Bad Boy (22 page)

“Transformation,” Stefan replied in a self-satisfied tone. But it was Jon who was transformed
‌
—but into what?

He continued to stare. Looking behind him, in the mirror’s reflection, Jon saw Tracie hug Stefan. Then she danced wildly, full of approval, around Jon’s chair. Well, she was his friend. He guessed she liked Sonic the Hedgehog. “Fantastic,” she yodeled, and pulled him up from the chair. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought. Then Tracie plucked Jon’s wallet from his back pocket as she whizzed by and handed Stefan his charge card.

“It’s going to be the best two hundred dollars you ever spent!” she told him.

“Two hundred dollars!” Jon gasped. Then he looked at Stefan and the razor and swallowed. He figured it was better than getting mugged, though just as expensive.

Tracie and Jon pulled up to the entrance of the REI parking lot. He’d been grilling her the whole way, but she’d refused to answer a single question.

Ignoring Jon, Tracie pulled a right, forgot
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to put on her indicator, and almost got backed into by a passing Saab. Other than that, they had no mishaps. “Let’s go.” Jon got out of the car, then tripped on the curb as he looked up to read the sign on the door.

“Oh my God! Not here!” Jon protested.

REI was a famous landmark on the outskirts of Seattle, near Interstate 5. It was probably the largest outdoor sports-supply store in the world. It was a gathering place for sports-minded ecoshoppers. Its distinctive architecture and the huge window drew the eye. From the door, he could see aisle upon aisle of mountain gear shining as hundreds of attractive young men and women shopped for equipment.

“Try to pick out a normal girl,” Tracie reminded him. “One of these.” She pointed at a whole gaggle of them, all willowy, all perfect, with teeth and hair and skin that shone. Jon felt himself growing smaller and darker, a blot on the landscape. Tracie gave him a little shove. “Place yourself near them, but don’t come on to them. You have to play hard to get. You have to make
them
want
you
,” Tracie told him. She gestured. They had come to an end of an aisle and before them was an enormous rock wall
‌
—at least six stories high
‌
—enclosed by glass. People were climbing its almost vertical face, visible to everyone in the store, as well as to passing highway traffic.

“Holy shit!” Jon gasped. He hated heights. He’d once told her that he was afraid to look
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out high windows because it made him feel like jumping.

“Class is in session. You look fierce now, but you have to
act
fierce.”

“How? By hanging off a rock? Forget it!”

She’d known he’d balk, but she was prepared. “Come on, Jon. Climbing is the bomb. A real loner’s sport. Women love loners. Think James Dean. Think
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
.”

“Hey, that guy only broke into a store and stole money. Then he went to London with a girl. I can do
that.
It’s heights I don’t like.”

“Jon, there are a million girls here looking to meet rock climbers.”

“I thought they wanted rock singers!” he whined. “You got a rock player. Don’t make me.”

Tracie decided to ignore him; she took a coil of rope from a shelf on the right and handed it to him, along with a carabiner.

‘Try these on. At least
look
like a rock climber,” she demanded.

Jon pointed to the space below the indoor rock. “Or like a Rorschach on that floor. Tracie, I watched all those movies. James Dean mostly moped and hung out against a corner of a wall. I can mope. I can rub against corners. James Dean never climbed rocks.”

“Don’t be so literal. Or so negative. Move with the times,” Tracie told him. “I didn’t tell you to climb rocks; I only want you to talk about it.” She nudged him. A very pretty blonde walked by, and Tracie thought the girl gave
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Jon the once-over. Good sign. “Anyway, you don’t ever have to climb. Just hang out with a piton and talk to a girl.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Talk about what?” He looked up the wall. “I know nothing about this.”

“Think positive. They probably don’t, either. If they ask you anything, tell them you like Black Diamond stuff. It’s the best.”

“How would you know?”

“I did an article.” It was a lie, but there was no need to tell him about Dan. Tracie drew a black diamond on her yellow Post-it pad, pulled it off, and stuck it on his chin. Even with the Post-it goatee, he looked cute. Absently, he reached up and unpeeled the Post-it. Meanwhile, he kept looking up at the towering faux rock that half a dozen people were climbing. He kept staring as he crumpled the Post-it. It was as good a moment as any to let her little duckling sink or swim, so, quietly, Tracie moved off.

“Why am I thinking Wile E. Coyote? You know the cartoon where he orders the Acme rocket and . . .”

Jon turned back to Tracie, but she’d disappeared. Instead, a long-legged brunette was listening to him.

“A rock etand?” she said. Her voice was as smooth as the rock surface glinting in front of them. “I’ve never used one. Is it some new piece of equipment?” she asked.

Jon tried to regain his composure. The crumpled yellow note in his hand reminded
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him of Tracie’s advice. And the girl was certainly pretty. “Yeah. Black Diamond. But I stick with the classics, don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” she agreed. “You climb much?”

“Oh, yeah. Been climbing since I was a kid.” God! What men would do to get a girl! His father had once made him limp for a whole afternoon with some woman he was trying to get into the sack. His dad had been real nice to him, and at the end of the day, when the two adults dropped him off, the woman said, “You’re a very brave boy.” Afterward, Jon asked Chuck why she’d said that, and his father laughed and explained, “I told her you had lost your leg to cancer.” And then there was that guy Tracie dated in her first year of graduate school who . . . He pulled himself back to the present and the opportunity that was walking past him on two very nice legs. He turned to look at this woman, who actually seemed interested in him. Her hair was long, and she had it pulled back in some kind of loose braid that started as part of her head on top and became a pigtail that followed her. Behind her, Tracie gave him the “okay” sign. Did that mean it was okay to lie, or that the girl looked okay, or that . . .

“I only got started last year, but climbing is . . . like a way of life,” the brunette said, interrupting his moral dilemma.

“Yeah,” he agreed, slick as his dad on his best day. “I need it like . . . oxygen. I need to be alone and depend on no one. I need to be a
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figure, black against a slab of schist.” At the corner of the aisle, he pulled a James Dean pose. He hoped she noticed but that she hadn’t, by some odd coincidence, been watching
East of Eden
the night before.

Apparently, she hadn’t. “I know what you mean,” she said with growing enthusiasm. Then, as if reconsidering, she blinked and turned away. Jon immediately felt a knot develop in his stomach. What had he said wrong? Was he going to blow this like he had blown it with The Lovely Girl at the airport? But she turned back to him. “I mean, I don’t totally know what you mean because I haven’t really climbed alone, but I want to. Do you do aid climbing?”

He didn’t even know what it was. “All the time.” What the hell, he figured.

She stopped at a section filled with pitons.”It’s all so gear-intensive, you know. And everything costs so much. I need a fifi hook and some copperheads. Do you use any?”

“Oh, sure. I never climb without them,” he said smoothly. This was scary. The more he lied, the easier it seemed to be. Was this what it had been like for his dad?

The thing was, he wasn’t like his dad. He looked at the girl and he liked her. Okay, maybe he couldn’t really climb, but he loved the outdoors; he bicycled everywhere. He bet she was as ecologically aware as he was. Maybe she wasn’t a vegetarian
‌
—it probably took a lot of animal protein to scale a mountain
‌
—but as he covertly looked her over, it
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seemed liked she was the kind of girl he’d want to get to know, that he’d want to do things with.

“What brand do you like?” she asked.

“Black Diamond,” he told her, and put his arm against the shelf behind him, trying to look casual. Instead, he almost fell, but luckily, she hadn’t seen him falter, because she was lifting some kind of gear off a lower shelf. Jon didn’t have a clue. It looked like something a Jew wouldn’t welcome seeing coming his way during the Inquisition.

“What about Pika toucans?” she asked. He remembered Tracie’s directive, and anyway, he wanted to touch this girl. Her skin was an even color all over
‌
—a kind of creamy white, with just the faintest suggestion of pink underneath. Her lips were pink . . . Then he realized she was waiting for an answer.

“They’re okay. I mean, they’re not Black Diamond, but . . .”

It’s now or never, he told himself. You have to touch her. Jon took her hand as if to look at the gear. “Wow. You’ve got beautiful cuticles.” He could tell the brunette was charmed. She looked down at her own hands, held in his, and he thought she actually blushed.

“I do? Thanks. My name is Ruth, by the way.”

“Bytheway. Interesting surname. Are you English?”

Ruth led him toward a line of people and joined them. Jon fell in behind her to keep the conversation going.

_p. 222
“You know, I only have an Edelrid fifi hook,” she was saying. For a moment, Jon thought the whole thing was a joke or an elaborate put-on that Tracie had arranged. Toucans, fifis, copperheads. Was this a sport or a circus? But though he’d lost sight of Tracie, he hadn’t lost his mind. This girl was enthusiastic and pretty cute and he was going to try to stick it out. “I hope it’s okay,” she was saying, “because I don’t want to have to buy another one.”

Jon eyed the checkout line. He guessed he’d have to buy the rope and the belt. He’d consider it just another wardrobe expense. But after another minute, he noticed there was no register ahead. What was this? Then, to his growing horror, he saw a guy at the front of the line throw up a rope and begin to ascend the rock while several other people rappelled down its huge height.

“Is this the checkout line?”

“No. It’s a testing line. I always test gear first. Don’t you?” Ruth asked.

“Every time I’ve bought anything here,” Jon agreed, truthful for the first time. His mother had always told him not to lie. How in the world has this happened to me? he wondered as he looked with horror at the people at the front of the line. One after the other, they kept swinging themselves cheerfully onto the rock face as if it wasn’t a suicidal act. He turned back to Ruth, who seemed to be moving her lips.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

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Two more people threw ropes up. He could hear his heart beating against his chest wall. He looked around for Tracie. This has to be a joke, he thought as he and Ruth moved toward the desk. Jon began to panic. He was so very afraid of heights. “I don’t have to test this line,” he said as casually as he could muster.

“No, but I’m sure you want to try out the carabiner.”

An REI expert came up to Jon. “Are you experienced?”

Before he could beg off, Ruth piped up. “He does aid climbing,” she assured the guy.

‘Then you can tie your own knot,” the guy told Jon.

Yeah, around my neck, Jon thought. Or around Tracie’s. Jon glanced from left to right, looking for a quick escape. The crowd hanging around to watch all looked like relatives of Madame Defarge at the guillotine. To his increasing nausea, he saw Tracie among them. Jon shot her a desperate look. She shrugged. He looked at Ruth, thought of her creamy skin, then took a deep breath and threw his line up the rock.

“Are you sure you want such a difficult route?” Ruth asked. Jon shook his head, grabbed the rope, and began to climb. Everyone else moved up the face like spider monkeys, but Jon inched along like something melting upward. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” Ruth called to him. Jon suddenly hated her with his whole heart. He hadn’t realized she was a demented sadist bent on his extinction.

_p. 224
“Oh, I’m not worried,” he called back, talking to force himself to move up two or three ledges of rock. He was now almost six feet from the ground. He looked over his shoulder and became so terrified that his hands shook and he almost fell. To prevent that, he began to move wildly, pushing himself into the stone while he scrambled up the rope. There was no place to perch, no surface that was anything but vertical. At last, he reached a ledge about twenty feet above the crowd below and grabbed it desperately. He hugged the rock like lichen.

The REI expert pulled out a bullhorn and called up to him. “Are you all right?” Everyone in the huge store stopped to stare. The crowd grew. So this was what people looked like from the ceiling of the Museum of Flight. He watched as Tracie scrambled to the front of the assembly below. Jon could see her, but instead of yelling encouragement, she began to flash pictures of him! No matter how long you know someone, you can’t guess their reaction to things, he thought in a detached way. It wasn’t a helpful response to his situation, but Jon didn’t really mind, since he was going to die right here. “Please answer me,” the guy with the bullhorn was calling. “Are you all right?”

Jon knew it was impossible to nod his head or even to move his lips.

“A clinger! We’ve got a clinger! Would all climbers please get down,” the guy with the bullhorn bellowed.

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A safety siren went off. People from all over rushed to look. Tracie backed off from the crowd. Meanwhile, Jon tried to make himself one with the rock.

After the humiliation of the paramedics’ arrival, Tracie and a pale, disheveled Jon crossed the parking lot to get back to her car. Other people in the lot stared and pointed at Jon.