Parts Per Million

by Julia Stoops

  There’s movement behind him, then, “There you are, Jacob,” says Fetzer. “You need to quit wandering off like that.” Fetzer scoops them up without breaking his stride.

  It’s not till they’re in the car and Fetzer is pulling out of the parking space that Nelson asks, “Find anything?”

  “Not sure,” says Jen. “I got this.” She tugs a wad of folded papers from her back pocket. “The file on his screen? I sent it to print. Plus there was this note in the middle drawer of his desk.”

  It’s small. In pencil. On Harry Lane University note pad paper.

  “You took the note?”

  “No,” says Jen. “I made a hologram of it which I am now holding in my hand.”

  Fetzer’s shaking his head. “A note he keeps in a drawer? He’s going to miss it for sure.”

  “There were other notes in there that looked the same. Sheesh, it’s not like I took them all.” Then Jen pats her hip and goes, “Wait, I did take them all!”

  Nelson’s heart does a flip. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Jen digs around, elbows him in the ribs, pulls out Deirdre’s phone. “You forgot this, darlin’.”

  “Me phone!” Deirdre’s hand reaches from the back seat, but Jen snatches the phone away.

  “I need to keep it till I download the photos. I only grabbed this one ’cause it’s so faint I thought the camera wouldn’t pick up the writing.”

  Nelson leans his head back until it’s resting on the firm leather of the seat. He lets out a moan that turns into a laugh.

  Fetzer smirks and shakes his head. “Well, what’s on the note?”

  “It’s just numbers. By the way, Sylvia called for you, like, twice.”

  “And what’s the printout?” says Fetzer.

  “Numbers, too.”

  “Me? What did she say?” asks Deirdre.

  Jen shrugs. “I didn’t answer.”

  Nelson would like to take the rest of the day off. Except it’s only ten a.m. He gazes sideways at the printout in Jen’s hand. “Looks like the department budget.”

  “What a waste,” says Jen. “Wish he was drafting something resignable. Like a dirty email to a teenage boy.”

  “You keep looking at that one,” says Deirdre.

  “It keeps pulling me back,” says Sylvia. Nelson glances up. They’re talking about the one of him on the sidewalk. Everyone says it’s so great, but it makes him look young. Looking young has plagued him his whole life.

  Sylvia winks at Nelson, then turns back to the photos. The ice clinks in her glass. “None of me, darling?”

  Nelson returns to the budget. Something about it. And something about the note. All the notes, which have been downloaded from Dee’s phone and printed out, the handwriting a little fuzzy, but readable. Columns of numbers, often the same numbers over and over again, in different order.

  “Course there’s some of you,” says Deirdre, “Here. From when you came to dinner.”

  Sylvia makes a tiny startled sound. “When did you take those?”

  “You and Fetzer got into that conversation about hydrogen cells and I snuck me camera out.”

  Nelson knows the ones she means. Four photos of Sylvia on the brown velvet kitchen sofa. Legs crossed. Arm along the back. Arm off the back, gesturing. Twisting around to say something to Jen, who’s out of the shot. She looks regal.

  He envies Sylvia, sometimes, her relentless confidence.

  Sylvia and Deirdre giggle. The air smells of lemon and gin, and Nelson reaches for his glass. It’s like a spot of snow in a field of heat.

  It was nice of Sylvia to bring the gin. And the bucket of ice. And the tonic and the lemons. The gin is some hand-made kind he’d never heard of and is apparently expensive. Deirdre was impressed enough for both of them. He takes a sip of the bitter, complex fluid, then sets the drink back on the desk. The desk is from Sylvia, too, along with the queen bed. Which is so comfortable after the camp cot it’s become even harder to disentwine himself from Deirdre each morning.

  Now they’re looking at the one of Nelson with his apron on, at the stove. Like that first morning when he made her eggs.

  Sylvia bumps Deirdre with her hip, and makes a hollow sound laughing into her glass. “How can you stand being so fucking happy?” Then, “Girl, I shouldn’t get you drunk. You need to work.”

  “Don’t be worrying about that,” says Deirdre. “The prints come out better after a few.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  But it’s true. Somehow it all just flows. But she does get forgetful. Like when they got back from St. Johns the other day, and he found her door unlocked. Anxious, he let himself in, and when he went down to the end and around the corner, he was relieved to hear her humming behind her bathroom door. He knocked, because it’s important not to open the door while she’s exposing paper. But he had to pound on the door before the humming stopped. The door creaked open, and there she was: her happy face, a pair of tongs in one hand, the other hand pulling off headphones, the wires tangling in her hair. He squeezed her so tight she yelped. Then the boozy smell hit him.

  “It’s good to be home,” he murmured into her ear. In the bath, prints turned gently in the water dribbling from the tap. She hung off his neck and hummed.

  “You’re drunk off your ass!” he said, and held her at arms length. It was funny, with her big smile and sleepy eyes, her chin tipped back on a lazy neck.

  “I’m printing,” she said, and laughed like she’d played a practical joke. She turned in his arms and pointed the tongs at prints hanging from the wire. “Picture of you. Picture of you. Picture of—”

  He wrapped his arms across her belly, sank his nose into her hair. “Please don’t leave your door unlocked.” They shuffled out of the bathroom. On their way over to the bed, the tongs clattered onto the floor.

  “So tell me.” Sylvia’s tanned shoulder nudges Deirdre away from the wall of photos. “What’s your secret?”

  “To printing?”

  Sylvia bumps Deirdre again. “To being so in luuurve.”

  Nelson doesn’t say, My girlfriend is incredibly hot. Because that is not the only reason why he loves her.

  He wants to have a child with her.

  Through the windows the afternoon sky is a still, empty blue. Smiling, Dee and Sylvia land on either end of the pale green sofa.

  Deirdre raises her drink. “‘Live today, forget the cares of the past.’ Epicurus.”

  “How very wise. But really, what about the, you know—” Sylvia glances at Nelson, then waves her free hand up and down her front.

  Heat flushes up Nelson’s neck. Is that meant to be a sexual gesture? He says to the budget, “I am in the room, you know.”

  Sylvia leans forward and whispers to Deirdre, loud enough that Nelson can hear, “The ties, girl. The shirts from Sears. I mean, come on,” and Deirdre says, “Stop it,” but she’s smiling. Avoiding his eye.

  “I should go next door,” says Nelson. He stands, shuffles the pages of the budget together, picks up his drink. But Deirdre is already at his side.

  “Don’t go,” she murmurs. She’s really buzzed. One of her small hands is on his back, the other grazes up his front. He has a hard-on already.

  Sylvia watches. She slips her feet out of her pointy sandals, lifts her long legs up to the sofa cushions and stretches out.

  “I don’t care what he wears,” says Deirdre. “He has the most beautiful face.”

  Nelson mutters, “I should go next door.”

  Sylvia rolls the ice around in the bottom of her glass.

  “Never judge a book,” says Deirdre. Her mouth is close. If Sylvia wasn’t here he’d pick her up and throw her on bed right now.

  “Evidently,” says Sylvia. She tips up her drink, and he can hear the ice hit her teeth.

  Deirdre touches a button on his shirt. “It makes him more fun to unbutton.”

  “Haaaaa?” says Nelson. He steps backward.

  Sylvia’s lips twitch. “Go, girl.”

/>   “I’ll leave you two to it,” he says, and he gathers up the papers. It’s important that Dee has a friend. He should give them some girl time.

  “What about you?” says Dee, as she heads back to the sofa. “Is there an important man in your life?”

  As Nelson’s stepping out, Sylvia says, “Is there such a thing?”

  He closes the door and stands at the top of the stairs. The sun is intense. He’s forgotten his drink. He slides down the door till he’s sitting on his heels over the hot metal grating. He’s going to have to take a cold shower. The budget. He’s forgotten the budget! No, it’s here, in his hand.

  Christ.

  He looks at the phone camera prints. On every one of Reynolds’s notes, the column of numbers adds up to five hundred thousand.

  34: FETZER

  A big peace rally happened the same day as our September show. The new phenomenon of regular protests was exciting in concept, but the rally itself turned out dull. A permitted march, long on rhetoric and short on drumming. We had raced downtown after the show and joined the edge of the crowd overflowing the bottom of the South Park blocks. Again thousands of people. Again, no black faces. Almost no people of color at all. Then we marched to the plaza in front of the Federal Building and stood and listened to too many speakers. And did they use our hard-won Saturday attention to focus on the imminent danger to Iraqis and our kids in uniform? No, it was Palestine this and striking dock workers that.

  Soon I was itching to stop the talk and get on with the walk. Now I don’t dance, but there was something about that loud and tight syncopated drum band during the August Bush protest that had got my feet moving and my hands clapping. Limbic, I know, but we spent so much time in the other parts of our brains, ferreting out details and building arguments—none of which seemed to be doing much to stem the tide of corruption and destruction—that a good loud yellfest made me hopeful. Like, if you dumbasses won’t listen to reason, you’ll listen to this.

  Another damper on the rally that day, at least for me, was worrying about Nelson. He spent the whole time quiet and droopy-eyed, and probably tormented with conflict. Earlier we’d been sitting in the studio at the start of the show, our headphones on and our stack of readers in front of us, waiting for the opening music. I asked Nelson if Dee would join us later at the rally. She was taking time off work to make prints for her show, and I figured she might want a break.

  “You kidding?” Jen interrupted through the studio speaker. “She’s too busy getting shitfaced in her bathroom.”

  Nelson said, “Christ, Jen. That’s unfair.”

  Silence. Two days of stubbly growth rasped under my hand.

  “You don’t understand the pressure she’s under,” said Nelson. He glared at me even though I wasn’t the one saying anything. “It’s nerve-racking to put your heart and soul out on display.”

  I spread my hands at the studio, at the mics that in a few minutes would send our small voices of embattled conviction out across the airwaves.

  “This is different,” said Nelson. “Art’s more personal.”

  In the engineer’s booth Jen was shaking her head.

  “Anyway, she’s Irish.” Nelson made like he was checking to see if his notes were in the right order. “It’s her culture.” He adjusted his headphones, and in a few seconds we were on air.

  Then it turned out to be a mistake to let Nelson drive us to the rally. He seemed fine during the show, but as we were heading over the Morrison Bridge and I was checking out a tugboat on the river, a long honk jolted me out of my reverie, and we were all tossed sideways.

  “What the fuck?” yelled Jen. My heart was banging.

  Nelson just blinked and gripped the wheel tight. “Oh god, oh god, I’m sorry.”

  “Pull over,” I said, and at the bottom of the bridge Nelson pulled into a loading zone. He rested his head on the steering wheel. “I’m so sorry.” He looked down at his shaking hands, then climbed out and walked a few paces from the car.

  “You didn’t see it?” said Jen.

  “I was watching a tug. I thought he was just changing lanes.”

  Jen pressed her palms to her forehead. “Dude, you’re a fucking back-seat driver when we don’t need it, then you’re out to lunch when Romeo takes a fucking nap at forty miles an hour.”

  My heart was slowing. “Redirect your anger, Jen.”

  I should have told Nelson and Dee to pack their bags and not come back till they’d figured out whatever the hell it was they needed to figure out. But you don’t do that, do you? You go with the flow, even though part of you suspects that what you’re doing isn’t all that effective—like walking around downtown Portland on a Saturday chanting slogans at empty office buildings—but you keep doing it, because you can’t think of an alternative, and it isn’t till later that you see things as clearly as you should.

  35: JEN

  “Quit standing up for him.” I say. “He’s being an asshole and you know it.”

  Fetzer stares at the empty white square in the newsletter layout and sighs. The locks click in the door and we both look up as Nerdonkulus steps in.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” I say.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I got waylaid. How’s it going, anyway?”

  Waylaid my ass. Give the guy a new bed and he can’t find his way out of it. And he has the audacity to smile. And for crying out loud he smells like sex.

  “Take a shower,” I say. To think we used to call this guy Mr. Clean.

  He tries to hand-comb his hair down. “Really? Um. Okay. Apologies.” He spots the white rectangle in the layout. “You doing the newsletter?”

  I fold my arms. “No. Needlework.”

  “Oh.” He clears his throat. “It’s Thursday already, huh.”

  Fetzer points at the empty square. “This space? It’s waiting for your follow-up on Yucca Mountain.”

  “Ohhh,” says Nelson and he nods like he has a clue. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Fetzer flicks a hand at the screen. “I wasn’t offering you a gift, I’m saying it’s not in your goddamn drafts folder.”

  Nelson rubs his jaw like he’s thinking. “It must have slipped my mind.”

  “Well, I resent that,” I say.

  Nelson’s don’t-shoot hands go up. “Whoa. I’m sorry it’s late but I’ll do it. Please, calm down.”

  “Calm down?” My chair spins off behind me. “Calm fucking down?”

  Nelson backs away. Fetzer’s hand is making a print on my T-shirt.

  “We can put in a ‘best of,’” says Fetzer. “Let’s just get it out on time, okay? Then focus on the elections.”

  “Look,” says Nelson. “I’m really sorry.” One paw reaches onto my arm. I want to slap his hand away, but nobody ever touches me and those big eyes have me caught.

  “It was undeniably inconsiderate of me,” Nelson says. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You need to check this out, too,” says Fetzer.

  With his other hand Nelson takes the printout from Fetzer. It’s the new memo I dug up from Reynolds to the president of Harry Lane U, showing a budget for the VIRAS project that doesn’t match the proposal. Nelson’s hand slips from my arm, leaves a cooling patch.

  “Off by half a million,” says Nelson.

  “Yup,” says Fetzer.

  Nelson says, “That guy I heard at the die-in, he seemed sure it was four and a half. And he didn’t sound like a student.”

  “And you never saw him?” I ask.

  Nelson shakes his head. “No. I was intent on getting Dee out of that mob, so—” He looks at the printouts again. “Sorry. Christ, I’m fucking up all over the place.”

  Now that made me blink. He swears, like, once a year.

  Fetzer says, “Yes, you are. Please stop.”

  “Dude,” I say. “All we need is for you to focus.”

  Eyes down, Nelson nods.

  I say, “Plus we’ve got that Science and Sustainability conference coming up next weekend.”
r />   Fetzer whacks his forehead. “Shit. Yeah. San Francisco.” He looks at Nelson. “You’re doing that talk you proposed, right?”

  Nelson winces. “Yeah.”

  Fetzer rolls his eyes and pulls out the cell. “Hope Franky can stay,” he says, and hits the Franky speed-dial.

  I say, “It’s barely more than a week. Are you ready?”

  Nelson smooths his shirt against his chest.

  “I’ve been working on it. And again, sorry,” he says. Then he turns up the basement stairs.

  Fuck, I’m tired. The chair rolls a little when I sit on it. Fetzer wraps up with Franky, and I check out the conference website.

  “Did you know he’s one of the highlighted speakers at the conference? They’re putting him in the main hall.”

  Fetzer stares. “What?”

  “Guess that would be a no. He didn’t say anything to you about them arranging a hotel or anything?”

  Fetzer snorts out a laugh and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Nelson, Nelson, Nelson.”

  36: FETZER

  Dee pulled a small tantrum the night before we left for San Francisco. Why did we have to go away so often? Didn’t we know she needed Nelson’s support more than ever? Her show was approaching and she was freaking out, couldn’t we tell? Plus she needed help getting the framing supplies: how was she going to get the framing supplies in time?

  Drama number one.

  Luckily Franky was there to put an arm around her in his brotherly way, and offer to help. She wiped her eyes. Her bitten nails were nail-polish red, courtesy of Sylvia’s latest visit.

  Then if that wasn’t enough, the next morning when I got up in the dark I found Jen asleep on the kitchen sofa.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  She groaned and turned her back to me. “Those two. All goddamn night long.”

  “You can hear them?”

  “Ugh. Can’t you?”

  “No.” Then I realized: Jen’s room shared a wall with Deirdre’s place. “Why don’t you say something?”

  Jen rolled on to her back and sighed. “After the first time, it seemed like too late.”