Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

“I’m so sorry,” Amelia said. “And what type of breast cancer did she have?”

  He looked vacantly.

  “I mean, there are many different kinds, Myles,” she said. “I’m a scientist, remember? Did she have a lumpectomy? Radiation?”

  It was an innocent enough question.

  “Uhh.” He looked around the room, embarrassed.

  “Did she opt for chemo instead?”

  He sat dumbfounded and then shifted in his seat, looking for a comfortable position.

  “Surely you’d have known since you were so involved in your ex’s medical decisions,” she said.

  His phone pinged on the table. The face lit up. She read TINA upside down, a skill that all research divers perfect when having to read the registration numbers on the hulls of ships while underwater. He quickly pocketed the phone in his suit jacket.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You were asking what type of…”

  “Bye, Myles.” She slipped both arms into her coat sleeves and pushed out her own chair. Standing, she turned to him.

  “And by the way?” She moved closer to his face. “Your world-class pianist is working mall security.” She nodded at the pianist who then nodded back in recognition as if just having placed her too. Amelia then hurried through the double doors before the waitstaff had the chance to let her out.

  * * *

  She was home in twenty minutes, found a parking spot right in front of the building, which was no small miracle, and bounded up the stairs to their apartment.

  Bryce turned from where he’d been wrestling with a prepackaged dinner and a steak knife, trying to saw through the plastic wrapper. That someone so adroit with delicate, sensitive scientific instruments and microcellular organisms could be defeated by molded plastic.

  He looked up and dropped both knife and plastic package. “Now that was the fastest dinner in recorded history.”

  She smiled in relief and leaned against the closed apartment door, feeling like she’d just gotten home after a long trip.

  “Figured you’d be out with Jen getting some food.”

  “She’s meeting the mall cop after his piano bar gig.”

  Amelia stood with her hands on hips, smiling. “I just heard her new beau playing.”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Any good?”

  “You know me,” she looked at him. “I don’t know music.” The wind and waves were music. The ambient background noise of blue whales emitting a series of clicks as they listened for the time it took for the echo to return was her language. Heavy rains, lightning; undersea landslides all created underwater sound. Even something as tiny as shrimp communicating with one another as to where they’d found food was distinguishable. The occasional rumble of an underwater earthquake plus the comforting chatter of dolphins and porpoises reminded her that she was not alone.

  She walked over and seized the steak knife.

  “Give me that thing before you hurt yourself.”

  He threw the frozen dinner in the sink.

  “I’m still hungry. You?”

  He turned and snorted. “As a matter of fact I am.”

  The apartment air was chilly. Saltwater scent from his aquarium made her ache with the feeling of home. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  “Got this sudden hankering fo-o-r … Chinese?”

  “You’re on.” He nodded and smiled.

  “Hong Kong Café?”

  “Let’s get outta here.”

  Amelia grabbed his jacket from the coatrack, tossed it.

  “Nice catch,” she said. “Knew there was a reason I liked you.”

  “God, I’m starving,” he said.

  “Bet ya I’m hungrier than you.”

  Bryce shook his head. “Nope. No way to baseline that kind of bet.”

  “Fair enough. Just sayin’.”

  The place was a three-minute walk.

  18

  “Call Sea Life. Arrange to see her when you’re in Minneapolis at the conference.” Charlotte picked up the phone and held it toward him.

  TJ didn’t move.

  “I bet they’re open now.” She looked up at the kitchen clock.

  “I’ll do it later.” His voice came out with too much force.

  She glanced at him, puzzled.

  They were eating breakfast after the Rhode Island call yielded Amelia’s whereabouts in the Minneapolis mall. She hung the phone back up.

  “Why not set it up now?”

  “Because I told you I’ll call next week.”

  “Okay…” She said it like an open-ended sentence.

  TJ crossed his arms as if to protect his torso from someone’s punch.

  She looked at him.

  “TJ, I’m not trying to give you a hard time, honestly,” she began. “I’m suggesting this because it might be good to call first, explain who you are before showing up to ambush her,” Charlotte said in an exaggerated way.

  He smiled and then laughed like a kid who’d just gotten caught.

  “Oh so that was your plan,” she guessed, laughing along with him. “How come I knew that?” she said. He hated talking on the phone, was more of an uh-huh, yeah guy.

  Instead he shifted his gaze, examining where the tops of the walls met the ceiling.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You’re stubborn as an ox. If you call now, you can arrange to meet somewhere in Minneapolis, explain the situation, and see what happens.”

  He shifted in the chair as if his back hurt and he couldn’t find a comfortable position. Though the TV was too loud, he didn’t want to turn it down either, hoping Charlotte would get absorbed in a news story and forget the whole thing so that he could gather his papers and slink off to his office.

  “So what do you think about what I just said?”

  “Sure.” TJ then stood up from the table as if his half of the conversation was over.

  “Sure what?”

  He sauntered over and sat in one of the stuffed chairs near the fireplace and resumed working on the latest draft of a paper to be presented at the Minneapolis conference. He’d spread out his papers on the coffee table. Since Gloria’s death he’d felt restless, unable to focus. He wiggled his foot in a nervous way. Maybe call and get feedback from one of his colleagues on the joint paper.

  Charlotte stood. “I hate it when you walk away like that.” Her voice rose. “It’s insulting.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  She made a disgusted noise and shook her head. “How about ‘Sorry’?”

  “I heard every word you said, that I should call and talk to her, break the ice, set something up when I’m in Minneapolis,” he repeated.

  She glared at him. That he’d heard angered her even more.

  “I didn’t say ‘break the ice,’ but it was a nice touch,” she said, though still irked.

  “I’ll call.” He picked up his notes and then logged in to his laptop. “If I have time.”

  Charlotte took the remote and turned off the TV.

  “Make time.”

  “I told you.” He turned to her. “With more states proposing wolf hunts the conference is going to be a bloodbath.”

  “This is bullshit and you know it.” She continued glaring. “What does one thing have to do with the other?”

  “I’d rather wait.”

  “For what?” Charlotte held up her hands, looking around the room in an exaggerated way.

  He had no answer other than he couldn’t and looked at the words on the printed copy of his paper and then at the e-mail notes from his colleague.

  “Sometimes you have to hold your nose and jump—”

  He looked away.

  “Take a chance on being happy for once, Niinimooshe,” she said, getting up to see if the coffee was ready.

  As she poured coffee, she noticed something she’d not seen before and set down the glass pot.

  “You’re scared,” she said in quiet surprise.

  He looked away.

  She walked over and set h
is cup down, studying him. He didn’t answer the charge, refute it, or look at her.

  Blowing on his coffee, he took a sip.

  “You are,” she said again, her voice quiet as she sat down on the opposite chair.

  “I just think it’s better if Gary handles it.” He turned to face her.

  “Oh really. So. Now you’re going from reading Amelia’s publications, her Web site,” she said with sarcasm as her eyes narrowed, “to suddenly letting the lawyer handle it.” She laughed in a way he found irritating.

  He looked at her and frowned. “Lawyers are better at handling sensitive situations,” he said, avoiding her eyes.

  “Really?” She paused. “Like you don’t handle sensitive and difficult situations?”

  He pulled a file of notes from the bottom of the pile and opened the folder.

  “Okay,” she muttered and stood up. “Rewind thirty years. For starters, standing on the boat dock at Lac du Flambeau when you and the others decided to exercise our tribal fishing rights for the first time ever in the history of the state of Wisconsin,” she said in an exaggerated way. “Angry white fishermen spitting, cursing. But you don’t remember that.”

  He frowned and looked away.

  “Shoving you, threatening your life, you must have forgotten that too.”

  “Oh come on—”

  “Oh come on what?” Her words were like bullets as she stared him down. “You stood them off. You, Elton, and the others. You faced them down time and time again, every season you showed up with absolute calm until the court upheld the treaty rights.”

  “I wasn’t calm.” He laughed in a disparaging way.

  “I knew that, but they didn’t.” She held his gaze for an instant. “The times they followed you home, tried to run you off the road, spray painted ‘fucking redskin’ on our trucks, the side of our house, punched you, and you still went back to spearfish day after day. All of you did.” She raised her voice. “Contacting your sister is nothing by comparison.”

  “That was different.”

  “How different?” Charlotte folded her arms and took a step toward him.

  “This is personal.”

  “It’s been personal for more than four hundred years. ‘Spear a pregnant squaw, save two walleye.’ Remember?” She almost spat.

  They didn’t speak for a few moments.

  “Now they’re killing our wolves, our brothers, and you tell me that’s not personal?” she almost shouted. “Afraid of facing your sister who might in fact be very interested to discover she’s got a family?”

  For some reason saying that made Charlotte cry.

  He looked down at the pile of papers. The tips of his ears were burning. His gut pulsed with remembrance of those days down on the boat docks. Maybe he’d been another man back then.

  “Don’t forget she lost two parents back then too,” she said. “We don’t know what her life’s been like. The woman’s lost her sea horse laboratory, her livelihood; think about it,” she shouted. “She’s working in a goddamned shopping mall, for Christ’s sake, TJ.”

  He was silent. No rebuttal, no argument.

  “What’s got you so spooked anyway?” Charlotte sat down next to him on the arm of the chair.

  “She never responded to the probate documents that Gary and I sent from his office—they explained the situation.” He leaned over, riffling through copies of his notes.

  “Maybe she didn’t get them,” Charlotte said. “Maybe they got lost in the move to the Twin Cities—”

  “Or maybe we should just let Gary handle it, mail them to Sea Life, have her sign off, sell the place; send her a check for half.”

  Charlotte looked at him for a long while.

  “Is that what you really want?”

  Her eyes sat heavy on him. He didn’t know what he wanted.

  From out of nowhere his throat constricted into a painful knot and he battled to find a place of calm. He was a little boy again, chasing after his father, trying to get the man to see him, to change his mind.

  Charlotte sighed as if reaching the end of her patience quota.

  “Here.” She got up, wrote down the Sea Life number onto a piece of paper, and tore it off, setting it on the side table next to his coffee cup. “Do what you want. I bet they’re open, it’s after nine.”

  He shook his head. “She wanted nothing to do with me. Said so in her September reply to my e-mail. Thought I was a lunatic.”

  “You are a lunatic,” Charlotte said under her breath in a way that made him laugh. “Maybe if you’d explained who you were in that e-mail we might not be having this discussion.”

  “You just don’t call someone up and tell them, ‘Oh hi, I’m your long-lost brother,’” he said with a laugh in his voice.

  “Why not?”

  He sat shaking his head.

  “It happens all the time, the world hasn’t ended,” Charlotte said in a quiet voice. “What’s the worst that can happen; she calls the National Guard?”

  He began to snicker at the preposterousness of it all.

  “Don’t worry, Niinimooshe.” Charlotte patted him on the shoulder from where she stood. “I’ll come visit you in Guantanamo, love.”

  He gave an amused smile.

  Then she leaned against his shoulder, trying to get him to push back as their mutual sign of affection but he didn’t. Instead he crossed his arms.

  “Here’s a thought.” Charlotte smiled with what he called her “predatory grin” when she’d think of something no one else had. “Just what if she gets excited and wants to drive up, become part of your life?”

  She watched him squirm.

  “Oh, so I see,” Charlotte said as she watched.

  He looked revolted and angry, as if he hadn’t thought of that.

  She paused and stood up again, smiling. “So you’d play hard to get,” she said sarcastically. “Didn’t know you were the type. Who would have thought after all these years…”

  TJ squirmed; his eyes darted from side to side.

  “So if she’s open to you then you can ignore her and punish her for something she’s never done.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He crossed his leg away from her, irritated.

  “You think it’s so simple.” His voice was getting angrier. “Like it’s no big deal.” He imitated Charlotte’s intonation and started to move his torso about in a comical way like she would. “‘Just walk up to her, TJ,’” he went on mimicking her. “‘Explain it and you’ll both hug it all out.’”

  A laugh burst out of her.

  “She’s not a complete stranger, TJ, she’s your sister—”

  “She is a complete stranger; that’s my point.” His voice rose as he turned to face her and then stood up. They locked eyes. “That’s my point exactly.”

  Neither spoke.

  “So what? Grow up; it’s gotta be done.” She turned and began to walk out of the room. “Do it for yourself, love. Hate yourself a little less, love yourself a little more. I’m sick and tired of it.”

  19

  Amelia called security. A group of teens was incrementally raising their voices. What had begun in horseplay was now bordering on a fight.

  “Oh, great, the fake cop’s here,” one of them sniped.

  “Get lost or I’ll sic the real cops on you,” the security guard said and herded them out until they dispersed up the escalators.

  The guard paused to look at her. He took a few steps closer.

  Her hair was semi-damp from having been in the water all morning.

  “Hey,” he said. “Weren’t you in the Grand Hotel this past Friday with some dude old enough to be your father?”

  Amelia laughed as he said it for reasons that made it funnier. The uniform cap said MALL SECURITY, but she recognized the sideburns, the black curls spilling out from the hatband. She smiled.

  “You’re Jen’s friend.” He looked different under the fluorescent mall lighting, a lot less impressive.

 
; “Tell me that guy wasn’t your your husband.” He frowned as he said it with more of a dash of pity than anything else.

  She stared at him in an incredulous way.

  “Uhh—then a Match-dot-com date?”

  She snickered and looked at him. “Bet you a quarter you’re an idiot.”

  “None of my business, but the guy looked like a real jerk.”

  “I call off the bet. I like you better now.”

  “Hey, I’m Doby.” He held out a hand to shake.

  “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Looking for Jen?”

  “If she’s not too busy,” he said. She detected a Boston accent. “You got a name, Little Mermaid?” He chuckled.

  She gave him the finger and he laughed.

  “I like your spunk,” he said as he read her name tag.

  “Oh right, you’re Amelia, Jen talks about you all the time,” he said. “Amelia as in Earhart?”

  She frowned. “Right, that’s why there’s an X on the roof of our apartment complex.”

  “Oh, ho, ho, ho, sorry Little Mermaid. Sounds like you guys got suckered in by one of those ‘convenient to the airport’ places?”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Amelia motioned for him to follow.

  He seemed in a totally different class of men than the usual ones Jen picked, the ones who’d phone early on a Sunday morning looking for her to make bail.

  Jen stood explaining to the volunteers how it was important to warn visitors not to step on the intake hoses as she said, “Ask yourself why there’s always time to do it over again and fix it but never enough to do it right.” Her eyes softened when she saw Doby.

  “Hey, Jen.” Amelia motioned for her to come over. “I’ll take over, you guys go on ahead.”

  * * *

  “So who’s the cop?” Bryce asked Jen late that night after they’d all gotten home and he’d set out an entire takeout order of Italian food on the coffee table in Styrofoam cups that they picked at with the accompanying plastic utensils.

  “Well, Dad, I met him a few weeks ago while getting coffee.” Jen stood up to get plates that Bryce and Amelia refused: “Less to wash,” they both maintained.

  Jen shook her head from side to side. “He’s a world-class blues musician working tons of jobs to save money.”

  “A world-class musician working in a shopping mall?” Bryce started his mocking laugh, but Amelia punched his arm and gave him a look to shut up.