Page 33 of Under Story

“Laurel, that was your chance!” Tess cried. “You didn’t try to kiss him?”

Laurel covered her face with a pillow. “Stop. You’re making it worse.”

“Let’s look them up,” said Tess, running to get her laptop.

Since the last time Laurel Googled him, Stanford had added a graduate student directory. They found Eli while eating from a heart-shaped box of Walgreens truffles. He looked painfully handsome. Tess scrolled to Angela next.

“Well,” Tess said, “she doesn’t have his last name. Maybe they broke up. You should email him.”

“Absolutely not,” said Laurel, but she thought about it for the next six months—until August of 2005, when Eli’s name appeared in her inbox.

Laurel: I’ve taken a visiting professorship in Madison—one year, though it might continue. I’ll be in town next weekend. Can I see you?

In the Rhizotron, Laurel shouted. She could have reread the first word—her name with its colon, the promise of more—all day.

Tess came running.

“He didn’t mention the fiancée,” she said, reading over Laurel’s shoulder.

“He did not mention the fiancée,” Laurel repeated.

Still, she dared not hope—not until they met on Friday evening, at an ice cream shop on State Street, and Eli told her he was single. Laurel exhaled. All day she had fizzed with nervous energy, but now she felt a sober certainty. Above them was the velvet navy sky that preceded darkness. They walked unhurriedly toward her apartment, a three-story brick building with a crooked outdoor staircase. Laurel led Eli to the top floor. She lived in the attic unit, which had a miniature galley kitchen and a view of the black walnut tree whose husks would soon fall to the ground.

He took her in his arms. With her nose to his neck, she inhaled his scent, and when she could not stand it anymore, she pulled him onto the couch. The door was open; a warm breeze drifted over them, and he was kissing her, kissing her, using his thumb to slide the strap of her camisole off one shoulder. Her brain was an abstraction; there was only Eli, his chest and thighs, the hardness that made her own longing rear up. When he said her name, his voice was torqued, as if he were begging for something—and if she closed her eyes, it was because she would allow him anything, a submission both ecstatic and unbearable. On the floor, hip to hip, the past and future blurred. She held his body, hot with life, and entangled now with hers.

Laurel runs from Miles’s room to the triple. Her shift starts at ten, and it’s nine forty-five: no time to shower, so she pulls on her uniform and covers her hair with a galley baseball cap. She’s scheduled to work the floor, but if she can get to the kitchen without seeing Eli, she’ll beg someone to swap with her for dish duty. Having a plan makes her feel somewhat less frantic—until she spots him, standing at the entrance to the galley with the ANITA physicists.

Nita, Louis, and Charlie are leaving breakfast. Laurel pulls them into a supply closet.

“Eli is here,” she says. “My ex-husband.”

In the dark, Laurel hears Nita. “Can you clarify what you mean by ‘here’?”

“Here!” says Laurel, with unrestrained hysteria. “Here, at McMurdo!”

“Sweetheart,” says Louis, “you’re still high.”

“Not that high.”

“Can we turn a light on?” asks Charlie.

“No, don’t. It’s much more dramatic this way,” Nita says. “Why would your ex-husband be in Antarctica?”

“He’s a physicist.” Laurel puts the pieces together as she speaks. “He’s working on—he has this theory, this theory of—parallel universes—one moves forward in time, and one moves…”

She can’t bring herself to say it.

“Oh my God,” Nita says. “You think he’s come to work on the Arc?”

Laurel hides her face in her hands. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Why not?” asks Louis.

“Because we’re divorced!” Laurel says. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Really, we should turn a light on,” says Charlie.

“Don’t bother,” Louis says. “It’s going be exactly this dark for the next six months.”