Monterey Bay(39)

And, God, how she hated her tallness. Sometimes, it was a longing even more painful than her longing for Ricketts: the wish for a complete bodily distillation, a retraction into a more adorably compact form. Her father had always told her to take pride in her vertical inheritance. He had taught her to let it speak for her, to give her authority by proxy. But lately she had become convinced of a more evolved way of being. She imagined Ricketts and Wormy in bed together, their small bodies a perfect match, their union muscular and efficient and happily confined to a cell of its own devising, a cell in which she couldn’t possibly fit. If anything, she was more like Steinbeck than Wormy. She was big and sour and needy, and what if Steinbeck’s fears were true? If he were no longer the lab’s sole patron, would he be cast aside and forgotten? Would someone else come in to take his place? Could that someone else be her? And that’s when the realization dawned: an answer that caused her to turn away from the ocean and sprint up the hill.

Back at the house, she paused briefly in the sitting room. With the exception of the sofa and the good china and their personal belongings, most of which were still in trunks, there was nothing material that spoke to their presence here, nothing that could have told a curious observer who they were or what they prized. Similarly, there could have been nothing extrapolated by examining their neighbors, all of whom differed from Anders and Margot in every possible way. And perhaps this was why she had been so resistant thus far to Ricketts’s categorization of the world. She didn’t glorify the distinction between those who lived here and those who lived elsewhere—the distinction between the locals and the tourists, the distinction between those who watched the party and those who joined it—because to do so would be tantamount to denying the boundaries of her own existence.

“Margot?”

When she entered the kitchen, she was alarmed at how bright it was.

“Did you get a new lamp?” she asked.

“No. I brought in the one from the bedroom.”

The can of grease was still on the windowsill, as it had been for more than a month now. Normally, she wouldn’t have even noticed it. Tonight, however, it had company: first, a vial of shark liver oil similar to those Ricketts was always trying to convince people to drink; second, a Chinese joss stick jammed into the flesh of an unripe peach, the burned end releasing an irregular curl of musky smoke, its presence somehow both placating and aggressive, like the warning shot that comes before deadly fire, like the line in the proverbial sand.

“I heard you lurking,” he resumed. “I don’t like it when people lurk. It means they want something but are too cowardly to ask for it.”

Heroes advance when it makes sense to retreat, she quoted to herself. And cowards retreat regardless of what makes sense.

“I’d like to ask your permission to visit the Agnellis.”

He put down his pencil and arranged his documents into a pile, the resulting déjà vu making her head swim. A newspaper sat on the far edge of the table. A headline read, FISKE CANNERY TO CEASE OPERATIONS: UNIONS TO SUPPORT.

“You didn’t seem particularly fond the other day,” he replied. “I’m surprised you’re so keen to socialize.”

“Oh, my interests aren’t social.”

“You’ve a new plan in place. Good girl.”

She adjusted the strap of the satchel.

“Would you care to discuss it?” he asked.

“No. I think I’ve become a little superstitious, too.”

He smiled, but not gladly.

“I’m joining them for Mass again on Sunday,” he said. “You can accompany me.”

She nodded at the newspaper. “Soon we’ll both have reason to celebrate.”

“Yes.” He leaned back in his chair. “I think you’re right.”





13


    1998




NO MATTER WHERE SHE GOES, THOUGH—NO MATTER which part of the aquarium’s public spaces occur to her as a refuge—there’s music. Music designed at her own behest. Music meant, if she’s honest with herself, to replicate and revise how it once felt to be inside his lab.

She remembers sitting down with the composer, showing him the blueprints, describing the main exhibits, playing him a few examples of what she had in mind. Bach, of course. A well-known kirtan: “Hay Hari Sundara,” the 1926 Carnegie Hall version. Some Debussy, embarrassingly enough. That part in “Take It on the Run” where the guitar does a high altitude burn. To all of these, he nodded in time to the beat, scribbled down notes. When she reached the last song, however, he stopped writing. It was “Get Ready,” perhaps the Temptations’ strangest offering. To be fair, she knew it was weird. For one thing, it was about a stalker. For another, it didn’t start out like all the other Motown relics, with a jolting, percussive call to arms. Instead, it began with a dirge of horns, persistent and menacing, followed by some violins gasping for breath. Then there was the part with the saxophone, notes stabbing the air in what should have been a solo but instead seemed like the disembowelment of one. On top of it all, the singer: a voice that sounded neither male nor female, neither completely sane nor completely unhinged, neither dangerous nor safe. I don’t want this kind of trouble, the composer’s face seemed to say. Who would? She, however, was sitting there with her eyes half-closed, certain that, had he lived long enough, this song would have either pleased Ricketts greatly or upset him to near madness.