My Last Continent: A Novel(33)

“Doing work at the local pub is still working,” he says.

“We had beer.”

“Unless you woke up in someone else’s bed with a raging hangover, it doesn’t count.”

“For the record,” I say, “I do have a social life. He just doesn’t live here. In Oregon, I mean.”

Nick raises his eyebrows. “I’m familiar with the concept of long-distance relationships,” he says, “but don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”

“You’re one to talk, Professor Kettle. I don’t recall seeing any single women at this party.”

“I thought you counted penguins for a living.”

“Your point?”

“You counted wrong.” He steps closer. “But then, she was the last one to arrive.”

I reach for a nearby wine bottle and refill my glass because I don’t know what to say.

“Remember what Freud said?” he asks. “You need two things in life—love and work. You know, as in a balance of the two?”

“Maybe I like being off-balance.”

He takes a step backward, still slouched against the counter, as if holding himself up. “I’m serious. When are you going to settle down? Join the real world?”

“Come on, Nick—you’re a scientist. Reality’s depressing.”

“I’m not talking about bugs and birds,” he says. “I’m trying to talk about the birds and bees.”

I smile and take a long drink of wine.

He leans forward. “Don’t you think you could ever be involved in a relationship that’s not quite so long distance?”

“Define long.”

“The same county? Zip code. Street, maybe.”

He’s close again, his face next to mine, and I look down at his mouth, at his full, wine-stained lips, and then I back up and turn to the fridge, where he keeps the aspirin. I shake two pills into my hand and pour him a glass of water.

“Take these,” I say. “And drink the whole glass. Every drop.”

He takes the water and aspirin but doesn’t say anything. I give his hair a quick tug and say, “See you tomorrow.”

As I open the door, I look back and watch his expression change—a furrowed brow, a quick smile, something -wistful—and then I shut the door behind me and walk across the garden.



LATE THE NEXT afternoon, as twilight falls, I’m trying to focus on my lesson plans when Gatsby’s yowl at my back door gives me an excuse to get up from the kitchen table.

I let him in and step away as he shakes the water from his long fur. He stretches, then jumps up onto one of the kitchen chairs and starts a bath. “You hungry, Gatsby?” I ask, scratching the top of his head. He pauses and looks at me, then resumes bathing. He’s sometimes hungry, sometimes not—such is life between two households—and I keep cans of cat food among the beans and soups in my cupboard for the days that he is.

I glance out the window, across the garden, and am surprised to see the windows mostly dark, the house quiet. I picture Nick inside alone, hungover, and I feel a little guilty for having invited Gatsby in when he should be keeping his real owner company.

I sit back down at the table and return to work, but it’s not long before I hear a knock. It’s Nick, blinking rain out of his eyes, holding a stack of mail and a bottle of wine. I open the door to let him in.

“Isn’t that the bottle I brought last night?”

“It’s probably the only thing I didn’t drink,” he says.

He puts the wine down on the table and leafs through the mail. “Thanks for coming by,” he says, lifting his eyes briefly as he hands me my mail—a couple of bills and Conservation magazine. “You didn’t need to clean up, though.”

“You barely let me anyway.”

He motions toward the wine. “Where’s your corkscrew?”

I get the corkscrew from the drawer next to the stove, and, while he opens the bottle, I plunk down two wineglasses on the table.

Nick tilts his head toward my laptop and says, “What’re you working on?”

As I sit down again, I shove the laptop and my folders across the table, out of the way. “Class stuff.”

He fills our glasses and sits down across from me, in the chair next to Gatsby’s. “I want to apologize for last night,” he says.

I’ve been half-hoping he didn’t remember. “No need.”

“It wasn’t fair,” he says. “Your life is your business. Your love life especially.”

“Don’t be like that. I want you to be a part of my life.”

“But only a few months out of the year, right?” He looks at me and shakes his head. “Will you ever get that place out of your system?”

“Why, so I can settle down here in Eugene? Build a picket fence and have a few kids?”

“What’s so wrong with that?”

“You’re lucky, Nick. Your work is right here in our backyard—Bombus vosnesenskii, Bombus vandykei. The Pygoscelis penguins are in short supply around here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Right,” he says with a laugh. “Like you didn’t choose penguins for the very reason that they take you to the other end of the planet.”