That night, after a “trust-building” exercise at Applebee’s involving Tabasco sauce and 7UP, Cooper returned to her hotel room to find the red cube on the phone blinking. It was Tucker calling to confirm that the shuttle for “fire school” would arrive at the hotel promptly at seven a.m., and that she was expected. Cooper listened to the message twice. She wanted to assume that an invitation to fire training meant she was in, but earlier at the restaurant, over double-crunch bone-in wings, some guy from Spokane told her a story about a woman who’d done the tests, completed fire school, flown to Christchurch, New Zealand, and been allowed to pick out all her extreme cold weather (ECW) gear, before being denied a berth on the flight to Pole because of a “clerical error.” It was best to assume nothing.
The next morning, Cooper boarded a shuttle bus with twenty other sleepy people and three highly caffeinated officials from VIDS. She chose a seat next to a pale, heavy-lidded man of about forty. He had poorly maintained ginger mutton chops, a high-and-tight, and the face of a hamster. He was examining a chain wallet with his name, Floyd, spelled out in tiny strips of duct tape. She imagined him straining over this project, fat pink tongue sticking out, Lit’l Smokies–esque fingers arranging the strips in the letters that formed his name. He glanced over at Cooper, so she said, “Hi.” He turned away, or possibly askance.
“I’ve done this three times,” he said to the window. He drew a penis with a cartoonish scrotum in the fog his breath had made on the glass.
“You’ve done fire training three times or you’ve been to South Pole three times?” Cooper asked, to be polite.
“Was I talking to you?”
“I’m pretty sure you were.”
“It’s a mistake to be ‘pretty sure’ of anything,” he said, using quote hooks. Cooper remembered her earlier use of quote hooks and burned with shame.
“Excuse Floyd. He’s saying, in his typical incoherent way, that he’s been to Pole three times.”
Before Cooper could turn to get an eye on the man seated behind her, a VIDS official wearing Ray-Bans atop his salt-and-pepper crew cut whistled to get everyone’s attention. “Get ready, folks. This is team-building time,” he shouted as the bus pulled into the Centennial State Fire Academy, which was located a few miles from the VIDS corporate campus.
Once everyone had shuffled down the aisle and off the bus, the prospective “Polies” lined up against a chain-link fence. Cooper noticed the guy next to her was stretching, linking his fingers and reaching for the sky. After two days of mingling with the marginally attractive, Cooper was startled to encounter someone whose looks were above average. He was built like a basketball player, at least six-four, with lean limbs and fierce hazel eyes in an otherwise relaxed and confident face. She wondered about his Pole occupation—carpenter, engineer, forklift driver? Cooper decided he was a carpenter, because he had that rangy look that she associated with woodworkers.
He glanced over at her. “You a Fingy?” Cooper recognized his voice as the one that had asked her to excuse Floyd earlier.
“A what?”
He laughed. “You’ve answered the question. Fingy—stands for ‘fucking new guy.’”
“Is that an official term?”
“Official enough. I’m Sal,” he said, sticking out his hand.
“Cooper.”
“Science or support?”
“Uh, I’m not sure—I’m down on the A-and-W grant.”
“Ah, you’re an artiste.”
“I detect sarcasm.”
Sal grinned. “Never.”
Cooper turned to watch as a squat two-story building disgorged smoke while people dressed in fire gear ducked in and out, rescuing dummies and laying them on the grass about ten yards away.
“After these cadets finish, we’ll start suiting up,” the VIDS official said.
“What’s this guy’s name again?” Cooper whispered to Sal.
“Just call him VIDS. That’s what we call all the Denver-based admins. They’re interchangeable. It’s easier that way.”
“VIDS sounds like a venereal disease you’d catch at Blockbuster.”
“Good one.”
The VIDS official clapped his hands to get the Polies’ attention. “While we wait, I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the United States Antarctic Program, also known as the Program. You may be going down there as a cook, a geologist, a custodial engineer, an admin—”
“Astrophysicist!” Sal coughed into his hand. Cooper snuck another look at Sal. It strained her credulity to believe that an astrophysicist could be both physically attractive and supremely self-assured—not that she’d ever met an astrophysicist, which had always sounded to Cooper like a made-up job title.
“In whatever capacity you come down here,” the VIDS official continued, “whether you’re on the science side or the support side, you hold your colleagues’ lives in your hands.”
A small woman wearing a pink bandanna raised her hand. “Excuse me but I have a thing with fire masks. For example, I wasn’t a good scuba diver because the mouthpiece freaked me out. I could see myself being someone who would take it out underwater, against my better judgment, you know, just because it’s a foreign object in my mouth. So I’m just wondering how this, um, tendency, I guess, is going to impact fire training.” Scornful chuckles all around. The woman looked at the group. “What, is that a dumb question?”
“All questions are good, all questions are good,” the VIDS official said, rubbing his hands together nervously. “What’s your name, honey?” Cooper noticed her stiffen at this. Apparently so did the VIDS guy. “I mean, your name?” he stammered.
“Pearl.”
“Pearl, I think because the fire mask doesn’t actually go into your mouth like a scuba regulator does, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how nonintrusive it is.”
Pearl nodded. “Good. Nonintrusive is always welcome.”
Over the next four hours, the Pole candidates donned helmets, fire jackets, overalls, boots, and face masks, and endured every worst-case scenario known to man. Forced entry using a halligan and an ax. Extinguishing vehicle fires with dry chemical powder. Crawling through an eighty-foot plastic tunnel called the Gerbil Tube in order to “get used to tight spaces.” Some of the applicants folded under the pressure and were hastily wrapped in shock blankets. Pearl did, in fact, find the face mask obtrusive, to the tune of a panic attack in the Gerbil Tube, and so was officially reassigned to the Trauma Team, which, at Pole, would muster to provide CPR or splints in case of catastrophic injury. Some of the Polies, Cooper noted, were studs. Sal had been the only one to locate the “infant reported to be in the building” and drag the miniature dummy out by the scruff of its neck, only to pretend to breastfeed it as the others scrambled to safety.
The last exercise of the day was in the Maze, a smoke-filled, two-story house. Cooper was expected to perform a sweep-search and rescue her victim—a scientist who had joined the group late. She had already seen several other veteran Polies, at fire school for recertification, complete this exercise; they’d exited the synthetic fires laughing and slapping one another on the back. It wasn’t easy, Cooper reasoned, but it was probably doable. She awaited the fire chief’s whistle, and when she heard it, sprinted into the building.