The Arctic Circle, Arctic Circle, Arctic Circle, the train to Brooklyn rumbles. We stop at Arctic Avenue, and then I realize it is Atlantic and I get out to transfer. It is my third alternative. If no one takes it in forty-eight hours, I will have turned it down. That means I will be dropped from the category of prime candidates, I will only be offered jobs that have been available to prime applicants for fourteen days. No New York job will be available after fourteen days.
Why did she offer it? Maybe there is some rule that she had to. But who would ever know? It wasn't even posted. She knew I wanted to stay in New York. She was angry at something. She is a bitch. She has ruined my life. If only she didn't try to do me a favor. I would never have applied for so risky a position as the Comex Constr. job if they had Arctic Circle posted for fear it would be my alternative.
I go back to Peter's. Peter is at work, he works in an office, doing paper sorting and filing for a dental clinic. I find beer in the box and sit down. Peter is supposed to get off work at 4:30, but I'm not surprised when he doesn't get home by six. At 9:30 he comes home. 'Rafael?' he calls as he comes in, and the lights come up. I have been sitting in the dark.
'Hello, Peter,' I say.
'What are you doing sitting in the dark?' He goes into the kitchen to put away groceries. I hear a low whistle. 'Drink our dinner, did we. Good day at the employment office, no doubt.'
'Celebration,' I call, a little thick. 'I think I have a job.'
'Congratulations,' he says, 'In that case I don't care if you drank most of the beer.' He sings something quietly as he puts things away, I hear him open a beer and he comes in to sit down. Blond Peter with his Eastern- European heritage and his easy, sleepy way. He is a good friend, bright yang to my dark yin. 'Tell me the particulars,' he says.
'It is a six month contract,' I say, 'with option to renew or extend.' I name the salary. His pale eyebrows arch, he is waiting for the punchline, but I draw it out, saying it is my third alternative.
'What's the kick,' he says.
I smile, 'It is on Baffin Island, somewhere up around the north pole.'
'Oh shit,' he says. 'You didn't take it, did you?'
'Not yet,' I say. 'There is a chance that during,' I check my watch, 'the next forty-two hours, someone will snatch this wonderful opportunity away from me.'
'You think maybe the salary will tempt someone?'
'No, do you?'
'It can't be that bad,' Peter says gamely, 'lots of people would be willing to do it for six months. Turn it down, you can stay here.'
Good of him, the apartment is really too small for two roommates who aren't in love with each other. It is not that I don't love Peter, I love Peter more than anyone in the world, but I'm not in love with him. I was once, and he with me, but that was years ago.
'It's only six months,' I say. 'I'll use the extra time to study for my engineering license.'
'Six months in Siberia,' he says. 'Six months for you to brood yourself into catatonia.'
'But then I will have three alternatives when I get back. I can get a job in New York.' I am being very practical. 'Besides, catatonia is a symptom of bourgeois or maladaptive thinking, something swept away by the revolution.'
Peter is looking at me in a way that says he is exasperated with me, that he doesn't trust me. Normally he would laugh, since we are clearly maladapted by virtue of our preference. Angry, he says, 'Don't drink any more beer tonight.'
'It's your beer,' I say.
'That's right,' he says.
And now we are both hurt and angry. He makes himself some dinner, I am too drunk to be hungry. There is not much to say. He goes into his room where he probably watches a vid, and I make my bed on the couch and go to sleep.
I don't see much of Peter the next day, which is my fault. The day after that I go back to the employment office. The Baffin Island job is still posted. I take it.
Two weeks later, the first week in October, and I am sitting in a copter. Five hours ago I was in Montreal, changing flights. Now, since I only had a fifteen minute transfer in Montreal and barely made my plane, I am torturing myself about whether my luggage was transferred. We will land in Hebron, Labrador. I have discovered that Labrador is part of the province of Newfoundland. I have already heard my first Newfie joke. In Hebron they still have the old-fashioned manhole covers that can be pried up with a crowbar, big round metal things. A Newfie is jumping up and down on the manhole cover saying, 'Sixty-seven! Sixty-seven!' every time he jumps. A man visiting on business stops to stare and the Newfie beckons him over, explains that what he is doing is a way of relieving stress. (This is told with a Newfie accent, every sentence ends with, 'ay?') He tells the business man to try. The business man is not sure that he wants to, but slowly he is convinced to step on the manhole cover. He jumps into the air and says 'Sixty-seven.'
The Newfie says that he's got to put more into it (ay,) really shout it out. So the business man jumps and shouts 'Sixty-seven!' He finds it is kind of fun, so he jumps higher, shouting 'Sixty-seven!' louder and louder, until he's red in the face and his long coat tails are flying. He jumps really high, shouts 'Sixty-seven!' and the Newfie whisks the manhole cover off and the business man disappears into the manhole. Then the Newfie puts the cover back on and starts jumping up and down shouting, 'Sixty-eight!'
I wonder what Baffies do to American Born Chinese.
The field at Hebron, Newfoundland is small, most of the traffic seems to be freight. It doesn't have the usual amenities of public fields, there's no arcade of shops, and no vendors wandering around hawking things. It just slowly stops being an airfield and becomes a town. The town is all ancient pre-fabricated housing (the kind shipped on trucks and fitted together) but the units have been painted and added onto, sometimes fantastically ornamented in vividly tinted aqua and red aluminum and plastics. It is terribly tacky and antique looking, but very very real. I think I like it. There is one little restaurant. Once I have convinced myself that my luggage has transferred, I go into the little restaurant. It is run by Thais, which surprises me, although I guess there are Thai restaurants everywhere. I order Thai-Moo Shu, and it comes, pork and cabbage in a spicy coconut sauce, wrapped up in a pancake. The restaurant has a screen door that leads to what looks like a mechanic's yard where a gray and white dog with pale eyes is tied to a doghouse made out of blue tinted chrome/aluminum, but the Thai food tastes exactly like it would at any little Thai hole-in-the-wall back in New York. The restaurant is filled with men and women in coveralls. I feel a little conspicuous, everybody knows everybody else, but the beer and the food are reassuring.
Maybe there will be a Thai restaurant on Baffin Island, too. If so, I will probably go every day for the whole six months.
My last flight is a copter, smaller than the one I came in on. There is no one on it except for myself and the pilot and co-pilot. I imagine Baffin Island will be like Hebron. I left New York at 8:00 a.m., at 7:22 p.m. we land at Borden Station, Baffin Island.
The cold hits as soon as the door is opened, blown in by a shockingly cold wind that smells like water. It is minus three Celsius, and already it is black as midnight. There is nobody there but the crew that ties down the copter, and the bright, white outside lights illuminate the copter, it casts long insect shadows in three directions. The only building I see is the research complex, I glance around quickly, looking for the town, but it's too cold to look much. I walk across the tarmac and into the research complex with the pilot and co-pilot. 'It gets dark early,' I say.
The pilot says, 'Sunset was at 15:10 this afternoon.' Five p.m. I think, then realize I'm wrong. Three o'clock. Sunset was at three, because we are north of the frigging Arctic Circle.
Inside the station is all smooth, clean white walls and blue carpet, very institutional and not shabby at all. There are big windows looking out at the tundra on one side, and over the bluff at Lancaster Sound on the other. The shore ice is whiter than the finest of sand beaches and the open water is shining like black glass.
For a moment I think that the woman who has met me is Chinese.
'Hi, you're Zhang Zhong Shan?' she says. 'I'm Maggie Smallwood, come on, I'll show you your room.'
'Just Zhang,' I say. She is Native American, Eskimo I suppose. Her face is round and her eyes are slanted. She
