Absolute Zero

“Jesus,” Broker grinned awkwardly.

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to talk.”

Broker scrubbed his knuckles in his frazzled hair. “Like about my life, up to and including the present train wreck with Sommer?”

Amy shrugged her shoulders agreeably.

“And talking about it is going to make it better?” Broker nodded his head. “Usually when women say that, it means they’ll feel better if they get you to talk. Okay, let’s talk.”

“Fine. Tell me about your marriage,” Amy said.

“That’s easy. My wife has this Joan of Arc complex. She intends to be a general. Does anybody ask what it’s like to be the general’s husband, home taking care of the kid? Or at teas with the officer’s wives?”

“Women did it for years, why can’t you? Where are you at with being separated from your daughter?”

“I’ve been with my daughter every day for two years. She’s probably due for some full estrogen immersion.”

“Aren’t we light and breezy today, and so adept at small talk,” Amy said.

“That’s me?” Broker gestured offhand. “Food, eat; gun, shoot; woman, copulate.”

Amy planted her hands on her hips. “You know, down in the Cities you might be a bad motherfucker. But up here, guys like you are a dime a dozen.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Broker drew back, a tad defensive.

Amy shook her head. “Sort of sad when a guy like you is reduced to bullying overweight drunks, like that guy at The Saloon. That was all out of proportion. Dave and I talked about it.”

“Great. So now it’s amateur-shrink hour.”

“Dave thinks it’s all coming down on you; your wife takes off, you’re getting older, being on your own, not having any-well, structure in your life.”

Broker grinned. “Lucky for me I got Amy Skoda standing here with the structural integrity of a small skyscraper.”

Amy raised an eyebrow and swatted a denim-clad hip. “Check it out. This is not exactly a cornerstone.”

Broker lowered himself to a chair at the kitchen table and mumbled, “I’m old enough to be. .”

“I know-my brother,” Amy dismissed him with a wave of her hand and plopped into the chair across from him.

“So how was your day?” he asked.

“Oh, wonderful. We had a preliminary root-cause analysis session.”

“Sounds grim.”

Amy winkled her nose. “Allen Falken sent a tape-recorded statement. He said he wouldn’t come in person because his friendship with Hank Sommer could be perceived as coloring his judgment. He did a beautiful job of making me look like a hick.”

“That bad?”

“Pretty bad. But friendly, more like. How do you staff for a five-hundred-year storm if you routinely staff for light fishing accidents in the summer. So it’s like my fault, but he can sympathize because I’m not really up to speed.”

“Really?” wondered Broker. “Right after the surgery, before it happened, he made a point of telling me how sharp you were.”

“I guess he had a change of heart. So the consensus is that Hank Sommer wound up a vegetable because the nurse-anesthetist miscalculated somewhere and the attending nurse failed to monitor in postop.”

Amy’s finger traced invisible water rings on the tabletop. “They’re not sure exactly where things went wrong. He was hypothermic and cold is always a weird variable and can effect the way the body metabolizes drugs. Like it could sequester and hoard them in a sluggish circulation system and release them at odd times.”

She tossed her hair. “Whatever. And Nancy Ward, the recovery-room nurse, was having a bad day; she’d had a fight with her husband and she’d worked all the previous night. Technically, she’ll catch the brunt of a malpractice suit. It looks like she neglected to program Sommer into the monitor. So she takes the blame for leaving him untended. But I was in charge. So it comes back to me.”

“You agree with them?”

She crossed her arms across her chest.

“You don’t agree with them?”

She uncrossed her arms, then recrossed them, stood up, and changed the subject. “There’s this rumor how you smuggled two tons of buried gold through Laos into Thailand and banked it in Hong Kong? Dave says if you didn’t have connections in the FBI, the IRS would be all over you.”

The rumors. Broker waved his hand. “Hell, I should pull it out of the stock market, put it all back into bullion, and bury the stuff again.”

“Bury it? Like a pirate?”

“Exactly.” He heaved up and went to the counter, selected a knife from the rack on the wall, and sliced an orange, then a lemon, followed by a lime. The tart citrus circles tumbled off the blade and laundered the air; orange, yellow, and green in a pile like tropical doubloons. He dumped the slices into another large pot, added a quart of cider, a generous splash of vinegar, two tablespoons of honey and a cinnamon stick, and set the flame.

Amy got up, joined him at the counter, and looked over his shoulder. “You’re going to have the most expensive urine in Minnesota.”

“Mom’s home remedy.”

“Whatever.” She held out her left hand. “Look, see that?” She pointed at a faint white line on the edge of her palm.

It was an old scar. He said, “So?”

“Thirty years ago, the summer you helped Billie put in the boat dock.” She pointed out the window toward the old, hump-backed dock jutting into the lake. “You cut a fishhook out of my hand. You were eighteen. I was seven.” She appraised him. “You don’t remember.”

He didn’t recall the fishhook. He remembered building the damn dock, though.

“You’re no fun today,” she said as she put on her coat. “I have something else for you.” She removed a bag from her purse and handed it to him. It contained a cardboard and cellophane toy box and a copy of the outstate edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

“What’s this?” There was a kid’s action-figure called War Wolf in the box-plastic wolf head on a pumped-up body, dressed in camo fatigues.

“Way uncool, Broker; everybody’s heard of War Wolf, the poor man’s Star Wars,” Amy said, patting his cheek. “You know what else Dave said? He said you were lost in the modern world. I’ll bet you’ve never seen Seinfeld? Ally McBeal?”

“Hey, knock it off, I read Doonesbury every once in a while. And I watch The Crocodile Hunter.” He held up the toy and hunched his shoulders, questioning.

“Read the paper, there’s an article about Hank Sommer in the feature section folded on top.”

Amy touched his cheek lightly once more, told him to keep washing his hands, and outside, clomped down the steps, got in her practical, reliable car, and disappeared into the early evening. She probably drove the speed limit when nobody was around.

As he turned his mom’s cider remedy down to a simmer he wondered if she kissed with her eyes open.

It was not much of an article, with just a tiny picture of Hank squeezed into the type. A bigger picture showcased the plastic toy.

Creator of War Wolf in Coma.

Timberry writer Hank Sommer was diagnosed as being in a coma due to complications following emergency surgery in Ely, Minnesota, last week. After a daring boundary-water seaplane rescue in a violent storm, Sommer was operated on to repair a rupture and perforated bowel suffered during a canoeing accident.