“Cigarette?”
She wheeled around. When their eyes met, she expected him to smile, but he just stared at her with a dishonestly straight face, as if he were physically suppressing something. The first few times she had seen him, she hadn’t really noticed his appearance; the magnetism of Ricketts’s presence had made such lesser observations impossible. Now, however, she was able to take stock. Seventeen years old, she guessed, possibly eighteen, short for his age yet solidly built, as if, had it not been for the stunting effects of poverty, he might have been taller than she and a good deal heavier. His clothes were old and colorless and almost insolently ill fitting, and his bearing was humble and nondescript. It was only his hair—wild and orange—that had any hint of extravagance to it, the curls sprouting from his skull like mutant carrots.
“I don’t smoke,” she replied.
“Me neither. I just tell the foreman I do so I can take a break when everyone else does.”
He jerked his head toward a cluster of women standing behind him in the cannery’s shadow. They were studying Arthur and her with an exhausted superiority, cigarettes pinched between thumbs and forefingers.
“Don’t mind them,” he whispered. “They think Sicily is the center of the universe.”
“Then they probably should have stayed there.”
Arthur winced, stepped forward, and drew her aside.
“Please,” he said. “They’ve only just stopped hiding my boots in the steam cookers. I don’t want to start anything.”
At first, his hand on her elbow felt menacing. It reminded her of that moment in Ricketts’s lab: her father holding her shoulders and shaking them. Say it. Say it in words. Arthur’s grip, however, was neither strong nor coercive. If anything, it had a gentleness to it that almost seemed grateful, as if the threat of the steam cookers had been little more than an excuse to touch her. To confirm, she looked in his eyes and there it was. A dopey, irrepressible gladness. A crush. Unrequited, naturally, and more than a little sickening. But useful nonetheless.
“I wonder if you can help me,” she said.
“I’m sure I can.”
“I need my job back.”
“Oh.” He let go of her elbow and glanced conspiratorially in the direction of the lab. “I heard the whole thing was pretty nasty.”
“What else have you heard? Has he found someone new?”
“To do the drawings, you mean?”
“Of course that’s what I mean.”
“Not that I know of. There’s a man in Carmel who sometimes does photographs. . . .”
“But not drawings.”
“Like yours?” His smile was so sweet, it made her stomach hurt. “No. There’s no one around here who does anything like that.”
“Then you’ll ask him. As a favor to me.”
“I’d be honored. But only if you’re certain.”
“Certain of what?”
He puffed out his cheeks and shuffled his feet. Then he dipped his head and took a step closer. She braced herself for another unwanted touch and was glad when it didn’t occur.
“Don’t wait here.” He indicated the Sicilian women. “If they start to suspect something, I’ll never hear the end of it. Go to that little outcropping above the beach where you read the paper every morning. I’ll meet you as soon as I can.”
By the time they reunited, it was late afternoon.
From the agreed-upon location, she watched the water. The tide was low in the yellowing light, the refuse from the canneries shining on the surface. Sardine scales glinted like flecks of tarnished silver. Sardine heads rolled in and out with the modest waves, grayish pink intestines trailing behind. Here and there, wherever a good-sized clump of entrails had been washed onto the beach, opportunistic clouds of flies formed: mobile, black tumors that refused to disperse even when the seagulls swooped nearby. The guts and the flies were very interesting to her, as guts and flies tended to be. Even more interesting, however, were the half-dozen men combing the filthy sand with boots on their feet and buckets in their hands, just like Ricketts on the morning they first met.
When she felt Arthur’s presence at her side, she made a point of not looking at him.
“You know,” he said. “I sleep down there some nights. Pretty well sheltered from the wind. And when there’s enough dry driftwood to make a bonfire—”
“What are they doing?” she asked, indicating the men.
“The scientists? Same thing as Doc, I guess, only they get paid a little better for it. That building over there is Stanford property: the Hopkins Marine Station.” He gestured to the multiwindowed structure she had noticed on her prior visits. “Top-notch research facility, modeled after the one in Woods Hole.”
“Why doesn’t he work there instead of at the lab? If the pay is higher and the reputation is better . . .”