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“Also the firewood,” Patrick says.

“Right, right,” Frank says, nodding into his soup. “The porters were cutting down the trees for firewood. They were supposed to bring the firewood from below, but then they’d run out and start cutting whatever was handy. You’re right, Patrick. I forgot about that. Now they’re not even allowed to have firewood on the mountain. Illegal.”

“So how do clothes get dry?” This from Jerry, who in the candlelight looks younger, and, Rita suddenly thinks, like a man who would be cast in a soap opera, as the patriarch of a powerful family. His hair is white and full, straight and smooth, riding away from his forehead like the back of a cresting wave.

“If there’s sun tomorrow, they get dry,” Frank says. “If there’s no sun, they stay wet,” he says, then sits back and waits for someone to complain. No one does, so he softens. “Put the wet clothes in your sleeping bag. Somewhere where you don’t have to feel ’em. The heat in there will dry ’em out, usually. Otherwise work around the wet clothes till we get some sun.”

“This is why those porters dropped out,” Jerry says, with certainty.

“Listen,” Frank says, “porters drop out all the time. Some of them are superstitious. Some just don’t like rain. Doesn’t mean a thing. We’ll be fine.”

Rita cannot get a grip on how this will work. She doesn’t see how they can continue up the mountain, facing more rain, as it also becomes colder, the air thinner, and without their having any chance of drying the clothes that are surely too wet to wear. Is this not how people get sick or die? By getting wet and cold and staying wet and cold? Her concern, though, is a dull and almost distant one, because almost immediately after the plates are taken away, she feels exhausted beyond all measure. Her vision is blurry and her limbs tingle.

“I guess we’re bunking together,” Shelly says, suddenly behind her, above her. Everyone is standing up. Rita rises and follows Shelly outside, where it is still drizzling the coldest rain. The hikers all say good night, Mike and Jerry heading toward the toilet tent, just assembled—a triangular structure, three poles with a tarp wrapped around, a zipper for entry and a three-foot hole dug below. Father and son are each carrying a small roll of toilet paper, protecting it from the rain with their plastic baggies containing their toothbrushes and paste. Their silhouettes are smudges scratched by the gray lines of the cold rain.

Shelly and Rita’s tent is small and quickly becomes warm. Inside they crawl around, arranging their things, using their headlamps—a pair of miners looking for a lost contact lens.

“One day down,” Shelly says.

Rita grunts her assent.

“Not much fun so far,” Shelly says.

“No, not yet.”

“But it’s not supposed to be, I suppose. The point is getting up, right?”

“I guess.”

“At all costs, right?”

“Right,” Rita says, though she has no idea what Shelly is talking about.

Shelly soon settles into her sleeping bag, and turns toward Rita, closing her eyes. Shelly is asleep in seconds, and her breathing is loud. She breathes in through her nose and out through her nose, the exhalations in quick effortful bursts. Shelly is a yoga person and while Rita thought this was interesting an hour ago, now she hates yoga and everyone who might foster its dissemination. Yoga people are loud breathers and loud breathers are selfish and wicked.

The rain continues, tattering all night, almost rhythmic but not rhythmic enough, and Rita is awake for an hour, listening to Shelly’s breathing and the rain, which comes in bursts, as if deposited by planes sweeping overhead. She cannot help but concentrate on Shelly’s breathing. She worries that she will never sleep, and that she will be too tired tomorrow, that this will weaken her system and she will succumb to the cerebral edema that is ready, she knows, to leap. She sees the aneurysm in the form of a huge red troll, like a Kewpie doll, the hair aflame, though with a pair of enormous scissors, like those used to open malls and car dealerships—that the troll will