This was our second attempt at Looking Glass Rock. The first time, the wind shoved us off the first pitch. As we packed our gear in defeat, a man appeared from behind the east fin. He began pulling baby rattlesnakes from the cracks with a bent wire hanger and taking photos.

I like to come by and check on how they’re growing. Most people don’t even know they’re here.

There were no snakes this time. Just the desert quiet and the occasional blaze of wind across the plains. Three sandy, slabby pitches, following a straight line of bolts winking silver in the sun. There was an odd trio of bolts  at the summit that fooled us for a moment before we spotted the real rappel station.

Cheeky bastards, Matt said. We have to drop through the keyhole to get down. They say the route was first climbed by local cowboys.

I watched as he slipped through the opening. Listened as he reached the ground. I was ready before his yell (I’m down!) stopped echoing in the vast church-like amphitheater. My turn.

The trick to a free hanging rappel is to stay still. Steady your breath. Keep a firm hand on the rope. Be deliberate. Slow. Calm. There’s a grace to lowering your body through hundreds of feet of open air. Don’t look down — look through the porthole on your left. Blue sky. Endless scrub and sagebrush. As you drop lower, concentrate on the grit of sand and slight burning of rope in your palm and a primitive sense of ownership. The desert is immense, but you conquered this part of it.

(His wife is asleep — tired from the beach, he says — but we all know they’ve been fighting.

No, that’s not true. I didn’t know. The bartender tells me.)

He’s too young to be married. Too pretty. I tell him this.

You’re too young and pretty to be married.

He laughs and smiles like a movie star. I see why they fight.

Porto C. is yellow shorts and dropped ice creams during the day, but empty at night. We go the wrong way down one way streets and park diagonally at the curb.

We stop at a small and bright bar. I can tell it isn’t summer yet — it’s nearly empty and there are no fireflies. Or maybe that’s just an American thing.

We take pulls on strong beers and peel wet labels. The boys slam each other’s bottles against the counter, pull faces, drink too quickly to beat the foam.

We go to a moonlit beach that I will never find again.

(We tried the next day, got lost, and were cursed at for ignoring road signs.)

On the ride home, warm, soaked to the waist, salt drying on my bare legs, trip-hop beats shudder out open windows and sand shimmers beneath my toes.

It’s fine, I say.

And then I walk into the dark and I pick the sharp sparkles from my knees and throw them in the grass.

And when we talk again, it is fine.

(You prepare for the plain things to be broken.)

…

If I could sing, I’d go on stage wearing a blue dress and high heels. The heels are too high, so I’d step out of them and place them by the stage lights. And I’d sing and wave and say hello! Hello! Can you hear me?

There are men in crisp black suits and brown shoes on motorscooters and on the corner, a photoshoot. The models straddle a Vespa–the man in white pants and a cabled sweater, the woman in scarlet lipstick and her high heels making black marks on his white, white pants as they smile blindly into a foil sun. It is summer and they are hot.

i wrote only one word because there were too many.