Runyan looked at her in surprise. He held the odd-looking things he had called ascenders or something like that.
“Hey, I’m sorry, sweetie,” he said, mistaking the source of her irritation. “This isn’t a putdown or anything...” He started to adjust the ascenders on the hanging safety line, one above the other at about head height. “I’m so out of shape for climbing I don’t want to take you on a real rock face until I’m sure I can handle it.” He gestured at the safety line. “You remember these, don’t you? Jumar ascenders?”
He was just being dense on purpose, to goad her, talking over his shoulder without even turning around. Totally frazzled, she snapped, “Do you really think I care, Runyan? I’ve barked my shin, I’m dying of thirst...”
“These can be used for horizontal traverse, but...”
“—blisters on my heels and rope burns on my hands—”
“...but climbers usually use them to climb ropes belayed from above on overhung rock faces like this one.”
“—and you want to talk to me about something called Jumar ascenders?”
Each Jumar had a rope sling hanging from it. Runyan stepped a foot into each sling, turned and grinned at her. “They’re so great because you can just walk right up a rope with them.”
He did, hand above hand, each knee flexing as the Jumar from which that sling depended moved, thus literally walking straight up the line and out of her vision.
Louise found herself stepping back a few paces, even as she fumed, squinting up into the sunlight to see how he did it. Damn, her neck was sore. But he was right: Those Jumars were pretty neat things.
They sat facing one another on top of the massive flake of granite in the red scorch of dying sun.
“Red sky at night, sailors delight,” said Runyan.
He offered her the canteen and she drank sparingly, small sips which let her savor the cool nectar running down inside her throat. Runyan put the canteen back on his belt without taking any himself; his water discipline was remarkable.
“Is it always like this? Climbing?”
He shook his head. “Usually it’s a lot more fun.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
She looked out and away, up the incredible valley the retreating glaciers had casually sliced through the middle of the Sierra during the last ice age. Deep purple peaks thrust up against the sunset which had retreated from scarlet to faded rose and delicate grey.
“I mean, this close to—”
She stopped, seeking words to express the inexpressible. She ached all over, she couldn’t count the scrapes and nicks and cuts and bruises on the outward angles of all her joints, she was tired and hungry and sunburned — and she had never felt so good.
“I just feel... as if it were all made for me.”
“Just a little something I had God lay on for you.”
“Thanks, Runyan.” She leaned forward and they kissed.
She was still thinking in superlatives as she took her shower, even though it was just a trickle of cold water from a rusted-out showerhead in the ladies’ facility near Camp Four. She rubbed herself red with the rough towel, scrubbed her hair halfway dry with it, realizing her mind was made up.
She’d always acted quickly on urges and impulses, even on intuitions, and her feelings about Runyan were more than intuition. God help her, more than infatuation. But she also always thought of herself as an intensely loyal person.
Now she realized that loyalty carried too far ceased being a virtue and became cowardice. So she had to do it. Tonight. A clean break with the past, no turning back because there would be nothing left to turn back to.
After supper, Runyan sat on a rock by the fire and she sat on the ground beside him, her forearms crossed on his knee, looking into the flames. It was a much warmer night, or she was getting used to it. Sap made the green wood crack and spit showers of sparks. Around them but somehow at a distance other climbers sat around other fires, their voices and bursts of laughter carried like swarms of fireflies on the gusts of warm wind.
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
“Royal Arches.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “Should I be scared?”
“You’ll be fine.” He put a hand on her shoulder for a moment. “You were great today.”
He poured red wine into two styrofoam cups and handed her one. They raised the cups in a mutual toast.
“To crime,” said Louise.
At the same instant, Runyan said, “To love.”
They drank quickly, each mildly disconcerted by the other’s toast. Louise put aside her empty cup and scrambled almost abruptly to her feet. Runyan, in the act of pouring more wine, looked up at her in surprise.
“I’m going over and get an ice cream cone.” She was glad of the shielding darkness that hid her expression. “Want me to bring you one back?”
Runyan merely shook his head, smiling dreamily after her. He sipped wine from the styrofoam cup, and fought a mighty battle in his mind. Love made him want to sit right there staring at the embers of the fire; survival tried to drag him to his feet. It was a wretched feeling. How in God’s name had the old people he saw walking hand-in-hand down suburban streets gotten through it all to reach that point in their lives still together? What was their secret that he didn’t know?
Runyan stood, threw his cup into the coals. It hissed and blackened and shrivelled. Her betrayal of him forced him to be a betrayer also — of himself, of her, of the facts he knew. Why did he need her so? Was this the ultimate irony: that she might be the one against whom he would have to defend himself?
He went silently after her into the darkness. Even as he ran he kept hoping, thinking, I’m wrong, all she wants over at the store is an ice cream cone.
But she was spotlit inside the phone booth, feeding her coins into the prim little mechanical mouth. He moved quickly and with little noise through the foliage behind the booth, his hands guiding the small branches back to their original positions individually. He was so close that when she spoke it was as if into his ear.
“It’s me,” her voice said into the phone. “I’ve always played straight with you so I’m playing straight now. This is the last phone call you’ll be getting. I’m dropping out.”
Runyan started to ease his way almost blindly back through the foliage. He couldn’t stand listening to her. He couldn’t stand spying on her. He needn’t have been here. She was not a betrayer. He was.
Louise was saying, “Well think what you want, buster, it isn’t the money...” She listened, spoke again, her voice edged with tears. “I tried, goddamn you, I really tried! But all you ever wanted was a piece of me, not the whole package. I can’t live like that any more. I need some absolutes...”
Chapter 23
Louise’s boot turned over a rock; it clattered loudly in the dry stream bed along which she followed Runyan. She shivered with the cold despite the heavy coil of Gold Line rope slung bandolier-fashion over one shoulder and across her chest. The icy dawn air offered no suggestion of the day’s heat to come.
Runyan, loaded down with their haul sack and all of the climbing gear, gestured up at the towering rock face which stretched a sickening 3,000 feet above them. His breath went up in white puffs.
“I’ll be leading the climb, all you have to do is follow. Just remember that you’ll be roped in, and that if anything happens, I’ll be set to take the strain.”
Her mouth felt suddenly dry, full of cotton. This wasn’t like Monday Morning Slab. “You talk too much,” she snapped.
Runyan didn’t answer. He was concentrated, focused, thrusting last night from his mind, thrusting away everything but the mechanics of the climb.