'That society does nothing better than close ranks and move on after the death of its members. That that's what society is all about.'
'That is awful! Don't you think?'
'Or ruthlessly realistic.' He turned and regarded the others. 'Everyone here will be gone someday and the world will go on. What will give their lives meaning?'
'What they are. Were.' She pointed. 'Like these three.'
'What they learned,' Norse corrected. 'Or rather, what the world learned from them.'
They feasted and Lewis felt as if his own body were on fire, electric from survival of murder and cold. He shuddered uncontrollably a couple of times as he continued to warm, his skin prickling, his senses taut even as he felt a deep, purging exhaustion. His brain was effervescent with its own chemicals. He felt high, as if Hodge had sprinkled some kind of pixie-dust drug from BioMed on all their food. He could hear everything, see every color, smell every scent. The women were all beautiful, the men his comrades. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he loved them all.
I've had too much to drink, he scolded himself. He poured another glass of wine.
After the eating, they cleared the food and plates, some helping with the washing, and moved the tables aside. The dancing began. Carl Mendoza brought out a slush tub of ice, lime, tequila, and triple sec, putting on a CD of salsa music. The celebrants yipped and sang. Dancers bumped and swirled, some clumsy, some sinuous. Gabriella writhed. Abby stood against one wall, sipping a drink. Lewis hadn't talked to her since their kiss at Clean Air.
He made his way to her with some difficulty. Geller stumbled against him, badly drunk, and Linda Brown, who'd skipped the Three Hundred Degree Club because she'd joined the year before, clipped him with her ample hip. 'Oops! And shake it all about!'
Abby smiled stiffly at Lewis's approach. The exhibitionism of the Three Hundred Degree Club had slightly embarrassed her and she'd been one of the first to turn around during the run. It had been a ritual to get through, not an experience to be savored.
'Did you like the run?' He had to half shout above the music.
She looked at him over the rim of her glass, holding it like a bandit's mask. 'It reminded me of what they say about jogging. It feels so good when it stops.'
'I thought I was going to freeze out there!'
'I didn't notice the cold at first. It was so beautiful. Then it hurt.'
'I wish I'd stopped with you.' It was odd to have burst outside naked with this woman. He couldn't remember what she looked like. He couldn't remember having really even seen her. They'd shared it without really sharing it at all.
'You looked half dead when you got back to the sauna. I think Bob saved your life.'
He hadn't quite thought of it that way but it was true, the man had pulled him in. 'Sort of.' He'd never heard her call Norse just 'Bob' before.
'He's holding us together.'
'I suppose he is.'
'Now you're not the fingie anymore. You're in the club.'
'Yes.' She was looking past him at someone, which annoyed him. 'Look, do you want to dance?'
It brought her back to him. 'All right.' She put her glass down.
They moved out into the swaying thicket of bodies. The fluorescent lights had been turned off and incandescents warmed the dancers with their yellow glow. The bulbs were usually discouraged because their heat could cause a fire, so feared at the Pole because all water was frozen and all wood was tinder dry. Acquisition of a regular light bulb was a sign of station rank and moxie: the 'bulbed' and 'bulbless.' More high school, as Tyson would say. The table candles, also allowed tonight because the crowd would keep an eye on them, danced in the hum of warm ventilation.
Pika Taylor was passing a magazine back and forth in front of a lamp in one corner, creating a primitive kind of strobe effect. He seemed perfectly content to be their mute automaton. It was hot like the sauna, musky again, animalistic. Abby began to move, her hips undulating, turning a slow, careful circle. She'd acquired a new gravity since the deaths of the others and her movements were still too tentative to be entirely silky. She seemed lost in thought, remote and unobtainable.
'I heard you defended me in front of the others after Rod's body was found,' he tried. 'I want to thank you for that.'
'Just from Dana.' The two women weren't fond of each other, he knew.
'I liked what happened between us at Clean Air. Now that the trouble's over I hope we can be friends. Good friends.'
'Now that it's over.' There was doubt in her voice, and a strange detachment. Lewis wanted to be Enzyme again, agent of change, but he suspected she was still focused on that mysterious photograph. Less persuaded than any of them that Tyson was the easy answer to it all: Why had Mickey died with her picture near his breast? Lewis had to break through to her. Calm her fear.
'Everyone's come together. This is the real start of the winter,' he told her.
'I hope so,' she murmured.
'I'm glad the group wanted me back.'
She looked at him then, the old mischief in her eyes. 'Just so we could keep an eye on you.'
The jibe made him feel he was getting somewhere. 'That's okay. It's a relief, fitting in.'
'What are you fitting into?'
Before he could reply, a muscular arm landed on his shoulder. 'How you doing, sport?' Norse shouted it into his ear.
'Warmin' up.'
'That was some run, wasn't it?'
'Nothing like it.'
'What a rush!'
The squeeze of the arm had stopped Lewis's modest attempts at dancing. 'It was. Hey, thanks for pulling me through there.'
Norse laughed. 'Naked as jaybirds! Don't tell that to my Freudian friends!'
Abby was eyeing the psychologist shyly.
'At least we had shoes,' Lewis said.
'Yes, and I'm even growing back my hair!' The psychologist smiled, his teeth big and perfect, running his hand across what was now a crew cut. 'I can almost feel it coming back. My strength, like Samson.' He hammered his chest with his fist.
'You're doing good with our group,' Lewis congratulated. 'You've held things together.'
'But you've got the prettiest partner.' Norse smiled at Abby, making no move to leave.
Lewis felt dominated by the help he'd had to receive. The older man had established a hold over him somehow, like a big brother. He had to counter with his own help. 'Cut in, if you'd like.'
'Never give an opening as easily as that.' But the psychologist took Abby's arm and lifted it, tugging at her wrist and letting her twirl underneath. She shrugged at Lewis. Norse moved with catlike grace, interposing himself, maneuvering her backward. 'I want to talk to you,' he whispered at her. Involuntarily, Lewis had to step back.
Abby was looking up at her new partner with a mixture of expectation and fear, a fly to a spider.
Lewis stood, momentarily at a loss, looking at them dance. Abby avoided his eye.
Then someone bumped him from behind. 'You can dance with me.'
He turned. Gabriella had her arms up, wrists together, her tank top lifting to show a slice of belly as she shimmied, laughing. Her arms squeezed and lifted her breasts, revealing her cleavage, making her look more naked than when she'd been nude.
'We've already sweated together,' he joked evasively, glancing around at Abby.
'Yes.' Gabriella twirled, her hair flying. 'Let's do it again.'
They danced, she expertly steering him away from the other two and losing them in the shadows, pushing suggestively up against him as Pika's makeshift strobe provided a peekaboo privacy. He felt himself flushing, growing hard, and he turned slightly so that she might not see or feel it. Geller's prediction had been right.
