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waxer.”
    “And then you figured out she was a bitch?”
    “Yes.”
    “Only took me thirty seconds.”
    If Lisa had been wearing glasses, she’d have been giving Ani a stern look over the top of them. “Your point?”
    “Battle of wits…tie score.”
    “Fine.” Lisa heaved a long-suffering sigh. “You know how they say that sometimes a person is meant to be a better friend than a lover? She wasn’t even a good friend.”
    “Or a good lover?”
    “I didn’t say that. Why do you think I stayed for so long?” She dusted off her hands with an aura of dispelling evil spirits. “Can I watch the fireworks with you?”
    “Sure. As long as it’s not a date.”
    “Can’t be.” Lisa opened the magazine in her lap. “I don’t date anyone I like.”
    Ani laughed and reached into the messenger bag. “You’ve read that one. Have a local tabloid. The police blotter is always fascinating reading. Close encounters between cars and moose, that sort of thing.”
    Lisa flipped open the first few pages. “I’m riveted. Hey, professors in Alaska are pretty darned hot. Did you ever study under this one?”
    Ani glanced at the photograph Lisa was tapping and said, “No.”
    After a raised-eyebrow look, Lisa refocused on the page. “Okay. If you say so.”
    “I do.” Not the way you mean it, Ani thought.
    “Okay. I believe you.”
    Ani went back to her data, but she saw none of it.
    Monica Tyndell was as beautiful as ever. So was Eve. And they looked very happy, arms around each other’s waists.
    “You don’t do fireworks in Alaska?” Lisa stretched and shifted on the towel, the newspaper still in her lap, even though the sunlight had faded thirty minutes ago.
    It was all Ani could do not to snatch it up. “We do them, they’re just not all that successful. Things happen to the properties of chemicals when they’re catapulted into sub-freezing air layers.”
    “That makes sense. Same thing happens to women who hit on you, too.”
    “That’s right, I’m frigid. Sub-freezing.”
    “Like hell you are first one!” Lisa’s squeal was all-child at the first big burst of golden sparks.
    To Ani’s relief, the fireworks were enough to distract Lisa from another dissection of Ani’s love life. The sliver of crescent moon was almost set, and within moments the night sky was brilliant with cascades of colors under the sparkle of white stars.
    For a while neither of them said more than “Wow” and “Good one!” The rapidity of the launches increased.
    “Green’s my favorite,” Lisa shouted over the sustained barrage of explosions. “Like ocean in the sky. I think this is the finale.” The fountain of emerald ribbons was replaced with starbursts of burning pink.
    Ani’s agreement was drowned out by the sustained popping of mortars. A resounding, beach-shaking boom was followed by a brilliant white wash of sparklers dripping from sky to ocean.
    Ani closed her eyes, sensing the resonance of the explosion from the sand underneath her. Her skin could feel the heavy blanket her father had used as a shock and sound wave buffer. She could hear his voice, plain as day.
    “See, Ani? Did you feel the difference? Dynamite sounds different from Tovex.”
    “I could tell, Dad.” She’d watched her breath form in the air under the blanket. “It made a deeper sound does it penetrate deeper, too?”
    “Take a look.” Her father had flung back the blanket, leaving Ani to blink in the dazzling summer sunlight. “What do you think?”
    Ani trained her binoculars on the glacier wall more than two football fields away. A large fissure had been opened. The shadows and intermittent presence of blue ice said it ran deep, much deeper than the fissure the earlier blast with Tovex had opened. “I see it. How come they want you to give up using dynamite?”
    “Water-gel compounds are more stable, especially at these temperatures. Tovex can be much more subtle, and sometimes that’s good. Several small charges can be more