“A moment, please. Only a moment.”
His voice was brisk and methodical, as unfamiliar as her surroundings. She took a seat on the hood of the car. They were in a garage: a ground-level chamber flush with the back lot and one level below the main building. There were two metal sinks against the far wall, dozens of bottles on a series of warped, poorly hung shelves, all of them labeled in a chemist’s obscure script, an icebox just as dilapidated as the one in the kitchen, lidded trash barrels filled with what she could safely assume was not the usual sort of trash. On the raw-wood countertops was a variety of scientific equipment: microscopes, flasks, burners, tongs, an abundance of glass slides like the one she had used to capture the worm, all of them stored upright in a box marked PROPERTY OF HOPKINS MARINE STATION. What really drew her eye, however, was the old china hutch at the base of the staircase. It was filled with what looked like hundreds of bottled specimens, many of which she had seen in isolation before, but never all together.
“Come here.”
She looked away from the hutch. He was standing in front of the sinks. She slid down from the hood of the car, and went to his side. Most of the morning’s collections had already been sorted and categorized into metal bins: hermit crabs cowering in their pilfered shells, snails stretching their gooey feet up the sides of their enclosures, small sea stars curling and uncurling their slender, spiky legs as if desperate to signal something. The worms, however, were still alone in their vial, untouched and alive, resting quietly on their microscope slides.
“Well then,” he announced, his voice perfectly amiable now, but also too jaunty, too official. “We’ll start with one part menthol to nine parts seawater, which should get them nice and relaxed. And because we’re feeling fancy, we’ll add a dash of magnesium sulfate, but not too much because we’re running low and my current supplier is one of those shortsighted types who insists on being paid.”
He let out a snort, but she remained straight-faced, intent.
“Awfully serious today, aren’t you?” he said.
“I thought this was serious business.”
“It is.”
“So what happens next?”
“Like I said, a nice splash of menthol.”
He selected a bottle and held it directly beneath her nose. When she inhaled, there was a brain-flushing odor halfway between pine and mint, the strength of it almost enough to push her over the edge.
“Into the bin?” she rasped, eyes watering.
“That’s right.”
She took the bottle from him and let a glug or two escape. Then she watched him uncork the vial that held the worms, and as the worms slid from the vial and into the liquid, she expected something intense and purifying, something like the burning sketchbooks. But the worms barely moved, their edges making a slight upward curl before falling from the slides and stiffening into gradual paralysis.
“Are they dead?” she asked.
“No.”
He uncapped another bottle and poured its contents into the bin.
“Now they are.”
They both coughed, the smell in the garage unthinkably foul. Eyes watering, she searched his face, but he just smiled with the same vacant brightness as before and turned toward the icebox.
“And now we’ll just give them another minute.” The ease in his voice was an insult now. When he opened the icebox door, she could see a stack of dead cats, a tapestry of bared teeth and stiff tails. “And then we’ll rinse them down and get them into the formalin: a five percent mixture, just to be safe. As for the rest of our little friends, I suspect we’ll use some Bouin’s fixative on the mollusks, or maybe some Zenker’s. And the brittle stars should be easy enough. Seventy percent alcohol and just a splash of glycerin. It’s important to remember the glycerin. Keeps the articular membranes nice and flexible so there’s no risk of—”
She backed away from the sink and reclaimed her seat on the car.
“You disagree?” he asked, shutting the icebox. “About the glycerin?”
“No.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
She looked at the hutch again. She wasn’t sure if it was the euphoria of working alongside him or the lingering effect of the menthol. Either way, the sea creatures in their jars seemed to be moving slightly. She blurred her eyes, hoping to erase what she was seeing, but they came even more alive as a result. And she wanted to say something about it, but how to phrase it? How to put it in a way he couldn’t possibly discard or misinterpret?
“I’ve been having dreams,” she said.
At that, his face finally darkened. He wiped his hands again, removed his apron, and joined her on the Buick’s hood. Their legs were almost touching, both of their feet propped up on the front fender, and it reminded her of sitting on the bed with him, both of them admiring her sketch, both of them fully aware of what would happen next.
“‘The dream is the aquarium of the night,’” he said.