Her only clarity, therefore, was in her work, and in this sense she had never been more successful. With the exception of her and Ricketts’s field trips, her days were split precisely down the middle, anesthetizing and preserving his collections in the morning, drawing them in the afternoon, a schedule as predictable as the tides. In the garage, the air was rough with menthol and brine, her blood warming with each little death; behind the desk, she would perform her artistic resurrections. During these times, she could almost forget how awful it was to be in love. It was only at night on the horsehair sofa that the truth came to her: the day’s disappointments lurking, her adoration of him and her abhorrence of herself so suffocating, so monotonous, that it felt like a measurable physical weight. It made her want to give up entirely, to never go down the hill again, to remain in the house until her father’s work was done and it was time to leave Monterey for good. But then she would remember the mud, the otters, the smells of sage and stone. She would remember how much money could be made and how much power forged in the gratification of primitive desires. She would remember her father’s teachings about persistence and worth, cowardice and heroism, and she would find herself descending the hill yet again, wondering if today was the day when she would kill the animal or draw the corpse that would finally tip the scales, that would bear a fruit that wasn’t so outrageously small and bitter.
Her father’s work had also taken a turn, although in what way she still didn’t know. His vexation was sharper and louder than ever before, and his schedule had become irregular. Instead of departing for the Row in the morning and returning in the evening, he was now coming and going at unpredictable times—the middle of the night, the middle of the day—which made her uneasy because it deepened the mystery of his ambitions. There was a small, unhappy part of her that rejoiced in his aggravation, that extracted a modicum of pleasure from what seemed to be his long-awaited comeuppance, but his despair was much like Wormy’s disappearance: there was something about it that prohibited real schadenfreude. The covert inspection of his papers soon became a habit, no longer in an attempt to undermine, but in an attempt to assist, which was how, on a night he failed to return home, she found something she hadn’t consciously been looking for but that seemed inevitable the moment it caught her eye. Wedged within a roll of blueprints were three of her rawest, most troubling sketches. It gave her plenty to think about, certainly, but among the first considerations was this: that somehow, in the multiple transactions that had allowed them to pass from her hands to his, the message of the drawings had changed entirely. Of course there was disgust and suspicion and fear. But mostly, there was disappointment of a very specific sort: that of the angler hooking a fish long considered too elusive and intelligent to catch.
So when he had invited her to join him on this evening’s visit to the Agnelli warehouse, she had accepted despite deep misgivings. Now, as they proceeded to the wharf, deep into Sicilian territory, she knew her misgivings had been warranted. The boats lurched in their slips. The night crews went about their labors in ghostly silence, condensing and scattering around the perimeter. When they stopped in front of a large, corrugated metal structure marked with the Agnellis’ blunt-lettered logo, she shivered. Her father, too, seemed to feel a chill, rubbing his hands together as he peered through the single salt-pocked window. He began to knock at the door but then thought better of it and entered unannounced.
“My God,” he whispered. “I haven’t seen a place like this since I demolished those olive oil presses in Puglia.”
Inside the warehouse, it was dark, but not too dark to see. A pale light was trickling in from an indeterminate source, painting the walls and floor a sepulchral gray, and it was against this backdrop that she gradually became aware of the room’s contents: hundreds of crates filled to overflowing with oval-shaped sardine tins, and a ten-foot-tall plaster saint standing on an ornately decorated platform, several gardens’ worth of paper flowers wilting at her feet.
Her father rapped on the wall: a cold, tympanic sound.
“Anders Fiske,” he announced. “For Giana Agnelli.”
When there was no reply, her father began eyeing the sardine tins as if counting them. Then there was a noise from the far end of the warehouse—a clearing of the throat, a launching forth of the resulting by-product—which caused Anders to move a step or two closer to the building’s innards. Seconds later, Mrs. Agnelli and Tino appeared from the shadows, both of them attired more expensively than ever.
“There’s a reason they call it an embarrassment of riches,” her father whispered.
If Mrs. Agnelli heard the comment, she gave no sign. She continued to move in their direction, her speed leisurely and unaltered, her head tilted toward the saint as she coughed and spit again. It was only Tino who seemed to acknowledge them, assessing both father and daughter with a gaze that seemed to imply his great regret not only at the fact of their presence here, but in the entirety of the cosmic plan that had given birth to it.
“She looks fatter,” Mrs. Agnelli said. This was not her cajoling, reverent, hilltop voice. This was a voice from somewhere far beneath. A voice that matched the laugh. “Which begs the question of what, exactly, you’ve been stuffing into her.”
A gossipy murmur from the bowels of the building. Margot moved closer to her father. On account of the echoes, it was difficult to estimate the size of the audience, but she could imagine the brothers lurking nearby, fully concealed from view behind the towers of crates. She glanced fearfully at Tino. Tino blinked and crossed his arms around his waist.
“My daughter’s dietary habits,” Anders replied, “are her business entirely.”
“I was just trying to lighten the mood. But I forgot that your people aren’t known for their sense of humor.”