Chapter 8
“Damn.” There were no rings, candy or otherwise, in the Grocery Outlet cereal.
Wes stuffed a crinkling bag of store-brand flakes back into its box.
He shrugged at Isabel and at the plastic Pixar figurine they’d unearthed, then retrieved her napkin of spousal immigration interview questions.
“No luck there. But this does bring up another item for the list. What’s our favorite guilty pleasure movie? ”
“The Princess Bride.”
She spoke without thinking. She had to quickly occupy herself by the reef tank, concealing the fresh heat in her face by stooping to study the oyster.
Wes. Westley.
“As you wish.” He joined her at the aquarium. One thumb scraped at a thin crust of algae caked above the waterline. “Why’s that our favorite?”
She couldn’t admit the obvious answer. “It’s a good film.”
“A solid choice, yeah.” His grin brightened in her peripheral vision. “But you went diving in Monterey Bay at night, so you must be a better swimmer than Buttercup. Those shrieking eels wouldn’t be a problem for you.”
“No eel species preys on humans.”
“You don’t think they exist.” The smile broadened.
It was a joke.
She answered seriously, “If one does really exist, its feeding habits likely won’t be its most interesting characteristic.
Moray eels have two sets of jaws. And both morays and hagfish secrete so much slime that they tie their own bodies into knots to squeeze off the excess mucus. Otherwise, they’d suffocate.”
“Like rolling up a tube of toothpaste?”
“Yes.”
“Bizarre. . . I didn’t know that. I do have experience with morays, though.
I got bitten when I was photographing the Maldives reefs.
But I guess I should count myself lucky that the eel didn’t slime me like something from Ghostbusters, too.
Insult, meet injury! Which reminds me.” When he nodded back at her list, he rucked up the hem of his shirt to rub at a scar branded over his hip beside the red veins of jellyfish blisters; her breath caught and the oyster was fascinating again. “What’s your toothpaste brand?”
“Oh.”
She exhaled, relieved. The list was safe. Facts were safe. She gave him the answer, learning in exchange that he lived off a rotation of free dentist samples—and that beyond generic mint, his tastes leaned toward golden oldies and acoustic rock for singalong radio.
“Don’t worry, I won’t play guitar at you. Or—maybe I should? It’d give us something to fight about.”
Again: joking.
An involuntary stumble still bumped her into the credenza.
“Fine, fine, no guitar. I left my last one in the Socorro Islands anyhow. I didn’t want to, but.
. . airline weight restrictions.” Wes raised his hands in surrender.
“I guess we could have regular arguments about the toilet seat instead. Don’t most couples?
Or the correct way to load the dishwasher, even if we both know you’re right. Or your ring?”
“No. No arguments. No fights. I—I don’t want. . .”
“No? All right, we won’t fight. We’ll be one of those couples.” The pump bubbled between them for a moment, soothing to her ears. Then Wes continued with another smile emerging, though quietly, “But I will find you a ring. A real one.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Maybe not, but our interviewer could.”
Tucked into her trouser pocket, Chase’s circlet jabbed at her thigh. Her skin itched where its metal had rubbed an irritated indentation under the knuckle of her fourth finger. “Yes, but something small.”
“So an eight-armed sucker like the one on this clock can’t sneak it off you, along with your pencil?” Wes pointed at the bungalow’s novelty timepiece. Its cephalopod arms were now angled to Lime & Coconut: seven o’clock.
Saturday was almost gone.
“Yes.”
“Deal.”
“Not tonight, though. It’s. . . late.”
His gaze flickered so quickly from her fists under her sleeves, to the western sunlight still trickling into the bungalow, that maybe she’d imagined him looking at her at all.
It wasn’t late. But he just squatted down to watch the oyster in its tank and said, “Sure. Sleep tight. Don’t let the morays bite. ”
No eels slithered up from the shower drain while Isabel lathered soap over her goosebumps and rinsed her hair in cold water.
There were also none in the bed, with its dreamcatchers and upholstered purple-and-orange patchwork headboard.
But she didn’t sleep. The bedroom was stuffy, scented heavily with sage and lavender.
Opening its windows to the bungalow’s rear garden admitted a breeze, though the drone of mosquitoes, too.
She shut them again. Restless, she turned over and over through the sunset and the gathering dark until she’d twisted her slip into knots, until the mattress began to squeak under her body.
She froze and flattened her palms on it.
She squeezed her eyes closed, guiltily waiting.
Listening. . .
Outside in the living room, the couch cushions sighed.
Her fingers fisted in the sheets. Her pulse rolled in her ears.
Had she disturbed Wes while he watched the oyster, or tuned into his Attenborough audiobook, or reviewed his daily photo rolls? She wondered, listening harder. But after a minute a muffled snore whispered under the door. The cushions groaned a second time, then stilled. Another snore followed.
Good, she breathed.
She’d sleep now. She had to. She began to count backward through the 1,600 suckers of a giant Pacific octopus.
One thousand, five hundred and fifteen.
One thousand and two.
She counted for an hour.
Six hundred and eighty-seven.
For two hours.
The moon was high, pale and mocking, sailing across the ceiling.
She kept counting, frowning.
Three hundred and fifty. . .
Still murmuring sucker numbers, she blinked awake sometime later to her sheets kicked off onto the floor and a spear of daylight prodding her eyelids.
Morning. Her mouth was sandy and her neck was stiff.
Almost as if she’d been the one sleeping on the couch.
No squeaks or rustles came from those cushions in the living room. But water sang in the house’s pipes.
Not in the bathroom.
Her door was still locked.
Wes was up, in the kitchen, and from the clatter of frying pans and spatulas when she poked her nose out into the common space, he was cooking breakfast.
She was late.
He would have wanted a shower, and the toilet.
Wincing at the taste of her tongue and his noisy humming—no one was that loud or cheerful unless they’d been up for at least an hour, likely after several cups of coffee or a swim—she washed her face, brushed her teeth and her hair, and rubbed balm over the salt-cracked fissures in her lips.
She wiped a small blob of toothpaste from the sink, then collected all evidence of her morning routine and stashed it away under the bed.
She retrieved the last of the clean clothes from her overnight bag: a boat-neck blouse with long sleeves and French seams, a pleated midi skirt, ballet flats.
When she’d packed before Friday’s wedding shower and her planned city weekend, she’d anticipated days at whiskey bars in San Francisco. Not. . . this.
But this was now, and Wes was waiting for her.
Or at least, he was waiting for two eggs to fry.
Yesterday’s jeans exchanged for frayed cargo shorts, a dish towel slung over the shoulder of a shirt emblazoned with a Save the Whales logo, hair pulled up into a sleep-frizzed bun, he was flipping the eggs to seal their yokes in a sheen of olive oil when she entered the kitchen.
He waved away her apologies with a spatula.
One eye still on the bubbling whites, he said, “Do you want a hard fry or a soft fry, small fry?”
That was all. He was smiling.
“Um. . . anything’s fine?”
“No, come on. Help me out.”
Her stomach rumbled. “Whatever you’re having, please.”
“Then your plate’s coming with a shot of Tabasco. Or that sauce from the Grocery Outlet. I like heat. Do you?”
No.
She kept quiet.
“Isabel.” Tap, tap went his spatula against the pan. “I need to know things like this. If toothpaste could come up in our interview, food preferences are definitely on the menu. Which one of us cooks, and who does the dishes. Allergies. Favorites.”
He had a point.
“No hot sauce,” she admitted.
“No problem.” He jiggled the eggs through the last of their oil before tipping them onto plates. He started up the kettle. “Now, toast: light, dark, or been down to hell to fiddle with the devil?”
“Light.” She retrieved the seed loaf and popped slices into a toaster.
For research purposes, she asked his preference.
“I’m not picky. Too light, and it goes back. Too dark, and the charring gets scraped off. Anything’s fixable. Except toppings. How about those?”
A discussion regarding peanut butter, hummus, and pesto took them from the stove to the living room with their eggs, toast, a bowl of sliced cantaloupe, and mugs of herbal tea.
“Do you drink coffee?”
Chewing through a chunk of melon, Wes rolled his eyes. “Erin likes it and Adrian’s a grouch if he doesn’t get his dose first thing in the day. But caffeine’s not great for my brain. I’d choose a swim over a shot any day.”
“Mmm.” She sipped her tea—steeped just long enough to be bright without turning medicinal, nearly as refreshing as a cold-water plunge. She signaled her consensus, and followed up with cantaloupe and a nibble of toast. “Did you go into the bay this morning?”
“Not yet. I don’t have any octopus sightings to report.
Sorry about that. But,” around a large bite of hot sauce and eggs, his cheeks reddening with the effort of his mouthful, or the spice, “I was thinking: we should go out together. We’ll need to stage some dates for this runaway whirlpool romance, right?
How about walking into downtown Monterey to scout locations after breakfast? Unless—you’re busy?”
A swim could wait. It had to.
After she secured her visa, though. . . what would she do with her time?
But that was a question for next September.