Chapter Thirteen
Milo
Looking for bird eggs doesn’t exactly sound like hard work, but, as default, I’m finding anything out here hard work.
This shit is tough. I’ve just finished a movie that I had to train really hard for – six hours a day in the gym, nothing but eggs for meals – but this is a different kind of – what’s the word?
Endurance. Yeah. Perfect word for it. Endurance.
We’re running on little sleep, it’s endlessly cold, we’re weighed down in these bulky, heavy clothes and there’s nothing here.
No people. No familiar sound of planes in the air, no distant traffic.
And the sun . . . It’s like the day never truly ends and we just have to pretend it has, with shutters and eye masks and obeying the digits of someone’s watch.
We’ve been walking, so far, for almost an hour.
Allie and me, Iris and Jameson, and we’re only just coming to a stop, right by the crashing, foaming ocean and a teetering rocky cliff, grassy and snow-covered, that seems to stretch into the clouds, scaly, like a dragon.
Jameson and Iris crouch ahead of us, investigating what looks like a pile of rocks, Jameson in his own version of heaven, gazing through the camera lens more than he’s looking through his actual eyeballs, quizzing Iris as if she’s in a chair on a late-night talk show.
They make a great fieldwork duo, both of them so relaxed, they’re basically lying on invisible magic carpets, floating through their lives.
Allie stands a few feet away, watching, surveying all the time, soaking it all in.
Every now and then, she’ll see something in the air as we walk, and the tiniest quirk of her mouth tells me she’s seen something she likes.
Her whole face transforms; eyes softening, pink mouth lifting.
It’s like . . . even her skin brightens?
Like, now. She’s got binoculars at her eyes, and she’s nibbling her bottom lip and her skin damn-near glows—
‘What?’ She’s dropped the binoculars and she’s looking at me. ‘What’re you looking at?’
I swallow away a laugh. ‘Nothing, just . . . why is Iris so interested in rocks?’ I manage to deflect.
‘It’s what’s beneath them that she’s interested in.’
‘Ah. Bugs?’
‘Yes, bugs,’ she says. ‘And bacteria. We can tell a lot from the bacteria that survives here, in the climate, in the circumstances.’
‘But . . . Is it stupid to ask why?’
‘No, not stupid,’ she says, brightening. ‘I suppose you could say, you’re just as much as what’s under that rock as you are a man standing in front of me. We’re all connected.’
And right now, I wish I could slip the little handheld camera out of my backpack, film her speaking, her serious eyes, her creamy skin, freckly under the high, blue sky. She has no idea how interesting she is, how photogenic . . .
But no. I’m not about to pull a camera out on her. Especially Allie Lake. And Allie Lake with a shotgun.
I’m grateful we’re here and not stuck in yesterday, though, with the atmosphere you could slice, like a razorblade through an apple, every word, every look, like an edge of chipped glass.
This is better. It’s awkward, of course.
A whole cloud between us full of words I keep wanting to take a pin to, let them rain down on us, once and for all.
I want her to tell me again that she didn’t do it.
But Allie has even smiled at me today, and damn – it’s nice to see that smile.
So, for the time being, we’ll obey the note – well, try – and the words will stay there, for now, caught, like fish in a net.
‘Allie?’ calls Iris. She’s shrugging off a backpack, dropping it at her feet.
‘Uh-huh?’
‘I think this is the one,’ she says. ‘I’m happy to stay here, collect some samples. Then you guys can . . .’ Her sentence dissolves and Allie holds a hand up in a wave.
Jameson swoops the camera around and gets us both in shot.
‘No,’ Allie calls simply, assertively. ‘No camera on me, please. I don’t want to be in the shot.’
‘Sorry, Allie,’ calls Jameson, giant Pac-man grin. ‘Really sorry. I’ll cut you out!’
I don’t mean to, but a laughs fall out of my mouth.
‘Sorry?’ Allie twists to look at me.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘S-sorry.’ My ego, of course, wants to ask: would it be so bad, being photographed with me?
My old self wants to ask why it would be so bad when she was quite happy to publicise our conversations?
But I know that’s unfair. Especially since I’m now slowly, slowly not so sure that’s even the truth.
Which is . . . beyond crazy. I’ve lived for two years believing she did this.
For two years, I’ve been walking around with that as a hard, real, horrible truth.
Allie stares at me, taken aback, but says nothing.
But I guess I feel defensive for Jameson too. We’re here to do a job. We’re here to make a video. We could really help. And she’s so self-sufficient, I don’t think she believes it.
‘We need to go up there.’ Allie gestures to the cliff casually. ‘We need to be on lookout, so we should gain some height. I need to conduct an observation of my auks from a distance too.’
‘What? What do you mean we need to go up there?’ I gaze slowly, up to the cliff.
‘It’s where my auk burrows are,’ she explains.
‘Up there?’ God. It’ll be like scaling a dragon’s back.
‘It looks worse than it is,’ she says. ‘Plus, this one goes up in stages. See. Mound by mound? We just need to be at the top of this first mound to be on lookout.’
But that first mound is the height of a suburban house, I want to exclaim.
‘Uhh. OK?’ I say instead.
Heights. Jameson told me that, apart from the chopper, there would be no heights. I hate heights.
‘If you don’t stop, if you just keep your eyes focused on the top, keep going, no hesitation, it’s easy. The studs in the boots will help. Short strides, light feet . . .’
She steps away from the mound, and positions herself like an athlete does, to get a run-up.
‘We’re going now? I . . . I’m no free-runner, Allie. Like – do we not have equipment?’
‘No,’ she says simply. ‘And you don’t need to be a free-runner for something like this, you just need some ba—’ She stops, clears her throat. ‘You just need to go for it.’
‘Were you just going to say . . . balls?’
‘Perhaps,’ Allie replies.
‘Huh. Well, balls I have, Allie. Last time I checked, which was this morning, so . . .’
She doesn’t give anything away. Her face: neutral. ‘OK, so you’ll be able to do it, then, won’t you?’
‘I’m uh . . . I’m . . .’ afraid of heights, I finish in my head, but I just can’t say it out loud.
Then, like she hears my thoughts, she drops her hand down to her side, tears off a glove, and holds out her hand to me. I stare at it. Not falling for that one again.
‘We’ll go together. You won’t stop if you think you’ll take someone else down with you. So . . .’ She shakes her hand, as if I need help locating it.
‘Well, forgive me for not taking it right away,’ I tell her. ‘Last time I did that, the girl recoiled like my hand was a spider crab. Happened on a snowmobile. Recently actually.’
Her shoulders sag.
‘Just . . .’ Allie grabs my hand. ‘Short strides. Light feet. Focus on the top.’
Something tightens low, low down in my body when she squeezes my hand; warm skin, fingers tight, entwined. Then she says, ‘Go,’ and we do.
Short strides, light feet, focus. Short strides, light feet, focus. Her hand grasps mine, and it steadies me. It’s steep and windy, and I don’t look down, concentrating only on Allie’s hand. And, of course, she’s right. It takes no time at all, and suddenly, we’re at the top.
Whoa. We’re – OK, we’re high. My heart feels like it’s been attached to a car battery. But it definitely looked worse than it was. I probably rolled down hills this high when I was in kindergarten, right?
And man – the view.
‘Jeez . . .’
‘I know,’ says Allie softly. We both seem to notice, at the exact same moment, that we’re still holding hands. We drop them in unison.
Stretches of mountain, grey-teal, like paintbrush-water, ice cascading the glaciers like that thick powdered sugar you get on funnel cake at carnivals.
The type you scoop onto your finger and dissolve on your tongue from the bottom of the bag.
It’s the sort of view that makes you want to write, boil it down into words.
Take a photo. That yearning to document something; hold onto it.
Encapsulate it. The illusion that you can create something better, or just as good as the moment itself, so you can always access it.
But, of course, you can’t. It’s the present moment, right?
That’s what all the gurus and therapists say.
It’s the now that matters. This view, this silence.
This great sky. Me and Allie. Just our ragged breaths, our beating hearts . . .
I look over at her.
She’s oblivious, looking too, at the stretch of everything in front of us, mouth open, the corners of her pink lips upturned just a little into a quiet smile.
I wanted to kiss Allie Lake more than I wanted air once – ah, shit.
But I can’t help it. I liked this woman so deeply and now she’s right beside me.
Where do you even begin? What do you even say?
Because I want to say so much. I’ve written this woman a thousand letters in my head, written poems about her, for God’s sakes; I’ve also imagined angry conversations with her, full of how could yous and why me—
‘Milo,’ she says. ‘Is this one of your silences? If you leave a silence, people fill it,’ she mimics with a smile.
‘Well, if it was, it just worked on you. For the first time.’ I laugh. ‘And no. No, not this time. You seem pretty content to be silent, so I’m . . . behaving myself.’
‘That might be so,’ she says. ‘But, also, you’re not here to be silent, remember? You’re here to do a job, and I’m doing mine, so you should feel free to do yours – whatever that turns out to be.’
‘Ouch?’ I straighten. ‘Whoa. Damn. Not said that in . . . two years?’