“He was a dreamer, I know.”
“Right, scattered. Point is, he made things a little more complicated around here. In ways that weren’t always good. Times it felt like Wyatt’d forget the important stuff, like how he still needed good ole Jeanne around to get him in and out of a crevasse alive because she brings along the right harnesses and ropes, collects his weather monitors safely, keeps him on track with logistics and all. I mean, those two could yabber on about science till the cows came home, but talk won’t save you out there.” She sighed mightily, as if lifting herself out of some bottomless thought chasm. “Anyway, that night I left them to their carousing and headed off to the Shed. Had an ice drill to fix. Went to bed after that—assumed they had too. It was real late. Woke up the next morning and he’d found Andy. Wyatt was destroyed. Never seen him like that. I felt sick about it.”
I clutched the wheel, willing the image out of my brain. “Just tell me one thing, Jeanne. Were all the doors locked the morning Wyatt found him?”
“Locked?” She grimaced, leaning over me to turn the cat’s key. I nearly cried to feel the blast of heat on my face, see the friendly glare of the dashboard. “Have a look around. No locks on any of the outside doors. Locks freeze out here, they’re a pain in the ass. I got rid of them. Besides, who would we be locking out? Polar bears can’t turn doorknobs. Look, Andy went out there, God knows why, but he could have come back in if he wanted to. Whatever he did, Val, he did it on purpose.”
twelve
It was nearly midnight. We’d all stayed up drinking shitty wine, getting into heated theories about Sigrid, before Jeanne turned in and Nora and Raj trudged off to the Dome in haunted blue twilight.
“So, Wyatt,” I asked, “what’s next for you, after this place?” I sat on the rug with Sigrid, who—newly entranced with markers—scribbled on page after page of drawing paper. She’d refused to go to sleep that night, hadn’t eaten much, and had barely spoken all day.
He tossed the dregs of his wine in the sink, whipped around to face me. “Ah, come on, Val,” he said with derision. “Don’t be coy. You must have googled me by now.”
I reddened. “Guess I missed something.”
He exhaled. “I was”—finger quotes—“inappropriate with a student back home. Grad student. She came at me, she was all over me, it was… mutual. For months. Then she blew the whistle. I should have known. Anyway, the powers that be are letting me finish my time here. Then they want me gone. They probably figure, what harm can I do? No nubile nymphets running around this place, that’s for sure.” He tugged at his scraggly beard and snapped at his spearmint gum. On his PC, a time-lapse animated field of glaciers melted and reformed, over and over. “So this is my last dance. Fuck knows where I’ll end up after this.”
“I have a feeling you’ll land on your feet.”
He strolled over to me, reached down, and traced his rough finger along the side of my face, gently lifting my chin to look him in the eye. I was stunned, but didn’t stop him. When was the last time a man had touched me like this? Even I didn’t know. His gesture felt intimate, sexual, but also spontaneous. Still, the flip from aggression to seduction unnerved me, and I felt my expression tightening. Sigrid had stopped drawing and watched his every move.
“You think less of me now, don’t you?” he said, stroking my hair.
Shivering, I drew back, and he pulled away. I felt relieved but also mourned the loss of his touch, of any touch. “Look, Wyatt, it’s none of my business how you deal with—”
“Val, I mean well. That’s what people don’t understand. Yeah, I’ve made bad decisions. Done things out of passion that just aren’t right. Things I’ll never forgive myself for.” He gave me a searching look—seemed vulnerable for the first time in memory—and might have kissed me. I would have let him, even in front of Sigrid. But he didn’t, and the moment passed. “Here’s the thing. I’m not the worst guy. I call my mom—she’s ninety—every Wednesday morning, nine o’clock sharp. Right here, on the sat phone. And hey, I’ve got some arthritis, some other old age bullshit, but I’m not completely washed-up. I’m sixty-one, which is a crime in America, to be over thirty—”
I laughed and nodded, and he finally smiled. I thought about the exquisite Japanese word, shibui, the beauty of aging, a concept that doesn’t exist in American culture in any real way.