“A glacier that size isn’t going anywhere soon,” Darryl replied, “and I know exactly where you were. I can orient it from the dive and safety holes.”
Down deep, Michael felt the same way. Something told him he’d be able to find the girl again, no matter what.
He came back to the table and studied the bottle in the tank. “When do you think we can take it out?”
“What? You need a drink?”
Michael laughed. “I’m not that thirsty. What do you think it is?”
“I think it’s wine.”
“But is it sherry or is it port? From France, or Italy, or Spain? And what century—the nineteen hundreds? The eighteen hundreds?”
Darryl had to ponder that. “Maybe if we can bring up the chest you saw, that will help date it.” He paused. “The girl might help, too.”
Despite their friendship—or maybe because of it—Michael had to ask the question. “You do believe me, don’t you? That I saw her, in the ice?”
Darryl nodded. “I’m the guy who studies sponges a thousand years old, and fish that don’t freeze in freezing water, and parasites that purposely drive their hosts crazy. If I’m not your guy, who is?”
Michael took what comfort he could from Darryl’s show of support—and Charlotte, too, had assured him that she would vouch for his mental health—but the night, nevertheless, was a long one. He ate a big meal of chicken, black beans, and rice—it was as if he could never get his inner furnace hot enough to banish the chill of the polar sea from his bones—and tried to distract himself in the rec room. Franklin was banging away at a Captain and Tennille song, until Betty and Tina tired of their nightly Ping-Pong game and decided to watch a DVD of Love Actually on the big-screen TV. A couple of the other base staff, playing gin rummy in the corner, groaned when the movie came on.
Michael ducked outside to the core bin to check up on little Ollie. The light in the sky was faint, obscured by a thickening scrim of clouds, and the wind was blowing especially hard. He had to kick some snow away from the crate and, as always, he had to look hard to find Ollie tucked away in the back. He knew Charlotte was right—that if he took the bird inside, it would never adapt to its natural life again—but it wasn’t easy to leave him out there. The temperature was already at fifteen below zero. He took his paper napkin from his pocket and shook out the shreds of chicken and a big ball of rice that he’d smuggled out of the commons. He pushed them into the crate, on top of the wood shavings, said, “See you in the morning,” to the little gray head staring out at him, and went back to his room.
Darryl was already asleep, the bed curtains drawn around his lower berth. Michael got ready for bed, taking a Lunesta first; he had enough trouble sleeping under normal circumstances, and the present situation was anything but. He did not want to turn into one of those guys who staggered around the base like a zombie, suffering from the Big Eye. He turned out the light and climbed up into his bunk in a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. He checked his fluorescent watch—it was ten o’clock sharp—when he pulled the bed curtains closed and tried to relax enough to let the sleeping pill do its job.
But it wasn’t easy. As he lay there in the dark, the bed curtains enclosing him like a coffin, he could only think of the dive…and the girl in the ice. Her face haunted him. He rolled over and punched the foam pillows a couple of times, hoping to get more comfortable. He could hear Darryl gently snoring down below. He closed his eyes, tried to concentrate on his own breath, on letting the tension flow out of his muscles. He tried to think of something else, something happier, and his thoughts of course turned to Kristin…to Kristin before the accident. He remembered the time they’d entered a couples-only chili-eating contest, and won first prize…and the time a cop had caught them going at it in a parked car and threatened to give them a ticket…or the time they’d flipped their kayak three times in as many minutes in the Willamette River. Sometimes it seemed like they’d always been taking on challenges, or getting into scrapes, together. They’d been friends as well as lovers, and that was why losing her had opened such an achingly huge hole in his heart.