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Bullseye jumped in.
"Look," he said. "Remember Perry Watts? What, '79? August, Malibu, right?"
"Oh, grody," recognized one of the climbers, an ex-surfer. "Listen to this
one. What that great white did to him."
"It was this day of perfect waves," related Bullseye. "Eight-foot lefts and
ten-foot rights, beach breaks and boneyards. Classic overhead glass all day
long. But around five, where's Perry? Gone. He's just gone. Everybody's
bummed. And next morning his board's lyin' there on the beach with a
twenty-inch bite out of the edge. And before the sun goes down, old Perry
finally makes it back to shore. He was missing the same twenty inches that his
board was. One clean bite."
"A nightmare of fucking terror," said another of the surfer-climbers.
"So, man?" slurred a foggy voice. "What's the connection with Tony?"
"Damage," said Bullseye. "You run risks, you take damage sometimes. Sharks.
Gravity. Loose rock. Hard wind. Avalanche." He paused, and most everyone
filled in the blanks with their own private close calls. There was truth in
his words. Bullseye's eyes were bright. "That's what happened to Tony."
"Bullshit," snapped Kresinski. "The one risk you shouldn't ever have to run is
a partner who ditches you."
"Leave it," advised Bullseye. "It's history."
"Oh?" Kresinski's monotone radiated old amusement. "As usual. Our in-house
fry-
head knows something the rest of us don't." A few uncertain chuckles fed into
the stew, hopeful noises. But the showdown wasn't over yet.
Bullseye climbed to his feet, once again boiling mad at this mutation people
dignified with a human name. Kresinski. An animal. Frankenstein couldn't have
done worse.
Or better. On the outside you had Michelangelo's David, a slimmed-down
Schwarzenegger with tendons even that rippled. When he moved, it was like this
glorious call to the sun to reach down and touch him, a walking hosanna. Yes,
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light beautiful. But inside... all Bullseye could
picture was a pithed frog, cold, amphibious, dead. The joy and tragedy of life
had been aborted. Instead of Beethoven or Joan
Armatrading or a solitary hawk keening over wide space, all Bullseye heard
when he looked at Kresinski was vicious noise, the sound of scavengers
fighting over a road kill.
"Sit down," Kresinski said.
With an effort, Bullseye straightened. "No."
Kresinski was running his fingertip in a delicate circle around the top of
someone's empty wineglass. The glass didn't sing. He quit and looked up at the
tall drunk. "Sit down anyway."
"The petty tyrant," Bullseye hectored. "No one wants your fucking
psycho-trauma."
"My fucking psycho
-trauma?" Kresinski sneered. Now people did laugh because it was just
Bullseye, and you could take him either way.
"The Visor?" A reedy, new voice cut through the hurly-burly. It was Pete
Summers.
Pete the Feet. Climbers catalog their rock moves according to type: crack,
face, friction. Friction climbing takes steady feet and a steady head. Pete
knew a thing or two about friction, and applied it now. "The Visor's all manky
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and thin. There's nobody can climb the Visor."
That quickly, the squall blew over. "Wah," confirmed another voice. "I checked
the
Visor out once, dude. It's way gnarly."
"Way way gnarly," someone else plugged in. More voices attached, Valley talk
that had little meaning but clearly begged for a cease-fire. Bad vibes hurt
their ears. "It's
5.14, that's what it is, man."
"Oh, man, get out. There's no such thing."
"There's a crack," said Tucker, fastening onto the new debate with sullen
relief. "I
know it'll go."
"No way." But it was friendly.
"Okay." Tucker retired from their skepticism. That in itself was plenty. Fly
or die. He didn't care what they thought.
"I want to see this, man. When you goin' up?"
Bullseye sat down, also relieved. His head was spinning.
"After Reno," said Tucker. He'd never seen Reno.
"You ready?"
"Look at him. He's tuned and dialed."
"You amped, dude?"
Tucker resumed his embarrassment.
"Where's my damn burger," one of the surfers shouted. They were back on track.
As if listening to an interior music, Kresinski nodded his head rhythmically
and stared at John, who shook his head slightly.
Que jodón, he thought. What bullshit. He sat back in his chair. Menopause.
That was the problem. We're getting old, but Kreski's
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Jeff Long - Angels of Light getting old and mean. Bad enough to lose your only
friend and Schaller had been lost to Kresinski long before his death on
Aconcagua now menopause was on him, too. At an age when triathletes have
barely started serious training, John and
Kresinski and Bullseye were eyeball to eyeball with Happy Trails. This year it
was
Tucker. Next year, who knew what youngster would appear and polish off the
state-
of-the-art test pieces. Bit by bit, the new generation would chew its way
through routes that old-timers had struggled and died upon to create. Climbers
call it flashing when a hotshot powers up a difficult route with no apparent
difficulty. Tucker had accidentally flashed one of Kresinski's proudest
accomplishments, Black Soap, so named for the color and slickness of the rock.
Like the four-minute mile, it was supposed to have stood for years to come,
untouched. Worse than his casual ascent, Tucker had done Black Soap without a
rope or partner, mistaking it for an easier climb to the left. Upon learning
his error, he made the mistake of downgrading the crack from 5.12 to easy
5.11, and when challenged had climbed it again, again without a rope.
Kresinski hated him for that. It was no excuse for the malice, though.
Then someone new and female arrived behind John.
"You guys think this is Beirut?" The voice was bass and smoky, Lauren Bacall
in silk.
John didn't need to turn, he just read the expressions across the table.
Several pairs of eyes walked up and down, from face to chest to hips and back
again. Bullseye quit scowling. Tucker lit up.
Liz had finally arrived. He'd heard the expedition had returned that
afternoon. He'd heard other things, too. They all had. "You can hear the
fireworks clear over at headquarters," she scolded them. John couldn't resist
twisting around. She had cleaned up and changed, and her blond hair was still
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wet from the shower. A park ranger shirt was tucked into clean but frayed blue [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]