“Here,” he said when he was sitting beside her again. “I got you a live one.”
He placed something yellow and cylindrical into her hand. There was the urge to flinch, to toss it across the room in disgust, but she kept her hand steady. She let it roll against her palm, light and wet, its ridges like worn-down tire treads. Then she picked it up by the small stem at its base and held it above her, as if peering into the speckled center of a foxglove.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Looking.”
“Would you like to know what you’re looking at?”
“If I must.”
“It’s a Styela. One of the animals you were supposed to be helping me collect. One of the animals Arthur failed to properly anesthetize. The tubular part is called a tunic. And the skinny part you’re holding on to is called the stalk. Which explains its common name: stalked tunicate.”
“Oh.”
“Some people also call it a sea squirt.”
“Why is that?”
“Give it a squeeze and see for yourself.”
She held it over the edge of the bed and did as instructed. The result was precisely as he had described: a little bit of the sea squirting out onto the floor.
“Are people always so literal?”
He laughed. “For the most part, yes. But every once in a while you get a pleasant surprise. The sarcastic fringehead. The Portuguese man-of-war.”
She pinched out the last of the seawater and put it in her lap.
“Go ahead,” he said, picking up the sketchbook and pushing it at her. “I know you want to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“It has a heart, you know. It literally has a heart. The water came out of the atrial siphon.”
“I don’t care.”
“And it may not look like it, but it’s a closer relation to you and me than any other invertebrate. As larvae, they have backbones and spinal cords. Just like us.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“It most certainly isn’t.”
“You’re trying to trick me.”
“Why on earth would I do something like that?”
Her father was never coming back, she told herself. And now everything was up to her, just as it had been in the tobacco fields.
“I’d like another drink,” she said.
“Me too.”
As he reached over to the windowsill to retrieve the jug, she could see the strip of skin above his belt. She would squeeze him around the waist just as she had squeezed the Styela; she would see the ocean coming out. He passed her the jug. Her mouth and throat were completely accustomed to the sensation now; it was only her belly that continued to respond. The fire flaring up, the fire cooling down.
“You know,” he said, watching her closely, “last time I drank this stuff, some strangeness happened.”
“What sort of strangeness?”
“Well, a slapping contest for one thing. Right on top of my desk. Joe and I sat there for hours and hit each other as hard as we could. Then John took a turn.”
“Why?”
He smiled and looked sheepishly at his essay, which was still sitting on the bed. “We wanted to see if we could break through.”
It was as if he were speaking in code. And the most puzzling thing was that she hadn’t even earned it yet. It usually took so much more than this to be invited inside a stranger’s world. Money, connections, shows of good faith. But she had offered him none of this and yet, here she was.
“Let’s do it,” she said. The tequila was a sword in her brain: brave and shimmering. “Let’s do another slapping contest.”
“Absolutely not.”
She raised a hand and tried to connect it to his face, but he grabbed her wrist and forced her arm back down. When he released her, she shifted onto her side and faced the wall. There was only one light source in the room—a rawhide-shaded lamp on the bedside table—and the shadow it cast of her body was huge against the expanse of paneled wood.
“Don’t pout,” he said after a moment. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway.”
Sleep was overtaking her now, quickly and violently, and she was glad of it.
“There’s another technique, though.” His voice cut through her drunken fatigue like scissors through wet silk. “One that’s a bit less likely to leave a mark.”
In response, she didn’t flip all the way around to face him. Instead, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.
“I’ll need to look into your eyes,” he said.
“Then look.”
She kept her gaze fixed firmly upward. He snorted in either amusement or frustration. Then, suddenly, he was the only thing she could see: his body covering hers but not touching it, his legs spread wide, his torso held aloft on bent elbows.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just stare at me. Stare the life right out of me.”