Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

Broker felt the heat go to his hands. He had no right to be indignant. But he was.

He became more irate as they continued to hang on her arms as Jolene Sommer reached for his hand. She moved like a person really eager to meet new people, and her sweaty clasp was more a grab for something solid than a handshake. “I truly appreciate what you did,” she said, searching Broker’s face.

Broker wanted to convey something but, rather than grope for words, he remained silent and Jolene continued to hold on to his hand. Looking too deeply, almost impolitely, into her eyes, Broker blinked and stepped back. She still had Allen holding one elbow, the smooth young guy clamped on the other.

His impulse was to pull her away, take her aside.

But he was the stranger here so he nodded, released the handshake, and stepped farther back. The guy in black then effortlessly moved in, squeezed Broker’s elbow, and took a long billfold from his inside jacket pocket. With one-handed flash he manipulated three $100 bills and tucked them into Broker’s hand. “For your trouble, fella; thanks again.”

He’s dealt blackjack, thought Broker, who wanted to see his eyes.

So, slam-bam-dismissed. Okay. But old radar started to track. While he studied what was wrong with this picture he remained low-key. He slipped the bills into his pocket, like they expected a humble canoe guide to do, and folded his hands below his waist like an usher, and waited.

Milt concluded his nontalk with the lady in the pants suit, who retreated inside the hospital. He spotted Broker and walked over with the forward momentum of a slightly damaged armored vehicle. They shook left hands. Milt extracted a business card and said, “I’ll be in touch. I can reach you at the lodge, right?”

Broker nodded, took the card. “Who’s the lady you were talking to?” he asked.

“Oh, her? She’s small-fry. The risk management flak for this place. Fortunately, they’re part of the Duluth system and Duluth has deep pockets.”

“Lawsuit,” Broker said.

Milt narrowed his eyes. “Word is two nurses heard the anesthetist admit she took the breathing tube out too soon.”

Broker nodded politely-like it was all over his head- and then pointed toward Sommer’s wife and her sleek companion. “How’d they show up so quick?”

“Charter out of St. Paul.”

“Who’s the guy?”

Milt narrowed his eyes a fraction tighter, as if this were more information than a loyal canoe guide needed to know. After a beat he said, with a ripple of distaste, “Earl Garf, he’s the remnant from her checkered past we discussed.”

“Uh-huh. What’s he do now?”

Milt shrugged. “What all the smart young ones do, computers.” He adjusted his sling, turned: “Well, ah, Christ, here comes Hank.”

An ambulance pulled out of the garage toward the waiting helicopter.

“Got to go, thanks for everything,” Milt said; quick handshake, fleeting eye contact. He was leaving Ely and the tragic vacation, locking back into the gravitational pull of his high-speed, high-stakes world. They all were. He stepped back to join Jolene and Allen as the gurney bearing the blanketed mummy bumped toward the helicopter door.

Eyes shut, Sommer’s face jutted under a clear plastic oxygen mask like carved Ivory Soap.

Broker’s lower lip went a little stiff as he recalled the tramp of ritual. Bagpipes at cop funerals. Taps sounding over rows of empty paratroop boots. He had wanted to thank Hank Sommer for saving his life.

But he was just the hired help so he kept his place amid the tragic procession. Sommer’s Ford Expedition was still at the lodge. The keys were hanging on a peg by the fireplace. All three clients had clothes and gear strewn from Ely to Fraser Lake. Clearly the departing friends and family were too preoccupied to collect belongings. He had Milt’s card.

The cortege escorted Sommer to the helicopter medics who loaded the gurney into the chopper. Mrs. Sommer, Allen, and Milt embraced awkwardly. Garf smiled directly into the sun.

Then Garf escorted all three of them to a waiting cab and they drove away. Broker squinted into the bright sky, and the wind sock on the hospital roof hung limp, and the only danger nature posed today was the flash of mild snow blindness.

The helicopter lifted off and in its place, on the far side of the helipad, Amy Skoda stood at attention, her hands balled loosely at her sides. She watched the helicopter, and Broker watched her until the engine faded and the plane itself receded into a dot in the south-eastern sky. Then Amy turned away and came across the parking lot.

Broker coughed three times. Then he sneezed. The sneeze blew the sharply stacked sun-and-shade design of the brilliant day into runny watercolors. Dizzy, he put his hand out and felt Amy’s firm grip steady him.

“Must be hungover,” he mumbled.

She rested a cool hand on his forehead. “I don’t think so. You went swimming in ice water in a blizzard. You fried your resistance paddling out. You’ve caught a cold.”

It’s all shadows now .

Sinking. Velvet suffocation.

Darkness fills in like ink. Shadows twist. Are they sparks or are they bubbles? Do they rise or do they burst? Don’t know. Ego sorts through the debris and finds the drawers of memory. Ego rearranges and sifts. Robust memory responds. There was icy water, then pain. Now bright lights. Halos of concerned faces hover. Ego assumes personality. Personality discovers some of its baggage.

Hurt. Dying. Dead.

But stuff still moves inside his head. Drowned in the dark, he grows gills and discovers he can breathe the black. Somewhere above, on the surface, murky storms of human weather barge around; garbled people in white coats who move, poke, talk, shine lights.

Better to avoid It. Them. Up there’s where the pain lives. Better to roll over and dive and meander along the bands of shadow where the lacy patterns of light sway like kelp.

Enchantment is not out of the question.

Everything else sinks but life is a stubborn bubble that persists in rising to the glow that is brighter and brighter and like-hey-

See. .

* * *

A kind of seeing.Dream-seeing. A shadow man and shadow woman in fuzzy outline, filled with black. They stand, facing each other, and the man slouches forward heavily. He holds one palm up and with the finger of his other hand, he strikes the palm, sadly counting items off a list.

The woman bows her head and pulls a hand through her hair. Her other hand presses into her chest over her heart.

Still not clear, like peering through screens, veils, mist. Just shapes. Tense, worried shapes. And some precocious part of his mind is piping up that this is how Homer described shades in hell.

A bell rings and they walk away. Now there’s nothing to look at but a shadow couch, a fireplace to the left, banks of windows, and beyond the windows a spidery lacework of barren branches under a slab of veined marble sky. Hello?

The woman returns and stands before the windows. She raises scissors and she could be a figure from Sophocles the way she methodically saws at her long dark hair. Clumps fall to the floor and on her shoulders until all she has left is a plucky cap the color of wine. With a broom, she sweeps the shorn hair into a dustpan. Then she is gone.

His eyes can move but they steer out of control; they roll, tipsy, and hit the curb of his vision and rotate back. His shoulders heave, the muscles of his neck jerk. He hits restraints. Straps maybe. Nothing else moves.

Nothing moves.

Paralyzed?

. .

Maybe just broken. Say broken.

Okay. Fix broken later.