Free Fishing With RayAnne by Ava Finch

camo-condom!”
    “That alone . . .” RayAnne shudders. “That could rocket me over the fence.”
    Above their heads, a flat screen aimed at the aisle plays a video that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to, probably because RayAnne has set the volume to barely audible. It loops a collection of impromptu shorts and outtakes from the show. In the first, RayAnne is busy outfitting her line and choosing bait, gently pawing through her tackle box, talking as if thinking aloud.
    “What draws me to fishing? I suppose the act of it, you know? It’s so . . . hopeful. Though I think catching fish is really overemphasized and overrated. I mean, unless you’re feeding your family or work on a trawler, getting skunked is no tragedy. Fishing is peaceful, you’re in a boat, and the world is back there on shore. For me . . . for me , it’s a way to think, to relax.” She begins doing something that requires both hands, holding the line between her teeth while talking. “Sho there’s the occasional triumph, you might get a fighter, shome exshitement . . .” Caught up in the motions of tying her leader, she severs the line with a bite, then, remembering the camera, she looks up and says, “Oh, but don’t do what I just did . . . unless you have dental coverage. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Catching a fish can be fun, but the old saying? Anticipation is the purest form of pleasure? That’s it, just getting out there is what matters, that’s our goal here on Fishing .”
    Such monologues weren’t scripted; in fact most were filmed candidly when she thought she was merely answering casual questions from the crew. The tapes were dug up after responses from audiences indicated they most liked RayAnne when she was just being herself. She wasn’t initially keen on the idea of the videos, but after seeing them edited and strung together, they seemed okay after all, maybe because she meant what she said on them—that, at best, fishing is merely a sort of meditation with no agenda, how, in a boat, calm has a chance to surface. That sometimes doing next to nothing is important.
    RayAnne pops up. “I gotta stretch my legs. Want anything? Coke? Assault rifle?”
    “Nah.” Cassi barely looks up, engrossed in a new game, boots propped. “Hey, stop in at Lefty’s. I told them you’d be by.”
    “Great. Thanks.”
    Vendors she passes promote everything from feather-light titanium rods and strap-on depth finders to Ferrari-style bass boats with matching trailers priced many times more than an average car. Expos are geared to portray fishing as an alpha sport, requiring state-of-the-art everything, all designed to tempt males of a certain age with expendable incomes to own the fastest boat or most enviable rod, men with wallets crammed with bills in higher denominations than their emotional IQs. The place teems with them.
    She’s a little twitchy passing the booths that sell weapons and handguns, and is reminded of Bernadette’s philosophy on gun issues. Whenever a school shooting or murder is in the news, Bernadette goes a little rabid. “If only knives would come back into fashion! Murder would be so much rarer. Any coward can shoot a gun; it’d actually take balls to kill someone with a knife, up close and visceral.” Her mother has a point. If drive-by killings entailed throwing rounds of knives out of moving car windows, inner-city streets would become nursery-safe. No one’s going to hold up a Kwik Trip with a Leatherman.
    No doubt Bernadette would label the men at the expo less evolved for the enjoyment they take in stalking and killing. Looking around, there is admittedly not much introspection going on at the corner of Glock Lane and Taxidermy Avenue. Near an exit, RayAnne waffles, pining for fresh air, but her vendor tag is back in the booth acting as a bookmark, so she might not get back in the door without it . . . which might not be such a bad thing, except she hasn’t got her phone either.
    At the