Ronald Malfi - The Ascent

I really didn’t know why I’d come. I wasn’t interested in getting whacked out on drugs, and I had even less interest in spending any more time with Hannah’s college friend. Still, I’d come to the very spot Andrew had told me to, and not knowing why bothered me more than actually being here.

“I feel like you summoned me,” I said, tossing the ball of wax aside and standing. The second the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. It sounded like an admission of sorts, like I was granting him power over me.

Andrew smiled his queer smile. He was wearing a loose-fitting cotton shirt, and the hem of his floral-patterned shorts hung below his knees. He stood barefoot at the top of the steps, looking at me. “I’m glad you came. Are you ready to go?”

“Go where?”

“To fly.”

I nodded toward his ramshackle house. “I just assumed we’d … you know …”

“Come on,” he said, bounding down the porch steps and brushing by me.

I followed him through the trees, the leaves so dense above my head that they completely blotted out the moonlight. When we broke out onto the reedy precipice that overlooked the city, just a few yards from where I’d dropped the bike, Andrew turned away from me, placed both hands on his hips, and leaned back at a curious angle. I heard his spine pop.

“You live in that house?” I said.

“I’ve been here for about eight months. I’ve got a place in New York, too. My old man was filthy rich. He owned an oil company. When he died, he left it to me. Then I smashed it to pieces and sold it to the Japanese.”

“So what do you do?”

“Whatever I want,” he said, shrugging. He didn’t have to look at me for me to realize he was smiling.

“Where are we going?” I said after a while. The urge to hop on my bike and pedal the hell back to the grotto was suddenly overwhelming.

Andrew extended one arm and pointed off to the right.

I followed his arm but could see nothing except for the edge of the cliff. “Yeah. Funny. Flying, huh? Is that what you meant?”

“It’s what I said , wasn’t it?” He turned, grinning at me from beneath a partially down-turned brow. His eyes seemed to glitter in the moonlight. As I watched, he stripped off his shirt and tossed it in the reeds.

“I thought you meant something else.”

“Like what?”

I shook my head. “Forget it.”

Andrew began unbuttoning his shorts.

“Whoa,” I said, holding up my hands. I may have even taken a reactive step backward. “Hey, man, you’re barking up the wrong tree …”

Andrew chuckled. “I’m not a fag, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“So you only get naked with straight guys?”

Andrew dropped his shorts and stood there stark naked. His paleness was severe and nearly translucent. I thought I could make out his heart strumming through the wall of his chest. There was a small tattoo etched across his upper left thigh.

He winked at me, perhaps playing up to the homosexual undertones of the situation. “Look at that city down there,” he marveled, glancing over the ridge to the cluster of huts below. “Look at those lights.” He exhaled with enthusiasm. “Beautiful.”

He pivoted and tromped through the reeds to the farthest side of the cliff. Beyond, the moonlight dazzled on the surface of the water.

Closing my eyes, I could still see the enormous face of the moon floating like an afterimage behind my eyelids.

“Such is the way to immortality,” Andrew said. In an instant,he was gone, having flung himself over the edge of the cliff. For a moment, he seemed to hover in defiance of gravity, his legs pressed together and his feet pointed, his arms outstretched like the wings of some great bird. Then he disappeared, carried below the face of the cliff and out of my line of sight.

My breath caught in my throat as I ran to the edge of the cliff. I braced myself for a gruesome sight—Andrew’s pale, reed-thin body tumbling down the rocky mountainside—but what I saw was his ghostly white form sailing out across the darkness as if flying. He grew smaller and smaller until he struck the water in a perfect dive, slipping beneath the dark surface with hardly a splash. As the ripples spread and faded, I counted several seconds beneath my breath until the white orb of his face broke through the surface. Even from this distance, I could tell he was grinning.

“How was that?” he shouted, his voice borne on echoes rising through the valley.

I felt like a fool. I’d come here under the pretense that we were going to smoke some pot or maybe do a few lines of coke, failing to take Andrew’s comment about flying in its literal sense.

Andrew pulled himself from the water and scampered up a winding, sandy roadway that trailed to the top of the mountain. It took him nearly two minutes to reach the summit, and by that time, I was yanking my rented bicycle out of the reeds by its handlebars.

“Where are you going?” he asked innocently enough.

“Back to the grotto.”

“But it’s your turn.”

I laughed. “I don’t want a turn.”

“You’re not afraid of a little midnight cliff diving, are you?” Had the question been proposed by anyone else, it would have sounded derisory; with Andrew, however, it sounded oddly sympathetic, as if he felt some deep, inexplicable sorrow for me.

“You’re out of your mind,” I said.

“The sad thing is that you’re passing up what might prove to be the most exhilarating ten seconds of your life because you’re scared to try.”

“They could prove to be the last ten seconds of my life.”

Andrew ran his hands through his hair. His body, oily and slick, glistened in the moonlight. Several times I found myself staring at his genitalia and had to force myself to look away.

“Don’t lie to me,” he said. “You came here tonight because you thought you’d be getting high, right?”

I shrugged. “So?”

“So you have no problem shoving shit up your nose, losing all control of your senses, and burning the fucking septum out of your face, but you won’t dive off a cliff.” He snorted. “Fuck you, Tim.”

“Hey.” I held up one hand—a traffic cop stopping a line of cars. “Listen, man, I—”

“This is your one chance not to fail yourself,” Andrew said.

And for whatever reason, that resonated with me. Don’t fail yourself , I thought, stripping out of my clothes. Don’t walk away from this chance .

It was stupid. Perched birdlike on the crest of the cliff, the cool night breeze stimulating my naked flesh, I took a deep breath, and as one single thought blazed like a neon sign outside a speakeasy— You’re going to make your wife a widow on her honeymoon —I pushed off the ground and let the air cradle me and carry me swiftly to the sea.

Hours later, just before the sun rose, I snuck inside our small rented grotto and slipped beneath the sheets next to Hannah. She sighed and rolled over, draping a warm arm across my chest.

I stared at the ceiling, mottled with incoming daylight, listening to my heart throb in my chest. Wired, I could not close my eyes.

“Where’ve you been?” Hannah whispered, still half asleep. Her voice startled me.

“I met up with your friend Andrew.” I couldn’t help but grin. “He took me flying.”

I felt her smile as she pressed her lips against my ear. “Oh, the cliff-diving thing.”

The remainder of our honeymoon was punctuated by intervals spent with Andrew. He took us to various hole-in-the-wall bars, the best places for drinks on the whole island. The drinks were all heavy with rum and decorated with slices of rubbery fruit.

“Do you think they call these drinks cocktails because all the fruit hanging over the lip of the glass looks like the feathered tail of a rooster?” Hannah said at one point.