Page 116 of Full Contact

Trier sat with a rental shoe in each hand, asking Tess questions.

“He’s interviewing her,” Felix said.

Trier worked his foot into a shoe. His face changed when his toes hit the end. He stood, took one careful step, and frowned down at his feet.

“Did you warn him that attractive footwear costs extra?” Felix asked.

“I warned him they’d be tight.”

Dana laughed. “Oh, I like him.”

Tess pointed him at an easy route, mostly big jugs with a couple of smaller edges near the top. He pushed his sleeves to the elbow before he started. A bruise the size of a puck was dark purple on his right forearm.

Dana leaned toward me. “What happened to his arm?”

“Hockey.”

“Last night?”

“Yes—a defenseman named Begich. Third period.”

Trier climbed halfway up the wall quickly. Then the wall bulged out, and the next jug was a long reach right. He grabbed it and pulled. His shoulders did all the work while his feet dangled.

“He’s hauling,” Felix said.

“I know.”

“Like someone else I could name.”

Trier lost his grip and dropped with a whir of the line. He hung a few feet down, glaring up at the jug.

Dana walked over to the base of the wall. “Can I give you some advice?”

“Please.”

“Foothold on your left. Knee height, little blue chip. Stand on it and you won’t have to reach.”

He found it, stood there, and his hips moved in close to the wall. The jug he’d been fighting for was right in front of his hand. He took it and slapped the top two moves later.

When Trier returned to the floor, he had chalk smeared across one cheek. “That was considerably easier after I stopped trying to drag the wall toward me.”

“I’m Dana.”

“Trier.”

Felix shook his hand. “Felix. For the record, you took advice on your first night. Mark didn’t do that for his first year.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Okay—eleven months.”

I took Trier to the cubbies to show him where we kept our things. His bag was already in one. I started explaining the tape colors on the route markings, and he told me which was which before I finished. He’d learned it from Tess.

Dana asked him how long it took to trust a movement after an injury. She’d hurt her left shoulder two years ago and still flinched on some reaches.

“I had a shoulder too,” Trier said. “It was most of a season before I’d go into a corner without thinking first. Then one night I went without thinking. I’d done it enough times that my shoulder got bored with being scared.”

“I’m stealing that.”