“Has anyone seen Sal?” one of his research techs called from the door.
“He’s up in El Dorm fucking that cargo handler,” Floyd replied.
“No, I just saw him in the library,” Denise shouted from the bar.
“You’re seeing things, then,” Floyd said, “because he’s definitely getting his cargo handled right now.”
Sal’s research tech grinned sheepishly and walked out.
If Cooper hadn’t already been completely soused, the exchange would have stung. Instead, she turned her attention to a half-full beer on the table that did not seem to have an owner. She drained it and set it back down. Next to her, Birdie slowly pushed the bottle away with his index finger.
“Well,” he said, “unless I’m much mistaken, I’ve just witnessed a moment of desperation,” he said. “What’s wrong, Cherry?”
Cooper responded by pushing back her chair and getting another beer from the bar. She wandered around, pausing at various tables, and after downing a J?germeister beer bomb with the contract plumber, walked up to Floyd and began an impassioned but incoherent defense of Larry McMurtry.
He merely waved her off. “Go sober up, honey.”
She sauntered back to Birdie’s table, but he was in deep conversation with Pearl now, so she decided to lay down on the floor and rest her eyes. Some time later, she found Tucker looming above her like a monument—he was wearing sunglasses, and in them, Cooper saw herself, twice. She realized she was using someone’s bunny boot—Birdie’s?—as a pillow. A new face appeared next to Tucker’s—an unfamiliar pink face with a mouth like an earthworm. “Are you okay, love?” The face swam in and out of view, and it wasn’t until she noticed the surplice that Cooper realized it was the chaplain in from Palmer Station.
“I’m okay,” she slurred. “Just wanna sleep.” She dropped her head back against Birdie’s bunny boot with a thud. The next thing she knew, Tucker was hauling her to her feet.
“I’ll escort her to her room,” she heard Tucker say to the chaplain.
“Encourage her to come talk to me tomorrow, will you,” he said. “Best to cut these problem drinkers off at the pass, I think.”
“Come on,” Tucker whispered in Cooper’s ear. He dressed her in her ECW, and escorted her down the stairs and across the Dome. As she emerged from the entrance tunnel, the crisp, thin air seemed to slap her halfway sober. Like a riderless horse galloping over a hill, vague but searing shame appeared and overtook her. She summoned every shred of competence she had to put one boot in front of the other.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. Public intoxication is an occupational hazard.”
“You have my paperwork. You know I’m not a drunk.”
“Situational alcoholism is a documented disorder,” Tucker replied.
“And it’s not even cold,” Cooper cried, as she blinked into the sunlight. “I’m at South fucking Pole and I’m not even cold!”
“It’s thirty degrees below zero.”
Cooper shook off Tucker’s grip and skipped across the snow. She stumbled and fell face-first, her reflexes too slow to break her fall. Tucker turned her over and looked down into her hood.
“I’m going insane,” Cooper heard herself say.
“You know what Foucault says,” Tucker replied. “Madness can be silenced by reason.”
This comment hit Cooper like a steel-tipped ice chopper to the head. She scrambled to her feet and pushed Tucker with both hands. “Take that back!” An expression of shock passed over Tucker’s face, quickly replaced by sadness. Cooper pushed him again. “It’s reason that is silenced by madness, and you know it. Take it back!”
Suddenly, Tucker gathered her into his arms, into a firm, bigger-than-the-sky embrace. “Forgive me, Cooper,” he said. Then, just as suddenly, he pushed her away and turned back toward the station.
The Jamesway was deserted. At her door, Cooper found a small package, wrapped in brown paper. She tucked the package under her arm and shouldered her way into the room. She successfully unzipped her parka on the third try before sitting down to work off her damp long johns and assorted underclothes.
Once she’d stowed her ECW, she opened the package. It contained a bottle of Scotch. A note was included, which was decorated by an amateurish but endearing drawing of two penguins. The penguins were regarding each other from across an ice crevasse. The note, written in immaculate but minuscule print, read, In hopes of inspiration. (They say Scotch was the drink of choice at Scott’s Hut.) Thank you for your kindness. My invitation to the Divide still stands. You’re on the manifest if you want to be. Frank Pavano.
Placing the note from Pavano on her desk, she picked up the old Tylenol vial. She ran her thumb over the cap, thought about opening it, then decided against it, setting it next to the compass. She lay down on her bed with her boots on to wait for the room to stop spinning, and after about an hour, it did. She staggered over to her desk and laid a blank piece of paper on it. She stared at its brilliant whiteness for so long that iridescent green specks began flying across the page. Finally, she picked up a sharpened pencil and began sketching.
Fifteen minutes later, she had a crude drawing of a vending-machine charm in the shape of Frank Pavano. It was the first drawing she’d completed since the last mitten in the triptych, and it was that fact, rather than any merit inherent in the sketch itself, that calmed Cooper’s nerves.
She heard the door to the Jamesway open at the end of the hall. The squeak of bunny boots echoed down the corridor until the footsteps stopped at her door. The sound of heavy mittens being removed was followed by a confident knock.
“You decent?”
“Wait,” Cooper said. “Just—hold on.” She struggled into her thermals and tucked the sketch she’d done of Pavano between the pages of Worst Journey. Finally, she opened the door to find Sal in his green parka and gaiters, frost on his eyebrows and his beard. He pushed his hood off his head with his forearm.
“Tucker told me you got obliterated at the Smoke Bar. He asked me to check on you.”
“He’s exaggerating. I’m fine. As you can see.”
“Well, I told him I’d check on you. So I’m checking on you.” He glanced around her room. “Can I come in?”
Cooper stepped aside to let him pass. He spotted the Scotch and picked it up.
“Mackinlay’s?” There was reverence in his voice. “Where’d you get this?”
“It was a thank-you gift.”
Sal looked over at Cooper. “From who?”
“Pavano.”
“Frank Pavano gave you this?”
“There was a note. It’s on the desk.”
Sal read it, then tossed the sketch back on the desk. “He offers you ‘inspiration’?” The ice groaned beneath the Jamesway, shifting.
“I’ll take what I can get,” Cooper said.
“Why is Pavano sending you gifts?”