“I inquired at the hotel, but no one knew.”
She gripped the sides of the mattress and tried to pull herself upright.
“Careful now.”
“I’ll find him myself.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will.”
But the nausea pushed her back down. A galaxy of small orange sparks was sizzling in the corners of her eyes, and he was smiling again, cocking his head and peering at her as if her discomfort were something to be studied instead of something to be solved, the smell of the meat strong enough to make her gag.
“Please remove that steak.”
“If you need to be sick . . .”
He indicated a metal bucket at his feet: one of the same ones he had carried through the tide pools. She retched. He held the bucket beneath her chin. She emptied herself into it. Then, with what seemed like the biggest and most concentrated effort she had ever expended, she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, sank into the mattress, and let the universe knock her down.
When she woke again, it was dark.
Her vision was steadier, the pain in her head had softened and condensed, the sickness had abated. Dusk had made its blue black deposit, pale streetlamps shining beyond the window like lesser moons. On the small table next to the bed, she could see the satchel that contained her sketchbook, its leather water-stained from her fall. Outside, she could hear voices and cars, but not a lot of them. She could hear the ocean, too, and the biologist was still sitting on the crate next to the bed, exactly as before. The only difference was that the tin plate and the beer bottle were gone and in their place was a typewritten manuscript, which he was studying with a focus so complete, it was almost certainly fake, like how a sinner might pray. Before, in the tide pools, she had come to several conclusions, none of which had been proven wrong. Now, though, there was the question of setting. At the water’s edge, he had appeared to her in blunt-chiseled relief. Here, however, surrounded by his own necessities, the ceiling low and the light dim, it was more like something rendered in oil instead of stone: his outlines definite yet malleable, the paint dry but not quite hard.
She coughed. He looked up from the manuscript and fixed her with the same peculiar gaze as before. She shifted her limbs, testing them. He chewed on his beard with his upper teeth. The sparks returned to her periphery and fizzled away.
“Well, well, well.” He smiled. “Up and at ’em, I see.”
She looked away.
“Can I get you some water?”
She shook her head. He studied her for a moment longer and then returned his attention to the manuscript. She examined the room. Before, in the midst of her delirium, her only impressions had been those of danger and anarchy. Now only the anarchy remained. Rows of salt-stiff books, towers of warped glass jars, ragged undershorts and photographic negatives dangling side by side from a length of fishing line. A typewriter on a folding table, its keyboard a good deal larger than normal and outfitted with many foreign-looking keys. A collection of deer antlers in a hammered copper basin. Dozens of postcard-sized reproductions of famous works of art crookedly pinned to the wood-paneled walls.
“Where am I?”
He smiled again and tapped the papers against his knee. Then he rose from the beer crate and wedged the manuscript onto a crowded bookshelf across from the bed.
“My home,” he answered genially, returning to his seat. “My lab.”
“Lab?”
“Biological. I study things from the sea.”
She leaned back, narrowed her eyes, and inspected the room again. The biologist was not a designation she had questioned when her father had first introduced them. Now, however, she was skeptical. There was nothing here that indicated the contemplation of science, much less its practice.
“I see,” she replied.
“Skeptical, eh? Well, I don’t blame you. Around here, I’m afraid I’m best known for embalming cats.” A pause. “And then there are the tours of the tide pools, but I tend to reserve those for only the most oceanically inclined of the hotel’s guests.”
She slumped against the bed and pressed the heels of her hands against her temples.
“What’s wrong? Should I get the bucket?”
“I’m not inclined toward the tide pools. Not one bit.”
“That’s funny. Your father said you were obsessed.”
“He was trying to get rid of me.”
“Now why would he want to do that?”
She shook her head, her hands still knitted around her skull as if holding her brains in place.
“I really think you should have some water.”
“Fine.”
“How about something to eat? Something that’s not a steak?”
“Just the water.”
His smile was so big that he almost appeared to be in pain. When he stood, she anticipated the relief of being left alone. But he remained in the room, stopping in the doorway and craning his neck just slightly beyond it.