Chapter Thirty-Four
Except for the two feet of snow left behind, it was as if the storm had never happened. The sky was bright blue, and with the parabola effect from the walls of snow and rock surrounding us, it was so hot that it seemed like the sun had mistaken Mount Everest for Thailand today.
After the winds had peaked during yesterday’s storm, they stayed sustained at that level for an hour before gradually backing down to a reasonable force. They died down altogether sometime in the middle of the night, but we stayed an extra day at Camp Two for avalanche reasons. Now our group was rallying for our climb up Lhotse Face to spend the night at Camp Three.
Lhotse Face is as steep as a double black diamond ski run, only instead of it being a narrow chute, it spans the full distance from Everest’s west flank to Lhotse’s east flank, like a drive-in movie screen for giants. The fixed line runs right up its middle, and when there are several teams on the line at once, it looks like an escalator straight to the sky.
The Cubans were already up on the line as the rest of us waited in Camp Two. I purposely brushed against Luke as the UW team positioned to get started. He glanced over and nudged me back, the intensity in his eyes reigniting our kisses in the tent this morning. Even though we were in broad daylight with clients all around, he grabbed my elbow for a split second and gave it a quick but firm squeeze.
Things were different with us now. Like the storm, we’d blown into Camp Two with anger, uncertainty, and pain, but we were leaving Camp Two with everything sure, beautiful, and new. There was still the huge question of what would happen at the end of the season, but for the world we were living in right now, he was mine and I was his.
Luke continued checking the harnesses of his UW clients while I headed over to the cook tent. He looked back at me, and seeing that I had been watching him, a smug smile crept across his lips.
I shook my head at him across the distance. His smile grew bigger.
My crew got on the line once the last UW client had clipped in. It didn’t take very long under the blinding sun before all members of A-Team had our down suits peeled halfway off with the sleeves tied around our waists like a belt.
For once, I was happy to be stuck in the back, since going fast in this heat would be even more miserable. The sun’s rays sizzled through my hair like they were searching for a chunk of scalp to fry. I insisted that Phil, Glissading Glen, and Johnsmith stop frequently for water breaks.
Camp Three was two thirds of the way up Lhotse Face. The Sherpas had built it weeks ago by cutting tent platforms straight into the snow and ice of the face. Here, the tents were three-person, which meant I’d be sharing with Doc and Claudia instead of Luke. By the time Tyler, Hulk, and I finished getting all the A-Team clients situated with enough water for the night and oxygen flowing properly, Doc and Claudia were already laid out in our tent like they’d been there for hours. I had a nagging altitude headache, so I wasted no time arranging my sleeping bag in the open spot between them. Woozy and lethargic in the sauna-like heat of the tent, I drifted easily to sleep.
After a brief guides’ meeting later that afternoon, Luke caught my eye, then traversed over to the side of the slope and around the corner to a big pile of boulders. A few minutes later, I followed.
There, the storm had swept the rock clean, and it gave us a place to sit that was hidden from camp but with a wide view of the incredible panorama. It was like we were seated on thrones at the top of the world.
“It’s been a while since you’ve been this high. You holding up?” I teased.
In response, he grabbed my face with his mittened hands and kissed me thirstily. His hands traveled down to my waist. I leaned in for more, and we kissed until we were both panting from the altitude.
I’d like to see a Going on Eighteen article talk me through this one: how to literally not run out of air when kissing at twenty-three-thousand feet.
“So…you think we’ll kiss at the summit?” I asked.
The question was hypothetical, of course, as we’d be with different teams, likely hours apart. But it was fun to pretend that it was just us climbing this mountain. Simply walking up to the top, untethered to the fixed lines and with no one to watch over. If not for the jet stream blowing on the top, we could do it right this moment, he and I. We could head to Camp Four tomorrow, then set our alarms for ten p.m. to make our summit bid, and be back at Base Camp right on the heels of the clients finishing this rotation.
“Hmmm,” he said. “If you make A-Team step it up, and I get the Dawgs tangled behind a different team, it’s possible we could summit at the same time.”
“You’d kiss me right on top of Chomolungma, in front of everybody?” The thought made me laugh. The summit of Everest was all about jockeying into position for the quintessential victory photo while battling cameras that refused to function properly in the cold. It was all oxygen masks and clients digging summit trinkets out of their pockets as we guides made sure no one dropped a mitten or fell off the side.
“How about this?” he said. “I will wrap my arms around you wherever our teams pass and keep you like that for way too long.”
“Deal,” I said, leaning in to his body and using his shoulder as a pillow. I closed my eyes and relished the feeling of him solidly beneath my ear, thankful for the rare stillness on the mountain from the boulders blocking the wind.
“So that storm made me think about something,” I said.
“What?”
“How unpredictable the weather has been here in recent years. And how you changed your major. You know, weather modeling and avalanche forecasting don’t just help climbers and athletes. They help Sherpas, too.”
“True. But it doesn’t help in the same way as medical care.”
“I think it’s equal. Climbing Sherpas have the highest job mortality rate on Earth. And how many of those deaths are weather- or avalanche-related?”
“Most.”
Including his own father’s. “So as a forecaster, you’d be in the business of preempting. You’re keeping the doctor out of work. You’re saving lives before they are at risk of being lost.”
“Hmm.”
“Seriously, Luke. Don’t you think you’d be more effective in something you’re passionate about? And having grown up here and loving mountains like you do, don’t you think you could do a better job of it than someone in, say, New Orleans, who has never stepped foot in the Himalayas? You’re like a textbook in mountaineering history. You know the past storms. You know what went wrong on expeditions, and you know what the weather view looks like from the ground, not just from the satellites.”
“It’s something to chew on.”
“Yes, it is something to chew on!”
I noticed then that his mouth was rippled in his trademark W. Amused and content. He was trying to get a rise out of me. I smacked him. He grabbed my hand and kissed it.
Afterward, his mouth remained in a W, so I knew he was actually considering the idea. It wasn’t the answer to everything, but perhaps it could satisfy his sense of duty in a way that better suited him. Also, if he didn’t go to medical school after he graduated, then maybe there was hope of us doing the Top Five together someday. I gave an internal fist pump of victory.
We stayed there on our perch for a little while longer, watching the cloudless sky start its transformation into an airbrushed canvas of neon pinks and purples. Luke’s arm was warm around me. Together, we were part of the circle of the great Himalayas that stretched out to the left and right of us and joined on the other side of the horizon.
Dad was at Global City within an hour of us returning to Base Camp. Luke and I had finished putting gear away and were starting a game of cribbage at one of the side tables in the big top.
Dad was glaring—glowering—at Luke. He knew.
“Dad! Stop it!” I hissed.
He cleared his throat. Luke quietly excused himself on a bogus chore.
“How was Pumori?” I asked.
“Fine. You have some explaining to do, MiniBoss.”
I groaned. “Doc told you, didn’t she? Speaking of, you have some explaining to do. I had no idea—”
“So there is something going on. And, no, Teresa didn’t say anything to me. Your cook, Phurba, told Pertemba that one of the Global Sherpas saw—I’m not sure I can say this aloud…”
“Maybe you shouldn’t, then.”
“He saw…that guy”—Dad pointed to the door Luke had exited from—“coming out of your tent so early in the morning it was still dark.”
Oh god. People were gossiping about us? We’d been so careful, but I guess we hadn’t been careful enough.
“Don’t you know I was caught in a whiteout?” I said, trying for a diversion.
“Spending the night, Emily? With Luke?”
“What’s new about that? We share a tent up on the mountain all the time.”
“This was in Base Camp.”
“We used to sleep over sometimes in Base Camp.”
“But you were kids then. Now—” He cleared his throat. “Now, neither of you are children.”
Oh, this was awkward. “You love Luke,” I pointed out.
“Yes, I do. He’s like a son.”
Annnd, it was getting worse.
Dad snapped his arms around me with a whomp, like a human mousetrap. “First you’re going off to college, and then you’re going off to who knows where—Tanzania, maybe—and now this!”
I was tempted to bring up Dad’s secret history with Doc again, but if I wanted to divert, it would be best to stay off the topic of relationships. “You’re going off to who knows where, too.”
“You know the location of every expedition I have planned for the next twelve months. Back to what we were talking about. Luke—our Luke—is your boyfriend. Okay, let’s see, how do I put this? I hope you and he are being careful—”
“Dad, stop!”
This was unbelievable. I’d never even seen Luke shirtless. I looked around, making sure no one was overhearing this conversation. The only other clients in the tent with us were watching a movie over in the far corner. The traitorous Cook-Phurba was not here at the moment. He better not be eavesdropping on the other side of the tent fabric. Perhaps I would suggest that Doc do a replay of eggplant parmesan night and then not help Cook-Phurba when he came begging.
“I’m a guide now, Dad. I think you can trust me to handle things”—I cleared my throat—“domestically.”
“You’re only twenty,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m twenty.” The sad part was that at the old-maid age of twenty, I actually could use some help, ahem, domestically.
Dad steepled his hands. “He treats you well?”
“Well, sometimes.” I laughed. “Just kidding, Dad. You know Luke. Of course he does.”
“I’m still not happy about this, but I guess Luke is better than someone I don’t know. But you two need to be more discreet. You do not want Jim to find out about it. In fact, this is serious enough that if you were not my daughter, I’d tell him myself. But because you are, and because I know Luke—even though I’d like to wring his neck right now—I know you two will be responsible and not let a personal relationship get in the way of what you need to do to protect your clients.”
“Of course,” I said, though I didn’t see the difference between Luke and me guiding together and Dad guiding with his own daughter along on the trip. But then, that probably should never have happened, either.
Dad plucked a cookie from the basket on the table. I took this as a good sign that he was going to stop talking about Luke. He took a bite, frowning as he chewed.
“I didn’t make them,” I said.
He set the cookie down and didn’t eat the rest of it. Take that, Randall.
“So how come you thought I was thinking about going to Tanzania?” I asked. “That’s kind of random.”
“You applied for a CentralPoint job, didn’t you?”
I looked at him oddly. “Yes, but what does Tanzania have to do with that?”
“You probably haven’t checked your email since you got down.”
“No.”
“Barrett Browning called me on the satellite phone about it yesterday.”
“Barrett Browning as in the CEO of Esplanade Equipment?”
“Yes. You’ve met him. On that Island Peak trip.”
I barely remembered. I was only fourteen that year.
“CentralPoint’s a pet project of his, and when the human resources department saw your application and recognized your name, they forwarded it to him.”
“Oh, wow. And he called you?”
“I think he just wanted an excuse to catch up, but he also wanted to make sure it was you because he’s going to email and offer you a job.”
I was speechless. I’d have somewhere to go after this! Somewhere to be. A job that didn’t involve French fries in a national park cafeteria. A job with my favorite outdoor equipment company in the world. “That’s great news!”
“Okay, so this is good? He wasn’t sure you’d be okay with Tanzania. Frankly, I wasn’t sure you’d be okay with Tanzania, but I guess you are?”
“Why do you keep saying Tanzania?”
“That’s where the pilot location is. Barrett said it’s opening midsummer.”
There was one major mountain in Tanzania: Mount Kilimanjaro. The highest mountain on the continent of Africa, and therefore one of the highly commercial Seven Summits mountains. It occasionally gets some snow on top, but it was much closer to hiking than alpine climbing.
Dad analyzed my frown. “So are you not feeling Tanzania?”
I tried to look less shocked. It was an amazing opportunity, but one mountain?
Further, Tanzania was remote and a place that had absolutely no connection to Luke.
“It’s okay if Tanzania isn’t right,” Dad said. “I would never do it. It’s beautiful but…”
But there was just one mountain.
“You know, you still have your plane ticket to Washington and, uh, with you and Luke, you might be more interested in using it now.”
“Dad!”
“I’ll be the first to admit, I’m still rooting for Washington, especially since you’d have a free place to stay with your grandparents. Or with Teresa, I hear.”
“Speaking of, do you think there might be something about Doc that you may have conveniently forgotten to tell me, for like ten years?”
His face grew red. “Like what?”
“I should make you say it after what you just put me through with Luke.”
“She’s doing her own thing now.”
“Right. Now she is. But I know it’s not that simple. You still talk all the time, and I saw her picture in your tent.”
He started nibbling on Randall’s bad-tasting cookie for distraction.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going to press you. Because, really, I don’t want to know. But know that I know. I am on to you guys.”
“Okay, yeah, so, uh, Tshering’s waiting for me back at camp. I want you down for dinner again before you guys leave. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
“And we will be discussing Jim’s decision to send eighty people up the mountain with a storm that was all but a sure bet, and what you will be doing if he tries a stunt like that during the summit bid.”
My temporary upper hand was gone. I nodded obediently.
I walked him to the door so he wouldn’t be tempted to look around for Jim and grill him personally about the storm.
We hugged good-bye.
“Your face is getting chafed, MiniBoss. You need to use more moisturizer.”
I touched my face. Yes indeed, my cheeks were rough. Thank god Dad was not hip enough to put together the low winds on Everest yesterday with Luke’s five days of stubble as the cause of the chafing.
He walked down the rock to the trail, a bit of humor in his shoulders. Shoot, maybe he was hip enough. Now it was my face turning red.