Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unfit to Practice

But how could that be? Why wasn’t she in bed, with this long, hairy arm across her breasts covered demurely by a down comforter? Why did she feel so exposed?

The fire must have kept them warm, she thought groggily, realizing they had never made it to the bedroom. Paul, who lay all over and around her in an intimate clutch on the living-room rug, snored softly. Before she had time to heed the situation further or form a plan to stave off impending disaster, the front door opened widely.

Bob stepped in. “Mom?” he said. “Taylor’s grandma’s sick. I tried to call-” His voice fell away.

Closing her eyes, Nina played asleep, trying to keep her breathing regular, just like Bob used to do when he was little and was caught late at night reading by flashlight.

“Mom.” This time, Bob said the word more softly. He stood there in the entryway for what seemed like months, then tiptoed past them and crept up the stairs to his room.

“Wake up,” she whispered to Paul when she felt convinced of the thoroughness of Bob’s absence from the room. She tried to lift Paul’s heavy arm off her, but the arm, awakening slowly, had other things in mind. She repeated herself a few times, watched the lazy hazel eyes open wide at last, and fended off his hands, which had gone exploring. “I have to get up. Let me go!”

Something in her voice worked. He removed his arm. “What’s the matter?”

“Bob came home,” she whispered.

“So?”

“Are you awake? He caught us lying here.” She moved her leg out from under his leg and stood up.

“God, you are so pretty from this vantage point.”

“Paul, get up!” She took his hand and tried to get him to his feet. “Put something on.” She handed him his shirt, which he obligingly put on. She handed him his pants. He pulled them over his legs. “Now button that shirt,” she commanded.

“What’s the rush?” He fumbled with buttons. “He’s on to us. There’s no going back now.”

Trembling, she picked up her nightgown and robe. She put the robe on and climbed the stairs to her room. “Shh. I’ll be right back.”

She returned fully dressed in a sweater and long knit skirt. Paul sat at the kitchen table in front of a beer and half-empty glass. Nina went directly to the refrigerator and pulled out the champagne. “We might as well open a bottle of this,” she said, and she knew how she sounded, sick at heart, horrified.

“Sure,” Paul said, ignoring all that. He popped the cork. She handed him two crystal flutes, which he filled.

“To us,” he said, clinking. “Bob will take it all right.”

She nodded and drank.

“Dinner?” Paul said, pointing his glass toward the full countertop.

“Yes, except Bob hates anchovies. You mind if I leave them out?”

“I don’t mind.”

“You can’t stay over tonight,” she said. “Taylor’s grandma’s sick.”

Before Paul could respond, Bob’s door opened. “You guys decent now?” he called down the hall. “Can I come out?”

“Come on out,” Paul said.

“What will I say to him?” Nina asked.

“Say it’s time for dinner. You’re delighted he decided to join us after all. Say you’re sorry about all that. Ask him if you can put anchovies in my half of the pasta.”

Lacking a better idea, she did.

O N SATURDAY MORNING, despite the pressure Nina and Paul felt to work, they both dropped everything when Bob extorted his way into their plans.

“The only thing that’s going to make it up to me is a hike up to Cave Rock, Mom,” he told Nina slyly, after she offered awkward apologies for the previous evening’s living-room debacle. “I’ve been wanting to go there all summer, and now winter’s coming and we still haven’t gone.”

Nina called Paul to tell him. Paul invited himself along. “Let me check with Bob,” Nina said.

“Sure,” Bob said, “let’s invite Paul. He’s such good company. But I guess you know that.” Chuckling, he took off to find his boots.

Although Nina was clearly still worrying about Bob, he seemed untraumatized enough to Paul when he picked them up. They drove past Zephyr Cove to Nevada State Park, parking in the lot below the tunnel, Bob talking nonstop about why he needed to see the famous cave. “Wish told me there are spirits here and if we don’t make any noise we’ll hear them.”

When Bob let up for a few seconds, Paul listened to Nina tell about her conversation with Jack, and how Jack felt she was in the clear. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, as if daring him to say something different. He kept his skepticism to himself. He also kept himself from making one single crack about Jack.

The parking lot abutted Lake Tahoe, ending at a boat ramp, and the two or three other cars all had empty boat trailers. Flights of gulls punctuated the delicate sky, which looked as if it might destabilize into a storm during the afternoon, but the lake lay passive and cool beneath.

In a triumph of functionalism over history, Highway 50 had been blasted through the bottom of Cave Rock as a WPA project. Cars roared through the tunnel as they climbed up the hill in light scrub. Bob sat on the edge of a wall overlooking the lanes until Nina, nervous, called him back.

“The Washoe used the waters below this cave for their sacred burial area,” Bob lectured, climbing on ahead, Paul behind, Nina on his heels. “I asked Wish to come along, but he said he has too much homework, which is too bad, because he knows a lot more than I do about it.” They came very quickly to a flat area marred with concrete and broken glass with an enormous natural archway entry into the rock. Within the gloom they made out a hundred years of graffiti on the walls. Stacked bits of granite, feathers, and twigs, offerings of mysterious origins, decorated the large slabs of granite at the far end, where the rock narrowed into a V.

“There is a cave like this on Oahu,” Nina said. “Bigger, but with that same narrowing at the back. It’s still an opening, but it seems to continue down into the earth at that point. The Hawaiians say it’s where their race was born.”

They walked back into the light and poked around. Bob set off, climbing beyond it onto a hillside of loose shale. Nina, who had been sitting cheerfully on a rock overlooking the lake getting her picture snapped by Paul, got up grudgingly to continue on with him.

“I’ll wait here,” Paul said, checking out the steep rock walls, noting the places where climbers had attached fixed holds. After they left, he walked around until one particular line on an outside wall of the cave attracted him. Cave Rock might be a sacred place to the Washoe, but to the profane rock-climbing community it was a vertical park.

Pulling his climbing shoes and some chalk for his hands out of his pack, he quickly readied himself for some free climbing, scoped the line out some more, eyeballed some handholds, and pulled himself into the ascent.

How he loved to climb. He loved the stretch of muscle under his skin, the adrenaline rush, the cold edges of rock that nicked him as he felt for handholds. He ignored the pitons left by more cautious roped-up types. After a while, he settled into a slow rhythm, taking no chances on the holds, which were, true, not too reliable, just enjoying himself in the moment, doing what his body was meant to do, his eyes six inches from Mother Earth, his hands holding her tight.

He reached the top fairly fast and sat down to enjoy another fantastic view of the lake and surrounding peaks, clouds massing in the east, a sliver of moon ghostly in the thin morning air. His reverie was interrupted by a shout, followed by a second shout, followed by his name.

He scuffled down the gentle backside of the rock face, toward the voices. There he found Nina kneeling over Bob, who was sitting at the bottom of a long rockfall, blood gushing from his knee. A bruise was beginning on one cheek, and scrapes on his arms told Paul he had taken quite a tumble.