“Dear God,” Eddie says.
“There’s an underlying order.”
“Chaos doesn’t count as its own form of order.”
A sea trunk resides in the near corner, and she clears papers from its lid, opens it to show him. Brown fur inside, like the humped back of an animal.
“Are we bringing a dead bear?”
She extracts a hooded parka, matching trousers, fur boots. “Reindeer. There’s nothing better in the cold. We’ll get you a set to match in Alaska.”
“Nanook and Nanook take to the skies. By the way, I’ve been studying up on the high-latitude stuff. A guy I knew in the war is in Fairbanks with a recon squadron. He sent me a manual and some charts as long as I promised not to sell them to the Russians.” Eddie wanders over to the largest map on the wall, a Mercator projection of the world with the Pacific centered, the Americas to the right and the rest of the continents hanging heavy to the left. On it Marian has penciled their route.
“I wanted to talk to you before I inked it in,” she says, following him.
He makes a noncommittal noise, leans close to study the penciled line, the bits of land it connects. He touches the empty ocean below Cape Town. “They don’t even bother including Antarctica.”
“I don’t know how you could, really, on a flat map.”
“Sometimes there’s a sliver of white, isn’t there? Just to remind people it exists?”
From the mess on the table, she extracts a map of Antarctica, mostly blank, only a few scattered elevations marked, a few patches of mountains. “There’s this.” She swivels around, surveying the room. “I have some better charts somewhere.”
“I thought you said there was an underlying order.”
“Sometimes it underlies more deeply than I’d like.”
Eddie studies the white shape. Finally, he says, “What have you got around here to drink?”
* * *
—
They take gin and tonics outside, brush leaves from the cushioned chaises at the edge of the grass. She pulls a lime from her neighbor’s tree that hangs over the fence, carves slices from it with a pocketknife.
He clinks her glass. “To friends reunited.”
They drink. The golden light has gone. She can’t think what to say, where to start. They have never been together without Ruth, and her absence hangs between them, a void but also the thing that spans it.
“You know,” he says, “I actually have the jitters. Don’t you feel like we’re newlyweds or something? In an arranged marriage?”
“I was nervous to see you. I didn’t know…”
“If it would be the same? It won’t be. Nothing is. But now you won’t be rid of me for months and months. How’s the plane?”
In the spring she had gone to Auckland. She’d walked down a row of six superficially identical war surplus Dakotas, snub-nosed and jungle green, but one had stood out plainly and obviously. She’d recognized it immediately as hers.
“Some wear and tear,” she says to Eddie, “but nothing major. It was in New Guinea, mostly.”
“Have you named it?”
“I wanted to wait for you, but I was thinking Peregrine?”
He nods, satisfied. “I like it. An hour into our arranged marriage, and already we’re parents.”
The affection she feels for him is a relief, confirmation that not everything from before is gone or irreversibly damaged. She had not been sure she could trust her memory of how much she had liked him. “Eddie,” she says, “I wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For agreeing to come.”
“I’m flattered you asked.”
“No, really. I’m grateful. There’s no one else I could trust.”
“I hope that’s not misplaced. I haven’t exactly been striking off into the unknown lately.” In Florida, he’s been a navigator for National Airlines, cycling between Miami, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, New Orleans, Havana. New York, once in a while.
“Part of it’s that I trust you to trust me,” she says. “We’ve never flown together, but I don’t think you’ll be the kind to try to take over or treat me like a novelty.”
“No,” he says quietly, “I wouldn’t.”
The marine layer is coming in. She is chilled, but she swirls the ice in her drink, sips. “Actually, I didn’t think you’d say yes.”
“To coming with you?”
She nods. “Why did you?”