Wish You Were Here(45)
“You drew pictures,” the ranger continues.
“Um,” I say. “Yes.”
I can feel Gabriel’s eyes on me, like the stroke of a brush.
“My son gave you a guanábana.”
The boy, I realize, who was being bullied.
“You are talented,” Javier continues, smiling a little. “But more important … you are kind.”
I feel my cheeks heat with both compliments.
The ranger turns back to Gabriel. “You know, Gabriel, if I saw you here, I’d have to report you. But if I turned away and you were gone, it might just have been a trick of the light, sí?”
“Por supuesto,” Gabriel murmurs. He reaches down for his shirt, stiff with dried salt, and pulls it on. I pick up the discarded snorkeling equipment and follow him to our panga. The surf whispers around my ankles while he holds the boat steady, letting me climb in before he pushes off from the shore and hops aboard, revving the engine in reverse.
I don’t speak until we are out of the cove and through the túneles, bouncing over the chop of the ocean. “That was close,” I say.
Gabriel shrugs. “I knew it could happen when I brought you here.”
“Then why did you? He could have taken your tour guide license.”
“Because this is Isabela,” he says. “And you should see it.”
On the way back to Puerto Villamil, we do not talk about what happened the moment before Javier interrupted us. Instead, I find myself thinking of the hollow bones of birds, of the long necks of giraffes. The changeable skin of leaf frogs, the insects that disguise themselves as twigs. I think of girls who are dragged from safe havens into the unknown, and men with secrets as deep as the ocean, and grounded planes.
It’s not just animals that must adapt in order to survive.
Dear Finn,
Beatriz—the girl I wrote you about—told me that before there was a real mail service in the Galápagos, sailors would put their letters in a barrel in Post Office Bay, on Floreana Island. As other whalers showed up in their ships, they’d sort through the post, find ones addressed to their home port, and then hand-deliver them. Sometimes the mail wasn’t delivered for years, but it was the only way the sailors had to communicate with the people they left behind.
Beatriz says now, tour boats go to Floreana. Tourists leave postcards in the barrel, and claim postcards others have left to deliver when they’re back home.
The barrel’s small; I wouldn’t fit in it. Otherwise, I’d probably crawl in and hope someone would carry me back to you.
Love, Diana
The day I met Kitomi Ito, and found myself standing alone with her in front of her painting, I realized exactly what was wrong with the Sotheby’s pitch, and why we would likely lose the opportunity to Christie’s or Phillips. Everyone seemed to be concentrating on Sam Pride, who’d bought the painting. But no one had stopped long enough to think about who he gave it to, and why.
I began to talk fast. I didn’t know if Eva would interrupt us, and if my boss heard me actively subverting her plan for the Toulouse-Lautrec painting, I’d be out of a job before the elevator hit the lobby.
“What if the auction wasn’t about fame,” I said, “but about privacy? It seems to me that everything was a big show for your husband—even, forgive me, his death. But this painting—it wasn’t any part of that circus. It was just for you, and him.” When Kitomi didn’t respond, I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t use this to headline the Imp Mod sale. I wouldn’t reunite the Nightjars. I wouldn’t make this public at all. I’d build a private sale in a room with simple staging, good lighting, and a single love seat. And then I’d extend a confidential invitation to George and Amal, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Meghan and Harry, other couples you might think of. It should be a privilege to be offered a showing. A nod to the idea that they have a love affair that’s timeless, too.” I turn back to the painting, seeing the vulnerability in the eyes of the pair, and the rock-solid belief that they were safe in sharing it with each other. “Instead of the buyer having the upper hand, Ms. Ito, you’d be choosing the couple that gets to continue the love story. You’re the one giving it up for adoption; you should be the one to pick the new caretakers—not the auction company.”
For a long moment, Kitomi just stared at me. “Well,” she said, and a slow smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “She speaks.”
Just then Eva’s voice cleaved between us like an ax. “What’s going on here?”
“Your colleague was just presenting an alternate approach,” Kitomi said.
“My associate specialist does not have the authority to present anything,” Eva replied. She shot me a look that could cut glass. “I’ll meet you at the car,” she said.
The driver hadn’t even closed the door behind Eva when she started lacing into me. “What part of ‘do not speak’ did you not understand, Diana? Of all the moronic, irresponsible things you could say, you managed to find something so … ?so …” She broke off, her face red, her chest heaving. “You do realize that the reason you have a salary is because the company survives on massive public auctions that attract an obscene amount of money, yes? And that silly little romantic love letter you proposed will make us look like kindergartners, compared to whatever spectacle Christie’s is offering—for God’s sake, they probably said they’d find a way to throw in a posthumous Kennedy Center Honor for Sam Pride—”