Warming Trend

by Karin Kallmaker

  It was easier to breathe and focus when they were in the garage. She hit the button to raise the door and they were joined by Tonk, who made a second pass at Lisa’s feet, then gnawed pointedly on Ani’s boots.

  “Sorry, boy, I need to keep them on for now.” She turned in a circle, then spotted boxes lined up on metal-straps-and-solid-door shelving that hung from the garage ceiling. The box closest had Ani B. scrawled on one end. She pointed it out to Lisa. “Eve always was a labeler. The rules of a tidy and organized kitchen.” One of the things that had always fascinated her about Eve’s cooking was that it was science and chemistry—hence the need to label everything, Eve had said— through the eyes of an artist.

  The ladder was still kept near the freezer, and Ani lowered a total of seven boxes and two cartons of books down to Lisa. Spread out on the garage floor, she found clothes, shoes and boots she’d forgotten she owned, old toiletries, her clock-radio from her dorm room and what had been, at the time, expensive memory sticks she had used to store her papers and data when moving from computer to computer at school. The best find was her photograph collection. She showed Lisa a few, who commented how like her father Ani was.

  “The blood is vivid. My father would say that in Russian but I haven’t a clue what it is anymore. Besides if I did say it in Russian I’d have to chase it with a shot of vodka.”

  “Ah—I’ve played that drinking game. Quote a poet, have a shot of tequila. It was a liberal arts college.”

  Ani laughed, and toed the closest carton. “It seems like everything is here. She got stuck with the stuff from my dorm room, too. Except this.” She indicated a phone, still in the box. “But everything else is mine and I can’t really think of anything that’s not here.”

  “Do you think you’ll keep much?”

  “I might. It’s really not a lot to ship back to the Keys and then decide. Heck, my whole life would fit in a van.” She set the unopened box with the phone on Eve’s work counter, and traded her best pair of boots for the ones she had worn from Key West. It felt really good to lace them up.

  “Some people think that’s a good thing. You’re free of materiality. If you wanted to go to Norway, you could.” She tossed a smile over her shoulder as she hefted a box. “I’d miss you.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Ani was touched. Of course, given that it was Lisa, in five minutes she could be wishing her on the other side of the planet again.

  They worked quickly to load the bed of the SUV. Tonk kept pace, tracking them back and forth the whole while.

  “Is that it?” Lisa followed Ani back into the house, joining Ani at the kitchen sink to wash her hands. “So you’ve got everything you wanted, right?”

  Ani didn’t answer. The relief of Monica’s offer of a career resurrecting job had her turned upside down. She’d wasted three years believing there was nothing she could do, living in suspended animation. A thaw had set in, no doubt about it.

  She ought to be satisfied with what she had gained, but no, she did not have all that she wanted. It was damnably frustrating that the moment she had some kind of hope, she hoped for even more. Life did not work out that way. She should take what she had and count herself lucky. Trying to get even luckier would jinx the whole thing.

  Lisa went out to the rental while Ani locked the house. She whistled for Tonk and the pang she felt at the sight of his doggie smile and lolling tongue was worse than the last time she’d left. Then, she’d been overwhelmed by circumstances and too many emotions to clearly sort out. Leaving Tonk had just been another blow when she was already down for the count.

  It didn’t change the fact that dogs didn’t understand goodbye. She said it anyway, with rib-thumping pats and her face buried in the soft fur. “I don’t think I’ll be back. But you are obviously very happy and very loved.” Then, just so Tonk alone could hear it, she added, “Be a little piece of me in her life.”

  Because Tonk was a good dog, a gesture sent him through the gate and she closed it. He promptly ran back and forth along the fence, tail up and snuffling fiercely at the chain link. When Ani dropped in the boots she’d been wearing the last several days Tonk promptly fell into abject adoration. Well, maybe at Christmas she could send another pair.

  She turned on her heel and went to the rental, blinking back the sting of more tears.

  “I’m not a dog person,” Lisa said after Ani backed out of the long driveway. “I’d rather be petting a human being, female shaped. And I like Key West. Still, I don’t know how you left those mountains, and I surely don’t know how you left that dog.”

  Ani wanted to answer as she had yesterday, that she’d felt it was the only way to make amends to Monica and Eve. Honestly, she didn’t know how she’d done it either, except that her brain hadn’t been registering anything but the need to run.

  They drove slowly toward town and the buzzing in Ani’s ears grew. Three years ago she had been impetuously moving forward because staying where she was seemed intolerable. Why was she in such a hurry now?

  “I forgot to leave a note,” she announced, out of the blue. “Damn.”

  “We could go back.”

  Ani shook her head. “I can’t…I don’t want to do that to Tonk. To me. I could give a note to Monica.”

  “Are you nuts? Even if she’s a saint, it’s a violation of the lesbian handbook to leave a note for your ex with her current girlfriend. It’s just stupid.” Lisa was back in full critical form. “Of course it wouldn’t be the stupidest thing you’ve—oh, look! Santa’s Workshop!”

  Caught between laughter and tears, Ani looked. The quaint shops were just as she remembered them. The forty-foot Santa was still outside Santa Claus House, which was still white with red trim and a white flocked roof. In the winter it was picturesque with the light dusting of snow that stayed on the ground throughout the season. She glanced the other way down the cross-street and her gaze was caught by a bright set of opalescent wings edged with turquoise and emerald, glinting in the noon sun.

  “Oh—isn’t that her restaurant? The Dragonfly?”

  “I think so.”

  Ani had instinctively pulled over to the curb. All she had to do was get out of the car, walk the length of a football field and say hello. That was it. She’d done that dozens of time in her life. It was easy. Walk, then talk. What was she so afraid of?

  She sat for a long time, waiting for a sign. Remarkably, Lisa was silent. When she finally stirred she thought Lisa was asleep, but the big blue eyes popped open.

  “Made up your mind yet?” Her expression was not unsympathetic.

  Ani nodded. “If I don’t do this, three, five, ten years from now I’ll wish I had. I’ll always wonder about what might have been.”

  “Good for you.” Lisa rummaged in her handbag. “Hold still.”

  “What?” Ani made a face as Lisa messed with her hair. “Ouch!”

  “You look like a kid—and not in a good way.”

  “No perfume!”

  “It’s not perfume—it’s hair spray. Do you ever condition it? It’s like straw.”

  Ani tried not to flinch, but when Lisa unearthed a wet wipe and scrubbed it across Ani’s face, it was the final indignity. “Cut it out!”

  “You have dirt on your nose, and it might not be visible, but there’s dog slobber all over you.”

  “She won’t care.”

  “Well, I care. Oh, for Pete’s sake!”

  They tussled for a little bit longer, the car rocking as Ani made her point about eye liner and its connection to Armageddon. Lisa finally won on the point of lip gloss.

  “Just a touch of it—just a little. You know, you’ve got basic good looks, but if you don’t start moisturizing you’re going to look like a Triscuit when you’re forty.”

  Ani threw open her door and scrambled out, her heart pounding in her feet, annoyed with Lisa and not sure she could start walking.

  Lisa said calmly, “I think I’ll stay here. I can shop, too. Visit Santa’s Senior Center.” She pointed at
the green-roofed building. “‘Cause knowing it can get to nearly eighty below makes me want to retire here.”

  Hands in her pockets, Ani tried not to slouch her way across the street and down the sidewalk. The afternoon was warming up and she was comfortable in her T-shirt. There could be a thunderstorm later, given the western sky, but her nose said probably not. In spite of Lisa’s ministrations, she felt dusty and mussed. She’d imagined sweeping into town in the kind of flawlessly casual and elegantly useful outfit Monica always managed. Or draped in leather, looking like a bad ass, with Lisa as a moll on her arm. She had a tan that didn’t stop at her T-shirt line, too. Catching a glimpse of herself she was glad Lisa had worked on her hair. She had a point about moisturizer.

  Her T-shirt showed signs of Tonk’s affection. She really ought to go back for something clean in one of the boxes. Except Eve would recognize it and think it was the same old Ani. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been when she left, was she? She stared at her reflection, but it didn’t answer back. Why was that a hard question to answer? Time had passed, so surely she’d changed.

  Well, she could hear what Lisa would probably say about that. Sure, you’ve changed. You want the same job, you read the same magazines, you still cry at the sight of the Chugach and would live on a glacier if you could. Oh, and you still love the same woman. Sure, Ani, you’ve changed.

  She made herself move on, finally reaching the doorway of the restaurant. The exterior was clean, bright and inviting. Peering through the thick glass, she thought it seemed homey and friendly inside. Ani thought the gorgeous mural was so very much Eve. The whole restaurant was Eve all over. Was that her near the back? It was hard to tell.

  What if I don’t have the strength to say goodbye to her again? That’s not the point, she argued with herself. This is her chance to say goodbye to you. You owe her that. Sure, standing here hoping for a glimpse of those blue eyes, maybe a smile a fraction as loving as the smiles she remembered, that had nothing to do with why she stood outside looking in, like a lovesick teenager.

  Two men emerged from the front door, contentedly patting their stomachs and discussing politics. Ani took a deep breath, straightened her spine and walked inside before the door closed.

  * * *

  “To tell you the truth, Monica, I can’t wait to go home in a few hours and soak in the tub, then fall asleep on the sofa and finally drag myself to bed by ten.” Eve wiped excess lemon grass off her knife blade, then scraped the contents of her cutting board into the bubbling pot on the stove. Fresh fish chowder was always a reliable crowd pleaser, and a soup as a special was a great time-saver.

  Bennie looked up from his station as he chopped carrots down small enough to fit into the shredder. “What a great love life you have.”

  Eve made a face at him while Monica’s voice continued to sound in her ear.

  “You work too hard. I feel badly about dangling that cruise in front of you, so I thought a quiet dinner with just a few other women would take some of the sting out.”

  “I would be the most wretched company. Maybe next week, okay?” Without much more ado, Eve tapped her headset to hang up. She didn’t have time to reason with Monica.

  The back door buzzer sounded and Bennie went to open up. He came back to announce, “Bread’s finally here. You have got to start tipping if you want to get deliveries earlier in the day.”

  “It’s the second delivery—they did me a favor coming back with baguettes.”

  “Cute delivery guy. Hey, I asked Tim about coming in an hour later today so I could help you out a bit more and he was okay with it. I’m actually kind of enjoying the range. All I usually do is veg and mise en place.”

  “Small business, everybody gets to do everything. If I’m ever looking for a working partner, I’ll keep you in mind.”

  “Do that.” Bennie loaded the shredder and whirled the crank. “I have some savings. I could buy my way in.”

  Eve stirred the soup thoughtfully. It was unlikely that the Dragonfly would ever make enough profit to reward two partners, but what if the storefront next to them became available? First things first—she needed to repay Monica’s share before she could think of letting in an active partner.

  The front door chimed and she peeped through the kitchen pass-through as she started on dicing the partially cooked potatoes. Saffron had agreed to come in for a full shift while Neeka was gone, freeing up Eve to be exclusively in the kitchen, and she seemed to be enjoying it—not too bored during the slower afternoon. She’d been perfectly willing to do table maintenance like refilling the salt shakers. Adding to today’s stresses was the fact that the afternoon busboy-cum-dishwasher had had a personal emergency. While it was slow, Saffron had been okay clearing plates and rinsing them, which was decent of her. Maybe some of those oft-promised tax breaks for small business would actually happen and she could sweeten Saffron’s paycheck a little bit. Even a public college was expensive.

  Her gaze traveled from her staffer to the customer now being led to a booth.

  Her knife stilled. She shook her head. Her eyes were blurry. A cold flush swept down her spine followed by a hot flash of denial. It couldn’t be. Not after all this time. Not looking like a day hadn’t passed. Not the same pleasing face, not those eyes, not her.

  She made herself look again. Her knife clattered to the cutting board.

  She felt struck by lightning, twice over. Once with the recognition that it was Ani, alive and well, and again with the unanticipated, but unmistakable reaction from the depth of her being: I can live again.

  “Are you okay?” Bennie was adding an olive oil and lemon-lime vinaigrette to the shredded carrots before stirring in chopped dried golden raisins.

  She nodded and picked up her knife. It was hard to focus and part of her was gibbering away that she ought not be handling a sharp instrument, but it was autopilot to dice the softened potatoes, lift the result into the cook pot and repeat again with the next potato. If she cooked she wouldn’t have to think about Ani sitting a few feet away, or the feelings that were roiling inside her.

  Impossible feelings, that no time had passed, that if only she’d gotten back sooner with the peace offering of the phone they might have talked, they might have solved things, and why couldn’t they try again? Why couldn’t she walk out to the front and slide into the booth across from Ani and say she was sorry? Surely, that was the quickest way to talking and healing. Why couldn’t the next hour be the hour they should have had? Couldn’t they go back in time and do it right? She’d been holding her breath. It was time to exhale.

  The door chimed again and Eve automatically glanced. She did a double take—definitely a tourist. North Pole did not see many bronzed golden-haired beauties. Her confusion doubled when the blonde strolled to Ani’s table, collected what looked to be Ani’s car keys, then walked back out the door. Who was she to Ani?

  Another peek confirmed that Ani looked pale, but it was under a tan that was every bit as golden as the blonde’s. She and the blonde had definitely been sharing the same sunshine for a while.

  She thought she might hyperventilate. Then she was very angry with Ani for upsetting her peace. She’d successfully lied to herself that her only feelings for Ani were regrets and some bitterness. Well, the bitterness was real, and saying sorry wouldn’t fix that. She could own her part, not just say it was okay for Ani to disappear for three years, leaving her alone to cry from Lammas to Christmas, unable to sleep for more than a few hours during the longest, darkest nights of the year. She’d worked hard to construct a barrier between her life and her grief. Okay, so much for the sorry and new chances—she was pissed. She had a right to be upset, even if it was old news and an old flame.

  An old flame who didn’t matter, she told herself. She was chopping potatoes and planning her business future and considering getting a real life again, finally. No amount of yearning to find out if Ani’s skin still felt the same changed anything. She was not washed over with memories of those kiss
es that were never ordinary, and not tingling at the echoes of laughter in the night.

  Absolutely not, she wasn’t craving intimacy, for their eyes to talk over coffee and for the warmth of Ani at her back as she drifted to sleep. She wasn’t living in a heartbeat all that she’d known in Ani’s arms. She certainly wasn’t thinking that she still knew it, and felt it.

  She felt nothing at all for Ani, and wasn’t this a great time to find out Ani had a girlfriend. And not just any girlfriend. She had a tall, voluptuous, supermodel girlfriend who didn’t smell of cooking spatter and this morning’s shrimp delivery. Wherever she had been living, Ani had moved on to the big leagues.

  Saffron dinged the service bell as she said, “One special.”

  Eve saw Ani look in the direction of the bell and she ducked back out of sight. You’re a fool, Eve Cambra, and an idiot and a moron and a dolt and…every one of those things twice again. How could she possibly feel that the last three years had never happened? Where was her pride?

  She dished up chowder from the simmering pot she’d made earlier, sprinkled it with fresh basil and kernels of corn, then split a piece of baguette and smeared salmon artichoke spread on it. A couple of minutes under the broiler crisped the bread, bubbled the spread and lightly browned the corn. While she waited for it to finish, she got the last of the potatoes into the fresh pot of chowder, stirred and left it to simmer.

  When the broiler timer beeped, she let the plate cool just a little as she changed her apron. A quick glance at the small mirror tacked next to the kitchen door said her hair was still neatly in its tie and the blue blouse she wore under the apron was free of stains. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said over her shoulder. Bennie grunted and went to tend chicken on the grill.