3
“This is the story of a man, a mountain, and an obsession.
“It’s not the most beautiful mountain in the world. Out of all the world’s highest peaks it lacks the symmetry of K2, the sleeping-dragon spine of Makalu, or the graceful slopes of Kangchenjunga. In fact, at first glance it’s kind of unprepossessing, to the point where mountaineers refer to it as ‘the pile’ or ‘the slag heap’. A vast, double peaked heap of ice and rock.
“In the days of the East India Trading Company it caught the attention of surveyors as they stomped all over the Indian subcontinent with giant theodolites, attempting to catalogue every last inch of their new domain. The Great Trigonometric Survey of India began in 1802, but from the start it was dogged with disease, disaster and political obstacles, so it wasn’t until 1847 that the then Surveyor General – Andrew Waugh – noticed that there was a peak in the Himalayas that appeared to be even higher than the summit of Kangchenjunga, which at 28,169 feet was then assumed to be the highest mountain in the world.
“The mystery mountain was designated simply ‘Peak B’, but it continued to preoccupy Waugh, so he sent another surveyor to the area to make observations from as close as they could get, which was unfortunately about 120 miles away. Nepal wouldn’t let the British into the country, for fear they’d start sticking Union Jacks in it and claiming it as their own, which was not exactly a groundless anxiety – let’s face it.
“The new surveyor – Nicholson – did his best and came back with fresh calculations that suggested that Peak B was a little over 29,000 feet high. When Nicholson came down with malaria the work was continued by a guy named Hennessey, who had a whole new notation system using Roman numerals, which meant that Peak B was now to be known as Peak XV - fifteen. From the beginning this mountain seemed to resist all attempts to hang a single name on it, and it was no better when the surveyors attempted to find out a local name for the beast. Hindered by Nepal’s policy of non-cooperation, it’s unlikely they would have heard the Nepali name – Sagarmatha. The Tibetan name – Chomolungma – came to them garbled via the Chinese and the tales of French explorers who had been in the area a century before. Finally, in desperation, Waugh suggested it should be named after the Surveyor General who had come before him, a Welshman named Sir George Everest.
“And yes, you heard me correctly. Eeve-rest. That was how he pronounced his name, emphasis on the first syllable. For reasons that nobody quite understands, it was the mispronunciation that stuck, as if the mountain was so massive that it swallowed all attempts at a consistent nomenclature.
“And it was massive. 29,029 feet above sea level. That’s 8,848 meters, for those of a metric persuasion. In 1852, an Indian surveyor named Radhanath Sikdar was the first to confirm that Mount Everest was the tallest mountain on Earth. Not the most beautiful by a long shot, but it wasn’t its beauty that made it so alluring to adventurers. Not now that it was the highest. The ultimate. The person who first climbed Everest would be the first person to stand on the roof of the world.
“It was irresistible. This is our mountain. And this is our man’s obsession.”
There. That will do for now. I switch off the microphone and take a much-needed mouthful of now tepid coffee. I sit back and listen, enjoying the quiet. Ever since we dropped Matt across the water it’s been weirdly peaceful. I used to wake up with my nerves braced for another tearful phone call from Mom, but now that he’s more or less incarcerated I sleep easier at night.
And then there’s Rocco.
He doesn’t make any music, which is strange, and maybe something I should talk to him about, because it seems wrong for him to be disconnected from the greatest love of his life. He doesn’t even have a guitar with him and seems incomplete without it. What he does do is cook, often, enthusiastically and with a surprising amount of skill. When I open the door with my foot I can hear him in the kitchen. Something sizzles as it hits the pan, and he murmurs, either to himself or to the cat.
“Go do your recording,” he said, helpful as a husband. “I’ll fix dinner.”
I descend from the snowy Himalayas to the smell of bacon. Yes, he’s definitely talking to the cat, a round-eyed tuxie who turns into Queen Mooch at the first whiff of pork fat. She’s winding around Rocco’s ankles as he stirs the pan.
“Hey,” he says, his hair tied in a clumsy ponytail at his nape. “You get everything done you meant to?”
“I made a start. That’s often the hardest part.” A pot of water is boiling on the back burner. The surface behind me still has traces of flour. I spot cheese, garlic and tomatoes and I try to guess what he’s up to from the ingredients I can see, but it’s become more and more apparent that he’s a much better cook than me. I didn’t realize at the time, but I was slithering closer to that hole where work takes precedence over everything, and once you fall down that you’re really in trouble. That’s when you lose the ability to stop and smell the flowers, and start thinking that Soylent looks like a good choice for dinner.
“Do you need a hand?” I ask.
“No, I don’t think so,” he says. “Other than maybe picking some of that basil.” He gestures to the pot on the windowsill. “Thanks.”
He turns down the pot on the back burner and goes to the fridge, dislodging the scavenging cat. His feet are bare and he moves with a wonderful purposefulness far removed from the vacant zombie shamble of the junkie. He brings out a bowl of gnocchi, which explains the smear of flour.
“You made gnocchi from scratch?”
“Sure. Handmade. Not bad, huh?”
I laugh. “This is so not what I imagined being roommates with a rock star would be like.”
“No?” He scrapes the minced garlic into the pan with the bacon. “What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t expecting you to be down with any kind of Led Zeppelin antics, but it does kind of suggest a certain level of debauchery. Late nights. Lots of girls.”
Rocco shakes his head and smiles. “I’m afraid I’m very boring since I got sober. No drugs, no booze, no trashing hotel rooms. Don’t even do girls any more.”
“Oh,” I say, caught off guard. Is he trying to tell me he’s switched teams? “Are you…?”
He grasps my confusion immediately. “No, not boys either,” he says, adding tomatoes to the pan and tossing in another handful of salt. “Actually I can’t remember the last time I had sex. It’s probably getting on for two years, at least.”
“Holy shit.”
Rocco shrugs. “It’s just one of those things. Hey, could you pass the pecorino? Thanks.” He dumps the cheese in and stirs quickly. “Heroin fries the shit out of your dopamine receptors, so you completely lose interest in all natural pleasures like food, music and sex. Everything is just dross compared to smack. It’s fucking horrible, and why coming off it is like the worst thing in the world, because you’ve damaged your ability to experience any kind of joy in life.”
“Lost the ability to stop and smell the flowers,” I say.
“Exactly. It’s the pits. Food tastes like cardboard, music means nothing and sex seems pointless. I didn’t even jerk off for like a year.”
“Oh my God.” I’m glad of the steam that hides my blush. The picture that leaps into my head has been sharpened by years of sexual fantasy. I’ve imagined it all – the motion of his hips, the way his eyelids tremble at the crucial moment. I think he bites his lip when he comes.
“I know, right?” he says, with a dirty, boyish smile. “Apparently it’s very bad for the prostate, keeping it all bottled up like that for so long.” He picks up the pepper mill and grinds it into the pan. “Sometimes I think the hardest part of getting clean was not losing patience with how long it took to start feeling pleasure again. That’s usually when people relapse, so I just started doing this.”
“Cooking?”
“Yep. I needed something new to obsess about.” He grabs the plate with the basil leaves I’ve picked. “Go sit down. I’ll bring it through.”
The table is already set in my tiny dining room. No sooner have I sat down than Rocco sails in with a round of garlic bread on pizza dough, then follows a moment later with the gnocchi.
“Gnocchi alla amatriciana,” he says. “Guanciale, pomodori e pecorino. Buon appetito!”
He’s originally from Philadelphia but his Italian is lively and un-American. His full last name is Pontecorvo, after the tiny town in Lazio where his ancestors came from, but showbiz demanded he shave it down to something a little easier on the Anglo tongue.
“Carbs and carbs and carbs,” I say, happily breaking off a piece of garlic bread.
“Low carb is for people who have lost interest in life,” he says. “It’s not for Italians. Or the Irish, come to that. We are two races who understand the merit of a big plate of starch.”
I take a careful bite of the steaming hot gnocchi. The potato dumplings are pillowy, and the sauce is rich and smoky. “Oh. God. That’s amazing.”
“It’s the guanciale,” he says. “Pork cheek. Who knew a pig’s face could taste so good?”
We stuff our faces in satisfied silence for a while. His hair – the pure white streak at the front that started going gray before any of the rest – comes loose from and flops across his forehead. He tucks it back behind his ear and smiles almost shyly when he catches me looking at him, and I have another one of those moments where I have to pinch myself and remind myself that this is real. I am roommates with Rocco Ponti.
And actually? I’m doing pretty well with it. I haven’t knocked on his bedroom door at night and begged him to fuck me. I haven’t turned the apartment into a vast puddle of drool. And there’s no booze in the house so I haven’t managed to get drunk and tell him the exciting story of my first ejaculation. In fact I think I’m keeping it together quite well, but then he licks the sheen of butter from his lower lip and sends my heart reeling all over again.
It’s like it happens in slow motion. The tip of his tongue is pink and pointed. Just the smallest lick, but then his teeth come down to scrape any last trace of butter from his lip and my dirty mind goes into overdrive. His teeth in his lip, his slender body straining upwards into his own touch. Or mine. Oh God, what if it were my hand on him, my lips open to receive the gasp that bursts from his, his eyelashes fluttering against my face as he flows hot into my hand?
He looks at me and I’m sure it must show on my face, because there’s a sudden heat in the room. If we’d had wine with dinner I might have just come out in said it in that moment.
I love you. I want you. I’m not a child any more. Come to my bed and I’ll show you how good it can be.
But I’m stone cold sober, and so is he, and he has the sobriety chip to prove it. That stupid little plastic disc with its misappropriated quotation. I hate that chip. It’s a bigger Thou Shalt Not than his heterosexuality; he’s six months sober and in no mental shape to be getting it on with anyone, least of all his best friend’s brother.
“So,” he says, reaching for another piece of garlic bread and breaking the spell. Like me, he knows he must. He inclines his head slightly to the door of my room and for a split second I almost misunderstand. “What were you working on in there?”
“Oh. Um…Mallory and Irvine.”
Rocco gives me a polite, blank look. Crisis averted, if only I can stop thinking about having sex with him.
“Everest Expedition,” I say. “1924. Part of that big post-war push to get up there.”
“Do you ever think about doing it?” he says.
Is he being deliberate with his choice of words right now? “What? Everest? No, fuck off. It’s the world’s most dangerous tourist trap. You know the lines they have at Disneyland? It’s like that, only you are literally dying while you’re standing in line for the summit. No, my natural cowardice and knowledge of everything that can go wrong at high altitudes keep me firmly at sea level, thank you very much. That was the whole idea behind the podcast – Armchair Explorers.”
“I love it,” says Rocco. “You’d never know you’d never been to half these places. You always know your stuff. I feel like I’m traveling the world when I listen to you.”
I laugh, because it’s ridiculous. “But you have traveled the world. Literally.”
He takes a sip of diet soda and shakes his head. “Yeah, but do you know how much of it I’ve seen? It’s actually pathetic. I’ve been to Europe, to Japan, to Australia, and they all look the damn same to me. I see the same things in every country. There’s a series of green rooms, stages, hotels and tour buses. Oh, and toilets. I’ve puked into toilet bowls on every continent except Antarctica.”
“You mean you’ve never played McMurdo?”
Rocco laughs. “No, but I bet it would be fucking lit. That could be one for the Bucket List – play live for the people at an Antarctic research station.”
“That would be very cool.”
“Literally.”
“There’s a lot of literally in this conversation lately,” I say, setting down my fork and wondering if he’ll judge me if I have a white trash moment and pop open a button on my jeans. “Okay, that was delicious.”
“I told you,” he says. “I’m like you – I have an obsessive streak. If something catches my interest it’s really hard to tear me away from it, whether it’s opiates or food or Bach or whatever.”
“You know that was the first thing I ever heard you play?”
“What? Bach? I must have been doing that on my own. Your brother always hated it if I played any of ‘that classical shit.’ I don’t suppose you remember what piece it was?”
“Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring.”
He smiles. “There’s that perfect recall again. I always preferred that without the recitative. And in the original tempo – oh my God. They drain the fucking life out of anything Baroque these days by slowing it down. It sounds like it’s being played by sloths on benzos. Like Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Jesus, that thing has just become the wedding dirge for white people with no imagination, whereas if you hear it played at the speed it’s supposed to be played then it loses all the banality and has this completely different energy. Especially if you get the authentic seventeenth century instruments…” Somehow he mistakes my expression for one of boredom and stops. “Shit, sorry. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”
“No. You’re fascinating.”
The words come out with too much passion and there’s a fresh flash of heat between us. Which is why maybe Rocco scrambles for the one thing that could put it out. “Matt used to hate it when I rambled,” he says.
“Matt was just insecure that you were a better trained musician than him.”
“No,” says Rocco, generous even in the face of the truth. “It wasn’t like that. He’s just…he’s very compartmentalized.” He makes little boxes in the air with his hands. “Opera goes here, and rock music goes over here, and all your bubblegum pop or whatever goes all the way over there and we don’t have anything to do with that…”
“…well, I think that’s stupid.”
He shakes out his hair and reties it. “So do I, but rock and roll is really fucking tribal. All this – the hair, the tattoos, the leather and studs – it’s all about saying you belong in the gang. I’d go in there and try and teach him vocal techniques I’d learned from opera singers and he’d automatically get defensive. It didn’t fit in the rock box. He was like ‘I don’t need to sound like Pavarotti. Fuck off.’”
“Wait, aren’t those techniques usually about preserving the voice?”
“They totally are, yeah,” says Rocco. “If you’ve got a voice you should take care of it. Don’t go all Axl Rose with it. That guy had one of the most incredible ranges in rock. You know how he could go from that real low baritone to that emergency siren screech he busts out in Welcome To The Jungle? It was insane how good his voice was when he was at the peak of his powers, but he smoked and drank and stressed his voice until it was shot. I explained this a million times over to your brother, but it was only when he heard the exact same thing from a really expensive vocal coach from New York…”
I laugh, knowing how the story ends. I’ve done it myself. “…right. Because if you’re paying for the advice you’re much more likely to take it.”
“Yup. You nailed it. That’s exactly how it works. Maybe knowing that people who love him are paying top dollar for rehab will straighten him out. It’s actually pretty hard to keep on being bratty to your drug and alcohol counselors when you remind yourself that you’re paying them to keep you on the straight and narrow.”
“How’d you think he’s doing?”
Rocco shrugs. “Who knows? He hasn’t busted out yet, so that has to be a good sign, right?”
Just then my phone shudders on the sideboard. We both look at it with identical expressions of dread.
“Oh God. You jinxed it,” I say, and reach for it.
“Shit. Is that him?”
“No.” I exhale. “It’s the realtor. She wants to know if I can take a look at a house tomorrow.”
“Can you?”
I glance over the listing. A yellow clapboard house about to celebrate its centenary. Three bedrooms, two baths. A little bit larger than what I had in mind, but why not spread out? “I think so. Looks nice. You want to come see?”
He takes the phone from me and looks at the pictures. “Are you planning on moving me in?” he says.
“Maybe. Let’s just say I’m not desperate to get rid of you just yet. Especially if you keep on cooking like that.”
Rocco frowns. “Yeah, I’m not gonna cook like that all the time, just so you know. Otherwise I’ll end up fat. Like, Jim Morrison dead-in-the-bathtub fat.”
“What happened to dissing low-carb?”
“Bravado,” says Rocco, handing me back the phone with a grin. “The last desperate yell of a man who recently turned thirty-five. You know how they say every pound after thirty-five is impossible to lose? Yeah – it is scary how true that turned out to be.”
“Bullshit. You’ve never looked better.”
God, why do I keep saying these things? Telling him he’s fascinating and hot. The man is straight, for fuck’s sake. I’m clearly making him uncomfortable.
*
Meredith, the realtor, is having a hard time keeping her tongue in her mouth. I know how she feels. It’s a rainy spring afternoon and Rocco looks good in this light, and the house lets in plenty. He stands admiring the rear deck through the glass doors. There’s a small lawn and in the far distance – and this is bumping the price up another fifty grand – a slivered glimpse of the Sound.
“You know the bolt on the bathroom door is loose?” he says.
“Oh. Is it? Okay – we can get that fixed,” says Meredith, scrambling to turn things back around. “As you can see, it’s a really roomy backyard. Great view. Lot of potential.”
“Definitely,” he says. “Lot of room for tomatoes.”
“You grow?” she asks, and Rocco turns impish.
“Significantly,” he says, batting his long black lashes. “Although I’m not totally sure you’d have enough sunlight for tomatoes. Zucchini, on the other hand…once you start those things…”
“Oh, sure,” she says. “They’re a cinch. Just don’t let them out of control, or they’ll wreck your relationship.”
I’m so intrigued by the idea of a homewrecking vegetable that I don’t bother to correct her. “How?” says Rocco, who clearly shares my sudden fascination.
“I planted a bunch of them and they were…overachievers,” she says, with a sigh. “They just kept producing and producing and producing until the backyard looked like something from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and he finally lost his mind when I attempted to make zucchini cobbler. We’d had zucchini noodles, zucchini bread, baba ganoush but with zucchini instead of eggplant – it was insane. Don’t plant them, not unless you want to become that wild eyed person who attempts to give spare zucchinis to the UPS guy, because none of your neighbors will take them any more.”
“We’ll definitely bear that in mind,” says Rocco. “No zucchini.”
Meredith’s phone brrs and she sighs again. “Excuse me a moment. I have to take this. Please – feel free to explore.”
“We?” I say, as she disappears out the front.
“Hmm?”
“We. You said ‘we’. You do know she thinks we’re together, right?”
“She can think that,” says Rocco, wandering into what must be the master bedroom. “It doesn’t bother me if she does. You know me – I’m not the kind of guy who’s threatened by it.”
“So what’s the game?” I ask, following him. It’s a big room, with a bay window partially shaded by a big lilac bush. “You let her keep thinking you’re gay and then you pleasantly surprise her?”
Rocco perches on the edge of the bay window seat. “Why would I want to do that?” he asks.
“You were flirting with her,” I say, taking a seat beside him.
“Me?”
I give him a dirty look. “Significant grower? Really?”
Rocco is unrepentant. “Well, yeah. I am. It doesn’t look like much on a cold day, but whose does?”
I laugh way too loud and it echoes in the empty room. “Oh my God,” I say, lowering my voice. “Why are you telling me about your penis?”
He nudges his knee against mine. “I’m flirting. Not sure how it works with a guy, but I’m trying. Am I doing it right?”
My heart suddenly feels too big for my chest. It thrums in the base of my throat. This is everything I ever wanted, and yet at the same time it’s so, so weird. “You’re…flirting?” I manage to say.
“Yeah.”
“With me?”
“Trying to, yeah.”
“Why?”
“You know why.” He looks directly at my lips. The lilacs outside the window bring out the blue in his eyes as he raises them to meet mine again.
“You’re straight, Rocco,” I say, determined to be sensible. “You’re six months out of rehab–”
“–seven. It’s seven now.”
“Seven. Fine. But you said yourself it’s too soon for you to be with anyone. Besides, you’re not gay. You’re probably just desperate. Two years without sex has addled your brain.”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. The realtor knows. She figured out that there’s something between us, and she got that impression from somewhere.”
“Uh, where, exactly?”
“You know where,” he says, and his voice is deep and low. He inches closer on the window seat and his fingers find mine. It’s his left hand, harder and more muscular than the right, but his fingertips feel surprisingly soft. I have a strange, non-sequiteurish thought – when was the last time he had those fingers on a fretboard? – but I know it’s just my brain waving a white flag in the face of overwhelming desire.
“We’ve been having…moments,” says Rocco, his fingers opening up gaps in mine, teasing and caressing.
“Moments?” There’s an echo in the room. I don’t look up. I keep looking down at our hands, at the delicate dance of fingertips taking place in the space between our thighs.
“Yeah,” he says, shifting on the seat, turning towards me. “Little…hot…moments.” His fingers walk up the side of my thigh and I can’t help myself any more. I look up and I’m already lost. His deep blue eyes are doing that thing again, that sexy back and forth between eyes and lips that says you’re about to get kissed. And how.
He runs the backs of his fingers over my mouth. The smell of hand soap is sharp under my nose, crowding out the perfume of the lilacs drifting in from the open window. “I know you feel it, too,” he says. “Last night you were looking at me like you wanted to fucking eat me.”
He has no idea what I want to do to him. Does he know that his was the first cock I fantasized about sucking? He can’t know that. If he did he wouldn’t be doing this.
“Seven months, Rocco,” I say, but it’s a feeble attempt. “This is…”
“…a terrible idea. I know.”
His hand settles on the back of my neck, drawing me in. First our foreheads touch, and then our noses. We hang there for a moment, breathing the same air, as if we’re afraid to close the gap. “Please,” I hear myself say, in a near frantic whisper. “Please just kiss me.”
The first touch of his mouth is dry and chaste. I feel the wet tip of his tongue – precise as a pinprick in the middle of my lips – and that reminds me of watching that pink pointed tip lick up the butter, setting off a damburst of dirty thoughts in my mind. I gasp and he goes in, his tongue pushing between my open lips, and then there’s nothing in my head but this kiss. The wet sounds echo in the empty room and I’m drowning in purple and sweetness and almost two decades worth of yearning. I know in this moment that I will never again be able to smell lilacs without getting hard.
“How are your lips so soft?” he whispers, when we come up for air. I reach for him again, but it’s too late. There are footsteps on the floor: Meredith’s back.
Rocco and I move apart. I’m glad of the length of my jacket as I stand up, and I’m gratified to see he does the same, pulling his navy peacoat closed over his crotch. I did that.
“Sorry,” says Meredith, taking in our shining eyes and wet mouths. “I didn’t mean to…”
“No, it’s okay,” says Rocco. “We were just having a…a…”
“A moment,” I say.
“A conference,” he says, and when he looks at me his smile is huge and stupid. He winds an arm around my waist and pulls me close. “So what do you think, honey? You into it?”
It takes me a second to realize he means the house. “I’m so into it,” I say. “I might even love it.” Am I really about to buy a house just because I kissed Rocco Ponti in the master bedroom?
There are dumber reasons. “You need more time to discuss it?” says Meredith.
Rocco shakes his head. “Not me. I’m sold. I think it’s beautiful.” He looks at me and I don’t know whether to kiss him or kill him. I name my price in a haze, and I get it. That’s it. That’s all it was. I just bought a house, but it hardly matters, because all I can taste is Rocco.
“Honey?” I say, as soon as we step out onto the narrow side street where I parked.
“Yes, baby?”
I swat at him and we tussle for a second, then my ass hits the fence opposite. His tongue is in my mouth again and I can’t get enough of it. I’m high as a kite from both him and from promising such a huge sum of money.
“What did I just do?” I say, between kisses.
“You mean the house, or me?”
“Both.”
Rocco laughs and runs his hands through my hair. “You haven’t done me,” he says. “Not yet.”
I’m dizzy, practically delirious. “Do you even know what to do?”
“No, but sex is sex. All you have to do is figure out what feels good and keep doing that, right?”
I’m dreaming. I must be. “Jesus Christ,” I say. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”
“Everything?”
Somehow I restrain myself from kissing him again. “Get in the car.”
He laughs and he’s so beautiful that I feel a flicker of fear. What am I to him? A new obsession? But then I slip into the seat beside him and he’s human again, frowning at his phone, no longer the person I placed on a pedestal when I was little more than a child.
“Shit,” he says, squinting at the screen.
“What? Who is it?”
He holds up the phone and I see the name. Matt.
“You’re kidding. I didn’t think he was supposed to have a phone?”
Rocco exhales, pushing his jaw out in an expression I know means he’s frustrated beyond words right now. “He isn’t. He’s checking himself out.”
“What? He’s only been in there for like three weeks.”
He sighs. “Yeah, well – apparently he knows all there is to know about it and he’s cured.”
“Which means he’s not, I’m guessing?”
“You got it,” says Rocco. “Fuck. I always had a feeling he’d do this. Come on – we’ve got to get to the ferry terminal.”
“He’s there?”
“He’s on his way over. If we catch him now we might be able to talk him out of it.”
I start the car, my head spinning with a dozen different things at once. And the worst part is that I’m mad all over again. This was shaping up to be one of the best days of my life and once again Matt has to insert himself into it and wreck it.