One Date, One Man, Never Twice: My Rule After the Divorce novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Slings

The rope setter lived in a Garfield apartment above a hardware store, and everything in it hung from something.

Carabiners hung from nails, harnesses from the door, and a row of bright flat loops of nylon webbing from a hook by the bed.

"Slings," he said, when he caught me looking. "For work. They hold three thousand pounds."

"Do they hold me?"

"They hold a car."

He was twenty-three, white, from Garfield, a lean wiry man with a sunburnt nose.

There was chalk in the creases of his knuckles.

I had noticed on the walk up how calmly he stood.

He set the routes at a climbing gym on the North Side.

Over dinner he had told me his whole job was deciding where other people were going to put their hands.

Now he stood by his bed and let me look.

The bed had a frame of black steel pipe, with a rail across the head.

"You said on the app that you've never tried it," he said.

"I said I'd never been told what to do."

"That's different."

"Yes," I said. "That's why I'm here."

He smiled and held out one of the slings.

It was a loop of red webbing the length of my forearm, soft and thick from use.

"Say stop," he said, "and they come off in a second. I'll have them off before you finish the word."

"I know."

"Okay. Take off your clothes."

I did, piece by piece, and he watched, not moving.

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