This seemed like a good opportunity. When she paused for breath, I broke in. With every semblance of nonchalance, I asked if she had any idea whether Mick might be single.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really.” Charlene shot me a worried look. “In fact, I’m sure he isn’t.”
“Ah.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh,” I said. “No reason. Still learning about everyone.”
There was a pause. Charlene was playing with her bangs. Her hair was the sort of fiery red that always made me do a double take. Day by day, I felt the need to check the pallor of her skin, the profusion of her freckles, trying to verify whether such a shade could possibly be real. I did that a lot here generally. The islands were a place that seemed to exist in fantasy, ever-changing and harsh.
Suddenly Charlene stiffened. A look of horror crossed her face. Gazing past my shoulder, she murmured, “Oh no.”
“What?”
She pointed behind me. I pivoted with some care, trying not to dislodge any shingles. My feet scrabbled for purchase on the slanted roof.
In the distance, I glimpsed a boat on the water. The Lunchbox was bobbing in the calm surf near Mirounga Bay. There was only one passenger. To my surprise, I saw that it was Lucy. Evidently she had rowed out alone.
“I hate it when she does this,” Charlene said. “I just hate it.”
I peered at the rowboat’s faraway contours. Lucy’s work—observing, tagging, and cataloging the birds—did not necessitate travel on the water. Galen and Forest, the shark boys, could often be found on the briny blue, but in Lucy’s case, a pair of binoculars would suffice. Still, her inquisitiveness might have gotten the better of her. Maybe she had decided to row to the Drunk Uncle’s Islets. Maybe she wanted to visit Arch Rock, which was shaped like a gigantic lock with an old-fashioned keyhole. From there, she would be able to see the burrowing owls and cormorants right under her nose.
And yet, as I looked closer, I saw that Lucy was wearing a neoprene wetsuit. Her body seemed different, wrapped in rubber. Usually she obscured her curves beneath layers of clothing, but now I could see the fleshy arc of her hips, the full measure of her generous bosom. She held a snorkeling mask up to her eyes, adjusting the strap. Beside her on the deck was a bulky breathing apparatus, a snaky hose coiling among the benches. Lucy lifted the end of this tube and stuck it between her teeth. Then she sat down and tugged on a pair of bright blue flippers.
“Is she doing what I think she’s doing?” I asked.
Charlene sighed. “It’s her hobby, believe it or not. She’s a diver. She goes down there and looks for anemones. She collects sea urchins and shells. She likes to see them up close.”
With a splash, Lucy plunged into the water. For a moment she was visible in the surf, pushing her mask into a better position. A swell washed over her, and she disappeared.
“But the sharks,” I said.
The rowboat, abandoned, slid back and forth on the waves. I could hear the smack of the surf on the hull. Lucy’s breathing hose was unrolling slowly, spooling over the side.
“We’ve all tried to talk her out of it,” Charlene said. “Especially Galen. He put his foot down. Big arguments in the kitchen. Lucy was polite, but she wouldn’t budge. She asked us to show her in writing where it said she wasn’t allowed to do it. And we couldn’t. There aren’t any rules for this. Nobody thought to make a rule about recreational diving.”
“It’s crazy,” I said.
Charlene bit her lip. “She doesn’t do it that much. Only a few times since I came. I did ask her about it once. She said it was something she had to do.”
The sea was opaque. Slippery waves. Drifting shadows. A clamor of sunlight glinting off the surface. The water did not allow me to pick out a human shape.
THAT EVENING, THERE was tension in the air. Lucy had not returned. I found it difficult to settle to anything. A cat on a hot tin roof. I was amazed that Galen and Forest could sit with their heads together, poring over a tidal chart. I was amazed that Charlene could focus on her book, pencil at the ready, occasionally underscoring an important word with two precise lines.
In my travels, I have learned that biologists are a strange breed. A certain kind of individual is drawn to this work. I have grown accustomed to the type. In Texas, I met a herpetologist who caught wild rattlesnakes with his bare hands for fun. In northern California, there was a botanist who enjoyed free-climbing the giant redwoods, scaling those massive trunks with no ropes or harnesses. In Greenland, I encountered an ichthyologist who imitated Jesus, walking on water. Born and bred in that climate, he was able to determine the density of the ice by sight. I often watched him, heart in my throat, as he strode over the surface of the ocean, sending out ripples in the layer of standing water above the deeper core of dark, porous frost.
In short, Lucy’s behavior was not that far beyond the pale. Still, as the evening passed, the clock ticking, the breeze brushing the windows, I was worried. The sea was rough and cloudy. Visibility was limited. It was starting to get dark. Lucy was down there alone, armed with nothing but a wire basket in which she liked to collect interesting shells. In my mind, the water teemed with white sharks, thrashing against one another in the rush to get to her exposed figure first.
In recent weeks, I had learned a lot about these wily predators. White sharks did not typically hunt humans—but it was common knowledge that a diver looked a lot like a seal from the right angle. Same color, same size. The sharks were inquisitive by nature, too. One might swipe Lucy with its tail, bump her with its nose, even give her what Galen called a “love bite” to investigate her presence. She could be killed, not out of malice or hunger, but from idle curiosity.
I was frankly astonished that there was diving equipment on the islands at all. It was perilous enough to travel around by boat without venturing below the surface. Probably, like the helipad, the diving kit had been purchased for emergencies—a man overboard, a discovery of sunken treasure. Surely it had never been intended to be used for fun.
Each time the door banged in the wind, I glanced up hopefully. Mick was out there, I knew, working the crane to bring Lucy home. At a prearranged hour, he had headed off to meet her. It seemed as though he had been gone a long while. Too long. Charlene set her book aside and began scribbling down notes. Galen and Forest continued their discussion in low, insistent voices. Forest was looking even thinner than usual, as willowy as a ballet dancer, with cavernous cheekbones.
He and Galen were arguing about the white sharks. I was getting better at following their jargon. The Rat Pack was the group of males responsible for most of the attacks on seals and sea lions. A strip of ocean by Indian Head was their hunting ground. The Rat Pack lingered to the south of the archipelago like a clique of teenagers at the mall. Galen and Forest had come to know them well. Some were curious, easily lured to the surface. Some were aggressive, thudding into the Janus’s side or trying to bite the motor. They were usually named for their wounds: Bite Head, No Fin, One-Eyed Jack.
The Sisters, however, were something else. The puny males were dwarfed by the female sharks, which could be as long as limousines, twenty feet from snout to tail. These ladies were nobility. They did not demean themselves to hunt with the Rat Pack but maintained their own turf, staying to the east, patrolling from Sugarloaf to Jewel Cave. I had yet to see a Sister myself (though any day now, I was sure that I would find the courage to go out on Shark Watch). They cruised the waters with a lazy grace, and the Rat Pack, those lesser peons, treated them with unswerving respect. The Sisters had so much gravitas that Galen and Forest claimed to be able to sense them underwater even before