And then he turned away, stomping heavily toward his rocking chair, the crowd trying and failing to eliminate his looming shape from view.
She looked in the direction of the kitchen. She sucked in her stomach and started walking. He would be inside, she told herself, standing in front of a fry pan, cloaked in fat and steam. But the kitchen was empty, so she spun around and scanned the front room, and that’s when she saw him. He was moving quickly, past the desk and the file cabinet, past the fern in the Coast Guard buoy. She shouted his name, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he kept his head down, his expression both cheerful and pensive as he hurried out the rear door, an earthenware bowl in hand.
She followed, fighting what she knew was an idiot’s smile. Outside, the night blinded her. On her journey down the hill, the streetlights had glowed yellow, obscuring the absence of the moon. Now the darkness seemed saturated, absolute, the densest fog she had ever seen settled over the land and water, the moisture in the air so thick she could feel it beading on her arms like sweat, clinging to the hairs and making her shine like something that had just recently been plucked from the sea. She was standing on a narrow balcony. Beneath her was a strange hybrid of a space: a back lot that merged seamlessly with the ocean and that was framed on two sides by the towering walls of adjacent canneries. The area closest to the lab was marked with a grid of concrete tanks, some of which had wooden lids, some of which did not. On top of one of the lidded tanks sat a bald man and his gaunt, homely female companion, their heads surrounded by a cloud of fragrant smoke. Wormy, the woman who had been there on Margot’s first two visits to the lab, stood beside them. And Ricketts was leaning on the next tank over, the earthenware bowl perched on the tank’s uncovered rim, a beer in one hand and a chunk of raw meat in the other.
Margot froze. The bald man held a pipe to his lips, inhaled deeply, and then passed it to the thin woman. Wormy coughed delicately and brushed something from the front of her dress. A spot of blood fell from the meat and onto Ricketts’s boots.
“And to make matters worse,” Ricketts said after pausing to take a sip of beer, “Zanuck gave him a private screening. Can you imagine it? Our John sitting there trying to be polite?”
“I’ve heard it’s quite good, actually.” The bald man shrugged. “And John gets along just fine with the L.A. types. Have you seen it in there tonight? It’s like he’s auditioning twenty-two-year-old blondes for the role of ‘Most Likely to Make Carol Kill Him in His Sleep.’”
“Oh, let’s not be too hard on him.” Ricketts laughed. “He never expected this sort of thing, so he was unprepared when it happened. As far as I’m concerned, he can hide out in the lab for as long as he likes. Long enough to mend fences with his wife. Long enough for the world to forget all about Grapes of Wrath.”
A noise from the lab—a loud, delighted shriek—and when he looked up in the noise’s direction, his eyes instantly met hers, his expression so tranquil and steady that it was almost as if he had expected to find her there.
He tossed the chunk of meat into the tank, watched the resulting commotion within the water, took another drink, and then moved in the direction of the balcony.
“Mademoiselle Fiske.”
His face was still impassive, unsurprised, but there was a glint in his eyes that was visible to her even in the darkness. The bald man frowned and nodded. Wormy smiled, her lips a bright and appealing red.
“Fiske?” mused the thin woman. “The family who . . .”
“That’s right.”
And she wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be winking at her. Not in the louche, crude manner of some of her father’s former colleagues, but in a way that made her feel as if she had just said or done something clever. Wormy took a long drag from the pipe, a heavy certainty clouding her eyes as if she already knew the outcome of the scene under way and was deeply, deeply pleased at the prospect of it repeating itself.
“Perhaps a beer?” Ricketts asked.
“No. Thank you.”
“A puff or two?” He glanced at Wormy’s pipe.
“Edward, she’s a child.”