* * *
—
Anders followed his regular routine, head down working, yet always remaining attentive, alert at every assignment he was covering, looking for the more interesting, deeper story that could be his next podcast—something that could be worthy of following up and building on the minor success of his Frick Island episode.
But another week passed by, Anders covering the grand reopening of a renovated Starbucks, a three-day county fair, and the inevitable sale of a local radio station to a national conglomerate, and nothing jumped out at him. He was frustrated. Demoralized, really. He should be patient, he knew. That was another thing his dad always said: Patience, persistence, and perspiration are the three keys to success.
But patience was not Anders’s strong suit.
He sat at his computer in the office, elbows on the desktop, head down, hands in his hair. One window on his computer screen opened to an email from his sister asking him if he was planning to drive in for Labor Day weekend on the Thursday or Friday before. Another window displayed a press release touting the accolades of the new dean of the school of education at the local university, information for the latest riveting article Anders was writing.
“There are doughnuts in the break room.” Anders lifted his head and turned to see Jess standing behind him, clutching a powdered orb in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. “Might help your day get better.”
Anders eyed her. “You have jelly on your shirt.”
She glanced down at her sleeveless white blouse, dotted with small cutouts of floating Weimaraner heads, which was a bit disconcerting, if Anders was being honest. “Well, shit.” She turned to set her coffee mug on the bookcase behind her but was closer than she thought and hip checked the structure, jarring the tan liquid out of her mug and onto her blouse, while simultaneously sending a teetering stack of back-issue newspapers cascading to the floor.
Jess froze, shocked from the commotion.
“You were saying?” Anders deadpanned. “Something about my day?”
“Ha ha.”
Anders stood up. “I’ll get you some paper towels.” When he got back with a wad clutched in his fist, half damp, half dry, Jess was on her knees trying to corral the papers currently splayed all over the floor. Anders knelt beside her. “Here,” he said.
“Thanks.” Jess took the proffered towels and dabbed at the stains, as Anders continued the newsprint cleanup effort.
“Every time,” she muttered. “Every. Single. Time. Should have known better than to wear white.”
But Anders didn’t hear her. He was staring at the front-page headline of a newspaper he had just picked up:
CRAB BOAT SINKS OFF FRICK ISLAND, MISSING WATERMAN PRESUMED DEAD
He rocked back on his haunches, lowering his bottom to the worn carpet, and scanned the article. The name “Tom Parrish” jumped out at him, tickling the recesses of his mind.
“Anders!”
“Huh?” He looked up.
“I was asking could you let Greta know when she gets in? I gotta run home and change before the city council meeting at two. Can’t exactly go looking like this.”
“Oh, yeah. ’Course.”
She stood up, still scrubbing the front of her ruined shirt, though it was clearly beyond saving. Anders glanced back down at the story, the byline catching his eye. “Wait,” he called out after Jess, who was already halfway to her cubicle.
She paused. “What?”
He flicked the paper with his middle finger. “You wrote this? About the missing waterman?”
“Oh.” Her mouth turned down in a frown. “Yeah, that was sad.”
“What happened?”
“A bad storm capsized his boat. He drowned. Least they think that’s what happened. Still haven’t found the body. Probably eaten by sharks.” She shrugged nonchalantly at her gruesome suggestion, in the way only newspaper reporters, doctors, and police officers can. “Anyway, it was like the first waterman death in fifteen, sixteen years?”
“And his name was Tom,” Anders said. He stared at the man’s picture accompanying the article—young guy, buzzed hair almost like a military cut, friendly eyes. Tom. Tom. Tom. What was it about that name?
“Yep,” Jess said. She tilted her head. “You know the saddest thing about that island isn’t that waterman dying, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Saddest thing is that the island isn’t even going to be here in eighty years, and not one of them seems to believe that.”
“Why won’t it be here?”
“Climate change? Maybe you’ve heard of it.” She grins. “Sea level’s rising. Frick Island is disappearing.”
Now that is interesting, Anders thought.
“Anyway—gotta run.”
“Yeah, OK. See ya.” He waved her on, then stared at the story a few beats more, searching the recesses of his brain. Nothing materialized, aside from the email he had received: You came all the way to Frick Island and missed the biggest story out here. He folded the paper in half and, standing, tucked it under his arm, then walked back to his desk to flesh out the four inches on the new dean of education due at noon.
* * *
—
After work, Anders went through his routine in a half daze— unlock apartment door, turn on light, scan for cockroaches. He loosened his tie, then pulled it off and started on his shirt—a short-sleeved white button-up that was a gift from his grandmother at his college graduation. Kelsey laughed when he tried it on and said he looked like one of those Latter-Day Saints kids who rode from house to house on their bikes peddling Mormonism to the masses. Anders didn’t care. The August heat and humidity was brutal and it was cooler than long sleeves while still being work appropriate. He hung it on the back of the folding chair.
Clad in his white undershirt and Dockers, he microwaved a frozen dinner and ate at the collapsible table while staring at NewsHour. He glanced at the folded newspaper he had brought home, where it now sat next to the plastic tray of half-eaten lasagna (that honestly tasted more like the plastic tray than lasagna), his eyes scanning the missing-waterman story again, and he thought about what Jess had said about the island.
His cell buzzed on the table and he experienced a brief hope it was Celeste, and then the immediate, familiar embarrassment. It’s over. Get it through your thick skull, Anders. He spied Kelsey’s name on the screen and turned his phone over, not eager to speak to his sister, who he knew was just calling to find out why he hadn’t yet answered her email about Labor Day.
After ditching the rest of his meal in the trash and scrubbing his fork in the sink—he hadn’t always been so steadfast in his cleaning, but with the cockroaches, he couldn’t leave anything to chance—he stretched out on his floor mattress and pulled up a new web page on his phone, typing “Frick Island disappearing” in the search bar.