105 18 Every single morning, when Rosie’s alarm went off at 4:30, her first thought was of kissing Larry, sitting against the pile of rocks supporting Our Lady of the Snows. The sensitivity of his mouth, the briefest of moments when his tongue touched hers. The sad kindness in his eyes. She annoyed herself, this not moving on. Enough already. Rosie swung her feet off the bed and looked at her new roommate . The woman’s freshly washed hair spiked out from her head in thin wisps on the pillow and two red patches bloomed on her otherwise pale cheeks. Her fair complexion and perfectly smooth skin made her look untested, incongruent with this continent. They hadn’t really had time to get to know one another, but it was a relief to see that bed filled by a live person. Alice. She took up so little space, filling just a small corner of the desk with her neatly stacked composition book and Scharffen Berger chocolate bars. A tissue-wrapped lump on top. Rosie left the room as quietly as she could and stumbled across the ice to Building 155, which housed the galley, some offices, including that of the Antarctic Sun, as well as Karen’s, more dorm rooms, an ATM, a barbershop, and a bank of public-use computer terminals. In the galley, she poured herself a cup of coffee and tied on an apron. She cracked dozens of eggs into a vat and used a broom-sized whisk to mix them. She stirred pancake batter and retrieved the morning’s rations of breakfast meats from the refrigerator. An hour later, Rosie started taking orders at the grill. The workers were first in line, folks who shoveled snow, fixed machinery , hauled garbage, and sorted recyclables. They ate eggs, sausages, french toast, and potatoes. A handful of beakers started their days that early, too, like the guy who studied penguin feces and the woman who was discovering the history of the earth by reading ice cores. They generally passed by her to scoop out bowls of oatmeal , which they dolloped with canned fruit. Earl’s pioneer hands, gripping either side of a tray, stopped right in front of Rosie’s grill. She made herself busy with some eggs, pretending to not see him. It had been two weeks since the party in the Heavy Shop and she’d worked hard to forget that incident against the crates of canned peaches. It had been a mistake, a big mistake. Thankfully, since he worked at Willy Field, he took most of his meals in the small galley out there. The hands and tray didn’t move on, even as customers piled up behind him, and she was finally forced to look up. “What’ll you have?” He looked at her dead on, very rugged. “Good morning, Rosie. How’s it going?” “Good. What’ll you have?” “Not a morning type?” “Just doing my job. Omelet?” “You don’t remember my name, do you?” Of course she did, but she shook her head. “Earl.” “Omelet, Earl?” Rosie shoved her spatula under a partially cooked amoeba of egg. “What are you doing this evening?” “Sorry. Busy.” Even as she made a grand effort to harden her words and blank her face, something soft slumped inside her. She glanced back up at him and saw his smirk. He knew she was resisting , that she wasn’t entirely neutral. It was a misstep, allowing him to see that. Earl Banks was the last person she needed. He was a bundle of crazy and trouble. Not the specific kind of trouble Larry 106 [54.205.116.187] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:53 GMT) was, but a random and chaotic kind of trouble. Trouble for its own sake. She forced herself to shift her eyes to the next in line, but Earl remained in her peripheral vision, just standing there holding his tray, and she feared some sort of outburst, a confrontation . She flipped two sunny-side overs and toyed with the bacon. “You,” Earl said, cocking a finger at her like a toy gun. He moved on at last, but she realized she’d blundered. She should have humored him. She knew those small-town boys. Slights festered . You always had to pay. At the end of her shift, Rosie cleaned up the grill and left a few minutes early. She walked slowly up the hill to the mailroom. Bea...