Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

  “Jesus—you’re the only person I know who burps the second they wake up.”

  “It was more than a second,” he said. “God, it sucks there’s never anything to eat.” Bryce shut the refrigerator door, and looked at her as if it was her fault.

  She raised her hands. “Do I look like a grocery store to you?”

  He sighed in disgust and turned.

  “Come to Lake Superior and I’ll feed you,” she said in what she thought was her hypnotic voice.

  “Jen coming too?” he asked mid-yawn, looking for signs of their roommate as he scratched his side. He’d slept in his Sea Life polo shirt after the late-night shift.

  “Stayed with the cop last night.”

  “Girl’s in love.”

  “Yes, me thinks,” Amelia agreed.

  “So were you hatching this little plan in lieu of sleeping?” He walked toward the leather couch and collapsed.

  “Actually, no,” she said in a sober voice. “I sort of woke up with this wild hair up my ass.”

  Bryce made a contemplative face and nodded thoughtfully. “I appreciate wild hairs.” He rubbed his chin and turned toward her with a certain regard.

  “Offer on Mickey D’s still good?” His face relaxed into what she called his sleepy-time smile.

  “Canadian bacon,” she confirmed in a singsong voice. “Only the best, Brycie.”

  He held out a hand to shake. Instead she chuckled.

  “God, you really know how to hurt a guy,” he said, shuffling back to his bedroom.

  She dragged one of the kitchen chairs over to the aquarium, positioned it. She then retrieved the food from the fridge, climbed up in her coat, and lined it up along the edge. A few frozen chunks of brine shrimp, plankton, dropping in the pieces as they floated by like melting icebergs. Then she sprinkled in flakes of vegetable matter. The leather toadstool coral pulsed; reaching its fingers toward what it had just sensed was food.

  Earlier she’d considered slipping out alone but couldn’t imagine not having Bryce along for the adventure. It was like taking Alex in that Bryce was never judgmental and was most importantly, funny.

  He emerged wearing a gray rag-wool sweater half pulled down over his stomach, still with plaid pajama bottoms on. The blue Sea Life collar poked up beneath the crew neckline. His sandy-colored hair stuck up straight like in silent movies when an actor has a fright. Stepping into his snow boots, he grabbed his hooded down coat, phone, and slapped on his camo cap.

  “Mind if I don’t brush my teeth?” he asked.

  “Is it that much of an effort?” she said, making a face.

  He walked toward the front door, looking at the weather radar on his phone. “It’s coming toward us, Am.”

  “No, it’s not. ‘If you can’t look to the west and predict the weather for twenty-four hours you’ve got no right to be in a boat.’ Remember saying that, Brycie?”

  He turned the screen toward her, frowing, but she looked away, dropping more vegetable flakes into the aquarium.

  “We’re not in a boat, Brunhilda, we’re in a car.”

  “So what, we’ll outrun it.” She smirked in a way that let him know that she knew.

  “You call your bro?”

  “Too early,” she said, figuring she’d crash the party, see his reaction. The old “better to beg forgiveness than ask permission”—the operating principle of crossing into international waters without authorization. “I’ll call around eight. Already texted Jen we’ll be back around dinnertime.”

  She brushed her hands together over the aquarium, knocking off the remaining fish flakes and frozen bits of food before climbing down.

  “Can I drive?” Bryce asked and stepped into the hallway that always smelled like a chlorine swimming pool despite there not being one in the building.

  “I told you I would.” She pulled out keys from her coat pocket. “You just eat, sleep, and navigate—though not all at once.”

  “Whoever reaches the Jeep first, drives,” he said.

  She grabbed her messenger bag. The two of them raced toward the stairwell and down the stairs toward the street. They ran until they began to laugh but Bryce touched first.

  “So okay, you won,” she said. “Your legs are longer.”

  “Always making excuses,” he said as he brushed off a layer of snow.

  “I do want to drive.” She looked up at him. “You mind?”

  “’Course not.”

  Amelia climbed in to warm the engine and plugged the GPS into the cigarette lighter and entered the property’s legal address that TJ had let slip into the phone conversation.

  * * *

  After McDonald’s, they headed toward the interstate on-ramp exchange to I-35 W, heading north. As soon as she turned to follow the signs to Bayfield/Superior, Wisconsin, her stomach jumped.

  “I know this is weird, but…” she turned to him. “I have butterflies in my stomach.” She pressed through her coat. Bryce looked at her for a while and smiled.

  “Butterflies?” He stopped chewing the hash brown patty and offered it to her.

  “No thanks. Like I’m going to see my father after having been away for a long time,” she said. “I’m burning with curiosity but feel like I’m snooping.”

  “I feel it for you, Am,” he said, stretching and looking out at the scenery. “Does feel good to get the hell out of Dodge though. Was getting some serious cabin.”

  “It’s a creepy feeling,” she said. “Like I’ll bump into my father there, like he’s lived a secret life all the while I’ve been thinking he’s dead.”

  They looked at each other. His face was serious as she shrugged.

  “I hope TJ’ll meet us there,” she said, thinking he might be one of those people who were better in person than on the phone. “I know it’s short notice.”

  “That would be cool,” he said. “Did he say he would?”

  “Haven’t asked; will when I call.”

  “Thought you arranged it last night on the phone?”

  She felt her face get hot. “No.”

  “Meet your brother.”

  “Half brother,” she said, holding up her index finger to remind Bryce how she’d been corrected.

  “Eh—that’s just bullshit.”

  “It’s biology.”

  They were quiet, watching as the shorter trees turned into forests.

  “Why did TJ know about me all these years?”

  He looked at her and rested his arm on the top of her seat around her shoulder.

  For some reason it made her eyes tear.

  “Don’t know, Ammy.”

  “Strange, eh?” She smiled.

  “Not really,” he said. “It’s strange because it’s your father.”

  She wiped the corners of her eyes with one of her thumbs tucked into the cuff of her parka sleeve. “I want to smell the air, look at the land, and figure out what drew him, why he left that woman and abandoned his son.”

  Bryce shrugged. “Hey, some of us wished our fathers would have abandoned us.”

  It made her laugh.

  “But seriously?” Her voice became soft. “I just hope TJ doesn’t hate me.”

  Bryce turned to face her full-on.

  She turned and shrugged as if it might be true.

  “No one hates you, Am, no one.”

  She raised her eyebrows as a challenge. “I’d hate me if I was him.”

  She felt him look at her. They sat in silence for a few moments as if he was trying to decide whether to speak.

  “He dumped them for Penelope and me.” She felt her throat constrict.

  “He didn’t say that,” Bryce said.

  “Didn’t need to.”

  “Venturing down the road of conjecture is dangerous territory, you know that, Amelia.”

  “Talk about a shitty thing to do,” she said, not hearing him. “Really shitty. I mean, think about it, Bryce.”

  “You don’t know what happened.”

  They sat quietly for a while.


  “All I know is that TJ grew up without a father and I didn’t.”

  “I just don’t want to see you get disappointed.”

  “I’m already disappointed.” She pushed back stray hairs that had slipped out of the hairclip.

  “I mean disappointed that you won’t find answers.”

  “I mean it was my dad, Bryce.” She turned to look at him. “Abandons his son—”

  “If that’s what he did,” Bryce qualified. “Maybe the woman kicked his ass and all his shit out.”

  He made her laugh.

  “Marries two women.” She glanced at him, nodding. “That part’s true. Granted, the man was distant, sort of elsewhere all the time.”

  “Wasn’t that everyone’s father?”

  She hadn’t once thought she wouldn’t find answers but now she wondered. In marine science there are always answers. Unanswered questions are answers in science. Mysteries like bioluminescence, biofluorescence, or the discovery of previously unknown creatures inhabiting the strange underground riverlike flows beneath the ice in Antarctica were yet to be understood, loaded with unanswered questions that would someday be known.

  Not so with the human heart. It remained a minefield of secrets and fears that if one trickle of truth escapes it might cause a flood in which everyone drowns. Or that life is so fragile it can only continue on through lies of omission. Like her father going out to make phone calls with nobody noticing but her.

  “Don’t think there’s much danger of us turning into the Waltons,” she said.

  She felt him look away.

  “You never know,” Bryce said. “There’ve been stranger things.”

  They sat without talking until the falling snow became heavy enough to break the spell of private thoughts.

  “Just flurries.” She held up her hand, waving like it was no big deal.

  “You’re so full of shit,” Bryce said as Amelia smirked. He was checking the radar again and he made a face as he turned the phone’s radar toward her. She looked away.

  As luck would have it, the winter storm warning had expanded to include the entire northern Minnesota/Wisconsin area up to Lake Superior.

  “Driving back might be a bitch.”

  Bryce looked back. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  * * *

  It was finally 8 a.m. and Amelia called TJ, hoping he’d pick up but got his voice mail instead.

  “Hi, TJ, it’s uh, Amelia. Today’s Monday. Bryce and I thought we’d get an early start and take a drive up on our day off. I know it’s sort of a spur of the moment thing but I’m hoping we can connect. Maybe meet at the land and have lunch or something after. I’ve got the GPS address from our conversation last night and we’re about an hour away from Duluth. Give me a call when you get this message, looking forward to seeing you soon.”

  He didn’t call back. As traffic slowed down and they were delayed, Amelia gave another call.

  Two hours later she tried again. “Hi, TJ, it’s Amelia again. We’re sort of slogging along in the storm, it’s taking us far longer than we thought but I was hoping to hear from you. Maybe we can connect later today. Give me a call, and let me know if that’s going to work.”

  All she had to do was to sign off on the papers and never have to see him again. Maybe he’d meant it. Maybe that’s what he wanted. She hoped not.

  Snowflakes swirled across the road in patterns that played tricks on her eyes. The sky darkened to navy blue. Can’t make somebody want to know you, can’t make somebody want to love you either.

  25

  Snow was falling in white sheets as Bryce dozed with a full McDonald’s belly. Amelia slowed down as road conditions worsened and he woke up with the change in speed.

  “Everything okay?” He sat up, rubbing his eyes and blinking as he looked around. “Holy cow, how’d all of this happen?” Neither had ever seen such accumulation before.

  “So what do you think?” she admitted defeat with a gentle voice, still unsettled by her own emotions. “Turn around, go back before we get stranded?”

  “Nah. Point of no return, Am, point of no return.” He tapped the screen of the GPS with his finger. His voice was light. “Once we get to Duluth it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to Bayfield.”

  She wasn’t so sure. Amelia had seen lake-effect snow once before while visiting a friend up in Buffalo, but this was different.

  “Bet ya dinner it’s falling three inches an hour,” she said.

  “Oh, so now you’re Ms. Caution, are you?”

  She tapped his arm and laughed in a conciliatory way.

  “Hear from the bro yet?” Bryce asked.

  She glanced at her phone on the dashboard, wondering about reception in the storm.

  “Maybe he’s out of town.” Or maybe he wants nothing to do with me. TJ hadn’t mentioned being away; maybe he was out in the field.

  The sky closed around them like a dome. Everything darkened and though it was early morning, it looked like dusk. Snow clouds hushed down in steel-gray puffs, enveloping the tops of trees almost midway toward the bottom of their trunks. The road narrowed to one lane, closed in by walls of white.

  Amelia was glued to the red taillights of the car ahead; her shoulders cement as she gripped the wheel. They slowed to 30 mph, then 25. It seemed they were the only two cars on the road.

  “You okay driving?” Bryce asked.

  She glanced at her watch but didn’t answer. It was taking far longer than the three hours, seventeen minutes the GPS had indicated.

  The wheels were floating and it felt like the Jeep was bucking to slide into the oncoming lane without notice. There was no center guardrail to block such movement.

  The car she’d been following put on its blinker and exited.

  “Shit,” she murmured. Whether at its destination or giving up, it left them on the road alone. Snowflakes had knitted together a tunnel, accentuating the narrowing of the road.

  Amelia looked at her watch again.

  “I can take it from Duluth,” he suggested.

  “I won’t fight you,” she said, and rolled her shoulders to try and relax.

  The windshield began to fog. Ice inched up on the outside, invading her line of sight despite the defroster working at full bore.

  “Pull over and I’ll scrape,” Bryce suggested.

  She wanted to but ahead she spotted a new line of dim taillights following what appeared to be a snowplow.

  “I don’t want to lose sight of them.” She gestured, fearing whiteout conditions. There was no place to pull over. They’d already passed stranded vehicles.

  “Damn,” she said. “You’re right about having planned this better,” she admitted.

  “Hey—what’s life without a little excitement,” he said and play-punched her shoulder. “Can you reach the scraper?”

  She felt his eyes on her.

  “Thanks.”

  Amelia reached under the seat and felt the familiar plastic handle and handed it over.

  “Allow me.” Bryce rolled down the window, hoisted himself out, and scraped as far as he could reach. Snowflakes covered the sides of his hair and the top of the camo cap as he sat back down.

  “Your turn.” He handed it over and took the wheel; his foot nudged hers off the gas pedal.

  Amelia rolled down the window, stood and did the same, feeling the wheels sliding.

  * * *

  The streetlights had clicked on like it was night just as they reached the Duluth city limits before noon.

  “Pull in there.” Bryce pointed to the first gas station/convenience store.

  Once parked, the Jeep’s doors wouldn’t open.

  She shouldered the door.

  “We’re frozen in,” Bryce said and then laughed. “This is like that drive through New Brunswick.”

  It took several more shoulder butts before Bryce’s side gave. Amelia then climbed over the gearshift and out. Then he opened the driver’s side. The entire exterior was iced over, with clumps of fr
ozen snow jammed up into the wheel wells and under the wipers.

  Amelia stood and stretched.

  “That was rather harrowing,” Bryce admitted and again scraped off the windows. He grabbed the last bottle of pink de-icer from a wooden pallet and headed inside the store.

  The store’s warmth felt good. Amelia dug her fingers into her neck muscles.

  “Hi.” She walked up to the attendant.

  “You guys in from the Cities?”

  “Yep, on thirty-five.” Bryce set the pink jug of de-icer on the counter.

  “Some storm, eh? Coupla fellas just came in. Whiteout conditions going west,” the young man said, looking out the window at the Jeep. “Lucky you—got the last gallon of that, probably walk outta here and sell it for a cool fifty.” The attendant chuckled. “More’s comin’ tomorrow. Any gas?” The clerk held his fingers just above the register keys.

  “Just this and two coffees,” Bryce said.

  “We’re headed for Bayfield,” Amelia said. “Know anything about the roads?”

  The attendant pointed at the TV monitor in the upper corner of the ceiling, indicating a large and expanding splash of royal blue fingers moving northeast.

  “Worst is on your tail,” the attendant said. “But them little coastal towns along the lake’ll get hammered in no time.” He looked up at a clock embedded into a neon Point Beer sign and leaned on the counter as if telling her in confidence. “Storm just closed down the Cities. Airport, buses, MOA.”

  “MOA?” she asked.

  “Mall of America.”

  “Ha.” Amelia laughed, thinking of Jen and turned to Bryce as he approached the register. Her cheeks glowed with warmth. Something about the closure was deeply satisfying.

  “Storm closed down the mall.” Amelia grabbed his arm and shook it. “No buses, airport’s closed.”

  His eyes widened. “Really.” They both smiled a secret, greedy smile and looked at each other. “Would’ve made for a quiet day at home.”

  “Think Jen’s stranded?”

  He shrugged. “Bet she will be if the cop is.”

  “If she’s lucky they’ll get stuck in Macy’s,” she said. “Just imagine the two of them snuggled up in those poufy, cozy-looking Ralph Lauren down comforter display beds they have in the front window.”

  They both chuckled, imagining Jen. “Bet she’d be like the princess and the pea, though,” Bryce said. “That girl’s happiest sleeping out on a rickety boat dock somewhere in the South Pacific.”