High Lonesome

by Tanya Chris

  Chapter 2

  Tanner

  From his bunk, Tanner watched Joe out the window, trying to focus on the solid body as it made confident movements around the hut—checking this, tying up that, he had no idea what Joe was doing, but he did it gracefully and with assurance—rather than on the eyeglass case tucked under his pillow and what was in that eyeglass case.

  He should’ve brought more.

  What had he been thinking, not to have planned for an emergency? Not that he’d had any idea a snowstorm could strand him at the hut in fucking August. What the fuck was that? Snow. August.

  No, no way he could’ve predicted this, but shit was always going wrong—that he knew. It paid to be prepared, to have a little emergency stash, just in case.

  Trouble was, emergency stashes tended to get used, and using extra once led to using extra again, and that was bad too. That was the kind of bad that had led him to exactly where he was today—way up in a hut, scared and stressed, nothing but a cantankerous caretaker for company and no sign of the guy he was supposed to be meeting so that he could get the hell back down to the real world where toilets flushed and the closest dealer wasn’t thousands of vertical feet away.

  He'd heard the chatter as that group of climbers had packed up and moved out. Three days, maybe, before the storm passed and the approach was cleared for trekkers again. He’d debated—go down with them? But what if his contact did show up, snowstorm or no snowstorm, and he wasn’t there? Months of planning for nothing. And he needed it—needed the money.

  His contact would show up. Somehow. These guys were persistent. They’d find a way to get to him. And he could make his stash last three days. Just needed to stretch it a little, stay in control.

  Like he could control it. Fuck. If he could control it, he wouldn’t fucking be here.

  Through the window, he saw Joe heading back into the hut and he jumped down off his bed to intercept him. Joe could be a diversion. He was a good-looking guy, reassuringly sturdy with solid legs and a broad chest and a permanent scowl that somehow made Tanner more comfortable than a smile would.

  There was nothing phony about Joe, nothing added or adorned. His eyes were the same grey as the surrounding stone and his dark hair was clubbed back in a stubby ponytail by a simple elastic. Joe was exactly the kind of guy he’d always been attracted to, if he were attracted to anyone anymore.

  Mentally, he could admire the clench of Joe’s ass in his snow pants as he bent over to pull a tarp over the chairs on the front porch, but physically he didn’t feel much of a response. That was mostly gone these days, another thing lost to his addiction. He could still get it up, even come on a good day, but why bother?

  Well, today he’d bother. He’d eat some food, he’d seduce Joe, and he’d hold off on another dose until the last possible moment. Until dinner at least. He could do it. He could. If only those AMC people hadn’t woken him up so damn early. Once he was awake, he had no choice, and that meant his morning high was already waning.

  “I guess I’ll have some eggs,” he told Joe when Joe had divested himself of his snow pants and the heavy parka.

  Joe’s scruff was damp with melting snow. He pulled the elastic free from his ponytail, letting his hair swing into a shoulder-length fall around his face, then scraped it back and re-fastened it into a sloppy bun on top of his head.

  “Yeah? How many? Might as well eat them while the power holds out.”

  “Just one, I guess.” His stomach turned at the thought of even one egg, but the way Joe looked at him made him determined to eat. Joe knew something. He couldn’t be the guy he was supposed to meet, could he? He’d picked the drop location himself. That the Russians would happen to have someone already planted there was too big a coincidence.

  “Let me fire up the stove,” Joe said. “I can make you some coffee too. Going to have a cup myself.”

  He shook his head at the offer of coffee. Caffeine was the wrong kind of buzz altogether. He went over to the stove and watched Joe spark it into life and shut the heavy iron door.

  “That’ll keep us warm?”

  “It’ll keep this room warm. It’ll be colder upstairs. I don’t suppose you’ve got a four-season bag?”

  He didn’t know if he had a four-season bag. He had whatever the guy at the outdoor store had told him was mandatory for an outing like this—the cheapest version of each item, because if he had money to waste on trekking gear, he wouldn’t need to be here to begin with. So, probably he didn’t have a four-season bag.

  “Could be fun to sleep down here,” he said, trying to make it sound fun, though it’d be a lot easier to keep himself dosed up in the privacy of the dormitory. “Where do you sleep?”

  “I’ve got my own room.” Joe jerked his head towards the front of the great room where a door stood closed next to the giant stove.

  “Got a bathroom in there?”

  “Got a piss jar.”

  He grimaced. He’d found the amenities in the hut to be sorely lacking with respect to hygiene. Inside, there was nothing but a hole to piss in, which wasn’t a whole lot more appealing than a jar to piss in, and a pump out of which a trickle of cold water could be coaxed.

  Luckily, not eating much meant not having to shit much, because the outhouse made his skin crawl. It didn’t smell as bad as he’d expected it to, but he knew what was down there: shit. And probably spiders. Rabid badgers, for all he knew. The hole was wide enough and deep enough to hold almost anything.

  “You’re not really an outdoorsman, are you, kid?”

  “Told you my name is Tanner.”

  “Right. Tanner. What are you doing here, Tanner? Why didn’t you go down with everyone else? You want a flush toilet, they got them down at Ganymede.”

  “Just—it’s beautiful up here.”

  Joe flashed him a look like he wasn’t buying a word of it. Why was Joe so fucking suspicious of him? It was like somehow Joe already knew all his secrets, and he couldn’t afford for that to be true. When the guy he was meeting showed up, they’d make their exchange and he could get the hell down from here, but he didn’t need to leave a suspicious witness behind.

  “Maybe I had another reason for staying,” he said, wandering over to where Joe leaned against the stove. He got close enough to feel the heat coming off the stove, or maybe it was the heat coming off of Joe.

  He shivered, realizing that it really was getting cold and that he was only wearing a t-shirt. He’d intended to play off Joe’s obvious attraction to him, to present an alternative reason for his continued presence in the hut so Joe would stop acting so suspicious, but once he got close enough to feel Joe’s heat, he found himself wanting it.

  There was nothing he’d call comforting about Joe—too hard, too stern, too disapproving—and yet he radiated a steadiness that had been sorely lacking in his life for the last couple of years. Joe wasn’t comforting, but he was certain. Whatever he did, it’d be a hundred percent, no doubts, no sickly waffling or shaky regrets.

  Tanner didn’t feel the least bit sexual, not with the nausea and aches that came with his dose wearing off, but he wanted Joe’s touch. His body when it stepped right up into Joe’s wasn’t lying. As it had up in the dormitory, Joe’s hand came to rest on his hip. His thumb brushed up under the hem of his t-shirt, stroking over the naked flesh.

  “That so?” Joe asked.

  “I mean, we’ve got the place to ourselves,” he suggested. “I thought it’d be romantic.”

  Joe snorted and let go of him. “I don’t do romantic.”

  “You know what I mean,” he scrambled. “Sexy. Whatever. Like, we could get loud. You know you want to.”

  “And you know you don’t.” It was another one of those comments that made him wonder how Joe knew so much about him. “I’m going to get you something to eat and then I’m going to clean this place up. Your friends left it a mess.”

  He expected Joe to move away, to do what he’d just said he was going to do, but instead Joe stepped clos
er to him. He wrapped an arm around his back and pulled him in—not down so they were mouth to mouth but in, so they were chest to chest. The top of Joe’s head only came up to his chin, but the breadth of his chest eclipsed his, making him feel surrounded.

  He ducked his head, nestling his cheek into the messy lump of Joe’s bun and let a soft sigh escape him. This was what he’d needed, yes. How long had it been since anyone had hugged him? He could barely remember the last time he’d gotten laid, but he knew there hadn’t been hugs involved.

  Joe’s other arm came to the top of his head, urging him to settle deeper into the warmth. Even through the heavy fleece Joe wore, he could feel the body heat that came off him, as though Joe were alive and he were something else.

  Shit. It wasn’t even noon. If he felt this bad now, he’d never make it to dinner. For a moment, he wanted to tell Joe everything—about his addiction, about the reason he was there, the lengths to which his addiction had driven him.

  For a moment, he believed Joe would do something about it if he knew. But then Joe released him and the moment passed. Joe was a stranger, a suspicious stranger. He was what stood between him and the reason he’d shouldered a too-heavy pack and walked up a too-steep mountain. He’d fuck Joe—strategically—but he couldn’t get attached to him.

  “Park yourself in one of those chairs in front of the stove,” Joe ordered. “You’re freezing and you don’t even know it. Here.” He stripped off the zip-up fleece he wore and tossed it over lightly. Tanner caught it reflexively, looking down at it in surprise.

  “I’ve got something I could wear.”

  “You’ve got crap. How’d they let you come up here so unprepared? Put that on and sit down.”

  Tanner figured he wasn’t going to get into Joe’s pants if Joe kept seeing him as a child, but the concern felt too good to argue with. He put on the fleece and zipped it nearly to his chin. It smelled like warm man and snowy mountains, like the outdoors had come inside and was giving him a hug. The sleeves were a little short but there was plenty of material to go around and it took being warm for him to understand how cold he’d been.

  “Good.” Joe gave an approving nod. “Now sit.” He steered Tanner to one of the two Adirondack chairs in front of the stove and pressed him down into it. “Two eggs, coming right up. I’ll fry them hard for you.”

  “One’s enough,” he argued, wondering how Joe knew he’d want them fried hard. The thought of anything runny—no.

  “I’ll make two and you’ll eat what you can.” Joe disappeared through the swinging door at the back of the room that led to a part of the building he hadn’t been in. Must be where the kitchen was.

  He nodded off while he waited, the last of the effects hitting him as he sat still and warm in front of the stove in the quiet of the empty room. He’d been in the great room the night before for dinner but hadn’t paid it much attention, concentrating on trying to blend in with the boisterous group of climbers so he wouldn’t look like what he was—a weird loner with no good reason to be in a mountain hut.

  He’d had a beer and pushed a chicken stir-fry around his plate, the beer and a recent dose soothing the nerves he’d normally feel in a group of loud strangers. He’d nodded out then too, startling back to reality when the volume rose, then slipping into a doze when the conversation got technical. Climbers had a lot of lingo, not unlike drug users, and climber was a language he didn’t speak.

  In the fading light at dinner last night, he hadn’t noticed the way the walls were decorated with climbing equipment and ski posters. He’d have expected the heads of animals, maybe. Hunting trophies. But there were no signs of guns or weaponry on the walls, just old pieces of iron and posters of gorgeous scenery. If he looked through the window to the right of the stove, he could see a scene not unlike the ones adorning the walls.

  Across from the hut stood a towering wall of rock, now peeking through the gusts of flakes that danced in front of the window. That was what the climbers had been crawling all over the day before. When he’d finally arrived at Longline, much later than the people at the lower hut had told him he would, the sun already dipping and his nerves thrumming with the need to shoot up, he’d seen the climbers descending from ropes strung across the face, heard them call to each other, bottom to top.

  He’d stopped to watch, only partly from interest, more from inertia, until they’d all made their way down and he’d ended up in the midst of them as they swarmed into the hut. He’d allowed himself to be swallowed up into them, as though he belonged with such robust people and their endless enthusiasm.

  He was glad they were gone now. He preferred the silence of the hut, preferred Joe’s taciturn gruffness that didn’t ask him to tell a lot of lies.

  It didn’t seem like more than a few minutes passed before Joe slid a plate into his lap. The eggs were scrambled good and solid, no runny yolks or slime, and there was a strip of bacon, just one, crisped almost to the point of being ruined. He put the bacon in his mouth and allowed the strong flavor to seep gradually down to his stomach as he chewed slowly.

  Joe put a glass of water on the arm of the Adirondack chair without comment and disappeared from view. He could hear him moving around the room as he made his slow way through the meal. Music played, something low and bluesy that he didn’t recognize. When was the last time he’d put on music himself? This trip was making him realize that he’d been too caught up in his addiction to even realize how caught up in it he’d been.

  He was stuck now, somewhere where he didn’t have enough, with no way to get more. He could use this time for something different than what he’d intended when he’d set out. Rather than betraying his country, sinking himself deeper into the disease of addiction and its consequences, he could use the time to break free. Maybe the man he was meeting wouldn’t come. Maybe he and Joe would be trapped here together long enough that the decision would be taken out of his hands. Maybe that was what he wanted.

  But the ache in his bones claimed otherwise.

  Withdrawal hurt and he was a coward, too weak to break away from this road he found himself on. Just eating was a trial he could barely force himself through. Did he really think he could go cold turkey?

  He didn’t eat all the eggs, but he ate the bacon and more than half the eggs and downed the entire glass of water, which tasted good—cold and clean and like something he hadn’t known he needed until he drank it.

  He rose with his dishes and turned to see that Joe had made a lot of progress cleaning the mess. The long plank table was now empty and the top glistened as though it had been washed down. The chairs were pushed in tidily around it, even and square, and the plank floor was clear of crumbs.

  He didn’t see Joe, so he took his plate to the swinging door and pushed through it.

  Joe looked up from the basin full of soap suds where he was washing dishes. He evaluated the plate Tanner carried.

  “You did good. Dump the rest of that for me.” He nodded at a little bin filled with food scraps and Tanner scraped the rest of his eggs into it.

  “I could help,” he offered.

  “Could you?” Joe asked in that tone that suggested he already knew the answer. “Don’t worry about it. You’re the guest here. I’ll be finished soon enough and then I’m going to go out and take a hike around before the snow gets too deep.”

  “Maybe I could come with you?” He didn’t know why he suggested it, but a part of him did want to go with Joe. A part of him wanted to be that outdoorsy guy who climbed rocks and hiked in the snow, who knew what to pack for a trip to the mountains and had those things in his garage—well-used items purchased one at a time with history behind them, not picked up en masse at a store at the mall.

  Joe eyed him dubiously. He wondered if he was swaying on his feet. He was in that halfway state between doses—still drowsy but also stressed about the effects wearing off—but Joe must have decided he was all right because he nodded and said, “OK, yeah. Some fresh air would do you good. Go get dresse
d. I’ll be ready in five.”

  He trudged upstairs, even those treads feeling steep and more than he could handle without breathing heavily. Damn altitude. They warned you it was harder to breathe, but shit. Every step on the way up had felt like he was pulling the whole mountain up with him. He’d never keep up with Joe on a hike.

  What had he been thinking?

  Chapter 3

  Joe

  Joe rinsed the last of the breakfast dishes and dried his hands on a dish towel. A quick glance around the galley kitchen showed everything in order. The space was too confined for sloppiness or confusion, and order felt good after the chaos he’d lived in for so long.

  Now that he had control of his life—and his body—he exercised that control tightly, and Longline was perfect for a guy with both an obsessive need for order and a compulsion to seek out adrenalin highs.

  He’d dressed for the outdoors earlier, so he only needed to add his top layers back on and he was ready to go in the five minutes he’d promised Tanner. He stood near the door to the hut, sweat forming under the accumulation of heavy layers, waiting for the kid to come down and cursing himself for ever agreeing to drag him along. What had he been thinking?

  When Tanner made his slow way down the narrow staircase, feet appearing first, he cursed himself even harder. The kid was wearing sneakers and jeans and a jacket that would’ve been perfect for a light spring rain.

  “You can’t go out there like that.”

  Tanner looked down at himself ruefully. “This is all I’ve got. I didn’t know it would snow.”

  He sighed. OK, no one would’ve expected a blizzard in August, but they were at altitude. Cold, precipitation—these things were totally within the range of normal. He pushed past Tanner, crossing through the great room to his own bedroom.

  “Well, come on,” he yelled back to Tanner who’d stayed rooted to the spot. “Let’s see what I’ve got that’ll fit you.”

  He was rummaging through the lost-and-found sack when Tanner appeared in his doorway.