Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

make the whole thing go away, but on the back of his eyelids he saw the face of his mother as he had last seen her, looking up at him out of her barrel of brine, "Make the call, you pussy. If anyone knows how not to get bad news, it's you. Part of loyalty is following up, you sniveling coward. Don't be like your brothers."
    Ah, sweet Mama, Clay thought. He dialed the phone – a number with a 716 area code, Tonawanda, New York. It rang three times, and the recorded operator came on, saying that the number he'd reached was not in service at this time. He checked it, then dialed the next number down, which also turned out not to be working. He called Tonawanda information for Amy's parents, and the operator told him there was no such listing. At a loss, he called Woods Hole Oceanographic Center, where Amy had gotten her master's. Clay knew one of her advisers, Marcus Loughten, an irascible Brit who had worked at Woods Hole for twenty years and was famous in the field for his work in underwater acoustics. Loughten answered on the third ring.
    "Loughten," Loughten said.:
    "Marcus, this is Clay Demodocus. We worked together on -"
    "Yes, Clay, I bloody know who you are. Calling from Hawaii, are you?"
    "Well, yes, I -"
    "Probably, what, seventy-eight degrees with a breeze? It's seven below zero Fahrenheit here. I'm out installing bloody sound buoys in a monthlong blizzard to keep right whales from getting run over by supertankers."
    "Right, the sound buoys. How are those working out?"
    "They're not."
    "No? Why not?"
    "Well, right whales are stupid as shit, aren't they? It's not like a supertanker is quiet. If sound was going to deter them, then they'd be bloody well deterred by the engine noise, wouldn't they? They don't make the connection. Stupid shits."
    "Oh, sorry to hear that. Uh, why keep doing it then?"
    "We have funding."
    "Right. Look, Marcus, I need some information on one of your students who came out here to work with us. Amy Earhart? Would have been with you guys until fall of last year."
    "No, I don't know that name."
    "Sure you do, five-five, thin, pale, dark hair with kind of unnatural blue highlights, smart as a whip."
    "Sorry, Clay. That doesn't fit any of my students."
    Clay took a deep breath and trudged on. Biologists were notorious for treating their grad students as subhuman, but Clay was surprised that Loughten didn't remember Amy. She was cute, and if Clay could judge from a night of drinking he'd done with Loughten at a marine mammal conference in France, the Brit was more than a bit of a horndog.
    "Great ass, Marcus. You'd remember."
    "I'm sure I would, but I don't."
    Clay studied the resume. "What about Peter? Would he -"
    "No, Clay, I know all of Peter's grad students as well. Did you call to confirm her references when you took her on?"
    "Well, no."
    "Good work, then. Abscond with your Nikons, did she?"
    "No, she's missing at sea. I'm trying to contact her family."
    "Sorry. Wish I could be of help. I'll check the records, just to be sure – in case I've had a ministroke that killed the part of the brain that remembers fine bottoms."
    "Thanks."
    "Good luck, Clay. My best to Quinn."
    Clay cringed. It turned out he really wasn't up for bearing bad news. "Will do, Marcus. Good-bye." Clay hung up and resumed staring at the phone. Well, he thought, I knew absolutely nothing about this woman that I thought I knew. Libby Quinn had already called (sobbing) to say that they should have some kind of joint service at the sanctuary for Nate and Amy, and that Clay should speak. What was he going to say about Amy? Dearly beloved, I think we all knew Amy as scientist, a colleague, a friend, a woman who showed up out of nowhere with a completely manufactured history, but I think, because she saved my life, that I came to know her better than anyone here, and I can tell you unequivocally, she was a smart aleck with a cute butt.
    Yeah, he'd need to work on that. Damn it, he missed them both.
    * * *
    Clay decided to kill the day by editing video: time-eating busywork that supplied at least an imaginary escape from the real world. The afternoon found him going through the rebreather footage he'd taken on the day the whale had conked him, for the first time going past the point where he was unconscious, just to see if the camera picked up anything usable. Clay let the video run: minutes of blue water, the camera tossing around at the end of the wrist lanyard, then Amy's leg as she comes down to stop his descent.