Amp'd (26 page)

When we're done Will pops open two cans of beer, hands me one, and clinks them together.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “Let's do this thing tomorrow.”

Will's plan calls for him to take possession of the explosives and for me to meet him at the dam at six, early enough to still have some daylight, but late enough that any possible innocent bystanders won't be standing by.

*   *   *

I dream that night of explosions and rushing water, of a river long held in check blasting forward, a million concussed fish in its wake, floating, bloated, each one transforming into a dismembered arm, rafts of limbs drifting downriver like logs.

 

BOOKED

Back in the early days of rough-hewn men settling America, one of our solutions to taming the wilderness was to
DAM IT
! No, I'm not swearing … I mean, literally, the damming of rivers and lakes, either to retain water, divert it for irrigation, or even harness its thundering power to generate electricity. But those dams also threw a serious obstacle in the migratory path of certain fish species, especially those engineered by nature to return to the place they were born to spawn. Imagine that! It would be like you racing back to the hospital delivery room where you drew your first breath, now to mate with your spouse—not the most romantic weekend!

But if that's a fish's idea of a good time, who are we to judge? In many parts of the country, this treacherous birthing ritual has gotten easier: since the late 1990s, scores of dam-removal projects have been under way across America, allowing migratory fish to complete their upriver journey unimpeded, an event that in some cases hasn't occurred naturally for more than a century. So break out the bubbly, lady fish—you're about to have all the suitors a gilled girl can dream of … and this time, they won't be so tired from the commute that they fall asleep in front of the TV.

This is Sunny Lee for
The Sunny Side
. Don't forget, I'll be signing my new book,
Sunny Side Up,
at Books-A-Million in Terre Haute on Highway 41 tonight at five o'clock.

*   *   *

I nearly drive off the road at this announcement that two of the momentous events of my life are destined to happen on the same day barely an hour apart.

Growing up I was never good at priorities, believing instead in both cake-having and -eating. It was evident in the behavior of the adults in my orbit that maturity meant routinely forgoing the thing you wanted for the thing you promised, and I was in no hurry to do so. (The moment those priorities flipped for Dad could possibly be traced to the last slide he took, as the growing demands of his family obliterated further pursuit of his picture taking.) Accordingly, I always resisted trading the thing I wanted for the thing I promised, opting wherever possible to pursue both, although not always without guilt: I still recall when Mom's birthday barbecue fell on the same day Artie scored a fresh mat of firecrackers; I'd slipped away under the pretense of sharing homework to meet in Crawlywood and returned, late for Mom's party, redolent of gunpowder and scorched fingertips and the stink of disappointment.

This particular conundrum will at least occur in the right order: Sunny first and then the dam. Were the order inverted, rushing the necessary process of dam-blasting so as not to miss the signing seemed perhaps fatally unwise; and of course there's the risk of arrest or accidentally blowing myself up and therefore missing the signing. Regardless, I try calling Will to convince him to push even half an hour to be on the safe side (if there is a “safe side” to blowing up a dam). There's no answer on his cell, and psycho-dialing him repeatedly yields the same result.

Whether to fortify myself for the industrious task ahead or as rationalization of a possible last meal, I drive to the Four Corners where I lard myself full of chicken-fat-fried meat, mashed potatoes, biscuits, gravy, and just for good measure, order a side of bacon and melted cheese. This would be more enjoyable if Dad were here, and if Mr. Weber wasn't so angry when I run into him in the parking lot on my way out.

“Where the hell have you been? Your mother is worried sick! If you're not going to answer your phone, you can at least return the calls!”

“If she wanted to know where I was all the time, she shouldn't have sold the house.”

“Stop being such a goddamn baby!”

“I'm staying with my friend Will. Remember Will? You would if you saw him. Guy I used to work with.”

“What about work?” he's still shouting. “Are you going back?”

“The dam might not be the future employer it used to be. Besides,” I navigate from confession to blame, “with all this money Mom gave me, who needs to work? She ruined my initiative with a trust fund of thousands.”

“Good God, is that your father's leisure suit?” he suddenly notices.

“It is!” I strike the dashing pose of a supermodel reaching the end of the catwalk to give him a good look.

What follows is an incredulous silence and with nothing much to fill it, I assure Mr. Weber I'm fine and excuse myself. Climbing into the van, I slam the door hard enough to dispel the lie but have to quickly throw it open again when my stomach rejects its contents, burning on its way up before obliterating the blue handicapped parking stripes in the lot. As I drive off past Mr. Weber I can't help feeling sorry for him, forced to keep stumbling across his dead friend's son expelling fluids from his body.

*   *   *

Traffic on Highway 41 whizzes past Books-A-Million as if there were some better place to be than here with Sunny Lee, even an agreed-upon rendezvous to liberate a river in a criminal act. There's a poster in the window showing her book jacket, and her face—
Lovely!
—inviting passersby inside, alongside lesser works by Russo, Lethem, Helprin, Chabon, Franzen.

Checking myself in the rearview mirror for traces of vomit, I see my chin stubble is clean but dammit, I spotted the lapel of Dad's leisure suit. As it's on the right side, I can't reach across myself but struggle, vertically, for several minutes to disperse it with spit on a handkerchief. Now I'm sweating profusely—it's not the heat but another nagging symptom of the drug withdrawal I've suffered since my van was looted. I wipe my brow with my good hand but now my hair is matted, and this isn't how I want to meet Sunny Lee so I settle down, turn on the air-conditioning, and wait out the wilt. I scroll through my phone log of missed calls from Mom and Mr. Weber but see nothing from Will.

Heading inside, I expect to encounter a long line of smart sophisticates who appreciate intelligence and humor and the universe around them, leading to Sunny Lee, behind a table, smiling warmly under thick black hair pulled back, dark almond eyes sparkling with intelligence. Instead, the store is quiet and the table empty.

“Am I early for the signing?”

“Late,” the woman behind the counter says. “Decent crowd, a few dozen readers. She stayed about an hour, signed, chatted, and left.”

“But it's still a few minutes before five,” I protest.

“Not here it isn't,” she declares in a way that says it's happened a thousand times to her before, here on Highway 41 just across the meridian into eastern standard time. An understandable mistake for anyone, but not the son of a man who once time traveled twice daily for his living.

I could have been here, in the future, an hour ago, met Sunny and then headed back to the dam before I even left. Instead she's already gone, and I don't even realize how openly bereft I am until the woman behind the counter offers me a 20 percent discount on Sunny's book if I'll stop crying.

Book in hand, and with a time zone hour to kill before my criminal rendezvous, I limp to the bar across the street and order a beer. Thumbing through the book, I find some of it familiar, about grasshoppers and attraction and brain hemispheres, but much of it waiting to be discovered. I wish I could read it all tonight, cover to cover, peacefully in bed, but know I cannot.

“Thanks for coming,” I hear in her familiar radio voice, and I turn to see Sunny Lee at the other end of the bar from me, sitting behind a glass of wine, smiling warmly under thick black hair pulled back, dark almond eyes sparkling with intelligence.

I want to say something clever, with the combined wit of every member of the Algonquin Round Table, or brilliantly observed, like Stephen Hawking gazing into a distant black hole. Instead I gape at her and start to sweat again.

“I didn't see you at the signing,” she says, eyes dropping to my arm. “I'd have remembered.”

“Late,” I grunt. “Forgot about the time difference.”

“Oh, I grew up around here and still mess it up.”

“Blame the European railroads,” I recall some useless bit of information I once passed on to my students. “We used to add four minutes for every degree of longitude. So when it was noon in Bristol, it was ten after noon in London. It made it hard to catch a train.”

“Can I steal that from you?” she laughs, typing into her smartphone.

“Is this how it works—chatting up strangers to steal their otherwise useless trivia?”

“Only when it's this good! Usually I find it in the stuff around me in the moment. I'm already planning one on bookstore germs.”

My phone rings and it could be Will, or Jackie, or a supermodel, the president, or sweet Jesus. Without looking, I shut it off.

“Would you like me to sign?” Sunny nods at my book, and I nudge it toward her.

“That's why I'm here, an hour in the future.”

“Should I make it to anyone special?”

“Me,” I reply. “Not that I'm special.”

“Okay,
me,
” she teases.

“Sorry! Aaron.”

“Aaron…” She starts to scribble and then looks up at me.

“You went to Paris High?”

“I did. Not often. Cut a lot of classes. The world outside,” I gesture, “the one you're always talking about on the radio, was a lot more interesting to me than whatever useless information my poor teachers were attempting to force into my head.”

“I was ahead of you. In your sister's class.”

“I didn't know that until recently.”

“I had a little crush on you,” she resumes scribbling. “I remember you were really funny. And that long hair, so cute.”

“Less hair is easier to take care of. Although somehow, less of me is harder. On the plus side, I know all kinds of useless stuff about nerve endings, pain management, blood infections, and lizard regeneration. Do you know that's mostly a myth? Of course you do.”

“Sounds like you could write for me.” She hands the book back, and I clasp it to my chest like a pastor embracing the Bible.

“I've learned a lot about minutiae, and a little about things that are huge. I know more about the human brain than I thought I could store in my tiny human brain. Wow, that sounded remarkably stupid,” I lament.

She laughs. “You sound like two things I like: interesting and interested.”

YES, I'M BOTH OF THOSE THINGS!
I manage not to shout.

“Seriously, I use freelancers from time to time,” she turns the subject away from me loving her to why I love her. “It's not easy coming up with three-hundred-some-odd segments a year.”

“I would be the best generator of weird, obscure ideas you ever had,” I wheeze.

“Not too weird! But humor helps. E-mail me a sample or two.” She produces a business card, scrawling her cell phone number on the back. “And here's my personal cell. Call me,” she smiles beatifically, and I can feel the sweat pumping. “I have to go. Say hi to Jackie.”

*   *   *

With just enough time to meet Will at the dam, I start the engine and restart my phone to see two voice mails: one from Mom and one from Jackie. If Dad were still alive, this would be a sure sign he was dead and both had called to tell me. Or else maybe Mom called to tell me Jackie's dead and so did Steve calling from Jackie's phone. I should call Mom back first but if my sister is dead, I don't want to make Mom say it, so I punch Jackie's number instead and am surprised and relieved to hear Jackie on the speaker.

“You have no idea how nice it is to hear your voice. Even if you just called to say ‘Fuck you,'” I tell her, imagining an angry Stevie Wonder song.

“Did you talk to Mom?”

“No, but she left a message. What's wrong?”

“Nothing, unless you count Mom marrying the fireman.”

“Oh God, no!” I almost swerve off the road again.

“It gets worse: I'm her maid of honor, and she wants you to give her away.”

“This already sounds worse than a
Game of Thrones
wedding,” I whimper, resolving never to listen to Mom's message.

We groan about Mom and the firefighter, tag-team-bash Jackie's soon to be ex-husband, laugh about my being kicked out of the Sunset Elks motel by the sheriff, and commiserate over losing nearly everything to car thieves, and the loss of the zinnias. (I make an especially big deal about the zinnias until Jackie tells me to just go back to the house and ask if I can take another bunch of goddamn zinnias—a ridiculously simple solution to my paralyzing bereavement that I somehow never thought of.) Sharing the news that I just met Sunny Lee at her book signing earns Jackie's accusation of “stalking,” which only sounds worse when I mention that Sunny might have offered me a job writing for her. Absentmindedly, I flip open her book to read:

Still so cute! Symmetry is overrated. Love, Sunny,
a radiant sun sketched next to her name.

I'm not sure I've ever felt better than this moment, even with two arms. And then I remember what I'm about to do.

“Look, this is great that we're talking. If something bad happened to one of us when we weren't speaking, I think it would be very bad for the other one.”