“Sadly enough, most people in this town seem to agree.”
“Well, I suppose you’re as much of an expert as anyone,” Ricketts said amiably. “All those Methodists living in tents beneath the butterfly trees, singing the praises of the immaterial. It must have been extraordinary back then.”
When her father looked away from the desk and toward Ricketts, it was with an almost audible snap.
“I’ve overcome my youthful follies and I’m thankful for it,” Anders said, his voice controlled and toneless. “Some men aren’t so lucky.”
“Are you talking about the Renoirs? Because your daughter hated them, too.”
She flinched. This time, Ricketts had certainly gone too far. But there was something in his delivery—a self-deprecating, peaceable sort of humor—that seemed to neutralize the comment even as he voiced it. Her father, too, had been disarmed. She could tell by the way he smiled, shook his head, and reached down to straighten a stack of errant papers.
“I enjoy our banter, Edward.” He sighed. “I truly do.”
“The feeling is more than mutual. Entertaining the Fiske family gives me great pleasure indeed.”
“In that case, I’ll be back for her at five. She gets Sundays off. Not on account of religious superstition, but on account of labor laws.”
“Of course, of course.” Ricketts nodded and looked at Margot. “I’m not sure what I’ll be able to pay her, but once she familiarizes herself with the way everything operates she can decide what seems appropriate and then—”
“No payment is required,” Anders huffed. “Consider her services a much belated act of gratitude. For the kindness you showed her after the accident.”
She heard a chuckle from the corner of the room. During Ricketts and her father’s conversation, Steinbeck had somehow rematerialized unnoticed. He was settled deeply now into a low-slung rocking chair in the corner, knees hitched up to chest height, a large notebook open on his lap, looking for all the world as though he had been there for a century or more and had been disappointed by every second of it.
“If I were you,” Steinbeck suggested, “I’d consider the debt already repaid. In full.”
Her father gave Steinbeck a bemused look and then turned back to Ricketts.
“Five, then?”
“Whenever you like,” Ricketts replied.
“Make sure you knock first,” Steinbeck added. “Or else you might interrupt some . . . how did you put it, Anders? Some ‘youthful follies’?”
“John . . .” Ricketts laughed nervously.
“Yes, yes,” Steinbeck continued, undeterred. “I’m quite the comic. Have you heard the one about the sea otters, Anders? When the male otter takes a mate, he sinks his teeth right into the female’s face and holds on until he’s done!”
She raised an inadvertent hand to her wound and then quickly lowered it. Her father’s left eye twitched.
“I don’t concern myself with lesser mammals,” he sniffed.
“If only your daughter shared your aversions.”
“John.” Ricketts’s voice was solemn now, completely absent of its earlier mirth. “I’m sure you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“And I’m sure he didn’t mean to insult my book.”
“Your book was sentimental,” Anders replied. “And unclear.”
“Unclear? How’s this for clarity? Ed fucked your daughter.”
Her father’s face sank and then reacquired a terrifying blankness. He turned to Ricketts.
“Edward?”
“Anders, there was nothing—”
Steinbeck leapt to his feet, the chair rocking violently in response.
“One more lie from you and I swear! I swear I’ll break every jar, Ed. I’ll release every shark. I’ll burn this stinkhole to the ground.”
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Ricketts explained frantically, his underarms dark with sweat. “He’s under quite a lot of stress. He’s been getting death threats from the agricultural associations, the movie studios won’t leave him alone, his wife has started raising rabbits and—”
“Margot?” Her father was standing very close to her now, his smell an ancient indictment.
She shook her head.
“Say it,” Anders insisted, grabbing her shoulders and shaking them. “Say it in words.”
“You have no right,” Ricketts yelped, as if it were his body under assault, not hers. “She’s a human being. Of age.”
“Of age?” He released Margot and strode across the room in Ricketts’s direction, toppling the remaining candles. “What monster considers fifteen years old of age?”
Ricketts blanched. Margot stopped breathing.
“Fifteen?” Ricketts coughed, slinking back in the direction of the beer crate. “I must say, Anders. One could be forgiven . . . on account of her height, you see . . . for thinking she was a good deal . . . ahem . . . older.”
“My God,” her father whispered.