Peru

The sun baked his skull through his cap as the path narrowed to single file in its inexorable rock face hugging ascent.

His T-shirt was soaked, the rucksack arms sliced his shoulders and perspiration dripped off his cap. He leant upright against the rock wall, unpeeling his backpack with stiff deliberation, lest too sudden a movement totter his Bambi-on-ice legs and banana skin him over the sheer drop a few steps away.

“Are you okay? Do you need some water?” A sporty American was coming down the track at a rate of knots that staggered. A bottle was proffered towards him.

“It’s okay, I’ve got one here.” He must’ve looked a hell of a sight for the young dude to be so earnest in his worry.

The man-boy smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, you’re over the worst of it, not much further to go.” Then he bounced off, skipping steps with vertiginous aplomb on his way down, uncaring a slip could send him plummeting over the edge.

Was such bravado a badge of youth or personal spirit? Age was inevitable, but its wearing was each man’s choice. 

The stranger’s honest display of kindness was inspiration enough; he took a glug of water, hoisted the sack back and continued. Nearly there, no sense thinking about turning back anymore.

People were kind, people were good.

THROUGH HER EYES HE SAW AN OPEN FUTURE OF HOPE AND EXCITEMENT AND PASSION

“Well I thought you were funny.”

Downstairs at the Kings Head comedy night; what started as an occasional trial had become a weekly masochistic routine. The stage was formed by chairs to the left of the bar. Some stand-ups raised themselves over the audience through sheer presence – he stood amongst them.

“What must they really think of us? A dog takes a dump in the street, his slave following behind on a leash picks it up, puts it in a bag, carries it along. No complaints. Who do you think really runs the show?” Bad Seinfeld rip-offs, badly told, schtick designed as a confidence boost served only to enforce his limitations.

Her open smile was genuine, the laugh lines that creased her eyes so natural he could believe her when she said she liked his routine. Her easy confidence was infectious, he was not just the comic they laughed at rather than with, he was the comic brave enough to stand in front of an audience and courage made snipes irrelevant.

“I believe in women’s rights, you should definitely buy me a drink, that way I can buy yours – equality right?”

And so it began. Chainsmoking in a crowded basement bar, sloppy kissing in the Crouch End chill on a teetering walk back to a shabby flat that Rosie greeted with optimistic fervour rather than snobbish disdain; she saw potential in the grot, it was the interior design project she always fancied; she didn’t run screaming out the door when he pulled out Ed the Happy Clown from his graphic novel collection (“a comic with comics”), she saw humour and imagination and creativity in quirk and oddness and individuality; she saw what he wanted to be, and through her eyes he saw an open future of hope and excitement and passion, a world where anything was possible, more so for the young and strange and different, so a one night stand felt permanent even before it became two and three and four nights and…

Good times, bad times – memory is a fussy eater, it picks at morsels, discarding some, savouring other, while the years amplify those snapshots so they grow in importance no matter how distorted that view they may be. 

What was true? What hope did they really have? Who knew what would happen next?

So many moments, some disappear, some linger, some twist over time, so the worst becomes the best with nostalgic reminisce, while the smallest, sweetest most beautiful moment pales into mediocrity, lacking the grandeur to compete with a fantasy ideal. 

It wasn’t as good as he remembered, it wasn’t as bad as he made it be.

LIVES INTERTWINED BY COINCIDENCE OR KARMA DEPENDING ON THE MOOD

They were in the clouds. 

At 3,050 metres above sea level the flat peak was a magnificent viewing plateau for the surrounding mountains. He had made it.

The air was clear and fresh and the sun shined through glass as the tourists milled around smiling broadly, hugging their companions and fellow travellers between gulps of water and Instagram poses above the ancient city far below. He took some shots for some temporary Instafriends, bonded by the gauntlet they all briefly shared and conquered.

A fellow Brit offered to take his picture, shooing away those who strayed into the shot, so he handed over his phone and posed by a wooden sign, drenched in sweat and a cheesy grin. He would see the Brit, a university professor, again and get drunk and argue over Scotch deep into the night in an Amazon lodge five days later, lives intertwined by coincidence or karma depending on the mood.

On the way back down he bounded past hikers sweating upwards with grim exhaustion. “Don’t worry, not far to go,” he found himself telling them cheerfully, fear of heights briefly forgotten. He couldn’t afford to dilly dally or grimly consider each step, he had to get back into town, shower and rejoin his tour group for the train to Cusco.

It was only when seated on that train he slowed down enough for realisation to hit. Amidst the celebratory mood of the crowd he had not paused to visualise Rosie and Thomas atop the mountain, had not placed them in a balloon, had not held them one last time, bade them farewell and watched them drift into the heavens. He didn’t need to.

They were already gone.