Monterey Bay(30)
Margot froze. The bald man held a pipe to his lips, inhaled deeply, and then passed it to the thin woman. Wormy coughed delicately and brushed something from the front of her dress. A spot of blood fell from the meat and onto Ricketts’s boots.
“And to make matters worse,” Ricketts said after pausing to take a sip of beer, “Zanuck gave him a private screening. Can you imagine it? Our John sitting there trying to be polite?”
“I’ve heard it’s quite good, actually.” The bald man shrugged. “And John gets along just fine with the L.A. types. Have you seen it in there tonight? It’s like he’s auditioning twenty-two-year-old blondes for the role of ‘Most Likely to Make Carol Kill Him in His Sleep.’”
“Oh, let’s not be too hard on him.” Ricketts laughed. “He never expected this sort of thing, so he was unprepared when it happened. As far as I’m concerned, he can hide out in the lab for as long as he likes. Long enough to mend fences with his wife. Long enough for the world to forget all about Grapes of Wrath.”
A noise from the lab—a loud, delighted shriek—and when he looked up in the noise’s direction, his eyes instantly met hers, his expression so tranquil and steady that it was almost as if he had expected to find her there.
He tossed the chunk of meat into the tank, watched the resulting commotion within the water, took another drink, and then moved in the direction of the balcony.
“Mademoiselle Fiske.”
His face was still impassive, unsurprised, but there was a glint in his eyes that was visible to her even in the darkness. The bald man frowned and nodded. Wormy smiled, her lips a bright and appealing red.
“Fiske?” mused the thin woman. “The family who . . .”
“That’s right.”
And she wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be winking at her. Not in the louche, crude manner of some of her father’s former colleagues, but in a way that made her feel as if she had just said or done something clever. Wormy took a long drag from the pipe, a heavy certainty clouding her eyes as if she already knew the outcome of the scene under way and was deeply, deeply pleased at the prospect of it repeating itself.
“Perhaps a beer?” Ricketts asked.
“No. Thank you.”
“A puff or two?” He glanced at Wormy’s pipe.
“Edward, she’s a child.”
“Or so they keep telling me.”
Another wink, another shot of warmth running through her. Men and their compulsive need to offer things: Arthur and the cigarette, Steinbeck and the beer, Ricketts and everything else. Tonight, he bore none of the mute, inapproachable, ferocious qualities he had acquired as a result of dreams and distance. He was attentive and witty, and as the foursome resumed their conversation, she could feel her nervousness peel away. It no longer seemed dark. Instead, everything was illuminated as if by a searchlight: their shapes on the concrete tanks, the smoke swirling around the bald man’s ears in direct imitation of a fleeting and translucent head of hair, all of it framed by the black skin of the bay upon which nearly a dozen sardine boats were skating with tectonic slowness. And had anyone else ever felt even half of what she was feeling now? she wondered. The dread and dizziness? The longing that waved from her chest like an extra limb? The desire to sit with someone on top of a desk and stare at him until something explosive was unearthed?
“What’s in the tanks?” she asked.
Their conversation stopped midsentence. The thin woman giggled. The bald man crossed and recrossed his legs.
“Come down and see,” Ricketts said.
She paused and then began to move down the stairs, her descent a marvel of luck and physics. When she reached his side, he smiled and took another swig of beer. Inside the tank, a dorsal fin periodically broke the surface, the shadow of a small, tense body beneath.
“What kind of shark?” she asked.
“Spiny dogfish. Squalus acanthias. Would you like to feed her?”
He offered up the earthenware bowl. She selected the largest morsel it contained and felt her skin flush when his mouth made a click of approval. When she dropped the meat in, she saw a tremor and a curl, muscles seizing up with pleasure, the underwater implications of working jaws and flexing gills.
“Edward,” Wormy noted, “she’s bleeding.”
She looked at her fingers, at the red leavings of the shark’s meal. Then she remembered the penknife. She looked down. As before, she felt no pain, but her right trousers leg was crimson from knee to ankle.
“Indeed she is.” Ricketts turned to his companions. “Will you excuse us, please?”
Inside, the crowd had thinned considerably.
The tourists from L.A. were gone, as were most of the others. Only a dozen or so guests remained, most of them gathered around Steinbeck’s craggy height like a family of squirrels praising a redwood, all of them singing in a language she couldn’t place. The man in the bathrobe was alone, the coatrack abandoned and upended, his affections redirected toward a large glass jar with a brownish liquid inside. The desktop was bare of everything, including papers.
As they entered the bedroom, he removed his coat and tossed it on the floor.
“Take a seat on the bed, please, and roll up your trousers,” he said, disappearing into the bathroom.
She sat and tried to steady herself. Her sketch of the young mother was still on his wall, its presence thrilling, auspicious. When he reappeared and sat next to her on the bed, there was the urge to push him down and stake her claim, but she clenched her fists until it subsided. From beyond the door, she could hear the final notes of Steinbeck’s chorus, the melody drifting off into hums and moans.