Friday's Harbor (18 page)

Libertine nodded matter-of-factly and reached across the table to take another slice of pizza. Julio Iglesias, who was sitting up in Ivy’s tote bag on her lap, growled.

“Oh, you,” Libertine said happily, rapping him smartly between the ears. Julio Iglesias lifted his lip.

“Boy, if looks could kill,” said Ivy.

“Short of stabbing me in the heart,” said Libertine to both of them, “nothing you can do is going to bring me down tonight, so don’t bother even trying.”

Ivy looked at her doubtfully. “Truman did tell you what the job pays, right?”

“Compared with zero? Yes. So you knew about this all along?”

Ivy waved this away. “It includes housing—he told you that, right?”

“It does?”

“He didn’t tell you.”

“I didn’t actually talk to him—Gabriel was the one who told me.”

“Well, the zoo will keep on paying your rent until June. After that you’re on your own.”

Libertine pressed her hands together in rapture. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“You really must be poor,” Ivy said.

“I have forty-four dollars and thirty-seven cents.” She gestured for Ivy to pass her Julio Iglesias across the table. In transit he sneezed over the pizza. “Talk about a class act,” Libertine chided him, settling him in her lap and kissing him on the top of the head.

“I’ve never seen you this happy,” Ivy said. “It’s unnerving. Julio thinks so, too.” The dog was stiff-arming Libertine, who was trying to hug him. “Here, you better give him back before he bites you in the face.”

“I haven’t had very many friends in my life,” Libertine said matter-of-factly.

“You have me.”

“I do have you. I had my husband, too.”

“You were married?” Ivy said, surprised.

“I know,” Libertine said ruefully. “It always surprises people. Do I look like that much of a spinster?”

Ivy thought about that for a minute. “No, you look like that much of a loner. A sad sack and a loner.”

“I wasn’t always.” She told Ivy about Larry Adagio. “He got me. I still miss him.”

“So do you, you know, hear from him or anything? From the Beyond?”

“I’m an animal communicator, not a medium.”

“Did he know that?” Ivy asked.

“He knew I could talk to our cat and an old dachshund his mom had, but I didn’t start working with wild animals until he died.” Libertine said. “I think he’d be proud of me, though. He always said he had more faith in me than I had in myself.”

“So some things don’t change,” said Ivy.

“I guess. What about you—no husbands, no fiancés?”

“Nope. Oh, I went out with a fair number of men in my day. I used to spend my winters in Egypt until recently.”

“Hence the dresses.”

“Hence the dresses,” Ivy confirmed. “There’s no getting around the fact that Arabs know how to dress for comfort. Anyway, I saw a few of the men in the Egyptian ex-pat community, but nothing serious—most of them were married. I was reading a biography the other day about Wallis Simpson, and did you know she didn’t really even
want
Edward? But after he abdicated the throne, what was she supposed to do, throw him over and call him a mistake? Not likely. They were apparently a phenomenally dreary couple, by the way—sponges and parasites and
boring
. After what they went through, you’d think they’d be fascinating but I guess they weren’t. Bigots and fascists, yes, but fascinating, no. How on earth did I get onto that subject?”

“Beaus,” Libertine prompted.

“Ah. Nothing else to say about that. It would be nice to have someone fall madly in love with me, a little less nice to fall madly in love with someone else, especially if it wasn’t reciprocal, but I don’t spend time thinking about it anymore. I’m sixty-two, set in my ways, and I love sleeping alone.”

When dinner was over, Ivy reached for the check first, as always. Libertine tried to stop her. “No, let me. After all, I’m employed now!”

“Honey, if you paid you’d only have twenty-five dollars and thirty-seven cents, and I can’t imagine any emergency that could come that cheap. You hang on to what you’ve got—you can take me out another time.”

Libertine gave in.

I
VY HADN’T BEEN
completely honest. There had been just one man in Egypt—a married man. They had met in a club frequented by U.S. State Department diplomats and functionaries; ever since, the shush of overhead fan blades turning in the heat had aroused in her a vestigial feeling of regret and longing. Ivy had been forty-nine, he’d been forty-two, and his wife had been thirty-seven—too old to be a trophy wife and not old enough for Ivy to feel sorry for. The feet touching beneath the table, the calves intertwined, the furtive hand-holding they’d succumbed to, had been agony. He had had the most beautiful forearms and hands she’d ever seen, before and since, though Gabriel’s were close contenders. They had met away from the club only once during their seven-month relationship, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo. But instead of the tryst they’d both been anticipating for so long, he had broken down and wept.

“What should I do?” he’d begged her. “Just tell me what I should do and I’ll do it!” But the mere fact that he tried to appropriate her strength killed the passion. She would not shoulder his adultery; nor was she capable of loving someone with unclear priorities. Dutifully she’d held him, even wept with him, but she flew home the next day and never saw him again.

I
N EARLY
F
EBRUARY
Ivy invited Gabriel to her house on San Juan Island. “You need to get away,” she’d told him in making her pitch. “When’s the last day you had completely off?”

“I don’t know. A while ago.”

“When’s the last time you were away from Bladenham?”

“Longer.”

“I’ll pick you up at the pool at two-thirty on Friday. Plan on staying overnight.”

“You don’t have to do that—I can find my way back.”

“I know, I just assumed we’d both be drunk enough not to want to deal with ferry schedules and unlit roads.”

“You do have a way of laying things out, don’t you? Does anyone ever tell you no?”

“Damned few, as a matter of fact—but it’s usually because I’m filthy rich. You don’t seem to care about that.”

“Why should I? You’re the one who’s rich, not me.”

“You have a point.”

“Almost always.”

Ivy put together a grocery list and faxed it to the market in Friday Harbor, asking them to put everything in a box, charge it to her account, and have it ready for her to pick up on the way home from the ferry. Included: Dungeness crab, butter clams, fresh mussels, asparagus, romaine lettuce, various bell peppers, mushrooms, radishes and any other available vegetables that would work up nicely in a salad, freshly baked artisan bread, and a whole bakery cheesecake. They stopped at the liquor store to pick up several bottles of a superb Chilean Pinot Grigio kept chilled and in stock especially for her, and arrived home with enough time for Ivy to assemble and serve an excellent dinner, which she followed up with a very nice port.

By the end of dessert they were blotto, sprawled in the deep, comfortable club chairs in Ivy’s living room. “I wish I were younger,” Ivy said earnestly, picking through Julio Iglesias’s fur for nonexistent fleas. When the dog bared his teeth she smacked him lightly on the nose and went back to rummaging through his coat.

“Doesn’t everyone?” asked Gabriel.

“No—I mean I wish I were younger but you were your age.”

“Ah.”

“Is it tragic or just maudlin when old women lust after younger men?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t think I’m the kind of man women lust after.”

“Au contraire.”

To his credit, Gabriel let the remark go; to hers, in an act of uncharacteristic restraint, Ivy didn’t pursue it. She sipped her drink and licked the rim of the glass ruminatively. “You know, it’s a terrible thing to be alone.”

“What do you mean?” said Gabriel.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? Just what I said.” Ivy pushed Julio Iglesias off her lap and sat up straighter. “I bet you think I’m spunky. Just a spunky ol’ gal.”

“Well, aren’t you? Not the old part, but the other.”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.”

“So what is the point?”

“No one chooses to be alone. Maybe that’s why I relate to Friday.”

“Now you’re being maudlin.”

“I’m not. I just love him and I hate that he’s all by himself.”

Gabriel stared at her. “Are you kidding? One of us is with him eighteen hours a day, most days.”

“You know what I mean,” Ivy said, slumping back into her chair.

“If I do, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ivy subsided. “Would you say you have to love the animals you work with?” she mused. “Because why else would you spend all day and most evenings waiting on them hand and foot? Hoof—hand and hoof? No, wait, wait—flipper and fluke.”

Gabriel frowned over this. “Love? Not necessarily. Respect—you have to have a high degree of respect for them. And they have to have a high degree of respect for you. Otherwise there’s a good chance they’ll kill you.” He closed his eyes.

“Well,
that’s
no good.” Ivy raised herself on one arm, squinted at him, then collapsed again. “How can you be so damned smart about animals and so clueless about people?”

He cracked one eye open in protest. “What do you mean?—I am not.”

Ivy nodded vigorously. “Oh yes, you are. Take little Libertine. She’s head over heels in love with you—love, not lust—and you probably don’t even know.”

“Now I do,” Gabriel pointed out.

Ivy snickered. “That’s true. Now you do.”

“You know, you’re a mean drunk,” Gabriel said, pointing at her with his wineglass, sloshing a little port on his shirt.

“Me?”

“You. She’s your friend and you just outed her.”

“I did not,” Ivy protested lamely.

“Yeah, you did,” Gabriel was saying. “Now we just have to hope I get drunk enough not to remember, because then you’ll have outed-her-not.”

“He loves me, he loves me not,” sang Ivy. “Are you drunk enough?”

“No.”

“Then we better fix that.” Ivy rose with some difficulty. “You know, I have a very,
very
good scotch. Want some? Accepting would be the gentlemanly thing.”

“Then I accept.”

Ivy rummaged in a liquor cabinet until she found the bottle, then soda, then two glasses. Clumsily, before putting the drink in Gabriel’s hand, she slopped some of it on Julio Iglesias, who’d been dozing on Gabriel’s lap. The dog gave her a bitter look before jumping down and walking slowly,
deliberately,
to the other side of the room, where he glanced back at her to make sure she was watching before depositing a small, perfectly formed turd on the carpet.

“I don’t know what he holds against me,” Ivy said sadly, making no move to clean it up. “I’ve given him everything and he treats me like crap.” Her eyes filled with tears. “They say maiden ladies—does anyone use that expression anymore?—maiden ladies use dogs as surrogate children. Some child. A real child would treat me better, I’ll tell you that.”

Gabriel slapped his chest. “Come on, Julio. Come to Papa.”

The dog trotted back and hopped up. “Want a sip?” Gabriel held his scotch-and-soda where Julio Iglesias could lap up a healthy dose, then raised it overhead. “That’s enough,” he said. “You’re the designated driver.”

Ivy thought that was a scream.

By midnight Gabriel had fallen asleep on the living room sofa with Julio Iglesias curled on top of his chest and snoring like a wino. Ivy was in a similar state of dishabille on a fainting couch across the room, her voluminous dress twisted around her, her Nikes and athletic socks kicked off to reveal a fresh and immaculate pedicure. One of her pet peeves was women who, in their senior years, neglected their nails—one of the few body parts which, when skillfully attended to, could still compete with those of women half their age.

She finally roused Gabriel long enough to lead him upstairs, putting him in the same guest room Libertine had used. “G’night, you luscious thing.” She gave him a peck on the cheek and said, “Dream of beautiful virgins.”

The next morning they were halfway through a hangover breakfast of hash, eggs, and Bloody Marys when the phone rang. It was Neva.

“I think you’d better come back,” she said starkly. “There’s something wrong with Friday.”

Chapter 11

G
ABRIEL AND
I
VY
made it back to Bladenham by late afternoon, which was a miracle, given the infrequent ferry runs at that time of year. They drove directly to the pool, where Neva and Libertine were waiting. Neva darted out before Gabriel had even stepped out of his truck. “Slow down,” he told her. “Take a deep breath.” Once they’d reached the office he said, “Okay. Now.”

“He does an underwater speed-swim for maybe two or three laps, until he’s really got some speed, and then he slams into the gallery windows.” Neva said. “It’s totally unnerving.”

“Headfirst?”

“God no—broadside.”

“And when she says ‘slams’ she really means
slams,
” Libertine said. “You can hear the reverberation from across the pool. And he’s doing it over and over and
over
.”

“Here—watch. He’s getting ready to do it again.” Neva pulled Gabriel over to the window. Just as she’d described, Friday wound himself up and bodychecked the nearest acrylic pane the way a hockey player slams into the boards. “It’s awful,” she said.

“Is he vocalizing?”

“I don’t know.” She and Libertine looked at each other for consensus. “No, not that we’ve heard.”

“And how many times has he done it?”

“Maybe forty times,” Neva said. “When we’ve been here.”

“Has the sun been out?”

“I wish.”

“What’s his body posture like?”

“I don’t know—normal,” Neva said. She looked to Libertine, who concurred. “Nothing different.”

“No convulsing, no arching, no cramping?”

Both women shook their heads.

“And no vocalizing?” he asked again.

“No.”

“Have you been in the water to listen?”

“I cleaned yesterday afternoon,” Neva said, “when he first started doing it. I didn’t hear anything.”

“No bleeding, no broken teeth?”

“No.”

“And he’s eating?”

“Yes.”

“No discharge when he blows—no flying snot?”

“No.”

Suspecting that whatever was going on was behavioral rather than medical, Gabriel calmly folded his arms across his chest and said, “Okay. Let me watch him.”

“We were worried he’d hurt himself,” said Libertine.

“If he wanted to do that, he’d be slamming into the rock work, not the windows. Have either of you told Truman what’s going on?”

“Yes,” Neva said. “I thought he should know.”

“Absolutely. Why don’t you call him and ask him to come over when he gets a chance?” Gabriel said to Neva; and then, to both the women, “Go to opposite ends of the windows in the gallery and see if you can see anything different from over there.”

With that, Gabriel leaned his elbows on the windowsill and spent fifteen minutes watching—until Friday slammed into one of the windows across the pool again, exactly as Neva had described it. Truman arrived at the office just in time to see it. “I gather we have a problem,” he said to Gabriel, looking shaken.

“I’m not sure. I wouldn’t say it’s a problem, necessarily, but it’s certainly a new behavior.”

“Frankly, I’m a little worried about the windows,” Truman said. “They weren’t engineered to take that kind of lateral force.”

They exchanged looks. “Well, that’s not good,” Gabriel said dryly.

“No. I’ve got a call in to see if we can find out what their tolerance is. I have to tell you I’m considering closing the gallery and asking you to put him in the medical pool.”

Both men paused as Friday made another pass around the pool and slammed into the windows again. Truman winced at the impact. “Can you tell me some things that might cause this?”

Gabriel frowned thoughtfully, saying, “It could be a lot of things. He could be having stomach pain or some other kind of discomfort, though I don’t think that’s it. He could be bored. He could like the sound the window makes when he hits it. He could be seeing his own reflection in the window and thinking it’s a second killer whale challenging him. His equilibrium or eyesight could be impaired by some kind of infection or virus. I want to take a blood sample and watch him for a while before I start narrowing it down.”

“All right,” said Truman. “Well, keep me posted.”

Once Truman was gone, Gabriel asked Libertine and Neva to bring a bucket of fish upstairs while he put on a wet suit. By the time he got there, Friday was at the slide-out area with his mouth wide open, as usual. Gabriel moved the bucket back and squatted down, scratching Friday’s head and tongue and talking to him congenially.

“Hey, bud. The girls tell me you’re being a dick. What’s up with that? You hungry?” While he was talking he inspected and wiggled all of Friday’s forty-eight teeth. Only one was damaged, an old vertical crack that would need attention at some point, though right now the whale didn’t flinch or show any other pain response when Gabriel moved it, convincing him that this wasn’t the source of the trouble. When he was done he stood up and said, “Come on. Let’s see you do your stuff.”

He put Friday through a standard set of breaches, bows, and spy hops, rewarding each one with fish and a blast on his whistle. Throughout, Friday was attentive, energetic, and in a seemingly excellent humor. When the half-hour session was over, Gabriel took a blood sample for Libertine to run to the hospital lab for a rush analysis, and then got into the water. Over the next hour, in an attempt to harness any excess nervous energy, Gabriel tried to wear him out by playing high-energy tag using the yellow scooter, by letting the whale pitch him off his back, by doing rocket rides, where Gabriel stood on Friday’s nose as Friday shot out of the water in a high spy hop, and by playing games incorporating the blue ball.

After all that, Friday bodychecked the gallery window before Gabriel had even reached the bottom of the stairs.

Neva, back from the viewing gallery, told him, “He’s hitting pretty hard—you can actually see the window flex, and it makes a kind of booming sound. And he’s definitely doing it deliberately. I mean, he’s not swimming into the walls of the pool or the rock work, which I’d think he would be if it were a vision or parasite problem. Frankly, it’s a little creepy. I hope the windows hold.”

The hospital lab called to report that nothing had shown up in the blood work.

Gabriel called Truman to say he was convinced that whatever was going on with Friday was behavioral, not medical; but to be sure, he suggested that Truman contact the local utility and ask if they would bring their buried line detector to the pool.

“Why?” Truman asked.

“It’s possible there’s something in his gut that hasn’t come up or out. I called down to Bogotá and they said there’d always been a story about his swallowing a brass hose nozzle, though there isn’t anyone down there anymore who actually saw him do it. I’ve never taken it too seriously, but we might as well rule it out.”

“I’m on it,” said Truman.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
dawned mercifully clear, the third straight day after a week of rain and wind. Libertine came to work even earlier than usual so she could finish fish house in time to watch as a technician from the power company carried a sophisticated metal detector onto the pool top. He wore earphones and didn’t smile: he was clearly aware of the seriousness of his mission. As she watched, along with Neva and Truman, Gabriel directed Friday to roll over on his back, stretch out along the side of the pool, and hold still. Gabriel tugged his flukes until they lay partially in the wet walk so he couldn’t drift, and then he beckoned to the technician. The man approached cautiously—“He’s not going to eat me, right?”—and swept his wand over Friday’s exposed thirty-two-foot-long undercarriage. Up and back, up and back, up and back. Then he gave Gabriel a thumbs-up signal and removed his earphones. There was no metal in Friday’s body.

At Gabriel’s request, Libertine scampered down the stairs and brought back the fanny pack Gabriel kept his supplies in, and Gabriel drew a fresh blood sample. “It’s hard to know what to hope for, isn’t it?” she said as she took the vial from him, labeled it with the day’s date and time, and handed it off to Neva so she could rush it to the hospital lab.

The body slams continued.

The lab reported that the day’s blood values were as normal as yesterday’s had been.

Once the zoo opened, Truman asked Gabriel, Libertine, and Neva to do everything possible to keep Friday from swimming into the windows during visitors’ hours. They did innovative sessions, high-energy sessions, play sessions, scooter sessions, and put every toy they had into the pool.

By half an hour before the zoo closed, they were exhausted and Friday was once again slamming into the viewing windows. Gabriel sent Neva back to the gallery to observe him and then asked Libertine to stay behind in the office for a quick chat. Her heart began beating faster as he turned to face her, and she clasped her hands together. “Look,” he said, standing beside her at the office window, “I can’t believe I’m even asking this, but is there anything you can tell me about Friday’s state of mind?”

She smiled. “I didn’t think you believed in that sort of thing.”

“I don’t. But at this point any input might help.”

Across the pool they could see Friday hit the windows once more, feel the concussion through the acrylic office window.

“
Crap,
” said Gabriel.

“I’m sorry,” Libertine said with sincere regret. “I haven’t sensed a thing. Still. There hasn’t been anything since he got here.”

He turned to face her. “You’re kidding.”

“No. I thought you knew that.”

“And you’ve stayed anyway?” he said incredulously. “Why?”

She could feel herself blush. “At first I just wanted to be here in case he needed me. He’d found me in the first place, so I assumed he’d wanted my help. And then you let me work here, and who’s going to turn that down?”

“Yeah—for free.”

“Not anymore,” she pointed out.

He just shook his head and turned back to the window. Friday was making a first and then a second fast underwater circuit around the pool, setting himself up, and then he slammed the window again. Libertine winced.

Gabriel pointed up. Raindrops pocked the water’s surface. “Crap.”

“What?”

“I really thought he was charging his reflection in the window. It all started the day the sun came out. But he isn’t seeing a reflection now.”

Libertine mustered her convictions and spoke. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s trying to see what he can get away with.”

“Okay,” he said, waiting for her to go on.

“Neva’s been having trouble getting him to cooperate during her sessions.”

“Yeah, because he’s a brat,” said Gabriel.

Libertine smiled. “Exactly!”

“So okay, riddle me this,” he said. “He’s healthy for the first time in forever, he doesn’t have any dolphins beating him up, he’s got great food, plenty of room, and clean, cold water. Why act up now? Why not in Bogotá? His life there was pure crap.”

“Was he ever encouraged to act independently down there?”

“Probably not.”

Libertine tapped the tip of her nose with her finger. “You’ve given him the ability to make choices, to use his mind, to decide for himself. Innovative sessions, toys to play with, visitors to watch—for most of the day, he does exactly as he pleases. You’ve given him power. Well, he’s using it. And here’s the corollary: by and large, people—and I assume, by extension, killer whales—only act out when they know they’re safe.”

Gabriel regarded her for a long beat. She flushed. “For a wing nut you actually make a lot of sense,” he said.

“Thank you.”

And with that, he left the office. Moments later, she heard the heavy steel door to the outside open and close and she was alone.

She was surprised that Gabriel hadn’t come up with her analysis himself; after all, it was basic adolescent psychology. He was shrewd, and obviously extremely seasoned and skillful, but she realized that that didn’t mean he was particularly insightful. She was struck, not for the first time, by how underdeveloped he was. She’d never heard him mention aging parents or siblings or any other close family members—or even friends, outside of his colleagues. Here was a man on whom no one had ever depended, whose best life relationships had probably always been with his animals.

He was a lot like her.

And thus, she thought sadly but with a measure of relief, infatuations die.

W
HEN
N
EVA CAME
back from the gallery, Truman was with her. He looked pale.

“It’s not pretty over there,” she told Gabriel. “He’s just
ramming
those windows. And it could be my imagination, but it seems like he’s picking the window that has the most people watching. Plus there’s something else.” She looked at Truman. “You want to tell him?”

“No, you can go ahead.”

Neva drew a breath. “Somebody’s started a rumor that he’s trying to commit suicide because we won’t release him. They’re saying it’s why his dorsal fin is curled over—that it’s a sign of despair.”

For a beat there was silence, and then Gabriel said grimly, “Welcome to the dark side.”

A
FTER THE ZOO
closed, Truman called Sam and Ivy, who hadn’t been at the zoo that day, and asked them to come in for a meeting. Once everyone was together in the office, he asked Gabriel to bring them up to speed.

“None of the labs came back positive and there isn’t any metal in his body that might be hurting him,” Gabriel reviewed. “Which tells me it’s behavioral.” Then he summarized Libertine’s explanation for the whale’s behavior, giving her the credit. “I have to say, it makes perfect sense,” he concluded.

“He’s certainly been giving me a hard time the last few days,” Neva concurred.

“But if Libertine’s right—and it feels right—that’s actually good news,” said Ivy. “Isn’t it?”

“That depends on your point of view,” said Truman carefully. “It’s good news for him, but not necessarily for the zoo. It’s very upsetting to the visitors, and there’s still the structural problem of the windows. According to the specs, the contractors are pretty sure the windows are strong enough to withstand the impact, but obviously the sooner we get him to stop ramming them, the better.” To Gabriel he said, “If I close the exhibit and give you a full day to work with him, do you think you can get this turned around?”