When she arrived at the door to her studio, she tapped the postcard of Foucault for good luck. Upon walking in, though, Cooper came face-to-face with her Mitten in Winter canvas, and her heart sank. The painting now struck her as revolting. She glanced over at Denise’s desk; a large cardboard box had been set atop a stele of textbooks. Cooper knew it was filled with slightly less than twelve gross Blue Razberry Blow Pops; the candy was circulating among the station population as currency. (Someone had already been called into HR for simulating fellatio on one of them during the sexual harassment training video.) But Cooper wasn’t looking for candy. She wanted the box cutter Denise had used to open the package. When she found it, she pushed the blade up and watched as its geometry changed the farther it extruded. She lay it flat against her forearm to test its sharpness and discovered that a slight change in angle could draw blood.
She turned to her canvas and thrust the blade into it. It didn’t rip cleanly—the canvas resisted and the first cut frayed. It was only when she retracted the blade a few degrees that it became an efficient tool of destruction. Cooper ripped long, jagged lines through the mitten, and the fabric peeled away from the gashes, dropping fiber at her feet. Every sound—the thrumming bass from the party next door, the vibration of the power plant, the creaking of the ice—faded, save her own thumping heartbeat. Then, slowly, she realized someone was pounding on her door. She froze, hoping whoever it was would walk away, but the knocks continued, taking on a percussive quality.
“Who is it?” Cooper called.
“Herbert Hoover.”
Cooper unlocked the door and opened it a crack to find Tucker’s pockmarked face. He was holding two steaming cups of black coffee. As he handed her one through the gap in the door, his eyes traveled to Cooper’s shredded canvas. “Ah, killing your darlings tonight, I see.” Cooper opened the door wide and let him pass through into the room.
She sat down heavily on the stool and sipped the bitter coffee while Tucker took off his parka and hung it on the back of the door. He kicked the ribbons of canvas into a pile and removed the frame from the easel. In its place he put one of the blank canvases Cooper had stretched and prepped the week before in a fit of optimism. As he tidied the room, Cooper could feel the high-octane coffee sobering her up, sip by sip.
Finally, Tucker turned to her, his muscular arms hanging awkwardly at his sides.
“You didn’t mention it on the application,” he said.
“Mention what?”
“That you were a prodigy. The New York Times Magazine thing. Whether you had or had not saved the American Art World at age sixteen. Incidentally, according to my online research, it’s still at risk.”
Cooper’s head swam. “That person no longer exists.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
She fixed Tucker with a glare. “Would you trade on fleeting success fifteen years after the fact?”
Tucker winced.
“I am not an attractive person but I am an honest one. You can ask me anything. I will tell you I am single and a homo. I relate to you because when I was your age, I was also someone who had hopes and dreams. I find as I grow older that I like to give the young people advice. And my golden rule is this: If you are going to be self-conscious, try to be funny about it or insightful. Otherwise, and I’m guilty of this, it is nothing but self-indulgence. And smile more—easier said than done if you have had Botox and a job like mine.”
He picked up her sketchbook and held it out to her.
“What?” Cooper said.
“You’re going to paint my portrait.”
“I don’t do portraits.”
“Just pretend you’re at a wedding. I can get some kale from the kitchen if it would help.”
Cooper looked at Tucker’s face, ruthlessly pitted by years of acne, and yet strangely smooth from all the chemical peels. Despite its imperfections, though, his face was a limpid image, perhaps the only truly clear image she’d seen since she’d arrived at this confusing place. She was starting from zero anyway, so she selected the sharpest pencil from her pencil cup and pulled her sketchpad onto her lap.
“Do I seem straight to you?” Tucker asked as Cooper began to work. “I mean—am I queeny?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“I’ve been advised several times to ‘be a man.’ In corporate scenarios, mainly. It’s made me question my masculinity.”
“Well, whoever said that is an asshole.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
With the side of her hand, Cooper blended the outline she’d drawn of Tucker’s head. “Why are you down here?” she asked. “Give me a one-liner.”
“Smartass.”
“I want to know.”
Tucker looked down at the cup of coffee in his hands. “One day, I decided to embrace a new manifesto, and I say this without being glib or self-deceiving: always look for the positive in all situations. This credo is also self-serving, since in my case, anyway, negativity causes facial afflictions.”
As she sketched, Cooper thought the eyes would be most difficult; the eyes always were. But Tucker’s were uniquely challenging. The startlingly green irises disappeared beneath his upper and lower lids, but the eyes themselves had a slight downturn at the corners. Sometimes, there was a flatness to them, as if he had checked out. Other times, rarely, they looked almost manic. Still, as she worked, she felt a kind of peace, as if her brain were cooling off. All she had to do right now was draw a picture.
“Here’s what I learned, Cooper. If your current environment is not conducive to a satisfying life, then you change your environment. That well-worn advice about your problems following you wherever you go? Patently false. I find I can live well at South Pole, which is good, because I want to live long enough to find out if John Cougar Mellencamp gets buried in a small town.
“Hey.”
Cooper looked up from her sketchpad.
“You’re working.”
Cooper grinned. “I guess all I needed was coffee—and Herbert Hoover.”
“I am but a humble servant,” Tucker replied.
As she worked, looking from her paper to Tucker’s gentle face and back again, Cooper was overcome by a feeling she hadn’t touched since David was alive, since she’d stood on the edge of the woods and waited for him to return—the conviction that the world could become known if only you looked hard enough.
* * *
2003 November 01
06:23
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
RE: Changing the subject line
C.,
My Internet research tells me that you have to take another psych eval in a couple months because you’re staying through the winter. My guess: you have to fail the psych exam with flying colors in order to stay. Would crazy people, if collected together, actually form a unit of sanity, their respective psychoses canceling one another out? Dad drove up to Grand Casino Hinckley last week. He and some other 3M retirees got schooled at the poker table by a bunch of elderly Hmong men who literally had no tells. Afterwards, they went to see Styx at the Events Center. OK, I have to go—there’s a manuscript by Carlos Castaneda’s last lover waiting to be photocopied. Mom acquired it last year and now has “buyer’s remorse.” Question: Did you ever wonder if Christ wore the cloak of the Illuminati? Me either. But Mom assures me that a huge “sub-sub-segment” of the New Age population wants an answer to this burning question, and I live to serve. Dad tells me the real money is in explorer lit anthologies. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the market for explorer lit died with “talking machines” and lineament.
B.
* * *
2003 November 03
11:08
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Changing the subject line
B.,
The Halloween party was a bust. I got drunk and left early. In oth
er news, I completed a triptych. Mittens. Actually, one is a glove. Which means I can assign it meaning. It was originally supposed to be all mittens, but I destroyed one of the panels in a fit of Artistic Angst. Tucker, the station manager, convinced me to “start fresh or become a tragic figure,” so I also started a portrait. In other news, there’s a guy. He spoke to me at length about the dangers of politics intruding on science, but all I could think about when he was talking was how weird it was that an astrophysicist could be extremely physically attractive. That never happens. Why does that never happen?
C.
* * *
When Cooper woke the next morning, her left eye was encrusted with dried pus. Cursing, she hauled herself out of bed and felt around for her ECW gear. She was embarrassed to have to go see Doc Carla about her eyes again—it was her fault for not taking the entire course of antibiotics.
She pulled on her parka and, out of habit, thrust her hand into the depths of the pocket to touch the old Tylenol vial. To her horror, she realized the cap was loose—not detached, but nearly. She removed it from her pocket, and after checking to make sure nothing had escaped, pressed the top down firmly. She held it in her hand and stared at it through her good eye for a minute. What the hell was she doing, carrying this around like a talisman? And what was her plan for it anyway? She’d only ever gotten as far as getting it down here. She hadn’t considered what she’d do with it once she arrived. She set the vial on her desk, next to the compass. She’d have to deal with it at some point, but not now.
As she walked down the entrance tunnel toward Hard Truth, she passed yet another guy holding a large pillow to his chest. He stopped short and looked hard at her. Suddenly, he began fumbling in his pocket for something. “Hey,” he said, shoving another folded note at her. “Will you give this to Bozer?” In a place where Beakers were peering into the beginnings of the universe, how could a pool table be so important? Tucker had so far refused to intervene, hoping the situation would resolve itself with a frenzy of broken test tubes and bent levels that would allow the hostile energy to dissipate without causing bodily harm. Denise, on the other hand, remained convinced that only when one of the groups established dominance would equilibrium be restored. Cooper snatched the note from the pillow-clutcher’s hands without a word. Bozer, it read, The cases of Schlitz will arrive on the morning flight from McMurdo. We expect reciprocity.
When Cooper got to the clinic, the door was locked. She knocked, and heard Doc Carla bark, “Wait!” After a minute, the door opened just slightly and Tucker’s face appeared. He took one look at her, then slammed it shut. Cooper could hear people talking on the other side. Suddenly, the door flew open and Tucker pulled her in.
Toward the back of the room, Marcy huddled on a chair, a blanket pulled over her shoulders. “Oh … I can come back later,” Cooper said.
“Stay,” Marcy said. “Learn from my mistake.” Tucker had his head in his hands. The feeling in the room was familiar—Doc Carla’s rugged bedside manner a little too forced, Tucker’s silence, Marcy’s resignation. This was the Trinity of the Unfortunate Event. Cooper had been through its rigors before. It had been present during David’s third 5150 hold—the day Cooper had run out of her shift at Caribou Coffee when he’d been found on the roof of the Weisman Art Museum, flapping his arms and walking in tight circles, unresponsive to the museum’s security officers, and then, later, the police. “That’s what happens to everyone who sees the Damien Hirst exhibit,” Billie had said at Hennepin County Medical Center, where they had traveled to meet the cops. Bill had laughed at this. Cooper still couldn’t forgive him for it. That was the only thing she had left to forgive him for—the laugh. When Cooper had glimpsed David as the orderlies walked him down the hall to the back ward, he looked like a mannequin, his arms bent at weird angles, his legs stiff. Cooper, still wearing her latte-stained barista’s apron, had watched in horror as he’d hobbled down the hall until he and the orderlies stopped before a set of white doors. With a swipe of a key card, the doors opened and swallowed him up.
Cooper was still standing there, frozen, when a nurse shoved something at her. “He was waving this around when the cops got to him. Most of ’em, if they’re raving, they got a Bible. Never seen this one before.” Cooper took the book without looking at it. She knew which one it was. Only when the nurse was halfway down the hall did Cooper dare to look: the ghostly image of three men—Edward Wilson, Birdie, and Cherry—silhouetted in the mouth of an ice cave.
Every night that week, Cooper stood outside in the backyard with Bill, staring at Hale-Bopp through the telescope. It was March, and for three months the comet had been a smeared fingerprint on the sky, but now, as it approached second magnitude, it grew brighter, it grew tails—one yellow, one blue. It had split at the root. Toward the end of the week, Cooper overheard Bill in the kitchen saying care facility and Clozaril and menial jobs and Dasha saying, “In some cultures, schizophrenia is a form of shamanism.” Billie, uncharacteristically, remained mute for days. And the book that the orderlies had had to rip from David’s hands, with its crenellated spine and its portrait of their men, remained Cooper’s secret possession; the Worst Journey in the World was now the most important thing in the world.
Doc Carla gripped Cooper’s upper arm roughly and propelled her to the sink. “I don’t have time for this shit,” she snapped. “You should’ve finished the whole course of antibiotics.” She forced Cooper’s eye open like it was a clam and squeezed eyedrops into the seam.
“I have such a good pee can,” Marcy said thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s the best one on the station. Epoxy-lined steel. Substantial volume. It even has a top. Damn. I take that pee can home with me between seasons. I use it when I’m off the ice.” She looked over at Tucker. “Sometimes I become immobilized on a toilet. I don’t know why.” She shook her head. “No, you know why, Marce. You know. You know it’s because you have no idea how to be outside of this place.” She laughed bitterly. “You know what’s funny is that about a week in, some guy in the machine shop, some asshole loaner from McMurdo, was telling me how he didn’t think women should be on the ice at all. He tells me that in the military there’s this ‘phenomenon’ of female service members getting knocked up so they can be relieved of their duties. Says, ‘It’s an easy out, like a no-fault divorce.’ And you know what? I agreed with him.”
Marcy looked worn and tired, her wild hair pointing in all different directions. “Well, it’s my own damn fault.” She shook her head. “It’s dumb to say it out loud, but, Christ, I thought I was too old to make a baby. I haven’t bled in a year. I thought it was over for me. I guess I got lazy. If anyone else finds out, especially the guys, my long and storied career here will go down in flames.”
“It’s happened before, Marcy,” Doc Carla said. “And it will happen again. Human nature.”
“If it were some other chick, Doc, I’d be standing there with everyone else wishing she was dead. As it is, I’ll be the only one wishing I was dead, but at least I’ll be off the ice when everybody finds out.”
“You’re leaving?” Cooper asked.
“This shit’s an automatic NPQ,” Marcy replied.
“Couldn’t you come back? Afterwards, I mean.”
Marcy looked from Cooper to Tucker and Doc Carla and back again. “Afterwards?”
It took a minute, but Cooper’s question finally penetrated, and Tucker pushed himself off the wall. “After your R-and-R trip. To Cheech.”
“What the hell do I want in Cheech?”
“It’d be tough to find a provider in New Zealand who could help,” Doc Carla said casually, “but let me work on that. Only if you’re interested of course.”
Marcy understood now. She leapt up and looked at Tucker. “You’d take me back? No NPQ?”
Tucker caught Doc Carla’s eye. She nodded, and Tucker put his arm around Marcy’s shoulder. Tears began leaking from Marcy’s eyes, and she wiped them away angrily. “Then put me on the fucking manifest,” she cro
aked. “Next plane out.”
“You should still do your seasonal meeting, Marce,” Tucker said.
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t, there will be talk after you leave. Act like nothing’s changed. Meet with the girls, and people will know you’re coming back. You’ll just have to come up with a reason why you’re taking your first-ever R-and-R.”
Marcy nodded. “I can come up with something.” She turned to Cooper and thrust out her hand awkwardly. Cooper took it uncertainly and let Marcy pump it a few times. “Hey, man,” she said. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“I was driving so hard, and so fast, I missed the exit ramp. You didn’t. I owe you.”
Cooper shrugged. “I guess there’s a reason I’d rather be a truck driver than a florist.”
* * *
A few weeks later, a rumor began circulating about a reporter from the Miami Herald on his way to the ice, having been thoroughly vetted and approved by the NSF based on his prior friendly coverage of the Program. NSF thought he was likely to produce a piece that would put a shine on things, and therefore safeguard the Program’s budget from conservative freshman congressmen, all elected in the recent midterm elections, and whom Sal described as “Tracy Flicks with dicks.”
“God, I hope he’s Cuban or something,” Bonnie said as a group of Polies, including Cooper, settled in to watch a VHS of the 1987 World Series. “I want to see someone other than Tucker who has skin with melanin, for chrissakes.” She looked over at Dwight. “No offense, honey.”
“None taken,” he replied, arranging the tail of his cloak behind him as he took his place on the sofa. Cooper fell into one of the La-Z-Boys and watched as Tom Brunansky made his way to home plate. Pearl was knitting another pair of leg warmers for a woman in Dave’s dance class, and had just frogged her last row of stitches when Sal and Alek stalked in toward the middle of the third inning. Alek was holding another bottle of samogon.
“Turn on game,” he said.
“It is on, Einstein,” Bonnie snapped.
Sal took a seat on the arm of Cooper’s recliner and said nothing. Pearl caught Cooper’s eye and gave her a quizzical look, but let the awkward silence go.
South Pole Station Page 12
