When she awoke, she was being carried up a staircase.
Although the pain was exceptional, it was also bright and precise. Not, in other words, a dream. It was all actually happening: the sound of feet against wood, the sensation of being hoisted up and turned around, of being shoved through a curtain or a door, of being dropped into a nest of laughter. The high scratch of a phonograph needle.
Then the most disorienting thing yet. Silence. A wide berth of it, white and expectant, the pain brimming and stretching.
She grunted and writhed and tried to escape. The biologist tightened his grip.
“Wormy,” he said. “Where’s Wormy?”
“Dunno, Doc.”
“For the last time. I’m not a doctor.”
“What happened?”
“Smashed her head.”
“She’s so . . . tall.”
“All of you. Go home. Now.”
“I’ll help.”
“Ethanol ampoules. The box in the garage.”
Silence again.
“Arthur! The garage!”
Another rattle of footsteps, voices retreating, smells of new and old milk, new and old smoke. A low ceiling and black walls, dented waves of yellow glass, small things watching her, bleached flesh and jellied eyes. An embryo in a glass jar, fingers on her head, pressing down, slipping on something wet that had been left there. And then a fierce tugging between her eyes, the suddenness of it wrenching her upright, and now it was only in the darkness behind her eyes that she could see what was happening. She was thrashing like an animal, but the fingers were strong, grabbing one of her wrists and then the other.
“Wormy. Hold her down. Tell her not to fight.”
A woman’s smell moving in close.
“Don’t fight.”
A vial nudging itself between her teeth.
“You can hate me for this later. Just lie still.”
“Who is she, Doc?”
“The Fiske girl. I tried to warn her about those shoes.”
“She isn’t one of your sharks, Edward. Please tell me you haven’t been drinking.”
“Out! Both of you. Out!”
High heels, low murmurs.
And when the sounds had faded away, when she was alone with the biologist again, all that was left were the fingers on her head and a sick suspicion. The rubbing alcohol, the needle, the thread. A process no longer of sewing something together, she realized as the room turned black, but of sewing something on.
3
INSECTS ON HER FOREHEAD. BIG, TROPICAL ONES.
She lifted a hand. She found the brittle legs. She tried to yank them away but couldn’t, and that’s when she remembered. The hotel, the tide pools, the biologist, the fall. Eyes still closed, she released the trail of sutures and lowered her hand, trying one last time to summon it: the prismatic color of the Philippines, its heat and certainty. But when it wouldn’t come, she opened her eyes. There was a sagging rope mattress beneath her, her feet dangling over its edge, and a moist woolen blanket atop her that felt as though it weighed several hundred pounds. The light was dim and bleary, a noon-hour dullness soaking its way through a green-curtained window above the bed and casting the room in a submarine gloss. And the biologist was sitting next to her on an upended wooden beer crate, gazing at her with a dark pair of eyes.
He blinked twice but otherwise remained perfectly motionless. His beard was thick and brown, his clothes tattered. A tin plate of steak and soft-fried eggs sat in his lap, the meat deconstructed into a pile of small, equal pieces, as parents do when feeding a child.
“You’re awake,” he said.
She stared at the steak.
“My God, you gave me a scare.” He extended a beer bottle in her direction casually and without reserve, as if they were friends. “Turns out it’s little more than a concussion, but you were so delirious for a while there that I almost considered tying you down.”
She swatted at the bottle and looked away. She could recall everything now, and in near perfect detail—the blackness of the rocks, the way he had lifted his flask, the union of the snail and the blood—and she couldn’t decide whether it made her want to scream or fall back asleep.
“All right,” he said, nodding. “Something to eat, then.”
He selected a fibrous morsel from the plate and smeared it into the yolk. He lifted the fork and moved it toward her face. She tried to close her eyes again, but the pressure between them was too intense.
“My father will kill you.”
“I certainly hope not.”
“He’s done far worse. On account of far less.”
“I’m sure he has. And I’m sure I’d enjoy the story. But for now . . .”
He put the plate on the floor and rose from the crate as if he were about to leave the room. Instead, he approached the bed, put a hand behind her neck, and slid a pillow into place. She flinched, and then allowed her head to drop, the pillow releasing a brief hiss of air that smelled like pickling brine.
“For now,” he continued, “you should rest.”
“Where is he? He should be here.”