The Big Bang Symphony: A Novel of Antarctica

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24 L et her go,” Earl said. “But I’m worried. She seems like she’s on the brink of something.” “We’re all on the brink of something.” “She already told me tonight she’s not a party type. What’s she doing?” “Changing her mind. It’s everyone’s prerogative.” Realizing the implications of his words, with regard to Jennifer, Earl sat down in the middle of the road and dropped his face into his mittens. “Get up,” Rosie said. “This is Antarctica. You’ll die.” “That girl was lucky. The one who died.” “Shut up. And get up.” “Half the women I fall for are free spirits. The other half are too young. Jennifer is both.” He unsnapped the latches on his guitar case. “Come on, Earl.” “You were both, too.” “You didn’t fall for me. Get up.” He tuned the strings, then played a blues riff, bending the notes in full circles, rich and succulent. Rosie looked up and down the road, and then up at the sky. A gray haze. It was damn cold. “I could have fallen for you,” Earl said pulling off a string and letting the note thin. “But I could tell you weren’t interested, not really. You just wanted sex. You haven’t found your heart yet.” “Excuse me?” 169 “You know what I mean.” He played a couple more slow notes in a blues scale. Then shook his hand out. “Frozen already.” “Come on, Earl.” “That’s why you travel,” he said. “Looking. Not me. I travel because I’m pissed off.” Rosie gave up and sat down in the middle of the road next to Earl. She picked up his mittens and held them out to him. “At what?” “Everything. Absolutely fucking everything. It’s like a fuel, anger. I love it, really. It’s great. Like this big old diesel engine in my bowels. But you know, I’m beginning to feel as if I’ve journeyed it off. I’ve walked enough, talked enough, fucked enough. You’d think that was a good thing. But what’s left? What’s left now that I’ve run out of fuel?” He spread his hands in front of himself to show her his emptiness. Rosie took one hand and guided it into a mitten, as if he were five years old, and then did the same with the other. He said, “I’ll tell you what’s left. An empty man. Nobody sees home when they look at me. They see a parking space.” “Come on.” She took the guitar out of his lap and put it back in the case. “They might be right.” “You said you wanted a woman with circles under her eyes and three stinky kids.” “I do. But that doesn’t mean I’m capable of it.” “I hear the van coming back. Let’s get out of the road.” “He looks like a professional baseball player.” “Who?” “The drummer.” “You mean beefy?” “I mean all-American. Orthodontist-enhanced smile. An overgrown Boy Scout.” “It won’t last.” “She’ll marry him. They all do. As soon as they meet the boy who will inherit Quaker Oats.” 170 “What do you expect when you go after girls half your age. You’re a cliché, Earl. And it brings you only pain.” “I don’t understand what she sees in him. He’s so normal. A drummer. There’s something pedestrian about all but the cream of the crop drummers and he isn’t even a fair drummer.” The van bore down on them and Earl slowly stood. Rosie dragged him by the arm to the side of the ice road and they watched the van roll by. She said, “I’m freezing. Literally. Let’s go back to the room.” “I feel like doing something extreme. Something extra extreme.” “Come on. I’m going.” Rosie started walking back toward McMurdo, leaving Earl beside the road. He yelled after her, “I feel like finding them. I want a confrontation . I want an answer.” Rosie turned and yelled back, “You don’t even know what the question is. Come on.” “I’m so sick to fucking death of this continent. It’s like a wall.” Rosie walked back to Earl and extended a hand. “I would never have taken you for a whiner.” He batted her hand away. “I am a whiner...