Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [110]
“Recreational anthropology.”
She laughed. “Yes, or Nancy Drew. Passing the time.”
Then they were done, the bill divided and paid. Out on the sidewalks she said, “Where are you staying?”
“The Metropolitan.”
“Me too. Okay. We can walk through the park and see if the ice skating is going yet.”
“It’s certainly been cold enough for it.”
As they walked into it, Central Park’s similarity to Rock Creek Park struck Frank. Flat terrain instead of a ravine, but they were still in a piece of the great eastern hardwood forest. It was very familiar.
“I’ve been spending time around the National Zoo,” Frank said impulsively. “It’s kind of like this.”
“What do you do there?”
“I’ve joined a group trying to keep track of the animals they haven’t yet recaptured.”
“That must be interesting.”
“Yes, it is.”
“And are you recapturing these animals?”
“Eventually I suppose they will. We’re mostly watching them now. It would be hard to trap some of them. The gibbons are my favorite, and they can get away from people very easily, but they’ll need some help with this cold.”
“I like their singing.”
“So do I!” Frank glanced down at her, suppressing several inane comments as they arose; in the end saying nothing. She walked beside him, relaxed and easy, short and solid, her dark hair gleaming where it reflected a distant streetlight or park light, seeming unaware of his gaze.
“Ah look, it is going. How nice.” She led him onto the bridge overlooking the northern bank of the ice rink. They leaned against it, watching New Yorkers expert and inexpert gliding over the illuminated white ice.
“Come on,” Diane said, tugging his arm. “I haven’t skated in years.”
“Ah God,” Frank said. “I’m terrible at it.”
“I’ll teach you.”
She took his rental boots from him, demanded a stiffer and tighter pair from the help, then laced them up for him. “Nice and stiff, that’s the secret. Now just stand straight and set a line. Glide forward. Shift quickly back and forth.”
He tried it and it worked. Sort of. Anyway it went better than he remembered earlier times having done. He staggered around and tried not to fall, or run into anybody. Diane glided past from time to time, undemonstrative but deft, throwing him off balance every time he caught sight of her. She skated with him, held him up, helped him up, then took off and skated by, red-cheeked and grinning.
“Okay,” she said after a while. “I’m losing it here, my ankles are tired.”
“Mine are broken.”
“Ah.”
Back into shoes, back walking on the ground—stumping along, it felt, after the skating. Frank felt a little tense, and they drew apart as they walked. Frank searched for something to talk about.
They walked more slowly, as if to prolong the evening, or stave off an awkward moment. Two single adults, out on a date in Manhattan, with empty hotel rooms waiting, in the same hotel; and no one on Earth knew where they were at that moment, except them. The theoretical possibilities were obvious.
But she was his boss, and about a decade older than him. Not that that mattered—though it did—but it was the professional relationship that was the main thing, standing like the bottom half of a Dutch door between them. So much could go wrong. So much could be misinterpreted. They were going to be working together for the foreseeable future. And then there was Caroline too, the existence of Caroline which had changed everything in his life; except not, it seemed, the content of this parcel of it.
The incorrigible scientist inside him was trying to analyze the situation. Every street they came to had a red light, and there was time to think, perhaps too much time. Alpha females often led their troop in all the most fundamental ways, particularly matters of sexual access, meaning