Gabriel looks at me across the fire. “When I was growing up, it was expected that I’d join the family business. I’d been doing it unofficially with him for years. You have to train for seven months to be certified as a guide by the government of Ecuador—studying biology, history, natural history, genetics, languages. Professors come here from all over the world—the University of Vienna, and the University of North Carolina, and the University of Miami—they ask for the help of the guides to continue research for them when they’re off-island. So you know, we might wind up taking pictures of green sea turtles, and sending them back to a scientist so he can track them around the island for his research. We might be asked to document penguin behaviors that seem unique.”
“I was bit by one,” I say, rubbing my arm. “When I first got here.”
“Well, that’s unique.” Gabriel laughs. “They usually are pretty shy around people, but with the quarantine, they seem to crave human interaction a little more. Even if it hurts the humans.” He pokes at the fire with a stick. “There was a time, believe it or not, that I thought I’d be the scientist doing marine biology. Not the tour guide doing the grunt work.”
“What happened?”
“Beatriz,” he says, smiling faintly. “My ex, Luz, got pregnant, when we were seventeen. We got married.”
“So you didn’t become a marine biologist.”
He shakes his head. “Plans change. Shit happens.”
“Beatriz told me her mother … ?left.”
“That’s a polite way of putting it,” Gabriel says. “The truth is, we didn’t stay together because we didn’t belong together. Not even for a baby. I learned the hard way that you shouldn’t stay with someone because of your past together—what matters more is if you want the same things in the future. Luz felt like she was too young to be trapped as a mother, and she was always looking for the escape hatch. I just didn’t think it was going to take the shape of a National Geographic photographer.” He glances at me. “Very different from you and your boyfriend, I’m sure.”
I am glad for the darkness, because he cannot see the flush on my cheeks. Finn and I are the couple that our friends tag #relationshipgoals. Every time Rodney has cried over another breakup, I’ve curled up in Finn’s arms in bed and silently given thanks that of all the people in the world, we found each other. I trust him and he trusts me. It’s steady and stable and I know exactly what to expect: I’ll get my promotion; he’ll get a fellowship. We’ll get married in a vineyard upstate (tasteful, no more than a hundred guests, band not DJ, justice of the peace officiating); honeymoon on the Amalfi coast; buy a house outside the city during the first year of his fellowship; have our first child during the second year and a sibling two years after that. Honestly, the only point of contention was whether we’d get a Bernese or an English springer spaniel. I had believed that Finn and I were so attuned that even a forced separation like this one wouldn’t shake our rock-solidness. But it’s taken only three weeks for me to feel disconnected; for doubt to grow like weeds, so insidious that it’s hard to see what used to blossom in that bed instead.
There is still the niggling thought that Finn suggested I leave New York without expecting me to actually do it—as if this were some sort of relationship test I was supposed to pass, but failed. And maybe I am equally to blame for not insisting that I stay. But I also know that focusing on that one moment of miscommunication keeps me from examining a more painful, scarier truth: here on Isabela, there are times I forget to miss him.
I can explain it away: At first, I was distracted trying to figure out how to stay fed and housed. I’ve been thinking of Beatriz, and trying to keep her from cutting. I’ve been literally disconnected because of a lack of technology.
But if you have to remember to miss the love of your life … ?does that mean he’s not the love of your life?
I pin a smile on my face and nod. “I’m lucky,” I tell Gabriel. “When Finn and I are together, it’s perfect.”
And when we’re not?
“Finn,” he repeats slowly. “You know what finning is?”
“Is this a sex thing?”
His teeth flash white. “It’s when massive Chinese fleets fish for tons of sharks. They cut off their fins for soup and traditional medicines—and then leave the sharks to die in the ocean.”
“That is awful,” I say, thinking that now I’ll always associate this with Finn’s name.
Maybe that’s what Gabriel intended.
“That’s the part of paradise you don’t get to see,” he says.
“Am I a terrible person?” I ask quietly. “For being here?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been weeks. Maybe I should have been trying harder to get back to New York.”
He glances at me. “Short of growing a pair of wings, I’m not sure how that would happen.”
I lift my gaze. “Natural selection favors wings …”
His mouth curves. “I guess anything is possible. It just may take a few thousand years for you to evolve.”
I scrub my hands over my face. “If you read his emails, Gabriel … ?it’s so bad. It’s killing him slowly to watch all those patients die, and I can’t do anything to help him.”
“Even if you were there,” he says, “you might not be able to do anything. There’s some shit that people have to work through on their own.”
“I know. I just feel so … ?powerless.”
He nods. “I imagine it feels like you’re caged in and can’t get to him,” Gabriel says, “but maybe you’re the only one who sees it as a cage.”