Before #2
“Yeah,” I say, hoping we can just leave it at that. I get the general idea.
He’s still staring at me, though. Finally, his face softens.
“Gretchen is best friends with Hilary. All I’m saying is that I know a decent amount about Richard’s marriage.” He hesitates. “And as your friend, I feel like I should say regardless of how…I know how Richard…but he really loves Gretchen. He really does.”
* * *
We were all gathered in the lounge tent for the briefing after breakfast. The lounge was a third of the size of the dining tent, cozy and chic—leather chairs, gorgeous rug, and a small, crackling fire to combat the early morning chill.
They’d made clear in the packing guide that a hallmark of Kilimanjaro was the wild swings in temperature.
Cold and damp, then blistering heat all within a day, and that we’d be dangerously cold on the summit.
That it might rain a lot or not at all and that snow was possible.
But it was one thing to be told something, another to experience it.
Already, the weather was reminding us we were no longer in charge.
“Look at this place.” Van gestured at the fancy tea setup on a sideboard. “Remember our first trip spring break sophomore year? Driving from Dartmouth to Vegas in Richard’s car?” Van laughed. “That piece-of-shit Chevy…”
Brooks turned to me. “You’d never know Richard grew up dirt poor. Did you even have indoor plumbing, Richard?”
Scotty grimaced. “Whoa, Brooks, ease up.”
“What?” Brooks blinked innocently, but his voice sounded genuinely angry suddenly.
“Come on—Richard’s proud of climbing out of the gutter and up to the pinnacle of New York society!
Fifth Avenue apartment! Goldman Sachs! He even hitched himself to Gretchen Dunlop—of those Dunlops!
” He eyed me meaningfully, even though I had no clue who the Dunlops were.
What I did know was that this context changed the way I saw Richard. I knew what it was like to grow up with nothing. Our electricity shut off at such regular intervals, we had flashlights stored in almost every corner.
“Excuse me, Brooks Grace of Grace Chemical,” Richard said. “I’m sorry that never actually having to work a day in your life made you such a sore loser.”
Sore loser?
“Fuck you, Richard,” Brooks said.
“Okay, Encyclopedia,” Van said, gripping Brooks by the back of the neck with one huge hand. “Let’s take a breath before you pop a blood vessel, little man.”
Brooks shrugged Van off, then glanced Richard’s way. “Sorry. Stressful morning.”
“Come on,” Richard said, patting him on the back. “This is what we all came for, squabbling like the old days.”
“Hey, remember that first trip we took when everyone got the shits?” Scotty burst out laughing.
“Ah, man, we agreed never to talk about that!” Van said, then groaned. “It was the eggs in that crap hotel we stayed in. I swear it was.”
Now they all laughed. First Scotty and Van, then Richard and Brooks.
“Speaking of which, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m rethinking breakfast,” Van said.
“Me, too,” I offered. “I think it’s the altitude. Or maybe the altitude medication.”
“I thought it was delicious!” Scotty said.
“That’s because you’re a human garbage disposal,” Brooks said.
Scotty looked like he was about to argue, but he grinned instead. “I’d live on McDonald’s if it wasn’t for Hilary’s five-star tastes—Per Se, Eleven Madison Park…”
“She’s still breaking the bank, huh?” Richard asked.
Scotty shrugged casually. “Should I break out the pictures again? There’s a cost to everything—women, especially.”
I kept my expression neutral, but inwardly I winced.
It was awkward being privy to their casual sexist banter, but at the same time I found it strangely comforting to think that maybe all men like this—wealthy, successful, privileged—were the same.
Perhaps I hadn’t chosen so poorly with the Senator after all.
“Fellas, I’m not sure this conversation is making us look very good.”
When I glanced up, Richard nodded in my direction. Everyone looked appropriately chastened for a beat. Was I annoyed Richard thought I needed protecting? Yes. Annoyed and a little touched.
“Thanks, but you don’t have to be careful around me,” I said. “We should all be free to be ourselves. Otherwise, this is going to be a very long week.”
“Amen to that,” Scotty agreed.
“So, Frankie,” Van said. “What brings you to Africa?”
I had rehearsed my story. A woman, traveling alone—I’d known I’d need one. But I had imagined my audience being a group of nuzzling couples, not an all-male group of old friends. I’d expected to be a different kind of outsider.
“I just got my first solo show at a really big gallery,” I said with a faint tremor in my voice.
There was a chorus of congratulations around the table, sweet and unexpected.
“I wanted to celebrate, and I’ve always wanted to climb Kilimanjaro.
I grew up hiking in Colorado. But it’s been a while.
I’ve been in the city since college. That’s a long time not hiking. ”
I was still smiling as I glanced over at Richard. He was looking at me intently, like he could tell I was leaving something out.
“You know, my good friend has a son who went to NYU,” Brooks said. “He’s maybe about your age. I’m not sure. Noah King?”
I could feel my eyes bugging out. “Noah is one of my closest friends!”
Brooks laughed stiffly. “His dad and I used to work together, back in my law firm days.”
It was surprisingly nice having even this tiny connection between these strangers on the other side of the world and my life back home. It made me feel a little tethered, in a good way.
“The Kings recommended True Altitude,” I said.
“That’s funny. For us, too,” he said with one of his awkward smiles. “Small world.”
“Good morning, everyone!” Kito called out cheerfully as he entered the lounge. “I need to take everyone’s blood oxygen and pulse now. So we have a baseline. We will do it twice a day, every day, while we are hiking. Remember, it is not a competition.”
Kito set about passing the pulse oximeter, a small device that clipped to the end of your finger.
Of course, it immediately became a competition.
The goal was high blood oxygen, low pulse—and to my surprise, I won.
Blood oxygen 97%, heart rate 59—numbers that were better than even Bakari’s or Kito’s.
I wanted not to care. But as the only woman, I cared very much.
And aside from a little good-natured grumbling, I was pleasantly surprised that no one said a sexist word.
Apparently, it was all very random. AMS, or acute mountain sickness, was like a tsunami sprung from a lake—felling people suddenly and randomly, the vulnerable and strong in equal measure.
It didn’t matter what kind of shape you were in, or how hard you had trained.
Eating and drinking enough helped keep it at bay along with taking all the medications.
Resting when you needed to. Praying. Even so, there were no guarantees.
No one knew for sure how their body would respond to high altitude, even from one expedition to the next.
It leveled the playing field in a way that felt both liberating and terrifying.
Kito was still recording all our vitals in a little notebook when Bakari arrived with an exquisite map that he spread out over the coffee table. Crouching alongside it, pencil in hand, he traced a twisty trail.
“We will take this route,” Bakari began, running a finger along it. “It is slightly longer, but it is the much better way.”
“Because?” I heard myself ask, though my plan had been to limit my questions to avoid conveying weakness.
“More days to acclimatize, and more time means we can move more slowly,” Bakari said. I appreciated the calm authority in his voice, though I wasn’t exactly sure I understood the logic. “Also, the views are much better, and the route is less crowded.”
“But what about the Western Breach?” Van asked. “Doesn’t that mean we have to cross that?”
The other men hummed in agreement. They understood what Van was asking.
I’d seen reference to the Western Breach when I’d skimmed the True Altitude materials detailing each day of climbing—the terrain, time, elevation gained.
Some days were described as harder than others, but I knew enough about climbing to know that it would be hard to translate the information into practical terms until I was on Kilimanjaro itself.
It had unique topography and I’d never even been to Africa before.
Besides, how did one conceptualize the 15,535 feet of elevation on day six as opposed to 13,897 on day five?
Even though I had grown up in the mountains of Colorado, the numbers felt to me impossible to quantify.
Besides, this mountain was in a league of its own.
“Yes, the Western Breach will be on our route,” Bakari said, pointing to a spot on the map that looked like all the other spots. There was something ominous about the way he said it. A tautness to his tone, the way he didn’t look up from the map. We all stared at the spot where he was pointing.
“I googled the Western Breach,” Brooks added. “Sounds like no joke.”
“No. The mountain does not have a sense of humor. But the breach is day seven,” Bakari said, holding up seven fingers on two hands for emphasis. “A lifetime away. Today is today. We take this mountain as it comes—little by little, slowly, slowly.”
Yes, exactly. I could do this.
“Polé, polé,” Kito added in Kiswahili. “Slowly, slowly. That is the way we will get there.”
“And in one piece, right?” Van added. “I promised the wife.”
“No one’s died on your watch?” Scotty asked with a laugh. “Right?”
Bakari was quiet for a long, uncomfortable moment. Oh my God, the answer is yes.
“I have been guiding climbs for thirty years. Many things happen over so many expeditions. Last trip a woman got very sick at base camp, here.” Bakari shrugged.
“Anything can happen. Several years ago a man got AMS near the summit. We brought him down right away, but…” He shook his head.
“Sometimes the mountain has other plans.”
“He was with his fiancée,” Kito added. Don’t tell us more. Don’t tell us more. “He had insisted that she finish the climb. We all thought he was getting better once we got down. But then…” Kito held up his hands. “The mountain.”
Clearly they believed it was better to be honest. But it felt like someone had hit me in the solar plexus.
“That’s awful,” Scotty said. “I don’t think I realized.” He looked around at everyone. “I’m not really looking to die up here, guys.”
“No one’s dying,” Richard said, then turned to Bakari. “Right?”
“Of course not,” Bakari said. “Because we will be careful, and we will take each day as it comes. That’s the way everyone will stay safe and healthy, and we will all summit together. You must only ever push yourself to a spot that is not too far.”
“And how will we know where that spot is?” Brooks asked.
“You know yourself better than you think,” Bakari said. “You already know everything you need to. It’s what brought you here.”