Free Fishing With RayAnne by Ava Finch Page A

concession stand, greasy hot dogs ride little Ferris wheels under heat lamps. She buys the only healthy thing on offer, a smoothie, sucking it down at a stand-up table chosen because it’s too small to share. On the way back, she stops in a bathroom, but upon leaving turns the wrong way. By the time she realizes, she’s deep into the weapons side of the convention hall, dead-ended under a banner emblazoned “Steve and Steve’s Kill Cam!”
    There’s no one in the Kill Cam booth, but on a wide video screen, two men in fatigues stand stiffly with hands clasped over their groins. Steve and Steve bellow in tandem, “Film the kill! Relive the hunt!” They demonstrate how to attach the Kill Cam to a rifle barrel and operate it like a scope. Squinting at their cue cards, they pitch. “One great way to remember a great hunt!” says Steve. “Who says that you cannot hunt out of season?” Other Steve asks. The scene cuts to them reclining in loungers watching a massive flat screen where a felled doe twitches on bloodstained snow.
    “Jeezus,” RayAnne mutters. “How gr—”
    “Grisly?” The low voice comes from directly behind.
    Turning, she says, “Gruesome.”
    She blinks at a face she recognizes but cannot place. It takes a beat. The man frowning up at the screen is the guy from the WYOY parking lot. The dimpled musician, so far out of context she grows slightly flummoxed. He takes a step forward, still fastened to the screen. “You suppose they write their own copy?”
    “You assuming they can write?”
    “There’s that.” He has a deep laugh.
    “Have we met?” she asks, immediately thinking, Is that the best you can come up with?
    “Not formally.” He grins. “But I’ve been hoping to, actually. I’m Hal. Hal Bergen.”
    He says it in a way that makes her think she should know him, but she cannot think why. Offering her hand, she automatically braces to receive the crushing, knuckle-aligning handshake men at these sorts of events tend to employ—the testosterone squeeze, the you’re playing a man’s game here, little lady crush. But his clasp is light and wrong. She looks down to see his hand is half encased in a sort of brace, like a leather golf glove with stays. After a slice of silence during which she stupidly stares, he eases his hand away, winking. “Bad day at the sawmill.”
    She laughs, assuming she’s meant to. His other hand seems okay.
    “How’s the show been for you so far?” he asks.
    “ This show?”
    She can be such an idiot. Her brother Kyle claims that, around men, her social skills regress to age ten, suggesting she might adopt any approach besides her own. The guy—whose name she has promptly forgotten—is better looking than she remembers, but then she’s up close now, wearing glasses (not her lovely new glasses of course, but the clunky Harry Potter ones). Her hair is jammed in a clip; she’s not wearing a smidgeon of makeup. He, on the other hand, looks professionally styled to a state of semiscruff as if for an indie album cover shoot. His hair is a dark mop threaded with early silver. He’s got the sort of eyelashes wasted on a man, and his mouth is particularly good, dimples exactly where she would have placed them herself.
    Ky claims she’s unfairly wary of handsome men because of Big Rick.
    “Um, are we supposed to know each other?”
    “Supposed to?” He looks slightly puzzled. “Well, no , not . . . Ah, you mean fraternize ?”
    “I’m not sure . . . what I mean.” Now flummoxed might as well be stamped across her forehead. As it tends to in awkward situations, her flight instinct kicks in and she surveys the aisle over his shoulder. “Anyway, yeah, I should really get back.”
    “Oh?” He’s clearly disappointed.
    She shrugs. “Good to meet you . . .”
    “Good to meet you too, RayAnne. See you later, I hope?”
    Later? She’s halfway down the aisle before slowing. He knew her name? She hadn’t offered it. Maybe he works at one of the