My Last Continent by Midge Raymond Page A

the seal—and I see he’s smiling.
    â€œI could get used to this,” he says.
    â€œTo what, exactly? Close encounters with deadly predators? The subzero temperatures? The six-day workweeks?”
    â€œYou,” he says. “I could get used to you.”
    WITH CONSTANT DAYLIGHT, time loses its urgency, and it’s easy for me to believe we’ll be here forever. Yet eventually the sun sets for an hour a day, and then a few more—and soon conversations on the base begin to eddy around the transition from summer to winter season. As our time at McMurdo grows shorter, I can’t stop myself from thinking ahead. Real life begins to intrude into every moment. Lying in Keller’s bed one afternoon, I tuck my head under his chin. “Where do you live now? Back home, I mean?”
    We still don’t know some of the very basic facts about each other. Here, none of it matters.
    â€œAfter the divorce, I got an apartment in Boston,” he says. “When I came here, I put everything in storage.” With myface against his neck, I feel the vibration of his voice almost more than I hear it.
    â€œI have a cottage in Eugene.” I curl an arm around his chest, wrap a leg around his. “Plenty of room for two, if you wanted to visit. Or stay.”
    The moment the words are in the air, I feel myself shrink away from them, anticipating his reaction. I pull the sheet over my bare shoulder, as if this could shield me from hearing anything but yes.
    Yet he lifts my chin to look at me, intrigued. “Really?”
    â€œSure.”
    A pensive look crosses his face, and I think of his life before, how rich and full it must’ve been—and now this: a dorm room with frayed sheets and scratchy, industrial woolen blankets, and ahead only the promise of a storage unit in Boston, or a tiny cottage and a wet Oregon spring.
    Then he smiles. “Remind me,” he says, “how long have you lived alone?”
    â€œWe’re practically living together here. I’ve spent more time with you than with any non-penguin in years.”
    He pulls me up and over until I’m on top of him, looking down at his face. Our weeks here, with long workdays and rationed water, have left him windburned and suntanned, long-haired and scruffy. I lean in close, and he says, “What are we waiting for?”
    WE DON’T TALK much about it after that day. I don’t think about what Keller might do for work in Oregon, about thefact that he’d only recently begun a whole new life. All I can think about is him coming back with me—the first time I’ve been able to bring home something I needed, a part of the place that always seems to make me whole.
    The last days in Antarctica before heading Stateside usually make me jittery, but this time it’s Keller who’s on edge during our final week at the station.
    â€œIt’s always hard to leave,” I assure him. “But we’ll be back.”
    â€œI know you will,” he says. “You’ve got a career. I’m just a dishwasher. And everyone wants to be a dishwasher in Antarctica.”
    He’s right; the competition for the most menial jobs at McMurdo is astounding. “But you got here,” I say. “You’ve proven yourself. They’ll want you back.”
    Our last days are busy—I’m gathering my final bits of data and wrapping up the project; Keller, as well as working in the galley, has been filling in for Harry Donovan, one of the maintenance guys, who’s been sick. We’re spending less and less time together, which doesn’t concern me because soon we’ll have nothing but time. We’re among the last of the summer staff still here—already the base is shrinking down, getting closer to its winter size of two hundred. In six more weeks, the sun will set and not rise again for four months.
    When I see Keller at Bag Drag, at the Movement Control Center from