Before
Frankie
Richard’s apartment building is stunning in that old-world, Upper East Side way—intimidating, too. As the Uber Richard sent pulls away, I stand on the sidewalk, self-conscious about my bare feet and pajamas. I look down at myself, at the mess I’m in. The mess I am.
We never should have spoken after we came back home.
* * *
I woke up in my tent, headlamp on, halfway in my sleeping bag, still wearing all my layers, including my parka. What the hell? Then, slowly, it all came back: Van, the rock, the way he cried out. Just the one time. Then the silence. That fucking awful silence.
For hours we’d held out hope that somehow he would survive.
While we waited for word, Bakari found a bottle of whiskey secreted at another campsite and proffered it as we sat dazed in the dining tent. He told us to be careful—drinking at altitude was risky. But the waiting was too excruciating to face clear-headed.
And then the news had finally come: Van was dead. His body already being transported to a hospital near the airport to be readied for the trip home.
We all got drunk. It didn’t take much. We weren’t any less sad, but after a while it became harder to feel. And then, well, I didn’t really remember.
I checked my watch: 6:13 a.m.
Someone coughed—in my tent. I startled.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Richard said. When I rolled over, he leaned across the tent and handed me my water bottle. “Here, drink this.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Bakari was right about the whiskey,” Richard said.
“It hit us hard. You most of all. Probably a body mass thing, but you just put your head down on the table all of a sudden. You were half asleep while we walked you back here and got you into your sleeping bag. You okay now?” Richard looked sad sitting on his sleeping bag in the pale morning glow in the tent.
“Yes, I think I’m…really hungover? Or that could be altitude.”
“Both, probably. Or the shock,” Richard said.
“Is Van really…”
Richard nodded and looked away. “Yeah. It’s going to be so brutal—his wife, you know? They just—they were really, really in love. Not just married, you know? She’s going to be dev—” His voice cut out.
“I’m so sorry.” I reached out and put a hand on his hiking boot. I meant to do it only for a second. I intended to lift my hand away. But I could not. I did not.
Richard and I were kissing before I fully realized what was happening.
It was tentative at first. But then we exploded against each other, hands digging under layers of clothing to find bare skin.
I was on top of him, my hips pushed forward against his.
Hands searching every part of each other.
It wasn’t until I reached for his belt that I felt a jolt of shame.
I was already pulling away when I heard a voice outside the tent.
“Hello, Frankie.”
A moment later, Kito was inside squatting beside me, checking my numbers: 92 over 89. Solid, by any measure. I’d had to stall and stall before slipping the pulse oximeter onto my finger, chatting until my heart had slowed.
“You will be okay,” Kito said. “We will watch carefully, but we are headed down now. You should quickly improve. We will have breakfast and then set off.”
“Thanks, Kito,” Richard said. “We’ll be over in a second.”
After he left, Richard sat back down on his sleeping bag. The silence grew long and heavy.
I will not let myself confuse need with love.
“You really spent the whole night in here?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Richard said, his eyes on his watch as he adjusted and readjusted it. “I was worried.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For looking out for me.”
As the sun broke over the horizon, it set the inside of the tent on fire.
We were face-to-face, Richard’s hat off, his hair tousled.
I was close enough to notice the streaks of gray at his temples, the fine lines near his eyes.
And yet he still looked youthful to me, and his eyes glittered with kindness.
How different my life might have been if I’d met someone like Richard first, before the Senator.
Before everything about me got turned inside out.
“I’ve wanted to look out for you since the second we met,” he said. Each word felt weighted. Deliberate. He was quiet for a beat. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I know exactly.”
He took my hand. But somehow the moment felt like an ending—inevitable, sad, necessary. I don’t remember who let go first.
A minute later, or an hour or five, we were packed up and headed down the mountain.
Two days later we were on our way home. In between had been hours filled with grief and gutting phone calls to the States, informing people about the accident.
No calls for me, of course. I didn’t have anyone I needed to tell.
And so my trip ended in a weird, stunted kind of grief.
I hadn’t known Van well, and yet I knew him in such a strangely intimate way, which left me with no place to put his death.
All I had left was my longing for Richard, which also felt somehow like grief. And my hope, cut short by tragedy—which made it easy to ignore all the other problems with our connection. We still felt like an unsolved puzzle when we said goodbye at the airport.
A puzzle I knew I should not bring home to New York.
* * *
I have my reasons for ending up at Richard’s apartment building—I’m scared, I need a place to go, I can’t reach anyone else. But I could have tried more people. I could have waited at some brightly lit café until Thalia woke up. I can still leave now. It’s not too late.
And yet, he’s part of the situation. Richard has a right to know the context, to understand how dangerous the Senator might be. There is a very real possibility he will go to Richard’s wife—just out of spite.
But deep down, I know none of these is the real reason I’m here. I can’t leave the puzzle unsolved
A moment later I’m inside Richard’s immaculate marble lobby, an extravagant arrangement of fragrant lilacs on the reception desk helmed by a tall, young doorman.
“I’m here to see the Falks. They know I’m coming.” I smile and motion to my outfit, trying not to hate myself for my very deliberate, very false use of they. “I got locked out of my apartment. Sorry about the…no shoes.”
The doorman leans over, eyes widening when he spies my bare feet. “Oh, yeah, you can’t…No.”
“Can you please call up? Or I can just go…” I gesture toward the elevator.
He frowns as he snatches up the phone. A moment later, his voice is much softer and more submissive. “I have a young lady here, a…” He looks my way and raises his chin, asking for my name.
“Thalia,” I say, hoping that Richard will remember. Another lie so easily told. And now Richard and I have yet another secret. How many more before we are comprised entirely of lies?
—
Richard is standing at the door when I step off the elevator. He waves me into the apartment like an excited teenager, and I feel a pang of regret. Whatever my legitimate reasons, this is why I really came.
The hallway is as fancy as the lobby, lavishly textured yet tasteful wallpaper, a delicately patterned, luxurious runner setting off polished hardwood. The carpet squishes between my bare toes as I make my way to Richard’s door.
Richard smiles, shaking his head. “What happened?” he asks in a loud whisper, pointing at my feet.
I put my finger to my lips. I’ll tell you when I’m inside.
And then I am. Inside. Standing in Richard’s stately marble foyer, which opens to a gleaming kitchen on the left, a sprawling living room lined with massive windows on the right, an elegant staircase in between.
A duplex. It’s all pristine, sparkling white, dotted with navy-blue accents in the living room, mint-green in the kitchen.
It’s so…serene. That’s my first reaction.
My second reaction hits me with stunning force.
I am a trespasser in this woman’s home, pure and simple.
I am invading a place of serenity that she created for her husband and children.
Worse, I’ve convinced myself there’s something noble about what’s happening.
Or fated. That I have no choice. But everyone chooses, all the time.
I’ve decided that how I feel is more important than pretty much anything else. Including what’s right.
And so what does that make me—a monster, a whore? Or just lonely, human. Alive. Maybe I am all those things—and always will be—whether I climb one mountain or a hundred.
“What’s going on, Frankie?” Richard asks. He sounds concerned as he leads me into the kitchen. “Come sit. Let me get you some water.”
“Are you sure it’s okay that I’m here?”
“Absolutely fine. Gretchen’s off at tennis and then headed straight to a full day of benefit meetings, so you’ve missed her.
” On his way to the sink, he reaches out as if to put a hand on my shoulder but stops short.
His hesitation sucks the wind out of me.
“I’m glad you’re here. I was going to text you again. Something has been bothering me.”
I brace myself. “Oh, yeah—what’s that?”
“Are you sure that Van was right behind you?”
This is what he wants to talk about? “You mean before he fell?”
He nods. “It’s been bugging me ever since we talked about it after dinner at Las Nacionales.”
“Yeah, I think so.” I replay those last moments again. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but I remember Van said something, and he was right behind me. Then Kito came up to ask me if I was okay, so it would have been Van and then Brooks in back.”
Richard rubs his chin, deep in thought. “But Brooks said he was in front of Van, that’s why he didn’t see what happened.”
“Maybe he felt bad?” I shrug. “Wanted to pretend he didn’t see it?”
“That doesn’t sound like Brooks,” Richard says. “He also made a lot of money because Van didn’t get down from the mountain. He was going to call off the sale.”
“I thought Brooks was rich already.”