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Three blocks later, I put the blinker on for the taco place.

Tova sits up. “Keep going.”

I keep going. “That was the taco turn.”

“We’re going somewhere first.”

“You have somewhere to be?”

“You’re driving.”

“Apparently without adequate briefing.”

“Turn right at the next light.”

I make the turn. She gives me another direction two blocks later, then one more into a strip of converted warehouses I’ve driven past a hundred times without looking at any of them.

The sign over the third door has a climber hanging sideways from a wall. I pull into a space. My phone is still face up in the cup holder.

Tova gets her backpack out.

“You climb?”

“Since we were at Gabi’s. She brings me.”

That explains the transportation and absolutely nothing else. Tova starts toward the door.

“You coming?”

Apparently.

Inside, the place goes up farther than it goes back. Walls lean at angles that look wrong on purpose, covered in holds shaped like handles, rocks, dinner plates, and things nobody should trust with body weight.

Tova goes to the desk, where the guy behind it looks up.

“Hey, Tova.”

“Hi.”

So we’re past introductions.

He finds whatever he needs on the screen, and nobody asks me to sign anything. Tova puts her backpack in a cubby and changes into climbing shoes she apparently already owns. Then she takes off the cap and hands it to me to hold, and heads for the wall before I can ask about the shoes either. A staff member checks her harness and takes her to an auto-belay lane at the far end.

The route she picks runs up a gray wall with blue holds. I follow the holds upward, count the high pull that would ask too much on the right and the narrow pinch my left fingers would have to trust, and leave the math there.

The staffer clips Tova in. She tests the rope once with her weight.

I’m still on the overhang.

Then she goes, and I say nothing.

She moves through the first six holds fast, slows where the wall kicks outward, misses the next grip once, catches it on the second try, loses half a foot on the blue volume, hangs there long enough that my weight shifts forward, resets, switches her feet, reaches left, pushes through her legs, and closes both hands over the top hold.

At the top, she doesn’t look for me.

She lets go.

The auto-belay catches her and lowers her in a slow line to the mat. Her feet touch down. She unclips with the staffer watching, steps out of the way, and loosens the harness before coming over with her face red and chalk on one side of her shirt.