My Last Continent: A Novel(36)

“Flamingo,” he says. “Too easy.”

I draw another few cards, yet these are different, posing what-if types of questions. I hold up the first one. “New game. Here we go. ‘Would you rather lose the conveniences of e-mail and cell phones, or lose one of your limbs?’ ”

He laughs. “Really?”

“Right. No moral quandary for you there.” I move on to the next card.

“Wait,” he says. “What about you?”

I think for a second. “I do like e-mail as an alternative to talking on the phone. But I’d give it all up. Especially since you hardly use either anyway.” I read from the next card. “ ‘If you were to get amnesia, would you want to lose your long-term memory or your ability to form new memories?’ ” I catch Keller’s eyes and wish I’d read the question to myself before reading it aloud.

“That’s a tough one.” He looks out the window, the rain on the glass turning the cars in the parking lot into wavy lines of color. “You’d think it would be easy for me,” he says. “Forget the past, live in the moment, enjoy the new memories. But forgetting would change everything.”

“How’s that?”

“I wouldn’t understand my own life,” he says. “How I got here. Why I’m here with you. Where we’ll be in a few months, why it all matters.” He looks back to me. “Which would you choose?”

“Easy. Erase the past. Focus on the here and now.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“What if part of what you erase is McMurdo, four years ago?” he says. “What if it meant looking at me and asking yourself, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ ”

“But I’d still have the ability to create new memories, so I’d just fall in love with you all over again.”

“Even if we met here, in Eugene, instead of in Antarctica?” he asks. “Would that have changed anything?”

“Not a chance.”

Our food arrives, and as our conversation turns to the article Keller is writing for Outside magazine, to a documentary we might see over the weekend, in the back of my mind I’m still thinking of his question, of how things might’ve been different if we’d met anywhere but Antarctica. Even now, his being here in Eugene is an adjustment, and I feel myself taking a mental step backward, looking at this scene from a pace away—Keller and me, sitting in a diner, talking about the weekend like any normal couple—and yet to me it’s as strangely exotic as crossing the Antarctic Circle is for the rest of the world. As we eat, I feel time shift and stall while I try to preserve these moments, to commit them to permanent storage in my brain—Keller holding a crinkly fry to my lips, the clink of his fork as it slips from the edge of his plate, the skin of his hand in the diner’s yellowish light as he slides the check across the table and picks it up.



AFTER I TAKE Keller to the airport for his flight to Seattle, I return home, and the vacancy of my cottage, which would usually feel normal, suddenly seems too quiet. Even Gatsby’s disappeared on me—through my kitchen window I can see him across the yard, in the window of Nick’s house, looking back at me. I wonder if Nick has called him home as a way to call me there, too.

I find myself looking over at the house all afternoon, and as evening falls I finally cross the yard. As I step up onto the porch, through the window Gatsby sees me first; his mouth opens in a silent pink meow, and then Nick looks up and sees me, too. He opens the door, motioning me in, then looks past me. “Is he gone already?”

“Just for a couple days,” I say. I pick Gatsby up off the kitchen counter, and he digs both paws into my shoulder before resting his chin on them, as if I’m a place to nap. I lean my ear against his rib cage, feeling the comforting vibrations of his purr. “I wasn’t expecting him here.”

“I could tell,” Nick says. “So how’s it going?”

“Fine,” I say. “Weird,” I add. “Different. Being together here instead of there. But it’s good.”

Nick smiles. “Who knew? This is starting to sound almost like a real relationship.”

I laugh. “Maybe.”

He looks at me for a moment. “Love suits you,” he says at last. “Just promise not to elope to Argentina or anything. Gatsby and I would miss you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say, though I feel my heart catch at the thought.

Nick looks over at the clock on the stove. “What’re you doing tonight?” he asks.

“Not much.”

“There’s an exhibit opening at the museum,” he says. “A bunch of us are going out afterwards. You should come along.”

“Oh,” I say, taken aback. “Well, I—”

“It’s okay,” he says. “You’ve got work, I know.”

I hold Gatsby in front of me for a second, then kiss the top of his head and hand him to Nick. “Have fun,” I say. “I’ll see you soon?”

“Sure,” he says.

Back in my empty cottage, I pour myself a glass of bourbon and think about Dennis, about that lone emperor penguin I’d seen shortly after he died, on my way back north. How alone she was, how at peace. It’s something I’d always tried to believe—that I’m at home with myself, at peace with my solitude. Maybe this is what separates us from other animals—the inability to live simply by our instincts, the need to talk ourselves into who we wish we could be.