His thumb was tracing the ridge of my hip bone like he was following a contour line on a map he'd memorized.
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I found the old iPhone 5 in a dusty Pelican case tucked behind my technical ice axes and a stack of dog-eared National Geographic maps of the Zanskar Range. It was like digging up a time capsule from a version of myself that didn't know how to navigate by the stars yet. I'm thirty-two now and my skin is tougher, tanned from the high-altitude sun of the Andes and the salt spray of the Lofoten Islands, but when the screen flickered to life and showed that grainy photo of the flatirons as the lock screen, my stomach did that same sickening drop it used to do back in Denver. Back when I was Lila, the girl who worked at The High Atlas, and he was Julian, the man who owned the shop and my entire sanity. I started listening to the voice memos because I wanted to remember the exact flavor of that year before I delete them for good. [Voice Memo 01: November 12, 2016 - 11:42 PM] (The sound is muffled, likely recorded under a duvet. Her voice is a frantic whisper, breathless and pitchy.) It happened again today and I think I’m actually losing my mind because we were in the back room cataloging the new arrival of Victorian-era survey maps and the air was so dry my skin felt like it was going to crack open and he was standing right behind me, so close I could feel the heat radiating off his wool sweater, that expensive charcoal cashmere that looks like woodsmoke and smells like cedar and old paper. He reached around me to point at a specific topographical detail on the 1874 Hayden Survey map—a tiny little notch in the Gore Range—and his forearm brushed against mine and I stopped breathing, I just stopped, and he didn't move his arm away for three seconds that felt like three hours. I can still feel the ghost of those coarse hairs on his arm scraping against my skin and he started explaining the triangulation methods of the 19th century in that low, gravelly voice of his that sounds like tires on a dirt road and I wasn't listening to a single word about surveys because I was too busy wondering what his hands would feel like if he stopped touching the paper and started touching me. He’s fifteen years older than me and he’s my boss and he’s got this life that’s so steady and solid and I’m just this girl who’s trying to figure out how to be a person and it’s wrong, I know it’s wrong to want to pull him down onto the floor between the stacks and see if he tastes as dark as he looks. He looks at me sometimes when he thinks I’m not paying attention and there’s this look in his eyes that isn't professional at all, it’s hungry and heavy and it makes my knees feel like they’re made of water. I recorded this because if I don't say it out loud I’m going to burst. I’m going to go to sleep and dream about him and tomorrow I’ll have to walk in there and act like I don't want to scream. [Voice Memo 02: December 4, 2016 - 9:15 PM] (Sound of footsteps on crunchy snow, wind howling in the background.) I just left the shop and I’m walking home through the Highlands and the cold is the only thing keeping me from turning around and running back there. We stayed late to drink a bottle of Highland Park because he said we needed to celebrate the acquisition of the rare French expedition journals and we were sitting on those big leather chairs by the fireplace in the front and the shop was dark except for the glow of the embers and the streetlights reflecting off the frost on the windows. He was telling me about a trip he took to the Karakoram when he was my age and he got this look on his face, this wildness that he usually keeps tucked behind his tailored shirts and his spreadsheets, and he said, 'Lila, you have a restlessness in you that’s going to take you very far away from here,' and I said, 'What if I don't want to go anywhere?' and the silence that followed was so thick I could have cut it with a pocketknife. He looked at my mouth and I looked at his and I wanted him to just reach across the small gap between the chairs and grab me, I wanted him to ruin everything, I wanted to feel his fingers digging into my waist and instead he just stood up and cleared the glasses and told me to get home safe because the storm was coming in. He’s a coward or he’s a saint and I hate him for both. My chest hurts. It actually hurts. [Voice Memo 03: December 21, 2016 - 10:30 PM] (The voice is low, urgent, and very close to the microphone. There is a faint sound of jazz playing somewhere in the distance and the rhythmic thumping of a heavy heater.) I’m in the breakroom. I locked the front door. We're trapped. The blizzard dumped twenty inches in four hours and the roads are closed and the power flickered twice before the backup generator kicked in and we’re the only two people on this block. He’s in the main room. He opened another bottle of scotch and he didn't even ask if I wanted some, he just handed me a glass and his hand shook when it touched mine and that was it, the first crack in the dam. I can’t—I have to go back out there. I have to see what happens. I’m recording this so I remember that I was the one who made the move, I was the one who decided. (Long pause, only the sound of breathing.) God, help me. [Voice Memo 03 - PART 2: December 22, 2016 - 3:14 AM] (The voice is different now. Lower, raspier, trembling with an aftershock of adrenaline. The background is silent.) We’re still here. I’m sitting on the floor behind the counter and he’s—he’s asleep, I think, or just resting, on the rug in front of the fire. I can’t stop shaking. It didn't go the way it does in books, it was messy and loud and desperate and I’ve never felt anything like it. I went back out into the main room and he was standing by the window watching the snow come down in sheets like white static and I didn't say a word, I just walked up behind him and put my hands on his back, feeling the heat through that damn cashmere sweater, and he went stiff for a second, just one second, before he spun around and grabbed my wrists. He looked angry, almost, his eyes dark and his jaw set so tight I thought he might break something, and he whispered, 'Lila, don't do this, you don't know what you're doing,' and I just said, 'I know exactly what I'm doing,' and I kissed him. He tasted like smoke and salt and something sharp and metallic, and he didn't pull away, he groaned into my mouth, a sound that started deep in his chest and felt like an earthquake. He pushed me back against the heavy oak shelves, a row of first editions pressing into my spine, and his hands were everywhere, in my hair, under my chin, pulling my face up so he could devour me. He kept saying my name like it was a prayer or a curse, Lila, Lila, Lila, and then his hand was under my skirt and I wasn't wearing tights because I’d been hopeful and stupid and the air in the shop was cold but where he touched me I was on fire. He found the lace of my underwear and ripped it, just a sharp tug that sent a thrill of pure terror and excitement through me, and then he was inside me with his fingers, two of them, driving into me with this rhythmic, punishing force that made my head snap back against the books. I reached for his belt, my fingers fumbling with the leather, and I finally got it open and his pants were down and he was so hard, so thick, he felt like a literal iron bar against my stomach and when I wrapped my hand around him he let out a jagged breath and put his face in my neck, biting at the skin right where the shoulder meets the throat. He lifted me up, my legs wrapping around his waist, the friction of his rough denim against my bare thighs making me whimper, and he carried me over to the counter, the one where we wrap the rare maps in acid-free tissue, and he cleared everything off with one sweep of his arm. Maps worth thousands of dollars just fluttered to the floor like dead leaves and he laid me back on the cold wood and pushed my knees up to my chest. He didn't use a condom, we didn't even talk about it, he just guided himself to the opening and pushed, a slow, agonizing slide that felt like he was taking up every inch of space I had inside me. I was so tight I thought I’d break but he just kept going, his eyes locked on mine, watching me take all of him, and when he was fully buried he stayed there for a moment, just breathing, his forehead pressed against mine. Then he started to move. It wasn't the polite, careful Julian I knew. It was something else. He was heavy and fast, his hips slamming into mine with a dull thud that echoed in the empty shop, and every time he thrust his cock into me it felt like he was trying to leave a mark on my soul. I had my hands in his hair, pulling him closer, my heels digging into the small of his back, and I was making these sounds I didn't recognize, high-pitched, needy little gasps that only made him move harder. The wood of the counter was hard against my back but I didn't care, I wanted the hardness, I wanted the weight. He reached down and found the spot, that little bundle of nerves that was already screaming, and he pressed his thumb against it while he kept up that frantic, driving pace inside me and I just exploded, everything went white like the blizzard outside and I felt my walls clench around him in these violent, rhythmic pulses. He let out a choked shout and buried his face in my chest, his whole body shuddering as he came, a long, hot sequence of jolts that felt like he was pouring himself into me until there was nothing left. We just stayed like that for a long time, the only sound the heater and our own ragged breathing. He finally pulled out and the silence came back, but it was different now. He looked at me and he didn't look like my boss anymore. He looked like a man who had just seen a ghost. He said, 'I’ve wanted to do that since the day you walked in here with that rucksack and those bright eyes.' And I just touched his cheek and didn't say anything because what do you say when the world you knew is gone? [Voice Memo 04: January 2, 2017 - 5:00 PM] (The voice is hollow, flat.) I’m leaving. I put in my notice. He didn't try to stop me. We haven't touched since that night, not once. We work in the same space and we don't look at each other and the air is so heavy it feels like walking through chest-high water. He’s back to being Julian and I’m back to being the girl, but we both know. I bought a ticket to Kathmandu. I leave in three days. I think he knew that would happen. He gave me the maps I needed. I’m taking the Hayden Survey with me, the one from the back room. He told me to keep it. A souvenir from the night the world stopped. (Silence for ten seconds.) I’m never going to be the same. [End of Transcripts] I’m thirty-two now and I’m sitting in my house in Boulder, looking out at the mountains that used to feel like walls and now just feel like home. I haven't seen Julian in eight years. I heard he sold the shop and moved to a ranch near Telluride. Sometimes when I’m high up on a ridge and the wind is hitting me just right, I can still feel the ghost of that heavy oak counter against my back and the smell of cedar and scotch. He was right—I did go far. But I never found anything that felt as dangerous as those four walls after the clock struck midnight. I’m hitting delete now. Not because I want to forget, but because I finally have enough room in my pack to carry the memory without the recordings. recordings. Goodbye, Lila. Goodbye, Julian. Lock the door on your way out.
