“Oh, leave him be, Richard,” Brooks said. “He’s a grown man who’s twice the athlete any of the rest of us have ever been. He knows his own body.”
“I’m with Richard on this, Van,” Scotty said. “The medication isn’t optional.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Step in line, Scotty,” Brooks said in a deep baritone. “The general has spoken.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richard laughed, but he looked more confused than amused.
“Come now,” Bakari said firmly. “Onward. Daylight is wasting.”
—
An hour later we arrived at the first camp. Our tents were already set up, lower and even smaller than I had expected.
We were at 9,255 feet now, 2,500 feet above base camp, 2,000 feet above the point from which we had started hiking that morning after an hour’s drive to the trailhead. Two thousand feet was a very respectable elevation to have covered in a single day, and I’d held my own. More than kept up with the group, in fact. Van was doing better after a little food and rest, but now it was Scotty who was struggling.
“The mountain has its own plans,” Bakari reminded us later as we finished dinner, acknowledging the random swings in everyone’s homeostasis. “It is important to be patient.”
“Sorry about that earlier,” Richard said as the others rose from the table.
We were alone for the first time since the trip started, the rest of the group headed out into the darkness, headlamps guiding their way. The air in the dining tent suddenly felt charged. It was destabilizing. There was something here. Something I wasn’t looking for, did not want. And yet it was impossible to ignore.
Not that it mattered. I didn’t mess with married men—figuratively or literally. Never again. That had been a promise I’d made to myself and easily kept over the years. Inappropriate men, on the other hand—too young, too drunk, too creative, too distracted? Sure.
“Sorry about what?” I asked.
“Our bickering. Sometimes we all act like the teenagers we were when we met. But you don’t need our regressing ruining your trip.”
“Oh, it’s okay,” I said, because who cared about that in a moment likethis. The quiet. How close we were standing. Had we moved closer together or did we start that way? I could almost feel the heat of his body. “I have a group of old college friends, too. It’s like family: complicated.”
Richard smiled. “That’s generous.”
“You guys are easy to spend time with. It’s kind of nice disappearing into all your history. In a way, it makes it easier to forget my own for a while.”
Richard was looking at me like he wanted to ask exactly what I meant. I saw the moment he decided not to.
“So why are you here?” I asked quickly. “I mean, aside from the joys of regressing.”
“That’s a good question,” he said, making a face as he tapped the table. “Lately, I’ve been trying to get to the point of all of it. I’ve been working my whole life, achieving things—and I don’t care about my job at all.”
“So, you decided to climb one of the seven summits?”
Richard laughed. “Wasn’t my idea, technically. But I am here now. You’re right, I should get something out of it.” He paused. “I bet you care, really care, about your work.”
“That’s true. But don’t worry—I have lots of other problems.”
And then we both laughed.
“Anyway, we’ll try to keep the juvenile razzing to a minimum so as not to disrupt your peace.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
The tightness was still sitting in my chest as we stepped out of the dining tent into the darkness. In the distance, the headlamps moved back and forth. I could hear quiet laughter, the sounds of singing very far away. There were at least a dozen other groups at the camp, and it was much less serene than I’d anticipated. But we’d been assured that the groups thinned out as the days passed.
I looked up at the inky sky, so blanketed with stars that itlooked like glitter-covered velvet. I felt at once so small and also infinite. “This place seems so impossible—the trees, the animals, the sunsets. I don’t even believe I’m standing here, to be honest.”
“ ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ ”
“Where’s that from?” I tucked my hands into my jacket pockets and looked up again at the sky.
