Up in the Air

Her voice is not strong, though I doubt that mine is either. I can hear the road in her voice, the truckstop coffee, as she describes her all-night diagonal journey down through South Dakota and Wyoming in her Plymouth van. She punctured a tire passing Rapid City, repaired it with a can of Fix-A-Flat. She picked up an Indian hitchhiker near Sheridan who gave her a bear-claw pendant for good luck. Crossing the Utah border at Flaming Gorge, she stopped for an hour to examine with her flashlight a hillside bristling with fossil dinosaurs. And no, she insists, it’s not the wedding she’s fleeing, but the deaths of Miles and TJ, the poisoned dogs, who expired, as Keith reported, at her feet, of unstoppable internal bleeding. Their deaths were her fault. In fact, it’s all her fault.

“What else?” I ask.

“Everything.” Julie is not right.

“Have you eaten?” I say.

“I’m eating something now.”

“What?”

“A licorice rope.”

“Licorice isn’t food.”

She doesn’t ask me to come. I’m coming anyway. I can be there, Great West and the flight controllers willing, in under four hours. I’ll have to leave immediately.

“I’m pouring a glass of milk now.”

“Finish it. Milk is the ticket,” I say.

“I’ve finished it.”

Pinter comes out the back door onto the steps and stands with one arm around Margaret’s girlish waist. His face has lost its lecherous intensity, and he turns it away to grant me privacy. I tell Julie not to sit up for me, to sleep, and to pass the phone to Asif, which she does. The hum of expensive appliances tells me they’re in the kitchen, where they should be.

“Take her car keys.”

“I have them.”

“Bless you, Asif.” The gift of a rich, resourceful brother-in-law who wasn’t born in America. We owe him.

Pinter gives me a moment after I’m off the phone. Strange man, but intuitive when he wants to be. “Something’s come up, I can see,” he says. “You run now.” Margaret lowers her head against his shoulder.

“Family.”

“Don’t explain. We all have troubles. This business between us, perhaps we’ll work it out. I’ll be at GoalQuest. I need to travel more. You’re speaking there?”

“Short talk. To clear the air. Just between us, I’m leaving ISM. They’ve niched me and it’s not a niche I like. Plus, my lower extremities are numb. I’m sorry. It’s the same old whine.”

“Not really.”

“You couldn’t drive me back to my hotel so I can grab my luggage and my car?”

“I could, but we might not get there safely. Margaret?”

“Certainly. Just let me find my glasses.”

Pinter and I shake hands. His tiny thumb beats with a disconcertingly sharp pulse. I thank him for the meal, his understanding.

“Good topic,” he says. “We always enjoy ‘pursuit.’ ”

eight

i was a country boy once. I wore a cap. It promoted Polk Center Gouda, “World’s Finest Snack.” The girls in town were virgins but didn’t know it because they thought having their breasts touched was real sex. The girls were all blonds, except for the exchange students, who came from places like Italy and Egypt and stunned us with their fine manners and silky English. The boys were all blonds, too. Touring polka bands pulled in each summer and people paid two dollars to dance all night and drink keg beer that was mostly tasteless foam. The money went to the volunteer fire department. When we heard about murders in cities, we felt lucky. When we heard about Washington scandals, we felt justified. America was that country all around us, and we knew that we’d go there someday, but we could wait. We were proud of Polk Center. Its farmers fed the world. Our stop signs may have been riddled with bullet holes but our thoughtful drivers still respected them.

It wasn’t until the first time I flew, in a medevac helicopter to Minneapolis, that I realized how confined I’d been. I was sixteen. I’d had an accident. Every December, when the lakes froze over, kids piled into cars and hit the ice to race and spin three-sixties. I was driving. I had two passengers, other boys from town, whose fathers delivered propane for my father. I cranked on the wheel and we slammed against the doors. I cranked the wheel back and we hit the other doors. We laughed. We drank vodka. Our parents knew where we were. They’d pulled the same stunts when they were young. Tradition.

Then the hood of the car sloped up and we were sinking. Just like that—slipping backwards through the ice, the coins sliding out of our pockets across the seats. I watched the hood rise up and block the moon and I reached for the door and heaved but couldn’t budge it. The water against the windows was black and solid and some of it trickled through a heating vent and splashed me on the chin.