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Three days later, on February 9th, their four month stint came to an end. The long-term staffers threw the eighteen of them a party on the last night. Harry got drunk and went around hugging everyone as if they were the dearest friends he had in the whole world, whom he never expected to see again. Their group included Deb Arliss and Brian. The chatter was about families and relationships, and about a series of stories on CNN about real-life vampires who had set themselves up in New York City. At least, that was the way Deb characterized it. She was going back to New York.
At one point Vincent caught Ruksana’s eye. He was standing in a small group alongside Henderson, Harry, and John. He made a point of raising his glass to her. He said something to the others, and they faced her, gave her a nod. Vincent winked. Harry set down his glass and came over. “Rooksie, it has been so good working with you. If I ever come out of retirement to put together a team to explore volcanic geological formations, you are at the top of the list. ” He gave her a wet kiss on the cheek as he hugged her. “And I know I’m faced, but I mean it. ”
“You’re retiring?”
It was obvious he hadn’t meant to let that slip. He was sixty-one, and his wife had died of cancer the previous year. His children were long gone, and he wasn’t looking forward to returning home.
“I, uh, I might be. But you, sweetie, you have your whole life ahead. Everything is yet to be done. I’m envious as hell, but you knew that already, same as you know that if you weren’t my daughter’s age, I would have been fighting that prick Vincent for your favors. ” He blushed and broke out with a nervous grin at the same time. “Sorry. That Johnny Walker pops the lid right off. ”
She held his hand. “It’s okay, Harry. Really. ” She leaned in and kissed him. “I’d work with you any time. ”
The core samples they’d brought in had already been filed away in a freezer for later study. Leaving Harry safely parked at a table with Deb and John, Ruksana found Kwasi and dragged him off into a corner. She asked him what had been on the jackets.
“Something organic I imagine,” he said, his eyes big. “It looks like algae. I see clear evidence of photosynthesis. ” He speculated that maybe when the ice shelf calved, the algae responded to the sunlight, activated. “Then again, perhaps it’s prokaryotic given where it’s survived, but it’s too soon to know. Considering how much ice has calved this year, there’s a good chance the majority of whatever it is has sailed off into the ocean anyway.
“We’ll get to it, just not before we’ve cleared out our backlog. You guys accomplished a lot, but a few more lab biologists and a few less mountaineering climate scientists would be helpful in the next rotation. ” He winked at her. He couldn’t have known how much that reminded her of Vincent.
Kwasi was staying on another three months. He promised he would contact her when they finally analyzed the samples and had some definitive profile.
The next morning she boarded an LC-130 and flew out of McMurdo. Vincent sat at the opposite end of the plane. He chatted with Deb and acted as if he barely knew Ruksana. Harry, with his Red Sox cap pulled down to shield his bloodshot eyes, gave her a little shake of the head as if to say “Forget about him. ” There had been a point where she’d worried about how she would explain her relationship with Vincent to her boyfriend, Costin. But Harry was right. Vincent was best forgotten. Unfortunately, the two of them continued sharing jets up until she boarded her flight back to Romania.
— 5 —
Decebal Vulpes stood up as she walked into the terminal at Henri Coanda? airport outside Bucures¸ti. In his heavy old coat he strode forward, arms wide, intense dark eyes above a crooked nose, his thick mustache rimed in yellow from his cigars.
“Bunicul, bunicul,” she said, making it an affectionate term.
“Floare mea,” he replied and folded her into his great arms, into the smell of cigars and winter. He pushed her back, his large hands on her shoulders. “They starved you in Antarctica. Was there nothing to eat but penguin?”
“Nothing,” she answered. “But it was very good penguin when we had it. ”
He tsked her. “I hope you didn’t develop too much taste for it. Tonight it’s tocana cu carnati and for dessert —”
“Cozonac. ” She smiled at him.
He shrugged. “Your mother’s recipe. ”
“It’s the only dessert you know how to make, bunicul. ”
“Foo. I only make it always because it’s your favorite. I could make anything. ”
Walking with him, she had to go slowly. She didn’t remember him being this stiff in his movements four months ago. His walk was almost a shuffle; and she wondered if she had simply not noticed a steady decline, whereas now his freshly encountered aging was shockingly apparent.
After they collected her bags, they took the 783 train into the city center. It was getting dark by then. He smoked a small cigar as they walked along. On the way to catch a trolley, they saw a pack of four dogs across the street at the mouth of an alley. The dogs were tearing open a large plastic trash bag. No doubt there was food in it. At first only one dog glanced their way while the others shredded the bag. Then, as though a signal had been given, all four stopped and turned to watch until they’d rounded a corner. It reminded her too much of Vincent and Henderson’s group at the party.
They kept going, heads down against the wind coming off the lake to the north, bitterly cold. Antarctica seemed tropical to her by comparison. On the trolley, she said, “So the wild dogs are still a problem then. ”
“That’s the first pack I’ve seen in awhile. The extermination program continues, but it never will wipe out all of them. They are clever. Did you see how that one watched as we approached? No different than a street gang, except probably much smarter. ”
The trolley took them almost to the door of their apartment on Strada Virgiliu. The computer store still occupied the ground floor. The Microsoft sign in the window was the same one as when she’d left, just more yellowed by exposure. Its presence was oddly comforting.
The apartment looked as if her grandfather hadn’t moved anything since she’d left. It smelled of the rich sausage stew he’d promised. He lit the burner under the pot to reheat it, then opened a bottle of wine. “It’s Bull’s Blood,” he announced as he poured her a glass. “You’ll need a glass or two to shake the cold. ”
“Did you teach?” she asked.
He dipped his head. “I am teaching. It’s only February, my flower. I have months to go. Ah, but they are distracted anymore with their iPads and their earphones. What I am telling them is from another planet. Folklore? It’s an empty word to these runny noses. What could it possibly have to do with them?”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You could make shadows come to life. ”
He bowed his head, smiling. “Only for you, little one. But you wanted them to come to life. You made my task easy. ” He scraped a fingernail along a front tooth as if cleaning it. “Did you call Costin?”
“That’s a leading question. You’ve been with me every moment since I got back. When would I have called him?”
He pointed his wine glass at her. “And that’s a telling answer. I remember four months ago, the tearful goodbyes, and the granddaughter who didn’t want me going to the airport with her because she didn’t want to cry in front of me and Costin both. ”
“She’s still here,” she replied, but she knew how attuned he was to her behavior. Her whole life he had been able to suss when she was upset and when she was concealing something, no matter how she tried to hide it.
Now he abandoned pursuit and said, “Go wash your face and we’ll eat. It’s ready. ”
Once they had sat down to their meal, however, he picked right up as if no time had passed. “She is still here, yes, but something has happened to her. Something that has her holding Costin at a distance when she knows he will be watching his calendar, too, and worrying if he hears
nothing. ”
She ate awhile, sniffling from the spice of the sausages — he preferred them very spicy. Finally she remarked, “There was a man. ”
Decebal nodded. “Of course. And as you say was, I will assume this has not proved superior to your nice musician so you’re, what, ashamed?”
“He was a scientist. Very beautiful. Very full of himself. I was stupid. ” She then described everything including the last days in Vincent’s company.
“Me, I should have killed him, cut his rope,” Decebal said when she’d finished. “Then again, I have no reason to spare him. Did they run tests on you? You are all right?”
She shook her head. “No, no tests. No cause for it. They are analyzing it, eventually. At the depth we were drilling it had probably been fermenting for many thousand years. Frozen and dead slime that we heated up with a drill. Pretty stupid. Really, I’m fine. ”
He said, “I would still kill him though. ”
“Me, too. ”
He laughed. “Then you learned a valuable lesson from this Vincent. Not to be persuaded by your loneliness and pretty men with facile ways. ”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I certainly did that. ”
“In that case —” he dipped two fingers into his water glass and flicked them at her “— I absolve you of your sins. You have grown from the experience, my child. Go forth and sin no more. ”
“Bunicul,” she laughed.
“Fata? dra?gut¸a?,” he replied. It was a tease. He called her a “pretty girl” whenever he wanted to incense her by pretending to dismiss her intellect. “Go call Costin so I can serve you dessert. ”
— 6 —
She did not call Costin. To herself she rationalized that she lacked the energy. To her grandfather she lied and said that she’d left a message on his cell. After the dessert she went to bed. Cozonac was her favorite, but as she crawled into bed, she couldn’t even recall how it had tasted, as if it had been taken away from her in her exhaustion.