Still holding Sigrid tight to my chest—she’d begun to doze on my shoulder—I drank the vodka down in a few gulps. Elbows on the woodshop table, forehead furrowed, Jeanne sipped hers, sucking the liquid between her teeth as if she was new at this hard-alcohol thing. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then folded her arms over her barrel chest. Harsh overhead light cast a long, gun-shaped shadow toward Sigrid; I imagined the weapon could easily blow her small body in half.
“You know, I’m not big on saving the world and all that.” Jeanne swept a few filings and flecks of stray sawdust from her otherwise spotless worktable. “Not because I don’t think it’s a good idea. Course it is. I just don’t think the world is a place that can be saved. Not with us stupid human fuckers running this particular shit show. So it’s not where I look for my, you know, satisfaction.” She poured us both another shot of vodka. Sipped, smacked her lips. “I’m good at a handful of stuff. Baking. Following orders. Keeping things running smooth. Nothing fancy. Nothing sparkly.” She swept her fingers along the barrel of the gun with one long, sensuous stroke. “You don’t notice us, but the world keeps spinning because of people like me.”
Sigrid stirred, whispering in my ear. I couldn’t concentrate on her words. Suddenly restless, she pushed herself away from me and I set her down.
“What did he ask you to do, Jeanne?”
She smiled crookedly, as if half her face wanted to and the other hadn’t been informed of her intent. “Well, how did he put it?” She chuckled. “God, he’s got a way with words. ‘The girl will have to thaw out at a more convenient time.’ Something like that.”
She coughed and shifted her weight; the boards creaked under her. She dropped her eyes, as if suddenly shy. “But then, push comes to shove…” She knocked back the rest of her vodka, shook her head, set the glass down hard. “Gotta say, it’s harder than I thought. Then again, everything’s harder than you expect. Don’t you think?”
“Jeanne, I don’t know what we’re doing here.”
She poured us out two more shots. Thoughtfully capped the bottle before approaching the walk-in freezer. “Good thing I had a spare lock for this puppy. You sure beat the shit out of the last one.” She spun the dial in both directions a few times, mumbling to herself as she peered down at the numbers. Quietly I lifted a ball-peen hammer from a hook on the wall and dropped it in one of the roomy inside pockets of my coat. The tumblers aligned; she swung the door wide. A wave of frost smoke rolled out, swirling at our ankles.
Jeanne crossed to the table, snatched up the rifle, and shouldered it. “Get in. Both of you.”
“You can’t be serious.”
She smiled, tilted her head. “I ‘can’t be serious.’ You academics all talk like assholes, you know that? Tell you what, if you’d actually done what Wyatt brought you up here to do, learn Sigrid’s language and such, we wouldn’t be standing here like this. We’d be in the clear. He’d have the answer. We could save her. Now, I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. What choice do we have? She’s dying—”
“She needs the ice eels, I’ve told you. And even if—Jeanne, look at her! She’s so weak, she’ll never thaw out alive again—”
Sigrid reached her arms up to me; I swept her up again. She buried her face in the hood of my parka, mumbling into the down.
“I thought you liked this girl, maybe even loved her—” Jeanne scoffed.
“I do love her!” I clutched Sigrid closer to me, her breath hot on my neck. “Of course I love her. And you do too, Jeanne, I know you do—”
She shifted the gun to waist height. Jerked it toward the freezer. “Get in.”
“You’re insane.”
She took on an exasperated expression, as if I was merely being childish. “It’ll take ten minutes. It’s almost a mercy. The pain goes away fast, and then you’re warm.”
“No!”
She raised the gun and squinted down the barrel at me, then at Sigrid. Cocked it. “Get the fuck in the freezer.”
I set Sigrid down, unzipped my coat, lifted her up again, and zipped her in close to my body. Faced the steaming cold metal box. The thermometer inside the door read forty-eight degrees below zero. Deep in its recesses, under a glowing tube of fluorescent light, the ice cores in their wooden cradles were stacked in neat rows from floor to ceiling, the walls and door dented where the caribou had kicked it.