrete and my flesh reeking of booze, I nodded at my closest admirers and went straight for the rear of the gallery. Brightly colored oil paintings glared down at me, disappointed in my appearance. I staggered over to Hannah, pretty in a red sequined gown and holding a champagne flute, but when I touched her arm and she turned around, it wasn’t Hannah at all.

  “Shit,” I said to the woman who wasn’t my wife. “I mean … shit, I’m sorry …”

  The woman seemed to look straight through me.

  I pivoted and caught a glimpse of Hannah—this time for sure—talking with a good-looking guy in a black suit and tie. She was stunning in a contoured velvet gown cut just at the knee. She wore black nylons—something that had always driven me wild. She must have sensed my gaze from across the room because she looked in my direction at that moment, our eyes locking.

  “Hey.” I kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I got caught

  up.” I nodded at the gentleman in the suit. “Hi.”

  “Tim, this is David Moore. David, this is my husband, Tim.”

  David grasped my hand and pumped it like a car jack. “Good to meet you, Tim.”

  “David bought your sculpture.”

  I arched my eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”

  David smiled. He was dark skinned with silver streaks in his black hair. Firm chin already darkened by tomorrow’s beard stubble. “It’s a beautiful piece. I noticed it right away. It really spoke to me.”

  I cocked a grin at him. “What did it say?”

  “Uh,” David said and followed it up with a nervous laugh. He looked me up and down. “I should leave,” he said, turning to Hannah. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “It was a fabulous evening.”

  “Thanks for coming, David.”

  I watched him leave before facing Hannah. “So how did it go?”

  Grabbing me by the elbow, she led me away from the center of the room. “Jesus, Tim. You stink of booze.” She, too, eyed me up and down. “There’s … there’s shit all over your tux.”

  “I should have covered it with a trash bag. I didn’t think.”

  An elderly couple waltzed by, raising their hands to my wife. She offered them a broad smile, shoving me farther behind her as if to hide me from the world. I took a few steps back until I stumbled into a wall. There was a speaker directly above my head through which issued a slow jazz instrumental.

  “Who is he?” I asked that night in bed.

  “Who is who?”

  “The guy who bought my piece.”

  “David? He’s a linguistics professor at Georgetown. He’s written a few books, and he’s very well respected in the arts community.”

  “He seems to like you a lot.”

  “He’s a lover of art.”

  “I mean, he seems to like you personally.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He just seemed really friendly.”

  “He’s one of the donors. And he spent a lot of money tonight. Most of it on your sculpture.” She rolled over in bed, her back toward me.

  “A handsome guy, too,” I said, staring at the ceiling.

  “You’re still drunk,” she muttered.

  “I’m sorry about tonight,” I said.

  “Just go to sleep, Tim.”

  “Can we talk about it?”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “All right.”

  But we didn’t.

  We didn’t.

  3

  ANDREW’S VOICE FOLLOWED ME DOWN INTO THE

  darkness: “Is it too tight? Can you move your arms?”

  Except for the shrinking circle of light above my head, my world was black. As they lowered me into the ice shaft, my nose only an inch or so away from the wall of black ice, I couldn’t help but think about the accident in the cave. Had it really been two years ago now? Bumbling through constricted tunnels below the earth, lost and blind yet going deeper and deeper. Everything had that coal mine smell. Then, just as it had happened to Hollinger, the ground had opened up beneath me and I’d dropped. My leg snapped when I crashed to the bottom of the trench, the pain so intense I was rendered instantly unconscious.

  I recalled now what Andrew had alluded to over a week ago as we huddled together in the cave after Shotsky had died. What he’d said about my reason for wandering around in those caves by myself in the first place. I hadn’t been afraid of dying. Lying at the bottom ofthat pitch-black stone trench, my ass soaking up ancient water that had somehow found a way in through the cracks in the rock, I had surrendered. I’d closed my eyes and surrendered, welcoming it. I was tired and wanted no more of it. And I would have simply bled out and died there if it hadn’t been for Hannah.

  Not now, I scolded myself. You want to lament, do it on your own goddamn time.

  Andrew’s voice echoed to me again. “Tim, did you hear me?”

  Cramped and restricted, I could hardly hinge my head far enough back on my neck to make out the circle of light above. “I hear you.” My voice was just a notch above a whisper, yet it echoed from every direction. Below, the shaft appeared to widen just enough to permit my arms movement. I brought them up to my face and wiped away the sweat that was stinging my eyes. If the rope snapped, I wondered how far a drop it would be before I hit the ground.

  Andrew’s voice floated down to me a third time, but I could no longer understand what he was saying.

  “It’s opening up,” I informed him, not knowing if he could hear me or not. “I can move my arms.”

  I could crane my neck and peer down the rest of the shaft, too, although the sight only caused my stomach to cramp. Around my groin, the harness was too tight, and I started to feel my feet going numb.

  Hollinger was a few feet below me. The platform on which he lay sprawled and unconscious was just a narrow lip jutting from the wall of the shaft—a miracle that it had caught him. My own bulk blocked the daylight from funneling down so I couldn’t make o
ut any specific details concerning the severity of his condition, but I could see that he was no longer wearing his helmet, which was not a good sign.

  My feet touched down on the ice shelf, and I reached up and tugged at the secondary line to alert the others. The shelf felt solid beneath my weight. I plastered my face and chest against the frozen wall for fear that if I didn’t I’d lose my balance and fall off the ledge.

  My left foot struck Hollinger’s leg.

  “Can you hear me, Hollinger?” I whispered into the wall of ice. The warmth of my breath bounced back at me off the ice. “Can you hear me?”

  Hollinger groaned but didn’t move.

  I looked up. The opening was no bigger than the size of a quarter now. Raising my voice the slightest bit, I said, “He’s alive.”

  Undoubtedly fearful their voices would create too much vibration, the others did not respond.

  “Okay, Holly,” I said, pulling off my gloves and stuffing them into the pouch of my anorak. “Hang with me, man. Hang with me.”

  Sliding one hand along the wall, I was able to grab hold of the secondary line. I ran it through the karabiners at my waist, then pulled at it to test the strength of the pitons the guys had secured in the surface of the glacier far above. It was strong and would hold. It would have to.

  My fingers already beginning to tighten up in the cold, I fumbled with the clasps on the harness, unable to get them undone until my third attempt. Around me, the world seemed to sigh. I paused. There sounded a dissonant, sonorous splintering from somewhere below me, and my heart froze in my chest. Something snapped and fell away; I heard the hollow whistle of its descent but did not hear it hit the ground.

  The ledge was crumbling under my weight.

  I yanked the buckles from the harness and climbed out of it just like stepping out of a pair of pants, my heart slamming against my ribs, and crouched down, while the splintering, popping sounds resonated throughout the ice. Straddling Hollinger, I worked the harness over his legs and around his waist, where I fastened it with increasingly numb fingers. At eye level, I noticed a lightning bolt zigzagging in the ice wall, creeping higher and higher. A second fissure appeared beside it, peeling up the wall from the base of the ice ledge.