Half Life

by Helen Cothran

  I was surprised at how much Sampson knew, given that he wasn’t officially a member of the gay community. The guys he hung out with were obviously a font of information. “Do you think Pete and Thornton got into it over this reparative therapy business?”

  “All I know is that those two went at it a couple of times, then it settled down. In any case, my real beef is with Cornwell. He preys on young people frightened by their sexuality. The bastard—sorry again—tells them the church won’t accept them unless they stop being gay. I’d say I’d like to kill him, but I know you’d take me seriously.”

  I smiled at his little joke, but I felt flustered. I had come to Sampson to find out if the nuclear waste protests had anything to do with Pete’s disappearance. But he had derailed me with this talk of reparative therapy. Was this a distraction, or was it a viable lead to pursue? For now, I decided to stick to my original plan.

  “So, back to the protests, how have the two camps gotten along? Aside from Pete and Matthew Thornton getting into their shoving matches, were there any other violent incidents?”

  Sampson shook his head. “The rhetoric has gotten ugly, but, no, I don’t know of any fights or threats, if that’s what you mean. Things have been pretty calm, overall.”

  “Has the mayor been personally involved?”

  “He may want the damn waste dump, but to lift a finger himself to get it here would cut into his golf time. No, he has Cornwell do all the heavy lifting.”

  “What’s in it for Cornwell? Does he really care about this?”

  Sampson made a face. “What Cornwell cares about is his rise to the top. He’ll pick up any issue he thinks will advance his career. He’s been currying favor with the powers that be, ambitious prick—sorry—that he is.”

  “Would you stop apologizing for cussing, damn it?!”

  He smiled thinly. “My wife hates it.”

  “Well, I don’t care. It’s nothing I haven’t said myself.”

  He cocked his head and looked at me, smile threatening. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

  “So, why did you get involved in the protests?”

  “I’d try to bullshit you, tell you my only motivation is concern for the good people of Desert Rock and its environs, but you have a BS detector that I can’t believe.”

  I nodded my head at his compliment.

  Sampson went on. “I do care about Desert Rock—this is my home, after all. But, I admit, I also care about my business. As you know, I’m the valley’s biggest developer. If they bring truckloads of cancer-causing garbage, shit that will stay radioactive for a thousand years, well, I see that as bad for business.”

  “You think no one would want to live here after that?”

  “Would you? I mean, maybe those of us who have put down roots in this place might stay. But my business is predicated on growth. If nobody else wants to move here, where’s the need for new housing?”

  “From what I’ve read, backers of nuclear power say the waste can be stored safely. You disagree?”

  He sat up straight, placed his thick palms on the desktop. “What about Chernobyl? Fukishima? People said those reactors would be safe. You build things to withstand X, Y, and Z catastrophes of such and such a magnitude, and what does the world do? It throws up something completely unexpected. An earthquake and tsunami. Or human error. Nuclear energy is one of those things that have a low risk of something bad happening, but if something does happen, the consequences are unthinkable.”

  “So why does the mayor want the stuff sent here?”

  Sampson threw himself backwards into his chair with a huff. “You’d have to ask him. But good luck—he never has time to see anyone, which is why he has Cornwell to do his bidding. Tyler says the repository would bring in jobs, help the economy. What economy, if no one wants to live here? The asshole aspires to higher office. If he could grow an economy, transform a sleepy little place like Desert Rock into a growing metropolis, he figures he can get elected to the state senate, maybe even become governor. The idiot.”

  I dreaded making the next statement in case Sampson saw another murder accusation implied in it. But, what the heck, what did I have to lose? My nose was already broken. “There must be a lot of money at stake over this thing. If the mayor gets his way, there will be money for the city, jobs. But if people flee the area, a lot of money will go with them, leaving businesses in trouble. Including yours.”

  He eyed me fiercely for a moment, then his lips quivered. “But you forget, Ms. Larkin. Pete and I were on the same side.”

  I laughed. “I had noted that, Mr. Sampson.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, both of us looking out at the Mule Train Hills.

  Finally, Sampson said, “Looks like we might get a good wildflower bloom this year.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Which means more hay fever. Not good with my nose like this.”

  I thought I heard Sampson snigger, but he got his face under control before I could confirm it.

  “Well,” I said, gathering up my hand bag. “I’ve taken enough of your time. I really appreciate you talking with me. I mean it.”

  We both stood, and he shook my hand again, my tiny hand disappearing into his paw. “Maybe trade that rottweiler in for a dachshund, Ms. Larkin.”

  “It’s good advice, sir,” I said with respect.

  I turned to leave, and just when I had my hand on the door handle, he said behind me, “Sam. Find out what happened to Pete. He was a good kid. If that bastard Cornwell had anything to do with this, I want him to pay.”

  I turned and looked Sampson square in the face. I said in my usual heedless way, “I will. I promise.”

  As I let myself out, I realized that I meant it, as crazy as such a promise was.

  8

  After my meeting with Sampson, I drove straight home, booted up my laptop, and started researching toxic waste. I wanted to prepare for an interview with Bernard Cornwell, should he agree. I thought it likely that he would, if he was as arrogant as Sampson suggested. A man of his ambition would doubtless appreciate the opportunity to be quoted in a book.

  Despite my resolution I found that I could not focus. Every time I started reading an article an image of Eddie intruded, his face aglow like it had been when he looked at Gabby. I realized that Eddie had been at the back of my mind all day. Although I had seen him only yesterday, it felt much longer than that. I felt a disturbing certainty that he and Gabby had spent every moment together since then, waking or otherwise. This thought prompted both the need to call him and the need to leave him alone. On one hand, I wanted to get back to the way things were, just the two of us, hanging out. On the other hand, it would feel humiliating to call him when he had so obviously traded me in for someone else. These conflicting desires made me feel sick, and I shook my head in disgust. Not a good idea! The motion sent shooting pains up my nose and into my skull. I eased away from my desk and went to retrieve a bag of frozen peas lest a nosebleed commence. Sitting back down at my desk, I pressed the icy bag to my face and suppressed a sob. Damn it! This was ridiculous!

  I snatched up my cell and punched Eddie’s number.

  It rang four times, and I’d almost given up hope when he answered.

  “Hey,” I said. “I won’t keep you, I know you’re at work. I just called to say a quick ‘hello.’”

  “It’s okay, I’m not at work,” he said.

  Eddie not at work? This was unheard of! “What’s going on?” I asked, worried that something bad had happened.

  He didn’t answer right away. Finally, he said, “I took the day off. Gabby and I decided to go hiking to see the wildflowers.”

  The frozen bag of peas dropped onto my keyboard with a clatter. My heart felt like it had fallen, too, right into my stomach, where acids were immediately digesting it. I managed to croak, “Oh, well, I’m sorry to interrupt your outing. I didn’t have anything important to say, so I’ll let you go.”

  “Sam!” Eddie said before I disconnected in haste.
“Are you all right? You sound like you have a cold.”

  I swallowed a couple of times. “I broke my nose.”

  He didn’t say anything for a second or two. “Not Lacy again.” The words came out tight, like he was suppressing a laugh.

  I felt myself smile, just a little. “Yeah, we did one of our things. Want to adopt a rottweiler?”

  He chuckled at this. “And put an end to these implosions? No way.”

  “Wow, with friends like you . . .” I realized that I couldn’t say it with humor and stopped.

  The connection went silent again. I could feel my nose throb. Finally Eddie said, “Seriously, are you okay? Do you need anything?”

  “Nah, I’m fine. But thanks for asking.”

  “Just let me know, okay?”

  “You got it.” I tried to sound chipper, but it came out flat.

  “Well, alright then. See you later, Sam.”

  “Have a good time,” I chirped fakely.

  We both held on the line for a few more seconds, then disconnected. I stared at the bag of frozen peas on the keyboard. I stared at it a long time.

  Then I picked it up and threw it.

  9

  Throwing the peas had felt good, and now I felt ready to engage in something more productive than feeling sorry for myself. I decided to call Bernard Cornwell. I would not spend another damn minute thinking about Eddie and that hideous woman.

  Cornwell answered on the second ring, and when I introduced myself, he seemed thrilled to be interviewed for my book. Sampson had been right about the man. He was vain.

  Our appointment was at eleven o’clock, less than two hours away, so I had little time to prepare. I needed to complete some quick research so I could ask a few intelligent questions during the interview to give credence to my purported reason for being there. Despite the urgency I sat staring at my computer, thinking about Eddie. Why was I so miffed? It’s not like Eddie and I were dating.

  I told myself it was natural to feel jealous when your best friend suddenly starts spending time with someone else. Every woman knows the feeling of being cast aside when her best girlfriend hooks up with some new guy. Of course, I didn’t have a best girlfriend, I had a best boyfriend—so to speak. So Eddie was a guy, so what? That didn’t make our friendship any different than what Vanessa shared with her girlfriends. I mentally probed this thought for reassurance, but the exercise fell flat, I could almost hear the psssss as the air wheezed out of it. Damn, I had to get a life.

  Starting now, I realized, glancing at the time. I had one hour before I had to meet Cornwell.

  I sighed and typed “radioactive waste problem” into the search engine.

  The first thing I learned about radioactive waste is that there is a lot of it. Over 46,000 metric tons in the United States as of 2010. If the spent fuel rods were stacked end to end and side by side, they would cover an entire football field over twenty feet deep—about the height of a two-story building. Only they are not all stacked together anywhere. Instead they are stored around the country at the nuclear power plants that used them. The reason is simple: Nobody wants the stuff.

  No mystery there. The spent fuel rods will stay radioactive for over a thousand years. Over time, the levels will decline, but considering that half the radioactivity will decay in five hundred years (the material’s radioactive half-life), that’s still more than five human lifespans. In other words, a very long time. Plenty of time to have something catastrophic happen. If a large earthquake cracked open the storage containers, for example, radioactivity would disperse in the atmosphere, irradiating anyone living nearby. The result could be a devastating cancer cluster.

  And the amount of waste keeps growing. A typical nuclear power plant in the United States generates about 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel each year, and there are sixty-five of them. Though the waste keeps piling up, efforts to deal with it have gone nowhere.

  Nobody thinks storing radioactive waste all around the country is a great idea. Obviously, it is harder to regulate diverse and scattered sites. But this has been the default waste management program simply because efforts to do anything else have failed. The problem of what to do with radioactive waste has plagued the nation since the first reactor went online in 1958. What’s more, this de facto approach runs afoul of federal law. In 1982 the Nuclear Waste Policy Act mandated that the federal government provide for permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste. Several potential sites were investigated, and in 1987 the government chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada to be the central repository. Not unexpectedly, before a clod of earth was overturned at the site, the good people of Nevada cried foul. Nevadans claimed that the site had been chosen without their permission. They argued that they should not have to assume all the risks associated with storing nuclear waste. Nevada finally won the battle in 2009, and for now anyway, the partially constructed underground facility at Yucca Mountain remains offline.

  Now the federal government is trying a different approach. The Blue Ribbon Commission, created by President Barack Obama when Yucca Mountain went kaput, quickly concluded that any attempts to foist a toxic waste dump on a community was doomed to fail. So the commission came up with a “consent-based” approach whereby communities across the nation would volunteer to host a nuclear waste management facility. With enough incentives—that is, grants from the federal government—the commission hopes that communities will be eager to jump on board.

  Mayor Tyler apparently decided that hosting a repository here could jumpstart our economy, which is never very hale but lately, with the economic downturn, has been stagnating. In a Desert Tribune article from two months ago, an opinion piece by Tyler expressed his complete confidence in government assurances that the radioactive material could be stored safely and would pose no health risks to those living here. Subsequent op-eds from Desert Rock residents took issue with Tyler’s sanguinity, vociferously arguing that in an imperfect world such assurances are naive at best, disingenuous at worst. These dissenters soon banded together and organized themselves, and the protests against Mayor Tyler’s plan were born.

  I would have to delve deeper into these issues as I worked on my book. For now, though, I had learned enough to conduct the interview with Cornwell. With any luck, he’d buy my act.

  10

  When I arrived at Cornwell’s office, I found the tiny reception area reception-less. The eight-by-eight space contained two worn chairs, a scarred coffee table piled with Christian magazines, and an end table on which a tabletop fountain trickled away, obviously meant to induce calm. It induced in me an awareness that I had not peed before leaving the house. I distracted myself by identifying the music whispering from invisible speakers as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. While standing in the middle of the room, I noticed a closed door, which I assumed led to Cornwell’s inner sanctum. Was I supposed to knock to announce my arrival? Or wait silently so as not to disturb a session in progress, trusting to some kind of sensor to alert the therapist of my presence? I stood dumbly, unsure what to do. Couldn’t he have put a sign up to explain all this? I sighed in bewilderment and plopped down in one the chairs.

  My butt had barely hit the fabric when the anteroom door opened and a tall, willowy, extraordinarily blond man in his early forties walked in. I took this as evidence for the sensor theory.

  “Ms. Larkin?” He asked, extending his hand.

  I shook his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Doctor Cornwell.” I knew that he wasn’t actually a doctor, but I figured if the man was as ambitious as Sampson suggested, he would like being referred to as one.

  Unsurprisingly, Cornwell didn’t correct me. He gaped at my face instead, which was still puffy and bruised. Before leaving home, I had tried to dispel the impression that I worked for the World Wrestling Federation by dressing like a schoolmarm, which I guessed was what Cornwell expected a writer to look like. Apparently, my efforts did not impress. He stared at my swollen nose, completely ignoring my long gray skirt, ruffled white blo
use, and fake pearls, all of which had belonged to my schoolteacher mother. I thought her old oversize eyeglasses, which I propped on top of my head, and the ecru flats were brilliant touches, but Cornwell appeared not to notice. So much for the Master of Disguises.

  To put an end to whatever unflattering impression of me Cornwell was forming, I waved a hand at my face and said, “My dog and I had an accident.”

  This obscure explanation sounded weird even to my ears. What, Lacy was driving my Corolla and we ran into a tree? Cornwell grimaced as if hearing the most preposterous lie in the universe. He mumbled unconvincingly, “Sorry to hear that,” and gestured for me to enter his office. He closed the door behind us.

  The Pumice Professional Office Building is one of the more rundown buildings in the old center of town. Cornwell’s office reflected this, its tiny space smelling of old carpet and dirty air ducts. The small window looked out across the street at the boarded-up Roadrunner Drive-In and the always-busy Desert Sudz and Dry. But Cornwell had done his best to present himself as a reputable and prosperous professional. An expensive cherry-wood bookcase housed scores of identically bound books, all of them American classics like Grapes of Wrath. He had framed diplomas on the walls, which could have been take-out menus for all I knew since they were hung so high you’d have to be an NBA player to read them. His huge desk contained a green desk lamp, one of those spiral-bound appointment books, and nothing else. Opposite the desk, a couch and a comfortable-looking chair faced each other, and I guessed this was where Cornwell conducted his sessions. To counteract the stale air, he had plugged in one of those air fresheners, which filled the room with pine scent.

  After pointing me to the couch, he asked if I wanted coffee.