Leaving Everest

by Westfield, Megan

  I returned to Olivia’s much juicier profile and scrolled on. At around five months ago, I wasn’t seeing him in the background of her Circs as much. When he was there, she wasn’t using the boyfriend hashtag. And her Circs no longer lined up with #YCCM Circs.

  I gave a silent fist pump. The information wasn’t solid proof, but it was enough to give me hope.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was a gorgeous day in the mountains with crystal clear views as we shepherded our clients on an acclimatization hike up a foothill near Base Camp. Jim had given the Sherpas a day off, so each of the guides had three clients. Mine were Old Man Phil, Glissading Glen, and Johnsmith.

  The lack of wind and the bright sun today made it warm enough that I was hiking in nothing but a light fleece jacket, stretch pants, and a pair of gaiters around my calves and boots. In the distance, the sharp profile of Makalu was practically glistening in the sunlight. This is what I love, I thought.

  Looking back, I noticed Phil, the nicest of the Global clients I’d met so far, had stopped to rest again.

  I backtracked to reach him. His breathing had a distinct gurgle, but that was not uncommon here. Most of us would have chronic coughs by the time we left the mountain. Living on the side of Mount Everest slowly deteriorates your body. Even the Sherpas aren’t fully immune to being as high as Base Camp for such an extended period of time.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  Phil leaned on his ice ax like a cane. “I don’t think I’ve ever…breathed…this hard…”

  “That’s what eighteen-thousand feet of elevation will do for you.”

  He nodded, looking at the distance remaining between us and the top of the snowy ridge. The fastest clients had already reached the top and were descending. “If you can manage it, it’s better to adjust your pace slower so you can keep moving rather than trying to go faster and having to stop for breaks. When we’re up on Everest, this will help you stay warmer.”

  He got moving again. Very slowly but steadily. I went to check on my other two charges.

  Glissading Glen had started out in the lead of A-Team climbers but quickly burned out and was now steadily tied for second-to-last place with Phil. Johnsmith was moving slowly, too, and favoring a leg. I had already recommended that he talk to Hulk about it when we returned to Base Camp, since Hulk had majored in exercise science in college.

  When I returned to the end of the line again, Phil was moving, but so slowly I could probably crawl on my hands and knees faster. He stuttered something I couldn’t understand.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Just having a bad day. Not good sleep,” he tried again after a breath. It wasn’t a good sign if he was struggling at this elevation. Even the lowest of the four camps on Mount Everest was several thousand feet higher than where we were right now.

  “Is Jim tracking stats today?” Phil asked.

  I winced at the distress in his voice, and I felt for him. We weren’t officially recording the clients’ performances today, but unofficially we were always watching. If Jim didn’t think one of the clients was performing well enough during acclimatization, he wouldn’t allow them on the summit attempt, and their $82,000 fee would not be refunded.

  “I wouldn’t worry about your stats right now,” I told him. “Today is casual. You’re right that bad sleep can really have an impact. And it’s the altitude affecting you. That’s the whole reason we do hikes like this. Keep paying attention to the basics this week. Drink more water, rest whenever you can, eat even when you don’t feel like it. The better you take care of your body, the stronger it will be as you acclimatize.”

  He nodded. “Thanks, Emily.”

  The Cuban team passed us then, heading down. Doc was right on their heels, the fastest of the UW team today.

  “Hey there, MiniBoss,” she called. It clearly wasn’t easy for her to hike at this pace, but I was proud of her for doing so well.

  Up ahead, Johnsmith was sitting down in the snow. To reach him, I had to pass behind Glissading Glen, who was unabashedly taking a leak in the middle of the boot-packed path.

  “How are you doing?” I asked when I got to Johnsmith.

  “My leg’s tight, but I’m okay otherwise.”

  He finished stretching, and I gave him a hand up and walked with him for a while.

  The next grouping that passed us on the way down was the rest of the UW team. Luke and Hulk were at the rear, between the fastest A-Team clients and slowest UW clients. I high-fived both of them. Instead of continuing down with Hulk, Luke stopped to talk to me.

  “What’s the deal with Phil?” he asked.

  “He said he had a bad night’s sleep.”

  “That’s all he could come up with? He’d better hope Thom doesn’t say anything to Jim about how far back he is.”

  “He better not!”

  Luke groaned. “Don’t tell me you have a favorite client already.”

  “No, but I like him. He seems different.”

  “He’s a lawyer, so he’s pretty much the same as the rest of them.”

  Same as the rest of them meaning rich, and sometimes rich and entitled and inexperienced in the mountains. Almost all our past clients were doctors, lawyers, or successful businessmen.

  “Yeah, but he’s really nice, like a grandpa.” Not my grandpa, per se, but a grandpa.

  When Glissading Glen caught up to us, Luke and I walked along with him, though off to the side. Luke pulled out his radio and asked Thom if it was okay if he finished out with A-Team.

  “Sure, no problem. Your Huskies are on fire today,” Thom replied.

  After a while, Luke was starting to nudge ahead of me.

  “Just so we’re clear, this is not a race,” I hissed. “I have to stick with these guys.”

  He stopped and raised his gloved hands innocently. I shook my head at him with a smile that continued to warm my face as we walked.

  Ever since Luke told me he’d emailed, I’d been looking for a chance to re-open the topic. I needed to explain why I hadn’t responded, and I wanted to press him for details. It wasn’t as easy as that, though, seeing as we hadn’t been alone since the puja. We weren’t alone now, but we were out of earshot of anyone else, and that was as good as we’d ever get on Mount Everest, so I decided to go for it.

  “That email you sent,” I said. “I never got it. My account was hacked.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think it was from an internet café in Thailand. I had to get a new email account.”

  “What’d you change it to? MiniBoss at WinsloweExpeditons dot com?”

  I snorted.

  “So you have an excuse why you never wrote me back,” he said, “but how come you never contacted me?”

  “I didn’t have your email address.”

  “And it would have been impossible to get your hands on it, right?”

  Touché.

  There were many ways I could have gotten hold of him if I’d applied myself. But I never had. Circs were safe. Circs were centered in the world we shared—the world of big mountains and pipe dreams. Circs were like a secret language. To communicate by email or chat or Skype was real life. And in real life, with him surrounded by real Americans, it would be clear to him that we belonged to different worlds, and our relationship wouldn’t be the same.

  We walked in thoughtful quietness, our steps perfectly matched in the tattoo of our creaking mountaineering boots and the slush of the sun-warmed snow beneath the points of our crampons. Sometimes when I walked in the mountains, my mind became so still that it was like I was meditating. Other times, I daydreamed of climbing World’s 19ers mountains, of Luke, and quite frequently of that little white bungalow that existed only in my mind. That was where my mind drifted now as I walked next to Luke.

  Though the house was imaginary, I knew it as well as if I had been there dozens of times. It was slightly disheveled inside and out, with vegetables growing in the front yard among gladiolas and sunflowers. There was a rope hammo
ck and rocker on the porch and a pull-up bar across one of the bedroom doorframes. In my daydreams, I’d pictured bonfires in the yard with good friends, drinking hot chocolate on the porch in the earliest hours of the morning, and pulling weeds in the garden while throwing a ball for a dog—my dog.

  I saw packing for an expedition while a loaf of honey wheat bread baked in the oven. I would actually enjoy the process because it wouldn’t involve packing up the entire contents of a hostel room or campsite. I would be taking only the things I needed for the one trip because I’d be returning to this same place at the end. It was home. A real home.

  Luke and I continued silently on autopilot until I realized we were almost on the heels of Hulk’s group.

  “We’re going too fast,” I said. We stopped and looked downslope to make sure my clients were doing okay. Johnsmith was limping along steadily, and to my surprise, Phil was pretty much keeping pace about twenty feet behind Glissading Glen.

  “I had him eat two gel packs,” I explained.

  “Jeez, did you lace them with something?”

  “What, like dexamethasone gel?”

  “Yeah, good idea. Dex-gel. We should start a business.”

  I looked at him standing there against the backdrop of the stunning south-facing slopes. His clothes were new and bright, and the way he stood was so confident and at ease. Standing just like this, he could be in a catalog, one of the fancy, magazine-like Esplanade Equipment catalogs.

  “What?” he asked.

  Was my research right? Do you really not have a girlfriend anymore?

  “Nothing. I was thinking about Doc. Did you see her practically up with the Cubans today?”

  “Yeah. She’s on fire, but I still think she’s out of her mind for doing this.”

  “You’re kind of a jerk, you know.”

  “I don’t see why anyone would pay that kind of money to climb this mountain when the experience is way better on pretty much any other mountain in the Himalayas. Especially Doc. She knows better!”

  “True. I mean, why not climb Pumori instead?”

  “Oh, you and your sweetheart Pumori.”

  I cocked my head. “Is it the altitude, or is that jealousy I hear?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You should be jealous. Look at that ridgeline!” I said, gesturing toward it. “Twenty-five-thousand feet of uncrowded yet perfectly accessible Himalayan bluebird vertical.”

  He grinned and gave me a playful shove. I wanted to fall into the flirtation and shove him right back.

  But first, I needed to be certain about Olivia. Asking him directly was the only way to know for sure, and that was out of the question. I’d have to be more creative, and I had an idea.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever taken a Circ of my sweetheart Pumori before,” I said. “Let me grab my self-Circ stick.”

  His eyebrows popped above his glacier glasses. “You have a self-Circ stick?”

  “Yeah. It’s an extra-long one.”

  “You don’t do self-Circs.”

  “Not yet. I just got the stick.”

  “Did you eat some of that dex-gel you gave Phil?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re off your rocker.”

  “Come on, you can be in it, too.”

  “Um. No. No self-Circs for me, thank you.”

  “I’ve seen you in self-Circs.”

  “Not by choice.”

  “Someone held a gun to your head?”

  “It was a girlfriend. And yes, pretty much.”

  Was a girlfriend? This was promising, but I needed the 100 percent answer.

  “Somebody who used to be your girlfriend?” I asked. “Or a girlfriend who you persuaded to stop taking self-Circs with you?”

  “Now look who’s jealous.”

  “Don’t you wish.”

  His dimples were out. Just slay me now.

  “It was somebody who used to be my girlfriend.”

  To hide my triumphant smile, I squatted down and pretended to dig through my day pack for the made-up self-Circ stick.

  “Well, shoot,” I said, zipping up my pack. “I must have left it in my tent.”

  When Luke looked down at me, there was a woman reflected in his sunglasses. A woman with an incredible smile and beautiful hair that fanned across her shoulders and glinted red in the sunlight. A woman who didn’t look anything like the boyish teenage girl from Vertical View magazine and who matched the confidence and ease in the mountains that I’d admired in him just moments ago.

  Was that really me? Was this what I looked like to Luke?

  It was like a capsule of golden happiness had been snapped open inside me. I still struggled with how accomplished he was compared to me, but from this perspective, I could see something different. What if he didn’t view me as a failure to launch who had balked at getting a higher education, but as a strong and driven woman who might someday be the first to climb the Top Five without oxygen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Luke was already waiting at the Everest Base Camp signs when I arrived for the workout we’d planned over dinner last night.

  “You ready for this?” he asked.

  Bold with yesterday’s confirmation that he did not have a girlfriend, I met his eyes and held them. “Am I ready for this? The question is, are you?”

  We lined up on the trail. He pressed some buttons on his watch and then looked at me over his shoulder, his eyes flirtatious and taunting: catch me if you can.

  My heart fluttered. You Can’t Catch Me.

  His watch beeped, and we were off in a sprint up the Base Camp trail. I loved the feeling of the freezing morning air searing my lungs.

  Sprinting at this elevation was closer to trotting than running, but we pressed on as fast as we could until we reached the place where the glacier dead-ended into the fearsome Khumbu Icefall. Luke won by a few steps.

  “You had a head start,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  We jogged slowly back down the trail to the Base Camp signs where we stretched before the next round. This time, when Luke clicked his watch, I was ready. I elbowed him out of my way so I could stride ahead. I reached the end first and looked back at him with a smirk.

  “Don’t even think that you won that one,” he said as soon as we’d caught our breath. “You were disqualified the second you brought those elbows out.”

  “Whatever. One more?”

  He groaned, but I knew he wouldn’t say no.

  We took the final lap much slower. There was a fine line between keeping in shape to counteract the languid Base Camp life and not exerting ourselves too much, which would cause further muscle degradation from two months of living at this altitude.

  Grabbing our packs, we went back up-glacier to find a good spot for pull-ups and abs. Since there was no pull-up bar in camp, we made our own using our ice-climbing axes and a tall block of ice.

  “Fifteen?” I asked.

  “You can’t do fifteen.”

  “Watch me.”

  We pulled off our gloves, gripped the ends our ice axes, hung by our arms, and started the pull-ups. We both did fifteen.

  “Jeez, Emily,” he said with a whistle.

  I was starting to get an altitude headache, but I couldn’t have kept the smile off my face if I tried.

  Over on a flat section, we spread out two backpacking air mattresses and rotated through crunches, lunges, and planks.

  On the next set of pull-ups I did an extra.

  “You didn’t tell me we were going to sixteen,” he protested.

  “Seventeen next time,” I said boldly. “If you can hack it.”

  “Of course I can.” He eyed me. A tingle ran through my body. “I don’t think you can.”

  I scoffed.

  “Let’s make it more interesting,” he said. “If one of us makes it and the other one doesn’t, then that person owes a favor.”

  I wasn’t sure I could do seventeen ice-ax pull-ups with arms t
hat were already tired from the previous two sets, but with how much he had slowed down on the last round, I figured that I had a better chance than he did.

  “Okay, deal.”

  He reached out so we could shake on it. His hand was strong, hot, and callused. Another tingle ran through my body.

  We did our next round of exercises and then went back to the ice axes.

  “We’re going one at a time,” I said. “So I can make sure you don’t cheat.”

  “Me?” He flashed both of his dimples, and my mouth went dry.

  He faced the ice, gripped the handles of his axes, and began lifting himself easily and steadily. The form-fitting, long-sleeved performance top he wore did nothing to hide the definition and stretch of his lats, shoulders, and back muscles. His shirt gradually rode up, giving me a peek of his tan, taut waist, beneath which his workout pants cupped the tight, perfect bubble of his rear end.

  I swallowed. The power of his body was incredible, and watching him this way, I saw there were nuances about him that I did not know in my role as just a friend. I wanted to know those nuances, too. And I wanted to be free to study him at all times, not just at times when I thought he wouldn’t notice.

  Luke hit ten and was still pulling steadily. He slowed at thirteen, and by sixteen, he couldn’t pull higher than a forty-five degree angle. Just as I was imagining what sort of reward I might demand of him, he rallied and pulled the rest of the way up.

  He hopped off the axes like it had been easy as pie. I shook my head. Without thinking, I reached for his bicep to give him a painful pinch. His eyes flew down to my hand on his arm.

  It was like Luke and I were two halves of a strip of Velcro. Each time even a single of the tiny hooks caught, I was incapacitated. Imagine what it would be like if we were closer, if even more hooks caught…

  To distract myself from that line of thinking, I did some arm stretches and made a show of getting ready for my turn.

  “Whenever you’re ready, MiniBoss.”

  I wiped my mind blank and stepped up to the axes, intending to soar through the burn by going as fast as I could. That got me to twelve. I suffered through thirteen and fourteen. Had it not been for the contest, I would have given in to my quaking arms right there. Crookedly, I pulled up to fifteen. I went for sixteen, but nothing happened. I exhaled and tried again.