It had escaped Cooper’s notice that day on the bus in Denver that Floyd looked positively Minnesotan, with the kind of round, ruddy face you’d find in Sauk Centre or Fergus Falls. However, he had made it clear, loudly and often, that he was a proud Floridian, and this, it seemed to Cooper, explained a lot. As she took a seat at the far end of Floyd’s table with her lunch tray, she noticed his muttonchops looked even more unkempt than they had in Denver. His sleeve was pulled back just so, revealing a forearm tat of a woman straddling a power pole. Sparks emanating from her bare boobs suggested she was being electrocuted, but in a sexy way.
The group of men sitting with Floyd didn’t seem overly interested in his soliloquy.
“McMurtry, right? So, yeah, I cringe,” he continued, “but I say, sure, I’ve heard of him, but I’ve also heard of Zsa Zsa Gabor. What’s your point? Well, she says she’s reading one of his books. I say, ‘So?’ and she goes, ‘I think he won the Nobel prize for cowboy writing.’”
Floyd let loose a huge belly laugh, but his friends continued eating in silence. “The Nobel prize for cowboy writing?” Floyd tried again.
Finally, a skinny guy in a stained University of Oregon sweatshirt said, “I thought there was, like, only one big Nobel for writers. I didn’t know they had one for Westerns.”
“Shut up, man,” Floyd said bitterly.
“What did I say?”
“Just stop talking.”
Tucker quietly took a seat on the bench next to Floyd and waved Cooper over to join him. As she scooted her way down the bench, her plastic cup of Dr Pepper wobbled, then spilled the length of the table. Everyone burst into applause. Sheepishly, Cooper mopped up the spill with her napkin. Tucker watched but offered no help.
Because everyone was still staring at her, Cooper decided to throw in her two cents about McMurtry. “I think Lonesome Dove actually won the Pulitzer,” she said, as she balled up the sodden napkin. She glanced over at the skinny guy, who now seemed unwilling to make eye contact with her. Tucker, too, avoided her eyes. She’d done something wrong, but she wasn’t sure what. She thought of Denise. Had she just trespassed into a “defended neighborhood”? Quietly, she added: “I’m just saying that’d kind of be like winning the Nobel prize for cowboy writing.”
After an excruciating silence, Floyd extended his fish-white hand toward her. Cooper took it lightly—as she had anticipated, it was clammy and damp. “Hi, remember me? I’m Floyd. I’m important.” He dropped her hand. “First of all, nice of you to invite yourself into this conversation and offer a pearl necklace of wisdom. We’re always looking for fresh Fingy insight.”
“Be nice, Floyd,” Tucker said, pushing his salad greens around his plate, but also, Cooper was annoyed to discover, stifling a smile.
“This is me being nice,” Floyd replied stonily, turning away from Cooper.
“And second?” she said.
“Huh?”
“You said, first, it was nice of me to insert myself into your conversation. I was just wondering what part two was.”
“Part two is fuck off.”
Floyd picked up his tray, followed by his friends, who quickly swallowed what was left of their food. At the dish pit, they dumped their plates into the sink simultaneously, sending waves of soapy water all over Pearl’s apron.
“Come on, Floyd,” Pearl shouted, “be a person!”
“Interesting,” Tucker murmured, when the men had departed.
“What’s interesting?” Cooper replied.
“Just that people tend to treat the power plant manager with kid gloves,” Tucker said. “You know, because he’s in charge of keeping the heaters going and stuff.”
“I had no idea Lonesome Dove was such a lightning rod.”
“There are hidden sensitivities everywhere. They’re like land mines,” Tucker said. “Floyd’s basically a good guy. Basically being the operative word here. He’s under a lot of pressure with the construction of the new station, and sometimes he relieves his stress with poorly informed but weirdly elitist literary critiques of popular authors. Best to think of him as our resident Kim Jong-il: wildly unpredictable, with the power to annihilate his neighbors. Helps that Floyd looks a little like him.” He glanced over at Cooper and seemed relieved to find her grinning. “The eye looks better.”
“Doc Carla told me even if antibiotics are past their expiration date, they can still work. But five years? I was doubtful.”
“How’s the work going? Has inspiration struck yet?”
Cooper quickly spooned a lump of the potato gratin into her mouth in order to avoid answering the question. Despite her hopeful start in the studio after meeting Denise, she had ended up with nothing. Nothing except a hasty sketch of the Terra Nova, which she’d begun out of desperation. Drawn from memory, it was a mess of flying jibs and mizzen sail, and it hadn’t been born of inspiration. It had been a product of a stubborn but useless memory.
Sal sauntered over from the caf line and dropped his tray onto the table across from Cooper. “I miss tots, Tucker,” he said. “I want tater tots. Fancy potatoes aren’t my speed.” Then he looked over at Cooper as if he’d just now noticed her. “Oh, hey, it’s the strange person who won’t sign the petition. You’re the dancer, right?”
“Painter,” Cooper replied.
“I want to meet the dancer. Is she hot?” Cooper examined Sal the way she had examined the endless still lifes she’d had to paint in art school. He seemed haphazardly arranged, but there was some underlying cohesive structure that she had to tease out. His unwashed, dark auburn hair was boyish-looking, but she could tell he kept his hair longer than he might otherwise so that it would fall over his forehead and hide his slightly receding hairline. He had a nose that, as he aged, would widen and grow almost bulbous and become more visually interesting. His conversation, however, left much to be desired. It seemed as if he were only playing the role of the bro-dude, not living the life. Still, Cooper thought, there was no law that said an astrophysicist couldn’t have the personality of a bro-dude.
“You don’t look like a Sal,” she said.
“What do I look like?”
“Brock? Josh? Colton?”
“Keep it coming,” Sal replied.
“Edison. Keegan. Chase.”
“So what you’re saying,” Sal said, swallowing down a mouthful of gratin, “is that I look like the rush chair for Sigma Chi.”
Decently handled, Cooper thought. The table next to them erupted in laughter, and a group of smart-looking guys, including the tall Russian scientist Cooper had met at McMurdo, got up and left en masse.
“There’s gonna be a Beaker-Nailhead cage match before the winter’s over,” Sal said, watching the men file out.
“No, cooler heads will prevail,” Tucker said soothingly.
“I doubt it,” Sal replied. “Alek has the capacity to go Unabomber on people. It’s all that Marxist scientific determinism bullshit.” Cooper looked at the next table over; it was occupied by a crew of brawny men in various stages of male-pattern baldness. Seated at the head of the table was the Confederate-bandanna-wearing man—Bozer—who’d coined the “ass-joint” phrase that had already found its way into Pole’s lexicon. (“Stop being such an ass-joint, Chuck!”) Cooper longed to ask Tucker whether Bozer’s bandanna bothered him, but something told her to keep the question to herself.
“It seems like the Nailheads rule the roost. I wonder if it’s the beards,” Cooper said.