CHAPTER 10
Trekking in Nepal
Her name was Cathy.
My feet were feeling a little squishy after walking a damp jungle trail in the early hours of the morning. Something didn’t feel right. Trekking through Nepal’s Chitwan National Forest required constant attention to the puddled, uneven terrain underfoot to keep from stumbling or getting completely upended, which can happen quickly, like a slip on an ice patch. After locating some dry ground along a humid rock wall, I leaned against its flat surface, which was coated in a glistening bright green moss, and I slid my backside down it to stabilize myself in a squat so that my hands could attend to the discomfort emanating from my shoes.
I pressed down on the crisscrossed laces of my Adidas, with my fingertips on the laces of each shoe at the same time, and then totally freaked! In that instant of pressure, a dozen or so slimy black leeches suddenly popped their heads up through the eyelets of my laces, looking like black golf tees, but swaying with menace for having been disturbed. It was really gross and not the kind of surprise I like. Besides not knowing that something like that was physically possible for a leech, the instant realization that these blood-sucking things were inside my shoes made me yelp. As fast as possible, I shucked my shoes, only to stare at the pinking of my white socks—from my blood no doubt—and a dozen gorging skinny leeches on each sock, interwoven into the cotton fabric, with sucking mouths that were undoubtedly attached to the skin underneath the socks—MY skin. Clearly, this was not life-threatening, but it sure was gross.
My three fellow trekkers and Sumi Garung, our Nepalese guide, crowded around me and were clearly sympathetic, but grossed out as much as I was. They didn’t move; they just stared and oohed and aahed until I suggested they check their own socks. After all, we’d all been trekking on the same path since daybreak for at least three hours. They quickly forgot about me and skittered to dry patches along the path, like sizzling water beads jumping on a hot skillet. I wasn’t the only one with leeches! Sumi didn’t bother checking his socks or shoes because he wasn’t wearing any. The porters didn’t have anything on their feet either. Tough feet, I guess. Leeches—yuk! It was one more thing to think about as we began our trek upward that morning from Pokhara, a trekker’s paradise.
Four Americans signed up for trekking with Sumi for the first few days of a seven-day adventure into the steep foothills of the Annapurna range, the spine of Nepal, which is the Mother Country of the Himalaya Mountains. I was traveling around the world for the year with Brad Kelly, a great friend of mine, and we were in our fifth month. He was from Dallas and an experienced traveler, like me. The other two Americans were two TWA flight attendants on a two-week vacation. They signed up with Sumi and the same seven-day program of four days of hiking up and three days of rafting out. We met them that morning: Cathy with a C and Kathy with a K. They were about our age, and happily, we all hit it off right away. There was nothing prissy about these girls, which is a quality worthy of respect among world travelers. They seemed as independent as we were and capable of looking out for themselves.
We all were grossed out by the leeches, but like I said, they weren’t life-threatening, so they gave us a harmless bonding experience early in our adventure. We rinsed out our socks in a rivulet that was coursing down a rock wall, and tugged on a dry pair of socks, which each of us had stashed in our bags for the trek. We all had been advised to carry an extra pair for some unforeseen event; we just didn’t expect to have to change so soon. And we didn’t expect leeches would be the reason. Anyway, in no time, the four of us were ready for our guide, who was waiting for us. We cried out, “Onward and upward!” as we continued our hike through the jungle, heading higher and higher into the foothills of the Himalayas.
Two hours later, we broke for lunch on the first plateau above the thick, dense forest. The view, for the first time, was an endless vista, which hung over a hundred miles of the tree tops left behind us. Ahead of us, was a long, slow climb up a ridge, followed by a lot of sky and probably many more ridges. The vegetation changed dramatically, as crisp, thin mountain air started to replace the thick humid air that we had been inhaling heavily while under the canopy of trees all morning. Two of our Nepalese porters were waiting for us at an open camp fire. A pot of stew propped over the flames would be our lunch, along with some of the local bread brought in fresh from a nearby village. We devoured everything edible that was laid out for us, having built up enormous appetites from the slow, steady climb in the late morning. Between mouthfuls of Daal Bhaat and a vegetable curry called Tarkan, we got to know each other a lot better, laughing intermittently about the leeches and thankful they weren’t as big as the finger-sized ones on Humphrey Bogart’s naked back in The African Queen.
Nightfall came quickly to our campsite, as it was situated on the threshold of the higher foothills. Exhausted, we ran through the cook’s dinner while seated around our second campfire of the day, eating as if we hadn’t eaten for several days. We sat in silence with legs stiffening up, but too tired to complain. Minutes after the last mouthful of another meal of Daal Bhaat and Tarkan, we all crawled into our separate tents with aching legs, thankful for a long night to recover from the exhaustion of a full day of trekking. Day one, like the first day of any trek, was a test, and it pushed us close to our limits. I fell into a deep dreamless sleep and woke up in the morning in the same position, when one of the porters rousted us for a daybreak breakfast of hot tea with yak milk and a warm, doughy bread that was served at the tent flap of each of our tents. A little later, still in camp, I opted for a couple of bananas over more Daal Bhaat, especially after learning that Daal Bhaat was really no more than a mix of rice and lentil beans juiced up with local spices. Pity the person who would hike behind me.
The day was relatively uneventful. With the rising trails, we spent every hour marveling at spectacular scenery that featured the world’s tallest mountain range, crested in snows that covered the tops of Annapurna, K2, and their sister peaks on the not-so-distant northern horizon. The scenery became even more spectacular with every rise of one thousand feet. We felt like trail blazers, although thousands of people had gone before us. The majesty of the experience over those four days of climbing made us feel like we were on top of the world and had it all to ourselves. We were, indeed, on top of the world, or close to it.
Brad and I, Cathy with a C, and Kathy with a K got along famously—and, I might add, platonically, to my knowledge anyway. I’m sure Brad would have told me if he’d done anything with one of them, if you know what I mean, and surely I would have noticed. In the early afternoon of the fourth day, we met up with our next guide, Dondi Sherpa. He was to be our river guide, the one who would take us down the Trisuli River, which is a whitewater river that rushes right out of the Himalayas and down, down, down into the Chitwan National Forest. He had a very rugged-looking six-person raft and a very soft-looking young Scottish woman with him named Susan, whom he picked up from another trekking group only an hour or so before we met up with him on the river bank. Apparently Susan left her trekking team early and opted for the river route back to civilization. Our six-person raft now had six people and was loaded with equipment and supplies for the three-day float to a rendezvous with an elephant taxi.
Yes, that’s right: Brad and I had arranged for an elephant taxi—a driver seated on top of his elephant, commissioned for travel through the jungle—to meet us at a particular bend in the river. Once on top of the elephant, we would begin the safari leg of our adventure in Nepal. After a three-hour ride atop ol’ Dumbo, we would be checking into the world renown resort of Tiger Tops for three luxurious nights of recuperation and a little tiger hunting on the side, but that’s another story.
Fortunately for us, Susan was very likeable and quickly fit into our camaraderie and all the silliness that ensued from the familiarity that spun out of our foursome’s four-day trek. And, I should add, she was very attractive. She was probably in her early twenties. That she was a Cordon Bleu cook was nic
e, but it didn’t give her the strength to carry her own weight in rafting equipment and dry bags or, as would become evident later, to set up her own tent. She was petite, but Dondi quickly stepped in to give her assistance. You could say he became her personal assistant. We pushed off within an hour of saying goodbye to Sumi and the porters and found ourselves traveling at an entirely different pace, in a swift current that was dangerously powerful and quite thoughtless about our welfare. We must have been crazy, all of us, to undertake three days of whitewater, which would be periodically crashing us into boulders as big as buildings and spinning us through canyons that disappeared into the sky. It was exhilarating and, frankly, as it turned out, we loved every minute of it.
At the end of the first afternoon, two hours before the snap of dark, we set up camp on a spit of sand off an errant elbow of the river. With our tents pitched well up the steep bank on some level turf, the four of us sat next to each other between a couple of the tents to watch the raging mountain water shoot past us, again all thinking the same thing: We must be crazy to be doing this! Susan and Dondi weren’t with us. In fact, they weren’t even in sight. My curiosity got the better of me along with my bladder, so I stood up, lamely excusing myself to find a bush for relief.
I walked one hundred feet down river and climbed up a small dune. As my eyelevel rose over the crest of the dune, thirty feet in front of me, just at the base of the far side of the dune, I spied our river guide and Susan doing it on a towel. Yeah—it! I quickly ducked below the crest of the dune, not wanting to be tagged a Peeping Tom, walked away and, true to my needs, peed behind a bush before returning to the trio. All the while, I was wondering where the foreplay had occurred and how I could have missed it. The raft didn’t leave much for privacy or secret conversations.
I told Brad and the two Cathies about the discovery of our river guide and Susan caught in flagrante delicto. Brad laughed, and the two girls pretended to be shocked, but only for a minute, as our bonding from five days of being together quickly got us all into making some pretty raunchy comments. You gotta love the wild life in the Himalayas! Out of that experience, I momentarily wondered why I hadn’t had a similar experience with Cathy, the one I preferred. It’s not as if the thought hadn’t occurred to me. The only answer I could come up with was an unwillingness to put our four-part harmony at risk by a rejected advance or, possibly worse, a successful one! I concluded that it was best not to rock the raft. Eventually, Dondi and Susan joined us. However, they didn’t arrive together but more like a minute apart. How discreet! Dondi was a stud, a fact that was now evident to all of us and made us assume that he got laid on every trip—Cordon Bleu or not.
The next two days were beyond description in every way, as we encountered total serenity in a wilderness punctuated by roaring rapids with hugely treacherous water holes, the kind that could make a raft dive down for twenty feet and never let it go. Three times in that period, Dondi dropped us on the riverbank and had us walk several hundred yards downriver while he single-handedly guided the raft through whitewater hell. We admired his immense skill in guiding the raft to the next pickup point and asked ourselves what we would do if he was ever tossed or the raft went turtle. It wasn’t something we dwelled on. We had challenges of our own just meeting up with him again, clambering down the boulder-strewn shoreline and perilously making our way over, around, and through the uncountable water-stripped trees embedded in the rock outcroppings. It wasn’t a walk in the park for us, despite the partially trodden path created by countless other adventurous tourists, who had also let their guide go solo through the treacherous parts of the river.
There were many quiet stretches on the float as well, which gave us an almost surreal experience, with the eerie echoes of water riffing along the base of the towering rock walls, while overhead serrated stream-cut crevices knifed through the walls to deliver dozens of silver ribbons of waterfalls, some falling as much as one hundred feet, and most misting us with fine spray, as we floated downriver in a near delirious state of peace and awe. It was easy to be speechless, although the five of us usually chattered like monkeys, while Dondi concentrated on the river’s currents—and on Susan, of course. Despite some scary moments bobbing through tumultuous rapids, the float down the river was generally idyllic.
Before Brad and I knew it, three days and three innocent nights had passed, and we were waving goodbye to the girls from atop our elephant taxi. He and I set off to Tiger Tops Resort, watching the girls begin their two-hour float down the river to their drop off point, where a car would take them to a regional airport for a flight back to Kathmandu. The two Cathies lived in the Bay Area, where I lived, so it was likely I’d see them again. We had all bonded as friends, and we promised each other we’d meet again when we got back to the States.
Seven months later, I returned to California, in culture shock for the first twenty-four hours of being home. Until I found a place of my own, my residence was a friend’s spare bedroom in an apartment in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood. The U.S. is so different from the rest of the world. Notably, it’s got great shower heads and fantastic toilets, beating every other country’s versions hands down. They were the two things I had missed most in my worldly travels. Two weeks later, I thanked my friends Chess and Gretchen for their hospitality and moved into a two-bedroom apartment on Clay Street in Pacific Heights with a buddy of mine who had just split with his wife and was going through a messy divorce. It worked for both of us.
Two weeks after moving into my own place, I looked up Cathy’s number and called her to say hi. She lived in San Rafael, just north of Sausalito. She said she was really glad I’d called, and we made plans to meet in San Francisco for dinner three days later, on a Saturday night. I was looking forward to seeing her and sharing our memories of Nepal. We agreed to meet at The Elite Café on the west side of Fillmore Street, just off its intersection with California Street.
I got to the Elite Café early, which is pretty standard timing for me, and waited at the bar with a martini already in hand, which wasn’t standard for me, but not a bad idea, since Cathy would probably be late from dealing with Saturday night traffic coming into the city over the Golden Gate Bridge. Besides, it wasn’t a “date” date, so I didn’t worry about holding off on a cocktail until we were together.
With the final olive barely submersed in a classic martini glass, she walked in and, scanning the room, quickly spotted me standing at the bar. She didn’t look great. She didn’t have that carefree sparkling aura about her that I remembered from our adventure. But of course, she wasn’t on vacation anymore, and for that matter, neither was I; so, maybe she had the same reaction to me. But I doubted it. I was pretty excited about all the new ventures that had come with my return to San Francisco, including the most recent plum of landing an assignment to write a weekly tennis column for the San Francisco Chronicle. With my new commitment to creativity, writing was on the docket, and landing this column was my first big coup in the new pursuit of a creative life. Surely the excitement over my luck was radiating from me. Nothing was radiating from Cathy.
I love The Elite. It has all the charm that a San Francisco iconic restaurant could have. It’s a great place for brunch, especially at one of the tables in the bay windows overlooking the eclectic street life on the busy sidewalk. The Elite is also a great place for dinner for two, especially if you get a table in one of the private booths.
We were together again, like old friends. I was pretty amazed at how tired and pale she looked. She was probably overworked or just got in from double duty on cross-country TWA flights. After exchanging the hug of old friends, followed with an air kiss to her cheek, I wasn’t able to detect even the smallest sparkle that I remembered seeing in her eyes eight months ago. She started with a glass of wine from the bar, but warned me that the drive home meant that one drink might be it—maybe another one with dinner, but that was doubtful. I understood her caution, of course. California led the country at the time in str
ict enforcement of DUI laws, so I respected her judgment. I wasn’t driving. I had walked eight blocks to The Elite from my apartment, so I knew another martini was on my docket, although more than that wasn’t in my budget. The cost of dinner alone would deliver maximum pain. Even so, I was taking her out to dinner tonight, at my invitation, to celebrate our reunion. When her wine was placed on the bar in front of her, I momentarily excused myself to let the maitre d’ know the Thomas party of two was ready to be seated. I always used my first name because, as hard as it is for me to believe, I was always asked to spell Dunker—I kid you not. Explaining that it was “like donut” didn’t seem to make it any easier.
Cathy and I got a booth. It was romantic, though I didn’t think either of us had feelings for each other in that way. This dinner was just a catch up on a promise made nearly eight months ago from atop an elephant that was standing knee-high in the Trisuli River.
Our time together started out low on energy and didn’t have the promise of picking up. Cathy was sucking the air out of the evening; that much was obvious to me, but why this was, I didn’t have a clue. After a surprisingly short exchange of our travel memories from Nepal, I plunged into a barrage of questions to get a better understanding of the cloud that was clearly hanging over her head. It was an ugly cloud, and I was about to learn why.
Six months earlier, Cathy had gone on strike with the union that included TWA’s flight attendants. The strike lasted a couple of months without work or pay—maybe a little of the latter—but with the expectation of winning a pay raise and more benefits associated with her seniority from having been with TWA for nearly twenty years. Cathy didn’t think the union would lose and assumed she’d be back to work after the strike and in better financial shape than ever. She was shocked when the union strike turned out to be a total flop and she lost her job because of it. Aside from a couple of nights of babysitting for a friend, she hadn’t made a dollar since her layoff five months ago.
When she told me this story, in more detail than I could follow, she had been unemployed for nearly seven months and, in that period, unable to find any work that was remotely respectable. In that period, TWA went out of business, like Pan Am had—another great airline gone. Other airlines weren’t hiring, and she didn’t have a clue what else she could do. Her prospects weren’t good. I didn’t know exactly what “not good” meant, but I surely sympathized with her and could feel her distress. I tried to keep the conversation upbeat by being sympathetic and as helpful as I could in suggesting ways she might pick up some spare change. None of my ideas seemed to connect with her—and not surprisingly, as I had so little time to thoughtfully incorporate my ideas into the little I knew about her.
We only knew each other from our week in Nepal. Even so, I provided a plethora of possibilities and did everything I could to infuse her with some hope. I shared my optimism and told her of my own recent struggle and more recent, though modest, good luck with the Chronicle. I even told her that they paid me a paltry twenty-five dollars for my weekly submission, so she could know that my sympathy for her was real. I wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough either, and my income prospects for the near future were…well…put it this way: They were nothing that could get me a girlfriend who wanted to live above the poverty level!
By the time I paid the check, she seemed to have recovered some of her good nature and that sense of humor I remembered her having during our trekking and rafting days. No doubt that second glass of wine helped, probably more than my commiseration or any of my stupid jokes and funny stories. I stopped myself at two martinis, which is what one column in The Chronicle could cover. As for covering the cost of dinner, I knew I’d better get a second career soon or I’d truly become a starving writer.
Thankfully, the evening ended on a much happier note than it had started on. She perked up a bit and looked better for it. I walked Cathy to a crappy old Fiat, which was parked on a quiet but car-packed residential street about four blocks from the restaurant, exactly where she had left it before meeting me. Moments before she got into her car, we shared a good night kiss that felt pretty good to me, although I didn’t think either of us should be dating anyone at a time of mutually shared borderline impoverishment. Dating each other struck me as a particularly silly thing to do unless we wanted to spend our time together in a soup line.
Two weeks later, Cathy called me and invited me to dinner at her place in San Rafael. She said I was really helpful over our dinner at The Elite and wanted to see me again to discuss some of her latest ideas. She said she’d fix dinner at her apartment. How could I say no, when it seemed like she needed some advice? So I accepted her invitation. I told her that I didn’t have a car but that a friend of mine had a motorcycle I could use to get me up to San Rafael and back. We set the date for five days later, on a weekday, when I knew I could get my friend’s bike for the evening.
I showed up on time, just as dusk fled. Her apartment was easy to find, even though it was tucked on the backside of one of the buildings, out of sight of the freeway. It was one of a dozen in an expansive two-story complex right off Highway 101, close to the exit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark civic center building, the one with the bright blue tile roof.
Cathy was glad to see me and gestured me in and, in the same breath, asked me about the ride to her place. I didn’t like riding motorcycles, especially on California’s highways, but happily, my ride up was uneventful, and the traffic was miraculously thin. I said as much. As soon as I stepped in, some savory fragrance emanating from her kitchen revealed that dinner was underway, and it was probably a curry of some sort. “Smells good,” I said, stepping farther into her living room, which began at the front door.
“It’s chicken curry,” she said. “I threw it together with the help of a Nepalese recipe—and some Bhaat.”
“How fun,” I said, thinking it was clever that she would fix something that would reprise our memories of fun times. “Just tell me that you’re skipping the beans.”
“You mean the Daal?”
“Yeah,” I laughed, “the lethal Daal.”
We laughed together at that memory. “Don’t worry,” she said, “that’s not on the menu. How ‘bout a glass of wine? Red or white?”
“White works for me, if you’ve got a bottle open. If not, I’ll take an open red. Either one will do.”
She turned to go to the kitchen for the wine and some quick oversight of the dinner.
I made a sweeping scan of the decor as I wandered a bit around her living room. The whole look was quaint and burdened with international trinkets, what I called collectible dustibles. They were probably souvenirs from all her travels. The furniture was mostly a potpourri of tired Pier 1 pieces. She had a dozen photos hanging on the wall above her couch, all in those cheap black frames you see at Walgreen’s. They were mostly of her posing with a motley mix of fellow travelers in front of some of the world’s most recognizable marvels, including the Taj Mahal with Kathy with a K, Buckingham Palace, St. Peter’s in Rome, and the usual suspects. I didn’t see a photo that had me in it. I concluded that her spare change must have been dedicated to travel. It didn’t look like her twenty years of flying had advanced her decor much beyond the college look.
I was suddenly feeling bad for her predicament. Clearly, it wasn’t a good one, especially knowing she was out of work. After she walked up to me with my wine, we turned to the photos hanging on the wall, where I got a quick review and little story behind each one. We had a lot of travel in common and got the evening off to a good start sharing stories of our respective adventures. In fact, the swapping of stories carried us through her curry, which was delicious, and into yet another glass of wine—the fourth?—which we consumed while comfortably seated on her couch. She pulled out a map of Nepal, which she unfolded on the floor to retrace our adventure, so we moved down to the floor for an easier read. Happily, the floor was quite comfortable and left us plenty of room for gesticulations as the travel tales flowed, as they i
nevitably do with all travelers—and so did the wine. I knew that driving back to the city on a motorcycle would be perilous and something I probably shouldn’t attempt, but I would deal with that when I had to deal with it. Our stories were too good to worry about anything, which was a blessed effect of the third bottle of wine she’d just opened.
In the middle of one of my stories, the lock on the front door nickered and swung open with the entrance of a woman who clearly looked comfortable entering the apartment. She said, “Hi,” and Cathy called out, “Hi!” and that was all, as the woman expeditiously disappeared down the hallway with the encore of a door closing. I looked a little perplexed and looked at Cathy for an explanation, which she provided right on cue:
“She’s my new roommate,” she explained. “I rented out my second bedroom to her last month. She’s very nice, very quiet, and travels a lot, so I don’t always know when she’ll be here. I guess she’s here tonight.” Cathy paused, as if waiting for a reaction from me.
While she waited, I recalled that there was only one bathroom in the apartment, so I was thinking that the quarters just got a little smaller. This was a concern because I was about to ask Cathy about spending the night on her couch. The wine was good, and I’d had too much of it. Getting on a motorcycle would be suicidal—or worse, maybe homicidal.
“Hey, makes sense to me,” I said about the news of having a roommate. “Sounds like a smart thing to do, especially while you’re unemployed.” I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. That’s all that was needed to kill the good mood brought on by storytelling and bring Cathy back into the unpleasant reality of her predicament.
“Yeah,” she sighed, “I didn’t have a choice.” And then her head dropped, and she told me the bad news: “I’m out of money and way into my credit cards.” I don’t ever recall a conversation moving so fast from smiles and laughter to the silence of a morgue. I felt her pain, as the silence became deafening. After the longest ten seconds of heavy silence known to mankind, she picked up her wine glass to make a toast and exclaimed, “Cheers—what the hell!” Those were her exact words.
I smiled meekly, trying to find something light to say, but could only come up with a polite exit to relieve myself in the only bathroom. I left the room, hoping the bathroom wasn’t occupied. It wasn’t. I ducked in, closed the door behind me, and wondered about my next step, besides the obvious reason for being in the bathroom. A minute later, I washed my hands, leaned forward over the countertop, and stared into the wine-glazed eyes looking at me in the mirror. The image in the mirror said, “You can’t drive.” Driving home was no longer a possibility, which would be my next topic of conversation when I returned to the living room.
She was in the kitchen, cramming a few pots and pans into the dishwasher. She had already refilled our wine glasses, which were waiting on the living room floor for our return.
“Hey Cathy,” I might have slurred my words a tiny bit. If I did, she said nothing, but I could tell I was definitely buzzed. “I can’t possibly drive back to the city. Mind if I spend the night on your couch? That’s assuming, of course, your roommate doesn’t mind.” Then I waited for her reply. Apparently, she was giving it some thought because she just plunked down on the floor next to me without saying anything.
With her head down in a long sniff of the bouquet from her glass followed by a sip of her wine, she then looked up at me and said, “Sure, no problem, of course you can stay here.”
I guess that settled it, and thankfully so because I had no Plan B in mind. I could see she was feeling really down. I offered more words of encouragement and told her tomorrow was a new day and maybe something might come up that was totally unexpected. For a brief moment, I thought I detected a very slight smile, or what I wanted to believe was a smile.
“I’ll be all right. You’re probably right,” she said while gazing past me, suddenly unfocused, into some distant space and continued, “Something totally unexpected might happen tomorrow.” And then she let a soft smile appear on her face, looked up at me, and leaned into me for a kiss. Our lips met, and the wine helped us believe that kissing was all that mattered at that moment. We kissed some more, with passion growing like a fire ignited by a single ember. Our kisses got longer and deeper. We did all this kissing without moving, without touching each other, and miraculously, without spilling our wine.
When we pulled apart, she stopped inches from my face. She was a little out of focus, and I’m thinking I’m probably a little out of focus to her too. She smiled again, another soft smile, and said, “Sleep with me. Sleep in my bed tonight. Okay?” And then she kissed me passionately before I could reply.
I didn’t say anything. The answer was never in doubt. We both stood up, took one last sip of wine, and abandoned the glasses on the kitchen counter before walking toward her bedroom. I closed the bedroom door softly.
As I tugged my shirt off, Cathy turned on a small bamboo bedside lamp across the room and then slowly moved around the bed, back to the door, where she flipped the switch to turn off the ceiling light. She pulled the covers back, which I took as an invitation to climb in, and then she walked to the foot of the bed. I was already naked when I slipped under the cool sheets. She undressed slowly in front of her closet, sylphlike, seemingly oblivious to me, while I silently watched from her bed. She had a beautiful figure, slender but with curves where curves should be. She moved provocatively in the low light of the room, slowly turning and turning and turning again, almost like a striptease but with a sense of modesty. Then completely naked too, she stepped to the side of the bed and slipped in under the sheets to be alongside me.
There was no urgency by either of us. We took our time with each other, exploring, moving together, and playfully rolling around. Gentle and slow worked for both of us. Our lovemaking was sweet, with a pace that took us well into the night. We were silent except for some whispers of tenderness, maybe with sensitivity to her roommate just across the hall, or maybe just because we wanted to whisper. We weren’t lost in the throes of unbridled passion but, rather, made love in a measured, steady tempo, in a synchronicity that enabled us to reach a sublimely blissful state at the same time without any thought for what tomorrow might bring. Moments later, still entangled, Cathy’s breathing became slow and deep, which told me she was already asleep. It was a simple act with an innocence that only human beings can share.
I closed my eyes, fell asleep, and didn’t open them again till the light of the morning haloed the window’s curtain. I got dressed and whispered goodbye, with the promise to call her. She said, “Okay,” and closed her eyes. I tiptoed out of her apartment, a little hung over, leaving her in a dead sleep.
Thirty minutes later, I was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on my friend’s motorcycle. Its vertical cables were glowing bright orange, burnished by the sun rising across the bay directly over Berkeley. It was the beginning of a new day in San Francisco, and I was excited about my life and everything ahead of me.
Late that afternoon, I called Cathy to thank her for a delicious dinner and a delicious evening. She didn’t answer, so I left a message on her voice mail, with the promise to try again later. I called after dinner. Again, there was no answer and, again, I left another message.
After three days, I still hadn’t heard from her. My phone calls went unanswered, and I got swept away by life. I was busy one morning writing my next column when the phone rang. The person identified herself as a friend of Cathy’s, someone whose name I didn’t recognize. She said she was calling the people in Cathy’s address book, which I thought was a funny thing to say and made me wonder what she was up to. Then she said the words that punched me in the chest like a judo kick to the sternum, taking my breath away: “I’m sorry to tell you this,” she said, “but, as I said, I’ve been calling the people in Cathy’s address book to let them know that two days ago Cathy killed herself….”
I didn’t hear the rest of her words. I’m not sure what I said to the caller, or even
that I said anything at all. I went numb. I remember hanging up and sitting at my desk as minutes passed, pointlessly staring at my keyboard while all the energy drained out of me, until I had just enough left to collapse on top of my bed for some more staring, this time at the ceiling. It wasn’t sleep I wanted. It was understanding and enlightenment. I couldn’t move, as I tried to make sense of it all, of something that made no sense. Was there something I could have done to help her down another path? Did I miss a signal, some kind of cry for help? No was the only answer I could come up with. She was dead now, and nothing I could do would change that. She was dead. Just like that—gone. I laid on my back in bed, numb from head to toe, for over an hour, unable to move, feeling like a bowling ball was sitting on my stomach.
A day later I learned that there would not be a funeral. I understood. All I could do was remember her in what must have been the final day of her life. I can live with that, but I’d rather not think about it.
∞