We hadn't been home five minutes before Donald disappeared into the kitchen and came back holding a pistol.

"What's that for, Donald?" I asked, absently rummaging around in his army-green canvas knapsack for my bottle of ibuprofen.

His face remained placid as usual as he raised the pistol to his head and pressed the steel nose into his temple. I wasn't sure if he was playing a joke on me, or if he was going to kill himself. Donald is like that.

I first met Donald on top of Gray's Peak' which isn't far from Denver and stands 14,270 feet above sea level on the continental divide. It was early August, and I'd been trying to climb as many 14,000-foot mountains as I could in one summer. Grays and its sister peak Torreys, which is only three feet closer to sea4evel, make for an easy one-day walk-up. On a good Saturday during the summer you can see upwards of 100 people trying to hike the mountains: married couples, retired men, families with children, yuppies with too much equipment, college students and church groups-all of them strung out across the huge basin and scattered atop the rock-strewn ridges like pilgrims trekking toward a holy place.

I topped off the mountain just before noon on a Thursday. The morning sun had warmed the summit cairn, but a high bank of bruise-purple storm clouds were already creeping in to the west. Two people were sitting next to the cairn when I arrived-a blonde woman, who looked to be in her late twenties, and Donald. The woman was talking rapidly to Donald, who wasn't showing much interest. She wore bright pink running shorts that didn't entirely cover her hips, and she greeted me cheerily as I walked up. She exuded a harmless sexual appeal, and I hit on her the moment I arrived.

I bragged a bit about my mountaineering exploits, not quite sure how to pick up on a woman who graduated from college when I was hitting puberty. She talked about how much she hated her job, and she mentioned the possibility of meeting for a beer with Donald and me at some pub along 1-70 later in the day. Since I wasn't old enough to get into pubs, I didn't follow her when she hiked back down the ridge. She said she had to check on her friend, who I guessed was the pudgy office-type I'd seen vomiting her guts out onto a dusty pile of basketball-sized rocks a half-mile down the trail. I imagine the gastric acid will eventually make it to both the Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon. Such is the consolation of getting sick on the continental divide.

I expected Donald to ignore me as he had the woman, and he startled me when he spoke up a few minutes after she left. "I like it here," he said, staring skyward as the purple clouds came closer. '"There aren't any moths."

"I like it too." Not sure how to counter his moth statement, I threw in a neutral bit of trivia. "When I was little, I always told people I'd be a mountain climber when I grew up."

Donald took a long drink from his water bottle, saying nothing. I thought his first statement would be his only acknowledgment, but he surprised me after several minutes of silence.

"When I was a kid I wanted to be Jesus when I grew up. That's too hard, though."

He fell silent again, still staring up at the sky. The dark storm clouds loomed directly above us. I didn't see any lightning, but I could hear the static buzzing faintly across the rocks. When I started gathering my gear to leave the summit, Donald looked over apologetically, as if he felt he owed me some more small talk before I left. "Where do you work?"

"Nowhere. I'm in college."

He gazed back up at the sky. "I tried college once."

"What are you doing now?"

"Just living, mostly."

I looked skyward, trying to figure out what he was staring at. I heard the dim rumble of thunder and felt the static tickling across my face like a cobweb. "We'd better bail," I said.

Donald improvised a short-cut route off the summit, and I followed him down the jagged talus fields. "Why didn't you talk to that girl up on the summit?" I yelled to him as we hopped from rock to rock. "I could tell she wanted you."

"I don't want to get married," he called back. "That would be like dying."

I laughed. "I didn't say she wanted to marry you."

Donald look back at me silently like that was the dumbest thing a person could have said.

I was uncertain why Donald had a gun in the house in the first place. He generally stays away from weapons. Not that he actively opposes violence; he's just uncomfortable with its after-effects. One time he told me a story about how he went on a bow-fishing trip as a teenager. He enjoyed the activity until he plunged an arrow through a carp for the first time. He was happy that he had finally hit one, but he couldn't bring himseff to watch the dying flailings of the fish. That's the way Donald's conscience works. He isn't nearly as concerned with the concept of shooting someone as he is with seeing them after shooting them.

The gun looked like an old police special, with dull dark blue metal and a snub nose. I wondered where he'd gotten it, but I didn't ask.

"What happened to the ibuprofen, Donald?" I figured I'd try to distract him, just in case he actually did intend to kill himseff.

He looked vaguely irritated. "What are you talking about?" He still held the gun to his head, looking absurd and dramatic at the same time, as if he had learned how to handle a gun by watching television soap operas.

"That bottle of pills. You know, the generic Advil."

"It's in the same box as the chess pieces."

Still uncomfortable with Donald's suicidal posings, I reached into the canvas knapsack and pulled out the rattling box of chess pieces.

We had gone to the park earlier that day to slum for basketball games, but eventually ended up playing chess out in the grass. Chess, which makes us feel mildly sophisticated, is our all-purpose backup plan whenever we go out in public. Donald beat me three games out of five, twice using his irritating four-move checkmatewith-the-queen-and-knight trap that I always fall into.

"Beating you wasn't that great," he'd told me, putting the chessboard into his knapsack. He looked like he had just been kicked in the stomach, even though he had won the final game. "I think I like the idea of beating you better than actually beating you.

"It's like anything about coming to the park," I replied. "It always ends up this way. The best part is thinking about it beforehand. Or looking back on it later."

Donald stopped packing, still looking down at the bag. "The now part never matters," he said. He looked up at me haughtily, as if pleased with his observation. "The future's too strong."

I found my ibuprofen bottle, tossed a couple of tablets into my mouth, and swallowed. It was becoming apparent that Donald wasn't going to do anything until I brought up the obvious question of why he was pointing a gun at his head. I just looked at him, though, saying nothing. Neither of us moved for several seconds. It was like a scene from my childhood, when my parents would argue by not saying anything.

My parents met Donald over Thanksgiving. Donald thinks that sentimental holidays are for the weak, but I forced him to come anyway. My family may be a bit goofy, but I figured they would be better for Donald than him sitting alone at home all day.

My mother, who feels obligated to make everyone feel included, tried to keep Donald busy with a barrage of small-talk.

"Tell me about your parents, Donald."

He paused, as if looking for the correct answer, a spoonful of mashed potatoes halfway to his mouth. "Oh, they're still alive."

"That's nice," Mom said, undaunted. "What does your father do?"

Donald still held the mashed potatoes uncertainly below his chin. "Well, he eats and sleeps a lot. But he likes television, too."

Donald doesn't do very well with family questions. Everyone is a little afraid they will turn out like their parents, but Donald is terrified by it. From what he's told me, his parents are flaky, over-emotional, and bad at communication. I can't say that's too abnormal. To Donald, they embody middle-class futility. The problem, is Donald doesn't know how to avoid it. Every job or activity that he starts winds up looking so much like bourgeois enslavement that he ultimately gives up. I'm not sure if he refuses to get involved in life because he understands it too well, or if he's just plain paranoid.

"I wonder about your friend Donald," my mom said to me with genuine concern after Thanksgiving. "Is he on diugs or something?"

"Probably," I told her.

I finally asked Donald about the gun, this time trying to be humorous.

"What's the gun for? Moths?" Donald feared and despised moths.

"There's no use in shooting moths." As graceful as a soap opera hero, he cocked the hammer of the gun. "No matter how many you kill, more will always come back."

Denver had suffered an edd moth infestation that summer. Donald's obsession stirred him into an absurd sort of mysticism. Each evening he would turn on his outdoor light and sit on a table on his front porch, glowering as the moths bumped stupidly into the light-bulb, the ceiling, and each other. He sat there and watched them, talking aimiessly and abstractly about things he had read for seen. Occasionally, he threw in ideas for exterminating the moths.

"Petroleum jelly," he blurted out once in the midst of a rambling sililoquoy about global waruling.

"Huh?"

"We could heat it until it boils, and the moths would fly in and disintegrate."

Donald never did kill any moths.

As if he had suddenly become impatient with me, Donald squeezed the trigger.

The hammer snapped down with a barely-audible clicking sound. He grinned and tossed me the pistol. I caught it, then looked at him condescendingly.

"What the hell was that all about?" I asked.

He shrugged and went into the kitchen, where I could see him filling a glass with water. Not sure what to think of the whole incident, I opened the revolving cylinder and gave it a roll, tallying the odds as the chambers rotated into view. Only there weren't any odds. Every single chamber had a bullet in it.