And Val had laughed at that story too. And instead of trying to take him up Mount Cook, or anything like it, she had driven him into the Southern Alps on the road from Christchurch over Arthur’s Pass, and just short of Arthur’s Pass she had parked the car at a Bealey Hotel, overlooking a wide gray gravel riverbed seamed by the many intertwining braids of a silvery river; and she had led him on a hike up the Bealey Spur, a green ridge rising over the braided riverbed, giving them a more and more spectacular view of it, and of the snow-capped mountains standing in all directions around them. A glorious walk it had been, with the whole world seemingly to themselves, no one else in it at all.
And then after lunch, on a kind of rock battlement near the high point of the spur, Val had leaned over and started unlacing a boot. And when X had understood why she was doing that, his heart had leaped in his chest. And though their lovemaking out in the sun on the mountaintop was wonderful, and though it was wonderful again to lie on yellow tufts of grass and watch Val walking around naked on the rock outcropping—just an animal checking things out, big and graceful, like an ibex become a woman in order to ravish him with her mountain glory—still, that moment when he saw her untying her boot, and understood why—that was the moment which later made his hands shake, which made him moan in his bed at the magnitude of his loss. Because after their vacation was done she had gone back to the States to take care of some business concerning her grandmother’s empty place, and X had traveled some more, and visited home himself, and not seen her for the three months of the Antarctic off-season; and when they had both gotten back to Mac Town the following Winfly, she had dumped him. And without ever saying why. She had arrived two days before him and started up something immediately with one of the other mountaineers, he heard later; but obviously that wasn’t the whole story. No—she hadn’t had the same kind of time in New Zealand that he had had, that was clear, or else she wouldn’t have done it. He had racked his brains trying to remember anything he might have done wrong, in the wan hope of somehow making up for it.
And as he sat on the heavy shop floor, picking up nuts and bolts on automatic pilot, he racked his brains again, and cursed himself for talking to her about political philosophy, of all things. He cursed himself for making fun of his athletic career, what had he been thinking? To an obvious jock? And yet she had laughed at all that, she seemed to have been enjoying it. And the hike up Bealey Spur, looking around at those magnificent peaks, and the braided silver of the river below; he had done fine, he had enjoyed the climb and they had had a lot of fun. Of course at one particularly steep point in the trail, huffing and puffing, he had made some joke about being driven by such a hard taskmaster of a pro mountaineer, and her response had made it instantly clear that she didn’t think that line of humor was funny at all; which made sense, and he had immediately apologized and backed off. So that couldn’t have been it, could it? Just one little bad joke? And if that had been it, and getting dumped was the penalty for one misbegotten remark, what then did that say about her? It didn’t make sense. She was a very easygoing person, she was always so cheerful, so casual. She never seemed worried about anything. Such fun, ah, God … he couldn’t think of it, it hurt too much. And yet he thought of it all the time. Like pushing a sore tooth with your tongue. Yes, it still hurts, you fool. You idiot. But what, what, what had he done?
So his poor racked brain spun, and his fingers picked up screws, nails, nuts, bolts, washers, and cotter pins, and put them in their bins. And slowly, slowly, he gave up all hope of getting back with Val; and, returning to his other unhappy track of thought, he gave up all hope of revolution bringing down the heartless aristocracy of the world; and when he slunk into the galley, starving and cold, Val’s gang laughed at their table, and the beaker girls smiled and passed him by, on the other side of an invisible spacetime discontinuity which was class.
After which, back to the heavy shop. The Sisyphean pile was of course as high as ever. This is work, X thought; this is what work is.
Ron appeared in the door. “Shit, X, are you still doing this?”
X glared at him.
“Tell you what, X. I got a proposal for you. Something completely different. It’ll still be work, hard work. But compared to this good-for-anything stuff you’re doing, it’ll be pure shits and giggles.”
Dulles to LAX, LAX to Auckland on the overnight, half watching two half movies, half eating two half meals; watching the face of a sleeping English nurse who worked in Australia, who had been very cheery until Wade had asked her about her job; three patients had died recently of melanoma; she slept dreaming of them, looking troubled. Wade wanted her for his nurse.
Later he woke to the insistent beep of his wrist phone. “Wade Norton,” he said blurrily into it.
“Wade it’s Phil. Where are you now?”
“Somewhere over the Pacific,” Wade said, trying not to wake up fully.
“What, you’re not there yet?”
“You just told me about this what, I don’t know.” Wade checked his watch, but could not remember what time zone it was keeping.
“Have you made it past the international date line? Or am I still calling you from tomorrow.”
“I don’t know. I was asleep.”
“So was I, Wade. But then I woke up and turned on CNN, and saw Winston being interviewed, and I was so pissed off that I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“So you called me.”
“As always.”
Wade pulled his phone headset from his briefcase and put it on, then plugged it into his wrist.
“—he did today? It’s not enough to block your Antarctic Treaty, and my debt-for-population reduction package—now he’s making noises about the CO2 joint implementation deal, knowing that any noise and the Chinese will throw a tantrum and run. Invasion of national sovereignty, he called it. We can’t be paying for their trouble! As if global warming was their trouble! Didn’t he notice Hurricane Velma? His own damn state about a hundred miles skinnier than it used to be, and him on CNN saying it’s a Chinese problem? Where do they find these guys? They must be breaking the cloning laws down there, they keep electing the same guy over and over.”
“He’s popular,” Wade said, leaning his head against the cool smooth jet window.