Parts Per Million

by Julia Stoops

  Poor Jen. She made no effort to get close to people, but I knew she was lonely. I sat on the arm of the sofa. “Just ask them to move the bed.”

  “And admit I’ve been hearing them for weeks?”

  Dee and Nelson’s footsteps crunched outside on the gravel, and we watched them make their way past the front of the house in the dawn light. Jen whipped her blanket into a ball, grabbed her pillow, and trotted up the main stairs.

  We were heading south past Salem with Jen driving when Nelson pulled out a fat envelope.

  “Found this this morning,” he said, and held it up. It was rumpled and unopened, and bore the logo of the Science and Sustainability conference.

  “I thought you got that weeks ago,” I said.

  “I lost it for a while. During my ‘delinquency.’”

  To his credit, during the days after the talking-to he’d pulled himself together, and Jen and I were glad to have the old Nelson back. He’d gotten caught up on site updates, finished his presentation on carbon sequestration, and even practiced it on us.

  Nelson unfolded the contents of the envelope and scanned each insert before handing it to me. Glossy pamphlet. List of nearby hotels, which was irrelevant since they’d already reserved us rooms. Then he paused on the calendar of events.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” said Jen.

  Nelson’s eyes bulged at the calendar. “Oh my god.”

  “What?” I said and grabbed the damn thing.

  And the presentation to be delivered by John Nelson of Omnia Mundi Media Group at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday? “Big Food: A Crisis of Democracy.”

  Drama number two.

  “How the hell did this happen?” I said, then to Jen, “He prepped the wrong talk.”

  Nelson shoved his hands in his hair. “I submitted two ideas. I thought they liked the other one. I mean, I don’t remember. If I got back to them. I have nothing.”

  Jen snorted.

  “Turn around!” yelled Nelson.

  Jen lifted a demonstrating hand. “Freeway, dude.”

  “Get off! Turn back! I need to get—” Nelson bounced like he was sitting on coals. “I need to prepare a different talk.”

  “Calm down,” I said. “Just tell them you’ve changed the topic.”

  “Can’t,” said Nelson. He snatched back the glossy pamphlet and held it open. “The whole conference is about food.”

  And indeed, the theme that year was Feeding the World: Food Security and Sustainability. His in-depth survey of the latest innovations in CO2 capture, transportation, and storage wasn’t going to cut it.

  “Turn back,” said Nelson, with enough force that Jen veered us off an exit.

  “There’s this other thing I’ve been working on. I started in the spring. It was going to be an essay. Maybe a book. It’s good. Good material. Lots of data. I need that data.”

  Jen drove into an empty lot and stopped. Turned off the car. It had started to rain.

  Nelson breathed in deep. “I can do it. If I get the material, I can pull it together.”

  Jen reached around for a laptop and the Ear. “Can’t we just grab it remotely?”

  “Some of it’s hard copy,” said Nelson. “Plus clips on CDs. Never made it onto a hard drive.”

  He turned to us with those hangdog eyes. “We’ll miss the reception. Sorry.”

  And who can yell at something with eyes that big?

  “No sweat,” said Jen. “I hate those things, anyway.”

  “You need to network,” I said to Nelson. “You should fly down. We’ll join you later.”

  Nelson chewed his lip. “We’ve been hitting Franky up for a lot lately. A last-minute fare’s going to be spendy.”

  “We’ll make it up to him,” I said. “Now let’s get you home.”

  I should’ve remembered that dramas come in threes.

  “Is that Sylvia’s car?” said Jen as we passed a gray Audi TT on Thirteenth. “Why’s it parked there?”

  From the back seat came only the steady tap of Nelson typing. I got a vague sinking feeling, but all my conscious brain came up with was the question: why would she park two blocks away when it’s raining?

  Music thumped from the house. Acting deaf, Nelson made a beeline for a filing cabinet in the basement. Up in the kitchen Franky was hopping around playing air guitar. He saw me and Jen and scrambled his way to the boom box to turn it off.

  “Heyyyyy,” he said. “Back so soon, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “Everything okay?” He pulled his sweatshirt straight and combed his fingers through his hair.

  “Nelson forgot something important.”

  Franky nodded. “Okay.”

  The door closed downstairs, and I could see Nelson walk past the front of the house on his way to Deirdre’s.

  “Is Sylvia around?” said Jen.

  Franky’s eyebrows went up. “No?” Like it was a strange notion.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I was relieved that it wasn’t Sylvia’s car after all, and my most pressing problem was how to ask Franky for more money. I started telling him what had happened, but Franky, ever gracious, made the offer before I even finished.

  “You’re the bomb, Frank,” said Jen. “I’ll book his ticket.”

  There was muffled shouting outside. Nelson’s voice, and Deirdre’s. I headed for the living room window in time to see Sylvia, her head down against the drizzle and pulling on a long shiny raincoat while she walked pretty much as fast as a person can without breaking into a run.

  “How could you, how could you,” Nelson yelled, and he and Dee came into sight. Deirdre crying, yelling something incomprehensible back. The two of them screaming, circling each other like moths. Deirdre in her robe, pulling it tight around her. Nelson yelling, “How long has this been going on? Huh? How long?” Deirdre shaking her head and crying.

  Drama number three, and my heart was on the floor between my feet.

  “Forget the ticket,” I said. “He’s coming with us.”

  Jen gathered the folders and CDs Nelson had pulled from the filing cabinet. I had the happy task of getting the soap opera off the street and into the kitchen, where I gave it cups of tea and Franky brought down towels because it was pretty soaked.

  “I tried to stop it,” Dee wailed. Her rain-flattened hair made her look gaunt, reminding me of the night she arrived. “She won’t take no.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Nelson kept saying in a voice that didn’t sound like him: sharp and barking. He wouldn’t look at Deirdre. “Can’t believe it.”

  At some point Jen came up from the basement. “Um,” she said from the top of the stairs. “I updated iDVD on the Mac laptop. In case you want to make something interactive.”

  Nelson closed his eyes and muttered, “Oh god.”

  “There were some, um, video clips. And good graphs. I’ll help you put it together.”

  Nelson said, “Yeah, uh, the corn surplus one.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jen stepped a foot closer, like she wasn’t sure if it was safe. “And a gnarly sequence on Kraft Foods, and another one about Percy Schmeiser.”

  “Yeah. That’s a good one.” Nelson set aside the towel and stood up. “I need to change. Franky, did they mention me needing to fly down?’

  “You’re driving with us,” I said.

  “The reception,” said Nelson.

  “You’re driving with us.”

  “The reception’s fluff,” said Jen. “We’re going to help you make a kick-ass presentation.”

  New shirt, new tie, and he’d traded his tan corduroy jacket for his only suit, but he still looked like a chemistry professor who’d stumbled out of an exploded lab. We bundled him into the back seat with his files and a laptop and a hunk of carrot cake the size of half a brick. Deirdre stayed inside and cried.

  Jen leaned into the back. “We’ve got the Ear, okay? Any time you need to log on, just let me know. And I brought the printer.” She plugged it in to the door panel. “Pape
r’s low, so we might need to stop at an office supply store.”

  Nelson stared at the foil-wrapped lump of cake on his lap like it was somebody’s ashes. “Okay.”

  “Here.” Franky handed him a thermos through the window. “Earl Grey.”

  “You going to be able to handle things?” I asked Franky.

  Franky nodded. “It’ll be okay.”

  I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Glad you’re here.”

  Franky said, “Me too.” Jen started up, Franky whacked the roof, and we were off.

  Once we were on the freeway, Jen said, “Um. If you need to edit any of those clips? There’s iMovie 2 on there too.”

  I turned around at the silence. Nelson was still holding the brick of cake on his knee.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

  “Yeah you can. You were all over it before.”

  “It’s not developed. Big holes. We should call and cancel.”

  “No way,” said Jen. “I saw what you had. It was like, a ton.”

  “I’ll just make a fool of myself,” said Nelson. “Of Omnia Mundi. It’s better if we cancel. Say I’m sick or something.”

  “Lie?” I said. “Since when do you lie? The John Nelson I know isn’t a coward.”

  His mouth bent into a wavy line and he gazed out the window. “Christ,” he whispered. His irises flickered, catching the city as it rushed past. “This is all my fault.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I shouldn’t leave her like this.”

  A worried glance from Jen.

  “You can’t—” said Nelson, and he gestured at the river. “You can’t be in a relationship and just take off whenever you like.”

  “Yeah, you can,” I said. “People do it all the time.”

  Nelson squeezed the cake. “But it’s not. It’s not good for us. She needs. She—we need to be together. Stability, you know?”

  Jen merged onto I-5 for the second time that morning. Eleven hours to go. It was going to be a very long day.

  “What if she leaves?” said Nelson. “God, she might just leave. Leave!”

  Spray from a semi-trailer coated the windshield, and Jen flicked the wipers on high.

  I said, “She’s not going to leave.”

  “How do you know? She might be packing. Sylvia could be helping. Franky could be taking her enlarger out, right now.”

  I held the phone over the back of the seat. “Why don’t you check?”

  “Nelson?” said Jen. “You’re giving this talk. There’s nothing else to do. So get it together, will you?”

  Nelson took the phone. He hit the speed dial. Hung up. Stared out the window. We were approaching Tigard and the specter of Nelson canceling, or worse, delivering a crappy lecture was beginning to take on a more solid form. I reached over and grabbed the phone.

  It was seven rings before Franky answered.

  “Hey,” he said, out of breath. Like he’d been carrying an enlarger down the stairs.

  “Hey. So. How are things?”

  “Oh. You know. Pretty upset.”

  “Yeah. What’s she doing?”

  “Well, she stopped crying.”

  “Okay. Any evidence of her packing up and leaving?”

  “Huh? No way. She’s lying on the sofa and holding a photo of Nelson. I was just upstairs getting her a blanket. She was really hoping Nelson would call.”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  Nelson’s eyes were swimmy. He reached for the phone and I turned on the radio to cover the next five minutes of mumbling and sniffing. When the phone reappeared at my shoulder, I took it and turned the radio down.

  “So?” I said.

  Nelson had his hands on his knees and a spelling-bee stare. “Franky offered to fly her down.”

  A “no fucking way” glance from Jen.

  Nelson said, “Which would be really great.”

  The specter of Nelson giving an exceedingly crappy talk loomed large.

  “Actually,” I said, “That wouldn’t be—”

  “But I said no. I need to concentrate. And she was okay with that. I mean, I think she was. It’s hard to tell, I guess. I thought she was okay about everything before, but I wasn’t seeing the signs. I have to be more attentive. Relationships take work. Neglect can—”

  I said, “Big Food: A Crisis of Democracy.”

  Nelson drummed his fingers on his knees. “Yeah. Subsidized overproduction. Ten billion bushels of industrial corn a year. Food corporations hijacking the political agenda. It’s good stuff.”

  “It’s excellent,” I said, and the specter of a crappy talk faded.

  “Do you think it’s okay that I told her no?”

  “It’s fucking perfect. Now here’s Woodburn already, so will you open the goddamn laptop and get to work?”

  37: JEN

  The driver’s door opens and Fetzer drops his ass into the seat beside me. “Is this blowing your mind or what?” He slams the door and the Ear wobbles.

  “Careful!” I say, but the reception only dips for a second.

  The parking lot is distorted through the rainy windshield. We’re in some lame small-town “center” with a print place and a café. Fetzer wipes his hands over his wet head, the sound raspy against the backdrop gurgle of drains and gutters and the rain on the roof of the car.

  “I found this picture of the earth,” I say, and shift the laptop so he can see.

  “Nice,” says Fetzer. He turns on the radio. Spins through crap. Turns it off. Sits back. “I mean. Ho-leee.”

  “Yeah. Huh.”

  Fetzer lifts his hands. “I never saw it coming.”

  “Hell no. Me neither.”

  “I mean, I saw something coming, but not this. Not”—he lifts his hands again—“Sylvia.”

  “Nope. Not Sylvia.” So I’ve got the earth, a feedlot, a seedling, some obese people. I need a better seedling.

  Fetzer says, “I mean, what the hell got into her?”

  “She belongs to the predator class,” I say. “What do you expect?”

  “I meant Deirdre.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Like how much sex can one not particularly robust person need?”

  Okay, Google, how about “new seedling”?

  “Any help Sylvia might have given us on Harry Lane is blown,” says Fetzer.

  I shrug. “She tells us shit we’d find out anyway. Saves us some time is all.”

  “And prepping the wrong fucking talk.”

  “Jeez, yeah.”

  Fetzer tips his head back and groans at the vinyl ceiling. “Holy. Freaking. Shit.”

  “That’s the exact phrase I was reaching for.” I turn the laptop and Fetzer looks at the bean seedling image out of the corner of his eye. “Uh-huh. Nice.”

  A peach-colored shape bobs in front of the car, that dumb umbrella. Why we have a peach-colored umbrella just hanging out in the car is anybody’s guess, but it comes in handy when the guy in the tie needs to stay dry.

  My door opens, and I scoot forward so Nelson can get in the back.

  Rain hammers the roof of the car. Slides down the windows. “It was four bucks and ten cents,” says Nelson. Calm. Like Deirdre never showed up and we’d gone through the last few months without her. Like he’d opened that envelope weeks ago and he’s just putting the final touches on the right talk.

  “I’m sweating already,” says Nelson. Fetzer and I pan the auditorium. There’s the murmur of small-talk and people are shuffling sideways past the folks who’ve already taken the aisle seats.

  As usual, everyone looks more grown up than me.

  “This place is huge,” I say.

  “John Nelson?” says a voice, and a tall East Indian guy in a gray suit a lot like Nelson’s steps up, shakes Nelson’s hand. “Peter Choudhury, conference coordinator. Good to meet you.”

  “Pleasure to be here,” says Nelson. Caffeine grin.

  Introductions all around, and polite talk about how I look taller than my bio phot
o. Implied: Fetzer looks shorter, ha ha.

  “Sorry we couldn’t make it to the reception last night,” says Nelson.

  “Last-minute schedule conflict,” says Fetzer.

  “Yes, it was a pity, but I hope you can make tonight’s,” says Peter. “There’s an environmental ethics professor from Spain who wants to meet you, and several other people you should connect with. You have any AV requirements?”

  I hold up the laptop bag. “This has to project. I’ve got a 13-pin and a 15-pin VGA cable and a line amplifier. Hope your projector’s native rez is at least ten-twenty-four by—”

  “You need to talk to Spike, down there in the black shirt?”

  Spike is way down there on the stage, crouching at the base of the podium and dealing with something that’s probably wiring. On the other side of the stage is a video camera on a tripod. Good, because I forgot ours. “’Kay.”

  “Where should we sit?” says Nelson, and Peter walks us down the aisle. Front row seats all have perky little tented RESERVED signs. Four of them in green. “These are the speaker seats,” says Peter. “For the three of you and I’ll take one when I’m done with the introductions.”

  It’s a big stage, with those super-long black curtains in the back.

  Fuck. He’s going to be up there.

  Nelson’s staring at the podium, and his smile goes limp through what’s probably another urge to run to the bathroom. Guy’s been three times this morning. When Peter’s gone I say, “Dude, it’s going to be awesome,” then I hop up onto the oak slats of the stage and head over to Spike.

  Peter steps down, and Nelson steps up through the small applause. His shoes are at eye level. Damn, he keeps those things shiny. Rustles and shuffling all through the hall. Nelson glows bright and warm on the black stage. His eyes stand out and his hands seem big and sharp. He looks so calm. I’d be trying not to puke—there must be eight hundred people in here. He looks out into the distance, but I know the light’s so strong on him he can’t see past the edge of the stage. Makes it easier, I guess.

  Someone coughs.

  “Thank you,” says Nelson. His voice is large over the PA. He blinks, slowly. No white knuckles on his hands holding the sides of the podium. “It’s an honor to be here. Today I’m going to share with you some thoughts on the food industrial complex.”