That night they reached camp four, at 2,200 feet, and had to share the remaining lounge, which was too small for one, let alone two. They didn't talk much then, either, carefully opening cans of Spaghetti-Os, their legs and shoulders pressed together as they ate. In the quiet Bruno seemed to hear a roaring, a distant roar that could only come from the stars, or maybe from deep within the earth. He imagined himself a moth, his specialized antennae stabbing into space and then he fell asleep for a moment, the Spaghetti-Os perched on his knee, light pockets of air rising and absorbing him and fingering his T-shirt and hair to draw him awake so he could discover again his thigh and arm pressed hard against his partner's acrid smell, his bare feet pressed down into the sky.  

It was warm enough that night to sleep without bags, just in their fleece and shells, but they could only sleep fifteen on, fifteen off, both of them shaking pins and needles out of their legs like so many shooting stars, leaning away from each other with their heads wound in nests of slings and aiders and yards and yards of rope. 

Bruno set off that last bright morning like the god of centipedes, all arms and hammers and locomotion as he nailed his way up a dicey seam, though his stomach stayed tight until he drove in his first solid pin forty feet out — his jaw not relaxing either until the sweet rising tones caught on the wind like gossamer. 

That evening, in the twilight, he yelled, “Watch me!” just before he laid his weight, all ginger and spice, onto a creaky HB. It was too shaky to bounce-test and when it popped it sent him ripping through five pieces that could have been fifteen and which would have landed him on Mr. Magoo, 80 feet below. 

In the almost-dark, after the jerk-and-fall, jerk-and-fall like buttons snapping off a shirt, his whole body felt rattled, as if someone had punched him so hard in the asshole it had gone clear through to his cranium. But he was the asshole — a big, stupid asshole — he thought just as the adrenaline sprayed from its glands and tore through him to create, for a blinding Bruno moment, the feeling that the meat of his body hung not upon his bones but from inside his hardened skin until he was only this hard skin, and then with a burst he couldn’t feel that or even any of the pain. 

They were gone and in their place he felt a nausea rise within, as if the hard skin had melted and drained hot to his belly and then wanted out. He fought this down, still hanging in his harness, swallowing hard and then throwing his head back, the acid bite ripping the lid off the sky to reveal the first of the stars that had come out. 

"You all right?" yelled Mr. Magoo again, worried and surprised by the fall after so many days of peerless climbing. 

Bruno felt he could smell the fear in Magoo's voice. Bruno felt on fire. "Yeah, I'm OK," he said, not loud enough, "I'm just an asshole." 

"WHAT?" came the words, chattering with the wind? 

"I'M A BIG, STUPID ASSHOLE!" Bruno hollered, his voice thrown down at the pale light of Magoo's headlamp like a bucket into a well. There was a relieved laugh far below, and then Bruno seized the rope above him, hauling himself towards the last piece as Magoo took in the slack. 

The heat in his belly was somehow clarified and cleaner and spread out into his limbs, and when he reached the piece that had stopped him he kissed it and the rock and then cranked up a little more and hooked into it. Hanging in darkness, miniscule and 2,500 feet off the floor, Bruno arched back as far as he could to see the Valley upside down, the thousand foot cathedrals across the way suddenly stalactites hanging from the cracked dome of meadow. 

He felt stupid for leading the last pitch so slow, stupid for getting caught in the building darkness and not putting his headlamp on, stupid for rushing and not simply taking a deeper breath and doing his job better.  Then, hanging in a back bend in the dark, his left eye tearing up, Bruno felt this stupidity go away. It wasn't as if it drained away, but as if it were being pushed out of him, riding out of him on a wave of painlessness.  Then he did take a deeper breath and, after righting the world, did fish his lamp out.  

He could see in its flower of light that he had torn his jacket and also grated a 2-by-4 patch off his forearm though he couldn't feel it yet, and then he saw-smelled-felt something drop from the lamp like a tiny bat diving. Not from the lamp. He reached up to touch split flesh in his cheek and found an oily smear around his eye and then saw his hand covered in blood. All he could figure was that one of the pieces had whipcracked him as he flew past, but he didn't remember it. At the belay he wouldn't even remember how he managed to finish the pitch or haul the pig up after him; he would only remember a glowing feeling, and later, all pain beneath bright stars.  

When Magoo saw Bruno’s face he could only whistle. They were at a hanging belay, only one pitch from the top, both of them twisting and wrestling with each other and their gear. Bruno's face was too slippery to tape up and Magoo had to cup one hand behind Bruno's head and press the other from the front to staunch the flow. It took awhile — maybe a hundred heartbeats — and then, afraid to wipe the skin and start the bleeding over again, Mr. Magoo carefully licked both the drying and wet blood from his partner's cheek, saying "Sorry, dude," once when the wind blew him too close and lightly bonked their heads together, their eyelashes weaving for a moment into a tiny screen. 

In the cool and carpeted Mountain Hut, Bruno pulls on one of the extra large jackets, as a decoy — as cover. It is far too big, but then, that's the point at this stage of the game. 

“Watch me at the hardware,” comes Mr. Magoo’s quiet voice from behind him, standing at a nearby hat rack, “One of them greenbacks almost got me when I snatched the hammer.”