We rented a house in the shadow of the Sierras, and on a beautiful May night, we set out for Whitney, departing at 3 a.m., under a full moon as bright and white as an exposed piece of bone.
Several hours earlier, before trying to grab whatever sleep we could, Kate had drank too many beers and then found a half-empty handle of Everclear left in our rental by some past hikers. She demanded we do a shot. I told her absolutely not. But when we parked at the Whitney portal and shouldered our packs, adjusting our trekking poles and headlamps, she pulled the Everclear handle from the car.
“No way. Fuck yourself, Kate.”
“One shot, Tar Heel. You’ll do it if you love me.”
We did the shot. When the antiseptic brine hit my throat, I thought I’d gag, but I muscled it down, choking. Kate, on the other hand, turned and projectile vomited into the road. I almost fell down, I was laughing so hard. She belched.
“What a way to start.”
We picked our way over the initial boulder field, and then climbed through the corridor between mountains, bathed in a blue glow, catching sips of cool air rushing down through the mighty cavern of the John Muir Wilderness. The pines of the Inyo loomed on all sides, while the crags of the surrounding mountains lay hidden in shadow. We saw other hikers using AR glasses to make their way instead of headlamps, and it was eerie seeing them move like phantoms through the dark. Kate was heaving breaths, struggling from the booze. Two hours in, we’d climbed fifteen hundred feet, nearing Lone Pine Lake, this high-altitude body of water fed by all the mountain streams. We looked back into the first pink, yellow, and blue filaments of sunrise on the eastern horizon. Kate slipped her fingers into mine, and we stood there for a while, watching.
The day after summiting, after my anger at Kate’s behavior on the upper reaches of a dangerous mountain had worn off and I had a chance to sleep for ten hours, ice my feet, and treat the plantar fasciitis that had lit in at the worst possible time, the flood of endorphins hit, “secondary fun” my mom calls it. Kate decided we had to make Everclear margaritas to celebrate, and this time I was more than game.
Though we’d seen the fire advisories all over California (Very High), the town of Lone Pine was nothing but vast, unyielding desert, so we built a fire in the pit out back and put on the wire mesh top so that the flames just barely licked out. We sipped the margs and put our bare toes by the fire.
After a while, Kate asked, “Have you given any thought to what we do now?”
“In regards to what?”
“In regards to Ivanka Trump’s Apprentice reboot—dude, what do you think? You know, like our fucking planetary emergency? Where does FBF go from here?”
“You’re asking me?”
“I am. I always do.”
It was the first time I ever opened my mouth to give voice to the idea that maybe we should just run away. That we should walk into the future, however frightening that might be.
But instead, Kate’s phone, for a month secured in a bag that blocked all transmissions, rang.
“It’s Coral,” she said, and we went inside to project the video on the wall.
The sight of Coral and their pageboy haircut, heavy glasses, lip ring, and that odd Winnie the Pooh tattoo coating their shoulder, flanked by Rekia and Tom, filled me with a buoyancy. These were not coworkers or even friends, they were my siblings in arms. They sat in the main conference room in the D.C. office. Above Rekia’s new bouffant doo, the Antonio Machado quote hovered, and though I’d stared at it in meetings for years, its meaning, in that moment, filled me with purpose again. I saw I had a text from Tom. All it said was I’m sorry man. Kate was giddy, telling them how great it was to see their faces, when Coral cut her off.
“Kate, we need to tell you something. There’s been a vote.”
I thought they meant in Congress, and so did Kate because she said, puzzled, “There are no bills up right now.”
“No,” said Rekia. Kate stared up at the white plaster wall. Dust glittered in the path of the light spilling from the phone’s projector. “There’s been a vote internally. We’ve decided to remove you from the position of executive director, effective immediately.”
I couldn’t have been more stunned if they said they were endorsing Jennifer Braden for president. My mouth dropped open. Kate’s face, on the other hand, betrayed nothing.
After a moment, Tom said, “I thought we should all call you to explain.”
“We lost so many allies in the midterms, Kate.” Coral removed their glasses and rubbed their left eye with the heel of their hand. “Now Senator Love is promising to investigate us. Our financial situation has grown dire.”
“Wait, wait,” I said, interrupting. “Kate didn’t rewrite PRIRA. This isn’t her fault.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” Rekia snapped. “Not sure if you heard, but news from the front is, we lost. Motherfuckers cut us to ribbons in about sixteen months. Kate wanted to live her tabloid life, treat all this like a vehicle for her brand, and when it blew up in our faces—who’s expected to handle the mess?”
“An intern?” Tom implored. “Really, Kate?”
“What you do in bed,” Rekia went on, “is immaterial. Hell, how you treat Matt is immaterial. But you stopped being an effective advocate a long time ago.”
“Rekia, you’re out of line,” I warned her, and I could feel the petulance rising in my voice. “You’re making this personal.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yeah, and who’s taking Kate’s place?”
Rekia didn’t hesitate. “I am.”
I stood and began pacing, walking from the couch to the bookshelf full of guidebooks for the Sierras. Coral explained what would come next.
“We’re issuing a press release tomorrow. Kate, it would be better if you didn’t make a statement yet. We’re in a very delicate position with our biggest donors, and these are relationships that must be repaired if we’re to continue financing our operations at full capacity.”
“Kate, I’m saying this because you’re my friend, and I fucking care about you, okay?” said Tom, and because his voice was so genuine, because I knew he’d long acted as Kate’s champion and loyal servant on the Hill, it enraged me even more. “It’s time to get out of the spotlight.”
“We get it!” I roared. I stormed back to the phone, resting on its stand, to make sure they could see my face. “We get what cowards you all are. We get you can’t take the heat. But you goddamn well know there is one person in this organization who dragged it to relevance and made it a force. And it’s none of you!” I jabbed my finger at Kate, still silent on the couch. “None of you have the creativity, the passion, the focus, or the courage to do what she did. And the first trouble that comes along, you all knife her in the fucking back.”
“Matt,” Kate said softly, and she put her hand on my waist, looked up at me. Her color-shifting eyes implored me to calm down. I had to walk away. I heard her say, “Thank you for calling, guys. Good luck to you.”
Kate came to me in the bedroom after that. She put her head against my chest, and we lay there together, the margaritas forgotten, nothing left of the day but a pink hue over the serrated blade of the mountains.
Two days later, I’d wake to find her in the kitchen. She’d gotten up early and gone into town for coffee. Without a word, she handed me the first proper physical newspaper I’d held in years. While we were hiking, a wildfire had broken out in Northern California: seven thousand acres near Calistoga had gone up in twenty-four hours, killing at least two hundred people with hundreds more missing. It was the worst death toll from a wildfire in California history, and the flames were still spreading. The lede was a simple quote from a Cal Fire spokesman: “This is up there with some of the worst fires I’ve ever seen, and it’s only May.”