The Ascent Page 20

  “Well?” Petras said. “What’d you guys find?”

  Andrew sat on a roll of tarpaulin near the fire and unfolded a map in his lap. “The entrance to the Hall of Mirrors is just where the Sherpas predicted it to be. It’s a cave—a mouth—right in the center of the mountain. Maybe fifty yards up the pass.”

  “The opening’s maybe a hundred yards from the ground,” Chad added. “We’ll have to do a short climb to reach it, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Do we know what to expect once we’re inside the cave?” I asked.

  “Legend says it’s just a straight tunnel that empties into an antechamber called the Hall of Mirrors,” Andrew said.

  I asked him why it was called the Hall of Mirrors.

  Andrew snickered and rubbed two fingers across his creased forehead. “Honestly, I have no idea.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Then from there?”

  Andrew continued to rub his brow. “There’s supposed to be an opening, a doorway of sorts, somewhere in the Hall of Mirrors. It leads directly to the Canyon of Souls.”

  “But no one’s ever seen the canyon,” I said. “Right?”

  “Well, no … but so far everything has been verified—the Valley of Walls, the Sanctuary of the Gods, the stone arch and the icefall, and now the opening to the Hall of Mirrors.”

  “How wide is this canyon supposed to be?” Petras asked.

  Andrew shrugged. “No clue. Two feet wide … or two thousand. No one knows for sure.”

  “Someone must have been there,” I suggested, “to know it exists.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Andrew agreed, “but it’s never been officially documented. Could be stories passed down from bands of monks or Sherpas or Yogis. Could be campfire tales told by ancient yak herders who once lived in the valleys around these mountains. Christ, for all we know, it could be the equivalent of the stories from the Bible, Jesus of Nazareth, water into wine, and all that. How do any of these talessurvive from one generation to the next? I don’t know.”

  It didn’t comfort me any to hear Andrew relate the Canyon of Souls to the stories of the Bible. To think Donald Shotsky and Curtis Booker died chasing some fairy tale did not sit well with me.

  Andrew looked at me. His eyes gleamed in the firelight. His face was gaunt, nearly skeletal. “Will you be ready to climb tomorrow morning?” I said I would.

  2

  THERE WERE NO DREAMS AT THIS ALTITUDE.

  3

  IN THE MORNING. BLADES OF ICE SLASHED INTO THE

  canvas tent and stuck like spears into the smoldering remains of our campfire. Hail came down like bullets, boring tunnels several inches deep into the packed snow.

  We drank cold coffee, and I ate the rest of the stale bread I’d rationed from Shotsky’s pack after he died while we watched the hail through the opening in the tent. Chad and Hollinger busied themselves with a deck of cards, and Petras thumbed through the remaining pages of the George Mallory book.

  Andrew sat by the tent’s open flaps watching the hailstones. “Looks like it’s letting up. I’ll give it ten seconds. Ten … nine … eight …”

  I sat at the rear of the tent, my legs resting on my pack, dragging the blade of Petras’s hunting knife across a softball-sized stone. “Seven … six …”

  I slipped and drove the edge of the knife into the soft mound of flesh just below my thumb. It didn’t hurt, but blood surfaced almost instantaneously, running in a single stream down my wrist and soaking the cuff of my flannel shirt. I grabbed one of my socks and—

  1

  —WRAPPED MY INJURED HAND IN A BANDAGE.

  Splotches of blood lay like asterisks on the linoleum floor of my studio, and there were two drops on the half-finished sculpture. Out along M Street, the lampposts radiated an incandescent blue, and the traffic was becoming heavy.

  At the sink, I washed the blood off my chisel, which had carelessly jumped from the stone and bit into the tender flesh of my palm. However, the chisel might not have been as careless if its handler hadn’t had so many scotch and sodas throughout the afternoon. Tightening the bandage around my hand, I removed my smock and turned the lights off in the studio before locking up for the evening.

  Thirty minutes later, I arrived home to our split-level along the waterfront, the house dark in the deepening twilight. I kicked my shoes off in the front hallway and called Hannah’s name up the stairs. In the kitchen, I prepared a pot of coffee and set it on the stove, then climbed the creaking stairwell to the second floor.

  The house was empty. The bed in the master bedroom hadn’t been made this morning, which was unusual, and the towel from my morning shower was still draped over the shower curtain rod. My dirty underwear was still in a ball next to the toilet. “Hannah?”

  I stood inside the bedroom doorway while my mind strummed. The closet doors stood open, and after a second or two, I noticed Hannah’s large floral suitcase—the one she took on our honeymoon to Puerto Rico—was missing.

  Frantic, I drove back into the city and cruised past Hannah’s gallery. There was a Closed sign in the window, but there were lights on inside. I double-parked the car, bounded to the door, and knocked.

  Kristy Lynn, Hannah’s twenty-two-year-old assistant, answered

  the door. “Hey, Mr. Overleigh. What’s up?”

  “I’m looking for my wife.”

  “Oh. Well, she isn’t here.”

  “No?”

  “Nope. Sorry.” Kristy Lynn curled a length of her dyed black hair. Her dark blue fingernail polish made the tips of her fingers look like those of a corpse. “Hasn’t been in all day.”

  I looked over Kristy Lynn’s shoulder as if expecting to find Hannah hidden behind a desk or a chair or something. “And you didn’t hear from her?”

  “Not all day.” Kristy Lynn sounded instantly bored. “What happened to your hand?”

  “Huh?” I’d forgotten about it. Blood had soaked through the gauze bandage.

  “You need a clean bandage.”

  “All right. Good night.”

  “Later, skater,” she intoned and shut the door in my face.

  I drove to the houses of our mutual friends, but no one was home.

  It was nearly nine when I arrived back home. The house was still dark; there was no indication Hannah had returned in my absence. An acrid, burning smell filled my nose as I crossed the foyer. Swearing under my breath, I realized I’d left the fucking coffeepot on the fucking stove. It had boiled over, coughing up brown sludge from the spout and onto the stove. Thankful the whole house hadn’t gone up in flames, I shut off the burner and wrapped my hand in a dish towel, then lifted the pot off the stove, and dumped the whole damn thing in the kitchen sink.

  The phone rang. I sprinted to it and gathered it up in my wounded, bandaged hand. “Hannah?”

  “I’m leaving you, Tim,” she said. Her voice sounded distant. I could tell she had been crying.

  “Where are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Did you hear what I said? I’m leaving. I have to leave you.”

  “Hannah, please—”

  “I’ll talk to you in a couple of days. I just need some time to myself, some time to cool off. You need that time, too.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? Where are you? I’ll come get you. We should talk.”

  “Not tonight.” It sounded like she was struggling very hard to stay calm. “Give it a couple of days.”

  “Like hell.” My face was burning, my hands shaking. My toes were curling in my shoes. “Tell me where you are. This is bullshit. What’s going on?”

  Her defenses fell. She started sobbing. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Live like we’ve been living. I’m second best to your obsession.”

  “What obsession?”

  She paused, then said, “Yourself. You’re obsessed with yourself. I can’t keep doing this. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Good-bye.”


  “Hannah—”

  “Good-bye.” She hung up.

  Injured and furious, I threw the phone on the floor and kicked it clear across the kitchen. I grabbed the next closest thing—a kitchen chair—and swung it against the wall. One of the legs splintered off, and I chucked the rest of it down the hallway. Then I collapsed on the floor, sobbing like a child, the bandage having come undone and trailing from my hand like a party streamer. When I stood ten minutes later, there was blood all over my shirt and pants and a widening puddle of it on the tile floor.

  Then something on the kitchen table caught my eye. It was a hardcover book, one Hannah had been lugging around with her for the past several weeks, titled Foreign Words: The Art and Heart of Language.

  I didn’t need to examine the author photo on the back of the dust jacket to know it was written by David Moore, my wife’s biggest fan.

  David made steady appearances at Hannah’s gallery throughout the week, and in the past two months, Hannah had heard him speak at Georgetown University three times. They were evening lectures, and she had invited me to the first one, which I declined in order to meet certain project deadlines, but the subsequent two she hadn’t even mentioned to me until after she’d gone to them.

  We’d even attended an intimate dinner party at his brownstone last month in celebration of the release of his newest book. He’d had my sculpture on prominent display in his living room, and I’d gotten drunk on expensive whiskey.

  I turned the book over anyway and stared at his grinning, handsome face. The pretentious ass, he wore glasses only in his author photos and never in real life. In a fit of rage, I tore the dust jacket from the book and shredded it. When I couldn’t tear it up any more, I seized the book itself and relieved it of its pages.

  At ten o’clock, I parked outside David Moore’s brownstone. It was in a collegiate Georgetown subsection, just one block away from the house where The Exorcist had been filmed decades ago. I’d had enough time to sober up and was running on full adrenaline now as I jumped out of the car and mounted the steps to his front door. I didn’t even knock until I tried the doorknob and found that it was locked. I heard shuffling and voices on the other side of the door. A light came on in one of the upstairs windows, and I thought I saw the silhouette of a head peeking out.

  “Come on!” I yelled, banging on the door.

  It opened partway, David’s face appearing in the vertical, three-inch sliver. He wore a bathrobe, and his dark hair, gray at the temples, was wet from what I assumed was a recent shower. For whatever reason, this sent me into a rage.

  “Tim—,” he began.

  I pushed the door open and barreled into the house. “Where is she?”

  “Calm down. Take a breath and—”

  I slugged him across the jaw. It was a good punch, forcing him to stumble backward and lean for support on an end table. The look of shock and fear in his eyes was fuel to my fire. I was cuffing my sleeves when Hannah appeared at the end of the hallway, wearing a pair of blue sweatpants and her old Kappa Delta sorority T-shirt. The sight of her weakened me. I froze in the entranceway.

  “Jesus, Tim.” David righted himself against the wall, massaging his jaw. “That’s assault.”

  Something snapped inside me. I pounced on the son of a bitch, swinging my fists and pummeling him until Hannah grabbed me from behind and attempted to pull me off him. The feel of her at my back caused the fight to flee right out of me.

  David curled into a fetal position against the wall, an arm over his face, one pointy elbow facing me.

  “Fucking coward,” I spat.

  Hannah’s fingernails dug into my forearms. When I whirled around to her, she shoved me against the wall. Her hair had fallen in her face, her eyes livid. “Get out.”

  “Hannah, I—”

  “Get out of here.”

  “You’re coming home with me.”

  David scrambled up the wall, straightening his bathrobe as he rose.

  I caught a glimpse of his genitals through the part in the robe, which caused me to lash out at him again. I swung at his eyes and cheekbones—anything my fists could reach—until a sudden strike against my left leg sent me crumpling to the floor. An instant later, white-hot pain raced up my thigh.

  Hannah stood over me with a golf club poised like a baseball bat, ready to take a second swing. Reflexively I covered my face.

  “Jesus Christ,” David groaned. “He’s out of his goddamn mind.”

  My eyes locked with David’s. “I’m going to kill you,” I growled.

  “You’re not,” Hannah said. She was shaking, her arms like pipe cleaners jutting from her sleeves. I had no doubt she would bring the golf club down on my skull if it came to that. “You’re going to get up and get out of here. I told you on the phone that I need a couple of days to get my head together. You’ve got no right coming here.”

  “I’m calling the police,” David said. He staggered to the kitchen and grabbed a portable phone.

  “Hannah,” I said.

  “I don’t want to hear it. Get up. Goddamn you. Get the hell up.”

  “Please …”

  “This is assault,” the son of a bitch said from the kitchen. “This is breaking and entering and assault.”

  “Come in here, you fucking weasel, and I’ll show you assault,” I said, standing. David did not respond, and I looked at Hannah. It killed me to see my wife standing in front of me, a golf club over her shoulder. What killed me even more was she was dressed for bed … in this fucker’s house. “Come home with me. Please. We’ll talk things out. I love you. You know that, don’t you? I love you.”

  Tears streamed down her face. “Get the fuck out.”

  “Sweet—”

  “I can’t do this right now. You’re attacking me when I’m weakest. That’s unfair.”

  “Your leaving me is unfair!” I shouted. “I come home to an empty goddamn house—that’s what’s unfair! Goddamn it. Come home with me!”

  “I can’t do this. Please, Tim. If you love me, you’ll leave.”

  David walked in, wielding the portable phone like a handgun.

  I wasn’t going to win this—the realization fell on me like a piano down a flight of stairs. My face burned; my pride burned. Breathing heavy, I straightened my shirt and shot a glare at David.

  He took a step backward into the kitchen, holding up the telephone

  to prove he was serious about calling the cops.

  “Fuck you, dude,” I said. I turned to Hannah and my soul softened. “One last time. Please come home with me.”

  “No,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I can’t.”

  “All right.” I went to the door, paused with my hand on the knob, then pulled it open and stomped onto the concrete porch. I left the door open behind me, but the second I stepped out, Hannah slammed it. A moment later, I heard the lock click into place.

  My head was filled with butterflies. My vision was as clear as it had ever been—I felt I could see for miles without restriction—and my veins were pumping full of lighter fluid.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat of my car and sat for what could have been an hour, watching traffic slide up and down the block and tourists dip in and out of bars. Parked in front of me was an old 1928 Mercedes motorcar convertible, with running floorboards and a spare tire on the trunk. It had a vanity license plate—4N WORDS.

  “Son of a bitch,” I uttered and twisted the door handle. I popped the trunk and grabbed my tire iron, feeling its heft in my hands. A malicious grin spread across my face. I marched over to the motorcar and stared down at the front grille.

  “Fucking bastard,” I murmured and smashed out one of the headlamps. It exploded in a shower of powdered glass. “Asshole.” And I smashed the second headlamp, swinging like Babe fucking Ruth, taking the son of a bitch over the wall. “Home run,” I said, grinning. “That one’s outta here.”

  “Tim!” Hannah shouted from one of David’s upstairs windows. “Goddam
n it. We’re calling the police!”

  “This one’s out of the park,” I informed her and swung the tire iron into the motorcar’s windshield, shattering it. I brought it down again and again until the interior upholstery was blanketed in triangular shards of glass. Exhausted, I dropped the tire iron in the street and held my hands up in mock surrender.

  Hannah poked her head through the window, and I could see David pacing behind her.

  “Go home!” Hannah yelled. “Go home!”

  “You go home,” I told her. It wasn’t about me; it was about her, all about her. “You go home.”

  The window slammed shut and the light went off.

  A car full of college kids cruised by, hollering at me from the windows.

  I kicked the tire iron at them—it rebounded off the car’s rear bumper, a good kick—and got back into my car. I cranked the ignition, and as luck would have it, the goddamn car wouldn’t start. I tried it again to no avail. A third time, though, and it kicked over, the engine just as angry with me as my wife.

  What the hell happened here tonight? I wondered. Car horns blared at me as I pulled out into the street and cut drivers off. Will someone tell me what the hell just happened?

  I sped home, the steering wheel greasy with my sweat. In fact, I ran my hands along the steering wheel, surprised at the amount of perspiration. It wasn’t until I stopped at a traffic light that I realized it wasn’t perspiration but blood. I held my hand up in the glow of the traffic light. It was covered in blood, the bandage completely gone, having unraveled at some point during the evening’s events.

  Behind me, car horns honked. I looked up and saw the light had turned green. Gunning the engine, the tires squealing, I raced home, caught somewhere between an agonized laugh and a child’s lost cry.

  5

  “FIVE.” SAID ANDREW. “FOUR … THREE … TWO … ONE.”

  Amazingly, the hail stopped. Not exactly at one but within thirty seconds of it. It was a curious enough feat for Chad and Hollinger to glance over at Andrew.