“That’s sweet, but then I’d just owe you money. I’m trying to get out of debt, not deeper in it.”
“Better me than the telephone company.”
Lisa sighed. “Thank you. I don’t mean to sound ungracious. It’s just that I thought I’d hit an easy patch for once. Here I was working with a bartender who put out great drinks faster than a speeding bullet, and scooping up all the tips I could handle without getting handled.” She opened her eyes and leaned out of the tub to put her glass on the floor.
“Leer,” Ani said, legs crossed in front of her. “Boobages, backside leer.”
“Oh. Stop. I’m blushing. You’re too kind.” Lisa gave her the patented drop dead glare as she rested her chin on the side of the tub. “What’s that?”
Too late, Ani saw the folded page of the Fairbanks Gazette where she’d last left it, on the short stack of clean towels. “Nothing.”
Lisa moved faster than she did. “I knew it! It’s that photo you said you didn’t know that professor.”
“No, I didn’t. I said that I hadn’t slept with her which is what you meant by asking if I had studied under her.”
“But you know her.”
“She was my doctoral advisor.”
“Cool. Why couldn’t you just say so? Did you have a thing for her?”
“I admired her, but that’s as far as it went.” She dipped a washcloth into the bathtub, and drenched her neck in cold water. It helped with the heat a little.
Lisa glanced up from the photo. “You had a crush on her.”
“Maybe at first. Everybody does, even the guys and they know she’s gay.” Ani tried for a nonchalant shrug.
“So? Oh…”
“Oh, what?”
“It’s not her. It’s the other woman. Eve Cambra. Who is short but very cute, I might add.”
Hearing someone else say Eve’s name sent a sharp jolt through Ani’s chest. All she could do was nod.
“You left because you broke her heart.”
“I broke everybody’s heart, including my own. I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t have to.” Lisa peered more closely at the photograph. “Were you two together, or just dating, or what?”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re not talking about it, I am.”
“None of it matters. They’ve moved on and Monica Tyndell is exactly the kind of woman that Eve deserves.”
Lisa gave her another of those quick glances that Ani was beginning to suspect were sharper than lasers. “You loved her to distraction, you made some kind of mistake, so you’re giving up on that?”
“I gave up three years ago.”
“You’re still giving up. Some Russian you are. Sounds like you didn’t plan ahead for something. I don’t know what you think you did, but it couldn’t have been that bad. You don’t strike me as a quitter.”
“I didn’t quit. You have no idea what academics are like when…I had to leave.” Ani ground her teeth. “Remember the part where I said I didn’t want to talk about it?”
“Vaguely.” Lisa put down the paper. “So are you like an identity thief, a dope dealer, or did you slap her around a little, or what?”
“It was nothing like that. And if I had any honor, I’d go back for my crap that’s probably still sitting in her garage. I’d get my stuff and my dog and go live in Kaktovik.” At Lisa’s arched eyebrow, she added sourly, “Think of the worst freakin’ cold armpit of the known universe and that’s a step up from Kaktovik.”
“Kak-whatever. I mean, come on.” She rested her head on her arms along the side of the tub. “You broke her heart, and she’s taking care of your dog and still has your stuff in her garage? How lesbian is that?”
Put that way, it sounded like ordinary dyke drama, but there was so much more to it. Lisa hadn’t a clue what it felt like to have everyone you’d ever respected whispering behind your back, and the people who didn’t like you saying it to your face, and to the newspaper and on blogs. She didn’t understand what it felt like to know people were taking their business away from your girlfriend because of something you’d done. “Well, I assume she has everything. She’s that kind of person. Way too good for me.”
“That doesn’t have to be true, you know. You can do the honorable thing.”
Ani watched as Lisa dipped under the cold water. When she surfaced, Ani asked, “What are you talking about?”
* * *
There was a reason Ani didn’t let people into her life, certainly not people like Lisa, who looked at things like pork rinds and declared them health food and somehow made that sound reasonable. People who heard yes no matter how many times you shouted no. Women like Lisa, whose frustrating leaps of indirect logic somehow made sense at seven a.m. after a mostly sleepless night, while standing in front of an airline ticket counter. They still made sense during the process of removing sandals in the security line, and buying really bad coffee and breakfast bagels. It had all made sense until they reached cruising altitude for the puddle jumper that would take them to Atlanta. That was when an inner voice chanting This is crazy finally got loud enough for Ani to hear over the straining engines.
“This plane is so small I’m guessing our snack is a can of peanuts the captain opens and passes back.” She felt like sulking, even though she knew it really hadn’t been Lisa’s idea. Ever since she’d seen that picture she’d known she had to go home. It was over, time to get her stuff and get out. Two weeks with no work how much more of a sign did she need? Who cared now if people pointed and whispered and thought she’d masterminded a reckless academic crime? Her dreams of being all that her father had been, plus having an academic degree, of proving his legacy had value by becoming Doctor Bycall, were done. Monica Tyndell’s belief in her was over. Eve’s faith had been wasted, and they’d moved on. She’d move on, like she’d always known she would. The only difference was she’d have the support of an unlikely friend. “I bet we don’t even get a movie on the Atlanta to Seattle leg.”
Lisa shifted in the narrow seat as she pulled a thin sweater over her head. “It was nice of you to offer to bring me along, but that doesn’t mean you get to whine the whole time.”
“All I need you to do is look like my hot blond girlfriend, and tell everybody I’m a rich bar owner now, or something.” This is a crazy idea, she told herself. It had sounded so reasonable two hours ago, after a second round of liqueur-doctored iced coffee. They’d scarcely packed anything useful in their bags. Like idiots, they hadn’t gone back to the club to see if they could borrow snowsuits or parkas or high-traction slip-ons for their shoes. Lisa didn’t even own boots and Ani had found that her sub-zero rated jacket, dug out of the back of the closet, had become home to a colony of critters.
They weren’t prepared for Alaska.
“To me, you are rich. After all, your credit card went through, and that was quite a ka-ching.”
Ani shrugged. “I was saving up to go back to school, study something else eventually.”
“As if you think about anything besides rocks and ice.” Lisa sighed. “What else do you want to be when you grow up?”
There was still no hesitation in her. “A glacial geologist. I can’t get past that, but I’m going to have to. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“The love of somebody’s life.” Lisa turned her head away, but not before Ani caught the sparkle of sudden tears.
“You okay?”
“No, but that’s nothing new. Do you have pictures in your head of your perfect life?”
Standing on top of a wind-sculpted rise on an ice field, at her feet the glory of breathtaking white spread out on one of nature’s largest, most formidable canvasses, the tingle of cold against her eyelashes, and warmth at her back she knew was Eve… Try as she might, Ani couldn’t conjure a big red X to blot it from her mind. Eve and her cooking together in a cozy kitchen, the fire crackling that one wouldn’t go away either. And that one hurt mo
re, because it wasn’t made up, it was a memory, and it came complete with Eve’s laughter and Karrin Alyson on the stereo. “No, no pictures.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t flinch when Lisa touched the back of her hand with a gesture of sympathy, but honestly, she told herself, it had been three years. She ought to have moved on, she knew that. Even if her one mistake had unfairly cost her everything she wanted, she still should have moved on. Moved on to what well, that was the unanswered question. It was time to start looking for answers.
“How old do you think I am?”
Ani made a show of looking Lisa up and down. “I’m a bartender don’t expect flattery. You’re thirty. Most people would think you’re twenty-seven, maybe twenty-six. I certainly thought you were younger than you are, at first.”
The remnant of tears in Lisa’s eyes was vanquished by her cheeky smile. “I’m thirty-two, oh great bartender. I never wanted lots, not like my folks. My dad upgraded the cars every two years, we were always moving to larger houses. I left home when it was a golf course out the back door. I only ever wanted just enough. The perfect life in my head was an endless curl of surf, a long beach, a bonfire, and it was always today. Never tomorrow.”
“Was? What’s perfection for you now?”
“When what’s-her-name took what little I had and I realized I was going to have to live five or six years, financially, all over again, I knew that I wanted a better tomorrow. Guess that means I have to grow up. Start using my brain. Be a Myra.”
“You could be a little less Lisa, maybe a little more Myra, I guess.” Since Lisa was fond of pointing out her mistakes, Ani added, “A Myra knows better than to pay for half a car and not get her name on the title.”
“I know,” Lisa snapped.
“Besides, that’s not the picture of a perfect life using your brain. That’s just a way to get a life you like.”
“Look what all your brains did for you.”
Stung, Ani said, “I already admitted I messed up my life.” Out of her hurt, she had a new thought. “So I messed up my life. Maybe that’s better than not doing anything with it.”
For a moment Lisa tried to peel Ani with her eyes, but she abruptly blinked and went back to staring out the window where the creamy level floor of cloud cover made it appear they were barely moving. “I deserved that, I guess.”
“You’ve been a bit harsh.”
“I figure if I help you get your life together, I’ll know it can be done, and work on mine.”
“We’re not getting my life together. I mean… We’re going to get my stuff so Eve can get me out of her life and I can finally start over. Most of my stuff should just go to the dump if it hasn’t already.” There, that sounded reasonable. That was achievable.
“If you say so. Personally, I think you should try to bag the babe again.”
“Eve wants nothing to do with me.”
“You don’t know that.” Lisa huddled into her sweater.
“I was there and you weren’t. Why do you think you know what she felt? Or what I felt?”
“How do I know? This is going to sound really sappy…” Lisa blew out a long breath and appeared lost in thought.
Ani decided it was a good time to wait. She’d been wrong about Lisa’s age and in the breakneck speed in which they’d become traveling companions, she’d had to revise her opinion about her more than once. Irritating as hell, yes, but not mean. She reminded Ani of Tan Salek, in some ways. They were night and day on the outside. If anything, Tan was a bit of a mother figure, even though she wasn’t old enough. Her sympathetic smile made her comforting to talk to, except when she was frowning over paperwork and especially if that paperwork in some way involved you. Lisa had bounced from job to job, while Tan was contentedly ensconced in a university desk job and had already planned her retirement, two decades in the future. It was something deeper that Tan had in common with Lisa they both listened with more than their ears.
Finally, Lisa continued, “I’ve been in denial that I’ve changed. But it all came together in my head when you looked at the picture. When I said it was Eve you’d cared about, the look on your face I realized I’d give a lot to have someone look like that at the mention of my name.” She twisted a lock of blond hair around her finger. “I can fend for myself, and I always have. I’m not weak. But I would really like to be on someone’s pedestal. To have someone think that the sun can’t rise without me. So here I am, helping you win back the love of your life. I figure if it works for a loser like you” She softened the words with a smile. “It might work for a loser like me.”
Ani was glad of a sudden interruption by the pilot, updating their arrival time into Atlanta. When she answered Lisa, her voice was steady with conviction. “I don’t want to win her back.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lisa said, still without her usual acerbic tone. “And I notice you didn’t deny she’s the love of your life. You’ve never even tried to replace her, Ms. Frigid, have you?”
Ani decided that if Lisa ever took up psychotherapy she’d be truly dangerous. “You don’t understand. I let her down. I let Monica Tyndell down.”
“Did you kill someone’s cat? Drop a baby on its head?”
“No.”
“Then how come an apology and making amends wasn’t enough?”
Ani shook her head. “There wasn’t isn’t any way to make it better. It can’t be undone. It’s like like untelling a secret. You break trust like that, you can’t put the genie back in that bottle.”
Lisa rummaged in her oversized purse and came up with a packet of crackers. Offering some to Ani, she said, “I might be more helpful if I knew what my hot girlfriend, who is a rich bartender, did all those years ago that’s so unforgivable.”
Ani was daunted. The reason she’d run away from Glacier Port was real. But someone who didn’t understand how that world worked wouldn’t understand her actions. Academics were fond of teaching examples of bucking the system, of excellence through maverick ideas and methods, all fine and good, but none of it applied to academia itself, which ran a certain way and stayed that way. Once an academic conviction was reached, changing minds was almost impossible. Lamely, she said, “I don’t know where to begin.”
Lisa rolled her eyes. “Start in the middle and work in both directions. Make it hard on me.”
“You’re incredibly annoying,” Ani said, without heat. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as she realized that things she’d hoped she’d forgotten were still vividly accessible in her head.
“That’s why you love me.”
“Dream on.”
Lisa heaved a longsuffering sigh, but she loosened her seatbelt a little and gave Ani all her attention.
It wasn’t hard to talk about the beginning. Describing the northern lights and dancing with Eve was pretty easy. The memories were so sweet.
She had only waited a day to call Eve. After twisting the night away she hadn’t expected to wake up to a brilliant sun of promise and the sincere regret that she’d not kissed Eve when she’d dropped her at home.
In summer, caterers were busy people, and it had been nearly two weeks before Eve had been able to promise time. A daylight picnic was the proposal, and they met at the entrance to the university’s botanical gardens at eleven a.m. Ani had spent the entire morning responding to Dr. Tyndell’s instructions to “Organize this” after she handed over a stack of temperature logs. Normally, it was what she lived for, but more than once she’d realized she was staring out the window of the professor’s office, not even seeing the bayhawks circling their nests.
Waiting at the garden entrance, she tugged nervously at her shorts, worried they were too utilitarian, even if they were clean. Clean clothes were hard to maintain in a dorm. She’d played it safe with a deep blue polo that featured the GlacierPort logo on the breast pocket. There was nothing she could do about her hair. The relaxing shampoo she’d been using for the last two weeks seemed to be helping a l
ittle, but it still curled and twisted any way it liked.
She had enough time to worry that maybe the easy conversation and the delight of the unexpected dancing had just been a fluke. Eve couldn’t be that lovely, could she? Surely something about her was flawed she just didn’t want to remember what it was.
When Eve’s hair caught the midday sun as she walked toward her from the parking lot, Ani knew her memory wasn’t false. Eve was that lovely, imperfectly beautiful. In the bright light her shoulder-length hair was a splash of yellow over a collared shirt patterned with blue and green diamonds. In between was the interesting face, and that smile that Ani abruptly realized she’d been yearning to see again. As Eve got closer, Ani remembered that she’d not been able to decide if Eve’s eyes were blue or gray. Now, clearly, they were blue, like the morning sky through wisps of cloud.
“I love peonies,” Eve said, without preamble. “Do you have a favorite place in the garden?”
Ani didn’t want to admit that botanical gardens weren’t exactly her first pick as a hangout. “Not really.”
“Follow me, then. I know a spot that’s usually in the sun.”
It was a typical Fairbanks July day. The temperature was pushing eighty, but the shadows were cool. People were out in droves, and it was easy to tell tourists from residents tourists had tans. Eve was wearing denim crop pants and Ani really liked the way the pale smoothness of Eve’s calves was wrapped with Grecian style straps from her gold sandals. They were the kind of shoes that could only be worn for a month or two out of the year. Ani much preferred her sturdy boots, choosing a pair each day based on the amount of traction she thought she might need on the ice. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate sexy sandals on another woman. And sexy they were, like the legs they decorated, legs that led to…
Warming Trend Page 6