Warming Trend (26 page)

Eve tried not to look stunned by the revelation. “Ani may have given you permission to butt in—”

“She didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Lisa wasn’t Ani’s girlfriend—no, it would not be appropriate to smile, and it was bizarre that a little sprite inside was trying to burst into song.

“Didn’t give me permission. I am an annoying person who thinks she gets permission from the universe to butt in.”

Really, Eve wanted to dislike this woman, but the wide, engaging grin drew a reluctant smile instead. “I’m still not baring my soul to you.”

“Then bare it to Ani. Let her bare hers. Ask her over tonight or something. Talk. You owe her that.”

“I went back, you know. I bought her a phone and went back. But she had already gone.” Heck, I
am
baring my soul to her, Eve thought. “Monica was there and Ani wasn’t. I felt…abandoned.”

“Of course you did. So did she. She didn’t think she deserved you anymore.”

“How could I know she loved me?” Eve broke eye contact and focused on her coffee. “How does anyone know for sure?”

“I don’t know about just anyone, but in Ani’s case, she loved you so much she trusted you with her dog. Near as I can tell in Alaskan Dykespeak, that means ‘marry me and have my babies.’”

Eve opened her mouth. Shut it again.

“Cool,” Lisa said. “Point to me on that one.”

“You’re really not her girlfriend?” She absolutely, positively did not hear strains of “Love is in the Air” playing in her head.

“Nope. I tried to jump her when we first met, but she’s totally hung up on some woman whose heart she broke. The breakup was sudden and tragic—I think that makes her quick-frozen ice. But she’ll melt quickly.”

Eve decided it would be a bad idea to make an enemy of Lisa. Besides, she was feeling kindly disposed to her now. “I’m not sure that’s useful information.”

“Knowledge is power. So—do you want me to tell her to drop by your place later?”

“No…Yes. I guess. I mean…”

“I’ll tell her yes.” Lisa licked her fork free of apricot sauce before having another bite of pancake. “Enough about Ani. I actually dropped in to ask about Tan. What’s her favorite food? Does she like sex?”

Eve blinked. “I don’t know. I don’t really know her at all socially.”

“There’s no amicable ex I could ask?”

“Not that I know of. I mean, I have no idea who she might have dated.”

“Damn.” Lisa pursed her lips. “Ani was useless too. Didn’t even have a clue what Tan’s favorite breakfast might be. Heck, she didn’t even know Tan was gay.”

“I’m not sure Tan knows Tan is gay.”

“Oh.” Lisa smiled and Eve immediately thought of a cat considering a bowl of cream. “She knows she likes women. Might not have had much practice, but she knows. It’s in her eyes. Did you know that her irises are ringed with an orange-gold? It makes the brown like chocolate.”

“Um, no,” Eve said. “I can’t say that I ever noticed that. Sorry I’m not any help.”

Lisa absentmindedly ran one finger under the collar of her scoop-neck shirt. “I’ll just have to use my wiles.”

Tan didn’t stand a chance, Eve thought. Lisa was practically a force of nature. “I should probably get back to work.”

“Sure you won’t come with us? Tomorrow?”

She shook her head. “I…I’m not sure I’d be any help.”

“I’m not going to be the least bit help, and I’m going. Ani’s looking for one thing out there. I’m looking for something else.” Lisa licked the last drop of apricot syrup from her fork. “What are you afraid to look for?”

Eve wasn’t fooled by the teasing light in Lisa’s eyes. It was a rhetorical question, but one meant to needle her conscience. Much to Eve’s consternation, it did.

“We don’t need sleds.” Ani looked to Tan for confirmation. “One night, we can live without a generator. It’s summer.”

“I should hope.” Tan gestured at the small stack of supplies and backpacks they already had set aside. “Generators take second signatures. Beacons and GPS don’t, though.”

Ani grinned. “Okay, that’s good to know. We should take two of the ultralite beacons, then.”

“And you can pay for all the consumables and rentals? You’re sure? I can help out.”

“You’re already helping out, because renting this all through the university is a big savings. Besides, I’ve been saving my money for something. Bartending pays pretty well in a place like On the Rocks. I didn’t know what I’d spend it on, but this is worth it. Even if we’re crazy, it’ll be fun to get out there for a night. The most fun I’ve had in a while. And this is a fraction of what people pay to sit on a boat while someone else sails them out to a pretty island and back. They’re stuck with seared ahi salad and baked brie. They don’t get freeze-dried…” Ani peered at one of the packets stacked at her feet. “Freeze-dried vegetarian beef-flavored stroganoff. Warning, contains soy and milk products. No beef. Just add water.”

“And flavor,” Tan added, chuckling. Ani couldn’t get over how much younger Tan seemed—but then she had yet to see Tan in one of her no-nonsense suits. Like the last two days, Tan was casual, today in her U of Alaska long-sleeve polo and cargo pants with more pockets on both legs than there were six-toed cats in Key West. Ani wanted a pair of her own.

Tan’s expertise with glacier hiking was also a surprise, but apparently she’d made a study of it as part of her fitness routine. Tan had muscles on her arms and back that didn’t stop. Obviously, as a student she’d only seen Tan the Helpful Administrator. Tan the Woman was quite a surprise.

Of the ration packets, Ani said, “Ain’t that the truth? I love this stuff. My dad used to make it for me on my birthday.” She had a nostalgic flash of one of their father-daughter trips where he’d demonstrated how to use Tovex for excavation and mix trail rations in their pouches to save the fuss of washing out a pot.

Planning this trip Ani felt alive all the way to the soles of her feet. She loved the chill air in the supply depot. The above-ground Quonset hut hid an extensive network of underground bunkers filled with everything an ice explorer could want, from rations to sleds to ice axes and crampons of every size and featuring every style of spike. Something about the place made her heart race, probably because every time she’d come here with her father it had meant an exciting trip onto the glacier. She was aware of the texture of the fleece against her skin, the wool in her socks, the metallic smell of the compressed, dried packets of rations. “You packed four of every meal,” she said to Tan.

“She might change her mind.” Tan pulled a small box of flares off the shelf and added it to the pile.

“I’m not going to think about it.” Ani knew she would, though. “If we take one-man tents that’s more weight than one that sleeps three.”

“Probably best for Lisa to go as light as possible. She’s built, but not—”

“That’s an understatement.”

Tan flushed. “I meant that she’s fit, but I don’t think she’s carried a thirty or forty pound pack.”

“True. Most of her exercise is done in a swimsuit weighing about two ounces.”

“Hey,” a voice said from the doorway. “I work out, you know.” Lisa stalked toward them in mock indignation.

Tan’s consternation increased. “It wasn’t meant as an insult. It’s just that carrying a pack when you haven’t practiced much can be a real challenge. I’ve seen buff guys walk crooked for a week after hefting fifty pounds for four miles across an ice surface.”

Lisa draped herself decoratively against the shelves nearest where Tan stood blushing. “I’m glad you weren’t insulting me. I can crack a coconut with my thighs.”

Ani burst out laughing. “I believe it. Come on, help me with the checklist.”

She handed Lisa the clipboard and Lisa promptly compared her list to the requisition form that Tan was compiling. Successful comparison involved Lisa’s hair trailing over Tan’s paperwork several times. She was incredibly obvious, Ani thought, and Tan was a blissful deer in Lisa’s headlights. It worried her, a little, because she didn’t think Tan was casual, and she didn’t want anyone to leave Alaska with regrets. Not this time.

“Eve wants you to drop by her place tonight, by the way.”

Ani looked up from counting out eight flares, not sure she’d heard Lisa right. “Come again?”

“Now you ask me.” Lisa went for an air of innocence, then giggled when Tan snorted. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I said that Eve wants you to drop by her place tonight.”

No way, Ani thought. “How do you know that?”

“It came to me in a vision.”

“No, really.”

“I asked her if she did and she said yes.”

“Wow,” Tan remarked. “The direct approach. You actually talked to her, asked a question, and she answered. Who knew?”

Ani decided Tan was spending way too much time with Lisa. “Did you, like, ask her and she said yes, or did you badger her and she gave in?”

“Do you really care?” If Lisa arched her eyebrows any higher Ani feared she would hurt herself. “Before I had brunch at her café, I bought you a new sweater, and you are going to wear it, after you clean yourself up and use moisturizer on your hair.”

“Christ, Lisa. I don’t need a makeover.”

“I think you’re drop-dead gorgeous just as you are, with that whole scruffy tomcat vibe you have. Everybody wants to drag the tomcat home for the night, but she’s not a keeper. A little attention to the rough edges and the sweater I got you says
keep me
.”

“Lisa, I don’t want—”

“Liar.”

Tan, who had been watching their exchange with increasing puzzlement, interjected, “I thought you two were together.”

“What gave you that idea?” Ani tried to remember how she’d introduced Lisa. Tan was more of a goner than Ani thought, because she’d been completely under Lisa’s spell even when she thought Lisa was spoken for.

“I just assumed…I mean, you were…” Tan’s ears practically turned copper.

“It’s the way they define things up here,” Lisa said. “Eve jumped to the same conclusion. You introduce another woman as your friend, and you’re sleeping with her. Call her your partner and you’re not.”

Tan was still spluttering. “It wasn’t that I…you seemed…I just thought Florida girls were natural born flirts since Ani didn’t seem to mind.”

Ani left them to it. She wondered if she’d have the motel room to herself tonight. She headed for the axes and picks. They’d best bring a few ice screws, and lots of rope of course. Lisa’s laugh echoed off the concrete walls and if Ani wanted to be honest, the puppy inside her was scampering in circles. Nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed to matter except that Eve wanted to see her. She wanted to enjoy the feeling for a few minutes, at least.

They’d hugged, a wonderful, body-to-body hug full of regrets and kindness, and that hug had made her want to believe they could go back in time, or just plain start over, but then Eve had seemed a little cold when they’d left. Maybe not because she was still pissed but maybe because Eve had thought she and Lisa were together and wasn’t it all a mess, and bless Lisa, Ani would buy her a dozen surfboards if she’d managed to untangle some of the knots between her and Eve, and she would never speak ill of tropical weather or surfers again.

Eve wanted to see her. Privately.

Face facts, she told herself. You’re going to stop at a store and get that relaxing shampoo to go with the moisturizer. And you’ll wear the sweater.

* * *

What was hardest, Eve decided, was that she didn’t know if Ani would actually just show up with a knock on the door, out of the blue. She had taken a shower the instant she got home from the restaurant, then had changed her clothes four times. Her hair she pinned back, let out, brushed, rebrushed and finally swept back with a sweetheart bandeau of the kind that Ani had once swept it out of her hair before admitting, her voice husky with desire, that she liked Eve’s hair spread out on the pillow.

The more she anticipated Ani’s arrival, the more her skin seemed to shiver on her bones. No matter how much she tried to check her feelings, it was a losing battle. Her common sense had given up.

She checked e-mail, downloaded credit card transactions for Quicken, tried to focus on writing up Bennie’s darned good corn and cabbage slaw recipe, but mostly she wondered if the wind in the trees was tires on gravel. It was Tonk’s snap to attention that sent her heart up into her throat and made her palms sweaty.

Tonk’s rapturous greeting covered their awkwardness. Of course Ani took off her boots, and of course Tonk worshipped them. In less than three minutes they were in Eve’s kitchen, Ani in her stocking feet, jeans and a deep blue sweater that made her hair gleam like a raven’s wing in flight.

And where, Eve asked herself, do you have any sense at all thinking about how beautiful her hair is, and finding birds to compare it to? So she’s not with Lisa, but it had been three years. They were strangers, all over again. Except it didn’t feel that way. She knew that smile, that laugh, the cadence of that voice. Every glance felt like a drop of light, filling up her dark and lonely places, and no amount of telling herself that Ani had chosen to go away and chosen not to come back until now made any difference.

Coffee made, she carried it to the kitchen table because the sofa had too many memories, all of them treacherously good. “I guess I knew you’d come back. Not knowing when was the hardest part.”

Ani sipped the coffee and set it down. Her fingers curled across the top as if warming from the steam. Eve mused that she had never seen Ani at work. They’d always meant to go on a real ice hike together, but life had been too busy and that summer the weather too uncertain. But she knew those fingers and their power and sensitivity, regardless. She knew if she turned Ani’s hand over, the skin on her palm was taut, but smooth. She knew Ani’s shoulders were strong, not from watching her string a tent during high winds or hammer a pipe into ice, but from her own arms around their breadth. Ani was strong enough to be gentle and powerful enough to pull Eve into a circle of safety, with tenderness she had never known before… Eve shook herself out of the past.

“I truly thought it was best to leave. I heard the messages on your machine, Eve. I heard what people were saying about our kind. They were hurting you because of me.”