Monterey Bay Read Free

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 fixedher 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.
    â€œWell, well, well.” He smiled. “Up and at ’em, I see.”
    She looked away.
    â€œCan 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.
    â€œWhere 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.
    â€œMy home,” he answered genially, returning to his seat. “My lab.”
    â€œLab?”
    â€œBiological. 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.
    â€œI see,” she replied.
    â€œSkeptical, 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.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? Should I get the bucket?”
    â€œI’m not
inclined
toward the tide pools. Not one bit.”
    â€œThat’s funny. Your father said you were obsessed.”
    â€œHe was trying to get rid of me.”
    â€œNow 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.
    â€œI really think you should have some water.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œHow about something to eat? Something that’s not a steak?”
    â€œJust 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.
    â€œArthur? Some water, if you please.”
    In response, the drumming of fast footsteps, the squeak of a loosening tap, water splashing into a sink and continuing to splash for longer than it should have taken to fill a drinking glass. The biologist returned to her side.
    â€œSorry about the wait. It always takes a minute or two for it to run clear.”
    Another smile, another alarming inflation of his face. She looked away again, her eyes landing on the nearest wall. Out of all the oddities this room contained, the little postcard galleries were perhaps the oddest. They were arranged with no deference to style or period and were, for the most part, in exceptionally bad taste: three too