Under the Dome, the fire team was pulling on bunker gear and hauling air tanks off the ground and onto one another’s shoulders. Bozer and Floyd were leading a group of Nailheads down the entrance tunnel to Skylab, where Tucker stood wearing a massive amount of firefighting equipment. “I got another one for you,” Kit shouted above the din and pushed Cooper into Sal, who was spewing acronyms into his radio, which was promptly spewing them back. Sal pointed urgently, and Cooper wandered off in the general direction where he’d pointed, joining Birdie, who was already outfitted. He slammed an air tank against Cooper’s back and pulled the shoulder straps around her arms.
Cooper’s heart pounded and she realized she was sweating. She lifted her nose in the air, like a dog scenting the wind. The only smells she could detect were gasoline, exhaust, and, somewhere on the edge, the scent of Pearl and Bonnie’s evening meal prep drifting out from the kitchen. “We’d be smelling smoke by now if it was bad, wouldn’t we?” Cooper said to Birdie. He only blinked at her.
Suddenly, the activity level slowed down. The chorus of muffled walkie-talkie voices diminished to occasional solos, and the robotic All-Call voice was no longer chanting like a Gregorian monk. One by one, snowmobiles roared down the entrance tunnel. As the din subsided, All-Call came on again, but this time it was Dwight’s voice that was chanting: “This has been a false alarm. A false alarm. Please return your equipment to the stations. Repeat: This has been a false alarm. Please return your equipment to the stations. Postmortem at All-Hands Meeting.”
Cooper’s legs began trembling. She kicked the air in front of her, as if to remind her legs that they were functioning limbs, but this only made things worse. A prickly heat climbed up her torso, up her neck, all the way to the top of her head, causing her face to flush; it felt as if someone had placed a cinder block on her chest. She lowered her body to the ground, trying to maintain some semblance of control. When the tears came, she was only half surprised.
She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when someone slid their arms under hers and hauled her to her feet. When she pulled off her goggles and wiped her eyes, she saw that it was Pavano. His face was obscured by his balaclava, but his limpid eyes were unmistakable. By the time Cooper had gathered herself enough to mumble a thank-you, Pavano was already halfway down the entrance tunnel.
*
“I want to see a bird,” Dwight said.
“I want to smell a new book,” Pearl replied.
“I want to fondle a fresh bell pepper, and then eat it,” Cooper chimed in.
“I want to pet my cat.”
“What does cat hair feel like? I forget.”
“I want to hear a child laugh.”
“I want to go barefoot.”
“I want a drink.”
Everyone turned at this, like a litter of kittens following a tracking light, to see Marcy standing in the door. Or a weak facsimile of Marcy. She was drunk. Cooper knew this because Marcy was holding herself steady against the door frame leading to the Smoke Bar. Old Marcy never needed anything to steady her gait. She never showed up at the bar already drunk. But now here she was, her normally proud shoulders slumped. It was as if one of the major structural supports holding up the geodesic dome had suddenly sunk ten feet into the ice. Everything still standing, but the building was catawampus.
Cooper and Sal got up from their chairs at the same moment and helped Marcy to a seat. Floyd threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, this is rich,” he said. “She’s back. The case study for Why Women Shouldn’t Be at Pole.”
“Says the shapeless mass of existential impotence,” Sal muttered, as he returned to his seat next to Bozer.
Floyd ignored this and focused his piggy eyes on Marcy. “So is it true?”
“Is what true?” Marcy said without raising her eyes from the table. Her voice sounded bruised.
Floyd continued looking at Marcy for a minute. “You stupid slut,” he said. Sal stood up from his chair so fast his knees hit the edge of the table and sent the beer bottles wobbling. Cooper saw Bozer grip Sal’s arm and hold it firm.
“So who’s the daddy?” Floyd said.
“Mechanic at Palmer,” Marcy replied.
“Oh, so a one-and-done.”
Marcy finally raised her eyes and looked at Floyd. “My specialty.” Cooper saw something change in Floyd’s face—a minuscule shift in the angle of his eyebrows, a faint tightening of his lips. Before he dropped his eyes, Cooper could see they’d changed, too, had widened, child-like, with pain.
The silence of the room felt alien. Cooper watched Bozer calmly sip his Schlitz, his hand still gripping Sal’s forearm. Finally, Floyd hauled himself out of his chair and walked over to Marcy. No one spoke as he leaned down and whispered something into her ear. She nodded, and Floyd stroked her messy hair before pulling her head toward his.
*
When Cooper walked in the gym for the second artists’ meeting later that week, the interpretive dancer was not sitting next to the historical novelist, and he was clearly pissed off about it. She, on the other hand, was exuberant. “That false alarm last week was just the kick I needed, because I’m swimming in inspiration,” she said. She flicked her Joni Mitchell hair over her shoulder. “I actually think I’m on the verge of a breakthrough.” She leaned toward Birdie, the only person who appeared to be listening. “I met this Argentinean gentleman online who’s doing research on Weddell seals at McMurdo—something about their estrus cycle. I’m thinking about transferring down there. Since it’s mating season, there would be a chance for me to observe contact improvisation in the wild.”
“But wasn’t your project based on the movements of the hydrocarbon tubeworm?” Birdie asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to interpret its vascular plume. This seal research is brimming with possibilities. I learned from this Latin genius that in order to do the research you have to capture the female Weddells by drawing a canvas hood over their heads, tying it closed, and then taking a vaginal swab.”
“You can dance about that?” Birdie asked, incredulous.
“I see it less as a dance than a choreographed crime scene,” the dancer replied.
“I hate Argentina,” the historical novelist said from across the room, his arms crossed. “Full of Nazis.” It occurred to Cooper for the first time that the historical novelist bore a striking resemblance to Karl Rove.
“He’s quite spiritual,” the dancer said thoughtfully. “Shaman-like, really. I like how he can summon sacred energy. I can actually feel it in my heart.”
“You know what I feel in my heart?” the literary novelist said from deep within the hood of his University of Iowa sweatshirt. “I feel nothing. It’s contracted like polar ice.” He groaned. “Christ, even my similes are stale.”
“You feel disconnected from yourself because you have put all that you are into your manuscript,” the dancer said. “You do not exist outside of your work.”
The literary novelist retreated further into his hood.