When, exactly, did I turn into an old lady?
She huffed out a laugh, pulled her hair up, slid her chef’s coat on, followed by a puffy, lightweight inner jacket, then the massive Big Red coat she’d been issued at the start of this trip. Last, she slid her fleece gaiter over her head to protect her neck and the bottom half of her face, pulled on gloves, and grabbed her knives. She lifted the blackout blind—a nighttime necessity at the South Pole in summer, the land of the midnight sun—and sucked in a bolstering breath before opening her door.
The long, brightly lit dorm hall stretched out in both directions and she shivered, not from cold this time but from the absolute dead quiet and the feeling that someone—or something—watched her, ever ready to spring out. From day one, trudging around Burke-Ruhe had spooked her in a way that was vague but bone-deep, as if she were always on the alert for…what? An alien attack? Jack Nicholson to pop out wielding a bloody knife? The abominable freaking snowman?
As if anything could survive this continent.
Even dry, her boots squeaked on the rubber hallway floor, then down a long set of metal steps. At the bottom, she pushed through a door into the chilly vestibule, then took a quick breath, counted down, and shoved the heavy outer door open, stepping into—holy crap—cold. Cold, cold, cold.
Wind ripped the air from her lungs and shut her brain down, stunning her into momentary stillness. Everything was a shock to the system—the subzero temperature, the achingly bright daylight. Not to mention the place itself.
Nothing lived here. No birds, no insects, not a solitary penguin on this most remote part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Just three hundred and sixty degrees of sky and ice—blue and white—fighting for dominance.
Not to mention a sun that played its strange game of hopscotch, bouncing along the rim of the sky but never quite setting. Almost sunset, sunrise, almost sunset, sunrise.
Thank God she wouldn’t be at Pole for that final sunset of the season, because she didn’t think she could handle twilight blending into months of eternal night.
The wind whistled between the buildings in a ghostly catcall, and because she wasn’t about to accept that kind of disrespect, she whistled right back. The sound didn’t carry past the fine weave of her neck gaiter.
Each exhale puffed loudly in her ears as she tromped across the snow, unwilling to glance again at the vastness beyond. It was too big, too scary. If she wandered outside the limits of the station, she’d become an insignificant blip swallowed up by the continent’s angry jaws. No, not angry. Aloof. Antarctica didn’t give a crap about her.
Geez,she laughed at herself,this freaking place.
Finally, she hauled open the door to the central building, which housed the gym and entertainment center, along with the lounge and communications office and—most importantly for her—the galley.
Relief flooded her, along with blessed warmth.
She’d never understand people who chose to come here and trek around, living in a tent out in that frozen wasteland,for fun. Explorers or adventurers, they called themselves, but she knew they were just masochists with too much time and money on their hands. Sunburn? Chapped lips? Frozen digits? You didn’t have to fly thousands of miles to find those.
And the landscape? Well, it wasn’t even a landscape, exactly, since that insinuated actuallandbeneath a person’s feet, whereas Antarctica was an ever-evolving ice sculpture. Apresence.
Okay, Debbie Downer. Time to lighten this party up.
After stomping the snow from her boots in the vestibule, she shed her coat, hung it on the hook, and beelined down the hall.
Finally, in the sanctuary of the galley, she let the door close and flipped on the overheads, watching as they illuminated rows of white rectangular tables, each with their own napkin holder and salt and pepper shakers. The one at the front—Jameson’s table—held his requisite bottle of hot sauce.
The view through the galley windows was different from the one outside. Beyond a few smaller metal structures—the ancillary building, Pam’s clinic, and a huddle of tents belonging to visiting scientists—there was nothing but white. But maybe the view wasn’t different. Maybe she was. With the glass separating her from the outside, she could appreciate the beauty.
Would she miss more than just the Poleys—the people—once she was gone? Would bittersweet memory turn all that powdery, dangerous snow from a splintering wall of pain into a cozy wintry landscape, covered in a delicate dusting of confectioners’ sugar? Would she remember the marrow-deep ache of the wind as just a sweet, mellow breeze?
The sky was blue today and went on forever. No reason to cancel the flight with weather like this. Which was good, she mentally repeated for the bazillionth time—it was time to go back and face the music. But first, Angel reminded herself, she had to face breakfast.
She went around the food service line into the bare-bones kitchen. Nothing, she decided as she got the coffee going, would ruin her last day at Pole. Not this cold seeping into every pore, not the lights flickering above, not even the hangover chipping away at the inside of her skull.
Of course, there was the stupid thing she’d done last night.Thatmight ruin today.
Oh, shut your piehole, brain.She slid a mug under the first drizzle of coffee, which would be too hot and too strong, but she needed something to knock the stupid right out of her.
Once her tongue had been scalded to her satisfaction, she shoved the frozen bacon into the microwave, pulled out the dough she’d thrown together last night, and punched it down with more vigor than usual. Then she went to work laminating the croissants—layering and rolling and layering and rolling. One advantage to cooking at Pole was that she didn’t need to refrigerate between stages. Until she turned the ovens on, the air in here was bracingly cold.
After an hour spent julienning, dicing, sautéing, and baking the ingredients of her last meal in Antarctica, she savored the aroma of thyme-laced veggies, glanced at the clock, and pulled out the fresh buns before sliding the croissants into the hot oven.
Soon she’d be snug in the cavernous belly of an LC-130 Hercules airplane, heading to McMurdo, then Christchurch, better known around here as Cheech. From there, she’d hop another flight to the United States, and finally, home to Pittsburgh.
First, though, it was time to run the gauntlet of one last breakfast in this place, which would be an absolute pleasure if not for the presence of a certain man.
Ugh.
