Fly by Night (23 page)

“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 M
ALL
S
ECURITY
, 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.

“Okay, so I'm an asshole.”

“You are,” Jen said.

In the past whenever one of them had a secret, the other two would zero in.

The side of Jen's cheek had turned red.

Bryce immediately sat up. He studied her as he forked a meatball from a Styrofoam cup.

“She likes the cop,” he said as if Jen wasn't in the room.

Jen looked down at her hands, emotional all at once.

“Shit. I think she loves the cop,” Bryce whispered in a voice loud enough for the sea horse in his tank to hear.

Jen started laughing and crying. She swatted at Bryce to shut up.

“Dad's never seen you love someone like this before,” Bryce said and scrambled over to put his arm around her.

Jen wiped the corners of her eyes. “Thanks, Bry. But he's moving this spring, opening a restaurant/music venue with a few investors on the Duluth lakefront.” She grabbed the Styrofoam cup off the coffee table and forked out the rest of the meatballs before Bryce had the chance to polish them off.

Amelia and Bryce shot glances at one another.

“Impressive,” Bryce said. “Congrats, sis, many standard deviations away from the usual lot, pilfering change out of vending-machine coin returns.”

Jen laughed as she punched him.

“It kills me to think about him leaving.” Jen almost couldn't finish the sentence.

“And so you're … not … going with … him because…” Amelia began, and looked long and steadily at her friend. They looked at each other in surprise.

“I think I love him,” she said and kept wiping tears.

“Then go,” Amelia said, on the verge of tears herself.

Jen looked at her. “It's not until June.”

“Maybe you're up at bat this time, puppy,” Amelia said.

Jen hopped over onto the couch and buried her face into Amelia's shoulder.

*   *   *

Early the next morning when Amelia showed up for work, someone had placed a paper memo on her office chair.

Amelia bent over, reading it before putting down her bags. The memo asked if she would please call the HR office to schedule a time to come in for a meeting.

“Fuck.” She dropped her bags onto the floor. What now? She thought back to what she could have done.

The day before she'd instructed one of the volunteer tour guides not to dive in the saltwater tank without permission since it wasn't a personal swimming pool. Later the woman who works with the Amazon poison dart frog exhibits pulled Amelia aside, warning her that the woman was the daughter of one of the “head honcho HR dudes” (in her words) and that Amelia should be careful.

Picking up the memo, Amelia moved it off to the side.

She needed to go get a coffee—nothing like a strong cup of coffee to settle her nerves.

“I'm going to get some coffee,” she announced, having opened the prep kitchen door. “Anyone want anything?”

A collective sigh of thanks, they all shook their heads.

Riding up the escalator, Amelia weaved through the tangle of roller coasters toward the coffee bar. They knew her by name and upon sight would begin filling a large cup of coffee before she'd even ask.

In the flow of crowd traffic walking toward her, a man slowed down to a stop. His face followed her as she headed toward the coffee bar. He looked dazed, as if someone had hit him over the head hard enough to get startled but not enough to knock him out.

Amelia slowed at his reaction. Something about him was familiar. He'd moved off to the side, out of the flow of the crowd and faced her. He looked about to speak. She racked her brain. Where did she know him? Was it from a dive project? From the U of M water-quality program?

Then a family with a double-wide stroller cut between them and paused, blocking the walkway. Giving instructions to their children as to how far to wander, Amelia glanced around the negotiating family but the man was gone.

Once the stroller and family passed, Amelia stepped toward where the man had been standing, but there was only a miniature Christmas tree and a clump of flowers where he'd stood. Searching for him, she then backtracked, trying to spot him but he was gone.

After a few moments she gave up and headed back to the Sea Life escalator, forgetting why she'd gone up to the mall level in the first place.

 

20

It was almost noon and Amelia still hadn't responded to the memo. It was the Friday before Christmas and Alex was due in that Wednesday. Amelia and Bryce stood in a shallow pool in the off-exhibit area, suited up in wet suits, trying to secure a new tiger shark to check for pregnancy.

The memo from HR filled her with a sense of doom.

“Jeeze, I probably should have called by now,” she said.

“So call after they're gone for the day, which is what? Two p.m. at the latest,” Bryce said as she laughed. “Leave a voice mail.”

She liked his strategy and chuckled, looking up at the top of his sandy-colored head. A lot more gray had come in since she'd last seen him without his cap.

They'd struggled for twenty minutes along with the interns to catch the shark and then hauled it in a sling into the back room. Once into the shallow pool, Bryce and Amelia had finally restrained it so that Amelia could safely measure its belly.

“Amelia?” One of the interns called over toward the tank.

“Yes, Amber?”

“Someone's here to see you.”

“Oh shit,” Amelia murmured to Bryce as he held the shark's front end before they could measure it. “It's that woman, Grace.” She softly started singing a rendition of “They're coming to take me away ho ho, he he, ha ha…”

“No, it's not,” Bryce said. “They never come down here.”

“Do you know who it is, Amber?” she called up.

“I don't know,” the young woman said.

“Can you tell if it's a manager?” she asked Amber, her eyes on Bryce.

“It's some older guy,” Amber said. “He asked for you by name.”

“Shit.”

“A hunj says you're fired,” Bryce said in a low voice.

She frowned and shot him a snide glance. “Shut up, that's not even a bet.”

“Think you could take a message or a number, Amber?” she called out. “I'm super busy right now.” She looked at Bryce who rolled his eyes.

“He says it's really important.” The intern was beginning to sound distressed.

Amelia looked up at her. The young woman's face was burning red. She knew Amber to be on the autism spectrum and today was her day to practice greeting visitors, not get stuck between head-butting adults.

“Can you tell him I'm in a tank with a shark at the moment,” she said.

“Why do women always say that about me,” Bryce murmured so only she could hear.

Amelia tried not to laugh and lose her grip on the shark.

“I'll try,” the young woman said.

Both heard distress in Amber's voice.

“Hey, Amber?” Amelia called up to her.

Bryce looked at Amelia.

“Forget it. I'll be right there.”

Bryce let go of the front end and threw up his hands. The shark immediately thrashed free as she let go of its tail.

“Fuck,” she whispered, climbing out of the tank.

“Thanks, Amber,” she said, her feet back on the cement lab floor. “You did the right thing by coming to get me.” She patted the young woman's shoulder.

Amber gave a doubtful smile. Amelia didn't bother to change out of the wet suit as they walked up to the admissions entrance, slapping a trail of wet footprints behind her. She braced for the next “talking to,” maybe even “judgment day,” as Bryce alleged. The three of them had never had bosses before.

“God, we're just the world's shittiest employees, aren't we?” Jen had observed after a few weeks, as none of them seemed to be able to take anything seriously, excepting animal care.

At the front entrance, a man turned to look.

It was the same man from two hours ago on the mall level.

“This is Amelia, our animal-care curator,” Amber introduced.

“Hello,” Amelia said. “How can I help you? I'd shake but my hand is sort of slimy.” Amelia held up her hands as if it was a holdup.

“Amelia Drakos?” He held his breath.

“Uh … yeah.” She hesitated. It felt like she was about to be read her rights. In the background there was frantic beeping of credit card machines as college interns swiped people's cards.

“Sorry to just show up like this but I e-mailed a couple of times, sent a copy of some papers explaining the situation.”

He paused as she stared.

“I'm Ted Drakos Jr.”

“Oh.”
Shit.
She looked down at her bare feet and then crossed her arms, flustered and frightened by the vague family resemblance.

Backing away toward the Ocean Tunnel she said, “Look, I e-mailed you back. We're not related and I'm
really
super busy right now.” She wondered how he'd tracked her down.

“There's something I need to discuss,” he said.

She kept stepping backward. “I-I told you I can't help.”

“It's about your father, Ted Drakos.”

“My father's dead.” She stopped and shifted her weight onto one foot.

“Born in Boston, lived in Baldwin, New York,” he said, watching her face to detect the slightest response. “Worked as a union printer.”

That was her father. It was his voice too. She folded her arms. He had her attention.

“He's been dead over thirty years.”

“I know.”

How would he know?
They looked at each other. She couldn't believe his face, her mind kept scanning his features as they came together and then broke apart. It was a mix of many confusing things. There was no privacy in the Ocean Tunnel, the slightest sounds echoed against the Plexiglas.