Tangled Grip

I'm Nix. Forty-five. I run the golf course next to the Stone Spur climbing gym. Been doing it eleven years, and the job's mostly mornings. Mow, fix sprinklers, yell at some guy in khakis for driving a cart too close to a green.

Evenings are mine. And for the last three months, evenings have meant one thing.

I watch Jess climb.

There's a window between the pro shop and the gym. Big glass, industrial light on the other side. I close up the course, walk over, and stand there like some creep at an aquarium. She climbs most weeknights. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best, because that's when Maurice shows up.

I didn't know her name for the first month. Just called her the chalk woman in my head. She's thirty-eight, I found out later. Climbs like the wall owes her money. Short hair, strong shoulders, no patience for hesitation. I'd watch her work a problem, fall off it three times, then stick it on the fourth and yell something the glass wouldn't let me hear.

It was good. It was a nice quiet thing at the end of my day.

Then one Tuesday in March it stopped being nice.

Maurice finished a route. Hard one, overhanging, the kind where you end up upside down at the top. He dropped down and Jess was right there, grinning, and she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. Both hands. Pushed it back off his forehead, slow, like she was arranging something that belonged to her.

Something in my chest snapped.

Not sweet. Not warm. Ugly and electric, like a live wire fell into a swimming pool.

I stood there at the window with a dead face and realized I was jealous of a man's hair. Forty-five years old, golf course manager, and I wanted to be a head of hair.

* * *

First time I ever noticed Jess was a Thursday in January. Cold night, gym fogging the glass a little. She was on this traverse low to the ground, and the whole time her face was doing this thing, this total focus, mouth slightly open, eyes going hold to hold like she was reading ahead in a book.

She fell. Laughed. Not a little laugh either, a full one, head back. Maurice was spotting her and he laughed too and she smacked his arm.

Then they talked. I couldn't hear it, obviously. But her body language said comfortable. Months comfortable. She pointed at the route, he pointed back, she shook her head, and when he climbed she watched him the whole way.

He topped out. She clapped. And when he came down, sweaty, she reached up with one hand and brushed the damp hair off his forehead. Quick. Casual. Like it was a thing she did.

It was a thing she did. That was the part that got me later. She did it all the time. Every week, some version of it. Fingers in his hair after a send. A tug at the crown when he was being smug. Once she grabbed a fistful and pulled his head back while she said something in his ear, and he went bright red and she cackled.

That was the January stuff. Back then I just thought, huh, cute couple. Went home. Ate a frozen pizza.

Took me a while to notice I'd stopped watching the wall and started watching her hands.

* * *

By mid-February I was there every night she was. I learned her patterns. She climbs best after eight. She chalks up twice as much as anybody. She drinks from a green bottle with a dent in it.

And I learned the hair thing was a habit, and then I learned it was more than a habit, the night she tugged him.

It was a Tuesday. Maurice had been working this boulder problem for two straight weeks. Kept falling at the last move. She stood under him yelling encouragement, and when he finally stuck it and dropped, she grabbed his hair with her whole fist and pulled, playful, tipping his head back, and said something that made him laugh and grab her wrist.

I watched that and my chest burned. Burned is the only word for it. Hot and stupid.

I said it out loud, standing alone in the dark by the glass. Nobody around.

"Jealous."

First time I'd named it in my life. I've had women come and go. Nice ones, too. Never once felt this. Never once looked at a stranger's head and thought, God, I wish that were me under her fist.

I walked home that night and didn't sleep much.

* * *

The next week, I went in.

Bought a day pass. Fifteen bucks. The kid at the desk asked if I'd climbed before and I said once, in the Navy, and he looked at me like that explained something. It probably did. My shoulders still work.

Chalk dust everywhere. Rubber squeaking on the wall. That smell of sweat and magnesium. I stayed on the easy stuff, the auto-belays, kept to myself. But I knew where she was in the room the whole time. You always know.

The fourth time I looked over, she was looking back.

Locked. Both of us. She hung there on the wall with one hand in a hold, just watching me. I didn't look away. Couldn't have if I tried.

She finished the route. Topped out, let go, dropped clean to the pad, and walked straight at me. Not toward the water fountain, not toward Maurice. Me. With this half smile, one eyebrow up, like I was a problem she'd already solved.

"You've been watching me." She stopped an arm's length away. Sweat at her collar. Green bottle in her hand.

"Yeah," I said.

"For how long?"

"January. Maybe earlier. I run the golf course next door. There's a window."

"The window guy." She laughed. "Oh my God. Maurice calls you the window guy. Tall fella, stands outside like a heron."

"That's me. Heron."

"So why do you watch?" She took a drink. "People watch climbers, fine, it's pretty. But you don't watch the wall. I've seen you through that glass, mister. You watch my hands."

She had me dead to rights and I figured lying was pointless.

"I want to know what it feels like to have your hand in my hair," I said.

She laughed. A real one, the head-back one, the one I'd watched through glass for three months.

And then she stopped laughing.

The smile stayed but it changed. Went from amused to interested. She looked me up and down once, slow, then leaned in a little.

"Say that again," she said. Quiet. The gym noise swallowed it, nobody else could've heard.

"You heard me."

"I want to hear it again."

"I want your hand in my hair," I said. "I've watched you do it to him every Tuesday for three months and it's been making me insane."

She looked over at Maurice, who was hanging a new route on the far wall, oblivious. Then back at me.

"Follow me," she said.

She walked toward the back of the gym, past the lockers, past a door marked STAFF ONLY, and pushed through into a room with crash pads stacked against the wall and one lonely weight bench. Chalk handprints on the doorframe. No windows.

She turned around and looked at me standing in the doorway like an idiot.

"Close the door," she said. "And come here. I'm going to show you exactly what you've been missing."

I closed the door. The latch clicked and the gym noise dropped to nothing. Just our breathing and the hum of a vent somewhere.

She looked me over again. Slower this time. The way you check out a car you're thinking about buying.

"Forty-five," she said. "Right? You look it. Good. I don't do games with guys who can't say what they want."

"I can say it."

"Then say it."

"I want you to pull my hair." My voice came out lower than I meant. "I want you to do to me what you do to him. Maybe more."

"More," she repeated. She liked that word. "You're not jealous of him. You're jealous of him getting handled." She stepped in close. Close enough I could feel the heat coming off her, the chalk dust on her forearm, little white smudges. "Tell me if I'm wrong."

"You're not wrong."

She nodded once. Businesslike. Then she took a fistful of my shirt and shoved.

I went back and hit a crash pad. The thing swallowed me, soft and deep, and before I'd finished bouncing she was climbing on. Straddled my chest, knees pinning my arms down light, not hard. Her weight settled on me and I stopped thinking about anything except the fact that this was happening.

"Hands stay where they are," she said. "You move them without asking, I stop. Understood?"

"Understood."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, ma'am." I hadn't called anybody ma'am in my life. It came out natural.

Her grin went crooked. "Oh, I like you."

Then her hand came up and went into my hair.

First contact. Three months of watching through glass, fifteen bucks of