“I know.”
And then the rebirth of another tradition: dinner on foot. For as long as she could remember, they had eaten like this, as if in readiness for fight or flight, their legs shifting beneath them as they chewed, her father’s enjoyment of the meal’s creation vastly exceeding his enjoyment of the meal itself. When they were done, she put down her fork and looked at him. He didn’t resemble the biologist, not one bit. But in a moment like this, when the turmoil within him had been temporarily silenced, when something had been successfully planned, executed, and consumed, the similarity was both unsettling and undeniable.
“So,” she said. “Have I earned it?”
He folded his napkin into quarters and placed it neatly on the countertop.
“Earned what?”
“An explanation.”
“A lucrative opportunity. Nothing more.”
“From what I’ve heard, the sardine game isn’t so lucrative these days.” In her mouth, the biologist’s words seemed precious and oddly shaped. “Most of them are already in cans.”
“For one thing, it’s not a game. For another, it’s not the sardines that interest me.”
“Then what does?”
He lifted his chin, the tendons in his neck jutting forth like buttresses. So it wasn’t over, she told herself. Not yet.
“I thought you were no longer interested in my affairs,” he protested, head tilted in reclamation of his earlier disdain.
“I thought you had deemed me unworthy,” she replied, mirroring his stance.
“Not unworthy. Just in profound need of correction.”
“Correction made.”
“In that case, fire away.”
Her pulse skipped. This was a game: one they had played countless times before.
“The sellers?” she asked.
“The Agnellis. Monterey’s most powerful family.” He was enjoying this, too, but pretending he wasn’t. “They know which way the winds are blowing. Or at least they think they do.”
“The price?”
“Far less than my nearest competitor offered, which ruffled some feathers, to be sure.”
“Location?”
“Just down the hill, at the intersection of Cannery Row and David Avenue. A few doors down from the place where that Ed Ricketts fellow tended to your wound.”
She put one hand on her stomach, one hand on the countertop. Ed Ricketts: a name she hadn’t known until just now, a name that brought her back to the strange, isometric desperation of the past seven days. Thinking back on it, she realized it hadn’t been calmness, not at all. It had been a million forces converging down on her all at once, slyly yet firmly freezing her in place.
“A lab,” she said. “His place is actually a lab.”
“I know. I’ve been there several times this week.”
She kept her face flat, her breath even. There were scratches on the kitchen table that looked like handwriting. Stains on the linoleum that looked like train tracks.
“And while he hasn’t exactly blessed my ambitions,” he continued, “he hasn’t cursed them either.”
“Why would he?”
“Because he’s the town’s self-proclaimed expert on everything fish related. Which is tiring in person, but useful in practice.”
And there it was: fate.
“So I’ll accompany you to the cannery tomorrow,” she replied. “Seven A.M. Just like always.”
He shook his head. Her chest tightened. Whenever they cooked, she wanted to tell him, he never let her use the knife, only the blunt things. The rolling pin. The wooden spoon. The pan.
“I want to work,” she said.
“And work you shall.” The light was catching his white hair and making it glow. “But not necessarily in the cannery. And not necessarily with me.”
“Then where? And with whom?”
He squared his shoulders and grinned; a stray green fleck stuck to his lower lip.
“With Ed Ricketts. In his lab.”
That night, she didn’t sleep.
For a while, she sat on the porch, a buzzing sensation in her belly and groin, the stink of the canneries fighting against other stinks: iodine, mulch, mildew.