Two for One-Relatively Speaking (The Two for One series)

by Sean David Wright

  Katie’s room, like all the other guest quarters, was remarkably well appointed considering this was a research station at the bottom of the world: a full-sized bed piled high with thick comforters, a small dresser, a nightstand with reading lamp, a closet, a bathroom with those tiny soaps and, most gratifying, shag carpeting on the floor which meant she could walk around barefoot without her feet freezing on cold concrete. There was even a CD/radio set and a 20” television with DVD player. Andrea’s handiwork was present in here also for on the ceiling was a beautifully painted mural of puffins doing things that puffins do.

  “Are you staying with Max tonight, then?” Katie asked as she transferred clothes from her suitcase to dresser drawers.

  “In the mood he’s in?” Danielle replied, handing her wife a sweater from out of the suitcase. “Not likely; I think it’s best to leave him in his room alone for the time being. Looks like it will be your job to keep me warm while we’re here.”

  “You know, I really wish he’d relax, honey. I care about him a lot, I really do; I mean, he’s a pain in the ass ninety percent of the time and has the social skills of Al Capone but I do love him. I would just hate to see him drop dead of a heart attack before fifty. Do you think he’ll eventually start enjoying it here?”

  “Uh…no.” Danielle stated flatly. The suitcase was empty; she zipped it closed and handed it to Katie to put in the closet. “What with rumbling volcanoes and the dreaded penguin menace he’s going to be counting the seconds until we return to London.”

  Sitting on the bed next to her Katie sighed and said, “Maybe we ought to reconsider our vacation strategy from now on. Let’s face it, Max is never going to like anywhere I pick so maybe we should just make him happy by leaving him at home and it being just the two of us traveling.”

  “Max would never go for it,” Danielle answered.

  “Want to bet?”

  Danielle said, “Look, don’t tell him I told you this because he’d just deny every word of it but the truth is he likes making you happy even if it sometimes makes him miserable; that’s why he comes on these trips. Besides, I’ll clue you in on something: he likes this thing you and he have, this combative, often-at-each-other’s-throats thing you and he have. You help complete him, Katie, because you allow Max to be Max. It took me a long time to realize this and then it took me a while to get over the jealousy I felt because of it, but it is what it is.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “Well, yeah…some time ago I realized that you and he click on a fairly deep level. You’re really a soul mate to him,” Danielle said, meeting Katie’s eyes. “Like I said, you complete him in a way by allowing Max to be Max. And that’s why I got jealous; naturally, I wanted to be his only soul mate.”

  Katie waited.

  “But I thought about it,” Danielle went on. “Considering how complex our souls are, can one person really be the only soul mate for another? I’m Max’s romantic soul mate; his sexual and emotional soul mate. Yet there are more parts of his soul, aren’t there? That’s where you come in. You’re his soul mate for that part of his soul that makes him think sunny days are a conspiracy by God to give him skin cancer.”

  They both laughed.

  “Or the part of his soul that causes him to cringe every time somebody says ‘Have a nice day?’” Katie suggested.

  “Exactly. Anyway, you’re his soul mate, too, otherwise the three of us together wouldn’t have lasted this long. And because of this he’d hate disappointing you or hurting your feelings by skipping out on one of your vacation destinations or even by missing one of your bi-weekly lunches. It’s his way of showing that he loves you like family.”

  “And are you jealous anymore?”

  “No. I figured if I can have two soul mates why can’t he?” And Danielle gave Katie a quick kiss.

  “Well, I hope you’re right about all this because I’ve already decided where I’m sending us next year when it’s my turn to pick again,” Katie said.

  “Where?”

  When Katie named the destination it took a full minute before Danielle was able to stop laughing.

  “Oh God,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Max is going to wish you were dead!”

  ***

  There was a knock on the door and when Katie opened it a beaming Samoan woman was standing on the other side.

  “Um…Laila, right?” Katie ventured.

  “Yes,” Laila answered. “And you are Danielle and she is Katie, am I correct?”

  “Actually it’s the other way around.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Laila laughed. “But you are both with the grumpy guy, right?”

  “That would be Max,” Katie confirmed, “and yes, he’s ours.”

  “But that’s as much responsibility as we take for him,” Danielle piped up from her seat on the bed.

  Laila laughed again.

  “No bother,” she said. “In fact, he reminds me of my grandfather. I am sorry to disturb you but I am wondering if you would like to come with me to visit the seals?”

  Both Danielle and Katie enthusiastically said they would and so Laila asked them to put on their outer gear while she asked the Henshaws if they’d like to come as well.

  “Shall I invite Mr. Bland?” Laila inquired before leaving them.

  “Only if we’re going to club the seals,” Katie advised.

  Half an hour later Laila led four companions to the seal grounds. As they walked she pulled a small sled behind her that had some cases of equipment strapped to it. Earl, being the only male in the group, offered to pull it for her but Laila said she enjoyed the exercise. The biologist was very indulgent during the short trek, allowing Katie and Earl to stop several times to snap photos with their digital cameras.

  They smelled and heard the seals before they actually saw them. Rounding an outcropping of craggy brown rock jutting up out of the ice Katie and the other tourists gasped as suddenly they found themselves smack in the midst of a colony of Weddell seals sunning themselves on the pack ice. At the arrival of the humans several of the seals raised their heads to give the newcomers the once over only to lie them back down again with apparent indifference.

  Katie nudged Danielle.

  “See? This is why I wanted to come here,” she said reverentially. “Isn’t it inspiring to see such creatures in their natural element?”

  Danielle shrugged but was careful not to let Katie see it. Being among the seals was certainly interesting the way most new experiences were interesting but she wasn’t about to get poetic about it. However, she said to her wife, “It is, sweetie; very inspiring.”

  Katie asked Laila, “Are we allowed to approach them?”

  But Laila didn’t answer straightaway; she seemed troubled by something and was examining the colony while biting her lower lip. It was only when Katie repeated the question that Laila, as if coming out of trance, answered with her customary smile: “Sorry. Yes, you may approach them; the Weddell seal has no natural predators in this region so I think you will find that they are not really afraid of anything. That makes it much easier for me to do my work.” She then explained to them that she was researching several things about the Weddells, most notably the influence of climate and weather on the animals; population characteristics and how their vocalizations, both on land and underwater, were used.

  “That is why we are here this evening,” she added. “I would like to make some more recordings of the seals speaking for my research. Perhaps you would like to help once I have my equipment set up?”

  “Gladly,” Katie assured her, then telling her to give a shout when she was ready. In the meantime she and Danielle, along with the Henshaws, went off to meet the seals.

  “Aren’t they cute!” Flo effused predictably. “Earl, aren’t they cute?”

  Naturally, Earl agreed and then made a statement to the effect that it was a shame Darth Bland hadn’t been able to come which caused Danielle and Katie to begin giggling.

  Surprisingly, Danielle, she
who could practically make someone lose control of their bowels with one icy stare, was a little hesitant about getting too close to any of these animals even though the seals were doing nothing more threatening than breathing, and when they did look up at the visitors it was with a whiskered face that seemed to be smiling. But Katie led by example, slowly but boldly approaching a huge specimen that had to have weighed eight hundred pounds. The seal watched her coming with brown eyes as big as shooter marbles but did nothing to discourage this human from kneeling down beside it. After pulling off her thick mitten and letting the animal sniff her hand as a way of introducing herself she began patting its bulk kindly.

  “See?” Katie said proudly. “Nothing to worry about.”

  So Danielle ventured forth and knelt right in front of the seal’s head. She was captivated by those whiskers and those huge liquid eyes; she thought the animal was, despite its bulk and its awful sea critter smell, very cute and it was wonderful how it was just lying here without a care in the world, not at all bothered by her and Katie’s proximity. It was like a great big dog at rest beside its masters.

  “I wish Pelham could be this sedentary,” she remarked to Katie. “It’d be great to have a dog that just stayed still like this.”

  “Let’s change his diet, then. Fatten him up on fish and whatever else this big guy eats and maybe he’ll be a lazy lump of blubber too.”

  Just then the seal raised its head as if in response to the insult. It looked directly at Danielle who laughingly told the beast that it was Katie who called it a lazy lump of blubber, not her.

  “Awww…look how its nose is twitching,” Danielle cooed, leaning closer. She switched to baby talk to address the seal. “Do you smell something good, huh? Does the wittle seal smell something yummy?”

  But as it turned out that wasn’t why its nose was twitching. Without any warning the penniped, whom Katie was considering naming Uncle Lou because its mottled gray flesh reminded her of the liver spots sported by her father’s brother, sneezed violently, expectorating copious amounts of seal snot which happened to splatter all over Danielle.

  “Ewww! Ewww! OhmigodOhmigodOhmigod!” the bank president screamed, scrambling away backwards from the animal on all fours. When she had gotten far enough away she stood up and looked down at herself, at the large splashes of gray viscous matter now dappling her clothing. Fortunately her face had been missed but this was little consolation to her and when she looked up at her attacker again it was with that bowel-loosening stare she employed to great effect on humans. But Uncle Lou was impervious to such tactics; now that its sinuses were clear it merely put its head back down on the pack ice and shut its eyes sleepily.

  “It’s not funny!” Danielle said to Katie who was laughing. “This is disgusting! Look at all this!”

  Earl and Flo had now come over and surprisingly Flo whined to her husband, “Earl, I want a seal to sneeze on me! That’s so precious!”

  Danielle turned on her, eyes blazing.

  “Precious? Are you some kind of idiot? A disgusting sea slug just blew its nose on me and you think it’s precious?”

  The Henshaws were taken aback; Flo hid behind her husband.

  “Well, there’s no need to get nasty about it,” Earl chided but he did it so meekly that it failed to disarm Danielle.

  “You’re right,” she said in a mock apologetic tone, “I am being nasty. So sorry. Tell you what, when we get back to the station I will scrape all this crap off me into a plastic cup that you can take back to West Virginia with you to put in your souvenir case. It’ll be my little gift to you, okey-dokey?”

  “Okey-dokey,” Earl mumbled, cowed.

  “In fact,” Danielle continued, “why wait till we get back to the station? You want some of this, Flo? Here!” And she scooped some off her clothing with her gloved fingers and flung it to splatter on Earl. “Isn’t that precious?”

  “Danielle,” Katie said, interrupting her wife’s tirade against the Henshaws and pulling her away from them, “come with me. I want to talk to Laila.”

  Katie had happened to steal a glance at Laila to see if the biologist had gotten her recording equipment set up yet. However, not only was Laila still standing in the exact same spot several yards away as when Katie had left her but there was no evidence of any equipment of any kind having been unpacked; moreover Laila didn’t seem to be interested at all in the Seal Snot Incident, which puzzled Katie as it seemed that some harm might come to the seals as a result of it. Instead, Laila kept looking down at a clipboard she held and then back up at the seal colony; back down to the clipboard and back up to the seal colony; over and over again.

  As soon as Katie and a still muttering Danielle approached Laila said, “There should be more.”

  “More what?” was Katie’s question.

  “More Weddells. What I am seeing here does not make any sense.” She noticed Danielle’s clothes. “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “Never mind,” Katie jumped in to say; she squeezed Danielle’s arm to prevent her wife from launching into a rant against expectorating seals. “We’ll explain later.” She surveyed the colony. “Seems like a lot of seals to me,” she told Laila.

  But Laila was shaking her head.

  “No, I do not know how to explain it except to say that this is the second largest Weddell colony on Antarctica—we bought the rights to study it from the Americans—but the population I am seeing here today is miniscule. I was here only yesterday and I was barely able to step between the seals then. There are thousands of seals missing today.”

  “Must have known Max was coming,” Katie offered and was relieved to see Laila break into a smile and start laughing. “Anyway, I’m sure it was just those tremors that scared them off, right?”

  “That is what I am hoping,” Laila said.

  Chapter 19

  As promised in the vacation materials Katie had received the Samoans included their guests in virtually every aspect of day to day life at the research station. For the next two days Danielle, Katie and the Henshaws were taken out to drill for ice cores and then taught how to analyze those cores when they were brought back to the laboratory; they were taken on excursions that brought them even closer to Mt. Erebus to check up on the data-gathering equipment the Samoans had in place there; were taken on a thrilling expedition to explore a nearby and visually stunning ice cavern; were taught how to operate the dog sled and, much to Flo’s delight, spent a few hours one day helping the Samoans study the members of an Adelie penguin colony. And despite the trauma of the Seal Snot incident Danielle joined Laila on a few more trips to visit the Weddells whose low numbers were still of concern.

  “Something’s up,” Max had told Danielle and Katie when the women returned to the station after one of the visits to the seal grounds to find him, as usual, in his room. They had told him, though he didn’t care, how puzzled Laila was by the dwindling size of the colony.

  “You know how it is with animals: they can sense things we humans can’t, right? Like when that idiot Pelham starts whimpering right before a thunderstorm? Mark my words: those seals have received a telegram from Mother Nature and are hightailing it outta here. And yet what do we humans do? What do we representatives of the most advanced species on Earth do? We keep our cabooses parked right next to a volcano.” He shook his head.

  “Oh stop it,” Katie had chided. “Personally I just think the seals are maybe tired of this place and are looking for someplace new.”

  Max had stared at her, one eyebrow cocked.

  “Lemme get this straight,” he said, “the one seal expert in this joint has no idea why the seals are packing up but you have the answer?”

  “All I’m saying, my love, is that I’m sure the mystery of the seals will prove to have a reasonable and harmless explanation.”

  “And all I’m saying, my love,” Max rejoined, “is that you are a moron.”

  ***

  Late on the fourth night of their residency on Antarctica Max emerg
ed from his room. At least he thought it was late; he had no idea, really. The fact that the sun never fully set on this continent this time of year made it difficult to tell. Plus, his Eco-Drive watch, which had the ability to show him the time in major cities in twenty-three time zones, didn’t have a time zone setting for Antarctica; it was still showing New Zealand time from when they arrived at Christchurch. What’s more, he was almost positive he shouldn’t trust the clocks throughout the station because he didn’t even know if it was possible to tell time at the bottom of the planet. The way he figured it, when a new research station is erected on Antarctica the inhabitants arbitrarily pick a time to start the clocks at and then just wait for their bodies’ circadian rhythms to eventually match what the clocks say. Therefore, Max surmised, the clocks here at the Samoan station probably reported a totally different time than the clocks employed at the American station less than a quarter of a mile away. In any case, the clocks here said it was just past 1 a.m. The station was quiet, sleeping, the only noises were the humming of machinery and low volume beeps and blips that could be heard coming from behind the laboratory door.

  Max was in the station’s library trying to select a book to read. He had to hand it to the Samoans…they had this place of theirs well-stocked. The library, for example, though housed in a cheerless storeroom lit by a bare 60 watt bulb, was full of treasures: shelf upon shelf of novels from all eras and genres (including the opera omnia of Max Bland), short story collections, biographies, back issues of National Geographic and Smithsonian, even anthologies of Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. One wall contained an impressive DVD collection; in fact, that was how Max had spent his evening until now, in his room watching movies. He hadn’t even emerged for dinner, opting instead to munch on granola bars he had taken from the pantry.

  Naturally, the women in his life interrupted his solitude on two different occasions. First it was Katie to challenge him to a game of pool in the rec room; then it was Danielle who immediately unzipped her snowsuit upon closing the door behind her to reveal that she was wearing nothing underneath.