“Well, good. If you were playing me, you’d just lie. Poorly, but you’dtry… And that’s not the Luke I know.” A melancholic satisfaction traced across his face. “So, you keep doing you, and I’ll take care of the rest. Consider me your guardian angel.”
“You’re no angel.”
He strolled off down the concrete walkway with a spring in his step, but his shoulders betrayed him, sinking lower with each stride, as he called back, “Guardian devil, then.”
31
2015
SEASON 20, EPISODE 7:
“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough… (Part One)”
I deserve worker’s comp for this,” Melange groaned, steadying herself on Shawn’s elbow as we traversed the ungroomed trail leading to the Tribulation. The night before, she’d tripped on a set of unfinished steps at the resort, twisting her ankle. Agonizingly swollen, her indigo bruise radiated under the tape the medics had wrapped around it. I’d seen plenty of bad ankles throughout my football days, and Melange’s was not minor. Nonetheless, she was hell-bent on competing.
We eventually reached an open clearing, Ecklund presiding at the foot of a jagged mountain path that shot straight into the low clouds. I instantly noticed how the mountain resembled the large painting that had greeted us at the penthouse in Shanghai.
“Welcome to the Huangshan mountains!” Ecklund declared. “Home of the brand-new, world-class Marco Polo Lodge!” The assembled Marco Polo representatives thunderously applauded off camera before Ecklund proceeded. “Today you’ll scale Bright Top, the stunning peak before us. This will be your last Tribulation before we ascend to… HEAVEN!”
Down the line, PB cut me a knowing glance.
“In NEW ZEALAND!” Ecklund exclaimed. Everyone seemed sincerely impressed, but my smile was for a single reason. One destination standing between me and the kids.
“Before you punch your ticket to Paradise, there’s a mile-long trek to the pagoda puzzle waiting atop this peak,” Ecklund continued. “But! You’ll have to earn your way through those pearly gates, so from here on out…no more votes.”
Even PB gasped. The bedrock ofEndeavorwas the voting process. I eyed Troy and Zara, firmly convinced they were just inventing new rules as they went along. “Tomorrow the bottom two pairs will battle to determine who joins us in New Zealand. And moving forward, if you don’t win safety in the Tribulation, you’re automatically in the Trial,” Ecklund concluded.
I gripped Imogen’s shoulders, trying not to betray my excitement. The show was essentially fast-tracking us to the finale if Imogen and I could just dominate the Tribulations. “It can’t be so simple,” she murmured as we went to get mounted with our GoPro body cams.
“We’ll make sure it is,” I replied, filling with resolve.
Troy escorted Ecklund and the Marco Polo suits to the summit via gondola, but Zara would do the hard work following us on the trail. “Be careful,” she advised, outfitting me with a water pack. “The altitude might surprise you given the humidity.”
“You too. I mean, you’re making the same climb we are,” I replied, blown away that she actually smiled at me before walking off.
Imogen meanwhile was trying to convince Melange and Shawn to abstain, a camera team perched nearby. “Melange, you’re guaranteed last place on that ankle. Sit out and rest.”
Melange scoffed, readying her mane into a tight ponytail. “Imagine Fortune and Greta climbing this thing. He actuallyisa mountain, and she sneaks half a pack of cigarettes a day.”
“Even if I have to carry Melange, we’re not quitting,” Shawn agreed. He looked to me expectantly, and I knew I had to back him after ourconversation the night before.
“If you think you’ve got this, who are we to disagree?” I inhaled, fully aware the camera team was there, but I refused to censor my impulse. No time like the present. I took Shawn’s hand in mine, squeezing it tightly, then kissed him lightly on the lips. “You’ll be amazing.”
The sound guy quickly started jotting in his notepad, but Imogen and Melange just eyed each other, suppressing smiles. Shawn blushed, briefly staring at me before he found the words. “Okay, then. We’ll see you on the other side of Heaven.”
Minutes later, as I sprinted into the cloud cover of Bright Top, Imogen was gamely setting our pace, the others all left behind. The cool vapor of the clouds enveloped us as we ran, the moisture and altitude thick in my lungs, though I reminded myself I’d raced through far less ideal conditions than this.
When I still lived in Charlotte, I’d run daily at sunrise. Virtually every morning was drenched in winter fog during the months before Mitch died. It was just me, him, and Barnes alone in the house then. While Jenny spouted her anxious platitudes from Philadelphia, Barnes was beside me for every morphine dose and pharmacy trip. We occupied such different roles then, perhaps the only time in our relationship when he was domestic, cooking and cleaning between our hospital pilgrimages. After the Season 2 Reunion, he’d traveled home with me to Charlotte for Christmas and never left. With his portion of our winnings, he’d hired some consultants to lay the groundwork for his first congressional campaign, even though it was almost two years away. Still, he never let their calls intrude, insisting nothing was more important than me and Mitch, clearly trying to do what he would have done for his own parents. In those final days, I became strangely jealous of how Mitch seemed to have forgotten his whole life in the haze of pain and prescriptions. No memory of my mother’s death, no memory of my accident, no memory of how any of us had failed. I didn’t have that luxury. I couldn’t forget anything. Except on those morning runs,when I was just an animal running ragged and breathless through the fog… That was the closest I’d come to forgetting it all.
I was briefly blinded by the sun as we erupted from the clouds, the neighboring peaks of the Huangshans breaching alongside us like the spines of sea monsters. Imogen and I arrived at the courtyard atop the summit soon after, where Troy and the Marco Polo execs stood watch near five tables. Troy signaled us to our station, upon which a sack sat waiting.
I frantically emptied it… except a jigsaw puzzle of the pagoda wasn’t inside. Smooth, abstract golden shapes clattered to the table like an alien’s toolbox, a buffet of oblong curves and pointy edges. “Where’s the painting from the suite?!”
“Maybe we build the pagoda out of these?” Imogen asked. I cluelessly tried to mate two of the bizarre pieces, but it just looked like I was artificially inseminating miniature whales.
Camdon and Tati sprinted in next, quickly proving just as flummoxed. The puzzle would indeed be the great equalizer…
PB arrived right after, Greta trotting behind like a dying horse. So much for those cigarettes.Please, I prayed,let Shawn be seconds behind…
