The Glaciers of Nyan Tolo

Just before sunrise on my eighty-sixth birthday, I watch Sirius climb through the hazy orange twilight like a spaceship breaching a distant horizon. A perennial reminder that I’ll be blasting off somewhere too soon. And I don’t know where that is. I do my best not to worry. It’s like Adi always says when I ask if she’s worried. She just looks at me deadpan and says, “Would it help?"

I shuffle my way around Railroad Lake, with a labored cough that sits in my chest after. The cough sends the geese hissing into the water. Hot spots on the lungs. Probably some kind of cancer, Doctor Yi said. Who knows. At this point in life, I treat diagnoses with the same respect as tarot card readings. I’ve already won the lottery to have enjoyed good health this long. I’ve beaten the house. Anything else is a bonus.

I’ve been coming to Cornerstone Park since it opened. But these days, I no longer count off the numbers of joggers I lap—feet clicking out a blistering pace you could set your watch to. I’ve been reduced to a brisk walk with some intermittent bursts of glory. The cement and the planks of the boardwalks over the water radiate the Vegas heat into my legs, swelling my toes like overcooked sausages. Before long, the sun drowns out the light of Sirius, erasing its grandeur, and marking the end of my workout.

As I towel off and open the door of my Ford F150, the cough comes on again. It's worse today, with the heat and smoke from the California wildfires drifting across the valley. I cough so hard that tears fill my bloodshot eyes and my ears crackle. Then finally a clear breath comes in as the air conditioner bathes me in a brief reprieve from the heat. I pull out and head to Mustang Sally’s to meet Adi.

The phone is ringing. A 212 number.

“Happy Birthday Mr. Peter Lee. Happy, Happy Birthday.”

“Not so happy if you’re calling doc.”

“Peter, I really need you to come in and see me. Peter... there's something else.”

“I love you Dr. Yi. Let’s don’t and say we did.”

***

The door to Mustang Sally’s is like a time machine into a 50’s malt shop. Checkerboard floors. Chrome trimmed booths. A jukebox in the corner. Neon signs above the bar. Pictures of muscle cars. Vintage cartoon prints.

I sit drinking my coffee until Adi walks in. I have a standing seven o’clock breakfast with Adi Amar at our usual place. Every day except for Mondays and Wednesdays when she’s in pediatric surgery. Like clockwork. We’ve kept this up now for almost twenty years. I don’t have the heart to tell her this all might be coming to an end very soon.

The waitress brings our usual dishes. Huevos rancheros for me. A corn tortilla, slathered with two leaky over easy eggs, lightly peppered, with warmed salsa on top. Avocado and refried beans on the side. Two slices of charred wheat toast, butter soaking every crisp pore.

For Adi it is her signature fluffy peanut butter banana pancakes with walnut crunch mixed-in. Warm maple syrup drizzled over a lump of butter two Land o Lakes cuplets tall.

I’m a nocturnal animal finishing my days with exercise and a meal before most people wake up. Adi is a morning person who starts her days early and takes a break to refuel with some carbs and spend time with me after her morning rounds. She is a pediatric surgeon at St. Rose Dominican. Her days end when my shift as a dealer at Four Queens begins.

Once a day, our orbits cross, like two binary stars in a fixed orbit, and we share our lives this way.

“Oh Peter. I was fixing God’s work again yesterday. Poor thing had a congenital esophageal defect. I had to make her a new esophagus.”

“Sounds like a real pain in the neck!”

“It is just hard to accept. That these babies, who have done nothing, are born broken.”

“We all arrive unfinished, my dear.”

“I suppose. But it is one thing to be normal broken. It is another thing to be broken broken.”

“You know Adi, if the world wasn’t broken, it’d be pretty boring, don’t you think?”

“I guess you’re right, Peter. I am just tired. When you do this thing—like pediatric surgery—you can’t help seeing it everywhere you go. All the deformities and defects. You become this walking lens that filters out everything that’s okay and only sees what’s wrong.”

“It is the same for me. All of the big players at the blackjack table are addicted to escaping reality. They don't bet for money. They bet for possibility. For one hour they get to believe their lives aren't already written. They don't even know what they'd do if they won. The 'what if' is enough.”

“So, you’re saying they have a lens too. They see the whole world as uninteresting, and they are just looking for excitement. At the tables, the grand adventure seems possible?”

“Exactly.”

“Imagine if there was a portal to another world. You don’t know anything about it. Maybe you won’t even fit in there or be accepted. Maybe it is harsh and unforgiving. But maybe it is everything you ever dreamed. Could solve all your problems. Would you go?”

“Depends.” I let out a hoarse cough that hurts my throat. “I'd probably forget where I parked.”

“Be serious,” Adi demands.

“I’ll be going there soon enough. Haven’t got much choice in the matter.”

“Oh, stop it, Peter! You’ll live to be 110. You’ll probably run a marathon on your 100th birthday. Give me a break.”

“Maybe not, Adi. Dr. Yi says I might have cancer.” So, there it is. I’ve said it.

“Might have. Sheesh. Dr. Yi is a quack. I’m sure it’s just inflammation,” Adi says, waiving off the comment.

The words “Extreme Heat” flash on a banner on the television over the bar. The local weatherman points to a map streaked with blobs of yellows, oranges, and reds. He says, “This is a record, folks. This marks the fifth straight day with highs reaching over 115 degrees in Henderson. We are on a heat wave advisory for the next seven days. Henderson and Boulder Beach and the entire Lake Mead National Recreation Area are experiencing rolling blackouts after late night thunderstorms with pea-sized hail ravaged the electrical system, already overtaxed from so many residents relying on air conditioning to beat the heat. All are welcome at the shelters in the Convention Center in Las Vegas. Stay safe out there, folks. We are recommending rationing water and keeping tabs on electrical usage. We all need to do our part.”

I pay the check and bid Adi good day, and I am off.

***

The electricity is out when I arrive home mid-morning. If it is 115 degrees outside, and it has to be 120 degrees inside. Breathing in the still, dry air is like breathing in dust. I sweat through my shirt in the armpits and around my collar. Despite the sweat pooling on my forehead, it feels like my head is boiling. My pulse is throbbing so I can feel the veins in my temples. As I move around the room, it is like an oven. Even the handle of the refrigerator is scalding hot, and I must wear oven mitts to open it.

I open the large nearly three-foot-wide drawer of the freezer chest of my Z-Line refrigerator. Everything is still frozen solid. I fill an ice bandana with ice and tie it around my neck, then go back and shuffle around for some ice pops. The cherry flavor tastes like childhood. While I am closing the freezer door, I can swear I hear a sound like wind coming from deep inside the chest. But it’s impossible. All the electricity is out. The fan can’t be operating.

Overpowered by the heat, I head back for another popsicle. This time an orange creamsicle. As I open the freezer again, the temperature seems to drop in the kitchen. There is a faint smell, crisp and sweet, like frozen heliotrope. Am I imagining things? I close the freezer, and I am thrust back into the stifling oven that the heatwave has turned my home into, navigating by flashlight.

Against my better judgment, minutes later I head back to the freezer for my third popsicle. When I open the freezer, a rush of air comes out and a faceful of snow smacks me in the face. It feels good against my burning forehead. I look deep into the freezer, but I can’t see the back. Just layer after layer of mounds of solidified ice. They look like rolling dunes of sand. I imagine I can see a horizon. Wisps of snow drift in the wind. A landscape. As I stare into the abyss in the back of the Z-line freezer, I suddenly have the sensation of falling. Heat stroke? Is this the big one? These thoughts pass. I find myself transported. I hear a vacuum seal behind me and realize I am standing again on my own two feet.

Only I am not in my kitchen. I am in the middle of a snowfield. On a horizonless plain. Dunes of snow in every direction. I take a step and pothole knee-high into a mound of snow. The whipping wind leaves small sections of icy rock exposed underneath. One endless glacier. Where am I? Is this a hallucination? A dream? I decide that if I am hallucinating, at least it is more interesting than cable television.

The clouds tear open without warning, revealing a sky unlike anything I have ever seen. A blue-white sun blazes so brilliantly it seems forged from molten steel rather than fire, its cold radiance washing the glacier in silver until every drift glitters like crushed diamonds. It casts no comforting golden warmth, only a white light that sharpens every ridge and fissure in the ice. Beside it, suspended in solemn silence, floats a second star—a tiny, bright white jewel that shines with the unwavering intensity of a lighthouse seen across an endless sea. It is too small to be another sun and too brilliant to be a planet. The elder star watches while the younger blazes. Together they rule the frozen world, one fierce with life, the other serene as a polished bone, and beneath their twin gaze the glaciers glow from within.

***

The first trip only lasts 60 seconds. Then I am standing back in the kitchen, the heat suddenly welcoming against my frigid skin. The melting snow from my legs is evidence that I was pulled through some portal into an ice world. What was that place? There was something familiar about the binary stars.

I check my pulse and it is normal. I feel my forehead for fever, but it is useless in this heat. Maybe I should see Dr. Yi. I may be losing it.

Suddenly I have an overwhelming urge to take a nap. I head into my bedroom where my mind is spinning as I lie down, forehead dripping on my pillow, collar soaked. But the exhaustion is stronger than my excitement. I drift into sleep.

When I wake up and jump out of bed, my knee pain is gone. For forty years that knee had negotiated every staircase I climbed.

I seize the moment and return again. This time I am gone a whole day. Out on the white plains against the white sky, I laugh out loud, the echo returning from everywhere at once. I grab a handful of snow and start a snowball fight with the dawn. I lie in the snow, still laughing, making snow angels, in my khaki pants and tie-die t-shirt. I can't remember the last time I played without worrying how I'd feel afterward.

Later, I find a moving ice river beside some ruins of what looks like ziggurats framed by a corridor of giant frozen pillars.

I am gone far too long without the proper attire. When I return it takes hours to warm my fingers and toes.

***

It’s my day off from Adi, who is in surgery Wednesday. This time, it is my eyes. I forget my glasses and go the whole day without realizing it. I need proper gear for my next trip to Nyan Tolo, so I don’t freeze to death. I’ve already figured out from the sky where I’d been transported to. An icy moon circling the Sirius twins.

“Right,” Gary says. “You want an Everesting high-altitude mountaineering setup.”

“For at least negative forty below.”

“You’ve come to Vegas REI brotha. Not basecamp. I’ll put in an order.”

“A few days won’t kill me.”

“Now, these Leki poles and these ice axes are a must.”

“Done and done.”

“Let’s talk about crampons. Normally I’d say Sportiva, but brotha, you've got that wide foot Harfoot thing goin’ on, so I’m gonna say we should fit you in some roomy zoomy Zamberlans.”

***

On my third trip, I find footprints and see smoke coming over the horizon. The trip lasts two whole days. I see Adi after but say nothing. Like always, she pours cream into my coffee without asking. It nearly brings me to tears.

As I hike up a cliff face on Nyan Tolo, I realize I’ve been out on the ice for four days this time. There is no night here. Only full day and half day, under the silvery light of the twin stars. I sleep in the tent often. Time here is unbalancing.

How long before I blip back? Why is it so much longer than last time? It must have something to do with the solar cycle. By my math Adi has probably already called the authorities to look for my rotting corpse. Next time I go, I’ve got to leave a note. It was selfish of me to leave again without telling her.

The gusts of wind buffet my face mask. My footfalls are lighter even at this altitude, which must be well over 10,000 feet, and yet the air is thinner.

I attack the ice shelf, using the ice axes and crampons, keeping three points of contact, like I’d read to do. I jab at the ice face. Sweat trickles down my brow. It is easier than I thought, but strenuous supporting my full weight. I am ten feet up the wall when the wind kicks up. I cling to the ice. Sweat pours down my face.

Looking east toward the horizon, I see something, a dome, with buildings inside. Yes, those are buildings! Unmistakable. It looks almost like the Silver City. I can make out three gates on the first of four sides. What kind of people could be living there? Are they people?

As I look more closely, I see a sky grid. A halo of flying vehicles.

Then, I am standing in the kitchen, a waft of Nyan Tolo snow following me out of the Z-line freezer chest.

I look for the date.

It is Sunday.

Tomorrow we’ll have breakfast.

***

“I had to go see Dr. Yi,” I lie.

“I was worried about you.”

“It’s just that… he doesn’t think I have long.”

Adi stabs a chunk of pancake, right through an extra big slice of banana, and sops up a helping of syrup, then inspects it before sucking it down. She looks up afterward, pleased with herself.

“Stop being so dramatic, Peter. Dinosaurs don’t die suddenly.”

“How dare you? I am a young man, in the prime of life!”

“And I am Marilyn Monroe. Let’s be real, Peter.”

“Don’t you want to go out on your own terms?”

“Why are you so morbid? What happened to your comedy routine? So, we’re old. It makes me wonder what you are waiting for – the second coming?”

“I’m not waiting, Adi. I am taking matters into my own hands.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

I kiss her cheek for the first time in nineteen years, not sure if I will see her again. I want to tell her what has happened, but if I try to tell her she’ll just have me committed to an insane asylum.

***

Beyond the ice ridge is a road. An ice road. I take out the Leki poles and begin a robust shuffle, half walking, half gliding. There is some kind of plant life. Porous yellow stalks, which frame the sides of the path in golden frills.

I wonder what the city will be like. I think of the note.

“My dear, if you're reading this, don't panic. Actually, panic a little. You'll find the freezer open. Close it if the electric comes back on. Don't call the police until Tuesday. If I'm back by then, breakfast is on me. If I'm not... you were right. There really was another world. I've left the coordinates. Love, Peter.”

As I crunch along the icy path, just about 400 meters away from the city gate, I think I can hear something along the path behind me.

There is a tall figure at the gate. A silhouette. I rub my eyes, not sure if it is a mirage.

I will miss you, my dear.

Sirius crests the dome, bathing the city in the purple light of the Dog Star.

Just before entering the gate, I hear something again.

I turn.

Someone is cresting the hill in a pink expedition parka. Even from four hundred meters away, I recognize that stubborn walk.

I laugh.

“Yes,” I whisper.