A cold night, and then things got frosty

Long FRIENDSHIPS, I’VE learned, bear certain similarities to long marriages. Some are satisfying in ways that do not require words. Others last simply because ending them is too much trouble. Such was the case with Roger, a ginger-haired man I’d known for quite a while. He’d show up in town; we’d have dinner, and afterward I’d wonder why I was friends with Roger.

But I was. That’s how I found myself paddling an inflatable kayak on the Colorado River. This was October, when it is cold. Not cold by your standards, maybe, but cold by mine: I live in Tucson, and when it’s under 60 degrees, I shiver like a wet dog. Without much experience -- and not a word of advice from Roger -- I was running the rapids in the great Godalmighty freezing Colorado just before sunset, pinballing off half-submerged boulders that breached the water like vicious dwarf whales. I banged around, and the freezing river ran over various body parts, and I had a long breathless moment that I think lasted an hour but I managed to stay more or less upright.

When we landed, Roger immediately started fussing with the brand-new gear he’d bought for the trip: a collapsible chair of spare Asian-looking design, a new sleeping bag, God knows what else.

“You need to explain things to me!” I yelled at him.

“Oh,” he said. I could see him struggling with the idea, as if he were a tamarin monkey trying to read a text message on a BlackBerry -- or eat it.

Fueled by a bottle of tequila, Roger pulled a 180 on the communications front that night. Instinctively we avoided getting too close to the river, probably for the same reasons New England sailors built their houses to avoid views of the Atlantic. We slouched against boulders the size and weight of bridge pilings and passed the bottle, a couple of rheumy-eyed hobos discussing the state of the world.

Roger’s world. Roger talked about his problems with women, and they were legion. I tried to be comforting while getting at least medium-drunk, but I wasn’t keeping up with Roger. By 9 o’clock he was geometrically, logarithmically, exponentially drunk, if I’ve got the order right on that. Really drunk. I realized that it didn’t matter what I said, so I came up with words that sounded right. It’s mostly the tone of voice, anyway, a soothing female sound I’ve come to despise, even though I can’t stop myself from using it when a needy man is doing the dog whistle on me.

As Roger’s voice droned on, I noticed the air had taken on a noxious, stinging quality. Freezing, in fact. Jeans, my favorite moth-eaten cashmere sweater and the warmest fleece jacket I owned suddenly seemed about as hardy as those see-through linen carapaces dubbed “resort wear” in the catalogs I devoured as a preadolescent.

When Roger suggested it was time to crawl into the tent, I acquiesced after only the most fleeting calculations. To wit: Roger was so drunk that in spite of my own impaired state, I’d be able to brush off a pass without having to think too much. Roger’s body warmth -- at a few inches remove -- had an Esquimau-style appeal: tribal and impersonal.

It took us a little while to get settled, wriggling, zipping things and, in my case, wrapping a wool sweater around my head like Lana Turner in “Madame X.”

The tent was fairly warm, and that was good. When I’m cold I wake up during the night, sometimes 10 or 20 times. Between the tent and the tequila, I might sleep through the night. I might have, if a fleecy tentacle hadn’t flailed in my general direction. “You’ve been such a great friend,” Roger said in a muffled-sounding voice.

I returned the appendage to its owner while bracing for the next incursion. Instead I heard the krikkk of the tent zipper. What the heck is he doing? Frigid air T-boned my cheek. I was primed to complain, then I heard the unmistakable sound of too much tequila.

When he returned, I asked out of politeness, “Are you OK?”

“Yeah,” he said, with either an embarrassed laugh or a milder retch.

I slid the zipper open again. “I’m gonna sleep outside.”

“Mmurf,” Roger said.

I hauled my bag up into the rocks. I went far, far away, to a high, sandy declivity between two boulders. The air was so cold, it was positively lunar, and my old down sleeping bag was good for nothing. I didn’t care. I slept outside that night and the next three nights on the river. Roger was in a bad mood, but I’d like to think he was angry at himself.

Water and sunlight propelled the days forward. The river never stopped moving, and, without much help from Roger, I learned to make decisions as fast as the current. But I lived for the nights, when I lay on the ground freezing like a drop of moisture at the very moment it enters the atmosphere from space. I woke a thousand times to a black sky, until those dark interstices became the world to me. It was just like dreaming in heaven.

And though we’ve spoken once or twice, in a perfectly cordial fashion, I haven’t seen Roger since that October, when we were still together, still friends, on the Colorado River.

Susan Zakin is the editor of “Naked: Writers Uncover the Way We Live on Earth.”