Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [63]
“Don't look down!” some wag shouts at them when they're still on the first step.
“Martha! Martha, over here,” someone else cries, waving a camera. “Smile.”
But Martha is in no mood to smile. Gutsily, she soldiers on against the raging elements, scaling a further seven steps before pausing for breath, at which point a vexatious westerly wind, sensing an opportunity for comedy, rushes in to lift up her pleated gray skirt, exposing a flash of senior buttock-flab to the crowd below. More senior buttock-flab, I'd say, than any human being with a gag reflex ought to be exposed to.
“Okay, off you go,” Jay manifests out of nowhere and hisses in my ear. “Give us five minutes, then start climbing. I'll tell Kevin.”
“Excuse me—are you out of your freakin’ mind?” Fat Kid's rousing pep talk is suddenly a distant memory. “Have you seen how high it is? I am not—repeat, NOT—going up there!”
But Jay's a different directing animal from Mark, harder to dissuade. Faced with any obstacle—a reluctant TV host is the first example that comes to mind—he adopts one of those long-suffering expressions he does so well, of a mother supervising a petulant three-year-old whom she loves dearly, but not today, not right now, and sighs heavily.
“Cash,” he groans, “you'll be fine. If a bunch of old biddies can climb it, I'm sure you can. Now—go.” Then, without even allowing me the common courtesy of arguing with him, he plows deep into the crowd, shouting over his shoulder, “Don't bother about where the camera is, Kevin will find you. Just keep climbing.”
Two steps from the top, Martha has staggered to a premature halt. Aware now that two hundred people are looking up her skirt, she tries to grip it between her knees, a move that could be her undoing. Several shaky squeals are lost amidst the laughter and general hullabaloo in the courtyard, as still more people, teased into joining this folly, each of them thinking, “Well, if the old bag in the pink bloomers can do it, so can I!,” tie on rain hats and start their own ascent.
As I watch their feet slither and slide across the watery ledges, the same ugly, gnawing fear I felt staring into that 134-meter gorge in New Zealand and Mount Yasur's fiery crater, begins eating away at my intestines once again.
I hate heights! Is nobody listening to me when I say this? I hate heights.
And remember, my definition of heights is pretty modest, too: anything higher than a bar stool, really. Yet, even as the tension is choking me, I recall Fat Kid's admonitions: teamwork, collaboration, it's not just about me, and so on. And as I do, in some peculiar way it weakens the grip of my terror a little, infusing it with an unexpected surge of resolve. Maybe I can do this. If I just focus my mind and ignore the drop.
Besides, I reason to myself, if I do lose my footing on the steps, there'll be enough old women in rain hats coming up behind me to cushion my fall, won't there?
Good thinking.
Considerably cheered by this, I wait five minutes, then run through the rain to the base of the pyramid.
As it is, my worst fears prove to be groundless. The climb is a breeze and takes me a mere ten minutes top to bottom. I even overtake Martha and her slow-coach friends on the way up, as I make it, damp, dizzy, out of breath, and with pins and needles in my feet, to the top step and the very summit of Mount Meru.
Yay!
Who would have thought that? Sir contained his anxiety for long enough to climb a pyramid! If I had a baton I would twirl it. Indeed, so slap-happy am I at this rare triumph over one of my phobias that I perch jauntily on the edge for a while to allow the camera, which I'm unable to spot in the scrum below but I know is there somewhere, to record and savor this valiant accomplishment.
Then, once I've left enough time for Kevin to get his shot, I head off in search of the giant golden statue of Vishnu.
That's when I realize two things: first, there