When Nora rubbed her face, even her cheeks hurt. Now I'M the fire truck .. .

  She had a feeling this wasn't going to be one of her better days.

  "Loren found a really big nest of the scarlet bristleworms, right in front of an underwater trench and the most fascinating coral configurations," Annabelle informed her next. She spoke with her eyes closed as Loren continued to massage her back. "I got great pictures!"

  "Actually it was Nora who found the nest," he at least had the presence of mind to say. "She told us where it was. Thanks, Nora. You were right. We hit the jackpot."

  Who gives a shit? Nora glanced, embarrassed, at her pink arms. "That's wonderful. So we can go now?"

  "Oh no," Annabelle piped up. "We'll be here a few more days at least. I need pictures of every aspect of the worm's life and its environment. The sun hits the water perfectly at midafternoon. Loren and I need to dive again tomorrow."

  It didn't even anger Nora anymore: the way Annabelle excluded her from everything.

  "I'm even going to have Loren in a few of the underwater pictures, so his name can go in the article, too."

  The only reason I don't bury you, Nora replied in thought, is because I'm too tired to dig the hole.

  "And I got plenty more samples for us to catalog for the college," Loren added, "plus some pretty interesting echinoderm fossils that look like they go back to the Cambrian Period."

  "The what period?" Annabelle asked.

  "Cambrian," Nora answered with no interest. "About sixty million years ago, when invertebrate life was just beginning to soar."

  Annabelle was careful not to acknowledge Nora at all. "You also found some other weird things, didn't you, Loren?"

  "Couple of translucent megalodae, some multicolored Clitellatas, oh, and a sea potato."

  "A sea potato?" the blonde asked, amused. "It's not like a potato we eat, is it?"

  Nora smiled. "Yeah, Annabelle. Loren will cook you up some fries in a jiffy."

  Loren intervened. "No, it's just called a sea potato. It's actually a sediment-dwelling sea squirt." - ---- - --- -- --- - - -

  Annabelle looked right at Nora and silently mouthed, Kiss my ass. Then she winked.

  What gall! For each hour that passed, it occurred to Nora that a conflict would erupt eventually. I guess I shouldn't be getting in any catfights, she realized. The bitch would probably beat me up.

  Annabelle rose to her feet and did a long stretch, giving Loren an eyeful. "Thanks for the back rub, Loren. You're a master. But after all that swimming, I think I'll go take a nap." She glanced down to Nora again. "You might want to put some sunblock on Professor Craig, though. She's turning as red as a fire truck."

  You would say fire truck. She even steals my analogies.

  "Oh, and, Professor? What time will you be cooking that lobster dinner you promised?"

  About five minutes after I put my foot up your ass, Nora thought. Instead she just said, "About seven, if that doesn't cramp your sophisticated itinerary."

  "Oh, don't worry, it doesn't. See you later!"

  A lot later, I hope.

  Annabelle traipsed off to the woods.

  "What's with all this friction between you and Annabelle?" Loren asked.

  "She's just a bossy, arrogant, territorial bitch, that's all. No friction. Women mark their turf, Loren, especially women with implants."

  "Oh no, she's natural, she told me."

  Nora smiled to herself.

  "And there's no reason for the two of you to not get along," he added, fishing in his bag for more sunblock. "We're all in this together, you know."

  "Not if you ask her. She treats me like I'm not here."

  "You're imagining it. She's actually very nice. Emotionally unfolded, professionally dedicated, and intellectually diversified."

  Nora leaned up, squinting outrage. "Loren! She's a ditz with big tits! She's phonier than Al Capone's secret vault. She's a mover, Loren; she uses her body and her sparkling eyes to manipulate men for her personal benefit."

  Loren almost got mad-something she'd never seen. "That's harsh and judgmental, Nora. I'm surprised that an academician such as yourself would make such a shallow invective. It almost sounds defensive, even insecure."

  Nora laughed. "She's got bigger boobs than me-big deal. I'm not insecure about it. She's more attractive than me, lots of women are, but you know what? I don't care! I could shit care less and whistle Dixie at the same time. But since you're not just my assistantyou're a good friend-I only feel it proper to warn you."

  He seemed defiant now, lower lip trembling at the challenge. "Warn me?"

  "She's a textbook floozie who's wheeling for you. Don't let her pull the wool over your eyes. Girls like that eat guys up and spit them out like gum when they're done with them. And she'll do it to you if you let her."

  Loren glared; now his lower lip was really trembling. "That hurts my feelings, Miss Perfect. I'm glad you have such confidence in my acumen with the opposite sex." His head bowed, almost as if he were about to sob.

  Oh, jeez ... "Loren, I'm sorry, I only meant-"

  His head jerked up in a grin and a loud clap of his hands. "Had you going, moron! Jesus Christ, I know she's a bogus, manipulating, saline-stuffed bitch. I'm just playing Poor Little Infatuated Nerd-Boy so maybe she'll feel sorry for me and give me a sympathy fuck. Believe me, I ain't looking to hold hands in the fucking park with that Paris Hilton wannabe."

  Nora signed, relieved. "You're such a tool, Loren."

  "Damn right, and a big, big tool at that-like a friggin' roll of cookie dough if you want to know the truth. I'll hump her so hard she'll sound like someone stomping on a squeak-doll."

  "Loren!"

  "Now shut up and flip over so I can put sunblock on your back. Otherwise you'll get redder than a-"

  "Don't say fire truck!" she insisted.

  "I was going to say scarlet bristleworm." He grabbed a tube of his own sunblock.

  Sputtering, Nora flipped over on her belly. "I guess you're getting to be an expert at this."

  "I'm an expert in everything," Loren claimed.

  "I feel like chopped liver here."

  "Why?"

  .You were too busy rubbing all over Barbie, you didn't even stop to think that maybe your boss might need a back rub."

  "And what's wrong with chopped liver?" he said, squirting lotion on her back.

  She tensed a moment as his hands slid over some sunburned fringes, but then relief began to work in.

  Loren chuckled. "I overheard Annabelle talking to a friend on her cell phone, and she referred to me as The Geek."

  "Are you sure she wasn't talking about me?"

  "Naw, you were Professor Dork."

  "How flattering."

  "And here's the best part-she's yacking away to her friend and eventually tells her that she's certain you and I are both virgins. How's that for a laugher?"

  Nora smoldered and kept silent.

  "What? I say something wrong?"

  "No, just-"

  "I'm no virgin, that's for sure. I've had sex a bunch of times, and my first one was with this foreign exchange student who stayed at my house while my brother went to Sweden. This girl was hot! She even-"

  "Loren, I don't want to hear about your sex life!"

  "Wow, you're really testy today," he said. "Guess Annabelle was right."

  "What?"

  "She also told her friend on the phone that you had permanent PMS."

  Nora almost yelled, "That insufferable bitch! I'd like to mop my floor with her bleached-blond head!"

  "Calm down," he urged, his finger daintily spreading the cool sunblock around her top straps. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

  "No!"

  "Are you a virgin?"

  "No. Of ... course not! And even if I were, it's none of your business. Just put the damn stuff on my back, mouth shut."

  "Sony." His fingers paused. "Wait, take this off before I goo it up."

  My cross, she realized. Her grandmother had given it to her eons ago at her confirmation. She rarely ever took the tiny golden cross and chain off. "You take it off, I can't reach, and I'm too lazy right now to sit up."

  He carefully worked the tiny catch and slid it off. "I've been working for you over a year and never knew you were a Christian."

  Nora thought about it. "In truth I guess I'm a pretty shitty Christian. My grandmother gave it to me and she was cool. I always wear it under my top."

  Loren grinned behind her. "I like the dichotomy. The symbol of the man who died for our sins, and you keep it between your breasts, which are the symbols of female sexuality."

  She rolled her eyes under closed lids. "Loren, my boobs aren't exactly pillows of carnality."

  "Oh, that's right, I forgot. You did admit that you're a virgin."

  Nora knew he was just pecking at her for fun, which normally she went along with. But now, here, the conversation filled her with dread. Throughout her adulthood, she hadn't even been "saving" herself for the right man. I couldn't GIVE it away ... She didn't suppose she was downright ugly, and she was at least complex enough to realize that not all men went solely for Annabelle-types. Jesus, I can count my heavy makeout sessions on ONE hand. Then a worse possibility assaulted her.

  Maybe Annabelle's right. Maybe I really am a great big case of permanent PMS. For one thing, what guy wants a woman whose career field revolves around worms? And for another, what guy wants a woman who's bitchy, unhappy, and cynical all the time?

  But was that really her?

  When she felt the cross slip out from between her breasts, she couldn't even remember if any man in her life had actually had his hands on them ...

  Now Loren was doing the backs of her thighs, multitasking the application of the lotion into a pretty good massage. Nora blanked her mind of all negativity ... and felt better.

  Her thoughts drifted to last night's dream: the crude sex-fantasy. It had been a gratifying dream, of course, until the end, when she'd wakened unfulfilled.

  Just sex, she thought. She focused on the dream's details-the faceless night suitor with no identity. The rough, intent hands on her flesh, the urgent tongue that incited her nipples and her sex. That's what I need, she joked to herself, a man who's just a body.

  A body for her.

  She could almost fall back to sleep now. The Bimbo's right; Loren gives a killer massage ... Now he was working her feet, firing nerves she didn't know she had.

  "The feet are an erogenous zone, you know," he said.

  "Your point being?"

  "Clinical reflexology. As scientists, we should be intrigued by human reproductive response systems, and all their intricacies."

  "Loren, please." Slippery fingers glided back and forth across her arches and insteps. "Just be quiet and keep doing it."

  The sensations overwhelmed her; she felt woozy in some carnal way. Her buttocks clenched when his hands slid back up the calves, then thighs. She knew this was absurd: she was letting an innocent back rub become much more, she was stealing something from it. She tried to imagine Loren as the lover from her dream, but then some distant moral twinge disallowed it. More sensations flowed from her thighs to her groin, somehow squeezing her sex with a lewd, hot pressure, and in another mental recess, she imagined herself turning around in the sun and masturbating, or worse, brazenly inviting him into her.

  The mental alarm bell clanged louder, and the fantasy dissolved with her realization of the truth. My teaching assistant is putting sunblock on me and I'm getting horny. Nora, congratulate yourself on a new low.

  "That's enough, thanks," she blurted. She flipped back over quickly, assailed by an inexplicable guilt. At least if she were blushing, her sunburn would hide it. "I can do the front," she said.

  "Damn, I was just starting to have fun."

  Nora frowned. I'll bet. Probably musing over the Bimbo. She rubbed more lotion on her front shoulders and arms. The tingling between her legs mocked her; she struggled for a harmless subject. "So what's on the rest of today's agenda? Are you and Miss Priss going out for more worms?"

  "You heard her," he said, lying back on his own towel. "She wants more underwater shots when the light is optimum, she said. And she wants to try to get some mating shots. Probably tomorrow afternoon."

  Figures. 'Did you sex the samples you brought up?"

  "Of course. All today's samples are back at our field lab. I've got them in some field aquariums." He chuckled. "And don't worry, I won't let Annabelle dupe me. Today she kept brushing against me-what a tease. I'll let her go on thinking I'm a virgin. Then she'll really want me, right? I mean it's true, all women want to crack a male virgin?"

  She shook her head to herself. "How about if we stick to more professional subjects?"

  "Come on, it's true, right?" he insisted. "Everybody wants to be somebody else's first. It's completely biogenic, it's got to be. In a sense, we're all still back in Neanderthal days. Part of our brains believe this."

  "Remnant Darwinism in sexual function," she murmured, closing her eyes again and lying back. "Let's stick to scarlet bristleworms, huh?"

  "I'd rather talk about sex," he thwarted. "It's fun. I'm going to play Annabelle's game, let her think what she wants, and execute my right to your remnant Darwinism in sexual function." He nearly giggled. "I'll wind up giving her the best balling of her shallow, insipid life!"

  Nora looked over, shielding her eyes. "What's gotten into you? You never talked so-"

  "Libidinously?"

  "That's not quite the word I was looking for. 'Trashy's' more like it."

  "Same thing. Why mince words? I don't know, it must be the environment, the air, the sun, just the four of us here in the cusp of nature's beauty. It all reaffirms my vitality as a sexual entity."

  You sound like a horny redneck, Loren."

  "I am a horny redneck, baby," he said, his giant Adam's apple bobbing. "And when I get back to the mainland, I'm gonna tear it up! Watch out, girls!"

  Jesus, I've created a monster-nerd ...

  "And speaking of abandonment of modern morality," he said, "here's your cross back."

  She'd forgotten about it-a symbol, perhaps, of her forgotten religion. She reconnected the chain and slipped the cross beneath the top of her one-piece. The tiny tidbit of metal felt cold between her breasts. "What about you?" she asked. "Are you spiritual at all? Do you have any religious beliefs?

  "Sure," he answered at once. "I believe in scientific conclusionary phenomenalism."

  Nora almost hacked. "What the hell is that?"

  "Reverence to the acknowledgment of the contradiction that space and time are forms of intuition. Man's spiritual absolution can never be made manifest in our finite minds but in the genetics beyond the whole. Follow me?"

  "No."

  "What I mean is, salvation is a consistence of a judgment pursuant to other judgments, fitting in ultimately to a single absolute system."

  Nora rubbed her eyes wearily. Never ask a genius what his religion is, she told herself.

  "It's just a neo-Judeo-Christian attitude, that's all," he dismissed. "Quasi-existential dynamics-and if there really is a hell, you can bet that Sartre and Nietzsche are there. We'll only find out who's right when we die; until then, there's only faith."

  Interesting gobbledygook, but Nora thought about that. If God exists, where will I stand in the end? she wondered with a chill. I'm not a bad person, but am I really a good person?

  And if there isn't a God ... does that really mean nothing matters? The ideas frustrated her, even as she unconsciously felt her cross beneath the swimsuit's fabric. She looked for any escape. "You're covering a lot of bases today," she pointed out. "Now you're talking heavy theology and five minutes ago, you were telling me about how you're going to connive Annabelle into thinking you're a virgin just to get laid."

  "But lust is innate," he responded. "God forgives all."

  Nora smirked. "I've had enough sex-talk and Godtalk." She got up and brushed sand off her skin. "Now I'm going to do something that really matters."

  "What's that?"

  "Catch lobsters."

  CHAPTER TEN

  (I)

  Ruth hadn't felt this awful ... ever. She awoke in the woods, and after a minute of thinking through a catastrophic headache, she remembered: I fell asleep in the shed last night, didn't I?

  Yes. She and Jonas had gotten high on some of his potent weed, and had made love in that little shed. He'd gone back to the boat but .. .

  I stayed, she knew. I slept on the floor-I'm positive.

  And if she'd slept on the floor .. .

  How did she wind up in the woods?

  When she leaned up, more shock hit her: she was still naked. She almost shrieked when she brushed some bugs off her thighs and stomach, then thought Fuck! and flicked a slimy tree frog out of her belly button. Dismay shot her head around; then she saw that she lay less than fifty feet from the shed. Sunlight struggled down through high branches. The door to the shed remained open.

  My clothes must still be in there, she realized. She wiped sweat off her brow and smacked her lips. Yuck! Her mouth tasted dry and stale, and her stomach squirmed to remind her how hungry she was. Jonas's asskicking pot always leaves some ass-kicking munchies. She was probably dehydrated, too. In this heat? Even last night it didn't feel as though the temperature had dropped below eighty. And I slept in it. In the fuckin' woods?

  She must've been so stoned, she'd tried to walk back to the boat, but then passed out. It was the only explanation. When she looked down more closely at herself, it almost seemed as if she'd been laid out deliberately: legs spread wide, arms out, flat on her back and nude. But when she tried to get up-

  "Oww! Fuck!"

  Her hands flew to her bare heels, which suddenly barked in pain when she'd dragged them across the ground.

  Her heels were scuffed bloody, and her buttocks and bottoms of her thighs sparkled in pain, too.

  What the fuck happened to me?

  She helped herself up, blinking her confusion through the headache. Now her eyes scanned back toward the shed and she saw two lines coming from the doorway and ending-