Warming Trend (2 page)

Lisa’s hand drifted over Anidyr’s more than once as she collected beers, drinks and pitchers throughout the night. The pace of the bar peaked at about one thirty, just before last call. The noise was deafening, so she merely tugged her earlobe and shook her head in answer to questions about locations of after-hours clubs.

The music stopped at two, and the lights finally steadied to a wan yellow. The blazing neon bar signs were switched off and the high energy of people with nothing to do but party transformed into weary travelers and staff all looking for bed. Ani spotted the blonde and the redhead necking on their way out.

Lisa counted out her tips and divvied up shares with Ani and the table jockey. Ani balanced the till and divided the leftover cash between herself and the table jockey. The club wasn’t quite as busy on weeknights, and because Ani could keep up with the pace, she didn’t share the bar except on Friday and Saturday nights. The assistant manager checked inventory and as usual didn’t find a bottle missing, so Ani didn’t owe anything back. She tucked the roll of mixed currency in her pocket, alongside the paycheck for her hours worked and the tips customers paid with credit cards, and headed out through the utility back room. It would be just a few hours before the restoration crew came in to fill molds and replace the ice glasses consumed during the night, and groom the walls and ice sculptures for the next day’s trade. She didn’t look at the ice sculptures much even with the slowest freezing process they could manage, the clarity of the ice was nothing like Fairbanks, which hosted the World Championships every year. She shook off the thought. It wasn’t productive.

“Hey, Ani.” Lisa fell into step alongside her. “Do you remember Kirsten?”

“Sorry. If I saw her I probably would.”

“Well, she remembers you. She said to say hi.”

Ani gave Lisa a sideways look. “She a friend of yours?”

“Not really, but she did say I should try to get a job here.” They turned the corner in the long corridor that ran almost the length of the resort’s main buildings. “And that you would be one of the highlights.”

“She was joking, I think.”

Lisa put one hand on Ani’s bare forearm. “You walk really fast. It’s the long legs.”

“It’s late and home is calling.”

Lisa moved closer, temptingly warm after all the hours of cold. “Bed is calling me.”

Ani tried to look as if she didn’t understand the invitation, then she tried frowning, but Lisa continued to look at her with the big blue eyes and a not-so-subtle heave to her bosom. Under her unzipped snowsuit she wore a ribbed tank that left nothing to Ani’s imagination. “Look, I don’t know what Kirsten told you”

“That you were fantastic with your hands.”

“My handiwork is all at the bar. I don’t go home with anybody.”

“Oh, that’s not what Kirsten said at all.” Lisa leaned even closer, and Ani knew she ought to have felt the heat rising off Lisa’s skin, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel anything but a desire to end the conversation.

“I’m sorry she misled you, then.”

The pouting began. “She said you were hard to get next to, but she’d managed.”

“I can’t explain why she’d say that.” Ani gently removed Lisa’s hand from her forearm. “I have a date waiting for me at home,” she lied. “Sorry.”

Lisa didn’t follow her as she walked onward toward the exit to the employee car lot. Ani consigned the conversation to the list of things she’d make to sure to forget by tomorrow. Why would Kirsten a woman Ani didn’t even remember make up a lie? Sometimes she had no idea what motivated people.

Every ten feet the temperature increased noticeably, and her footsteps slowed as she reached the exit door. She was glad to be unaccompanied. No one would understand why she found it hard to open the door to the lush, exotic Key West night.

She told herself she was being a fool, the same thing she did every night. But she couldn’t help it. It was nearing three in the morning and she didn’t want to leave the cold and ice of the club. She so very much wanted to open the door to forty degrees and the night sky already glowing at the eastern horizon. It was the time of year when, at home, the sun almost never set, and the stars faded like pale milk into the indigo canopy. The time of year when two women could touch noses and not worry they might get frostbite. The time of year when dancing on a glacier at three o’clock in the morning wasn’t suicidal madness, and the northern lights blazed in full celebration of whispered endearments.

She pushed the past out of her head. There was no exhilarating chill on the other side of that door, no aurora borealis. She opened the door and let the humid Key West air brutally remind her that it wasn’t a bad dream, she’d still made the mistakes she’d made, and she still had to accept that this was how it had to be. Key West was her chosen place of exile. She loved living in the Keys. The years of bartending to get through her bachelor’s degree at U of Fairbanks had paid off as her only real vocational skill. Who cared if she could set an avalanche charge or tell, just by looking, if the glacial ice was stationary or moving? Useless. So what if she came from generations of sturdy Russian stock that thrived best when conditions were harsh? Why not live in paradise?

She felt heavy and slow as she claimed her scooter from the lot. Find wisdom, she told herself.
It’s not about having what you want, but wanting what you have.
Key West, oh she loved the humidity and the sparrow-sized bugs. She loved the constant sweat on her palms and the six-toed stray cats. It was always summer, the flowers were always in bloom and nothing ever changed. Who could want more than all that?

She headed into the thick, cloying night, the sky loaded with stars. She wished she could call it beautiful. She knew that the fireworks tomorrow ought to be spectacular if the clear weather held for one more day. Look forward to the fireworks, she told herself, and stop wishing you didn’t smell of scotch.

Her bungalow was on the other side of the tourist district, past the Hemingway house and into one of the low-rent side streets near the airport. Many of her neighbors also worked in tourism, and she wasn’t the only one arriving home at that late hour. A shower was her top priority, and then a long sleep to start off her Independence Day.

“Ani-dear,” someone called softly, not too far away. She turned to track the voice and saw Shiwan waving. “A package.”

“Sorry,” Ani said as she crossed the small patch of unmown grass that separated their doorways. “They never get it right.”

“Postman lazy. My door much closer.” Shiwan flashed her a tired smile. “I going to bed, so good thing you come home now.”

“Thanks.” She hefted the box, telling herself not to hope that it was from Tan. “I appreciate it.”

She heard Shiwan’s door close before she was back on her own front porch. Once she was in her own narrow foyer, she glanced at the return address A. Salek, Fairbanks, Alaska. It
was
from Tan. She hadn’t lied to Lisa, after all. This box was a bona fide date.

The familiar mix of excitement and dread played out in a rush of adrenaline, and she quickly pulled off the club tank top and kicked off the worn black Levi’s. Within minutes she was in the shower, scrubbing the odor of booze out of her pores. She toweled her hair until it was damp, enjoying the cool feel of it against her neck. Though she reveled in the club’s icy air, it was stale. The bungalow’s lack of central air conditioning was welcome. The moist air from the swamp cooler refreshed her sinuses, doing as much good as the moisturizer she massaged into her rough hands.

Even as she automatically tended to all the steps that would lead her to bed, she wondered what she’d find in the box this time. What gossip from the university? Would there be new issues of
geoLogics
? Would any of the newspapers mention people she’d once called friends? It had been three years of experiencing a brand-new climate, but she missed Alaska desperately. That her exile to Key West was her own damned fault only made it harder to let go. Tan’s box of news was an act of pity by the department administrative director to a former grad student who had screwed up. Maybe Tan and the rest of the world believed her guilty of the wrong thing, but she had still made some big mistakes and now she was paying for them. Karma was karma.

Knowing if she opened the box she would not get the sleep she so badly needed to truly study the contents, she made herself leave it on the floor next to the bed. Exhausted as she was, she felt its presence as she waited for sleep. News from home…

She awoke to the pop of firecrackers. Her heart raced at the surprise of it, even though her ear reassured her that the high, light report couldn’t be anything but the rapid crack of tight paper cylinders exploding. She had to blink sleep out of her eyes before she could see the clock. It was already after ten. For just a few moments her day off was no more complicated than wondering if she should doze for another half hour or go back to sleep for even longer.

Another round of firecrackers solved the question and she pushed herself upright with a groan. The day was already humid and hot. A tank and shorts would be too much clothing. The Fourth of July was usually one of the short range of days when a person could wear a tank and shorts in Fairbanks. It was probably in the eighties at home.

She bashed a foot on the box from Tan as she swung out of bed. Torn between a curse and giddy anticipation, she hobbled to the small kitchen to start the coffee. If she had the Internet she could look up the weather at home. She sloshed water onto the counter as she filled the little coffeemaker, then koshed an elbow on the cupboard as she reached for a mug. It was all the fault of the box. News from home always upset her equilibrium the reason she wanted no home computer, no Internet, no contact. If a little box filled with journals had her spilling jam down her shirt, she knew she’d have no peace at all if she could click her way to the university’s class schedules and faculty bios. She dabbed at the jam smear and knew that she really didn’t want to read about the latest candidate to become a tenured geologist at GlacierPort. The bottom line was that it wasn’t her, and never would be. Dr. Anidyr Bycall was a lost dream. Monica Tyndell, professor, doctor of Quaternary geology, undisputed expert in the glacial history under Gates of the Arctic, and Ani’s mentor and idol, would have had to have seen to it that Ani’s entire academic career was expunged.

Tormenting herself with daily news would drive her crazy. Better to wait for these boxes every other month and fill her time and her bank account at the bar. Some day she would explore a different line of study. Some distant day.

By the time she finished her toast and had a half-full mug on the table, her hands were shaking so badly she nicked her thumb with the knife she used to cut the tape. Great, it would sting like hell the next time she made a margarita.

She could have sworn she smelled smoked salmon as she pulled back the flaps. Tan had put
Alaska Today
right on top, and her breath caught at the stunning photograph of the ice fields east of Juneau. Her nostrils responsively tightened and her perceptions sharpened as if a bite of the icy air had hit her full force. It only lasted for a moment, but in that moment home existed.

The dinette table creaked as she pulled the box closer to her. The technical journals went on the left, the
Fairbanks Gazette
, University of Fairbanks magazines and newspaper clippings in the middle, and GlacierPort newsletters on the right. Many of the latter were printouts from online versions. She scanned headlines as she sorted
geoLogics
featured an update to the ice timeline, promising an article that would take her all the way to evening to read and digest. She regularly lied to herself about how much she missed the pleasure of studying data, but when she held some in her hands, she couldn’t deny she was starved for it. She would take the ice data to the beach later, and enjoy it while she waited for the fireworks.

The bottom of the box finally reached, she set it aside so she could fill it with key limes, fresh roasted coconut and the toffee covered hazelnuts that Tan had said she loved. It was the very least she could do to repay Tan’s kindness, especially since so far Tan had refused all offers to come and visit—too hot, too far and so forth. Tan had been the only one who had thought, regardless of what Ani may or may not have done, that Ani had been ill-treated. She had offered to listen, at least. Eve hadn’t listened.

“Enough of that.” She pushed away the memory of Eve’s eyes squeezed tight and her hands over her ears.
Don’t tell me anymore!
Ani had done exactly what Eve had asked and that was that. She opened the
geoLogics
to the first page and began on the editor’s abstract.

Her stomach growled so painfully that she closed her eyes for a moment. Dizzy and cramped, she looked in disbelief at the clock on the stove how could it be three o’clock already? She turned her head too quickly and was repaid by a shooting pain along her neck. When she looked at the page of tabular data in front of her the numbers wavered against the white background.

“I get it, I get it.” She muttered more words under her breath as she stamped one foot to get circulation going again. Time for something to eat, and to stake out a spot at the beach. She quickly filled a messenger bag with an older issue of
Alaska Today
, the
geoLogics
she had been reading, a couple of
Gazettes
, and an issue of
Terrafrost
in case she wanted a break from all the science. Every once in a while, a student’s short story was worthwhile. Adding a thin beach towel to the bag, she headed out to her scooter. She put a bottle of water and an apple, along with a bag of frozen blue ice, in the small cooler bungeed to the back, added her messenger bag with another bungee and puttered out onto the already crowded streets.

After a stop at the ATM to deposit her paycheck, she wove her way through stop-and-go traffic along Flagler until she could use side streets to get to the water. The scooter culture in Key West meant it was generally okay to carefully use the shoulders to pass traffic, but it paid to keep an eye out for fallen fronds from the palms that lined every street. She’d already gotten one flat tire from driving over a dried out edge.