“Maybe we could make a pit stop.”
Russ didn’t complain. We had already passed four
service stations and the next one came up quickly.
“I could use an iced tea,” Padgett said.
“Me too,” Matt said.
He kissed me. I kissed him back. He was in a better
mood today. What am I saying? My cowboy was never in a bad mood. He
was as plain as the day is bright. If there were any mysteries
about him, it was only for my lack of asking.
“I’ll skip the tea,” I said. “Any more in and I’ll
need water wings.”
“Careful over the bumps, Russ,” Padgett said.
Russ found them anyway, and I thought I’d wet the
seat. I had to run for the bathroom key the minute we glided into
the gas station — no apologies made. When I returned, Matt was
propped on a railing, sipping at his bottle and gazing aloft to the
cliffs and crags. Padgett was flirting with the attendant, while
Russ paced about waiting for the fill up. Tim was somewhere inside,
probably stocking up on chips. He had munched on three full bags of
chips even before we left Denver’s city limits. As for me, it was
relieved, in the best possible way. The sun was warm, my kidneys
were drained and I was happy for a moment of solitude. I was never
a happy passenger cooped up in a car for any length of time. My
legs would cramp, especially in the middle seat.
I hesitated before joining Matt on the railing. He
looked so pacific, I hated to disturb him, but when I stepped out,
I suddenly felt light-headed. It was just a passing dizzy spell,
but enough to halt me, forcing me to check my balance. Sitting was
a necessity and, by the time I reached the railing, I practically
fell into Matt’s lap. However, the faintness had passed as fast as
it came.
“Are you okay?” Matt asked.
“Fine. Just was a little light-headed.”
“Bubble headed, you mean, Pumpkin.”
I gave him a love punch. He punched me back and then
rubbed my back. His touched calmed me — better than the warm sun or
emptied kidneys.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said. It was more a
venture than a statement. I didn’t expect a response, but I got
one.
“I know you are. Don’t fret about it. I needed to go
there. I hate to say it, but it helped. It’s nice to know . .
.”
His voice trailed off lost to a thought, one that I
was supposed to complete. I couldn’t, but didn’t much care to fill
in the blank. Matt just glanced back to the car. The attendant had
finished filling us up. Padgett still posed and flirted. It
wouldn’t be long for the attendant to summon his redneck buddies to
take out a car full of fairies. The thought alarmed me, but the
attendant, although not very fay, seemed tolerant. This was Boulder
after all — city of the liberal edge. He was probably a student
working his way through a law degree. Padgett could sniff out a
professional from ten miles distance.
Tim, trailing three more bags of chips from his
platinum fingers, strutted toward the suicide seat. It was time to
move on, leaving Boulder behind us.
The road climbed, we climbing with it at a steep
angle. As we ascended, the pines were taller, the road rougher.
Cabins peeked out from the brush lands besides rushing waters. I
wanted to jump out, grab a fishing pole and do my best Huckleberry
Finn. Shame I don’t fish or eat fish, or have a deep Missouri
accent. Soon the cabins gave way to homes, some chalets and others,
ski lodges. We approached Estes Park, a resort that, during the
summer hiatus, doubled as the gateway to Rocky Mountain National
Park. The place tumbled out around us, and soon we were in a
bustling community of shopkeepers and tourists. The town green
hailed charming, sporting restaurants, souvenir shops, clubs and
more than one mural painted on white washed walls in an attempt to
summon an Alpine atmosphere. Who needed paintings for that? The
mountains did that mighty fine.
“Glad we don’t have Moorehouse with us,” Padgett
snapped. “He’d be comparing these unfavorably to his latest
Bavarian jaunt.”
That was true enough. I was glad Todd was not with
us, because I couldn’t put up with both of them today. Although
they would kiss and make-up back in New Jersey, the separation of
the milk from the cream suited me fine now, although we were stuck
with the milk, and that milk was sour.
The day was pristine, sunny, a cloudless, royal blue
sky. A chill kissed the air and the place felt . . . Christmasy. I
wanted to shop for ornaments and I knew that there must be a year
‘round Christmas shop tucked along one of these quaint lanes.
“We’ll eat first,” Russ said.
No arguments here. It might take us an hour to
decide what to eat, but that was part of the landscape, as sure as
the mountains came before the faux chalets. So Russ parked and we
popped out of the Honda like birds from the cage, only . . . when I
took my first step, the faint feeling returned. I thought I would
fall.
“Holy cow,” Matt said.
I saw that he was having problems too. I grabbed his
shoulder. I don’t mind wobbling about if I earned it with a pitcher
of Cosmos and a beer chaser. But this was a non-alcoholic drunk and
it worried me.
“What’s going on? I feel like I’m at a
funhouse.”
The street spun. I noticed that Padgett had spun
too, landing on the curb, his head bobbing like a pullet. Tim
giggled, and then did his best impression of Frankenstein’s
monster. He was enjoying the sensation, no doubt.
“It’s the altitude,” Russ said. “It was mentioned in
the guidebook.”
He looked no worse for wear, as pale under the
malady as he was when he stopped for gas. Matt pulled me toward a
shop front. I thought I was going to heave.
“Just settle down,” Russ commanded. “If you stand
still, close your eyes and take deep breaths, your inner ear will
resolve itself.”
“When were you going to tell us about this?” Padgett
complained.
“Didn’t you read the stuff that Desmond handed out
about traveling in the Rockies?”
“Obviously not.”
I closed my eyes, and then controlled my breathing —
deep breaths.
“Blow into your cupped hands, Pumpkin.”
I did so and that seemed to work. Imagine what
mountain climbers on Everest must go through if I had to hold on
for dear life just a bit over a mile high.
“We’re getting there,” I said.
“It’ll pass,” Matt said. “We’ll be okay to ride to
the summit.”
I felt like telling him that I was as high as I
wanted to go, but if I could manipulate him into a hall of weepy
people, I could at least return the favor by letting him murder me
on this mountain.
“Once I get my head together,” I said, thinking that
it would never happen. “Once I’m steady, we’ll take a stab at
it.”
“Well, up then,” he said, giving me a hand up.
It was a tenuous boost, but I made it up. I opened
my eyes. The world was steadier and I laughed. It was a giddy
feeling, this mountain high. I had heard the expression — even
heard of mountain sickness, but I always thought it was a joke told
to greenhorns.
The others were coming around, but fast we weren’t.
Ice skaters new on the pond came to mind.
“I could kill a hamburger,” Tim said. He had
recovered, if he even realized anything was wrong.
“I could puke one up,” I said.
“Something fizzy to drink,” Padgett added. “That’s
it. A tall seltzer water.”
And that sounded good to me. In fact, it became a
personal and immediate goal.
There was a bistro two blocks away. By the time we
reached it, I was walking less drunk than weary. My stomach
rumbled, so I ordered a salad and kept the ranch dressing on the
side just in case it provoked an embarrassing response.
Estes Park was idyllic. I anticipated a good
shopping day and even rearranged my luggage in mind to accommodate
the unbought booty. Best of all, trouble seemed far away now. Matt
had hit it off with Tim (go figure) and Padgett had run out of
things to say (go figure). Then, in one of those silences that
inevitably happened during group meals, Russ raised his root beer
and proposed a toast.
“To Summer,” he said.
“To Summer,” we all echoed, clicking our various
drinks mid table.
“Remember it always . . . even after you’ve all
forgotten me.”
Matt blanched, his eyes studying friend Russell, as
if he saw him for the first time — a penetrating, analytical stare,
most un-Matt-like and unnerving.
Put it behind you, Martin. Put it away. Don’t give
it a second thought.
Suddenly, the sun went behind a cloud, the only one
to show up on that cloudless day . . . or so I thought.
On unsteady legs and with a disquieted heart, I had
reached the pinnacle — a mountain so high that I could imagined
myself suspended like the angel atop the tree. When I recall that
day in the Rockies, far from New Jersey and even Denver, I remember
one thing. Clarity. A point of clarity in my life, because on that
day the shadows faded, letting the darkness set in. I am a bright
spirit, cheery and always decking the hall with boughs of holly.
Still, I believe that I’m tough — a street fairy who raised himself
under the scant guidance of a loose moral manicurist, who tagged in
the margins with lethal advice. We always imagine that we are
stronger than we really are and still, no matter what mountain
looms before us, we still manage to climb toward the summit,
whether we ever reach the other side or not. So I mushed on and
mushed on, with unsteady legs and a disquieted heart. That’s the
vigil I’ve kept and keep.
I was stunned. I stood on the platform overlooking
the world, seven-thousand feet up. A brass map showed me the points
of interest — the names of the peaks, the lakes, and the meadows,
but that didn’t matter. My heart raced, in part from the altitude,
but mostly with a morbid fear of heights and the question I had now
posed to my inner fairy —
Why was I up so high? Was I nuts?
The snow capped peaks called to me —
Jump. Jump.
My stomach
twitched and I decided to retreat to the Honda bumper.
Tim and Padgett were climbing to a higher point, a
steep nanny goat path with a tenuous railing. That wasn’t for me.
Matt had walked further up the road and around a curve. I think he
was looking for patches of snow — summer remnants. Him and his love
of snow. Ever since that first evening when he rolled around naked
in the stuff, he looked forward to every flake that heaven belched.
Now, when the park ranger said that there was still snow up ahead,
he had to explore. I was fine on the bumper, sitting next to
Russ.
“Where’s your cowboy?”
Talking, are we?
“In search of snow.”
“Snow cones?”
“Something like that.”
I thought of finding my own bumper. I recognized
Russ’ approach to conflict and I was in no mood for it. I found it
difficult to breathe and the dizziness came and went as if it were
becoming a permanent condition.
“Listen,” I said. “I know you don’t like him and I
know you might be a bit . . . jealous of our relationship, but you
should shake it off and move on.”
Russ smiled. It wasn’t his pixie smile, but an
incredulous spike.
“Your choice of man is not my problem. I don’t sleep
with him, you know. In fact, I’m surprised that you think that
anything you’ve done concerns me.”
“Fine.” I slid off the bumper. “Stew in your own
shit.”
Russ waved his hand about, and then rolled his
eyes.
“Wait, Lambkins.” He hadn’t called me that in over a
year. “I’m sorry if you think that you’ve caused my current funk.
It has nothing to do with you.”
“What’s wrong then? Is it Tim?”
“Him?” He shrugged. “Dumb as a post, but horny as a
toad. He’s fine, in his way. He mostly ignores me and my . . .
funk. Suits me fine.”
“Then what?”
Russ swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple dancing like a
stuck fish bone yearning to be free. He shook his head.
“Fine, then,” I said. “You’ve always confided in me,
always told me your little shitty secrets, even if they didn’t
amount to anything. Now, you look like crap — a shadow of your
former self and you hum and haw. I think I’ll join my cowboy is
search of snow.”
I turned away, wavering in the first few steps. Russ
muttered something I understood, but really couldn’t fathom.
“Ask your cowboy what’s up with me.”
I rounded on him.
“Are you telling me that Matt’s been . . .”
“No,” Russ snapped. “Nothing like that.”
“Then like what?”
“He can see through me. Always has, since the first
day. His eyes penetrate my soul and he reads me like a book,
something I thought you could do. Ask him.”
That did it. Cat and mouse games aside, Russ had
pissed me off and I wouldn’t stay there for another round. I
flipped him the finger and marched off, as best I could, to the
curve in the road.
The road inclined steeply. I didn’t think I’d make
it, but as I rounded the curve, a strange silence overtook me. The
conversations of tourists and rangers suddenly muffled. It was as
if a quilt was thrown over my head. I had never known such silence.
A vacuum. My breath hastened, my fingers tingling. I was going to
pass out. I just knew it. However, beyond me was the summit and
there was nothing beyond the pinnacle except a mound of snow —
frozen and gray, but snow nonetheless. Near the drop off stood a
man in a cowboy hat.
“Matt,” I called.
I was afraid to approach the ridge. With wobbly feet
and swimming head, I might not need to reflect on the angel harks
to
Jump. Jump.
I might just get to the edge, swoon and
tumble. However, Matt didn’t turn. Nor did he acknowledge me, so I
had no choice but to trundle nearer the brink.
“Didn’t you hear me?” I asked.