Warming Trend (3 page)

Even though the heat of the afternoon usually kept most of the locals indoors, the fact that it was a holiday meant a lot of people were walking the last few blocks to get to the long strip of eastern shoreline. The fireworks would be visible from almost anywhere on the miles of beach, so she thought she’d spread out near the dog park. There was shade and fresh water nearby. Scooters were three deep along the parking lot fence, but she found a spot to wedge hers in, then walked out to the nearest cabana, the cooler dangling from her fingertips. A few slightly soggy bills from her tip cache acquired a trio of fresh fish tacos with mango salsa, and a thoroughly chilled juice blend the locals called conch-conch. It was never the same twice. Today it tasted like guava had been the primary component.

Her stomach finally at peace, she half-buried the cooler in the sand for insulation and sprawled on the towel, mostly in the shade. She relaxed first with one of the stories from the literary magazine. The Jack Londonesque tale of a dog sled race wasn’t particularly original, but it was certainly enthusiastic and brought back her own exuberant sledding experiences. She pressed the chilled exterior of her conch-conch cup to her cheeks and closed her eyes and let herself have just one moment of vivid remembrance. Her only win had been a midnight race, late June. Her father had said her good fortune was genetic. Those black eyes of hers could see in that mixed twilight, and she’d seen every flag while her competitors had veered off course. When she’d come across the finish line he’d swung her around and around until she was dizzy. She’d been maybe thirteen? She’d never forget Tonk Senior and Bannon and Jeeves and Klinkatet. Beautiful dogs. They’d loved racing.

She wondered what had happened to Tonk Junior. No matter how mad Eve had been with her, Ani knew in her heart that she wouldn’t have taken it out on Tonk. Tonk was still in a loving home, older and slower, but happy. Had to be.

She opened her eyes to the dazzle of orange-gold light. The sounds of puppies and dogs at play in the dog park brought painful nostalgia, but not so much that she wanted to move. She deserved the reminder. She’d disappointed Monica Tyndell, broken Eve’s heart, and Tonk wouldn’t have understood why one day Ani didn’t come back. Dogs only understood hellos, not goodbyes.

Damn. Okay, time for some data to distract her. She studied her way through another temperature table in
geoLogics
, this time for what was left of the ice sheet near Ellesmere Island, then decided it was time for
Alaska Today
. She’d never read the magazine when she’d lived there, but now every article held some element of interest. It didn’t matter if the subject was netting salmon on Cook Inlet or bull moose locking horns in Denali. In the Keys she was daily surrounded by yellow sunshine. The photographs from home had blues, beautiful deep, rich saturating blues. Blues in the ice, blues in the ocean, blues in the rivers and even tinting the spruce. Without mountains, it seemed, there were no real blues.

She drank it all in. A recipe from Ketchikan for new pea salad recalled her mother’s Easter dinners. A bed-and-breakfast just outside Anchorage reminded her of the place her folks had run for a while when she was small. Her mother had done most of the work, but dad had helped out between his expeditions. After her mom’s death, Dad had sold the B&B for a tidy sum, a chunk of which had helped with Ani’s first four years of college, with some left over to get her foot in the door at grad school, along with her scholarship. Fat lot of good that had done.

“Hey fancy meeting you here.”

Ani looked up into a flash of blond hair. It took a moment to recognize the face without the snowsuit hood framing it. “Oh, hey.”

Lisa plopped onto the towel next to her. “So where’s that date of yours?”

The question didn’t seem hostile, though the lift to Lisa’s eyebrows suggested doubt at the existence of any date. Ani indicated her reading material. “You’re looking at it.”

Lisa frowned as she picked up the
geoLogics
. “I can’t say I think much of your priorities.”

“To each her own.” Ani held out one hand for the journal.

Lisa continued to study it. “So is global warming real?”

“Yes it is. We might be in a warming era anyway, but our own pollution is accelerating it faster than our ability to adapt.”

Pointing at a column of core temperature readings for the polar ice sheet, Lisa asked, “How can solid ice have different temperatures and still be frozen? Or is that a stupid question?”

“It’s not a stupid question.” Ani shaded her eyes and was surprised to see that Lisa was serious. She knew a lot of women who ran screaming from data tables. “Fresh water forms the crystal structure of ice beginning at thirty-two degrees at sea level. As the temperature decreases, the crystal structure gets stronger. The inner temperature of the ice reaches a point where its strength turns brittle. Past that point the crystal structure is prone to shattering.”

“So that’s why avalanches are more risky when the temperatures stay unnaturally low?”

Ani hoped she didn’t look as surprised as she felt. “That’s right. Glacial calving is also more likely in extreme cold.”

Lisa dropped the journal onto the towel and gave Ani her full attention. “Just because I don’t look like I went to college doesn’t mean I didn’t.”

“I”

“It’s okay.” She tossed back her hair and flashed an unapologetic smile. “Lots of times I fall asleep to the Discovery Channel. I try not to use my brain a lot now, though. I don’t want to use it up. Sooner, rather than later, the skin’s going to get blotchy, and the equipment” She mimed her curvaceous figure in the air. “The equipment is going to go south. Lesbian sugar mommies are really quite hard to find, so I guess sooner or later, I’m going to have to get a real job. I’ll go back to being Myra, and I’ll need the brain then.”

Ani couldn’t help herself. “That whole bit about the tips was just a dumb act, wasn’t it?”

“Works on guys all the time.” Lisa grinned. “You, on the other hand, didn’t offer to let me keep some of your tip money. Clever woman.”

In spite of herself, Ani laughed. Lisa’s honesty about her motivations was refreshing. “The offer last night, was that about tip money?”

“No. That was about Kirsten saying you were great in bed. She had a good laugh about it when I called her this morning. I’m taking her off my list of friends.” Lisa rested back on her elbows. “So what’s a nice geologist like you doing in a place like this?”

“Earning a living.”

“And not much else, I’ll bet. Really what made you move here?”

“I love the beach.” At Lisa’s patent skepticism, Ani added, “Why else?”

“Because it’s a long way from there.” She pointed at the
Alaska Today
. “Kirsten was right about one thing. Any girl with a pulse has a heart attack when she walks into thirty degrees and there you are in a tank top and those sexy fingerless gloves.”

“It’s just the uniform. It’s not like I’m”

“Trying, no you’re not even trying, which makes it all the more intoxicating. Then they find out you really are in your element as cold as the furniture.” Lisa stared at her and there was no way she missed the fact that Ani was blushing. “Now I’ve got it figured out. I don’t know who she was, but half the lesbians in Key West hate her.”

“Who?”

“Whoever she was—the one that broke your heart.”

“Oh.” It was Ani’s turn to be rueful. “I broke her heart.”

“And then you took off?” Lisa cocked her head and Ani realized she was a little bit older than she’d first supposed. “Well, since I don’t think we’re likely to date given your preferences…” She nudged the
geoLogics
with her toe. “That leaves me free to say I think that’s chicken shit.”

Irritated, Ani snapped, “Who asked you?”

“Oh, please. Lesbian code of conduct. If we’re not going to go to bed so we can become judgmental exes, then that means we go directly to being judgmental, but without the whole bitter thing. You broke her heart and took off so you didn’t have to watch her suffer.”

Through gritted teeth, Ani said, “You don’t know anything about it.”

“What difference does that make?”

“God, you’re irritating.” This is why I don’t like people, Ani thought.

“Oh, now you’re talking like an ex. Maybe we should go to bed after all.”

Ani just stared at her.

“What?” Lisa’s gaze was level. “You’re freaked because my real name is Myra, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m annoyed because you’re a know-it-all.”

“For a woman supposedly without a broken heart you have no sense of humor and not a clue how to flirt.”

Ani had thought it was just the reflection off the sand, but the tiniest crinkle at the corners of Lisa’s eyes made it apparent she was being teased. “What if I don’t want to laugh? There’s global warming and the price of gas, you know.”

“Say
melanoma
in a group of surfers guaranteed to bring the vibe down.”

“I’m not going to win this battle of wits, am I?”

“No. Might as well give up.” Lisa opened the half-buried cooler. “Can I have the apple?”

“Sure, if you buy me an ice cream.”

“Buy your own ice cream!”

“Buy your own apple!”

“You’re incredibly boring.”

Lisa settled in to read
Terrafrost
. Ani wanted to ask her if she didn’t have plans or something, but she kept her mouth clamped shut.

Some time later, Lisa grunted and said, “Not a bad story. And I got stood up.”

“Whoever she is, she’s a fool.”

Lisa looked up from the magazine, eyelashes fluttering. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Ani continued giving most of her attention to an article on fly fishing near Bristol Bay. “What’s your last name, anyway?”

“Garretson. Yours is Bycall.”

Ani nodded and Lisa was finally quiet.

Someone like Lisa lounging on a towel tended to attract a lot of foot traffic. Guys and girls alike trolled past them. Half the girls Lisa seemed to know, but she was equally laconic with most of them, though a couple earned the kind of smart-ass teasing she’d dished out to Ani. Ani was blotting out the chitchat with another table of ice temperature data when a newcomer’s coy-kitten tone broke into her concentration.

“Don’t you look cozy?” The new arrival was sleek and tall, and sported a mane of golden bronze hair that had to have emptied a salon of its entire supply of extensions.

“Hello, Tina.” Lisa didn’t move, but her breathing had gone shallow. “Yes, I’m cozy.”

“It’s a shame we don’t see you around much anymore.”

“I’ve made a clean air environment a priority. For my health.”

“Remember Mindy?”

“How could I forget? The image of her skinny legs wrapped around you left me with retinal damage.”

Ani couldn’t see Lisa’s eyes, but she could have sworn that little fire bolts darted out of Tina’s. “Now that we’re living together she’s handcrafting me a board.”

“Something to do after getting canned from the board shop?”

The fire bolt eyes turned to Ani. “Who’s this?”

Ani answered, giving Tina a patently false smile, “Anidyr.”

Tina dismissed her with a blink, and went back to trying to burn a hole in Lisa. “Your dear Ani? I didn’t know you were dating
finally
, even after all this time.”

Ani had seen Tina’s excellence-in-bitchery type in the student union back home. When the sun rose at eleven a.m. and set four hours later practice with verbal knives passed the time. “We haven’t been dating for very long. It took me forever to convince her I wasn’t another lowlife.”

Tina made a face at both of them. She flicked some sand onto the towel and the reading material. “Taking a vacation to Alaska or something?”

She’s dying to know, Ani thought, which makes her still hung up on Lisa or a control freak stalker. Control freak stalker seemed more likely.

Lisa brushed the sand off the
Alaska Today
. “Yes, you’ve got it. I am in awe of your deductive abilities.”

“Before we go,” Ani said, “Lisa thought we ought to familiarize ourselves with the deterioration of oxygen isotopes and the rate of glaciation retreat.”

“Ani’s a geologist.” Lisa smiled sweetly. “I’m sure with her help I can work my way up from ablation of the ice cap to the proper use of a surf wax comb.”

Tina tossed her hair, which was no small feat. “Whatever. See you on the curl that is, if you can still get your ass up on a board.” She stalked off, her hair blotting out the setting sun.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Lisa said. “Now I owe you.”

“It was self-defense. She was standing in my reading light.”

The tension in Lisa’s body eased. “I used to think she was a big deal. I was flattered she even noticed me.”

“And then you figured out she was a bitch?”

“No, then I fell for her and we moved in together.”

“And then you figured out she was a bitch?”

“No, then I did her laundry for thirteen months, eleven days.”

“And then you figured out she was a bitch?”

“No, then I walked in on her and that skinny, empty-headed surfboard waxer.”

“And then you figured out she was a bitch?”

“Yes.”

“Only took me thirty seconds.”

If Lisa had been wearing glasses, she’d have been giving Ani a stern look over the top of them. “Your point?”

“Battle of wits…tie score.”

“Fine.” Lisa heaved a long-suffering sigh. “You know how they say that sometimes a person is meant to be a better friend than a lover? She wasn’t even a good friend.”

“Or a good lover?”

“I didn’t say that. Why do you think I stayed for so long?” She dusted off her hands with an aura of dispelling evil spirits. “Can I watch the fireworks with you?”

“Sure. As long as it’s not a date.”

“Can’t be.” Lisa opened the magazine in her lap. “I don’t date anyone I like.”

Ani laughed and reached into the messenger bag. “You’ve read that one. Have a local tabloid. The police blotter is always fascinating reading. Close encounters between cars and moose, that sort of thing.”

Lisa flipped open the first few pages. “I’m riveted. Hey, professors in Alaska are pretty darned hot. Did you ever
study
under this one?”