Monterey Bay(16)

He smiled at the squid in the skillet as if they had done him a personal favor, then smothered them with a handful of minced greenery. She hadn’t expected it to feel this good—this return to business as usual—but it did. Her father’s sudden enthusiasm was sweeping away any former notions of patience, payback, or restraint. Just like the burned sketchbooks, she thought with a shiver: the catharses that were always so final until, at a certain point, they weren’t.

“And what about the squid? Did they disappear, too?”

“No. The bay is still full of them, but that’s not the point. The point is that, for centuries now, people have been doing the same damn thing. Breaking the bay, waiting for it to fix itself, and then breaking it again. And I’m certain there’s a better way.”

He reached across her to give the skillet a little shake.

“And what way is that?”

Instead of answering, he took a tiny jar from his vest pocket, opened it, and dosed its contents into his palm.

“Smell,” he said.

She paused. This was the most conciliatory gesture he had made in months, and something about it worried her. But then she bent over his hand and inhaled. Hot, musky, semisweet. As specific and strange as the unknown herbs.

“What is it?”

“Chinese five-spice powder. Try to guess all five.”

Guess, she remembered telling the biologist. Guess how old. She closed her eyes and took another sniff.

“One: cinnamon. Two: cloves . . .”

“Star anise, fennel seed, and Szechuan pepper.”

“I was just about to say that.”

“No,” he teased. “You weren’t.”

The powder hit the pan, its smells unifying and then exploding.

“Quick,” he said. “The plates.”

She opened the nearest cabinet and withdrew two pieces of the good china, which had been placed there without her knowledge, as if in deliberate secret.

“Cook it for too long,” he said, easing the squid out of the skillet, “and it turns to rubber.”

“I know.”

And then the rebirth of another tradition: dinner on foot. For as long as she could remember, they had eaten like this, as if in readiness for fight or flight, their legs shifting beneath them as they chewed, her father’s enjoyment of the meal’s creation vastly exceeding his enjoyment of the meal itself. When they were done, she put down her fork and looked at him. He didn’t resemble the biologist, not one bit. But in a moment like this, when the turmoil within him had been temporarily silenced, when something had been successfully planned, executed, and consumed, the similarity was both unsettling and undeniable.

“So,” she said. “Have I earned it?”

He folded his napkin into quarters and placed it neatly on the countertop.

“Earned what?”

“An explanation.”

“A lucrative opportunity. Nothing more.”

“From what I’ve heard, the sardine game isn’t so lucrative these days.” In her mouth, the biologist’s words seemed precious and oddly shaped. “Most of them are already in cans.”

“For one thing, it’s not a game. For another, it’s not the sardines that interest me.”

“Then what does?”

He lifted his chin, the tendons in his neck jutting forth like buttresses. So it wasn’t over, she told herself. Not yet.

“I thought you were no longer interested in my affairs,” he protested, head tilted in reclamation of his earlier disdain.

“I thought you had deemed me unworthy,” she replied, mirroring his stance.

“Not unworthy. Just in profound need of correction.”

“Correction made.”

“In that case, fire away.”

Her pulse skipped. This was a game: one they had played countless times before.

“The sellers?” she asked.

“The Agnellis. Monterey’s most powerful family.” He was enjoying this, too, but pretending he wasn’t. “They know which way the winds are blowing. Or at least they think they do.”

“The price?”

“Far less than my nearest competitor offered, which ruffled some feathers, to be sure.”

“Location?”

“Just down the hill, at the intersection of Cannery Row and David Avenue. A few doors down from the place where that Ed Ricketts fellow tended to your wound.”

She put one hand on her stomach, one hand on the countertop. Ed Ricketts: a name she hadn’t known until just now, a name that brought her back to the strange, isometric desperation of the past seven days. Thinking back on it, she realized it hadn’t been calmness, not at all. It had been a million forces converging down on her all at once, slyly yet firmly freezing her in place.

“A lab,” she said. “His place is actually a lab.”

“I know. I’ve been there several times this week.”

She kept her face flat, her breath even. There were scratches on the kitchen table that looked like handwriting. Stains on the linoleum that looked like train tracks.

“And while he hasn’t exactly blessed my ambitions,” he continued, “he hasn’t cursed them either.”

“Why would he?”

“Because he’s the town’s self-proclaimed expert on everything fish related. Which is tiring in person, but useful in practice.”