Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [90]
He’d called that night not to tell me what he’d decided. He wanted me to meet him in Virginia three days later, while the weather was still good, to hike in Shenandoah National Park. He knew I had a break in filming, and he would bring everything, even boots. I just needed to show up. The friends in New York who gave advice would have said he was buying time.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“You can ask me anything.”
“Why do you want to see me?”
“It helps me to see you,” he said slowly. “I don’t know … I think of you. I walk by your old apartment, and I think of you. I can’t imagine you not being here. Or you being here without me. You’re my best friend. I’m closer to you than anyone.”
He pushed a while longer for the trip to the mountains, then changed his tack. “Just promise you’ll sleep on it. You can even decide when you wake up that morning. There’ll be a ticket for you at the airport and I’ll be there regardless. I won’t count on it, but I’ll be glad if you come.”
He knew me well. When pressed, I was stubborn. But if I felt like there was a choice, chances were I would acquiesce. In that way, we were alike.
I told him I would think about it.
“Wait. Don’t get off,” he said.
“What is it?”
I was lying on the floor, the phone now cradled against my shoulder. The white cord was coiled around my wrist, and the shadows from the traffic made a slide show on the low, laminated ceiling. I knew that, miles away in New York, he had not gotten up from the couch but was leaning forward, his head dropped, his elbows pressed on his knees.
“Just … don’t get off,” he repeated. “Not yet.”
When I arrived at the small airport in Weyers Cave, Virginia, he’d been in town for hours, buying supplies and maps and organizing the gear. We were shy with each other at first, puttering about the car. My eyes adjusted; I hadn’t seen him in weeks. In the parking lot of the Super Save, we poured nuts and dried fruit into baggies and transferred the apples, oranges, chocolate, sausage, and hard cheese into food sacks. He opened the trunk and pulled out two boxes of boots he’d bought in New York, unsure of which would fit me better. There were two frame backs, two water bottles, two sleeping bags. By early afternoon, we were on one of the feeder roads that lead to the Skyline Drive. He passed me the map with several trails circled. The higher peaks were farther north, but he thought I would like the one at the bottom best—the less crowded backcountry south of Loft Mountain.
For three days, there were hawks, streams, mud, and yellow leaves. It was a final gasp of warmth in what had been the longest Indian summer I could remember.
The last night, we had a fire. It was illegal, but we did it anyway. We were too far for the rangers, too far for anyone to care, and by our tent there was an already blackened circle of stones. My job was to gather twigs, and his was to start the fire and keep it going. We always brought poetry books when we camped to read aloud to each other, and before I left Chicago, he reminded me of that. He packed Seamus Heaney, and I brought Edna St. Vincent Millay, along with the one I always carried, my blue clothbound book of sonnets from the Yale series. I read number 129, the one about lust. I’d discovered it over the summer, and it had become my new favorite.
The night was clear. We drank Constant Comment spiked with whiskey, and I lay with my head in his lap while he told me stories of the stars. It didn’t matter that I’d heard them before.
I asked him which of the seasons reminded him of us.
“The first snow. I don’t know why, though. You?”
The truth was, it was all of them.
“The September part of summer,” I said. “When it’s still hot, but you know the next day it might be gone, and the leaves at Gay Head have