The air was gray dust and her fingers were driftwood. She had been taken here against her will, just like the Styela, and she would end up like them, too: prodded and observed and put to death. Her earlier instincts had been right. Resist, retreat, run.
But then she met his eyes and a different set of concerns surged forth. Just a few hours earlier, she had been so proud of her portrait of him. Now she felt differently. It wasn’t enough to represent something faithfully. The important thing was the order in which it all happened. Was she, in other words, taking something whole and breaking it apart? Or was she building up disparate elements until they formed a known shape? Her father always judged his success on the product, on the amount and quality of what came out. But what if it was actually about what went in? You’re getting somewhere, she told herself. You’re finally getting somewhere. But then all she could think about was her left shoulder. He was stroking it with his thumb, tracing the seam in her shirt.
“Explain it to me,” she said. “Explain it like I’m the dumbest person in the world.”
The thumb stopped. But then it resumed its tracing.
“You’re not dumb at all. I’ll bet you did marvelously in school.”
“I’ve never gone to school. Just to work.”
“Which I suppose explains the Surrey collar,” he said, popping the fabric. “Very debonair.”
“My father and I share a tailor.”
“Of course you do.”
“Please. Explain it.”
He sighed. There was reticence in his expression and she knew why. She had never tried to justify her drawings to anyone because she knew it would sound complex, and complexity could easily be mistaken for weakness.
“Like I said before,” he began carefully, “I collect specimens from the tide pools. Then I preserve them and sell them to universities. But I also do other things.”
“The essay.”
“Yes. And other essays much like it, none of which I can ever seem to get quite right. I like trying, though. I like to think about poets and composers and artists and their access to the divine. There’s the shark oil situation, which I believe in fervently. I’m trying to get the real story from both the fisheries and the population scientists to determine just how many sardines are left in the bay and whether or not we should keep on canning them. In my more optimistic moments, I feel like I’m just one idea away from figuring out a whole new method of categorizing each and every living thing. And someday I’m hoping it will all come together in a clear and beautiful way. In a way that even the dumbest person in the world will understand.”
From somewhere on the street outside, the sound of glass breaking, women howling in laughter. She had always thought her father was ambitious, but his goals were nothing compared with this. The biologist’s fingers moved from her collar to the side of her face. She felt very ugly. Very young.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t.”
“Oh,” he said, pushing himself back onto his heels. “I thought you were—”
“I’m not,” she replied, the words slightly emptier than she intended.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t usually try that sort of thing unless I’m quite certain.”
“Certain of what?”
At this, his eyes went blank. Then he stood from the bed and sat on the beer crate, the mattress shifting audibly beneath her as if dismayed by the sudden imbalance. She, too, felt dismayed. It hadn’t necessarily been pleasant to have him above her, to have him touch her on purpose. Pleasant, however, no longer seemed to be the point.
She stood from the bed and moved to the doorway, toward the room from which, if she listened hard enough, the music still seemed to emanate, even though it had stopped hours ago.
“Where do you put them all?” she asked.
“All of what?” He was standing now, too, and watching her more intently than ever.
She cleared her throat. Something was blocking her voice.
“You should lie back down,” he cautioned. “You might feel like you’re ready, but you’re not.”
“You go out there and take things.” He was right, she realized. Reclined on the bed, she had felt fine. But now that she was standing, the blood was plummeting from her head and the liquor was staking its belated claim. Within seconds, she would pass out and fall over. “You take things from the ocean and put them in here, so when do you know when it’s enough?”
“Well . . .” He grinned. “That’s the thing. It’s never really enough.”
When the next urge arose, she aimed herself in his direction and steeled herself for the impact.
“Whoa, there.” He caught her by the waist and guided her onto the bed. Instead of returning to the crate, however, he remained upright, his thigh within easy swatting distance.
“I actually am,” she said. The fabric of his trousers felt slightly damp beneath her fingers. She was finding a seam, too.
“Excuse me?”
“I actually am . . . interested.” What’s the other word? she asked herself. The less ambiguous one? “Available.”
Ricketts grimaced and shook his head.