barely knows me!â
âYouâre in love with her but you never met her?â Mom finds this unusual.
âI love everything about her. Her voice, her dry humor. And sheâs smart. Is she cute? I think Iâd like to marry her.â
âIf sheâs so smart, sheâs probably not into guys who drunkenly tattoo sea serpents on their stumps,â Mom suggests.
âReally, âguys,â plural? Like thereâs more than one of me.â
âIt does seem pretty unlikely,â Dad muses.
âMom!â Jackie shouts, desperate. âDo something!â
âThis is exactly what Iâm talking about, sweetie. Youâre letting the dinosaurs make you crazy.â
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
My sister knows Sunny Lee my sister knows Sunny Lee MY SISTER KNOWS SUNNY LEE! Fuck, my nub hurts.
Iâm smoking Somnambublast and plugged into podcasts of The Sunny Side archivesâabout Viking sunstones, mummy prosthetics, molecules that make music, and cocoons made of mucusâso I donât hear Steve as he clomps up the attic stairs. But when I see him, lugging blanket and pillow, itâs not hard to figure out heâs been banished.
âThe basement might be more comfortable. We can lay a mattress on top of the pool table.â
âI slept in a bathtub last night; you think the floorâs gonna bother me?â
âBathtub! We have one of those. Why didnât I think of that?â
âGive me some of that,â he says, groping for my pipe. âIf Iâm gonna be accused of being stupid, I might as well be stupid.â
He takes a long toke before I tell him, âThat wonât make you sleep. Itâs designed for alertness and may cause anxiety.â
âThanks for the fucking warning!â
âYou didnât even ask. I could have been smoking angel dust laced with a laxative for all you knew.â
âAnything else I should know?â
âIf you find blood in your stool, call your doctor immediately.â
I go back on earbuds and the botanically engineered alertness kicks in, heightening my appreciation of Sunnyâthe silkiness of her voice, the deep timbre that perfectly expresses intelligence and wry humor, the wonder of discovery:
Look! Up in the sky! Itâs a bird, itâs a plane, itâs a ⦠grasshopper? Because the physiological constraints of muscle power are limited per kilogram of muscle, a grasshopper should not be able to hop nearly as far as he canâwhich is roughly the insect equivalent of leaping tall buildings! Researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered that Orthoptera caelifera overcome this limitation with an elastic apodeme, or tendon, anchored to the leg muscle. The use of elastic storage allows as much as seven times that of equivalent muscleâwhich is like a human throwing an arrow by hand instead of using a bow ⦠and even Robin Hood couldnât make that work!
I can visualize it all perfectly: the super-enlarged image of the grasshopper under observation, its explosive slow-motion leap, the white-coated researchers in their white Cambridge lab ⦠Sunny in a recording studio, headset on, lips wet from the bottle of water she sips to lubricate her voice, content smile from her little joke at the end. The audio engineerâas much in love with her as I amâgives her a thumbs-up, and she smiles warmly back, dark almond eyes sparkling with intelligence as she removes her headset and tosses her thick black hair, taking a final sip before recycling the bottle.
I want to run to wherever she is and take her in my arm.
Instead, Iâm in my fatherâs attic with Steve, whoâs videotaping me on his cell phone.
âWhat are you doing?â
âCool room ⦠taping it ⦠maybe we can get you on one of those home-makeover shows.â
âIf itâs so cool, why would I want to make it over?â
âNo, youâd be