“The Agnellis. Monterey’s most powerful family.” He was enjoying this, too, but pretending he wasn’t. “They know which way the winds are blowing. Or at least they think they do.”
“The price?”
“Far less than my nearest competitor offered, which ruffled some feathers, to be sure.”
“Location?”
“Just down the hill, at the intersection of Cannery Row and David Avenue. A few doors down from the place where that Ed Ricketts fellow tended to your wound.”
She put one hand on her stomach, one hand on the countertop. Ed Ricketts: a name she hadn’t known until just now, a name that brought her back to the strange, isometric desperation of the past seven days. Thinking back on it, she realized it hadn’t been calmness, not at all. It had been a million forces converging down on her all at once, slyly yet firmly freezing her in place.
“A lab,” she said. “His place is actually a lab.”
“I know. I’ve been there several times this week.”
She kept her face flat, her breath even. There were scratches on the kitchen table that looked like handwriting. Stains on the linoleum that looked like train tracks.
“And while he hasn’t exactly blessed my ambitions,” he continued, “he hasn’t cursed them either.”
“Why would he?”
“Because he’s the town’s self-proclaimed expert on everything fish related. Which is tiring in person, but useful in practice.”
And there it was: fate.
“So I’ll accompany you to the cannery tomorrow,” she replied. “Seven A.M. Just like always.”
He shook his head. Her chest tightened. Whenever they cooked, she wanted to tell him, he never let her use the knife, only the blunt things. The rolling pin. The wooden spoon. The pan.
“I want to work,” she said.
“And work you shall.” The light was catching his white hair and making it glow. “But not necessarily in the cannery. And not necessarily with me.”
“Then where? And with whom?”
He squared his shoulders and grinned; a stray green fleck stuck to his lower lip.
“With Ed Ricketts. In his lab.”
That night, she didn’t sleep.
For a while, she sat on the porch, a buzzing sensation in her belly and groin, the stink of the canneries fighting against other stinks: iodine, mulch, mildew.
At around three in the morning, she returned to the sofa, where she watched the walls wash themselves lighter and lighter, the daylight swinging across the land and water. Part of her was amazed at how well everything had turned out, her father’s schemes coming into miraculous alignment with her own. He had explained it to her succinctly and without room for dispute: how the lab’s finances were a disaster and how she was more than qualified to set things straight. Her real purpose, however, would be not that of the accountant, but that of the spy. She would eavesdrop on conversations, memorize statistics, and then report back to Anders. Even more important, she would curry favor with Ricketts himself: an element of the plan that, according to her father, was indispensable to victory.
So it was a simple arrangement and one that promised dual satisfactions. Ample reason to be optimistic, perhaps even joyful. But she wasn’t. Ricketts’s appeal, she remembered now, hadn’t exactly been benign, and his ambitions hadn’t exactly been straightforward. At times, he had watched her a little too closely. He had laughed at her terror and had offered her a beer, and now when she tried to summon the image of them sitting side by side on the bed, she saw not only their bodies and faces and her drawing on the wall, but also the green-curtained window. In her mind’s eye, she looked through it, hoping to see nothing more than the fog moving beneath the beams of the streetlights like the sorts of vapors some mistake for ghosts. Instead, she saw a face looking in at them, a pair of eyes assessing them with curiosity and envy.
She sat up. The daylight was growing stronger, the cushions seeming to actively repel her weight. A train whistle blew in the distance, a gull screamed. She stood and tiptoed over to the clock on the mantel—a German timepiece with a loud, bossy tick—and saw herself reflected in its glass face. She looked the same as she had yesterday: pale, scarred, perched at that odd inflection point between youth and adulthood. But there was also something else. A new severity, a new definition, almost as if her features were too sharp to belong to a child.
When she heard her father waking, she turned from the clock and listened. The rush of running water in the bathroom sink. The hollow plunk of one of his shoes and then the other. The rustle of his files and papers as they were swept into his valise. His suit, she knew, would be pressed and spotless. His thick, colorless hair would be neatly pomaded and parted down the middle. Their descent would be wordless, dignified, her father humming a little as he walked, chin raised and arms rigid. In these ways and more, she knew what to expect. What she didn’t expect, however, was how tall he would look when he finally emerged from his bedroom. As they left the house and proceeded down the hill to Cannery Row, his six feet and five inches seemed as distant and immovable as a cathedral ceiling, and she felt very small in comparison: as close to the ground as a dog, unusually aware of smells and the transitions between them.
When they were just a step or two from their destination, the sidewalks dense with cannery workers, the street loud with trucks, he stopped and searched her face and must have been troubled by what he found there, because what came next were the type of words that, in the wake of last night’s détente, shouldn’t have been necessary: instructions that assumed the worst about her instead of the best.
“You’re not to roam the streets. You’re not to come here after dark,” he said. “Other than that, all I ask is that you behave in a manner that is least likely to tarnish the simple dignity of your family name. Is that something you can manage?”
“I believe so.”
And moments later, there they were: shoulder to shoulder in front of the dark, salt-swollen door of Ed Ricketts’s lab.
6
THE MAN WHO ANSWERED THE DOOR WAS NOT ED Ricketts. Not in the least.
“John,” Anders said. “I was under the impression you had already left for Baja.”
“Not yet,” the man replied, shaking her father’s hand and then returning both long arms awkwardly to his sides. “Still trying to talk some sense into Ed, and that could take months.”
The man produced a labored smile, a horse’s set of big, yellow teeth layered across his gums like roof tiles. He was shorter than her father but looked as though he should have been taller on account of his coarse, oversize features. His brow was broad and bunioned, his nose a weighty bulb at the base of a funnel-like bridge, his ears those not of a human being but of some sort of huge nocturnal mammal. She stuck out her hand and tried not to startle when her fingers were engulfed by his.
“John Steinbeck,” he said.
“Margot Fiske.”
“I know. You couldn’t look more like your father if you tried,” he answered morosely, squinting at the scar on her forehead. “Plus, I can see the telltale damage. The sign of the beast.”
She met his gaze evenly. “That’s not the proper usage of the phrase.”
“Margot,” her father cautioned.
Steinbeck turned away without a word. Anders and Margot followed him inside. She scanned the front room anxiously. It was quiet and bright. The contents were much the same as before—the cluttered desk, the overburdened bookcases, the ancient phonograph, the Coast Guard buoy with a fern planted inside of it, the file cabinet in which there sat a half-empty bag of flour, the same wooden beer crate that had served as Ricketts’s bedside chair. The only change was an odd and obvious one: a ring of unlit tallow candles in the middle of the floor.
“Take my eye off him for one second …” Steinbeck grumbled, kicking a candle onto its side.
“We can wait.” Anders tapped a foot in impatience.
“Please do.”
Steinbeck trudged out the r
ear door. Her father deposited his valise and hat onto the desk and surveyed the room, his upper lip wrinkled in distaste.
“Good Lord,” he said. “He’s worse at housekeeping than we are.”
And then a voice from behind.
“The Fiske family. A delightful surprise!”
She paused before turning to face him, taking care to keep her expression neutral. He was wearing an ankle-length oilskin apron, a stained undershirt, and the sort of green visor favored by gamblers. Arthur was at his side again, as was a woman—below average height, above average looks—who seemed familiar, but in a way she couldn’t quite place.
Ricketts walked briskly up to her father and extended a hand.
“It wasn’t meant to be a surprise,” her father said, completing the handshake, taking a small step back, and reexamining the candles’ broken circle. “I sent word we’d be here at ten past, but—”
“You did? To whom did you speak?”
“I think he called himself … Bucky.”
“Ah yes! Bucky. Lives across the way in one of those big storage cylinders. Answers my phone sometimes, but he’s usually too drunk to write anything down. If I had known you were coming, I would have made things a bit more presentable. Or at least cleared away some of the evidence.”
Her father lifted an eyebrow.
“In case you’re interested,” Ricketts continued, “tallow beats beeswax. Almost always.”
“For what purpose?” her father asked warily.
“For the purpose of the séance. I think we might have actually broken through for once, although I’m not sure it was worth the trouble. I always get so nervous in the presence of the supernatural.”
At this, he looked directly at her for the first time since entering the room, his examination prolonged yet buoyant, as if the two of them were in on a joke the others were too slow to understand. She looked at his hands. They were nimble and callused and held a bucket each, just as they had that morning in the tide pools, and at the sight there was a surge of interest strong enough to make her stumble. Whose ghost had he summoned last night? And why?
“Can I offer any of you a beer?” Ricketts asked. “Or a steak?”
She tried to answer but couldn’t.
“She’s shy.” The woman smiled.
“I can assure you she’s anything but,” her father replied.
“Wormy, Arthur.” Ricketts handed the buckets to his companions. “If you please.”
“Doc, perhaps she’d like to—”
“Arthur. Downstairs.”
“They’re just Styela. I don’t have to—”
“Arthur!”
Arthur scowled and followed Wormy through a small door at the far end of the room. Ricketts turned back to Margot and her father.
“Oh, Styela.” He grinned. “Don’t know why I even bother anymore, to be honest with you. Can’t get the boys to bring me much else, so why should I be out there getting them myself?”
In reply, Anders studied Ricketts and then helped himself to the seat behind Ricketts’s desk. Ricketts settled himself contentedly on the beer crate. Margot remained standing and watched as her father began eyeing the papers on the desktop. To anyone else, it might have looked like an idle perusal, but she could see its underlying intensity, assimilative and scathing.
“Any new orders since last we spoke?”
“A few,” Ricketts replied, stretching his legs out in front of him. His pants were rolled up to his knees and his shins were hairier than she remembered. The green visor made him look a little seasick. “But most of the universities ordered their supplies for the spring term in the fall. Which means I have more than a couple dogfish out back just begging for someone to buy them and slice them in two.”
When he turned to smile at her, he looked like a clown, but not the funny kind.
“A challenging business model, isn’t it?” Her father found a document that interested him and inspected it carefully, blinking as if his eyelids were camera shutters. “Flush one minute, broke the next. I don’t know how you manage.”
“Not very well, I’m afraid. If it weren’t for my illustrious benefactor, I don’t know where I’d be.”
“Don’t be so modest. I’m sure John knows a bargain when he sees it.”
“John knows a story when he sees it. And I usually deliver on that front, I’m sorry to say.”
“Yes. His latest book was … unusual. Those peach farmers really had the worst of it.”
“Funny. Most people sympathize with the pickers.”
Her father raised his hands in the air. “A heartless capitalist! Guilty as charged!”
“Making something from nothing is what our society values, I’ll grant you that. Making nothing from something, though …” He gestured around at the lab. “Well, that’s the real trick.”
“Sadly enough, most people in this town seem to agree.”
“Well, I suppose you’re as much of an expert as anyone,” Ricketts said amiably. “All those Methodists living in tents beneath the butterfly trees, singing the praises of the immaterial. It must have been extraordinary back then.”
When her father looked away from the desk and toward Ricketts, it was with an almost audible snap.
“I’ve overcome my youthful follies and I’m thankful for it,” Anders said, his voice controlled and toneless. “Some men aren’t so lucky.”
“Are you talking about the Renoirs? Because your daughter hated them, too.”
She flinched. This time, Ricketts had certainly gone too far. But there was something in his delivery—a self-deprecating, peaceable sort of humor—that seemed to neutralize the comment even as he voiced it. Her father, too, had been disarmed. She could tell by the way he smiled, shook his head, and reached down to straighten a stack of errant papers.
“I enjoy our banter, Edward.” He sighed. “I truly do.”
“The feeling is more than mutual. Entertaining the Fiske family gives me great pleasure indeed.”
“In that case, I’ll be back for her at five. She gets Sundays off. Not on account of religious superstition, but on account of labor laws.”
“Of course, of course.” Ricketts nodded and looked at Margot. “I’m not sure what I’ll be able to pay her, but once she familiarizes herself with the way everything operates she can decide what seems appropriate and then—”
“No payment is required,” Anders huffed. “Consider her services a much belated act of gratitude. For the kindness you showed her after the accident.”
She heard a chuckle from the corner of the room. During Ricketts and her father’s conversation, Steinbeck had somehow rematerialized unnoticed. He was settled deeply now into a low-slung rocking chair in the corner, knees hitched up to chest height, a large notebook open on his lap, looking for all the world as though he had been there for a century or more and had been disappointed by every second of it.
“If I were you,” Steinbeck suggested, “I’d consider the debt already repaid. In full.”
Her father gave Steinbeck a bemused look and then turned back to Ricketts.
“Five, then?”
“Whenever you like,” Ricketts replied.
“Make sure you knock first,” Steinbeck added. “Or else you might interrupt some … how did you put it, Anders? Some ‘youthful follies’?”
“John …” Ricketts laughed nervously.
“Yes, yes,” Steinbeck continued, undeterred. “I’m quite the comic. Have you heard the one about the sea otters, Anders? When the male otter takes a mate, he sinks his teeth right into the female’s face and holds on until he’s done!”
She raised an inadvertent hand to her wound and then quickly lowered it. Her father’s left eye twitched.
“I don’t concern myself with lesser mammals,” he sniffed.
“If only your daughter shared your aversions.”
“John.” Ricketts’s voice was solemn now, completely absent of its earlier mirth. “I’m sure you don’t know what you’re sa
ying.”
“And I’m sure he didn’t mean to insult my book.”
“Your book was sentimental,” Anders replied. “And unclear.”
“Unclear? How’s this for clarity? Ed fucked your daughter.”
Her father’s face sank and then reacquired a terrifying blankness. He turned to Ricketts.
“Edward?”
“Anders, there was nothing—”
Steinbeck leapt to his feet, the chair rocking violently in response.
“One more lie from you and I swear! I swear I’ll break every jar, Ed. I’ll release every shark. I’ll burn this stinkhole to the ground.”
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Ricketts explained frantically, his underarms dark with sweat. “He’s under quite a lot of stress. He’s been getting death threats from the agricultural associations, the movie studios won’t leave him alone, his wife has started raising rabbits and—”
“Margot?” Her father was standing very close to her now, his smell an ancient indictment.
She shook her head.
“Say it,” Anders insisted, grabbing her shoulders and shaking them. “Say it in words.”
“You have no right,” Ricketts yelped, as if it were his body under assault, not hers. “She’s a human being. Of age.”
“Of age?” He released Margot and strode across the room in Ricketts’s direction, toppling the remaining candles. “What monster considers fifteen years old of age?”
Ricketts blanched. Margot stopped breathing.
“Fifteen?” Ricketts coughed, slinking back in the direction of the beer crate. “I must say, Anders. One could be forgiven … on account of her height, you see … for thinking she was a good deal … ahem … older.”
“My God,” her father whispered.
An interval of hellish silence, Steinbeck’s chair squeaking as its empty form continued to rock. In the distance, she thought she could hear the voices of the woman and the boy, Wormy and Arthur, laughing at something in the water.
Her father put on his hat and made for the door.
“Anders, I certainly hope—”
“Oh, let him go, Ed,” Steinbeck said. “He’s no friend of ours. And neither is the girl.”
Monterey Bay Page 6
