The Ascent

by Ronald Malfi

  I surprised myself by laughing. “That’s cool. Seriously.”

  “I’ve got everything set,” he said, leaning back against the red vinyl cushion of the booth. “I want you to come with me.”

  For some reason, I had been expecting this. “You’re crazy. You’ve always been crazy. I can’t compete with that.”

  “What’s the matter? You broke your leg so now you’ve given up on life? That’s disgusting. Hannah would be disgusted with you.”

  The mention of her name stung me. “I’m in a different place now.”

  “What were you doing in that cave by yourself?”

  It was the same question Marta had asked me earlier. However, this time I found it much harder to avoid giving an answer. “I wasn’t

  thinking. It was stupid.” I chewed ravenously at my lower lip. “Where is this Canyon of Souls, anyway?” “Nepal,” he said. “The Himalayas.” I brayed laughter. “You’re out of your goddamn mind.” “The whole thing will take a month. You’re experienced—you’ve been ice climbing, and you’re familiar and comfortable with the equipment.”

  “I’ve got a busted leg.”

  “Fuck that,” said Andrew. It was his turn to laugh. “It’s not until next year.”

  “I’m a teacher—,” I began.

  “No, you’re not. You used to be an artist who gave up art. You used to be an athlete, but now you’ve apparently given that up, too. So what’s left?” His eyes were frighteningly alight. “What’s next?” My response came out small, strangled. “I … don’t know …” He pressed his lips together until they turned white and bloodless, his nostrils flaring. I briefly wondered who had been more afraid in Pamplona—Andrew or the bull.

  “Remember that first night in Puerto Rico? Remember what it felt like to fly?” he said finally.

  I finished my drink and crushed out my cigarette. “I could never keep up with you. Never.”

  “Neither could Hannah. But she tried.”

  5

  ANDREW CONVINCED ME TO STAY FOR A FEW MORE

  drinks, and there was no further talk of Nepal or the Canyon of Souls. There was no further talk of Hannah, either, which was just fine by me. We tossed darts, drank Maker’s Mark, and pumped countless quarters into the jukebox, Andrew favoring the Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. After a while, I’d lost all inhibition and was feeling no pain. I

  felt I could slam my injured leg in a car door and laugh.

  Around midnight, after returning from the restroom, I found our booth empty and the tab paid. There was no sign of Andrew; it was like I’d imagined the entire evening. I staggered over to the bar and asked Ricky if I was dreaming.

  “Ain’t dreaming,” he said, “but you’re pretty darn well sloshed. I’ll call you a cab.”

  Back at my building, I opened the door to my apartment and hobbled into the stale-smelling little box without bothering to turn on any lights. If Hannah was here, crouching in the dark, then I’d just let her be. Anyway, I was drunk.

  I stumbled into my bedroom where I peeled off my clothes and crawled beneath the blankets on my bed. The bedroom window was open, and a cool breeze stirred the curtains.

  As sleep drew nearer, my thoughts clashed into one another. At one point, I was crawling through a tight space, the walls hugging my shoulders and forcing my head lower and lower until my chin pressed against my breastbone. There was shallow water on the ground, freezing my hands and soaking through the knees of my pants, causing my teeth to chatter in my skull. I crawled, not knowing where I was going or even where I was.

  Then I struck a wall—the end of the tunnel—and fear began to suffocate me. I tried to back up but couldn’t. I attempted to turn around, but the chamber was too narrow. Claustrophobia settled around me like a warm, wet blanket.

  I’m going to die down here. I’m going to die down here. I’m going to die down here—

  I awoke with a scream caught in my throat, the sound of a distant boat horn bleating in the night. The curtains still undulated in the night’s breeze.

  I ran one hand over the mattress and realized I’d wet the bed.

  Chapter 3

  1

  Three months after our chance meeting at

  the Filibuster, I received a package from Andrew. It arrived in a wooden crate the size of a footlocker, delivered by two burly men wearing harnesses and fatigues. It was early November, but the men glistened with sweat, both of them panting in synchrony while I signed their clipboard. I felt obligated to offer them each a glass of water. They accepted without hesitation, and I listened to the click sounds their throats made as they drained their glasses in about three seconds flat.

  “She’s a heavy mother,” said one of the men. He had a deep scar along one side of his black face, the skin itself looking like the coagulated film atop pudding that’s been sitting out too long. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. There didn’t appear to be a return address on the little slip that came with the crate nor anywhere on the crate itself.

  “Thanks for the water,” the man with the scar said, and they both plodded out of the apartment, leaving the door open.

  I shut the door and scrounged around the hallway closet for my largely unused toolbox. I located it buried beneath a mound of winter coats but frowned upon opening it. Unless I was able to coax the wooden crate open with a few thumbtacks and a bunch of old washers,

  I was out of luck.

  Like a lion stalking prey, I circled the crate, wondering what could be inside. My leg was fully healed, and I’d ditched both the wheelchair and the crutches long ago, but I swore I felt a twinge of pain in my left leg. It was a dull ache—nothing serious but enough to remind me of what had happened in the past year.

  It occurred to me that I had my old sculpting equipment in my bedroom closet. I hadn’t messed around with that stuff since I’d given up sculpting—since Hannah’s death—and I’d all but forgotten about it. But sure enough, as I climbed a footstool and pawed through the cluttered mass of old books, blank VHS tapes, a pair of Adidas running shoes, and threadbare sweaters, I located the hammer and chisel.

  A moment later, I stood like some mythological god before the crate with my hammer and chisel—God of Lame Legs, perhaps—and located a seam in the wood. I drove the chisel into it and heard the wood stress. Then I brought the hammer down on the chisel’s hilt, driving it deeper. The wood split. I felt a stupid, childish enthusiasm overtake me.

  After a few more strikes of the hammer, the front panel fell away from the crate. Styrofoam popcorn spilled out and pooled around my feet in a cascade. What stood inside the crate caused me to blink, as if to realign my vision.

  It was a massive chunk of granite, a perfect rectangle, perhaps three feet high and two feet wide and at least eighteen inches deep. The granite was dark brown, speckled with glittering mica and textured, multicolored stone.

  There was a piece of pale blue stationery folded once over and taped to the hunk of stone. I plucked it off and unfolded it. A single sentence, inked in a child’s undisciplined handwriting, read:

  Never take your talent for granite.

  It took me a few seconds to realize the initials stood for Andrew Trumbauer—a connection I would have never made had I not seen him only three months earlier and because something about him and our chance meeting still resonated with me.

  Two days later, when Marta stopped by for our ritualistic evening of board games and movies, the hunk of stone was still in the middle of my apartment, three-fourths of the wooden crate surrounding it. Though I’d attempted to clean up the spilled Styrofoam popcorn, there were many pieces on the floor, some having been flattened by the treads of my sneakers.

  “What in the world is this?” she marveled, peeking into the crate with her hands on her knees.

  “It grew there,” I said, “straight up through the floor.” “Tim …”

  “Okay. Then would you believe a bunch of elves delivered it in the night?” I didn’t know why
I was being difficult. Perhaps I just didn’t want to talk about Andrew Trumbauer. Because to talk of him was to talk about Hannah George, and Marta Cortez knew nothing about my wife except for the fact that she’d once existed.

  Suddenly I saw elation fill her eyes. She all but clasped her hands over her chest. “Tell me this means you’re sculpting again.”

  I went into the kitchen and poured Maker’s Mark into two tumblers, then added some sour mix. I stirred both drinks with my finger.

  “An old friend of mine mailed it to me,” I said finally, returning and handing Marta her drink.

  “I can’t tell when you’re being serious anymore.”

  “I’m serious. It showed up two days ago.”

  “Two days?” She looked incredulous. “And it’s just been … sitting here?”

  “It’s a giant slab of rock. I’m not really sure where to put something like that in a tiny apartment without fucking with the feng shui.”

  “What kind of friend mails you a hunk of rock?”

  “One who’s both independently wealthy and overly eccentric.”

  “Interesting.” She grinned. “Is he single?”

  “He’s not your type.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s probably off in Uganda for the next six months.”

  She rolled her shoulders and sipped her drink. “You know I don’t like to be smothered.”

  I stood beside her, studying the slab of stone. “I just need to figure out how to get this thing out of here.”

  “I’m assuming it was sent to you for a reason.”

  “Is that right?”

  “So you’d start working again.”

  “My sabbatical is over in the spring.”

  “Not that work.”

  Still gazing at the stone, I said, “Maybe I’ll call the college art department, have them pick it up. I might get tenured for a donation this big.”

  But by the following Wednesday, with midweek ennui settling around me, I found myself seated on a stool before the column of granite. I’d liberated it from its crate. Together, we stood in the center of the living room, a crystalline frost building up against the windows, my hammer in one hand, my chisel in the other. I sat staring at it, locked in unspoken dialogue with this ridiculous chunk of rock in my living room. The top of the column was buffed flat and smooth. It could be a podium for a potted plant, an art deco stand for a decorative vase. It could be anything, and I needn’t touch it at all. Not at all.

  With a single stroke, I hammered off one corner of the slab. A spark flickered, and the triangular cut dropped to the floor and bounded under the sofa. The muscles in my arms felt weak; the

  strike, which by no means had been forceful, reverberated through the marrow in my bones. I laughed.

  2

  I WAS TWENTY-SIX AND ON MY HONEYMOON WITH

  Hannah in San Juan when I met Andrew Trumbauer. It was our third day on the beach, and Hannah and I had just finished snorkeling and were laid out on towels in the sand when Andrew came out of the sea. I paid him no attention at first, but as he drew nearer, I saw something akin to a skeletal smile break across his face, causing the corners of his mouth to push his cheeks into sharp points. There was something radiant about him, a confidence in his walk. He headed directly for us.

  “Holy shit,” said Hannah. I thought I could see this strange man mouthing the same words at the same time, as if Hannah were providing the soundtrack of his voice. “I don’t believe it.”

  Andrew’s shadow fell across us, and he dripped water on my legs. He carried a mesh bag of dog biscuits used to feed the fish when snorkeling, and I couldn’t turn away from his grin. His teeth looked preternaturally bright.

  “Andrew!” Hannah shouted, bouncing off the towel and into his arms. She was laughing hysterically as she kissed him quickly on the cheek—a jab, really—and beamed over at me. “This is totally insane!”

  “Indeed,” I commented, not knowing what I was required to say. “My head is spinning.”

  “Andrew, this is Tim, my boyfriend.”

  “Husband,” I corrected.

  “Oh!” She laughed. She looked so beautiful and dark. It was before she cut her hair short, so she was very feminine. “Oh, God, we were just married a few days ago. I’m still not straight with anything.”

  “I’m Andrew Trumbauer,” he said, grinning an awkward grin and driving his knees into the sand so he could shake my hand. His pale chest glistened. A string of cobalt-colored lapis hung around his neck.

  “Tim Overleigh.”

  “Andrew and I went to college together,” said Hannah.

  “Good old JMU. I was the loser friend all the pretty girls took pity on,” Andrew said, still grinning.

  “Not all of them,” said Hannah. “Most hated you.”

  And then Andrew did something that caused my testicles to crawl up into the cavity of my pelvis: he winked at me.

  “So true,” he said. “Most everyone hated me.”

  Later that night we all had drinks together at a local dive, and Andrew waited for Hannah to stagger off to the restroom before practically crawling into my ear and whispering, “I’ve got something I want you to try.”

  “What’s that?” I was expecting him to offer to sell me weed, speed, pain pills—whatever the going pharmaceutical trend on the island.

  “Flying,” he said, which only reinforced my expectation. “You up for flying?”

  “Sorry to break it to you,” I said, “but I’ve flown before.”

  “Yeah?”

  “All through college and every once in a blue moon on weekends.” I lifted my drink and nodded at him from across the table. “Alcohol’s been my airplane for the past year or so.”

  Andrew laughed, and I immediately doubted its authenticity. It was too brash, sounded too forced. He was shirtless across from me at the table, his skin sunburned and painful to look at, the twin pink discs of his nipples resembling engorged pimples.

  I went on, “And Hannah, of course, doesn’t necessarily appreciate—”

  “I was asking you. Not Hannah.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Think about it. You’re in good shape.” As he said this, he

  seemed to appraise me.

  Not knowing what being in good shape had to do with shooting a few lines of coke or whatever, I could only laugh with some discomfort and wait for Hannah to return from the restroom.

  That night, after a huge dinner and slow, lethargic lovemaking, Hannah and I fell asleep in each other’s arms. The windows of our small grotto opened on the water, and I woke when the sounds of distant quarreling echoed up from the beach. I listened for a very long time, staring at the darkened ceiling, while I rubbed my foot against Hannah’s.

  “Hmm,” she muttered. I couldn’t tell if she was awake or not.

  I leaned over and kissed her cheek, brushed her hair off her face.

  She smiled faintly without opening her eyes.

  “I’m going out for a ride,” I said.

  “Hmm.”

  Outside, as I had done for the past three nights, I rolled a bicycle from the grotto shed and led it across the property to the roadside. The resort grounds were fastidiously maintained and accommodating; the streets beyond were dark and winding, where fast cars with missing headlamps sped, their radios blasting, and chickens loitered in squalid, feathered heaps in the culverts. On foot, I would have been concerned traversing the unlit byways of the island, certain that I’d run into unsavory characters up to no good. On bicycle, however, I blew by the hordes of shifty-eyed locals and was able to avoid the few automobiles whose drivers found it amusing to attempt to run me off the road—a dangerous scenario given “off the road” would mean plummeting nearly fifty yards over an embankment to wooded forests or rock quarries below.

  I rode now on the snaking, single-lane roadway that wound up the mountainous terrain. The moon was fat and blue, so close I could nearly count the individual craters
on its surface. My heart rate rose, and I could feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead and across my back. One mile, two miles, three—straight to the top of the world.

  From this vantage, I could see one full side of the city, including the lights of the cruise ships docked at the harbor. I hopped off the bike and set it down in the reeds. It was impossible to gauge my height, what with the darkness fooling with my perception, but I knew I was high. Even my breathing, which I’d maintained at a regular pace while riding, was a bit labored at this altitude, although I wondered if that was only in my head. I could faintly hear calypso music and beyond that the squawking of phantom chickens.

  Through a line of dense trees, I spotted dim lights issuing from the windows of clapboard houses along the cusp of the cliff face. Still somewhat unsure of myself, I stepped through the trees into a clearing. The closest house—a hovel, really, like something you’d see in one of those commercials where they ask for money while showing kids with no shoes muddle through sewage—was fronted by a screened-in porch. Large flaps of screen had been torn away and hung down like triangular wedges of pizza, and small birds darted in and out of the openings. Tallow light spilled from a single lamp beside the doorway. I heard the sizzle-pop of an electric bug-zapper firing somewhere nearby.

  I sat on the porch steps and wiped the sweat from my brow. In front of me, my shadow stretched out along the brown grass, framed in a glow of dancing yellow light. Around me, the stalks of candles flickered. Many unlit candles littered the ground. Some even protruded from the mouths of discarded liquor bottles, and others were clustered together in clay pots. I retrieved a waxy yellow candle from one of the pots and held it above the flame of another until it grew malleable and dripped melted wax onto the grass. I proceeded to mold it into a sphere and elongate the sphere into a slight oval. My thumbs created the impression of eye sockets. With one fingernail, I carved out a mouth, then formed the fullness of a pair of lips around it. I don’t know how long I sat there sculpting before I heard the door open behind me.