Up in the Air

literally had to shake him.”

She rambles on and I listen without listening. The clouds below have a complicated topography, dimpled and grooved and folded and corrugated, with broad estuarial fans along their edges. (Estuarial—there, I’ve finally used it.) It’s Wednesday down there, but what day is it up here? At times, in the afternoon, when flying east, I can see night bearing down across the continent, and the feeling is one of powerless omniscience. To know what’s coming and when it will arrive and see the places it’s already been is a counterfeit wisdom. It ought to help, but doesn’t.

Julie keeps talking. Though I barely hear her, I manage to be a brother to her merely by sitting nearby and shedding heat. She’ll go through with her wedding, I’m certain of it, but only once she’s drawn sufficient energy from me, her original hero, her first security. We talk about our father as though we loved him, but that was something we only discovered afterwards; while he was alive, he mostly worried us. He’d taken on so much—the house, the trucks, the loans, our mother—and we could see him sagging. His business was our protection, all we had, but nothing protected his business, and this scared us. We reserved our love for one another, brother and sisters, because everything else seemed borrowed against, at risk.

“Ryan?”

“Yes?”

“Weird question: are you rich? The way you bought my ticket, just like that, not even asking the price.”

“I’ve saved. I’m comfortable.”

“Do you date? Do you have a love life?”

“I like to think so. I’m meeting a woman in Vegas tomorrow night.”

“A stranger. Disease doesn’t worry you?”

“I’m in the soup. If you’re in the soup and get wet, then you get wet.”

“I don’t think you know how proud of you we are. Everything you’ve accomplished, this book you’ve written, these meetings you’re always flying to. It’s awesome. It’s like you’re out here covering the territory, putting it all together. Our ambassador. We read magazines and expect to see you in them, and even though you aren’t, we know you will be. We know you should be.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re done out here. Let’s go back to Minnesota,” she says.

“I’ll get you there tomorrow. I’ll be there Friday. I just have a few more stops to make. Appointments. It only seems hectic. Believe me, there’s a rhythm. You had to be here when it started to hear it, though.”

Julie sleeps.

There are no lights in the garage tonight except for the guttering candle that illuminates the latest quarterly statement from his accountants. According to their figures, the world is his. His products and processes dominate their markets. His name has become synonymous with quality and demand-based value-adding genius. He can quit now and step outside to vast acclaim, assured of permanent wealth and influence. The garage will have served its purpose as an incubator for dreams once widely dismissed and roundly ridiculed, and surely he must preserve it as a museum showcasing in perpetuity the transformational journey of one mind wholly at peace with its core competencies. But as M rises up from his stool to make his exit, something distracts him: a pad of clean white paper lying on the bench beside his instruments. The paper’s emptiness cries out for a mark, a sketch, a diagram, a thoughtless doodle. Through the door he can hear his massed admirers calling for him to show himself at last, but while he feels boundless affection for his team, without whose selfless input he’d be lost, he understands also, after a quick gut check, that his work remains incomplete. He lifts his pencil. . . .

The first thing I do in Denver is call Dwight’s mobile. He answers on the first ring. It’s disillusioning. I’d imagined him hunkered down with a sick author, but apparently he’s alone and doing nothing. Behind him I hear splashing, yelling. Pool sounds. His assistant portrayed the trip as an emergency, but it sounds like another golfing getaway.

“I’m on my way,” I say. “I’m with my sister. Hard to explain. We got canceled and rerouted, but we should be down there in time for dinner, easily.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’m not sure we are. I have to get her back to Minnesota and I need to be in Las Vegas tomorrow. GoalQuest. I might just shoot over there early.”

“The book is just brilliant.”

“You got it? You read it? Not just the summary? I don’t think it lends itself to being summarized. It’s more a gestalt. Is that the word. Gestalt?”

“I have a contract in front of me. An offer. We can work on the figures, the terms, but not a lot. It’s close to the best I can do. Just need your signature.”

“And I want you to have it.”

“Once we’ve talked. The manuscript has a ragged edge or two. I have a few trims, a few snips.”

“It’s not too short for that?”

“A lot of our books are read in digest form. You’ve heard of the journal Executive Outlines? They lop the fat off six or seven titles and sell them as a package to subscribers who don’t have time for a lot of monkey business.”

One of my eyelids twitches. My crownless molar zings and sizzles. I can taste it rotting.

“You’ll be here when, exactly?” Dwight says. “Technically, I’m checked out of my room, and my flight to Salt Lake City leaves at seven.”

“You’re flying to SLC? I don’t believe this. That’s where I’m coming from. I left an hour ago.”