Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

The waitress brought his sausage and eggs. “You did say wheat toast, didn’t you, dear?” He nodded. They hadn’t mentioned toast, as far as Weber could remember. She poured him fresh coffee and turned toward the farmers’ table. She stopped and swung back around to him. “You’re the brain man from New York? The one who came out for a look at Mark Schluter.”

He flushed. “That’s right. How…?”

“Wish I could tell you it was psychic powers.” She spiraled the coffee pots near her ears. “My niece is a friend of the boys. She showed me a book of yours. Said you were out. We all think it’s a tragedy, what’s happened to Mark. But there’s some who say that if it hadn’t been that particular accident, it would’ve been another much like it. Bonnie says he’s pretty different these days. Not that he wasn’t kinda different before.”

“He’s bruised up, yes. But the brain is a surprising place. You’d be shocked what it can recover from.”

“This is what I am forever trying to tell my husband.”

Something clicked in him. He felt the thrill of dredging up something too small to merit remembering. “Your niece. Is she thin, light-complected? Long, straight, black hair down below her shoulders? Does she knit her own clothes?”

The waitress threw out one hip and tipped her head. “Now, I know for a fact she hasn’t met you yet.”

He spiraled his hands by his ears. “Psychic powers.”

“Ho-kay,” she said. “You got my dollar. I’ll go buy your damn book.”

She went to the circle of men and topped off their coffees. They flirted with her outrageously, joking about her pair of hot, bottomless pots. The same jokes that filled Long Island diners, jokes Weber had long ago stopped hearing in his native country. She leaned into the group, and they spoke together in soft voices. Surely about him. The alien species.

She came back his way, waving coffee pots in triumph. “You were looking at pictures of her at Pioneer Pizza. That fellow there—” She pointed with the decaf. “I won’t say ‘gentleman’—has a daughter who waited on you.”

Weber pressed his hand to his forehead. “I think I’m outnumbered here.”

“Small town for you, i’nit? Everybody’s somebody’s kin. Take that plate for you, hon? Or are you still working on it?”

“No, no. My labors now have ended.”

As soon as his waitress left, dread washed back over him. Coffee was a mistake, after such a night. He never drank caffeinated anymore. Sylvie had kept him clean for close to two years. Sausage, too: a gross miscalculation. Four days in Nebraska; four days away from the lab, the office, the writing desk. He checked his watch; still too early to call out east. But he called Bob Cavanaugh’s cell so infrequently that he’d earned the right to abuse it now.

His editor’s preemptive “Gerald!” knocked Weber back. Caller ID: one of the world’s truly evil technologies. The receiver was not supposed to know the sender before the sender knew the receiver. Weber’s own cell phone had Caller ID built into the dial screen. But he always averted his eyes. Cavanaugh sounded pleased. “I know why you’re calling!”

The words crawled up Weber’s spine. “Do you?”

“You haven’t seen them yet? I sent them as attachments, yesterday.”

“Seen what? I’m on the road. Nebraska. I haven’t—”

“God help you. What is it, still smoke signals out there?”

“No, I’m sure they…I just haven’t…”

“Gerald. Why are you whispering?”

“Well, I’m in a public place.” He looked around. No one in the restaurant was looking at him. They didn’t have to.

“Gerald Weber!” Affectionate but merciless. “You aren’t calling at this hour to ask how things are going ?”

“Well, not entirely, no. I just—”

“Slippery slope, Gerald. Three more books and you’ll be asking for sales figures. I, for one, am delighted to witness your descent into humanity. Well, set your mind at rest. We’re off on a pretty good foot.”

“A pretty good foot? Is the creature in question a biped?”

“Ah, biology humor. The Kirkus review is a little mixed, but the Booklist is to die for. Hang on. I’m on the train. I copied myself on the laptop. I’ll read you the highlights.”

Weber listened. This couldn’t be it. He couldn’t be worried about the book. The Country of Surprise was the richest thing he’d ever written. It consisted of a dozen re-created case histories of patients who’d suffered what Weber studiously refused to call brain damage. Each of his twelve subjects had been changed so profoundly by illness or accident that each called into question the solidity of the self. We were not one, continuous, indivisible whole, but instead, hundreds of separate subsystems, with changes in any one sufficient to disperse the provisional confederation into unrecognizable new countries. Who could take issue with that?

Listening to the review, Weber was all islands. Cavanaugh stopped reading. Weber was supposed to respond. “Does that please you?” he asked his editor.

“Me? I think it’s great. We’re using it for the ad.”

Weber nodded, to someone half a continent away. “What didn’t Kirkus like?”

Another silence at the other end. Cavanaugh, finessing. “Something about the case histories being too anecdotal. Too much philosophy and not enough car chases. They may have used the word portentous .”

“Portentous in what sense?”

“You know, Gerald, I wouldn’t worry about it. Nobody can discover you anymore. You’ve become a big target; more points for taking you down than for praising you. It won’t hold us up in the slightest.”

“Do you have the piece handy?”

Cavanaugh sighed and retrieved the file. He read it to Weber. “There. Masochist. Now forget it. Fuck the peasants. So what are you doing in Nebraska? Something to do with the new project, I hope?”

Weber flinched. “Oh, you know me, Bob. Everything’s the new project.”

“Are you examining someone?”

“A young accident victim who thinks his sister is an impostor.”

“Strange. That’s what my sister thinks of me.”

Weber laughed, dutifully. “We all play ourselves.”

“This is for the new one? I thought I was buying a book about memory.”

“That’s what’s so interesting. His sister matches everything he remembers about her, but he’s ready to discard memory in favor of gut reaction. All the remembered evidence in the world can’t hold a candle to low-level hunch .”

“Wild. What’s the prognosis?”

“You’ll have to buy the book, Robert. Twenty-five bucks, at your local chain.”

“At that price, I’ll wait to read the reviews first.”

They hung up. Weber snapped back to the restaurant, the smell of bacon grease. The reception of his work was almost irrelevant. Only the act of honest observation mattered. And on that score he was covered. The morning’s anxiety had been an aberration. He couldn’t imagine what had triggered it. Perhaps that woman Gillespie’s unspoken accusation. He drained his coffee, searching the cup bottom. At the far table, the farmers exchanged jokes about agricultural extension agents. Weber listened without following.

“So the first fella says, ‘This bug don’t chew and spit up its cud like the other one.’ ‘Naw,’ the second fella tells him. ‘This one is a non-compost mantis.’”

His waitress reappeared. “Get you anything else, dear?”

“Just the check, thanks. Oh. And could I ask you something?” He felt mildly queasy again. Nothing. “You say that everyone is somebody’s kin out here. How about the Schluters?”