“So you mean…they died?” I ask.

  He nods. “Like I told you,” he says. “Dangerous.” He navigates through the steampunk maze of risen rock. “Look, over there, on the aa lava.”

  “The what?”

  He points. “The spiky rock,” he explains. “Pahoehoe lava is the other kind—the stuff that looks like it’s melting.” I follow his finger to see two blue-footed boobies. They face each other, bowing formally to the left and then to the right and back again, twin metronomes. Then they attack each other with their beaks in a frenzy of nips and clacks. “They’re going to kill each other,” I say.

  “Actually, they’re going to mate,” Gabriel says.

  “Not if he keeps that up,” I murmur.

  He laughs. “That guy’s a pro. The older the bird, the bluer the feet. This isn’t his first shoot-out.”

  It takes me a moment. “Rodeo,” I correct, grinning. I watch him hop out of the boat and drag it onto the beach. “I know Beatriz learned in school, but how come you speak English so well?”

  “I had to for my job,” he says. He reaches under the seat again and tosses me a snorkel and mask. “You know how to use these, yes?”

  I nod. “But I’m not wearing a bathing suit.”

  Gabriel shrugs, kicks off his flip-flops, and wades into the water fully dressed. It laps at his hips, his waist, and then he dives forward, surfacing with a shake of his shaggy hair. He fits his own snorkel and mask to his forehead. “Coward,” he says, and he splashes me.

  The water is a dizzy mirror of the sky, the sand like sugar under my feet. It feels strange having my shorts float around my legs and my shirt plastered to my body, but I get used to the sensation as I tread water. Gabriel dives a few feet away and a moment later I feel him tug at my ankle. “Vamos,” he says, and when he ducks beneath the surface this time, I follow.

  The undersea world explodes with color and texture—bright anemone jewels, runnels of coral, wispy fronds of seagrass. For a little while we follow a sea lion that keeps playfully slapping Gabriel with its tail. Gabriel squeezes my hand, pointing out a sea turtle rhythmically sawing through the water. A moment later, in front of my mask floats a bright pink sea horse, a question mark with a trumpet nose and translucent skin.

  Gabriel surfaces, pulling me with him. “Hold your breath,” he says, and still grasping me, he kicks us powerfully to the seafloor, where a rocky promontory juts, polka-dotted with sea stars and a ripple of octopus. Gabriel twists until we are hovering in front of a small crevice in the boulder. Inside I see two small silver triangles. Eyes? I swim closer for a better look. But when I do, one moves, and I realize I am staring at the white-tipped fins of sleeping reef sharks.

  I kick backward so fast that I create a wall of bubbles. Without looking to see if Gabriel is following, I swim as hard and as fast as I can back to shore. When I crawl onto the sand and rip off my snorkel, he’s right behind me. “That was,” I gasp, “a fucking shark.”

  “Not the kind that would kill you.” He laughs. “I mean, maybe just a good bite.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I say, and I flop onto my back on the sand.

  A moment later, Gabriel sits down next to me. He is breathing hard, too. He pulls off his soaked shirt and throws it to the side in a soggy ball. When he lies back, the sun glints off the medallion he wears.

  “What is that?” I ask. “Your necklace.”

  “Pirate treasure,” he tells me.

  When I look at him dubiously, he shrugs. “In the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, pirates used the canal between Isabela and Fernandina Island to hide from the Spaniards after raiding their galleons. Back then, this was a place where you could disappear.”

  Still, I think.

  “The pirates knew the galleons went from Peru to Panama, and after they stole the gold, they hid it on Isabela.” He raises a brow. “They also nearly hunted the land tortoise population to extinction, and they left behind donkeys, goats, and rats. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting to a seven-year-old boy who was digging for buried treasure.”

  I come up on an elbow, invested.

  “It was back in 1995 on Estero Beach—that’s near El Muro de las Lágrimas. Two sailboats showed up, full of Frenchmen who were exploring Isabela, digging for treasure. I helped them for a few days—or at least I thought I did, I was probably more of a nuisance—and they found a chest. I helped them dig it out.”

  My eyes fall on his medallion. “And that was inside it?”

  “I have no idea what was inside it.” He laughs. “They took it away, still sealed. But they gave this to me as thanks. For all I know, it came from inside a cereal box.”

  I smack him on the shoulder. He grabs my hand to stop me from swatting him again, but he doesn’t let go. Instead, he squeezes it, and looks me in the eye. “Speaking of thank-yous,” Gabriel says, “Beatriz—”

  “Is a great kid,” I interrupt.

  He releases me, and seems to be carefully choosing his words. “When she would come home from school, there was always a wall between us. Every time I thought about knocking it down, every time I got close enough, I could feel so much heat on the other side—like a fire, you know. If you think there’s a fire on the other side of a door, you don’t rush in, because with even more oxygen, the flames are going to consume everything.” He draws a line in the sand between us. “This past week, I don’t feel as much heat.”

  “She’s angry,” I admit softly. “She was ripped out of her comfort zone. It’s not fair, and it’s not her fault. When you can’t see light at the end of the tunnel, it’s hard to remember to keep going.”

  “I know,” Gabriel says. “I’ve tried to do things like this with her—distract her, you know, by taking her around the island? But she only goes through the motions, like it’s a chore.” He rubs his forehead. “For years, she lived with her mother, and God knows what Luz said about me. And then she was at school. And then when the virus hit, she called me, begging to come home.”

  Clearly, I misunderstood. “I thought she had to come home,” I say.

  “She’s spent school vacations with her host family before—almost all of them,” Gabriel says. “I don’t know, maybe she was worried about the virus? Whatever it was, it was a gift. I was just happy she wanted to come back. I thought if we spent time together, she’d figure out that I wasn’t actually a monster.” He smiles a little. “I wish I could do what you do so easily.”

  “Talk to her?”

  “Make her like me.” He pulls a face. “That sounds pathetic.”

  I shake my head. “When you lose something that matters, you grieve,” I say carefully. “Right now, Beatriz thinks she’s lost her mom, her friends, her future.” I hesitate. “So maybe there’s a reason she keeps you at a distance. You can’t grieve something if you don’t let yourself get close enough to care.”

  His gaze snaps to mine—this seed of doubt is the absolution I can offer: the chance to think that Beatriz’s aloofness might not be because she hates him, but the opposite.

  Suddenly a marine iguana runs right between us, making me shriek and scurry backward. Gabriel laughs at me as the big lizard crawls with surprising speed into the water, bobbing a few times before it dives under the surface. “Why aren’t those things as afraid of me as I am of them?” I mutter.

  “They’ve had the run of the island longer than humans have,” he says.

  “Not surprising, since they look like baby dinosaurs.”

  “You should see the land iguanas in San Cristóbal. They turn turquoise and red during the mating season—we call them Christmas iguanas. That’s how they get the ladies.” He nods toward the water. “But the marine iguanas are my favorite.”

  I lie back down on the sand, looking up at the sky. “I can’t imagine why.”

  “Well, they used to all be land iguanas. The ones that arrived came by accident ten million years ago, rafting in from South America on debris. But when they got here, there wasn’t any vegetation. The only food was in the ocean. So their bodies changed, slowly, to make diving easier. They got salt glands around their nostrils to expel the salt when they went underwater. Their lungs got bigger so they could take bigger breaths and sink deeper.”

  Gabriel turns, rising on his elbow. Very slowly, he takes one finger, and traces the slope of my throat. “Evolution is compromise,” he says softly. “When humans evolved to speak, our throats got longer to make room for that precise tongue, and with that came risks. Food had to travel further to get to the esophagus…but manage to miss the larynx.”

  His thumb rests in the spot where my pulse flutters at the base of my neck, and I swallow.

  “So unlike animals, we can now sing and speak and scream…but unlike animals, we also can choke to death if our food goes down the wrong pipe.” He looks at me, almost as if he is as dazed to find himself touching me as I am. “You can’t move forward without losing something,” Gabriel says.

  I clear my throat and swiftly sit up.

  Immediately, so does he, and the moment breaks like a soap bubble.

  Before I can process what just happened, Gabriel scrambles to his feet. A boat putters closer to shore, idling where the waves are breaking. I shade my eyes with my hand and see a man in a khaki uniform and a brimmed hat. As he approaches I squint to read the patch on his shoulder, which looks official.

  “Gabriel,” the man says. “Qué estás haciendo aquí?”

  “This is Javier.” Gabriel’s voice is perfectly even, but I can feel him stiffen. “He’s a park ranger.”

  I remember what Beatriz said at the swimming hole with the mockingbirds—if the park rangers find you trespassing on a site that’s closed due to Covid, you can be fined. And if you’re a tour guide, you can lose your license.

  Gabriel spills forth a river of Spanish. I don’t know if he’s trying to be placating or act clueless or justify our journey here.

  I wing a wide smile at Javier and interrupt. “Hola,” I say. “This is all my fault. I’m the one who begged Gabriel to take me here—”

  I do not know if the park ranger speaks English, but I hope I am rambling enough to draw attention away from Gabriel. And it seems to work, because Javier’s gaze jerks toward me. “You,” he says. “You were at the feria.”

  I feel sweat break out between my shoulder blades. Was it illegal to trade at that market, too? Will park rangers go after the locals, or just the tourist? And if I can’t pay a fine, then what happens?

  I know there is no hospital on the island, and no ATM. But with my luck, there’s a functional jail cell.

  “You drew pictures,” the ranger continues.

  “Um,” I say. “Yes.”

  I can feel Gabriel’s eyes on me, like the stroke of a brush.

  “My son gave you a guanábana.”

  The boy, I realize, who was being bullied.

  “You are talented,” Javier continues, smiling a little. “But more important…you are kind.”

  I feel my cheeks heat with both compliments.

  The ranger turns back to Gabriel. “You know, Gabriel, if I saw you here, I’d have to report you. But if I turned away and you were gone, it might just have been a trick of the light, sí?”

  “Por supuesto,” Gabriel murmurs. He reaches down for his shirt, stiff with dried salt, and pulls it on. I pick up the discarded snorkeling equipment and follow him to our panga. The surf whispers around my ankles while he holds the boat steady, letting me climb in before he pushes off from the shore and hops aboard, revving the engine in reverse.

  I don’t speak until we are out of the cove and through the túneles, bouncing over the chop of the ocean. “That was close,” I say.

  Gabriel shrugs. “I knew it could happen when I brought you here.”

  “Then why did you? He could have taken your tour guide license.”

  “Because this is Isabela,” he says. “And you should see it.”

  On the way back to Puerto Villamil, we do not talk about what happened the moment before Javier interrupted us. Instead, I find myself thinking of the hollow bones of birds, of the long necks of giraffes. The changeable skin of leaf frogs, the insects that disguise themselves as twigs. I think of girls who are dragged from safe havens into the unknown, and men with secrets as deep as the ocean, and grounded planes.

  It’s not just animals that must adapt in order to survive.

  Dear Finn,

  Beatriz—the girl I wrote you about—told me that before there was a real mail service in the Galápagos, sailors would put their letters in a barrel in Post Office Bay, on Floreana Island. As other whalers showed up in their ships, they’d sort through the post, find ones addressed to their home port, and then hand-deliver them. Sometimes the mail wasn’t delivered for years, but it was the only way the sailors had to communicate with the people they left behind.

  Beatriz says now, tour boats go to Floreana. Tourists leave postcards in the barrel, and claim postcards others have left to deliver when they’re back home.

  The barrel’s small; I wouldn’t fit in it. Otherwise, I’d probably crawl in and hope someone would carry me back to you.

  Love, Diana

  * * *

  —

  The day I met Kitomi Ito, and found myself standing alone with her in front of her painting, I realized exactly what was wrong with the Sotheby’s pitch, and why we would likely lose the opportunity to Christie’s or Phillips. Everyone seemed to be concentrating on Sam Pride, who’d bought the painting. But no one had stopped long enough to think about who he gave it to, and why.

  I began to talk fast. I didn’t know if Eva would interrupt us, and if my boss heard me actively subverting her plan for the Toulouse-Lautrec painting, I’d be out of a job before the elevator hit the lobby.

  “What if the auction wasn’t about fame,” I said, “but about privacy? It seems to me that everything was a big show for your husband—even, forgive me, his death. But this painting—it wasn’t any part of that circus. It was just for you, and him.” When Kitomi didn’t respond, I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t use this to headline the Imp Mod sale. I wouldn’t reunite the Nightjars. I wouldn’t make this public at all. I’d build a private sale in a room with simple staging, good lighting, and a single love seat. And then I’d extend a confidential invitation to George and Amal, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Meghan and Harry, other couples you might think of. It should be a privilege to be offered a showing. A nod to the idea that they have a love affair that’s timeless, too.” I turn back to the painting, seeing the vulnerability in the eyes of the pair, and the rock-solid belief that they were safe in sharing it with each other. “Instead of the buyer having the upper hand, Ms. Ito, you’d be choosing the couple that gets to continue the love story. You’re the one giving it up for adoption; you should be the one to pick the new caretakers—not the auction company.”

  For a long moment, Kitomi just stared at me. “Well,” she said, and a slow smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “She speaks.”

  Just then Eva’s voice cleaved between us like an ax. “What’s going on here?”

  “Your colleague was just presenting an alternate approach,” Kitomi said.

  “My associate specialist does not have the authority to present anything,” Eva replied. She shot me a look that could cut glass. “I’ll meet you at the car,” she said.

  The driver hadn’t even closed the door behind Eva when she started lacing into me. “What part of ‘do not speak’ did you not understand, Diana? Of all the moronic, irresponsible things you could say, you managed to find something so…so…” She broke off, her face red, her chest heaving. “You do realize that the reason you have a salary is because the company survives on massive public auctions that attract an obscene amount of money, yes? And that silly little romantic love letter you proposed will make us look like kindergartners, compared to whatever spectacle Christie’s is offering—for God’s sake, they probably said they’d find a way to throw in a posthumous Kennedy Center Honor for Sam Pride—”

  She was interrupted by the ring of her phone. Eva narrowed her eyes, warning me to be quiet under penalty of death, as she answered. “Kitomi,” she said warmly. “We were just discussing how much—” Her voice broke off, and her eyebrows shot to her hairline. “Well, yes! Sotheby’s is honored to know you trust us to showcase your painting at auction—” Her voice broke off as she listened to Kitomi speak. “Absolutely,” she said, after a moment. “Not a problem.”

  Eva hung up and frowned down at her phone for a moment. “We got the account,” she said.

  I hesitated. “Isn’t that…a good thing?”

  “Kitomi had two conditions. She wants a private auction for couples only,” Eva said. “And she insists that you’re the specialist in charge.”

  I was stunned. This was my break; this was the moment I would talk about years later, when I was interviewed by magazines about how I’d advanced in my career. I had a vision of Beyoncé hugging me after she placed the winning bid. Of a corner office, where Rodney and I would close the door at lunchtime and share bowls from the Halal Guys and gossip.

  I felt heat creeping up my collar and turned to find Eva staring, as if she was seeing me for the first time.

  To: DOToole@gmail.com

  From: FColson@nyp.org

  Before I forget: The Greens called again and left a message at home.

  It’s 72 hours old, though, because that’s how long I’ve been at the hospital.

  Of course, a shift that long is technically against the rules, but there aren’t rules anymore. It’s Groundhog Day, over and over. We have it down to a routine. There’s me, a junior resident, and four nurses. My job is to put in central lines and arterial lines, to manage a patient’s other comorbidities. I put in chest tubes when they get air around their lungs, caused by the vents. I call the families, who ask for readings they don’t understand on oxygenation, blood pressure, ventilation levels. I hope she’s getting better, they say, but I can’t answer because I know she’s a mile from better. She’s dying. All I hope is that she gets off the vent or ECMO, and that there’s not a cytokine storm that sends her back to square one. The families can’t visit, so they can’t see the patients hooked up to wires and machines. They can’t see with their own eyes how sick they are. To them the patient is someone who was perfectly healthy a week ago, with no chronic illness. They keep hearing on the news that there’s a 99% survival rate; that it’s no worse than the flu.