Page 81 of Full Contact

He walked over to the kitchen. I heard him fill the kettle and open the right cupboard on the first try. Peaches lifted her head in the armchair to see what was happening, decided nothing was, and put it down again.

I picked the canal book up off the cushion and put it on the side table with his glasses, so his place on the couch was clear when he came back.

Chapter twelve

Mark

Someone at the climbing gym had strung colored lights along the top of the walls and taped a paper snowflake to the auto-belay by the door. It had been dark since half past four. Inside, the ceiling fans were still turning, and the front-desk speaker played a jazz “Jingle Bells” over the thud of a dropped crash pad.

Dana stood at the base of the blue route, hands on her hips. Its holds led up over a gentle bulge in the wall, then beneath a small overhang to a pair of slopers—rounded holds with no edge to hook your fingers over. They looked like clay somebody had smoothed with a thumb. Keeping hold meant pressing your palms against them and trusting the friction. A strip of tape marked Friday as the day the staff would remove the holds and build a new route.

“Twice,” she said. “I’ve tried it twice.”

“Did you finish?”

“Eventually. The rope did some of the work.”

Felix sat on a bench with a stopwatch in one hand and his phone in the other, supposedly timing her rest. On his phone was a list titled SATURDAY: stuffed mushrooms, baked brie, spinach puffs, and eight more dishes. Climbing chalk smeared one corner of the screen.

“You’re timing her?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s a menu for your party.”

“I can do both.”

I took my turn on the yellow route beside Dana’s and came down with my forearms pumped tight and chalk packed under my nails. The smoothie bar was ten steps away. I sat down to watch.

On her next try Dana didn’t pause at the roof. She brought her left foot up high, rocked over it, and reached for the first sloper without looking for it. Her hand slipped a quarter inch and held. She matched it with the other hand, breathed once, and slapped the top hold, laughing before she let go.

“Somebody tell me that counted.”

“It counted,” I said.

“I had the stopwatch running,” Felix said. “Permanent documentation.”

When she came down, Dana pulled me into a sweaty one-armed hug.

Felix put his phone down. “Now I have a problem. The lamb needs three seventy-five. The potatoes need four twenty-five. They come out at the same time.”

“In one oven,” Dana said. “Maybe your guests need to eat in shifts.”

We took our smoothies to the window table. The glass had fogged at the corners, and outside a man walked a small dog in a red sweater.

“How’s my chicken?” Felix asked.

“Evolving,” I said.

He winced. “That sounds terrible.”

Dana stirred her smoothie with her straw. “Are you going with him to Springfield for Christmas?”

“No. He leaves Christmas Eve morning, back the twenty-sixth.”

“And you’re with us.”

“Christmas Eve at Felix’s. Leftovers at yours.”