When Cooper arrived at the studio the next morning, she saw that Denise had cleared their communal desk of textbooks and papers, and had tied a number of Blue Razberry Blow Pops into a bouquet with a note signed, Good luck. Your friend, Margaret Mead.
With one of the suckers in her mouth, Cooper walked over to the easel. She pulled off the dropcloth: Tucker’s eye stared back at her. Without the Scotch and painkiller cocktail, she could better see that it was objectively decent. Despite what Tucker had told her that night, it needed no revision. In fact, it might even be done. Then there was the painting of Pearl. The brown eyes stippled with copper and the plain freckled face that burned with ambition.
Then there was the one of Bozer. She’d been outside, ready to start fresh in order to avoid becoming a tragic figure, observing the white wasteland to the west of the station. She’d tried to look at the landscape critically, the way she hadn’t been able to do out on the Divide. It was an ocean, with wind-sculpted waves frozen in time. No—that was too generic. It was a desert—blowout dunes, sand seas. No, not that either. There was a reason, Cooper could admit now, that her desert series—“Richat Structure”—had not impressed nor sold at Caribou Coffee. (“This one makes me thirsty,” she’d overheard someone say. “I refuse to be thirsty in my own home.”) Then she’d blinked into the sun, and had been startled to see it was encircled by a purple and gold halo. It seemed impossible, as if her unchanging Minnesota sun had been replaced by a pulsating counterfeit. Deep black to the west, Cherry had written, shading into long lines of gray and lemon yellow round the sun, with a vertical shaft through them, and a bright orange horizon. His foot on the edge of the Antarctic Plateau, and Scott told him to turn back. Cherry had peered through his myopia waiting for them as he winked in the sun’s faint gleam.
A metallic clatter of a load of beams falling to earth had made Cooper jump. She’d watched as the various construction vehicles circled the beams curiously. Marcy had gotten her bulldozer running again, and Bozer was on a snowmobile with an admin, gesticulating like a traffic cop. Cooper had thought about her sketches of Bozer, back in her studio. She’d managed a few broad outlines before losing steam and resorting to the hesitation wounds of a doomed painting—slashes of paint here, pointless half-tones there. He saw her standing there, gaping at the gathering crowd in front of the B3 module; he motored over to her and told her to get on—something important was about to happen.
Whether it was important was almost beside the point—it had appeared to Cooper, once she was at the site with everyone else, that Bozer was simply placing a large steel beam on the very top of the new module. But then she’d seen his face, and she’d understood.
The canvas in front of her now was embryonic, but promising. A nose set in the middle of the canvas—the nostrils lined with flesh-pink and sprouting hairs, and burst blood vessels sketched in with pencil, unpainted, undecided. The overgrown, Bobby Knight eyebrows with their searching insect antennas had yet to be considered. Ditto the stylized handlebar mustache and the incongruous lumberjack beard, and the glossy pate hidden beneath a series of offensive bandannas. But she had figured out the eyes, which was the only way into a portrait. These eyes that told you, point-blank, that manning a trawler crane at the end of the earth was the only place her subject belonged. She started to paint.
*
2004 February 3
11:57
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE: MIA Redux
I can’t tell if your last e-mail was an attempt at humor or if you are really a new member of the Nine Finger Club. I’ll assume it’s the former, and I’ll bite: my research indicates other members of the Nine Finger Club include Buster Keaton, Jesse James, Lee Van Cleef, Daryl Hannah, and Galileo. Lee fucking Van Cleef, Cooper. But to be completely transparent, I should add that Galileo lost his finger post-mortem, when someone took the middle finger of his right hand straight from his corpse.
I don’t know what to say. How are you going to paint?
B.
The station populace grumbled its way into the gym—Game Night had been cancelled and the half-finished games of Settlers of Catan from the week before would have to remain half finished. Once everyone had found a seat, Tucker walked onto the stage, where a crew of unfamiliar men, clearly not Polies, were leaning back in mismatched folding chairs, speaking to one another in low tones. Tucker, Cooper noted, was still wearing sunglasses.
“First, let me run through the week’s Significant Activities.” He consulted a notebook. “Two Twin Otters left to support the Chilean Antarctic Program—that was on Wednesday. In construction news, Bozer and friends have finished the siding trim on the upwind side of the new station and have installed SIP panels on the third section of the Logistics Facility.”
“Footers for the second section were installed this morning,” Bozer called out.
“Floyd, what’s the status of the leak in the Emergency Power Plant right water tank?” Tucker said.
“Still exceeds,” Floyd replied. “It’s a known issue.”
“Doc?”
Doc Carla stood up and recited from memory the week’s sick calls. “One subungual hematoma, one thigh contusion, one mononeuropathy, one biceps tendonitis, one shoulder rotator cuff tendonitis, one thumb strain.” She glanced sideways at Cooper, and added: “And therapeutics for one finger amputation.” This was met with a rousing round of applause. Next, Pearl stood up with a file folder in hand.
“Here are the numbers from the Food Growth Chamber: nine pounds of green leaf lettuce; fourteen pounds of red leaf lettuce; and nothing else has sprouted yet. Water usage this week was nine gallons. And our dedicated produce maintenance volunteer is redeploying at the end of the month, so please come see me if you’d like to volunteer.”
“Thanks, Pearl,” Tucker said. “Finally, some of you asked me to update you on Changed Conditions Affecting Functional Operations. We’ve completed one hundred and ten LC-130 missions so far, but we remain seventeen missions behind schedule, which could affect our fuel supply.” The room quieted down a little at this news. “We’ll talk about this more at the operations meeting tomorrow night. Now, on to the matter at hand. As you probably know by now, we’re going to be hosting some Distinguished Visitors shortly.”
Someone in the back started a chant of “Tom Waits, Tom Waits, Tom Waits, Tom Waits.” The rest of the room picked up it up.
“It’s not going to be Tom Waits, obviously, although if you want, I’ll sing his catalog to anyone who’s interested after the meeting.” The men in the folding chairs behind Tucker laughed indulgently at this.