“You said that didn’t bother you.”
“Of course it bothers me, brother-fucker.”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
Patrick didn’t know how he was supposed to be. “You have a replacement me lined up!”
“Well, I’m sorry you’d rather I be a spinster, pining for you from afar.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Because there are absolutely no men in New York, so it’s either my brother in Connecticut or being an old maid.”
Sara walked closer to the rim of the canyon, a ghost barely visible through the fog. It reminded Patrick of their rooftop adventure in college, how nervous it had made him, her standing so close to the edge. How he promised he’d never let her fall. How times had changed. He lifted his hand, curled his forefinger to his thumb, and then pretended to flick her over the edge. She turned just in time to see it.
“Did you just flick me off the edge?”
Patrick did it again. This time he added a sound. “Pfft.”
Sara charged over toward him, away from the edge. “What is your problem?”
“What is yours?”
“You chose this move. You don’t get to offer opinions any longer on how I live my life!”
“But Greg? Really? It’s gross. It’s like you’re trying to have me, my worldview, my upbringing, my DNA, but in a different . . . sack.”
Sara was appalled.
“Well, body didn’t seem to convey my level of disgust.”
Sara ran her fingers through Patrick’s hair and he flinched. “I’ll bet you have the same sack.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Seriously, though.”
“Now you’re being vulgar. Don’t say another word about his sack.” Patrick ran away and Sara chased him until they ran in circles like dogs. “Or mine,” he added, laughing this time. They both stopped when they realized the fog obscured the canyon’s edge.
Sara put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. “All this way and we can’t even see it.” She carefully approached the edge and looked down, then picked up a pebble and dropped it, watching as it was swallowed by the mist.
“This sucks,” Patrick said, but it wasn’t clear if he meant the weather or the situation.
“I’m just doing to you what you’ve been doing to me. Pushing you away to make this breakup easier.”
“That’s not what I’ve been—”
“You just flicked me off the edge!”
He instantly saw the connection. It was true. He was done with the city, with loneliness, with the claustrophobia of concrete all around him. The endless jackhammering of midtown that made his teeth rattle when he emerged from the subway for work. But he would never be done with her. The thought of Sara not being a presence in his everyday life unsettled him deep in his core. The only way to survive was to disengage. And it was breaking his heart.
But, then.
“Look, look, look.” Patrick spun her around and pointed. The fog was lifting rapidly, a thick curtain raised, dissipating into nothingness. And the most incredible thing they had ever stood in front of revealed itself like an enormous, delicious pastry in a thousand flaky layers.
“Oh my god.”
They crept closer to the rim, holding on to each other in astonishment. The canyon was the color of every mineral and ore, thousands of years of sediments in rusts and greens and yellows and grays, and there seemed to be no bottom, the mist along the river basin the very last to lift. The world was so much bigger than they were, more mysterious; they were comparatively insignificant to the millions of years of work and splendor that lay before and beneath them.
“Water did all this. Can you believe it?”
The vista continued to sharpen. People ran from the direction of the parking lot, others oohed and aahed. Patrick and Sara, however, backed slowly away, as if they were in danger of being swallowed—two figures moving slowly backward against the tide of a world spinning forward.
* * *
Patrick treated the kids to lunch at the Pines Café at Mountain Station. Grant threw a fit when a bird grabbed someone’s french fry from one of the tables on the deck, so they sat inside, securing a spot by the window. They each had a slice of cheese pizza; the kids didn’t ask Patrick for pepperoni—they weren’t up for the fight—and he ordered the three of them a sad-looking salad to share.
“What should we do?” Maisie asked.
“With our afternoon? I don’t know. I thought this would take longer.” Patrick took a bite of his pizza, which was doughy and lukewarm, the sauce dry under a heat lamp. As much as he would have preferred actual food—a salad with genuine greens rich in nutrients, or any array of options available to him on regular ground—he was in no hurry to reboard the tram. “We could just hang out here among the trees.” Like the air, they were lighter up here, floating above the stressors that waited for them below.