Robert’s voice at the end of the line, at the end of the world, said “an accident.” Molly heard little else. Her brain stuttered, catching only useless details, like “a car,” “coming home,” “no pain.” The fact was that Paul was dead. She hung up in the middle of a sentence.

She stared into the silent living room. Her cat was swatting threads of noon-time sunlight to the mat. Molly watched the dust puff and swirl. Then she began to laugh, a mad cackle that hurt her throat and sent the cat under the couch. Paul had died at ten at night, a far distant Himalayan night, this same day, long hours from now. It was God’s little joke. Paul wasn’t dead, not yet, not here, not for half a day. Paul would have laughed.

Then Molly calmed and she sat at her end of the couch. She pulled a cushion to her chest. She’d never known a death before: twenty-eight and her parents both alive; no brother, no sister; her friends were all doing fine. She didn’t know what to do. She’d have to tell Paul’s mother, but not now. She could give Mary another day of happiness.

Besides, he wasn’t dead.

He shouldn’t have gone. She told him so. She knew he’d be hurt. She had had bad dreams. But he told her she always felt that way. He’d be home soon enough. He kissed her and held her hand.

She loved his hands. Before she met his eyes, before she heard his voice, she fell for those hands: so strong and tapered, like a carpenter’s, a masculine gentleness. She knew she wanted those hands upon her.

And it was an accident. Her hockey team needed a man one Friday and Paul came along as John’s friend. She never noticed him across the dressing room; didn’t remember his name after it was shouted out to them all. Some chance glance fell upon his hands lacing his skates and her heart was caught upon a nail. That was it: five years of a life started in a second. She found herself wanting to look at him, knowing it was wrong to stare at anyone in this mixed room. Yet she couldn’t stop herself. She glimpsed his naked chest as he changed his shirt, studied his face as she joked with Cathy next to him. She was conscious of her own body, of her stripping down to her sports bra. Her own hands moved more quickly, madly thinking he was watching her.

That night, her game was lousy. She couldn’t even make a pass. “What’s up with you?” Claire asked her. “Nothing,” she said, but her mind was desperate on how to meet this man. In the end, it was simple. She ducked out early and smoked outside the exit. When he came out, she said he’d played well. “Thanks,” he said. “So did you.” She laughed and called him a big fat liar. “Yes,” he answered, “I most definitely am.”

Conversation came simply. He was heading to Burin next week, Did she climb? A little, she said. She watched him think and she waited, her heart going mad. “My regular partner can’t make it. Are you up for it?” “Absolutely,” she said, and they shared numbers. She told her roommate that night she’d found “the one.” She thought she was very clever.

Molly now looked at the clock on the wall, watched the black hands moving. She felt disembodied, as if she were a ghost, then closed her eyes to see things better.

She’d never climbed but it couldn’t be that hard. You go up and you don’t fall down. She had strong arms and if things went sideways she’d say she’d twisted her ankle. She went to the indoor climbing store for practice and every day she spidered its walls. The instructor said she was a natural. She rented her equipment the day before the trip.

They took the one car, his, their equipment in the back, including the sleeping bags: an overnight trip. She had had fantasies about passion in the mountains, about those climbing hands, but now she felt a fluttering panic. She kept the conversation as light as she could, away from mountains. Sometimes she didn’t hear what he said because she was worrying about what would come. She wished the car would roll on forever but soon it stopped in a clearing,

They hiked from here, a rocky forest trail, an easy walk for them both. The physicality returned her to confidence. She strode a little behind and watched his body, the shadows and light rippling across his shoulders.

Then they ducked out from the branches and there was the mountain before them, cold and sheer and very, very high. She recoiled as though a stranger had startled her with a gun. Paul didn’t seem to see. He was far ahead now, striding up to the rock face.

“Do you want to start now?” he called, already hauling on his gear.

She walked up slowly and wanted to confess but fear and pride shut her mouth. Part of her still thought she could climb. Yet her fingers were a knot. The harness was twisted, bunching against her neck; she stumbled once.  She could feel her breath race. She avoided Paul’s gaze, but she felt it.

Then he spoke in that kindly tone she would hear for all her life, and held her fumbling right hand: “You might get yourself hurt.” He looked into her eyes and added, “Worse, you might get me hurt.”

Then they both laughed. That day was the best of her life. He spent the morning teaching her how to climb: to use her weight, to choose holds, to eye a face. He taught her as if she were a partner and not a pupil. But she was no climber. They went up together a hundred feet before she had to be guided back. In the early evening, she watched him climb, while below, she made supper on a Coleman:

When he came back down, she had a plate of eggs and ham ready, and told him, “you can’t expect this every night.”

He paused and her heart paused with him and then he said, “I won’t.”

Unconsciously, on the couch, she was smiling, but her mind was returning to today. She saw the afternoon upon the apartment wall,

The morning light, she thought, should be warming the Himalayas now, but knew a chill was riding the clouds.

She felt the world turning beneath her. In horror, she watched the scythe’s edge of night cut across the face of the earth.  She saw ten o’clock roll towards her, from the blackened hospital roof and the time-stained summits; smothering the green of the jungle; enfolding minarets and spires; blotting villages and cities. All humanity was a sequence of locked doors from Asia to Europe, a shutting-up of day to the inevitable sleep. Then the darkness dropped from the land. The Irish coast became unseen and the silver crests of cold Atlantic began to dim. Her heart hurt as if it were choking her. All was black, all was night.

Then she was back alone in her flat, tear-stained and foolish on the floor, an idle cat pawing at her hair. She got up and sat on the couch, chastened. The telephone rang, but she didn’t move. She started to talk, while she could, to Paul. She told him how she loved him, that she was more complete because of him. The words seemed natural and clear. The long afternoon was upon her neck, hours before the dark, waiting for her dead lover to die.

– Michael Nolan