Chapter Seven Dog Day Afternoon, dir. by Sidney Lumet #2
Eli places his hand on the rough surface of the first rock, pulling himself into the air and then placing his left foot on
a rock. But as Eli reaches to put his right foot underneath him, he falters, his shoes sliding against the wall.
His body short-circuits for a moment and he just lets go. There’s a second where he tries to catch himself, waving his arms
like a baby bird to try and get his balance back, but it doesn’t help, and he drops a whole two feet back onto the floor.
And there’s no Peter to catch him, so he just lands on his ass.
“I don’t want to hear a word.” Eli points in Peter’s direction without even sparing him a glance.
“I didn’t say anything,” Peter protests once again.
“I heard snickering!” Eli proclaims.
“Here.” Peter offers him a hand, getting Eli to his feet.
“I just have to get used to it, is all.” Eli’s pride is only slightly more wounded than before as he reaches for the same
rocks, pulling himself up. This time, his foot doesn’t miss the hold, so he lifts higher into the air, then dares to let go
so that he can grab onto the next rock above him.
Eli grins as he climbs and climbs, his arms aching already, but still he carries himself higher and higher until he finally
reaches the rock with the word finished! etched into it.
“Ha-ha!” Eli boasts loudly. “See, told you I could do it!”
“That’s great, Eli!” Peter calls to him, sounding further away than Eli anticipates. “Now jump down.”
Eli looks underneath him to see just how far he is from the floor.
In an instant, his blood runs cold.
“Oh, God...” He whispers, pulling himself as close to the wall as he can get, one rock digging too close to his crotch for comfort.
“What’s wrong?” Peter asks, such an innocent question.
Eli peers down again, his vision going blurry for a moment. “Oh, you know... just wanted to enjoy the view.”
“Are you stuck?”
“No!” Eli answers too quickly, showing his hand, grabbing onto the gray safety blocks with full grips to readjust. “I’m just...
showing off. Look at how long I can stay up here!”
“The floor is padded, Eli. If you can’t climb down, just fall.”
“I don’t wanna!” Eli hides his face like a child.
“It’ll be okay, I promise,” Peter tells him. “You’ll survive.”
Eli grips the fake rocks so tightly that he’s afraid he might just pull them clear off the wall. He presses closer, hugging
the wall, hoping and praying that his foot doesn’t slip. But it does, and he flails wildly for a moment before he finds purchase
again. “I’m fine staying up here, actually!” he shouts back.
He starts to imagine how he can make a living in the gym, work remotely, have his laptop fixed to the wall, type with one
hand. Totally logical!
His eyes are closed so tight that Eli doesn’t notice as Peter climbs the wall next to him, almost completely silent as he
makes his way up.
“Eli?” Peter whispers.
“Ah!” Eli can’t help the yelp that slips out, recovering his composure in an instant as he realizes that Peter is now right next to him. “Oh, Peter. Hello.”
“Enjoying the view?” Peter looks up at the lights that hang from the ceiling.
“Yeah, yeah... totally.”
“Okay, well... some people really want to use this part of the wall, and you’re keeping them from doing that.”
“Hurry up!” a kid shouts from the floor.
“Mind your business!” Eli yells right back.
“Hey, hey, eyes on me, okay?” Peter urges him to focus. “I’m going to guide you, all right?”
Eli nods quickly. “Okay, yeah.”
“Okay.”
Peter begins to climb down, and Eli feels the panic rise in his chest, a brewing in his stomach. He doesn’t even want to think
about what it might look like to vomit from his current predicament. Except he can’t stop his mind from going there, and—
He swallows, determined to not make a fool out of himself.
Well, no more than he already has.
“Wait, where are you going?”
Peter says with a smile in his voice, “I’m going to get under you.”
“That’s smart. Good thinking.”
Eli waits, his cheek chafing from where it’s rubbing against the rough wall. Then he feels a hand on his right ankle.
“I’ll lead you on where to go, okay?” Peter’s voice arrives as a relief, even if it’s only been a few seconds.
“Okay, okay.”
“Put your foot here, just go down a bit.” Eli lets Peter pick his foot up off the rock, trusting that he won’t let him fall
as he guides Eli to the next rock. “Now take your left hand down onto that smaller rock. Use the black or the purple ones
if you need to.”
Eli is embarrassed to admit that it’s the first time he’d even noticed the other colors of rocks on either side of his body.
In his mind, he supposes he thought using them meant he was cheating.
“Okay, now your left foot, down to here.” Peter continues to lead him down the wall. “And your right hand down, just like
that. You’re almost there.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
Oh, he’s never going to live this down, he knows that much.
“Now here, and left arm here.” Peter guides him until, finally, Eli feels him release his ankles.
“Where’d you go?” Eli tries not to let the panic take control again.
“I’m on the floor,” he says. “And so are you. Basically.”
Eli looks down again out of squinted eyes, and instead of the miles from the floor that he’d imagined in his head, he’s barely
half a foot off the ground, and he finally breathes a sigh of relief.
“Oh my God...” Eli lets his forehead fall against the wall.
“Come on, let’s get some water.”
Eli finally lets go of the wall, his arms aching from keeping his weight up for so long. He tries his best not to meet the
eyes of the ten-year-olds who are waiting for their turn, watching as they climb the same wall that he had, only to make it
to the very top and then leap onto the padded floor as if it’s all a playground.
“It’s tougher than it looks, you know,” Eli says.
“Oh, I’m aware,” Peter tells him, and Eli ignores the patronizing tone. Instead, Eli lets Peter guide him to the benches that
sit against the railing. “You okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Totally. You know.” Eli does his best to wave him off, but his heart is still pounding. “Those kids make it look
easy.”
“We can leave, if you want,” Peter offers.
“No way.” Eli shakes his head. “This is your date. So, we’re staying. Plus, that wasn’t... the worst experience in the
world.”
“You could argue that me wanting to leave for you shows that I’m willing to sacrifice my own interests in order to make sure
you’re safe.”
Eli straightens, staring at Peter. “Where’d you learn that?”
Peter flushes. “I read.”
“Read what, exactly?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Peter tells him. “At the very least, we can break here for a bit.”
“Thank you.”
“By the way... who’s Phoebe Bridgers?”
“Who’s what?”
“Your, um... on your butt,” Peter asks, stammering like he’s afraid to say the word butt out loud. “You have the name Phoebe Bridgers. Something about a Grammy?”
“So, you were staring at my butt?” he teases.
“Well, it was in front of my face. I couldn’t really help but notice.”
Eli laughs at that. “She’s a singer. Rose is a big fan; I borrowed the shorts from her.”
“I take it you don’t work out often?”
“What was your first clue?”
“Your form is pretty terrible, for one.”
“Okay, what form can you have for rock climbing?” Eli asks.
But Peter ignores him. “And being afraid to fall.”
“It’s a long drop.”
“You were eight feet up, max.”
“I’d like to see how you climb.”
Peter stands without a second thought, crouching for a bag that sits on the side of the mat. His hands come back white, caked
in a chalk dust. He shakes off the excess before he rushes toward a wall marked M-10, grabbing on in a leap of sorts, earning
him a head start.
The fake rocks are a color that’s a near-perfect match for the wall, each of them only slightly bigger or smaller than Eli’s
balled-up fist, some of them sloped with no visible grips so that Peter has to hang on by the very tips of his fingers.
For a moment, his tank top rides up when he reaches for the rock above him, and Eli can see the perfect shape of the man’s ass and the strength being exerted in his calves and thighs as he braces against almost nothing at all with his feet.
In seconds, Peter’s reached the top of the wall, climbing onto the edge to stand with his hands on his hips and a too-proud
smile on his face.
“Okay, yeah. I get it.”
Peter slips back off, hanging on the edge as he checks that no one’s below him before he drops, falling into a perfect squat
on the mat. Of course, the uneven flooring causes him to fall backward, but there’s no fear in his eyes, only a little heaving
in his chest and a thin coat of sweat on his skin. Eli stands, offering a hand to Peter to help him up, though he isn’t sure
what good it does.
“Thanks.”
“You’re a showoff, you know that?” Eli braces himself as best he can, hoping Peter doesn’t take him to the floor as he hoists
himself up.
Peter smiles at him, the corners of his mouth disappearing into his dimples. “You’re okay at it. You just need to learn to
fall.”
“Yeah, I’ve never been the greatest at that,” Eli tells him, wiping the fine layer of chalk now on his hand onto his black
tank top, leaving faded white streaks. “I was too afraid to learn to ride a bike because of it.”
“You can’t ride a bike?” Peter seems genuinely amused by the information, a soft sound slipping past his lips.
“Okay, okay! You know, it’s not that big of a deal. Plenty of people can’t do things.”
“No, I mean... I didn’t mean to laugh at you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Eli picks up his own water bottle. “You can laugh; it is pretty embarrassing. Every time my friends ask me if I want to go riding down to Crissy Field or the Great Highway, I have
to fake a backache or say I’m too busy.”
“You could still learn.”
“Isn’t there some statistic about it being harder to learn to ride a bike as an adult than it is as a kid?”
Peter’s thick brows furrow. “I think that’s ice-skating. Or the violin?”