High Times

Parking Garage: 2. Climbers: 0.

Collins says he thought about that day. He wanted to try again, but he waited. One night, when darkness fell, he drove his Civic back to the River Market and parked across from the garage, just to look at it. He was unsure. Collins disagrees with climbers who base their identity on their performance. It's unhealthy, he says, and unproductive. So he studied the crack like an athlete studies playbooks, mentally reviewing his options, deciding if it was worth a rematch.

He waited almost a week, then he called Burns. Trying to do the north crack had been a mistake, he said. The south crack, between the corner of the garage and another brick building, is wider -- though brick is usually fragile and known to break apart.

They would do the south crack at night, he said. There's less chance of getting caught.

Driving the wrong direction up a one-way street, Collins and Burns arrive at the garage in separate vehicles around 10:30 p.m. They park inside. The security gate to the top is locked, but Collins says he'll climb it from the bottom and use a steel bar he saw on the last failed attempt as an anchor at the top.

Before exiting the garage, Burns pees in a corner. Then he and Collins step into the night.

From the empty street, the garage looks one-dimensional, like a storefront façade, illuminated in arcs from two streetlights. An off-river wind rips between the buildings. According to a bank sign, the temperature is just about freezing. Collins' and Burns' voices are obscured by the white-noise whirl of refinery machines, and the night air is saturated with the smell of roasting coffee.

After so long waiting, Collins' moves seem scripted, rehearsed. He places his hands in the crack and works toward the corner of the brick building where, 20 feet off the ground, there is an accessible ledge.

On the other side of the street, behind a second-floor window at the Folgers plant, a man in a hairnet works at his computer. He looks out the window, sees Collins scrambling up the crack and pulls his chair around to watch.

From the ledge, Collins moves about 10 feet up before placing another piece. Brick is weak, he thinks. Pull too hard on this, and a chunk of wall might just explode. He inserts his finger until he feels a pinch. The threat of falling is real now. This is his best handhold, just his own skin cinched between cement and brick. Suddenly, his fingers start to slip.

"Take!" Collins says. He leans back on his piece to test the weight.

On the ground, Burns is holding the rope. He takes in as much slack as he can and leans back gingerly against Collins' weight. He's quiet. Not joking. Collins hangs there silent, too. Within the crack, the piece pulls forward. Collins jerks in his harness as he drops another inch. Suddenly the entire operation seems entirely too yahoo. The safety piece is not entirely secured, and to fall from here would bounce him off the ledge like a pinball.

Collins inserts another cam beneath his first one. He has two options: Rappel now, or risk falling because of unsteady gear. He makes eye contact with Burns. Chalk dust falls in white flakes around him as he powders his hands to try again.

Moving upward, he passes above the streetlights. Up here, shadows run into each other, distorting edges and objects as in an M.C. Escher painting. Jamming his knuckles deep into the crack, Collins climbs by touch.

When he reaches the top, there is no celebration. He yells that it's Burns' turn. Burns hesitates, mumbling to himself. Then, in hiking boots and corduroys, he slips his fingers inside the crack and reaches out across the brick, bear hugging the side of the building.

By now, two more employees have gathered at the Folgers window, and the guy in the hairnet kills the lights. A black Ford F550 comes rumbling up the street and slams to a stop. The driver turns off the engine but leaves his headlights beaming.

"I won't call," the driver says. "I just want to watch."

Burns climbs differently from Collins. He steps on bolts jutting from the mortar between bricks and reaches out to hook his heel onto window sills to steady himself. Compared with Collins' climb, Burns is thrashing. Each vault upward is a sort of desperate tackle, versus his friend's methodically quarterbacked ascent.

Now his fingers stiffen. His hands are freezing, he says. Finally, they go numb. Burns slaps one hand up and then the other, wedging and climbing and slipping and falling and wedging and climbing and slipping and falling until he reaches the top.

The man in the F550 revs his engine and pulls away. Folgers employees retreat from the window. A police car just drove past, someone says, but there's no rope, no climbers. The cop never slowed down.

Chalky handprints line the building where they've been, but Collins and Burns are still above the city, watching cars turn at perfect right angles.