“Am I a big gun?” he replied. “I’ve been told I have a big gun.”
“You just told me you run South Pole,” Cooper said. “In terms of guns, that qualifies as an assault weapon.”
Tucker moved toward the chair next to Cooper, and seemed to consider sitting for a moment, before placing his hand on the back of it, as if posing for a Matthew Brady portrait. “I’m more of a matchlock musket,” he said thoughtfully. “In fact, the parallels are nearly complete.”
“So, you’re here because I wouldn’t look at my test results.”
“Sometimes the contract psychologists get responses that aren’t on their protocols, so they call somebody from the Program in to double-check. One person’s tendency to hole up in her room with Proust is another person’s schizoid isolation. Not that I speak from experience.” He glanced over at the paperwork on the desk, his hands now thrust into his pockets. “You’re in the Artists and Writers Program.” He looked up from the pages. “Says here that you’ve been a live-event artist.”
“My first job out of art school.”
“Bat mitzvahs?”
“Weddings, mostly. The brides carried kale.”
“Better than a caricaturist-for-hire,” Tucker replied.
“Barely.”
“Well, we don’t get a lot of traditional visual artists anymore,” he said.
“Conceptual?”
“No, they stopped coming in the early nineties. Now it’s mixed-media artists, collagists, and found art. Last season, they had a guy doing paper clips. He made a uterus. He called it a feminist conduit to tactile interaction. There was one sexual harassment complaint.”
Cooper felt her limbs relax, and her muscles immediately ached from the tension they’d been holding for the past three hours. Clearly the bar for artistic achievement was low at South Pole.
“Do you have any talent?” Tucker asked.
“Maybe,” Cooper said.
“Maybe?”
“It’s kind of like psychological exams, I guess. Subject to protocols.” When Tucker didn’t reply, Cooper added: “I’ve been told I have talent.”
“If you don’t agree, then why are you here?”
“I don’t know why I’m here. But I’m here.”
Cooper could see this wasn’t enough. “What if I promise to just be your typical aimless thirty-year-old looking to delay the inevitable slide into mediocrity?”
“That rolls off your tongue easily.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve said it before.”
Cooper thought she detected a slight smile somewhere on Tucker’s face, but he didn’t let it crack open.
“Then you will fit in very well,” he said. “But can you, just for paperwork’s sake, give me one line that I can write down on this form? One line about why you want to go to South Pole?”
“I put that on my application.”
“That thing about ‘new horizons’ and ‘fresh perspectives’?”
Cooper sighed. “How about to further my creative journey?”
“Insincere.”
“For adventure’s sake?”
“There is no adventure, only a grind.”
“I like cold climates?”
“Stay in Minnesota.”
“I want to be somewhere else.”
“You’re getting closer.”
“But if I say that, you’ll think I’m running from something,” Cooper said.
“It’s not ‘running from something.’ It’s turning aside.” Tucker thought for a moment. “Or looking askance. Looking askance at civilization. If you apply to go to Pole because it seems ‘cool’ or because you’re looking for ‘adventure,’ then you’ll crack up when you realize it’s not a frat party. If you don’t fit in anywhere else, you will work your ass off for us. This has been proven time and time again.”
He clicked the pen attached to his clipboard and scribbled something. Then he stood up and indicated that Cooper should, too.
“I’ll have to meet with the program directors this afternoon to go over the borderline cases.”
“I’m borderline?”
“Sorry.”
“What about my one-liner?”
“What about it?”
“You’re going to use that thing about the personal journey?”
“Unless you have something better. The paper-clip guy said something about a personal journey, and he scraped in.” Tucker waited a moment, rubbing his left earlobe between his fingers, but Cooper could think of nothing to add. As she gathered her things, Tucker said, “Listen, shrinks worry about fresh death. Especially a suicide. Unresolved grief does sometimes lead to breakdowns, especially in extreme environments. But then so do delays in booze shipments. I’m sorry for saying ‘fresh death.’”
“I don’t mind. I guess it is.”
“You’ll know by tonight,” Tucker said. Cooper smiled weakly and watched as he left the room. She could hear his footfalls in the hallway. It sounded like South Pole itself was receding. As she closed her eyes to deny tears an exit point, she realized that she had underplayed the importance of this whole thing. For the first time, she understood it wasn’t the lark she’d been telling herself it was; Cooper knew that the jagged edges would continue to lacerate her unless she did something drastic. She didn’t quite know why she believed this, but she did. In fact, it was one of the only things she believed in now.
As she stared at the pale, sickly leaves of the office plant, Cooper understood that her chance was slipping away. She was on the verge of being rejected, as Scott had rejected Cherry.
Cherry.
She leapt to her feet. “I’ve got one,” she called down the hallway, where Tucker was talking to a VIDS employee. “A reason to go.”
Tucker dismissed the man, and waited as Cooper jogged toward him. “It’s a quote, but it’s why I want to go down.”
“Quoting others suggests avoidance,” Tucker replied when she arrived.
Cooper shook her head. “No, it only means that someone more articulate than me has been in my shoes. It only means”—Cooper could hear the hitch in her voice—“that someone else said it better than I could. But it’s why I want to go.”
Down the hall, someone began brewing a vending-machine latte, and Cooper realized she was holding her breath. Tucker finally clicked the pen again and held it poised above the clipboard. As she spoke, Cooper tried to keep her voice steady.
*