Читать книгу Lighting Out - Daniel Duane - Страница 18

Plumb out of yang, no desire to get to the top of anything, I mulled over how to break it to Nick. Over a plate of bad French toast at the Yosemite cafeteria, I remembered Kyla’d be back from the music festival by now, converted or not.

“Dan,” he said, before I could open my mouth, “I can’t do it. I’m just not in the right space to climb.” We were in the car and on the road back home with more coffee, and Nick was rubbing the muscles of his neck with both hands and talking about how much the storm had shaken him. Really gotten under his skin. The confession came pouring out; he needed me to know he wasn’t like me, whatever that meant. He didn’t get off on death. “I mean,” he said, “I gotta think this through some more. Be a shame to die just to impress my mom.”

We passed the park entrance where a row of cars a half-mile long waited to pay entrance fees. Enormous RVs with names like High Plains Drifter and Footloose had canoes strapped to their roofs and Suzuki 4x4s in tow. Nick took off his glasses, breathed on a lens, wrapped his shirt around it and started kneading with his fingers. He told me he’d enrolled in a figure painting class at the university. I crassly asked if the nude models had anything to do with it.

“You do have the mind of a five-year-old after all,” he responded. “But frankly, the teacher, this French lady, is unbelievable.” He put his foot out the window in the breeze and I wished I could do the same. “My mother’s not going to believe it,” he said. “She hates it when I change obsessions too quickly.”