“I was never good at science,” Hudson said. “Once, in chemistry class, I got the beakers mixed up and managed to create some sort of toxic fumes. Well, toxicish. Anyway, they had to evacuate the whole floor. Oh, and I almost failed biology because I wouldn’t dissect a frog. My father had to threaten the school with a lawsuit so that they’d let me write a paper instead. I still got a D.”

  Ben didn’t know how to respond to this information. His conversations were generally limited to discussions of field reports and lab findings. It had been a long time since he’d been asked to comment on someone’s personal stories. He found himself looking into his coffee cup, unable to think of anything to say.

  Hudson saved him by continuing to talk. “English was my thing,” he said. “Books. Words. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how elements formed compounds or whatever it is they do, but words made sense.”

  “Which explains the Steinbeck thing,” said Ben, referencing Hudson’s earlier comment.

  “Which explains the Steinbeck thing,” Hudson agreed, nodding. “Although I didn’t get interested in him until later. When I was a kid it was all Paul Zindel and Madeleine L’Engle. And, of course, Jackie Collins when no one was looking.”

  “Of course,” said Ben, trying to remember if he knew who Jackie Collins was and failing.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” Hudson said. “You’re Mr. Science and I’m Mr. Words, but we both love Steinbeck.”

  Ben raised his eyebrows. “I never really thought about it,” he said. Then he asked, “Are you here researching something about Steinbeck?”

  Hudson looked up at him with an expression that surprised Ben. There was a look in his eyes that was almost feral, on guard, as if Ben had done something to make him suspicious. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had appeared, and Hudson was once again regarding pleasantly.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “I’m working on a paper for grad school.”

  That explained it. Ben understood all about grad school, about the endless writing and research, the quest for something to study that was unique, something not already claimed by someone else. He recalled his own horror at discovering, while working on his master’s, that he’d elected to pursue the same subject as an archrival, a situation that added even more pressure to an already-difficult situation but which ultimately had forced him to work harder and, as a result, produce the more original thesis. He knew now why Hudson had seemed wary. He knew, too, that further questions about the subject would make the other man uneasy.

  “People often assume Doc and Ricketts are the same person,” he said, going back to the subject that had originally brought them together. “But they weren’t. Not really. I think Doc was an idealized version of Ricketts, maybe the man Steinbeck knew he wanted to be. Or maybe the man Steinbeck wanted him to be.”

  “I’ve always thought that myself,” said Hudson. “I was hoping that being here would help me figure it out.”

  “Maybe,” Ben said. “As you’ve already seen, though, even Monterey has turned into what it thinks people want it to be. It’s a sort of Dis-neyized Cannery Row. People don’t want to know about how they wiped out all the sardines, or how the original Japanese fishermen were pushed out by the white ones when they realized there was money to be made. The place has almost become a myth, filled with happy bums and heart-of-gold whores.”

  “And Doc,” said Hudson.

  “And Doc,” Ben echoed.

  “All writing is a lie in some way,” Hudson said thoughtfully. “Like you said, maybe Steinbeck wrote about it the way he wanted to see it. Did you know he wrote his ex-wife out of the Sea of Cortez account?”

  “No,” said Ben. “I’ve never heard that.”

  “Took her right out,” Hudson said. “They fought the whole time she was there, and he didn’t want to write about her. He thought the story would read better if it was just him and the boys going on an adventure.”

  “He’s probably right about that,” Ben said. “I can think of a few trips I’d rather remember without my wife in them.”

  “Well, Carol Steinbeck probably felt the same way about John,” Hudson said. “It would be interesting to hear her side of the story.”

  Ben had forgotten that Steinbeck had been married to a Carol, too. He thought of his Carol. His ex-Carol. She also had her side of the story. Their story. He wondered how she told it, how he came across to people who knew him only from her description of their marriage. I wonder if I would recognize myself? he thought.

  “I’ve taken up a lot of your time,” Hudson said, checking his watch. “I didn’t mean to. But I appreciate it.”

  Ben drained the last of his coffee. “It’s all right,” he said. “I wasn’t in any hurry to get back to the lab.”

  “I know that feeling,” said Hudson. “I’m kind of putting things off as well. I was hoping that walking around would help me focus a little better.”

  Ben stood up. He could tell that, despite his comments, Hudson was hoping he wouldn’t leave. He recognized the pull of procrastination. After all, he was deep in its thrall himself. The temptation to suggest a second cup of coffee was strong. But he fought it off, telling himself that it was for Hudson’s sake that he was leaving.

  “You know,” he said. “I might be able to arrange for you to get inside Ricketts’s place,” he said, surprising himself.

  Hudson’s head snapped up. “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “I might,” Ben repeated. “I’ll ask around. Monterey is a pretty small place.”

  “That would be amazing,” Hudson said, fumbling in his backpack. “Here’s my number.”

  Ben accepted the piece of paper. Hudson’s obvious excitement was refreshing. It wasn’t often he saw someone so happy over the prospect of seeing the inside of a marine biologist’s office. He couldn’t even stand to be inside his own at the moment. He lifted the paper. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  He left Kalisa’s followed by Hudson’s repeated thanks. What a peculiar day it had been, he mused. First his run-in with the fisherman, and then an entirely different kind of run-in with Hudson Jones. And all of it completely accidental, occurring only because he’d decided to take a walk. Had he sat in his office, stewing over his problem with Caddie, he would still be there, undoubtedly no closer to finding a solution. This, he thought, was infinitely better.

  As he walked, he thought about Steinbeck some more. How long had it been since he’d read Cannery Row? He thought back, realizing that it had been at least ten years. He’d read it first in grad school, simply because, as he’d told Hudson, reading Ricketts’s classic Between Pacific Tides had led him to the Sea of Cortez material coauthored by Ricketts and Steinbeck, and then to Steinbeck himself. But his interest in Cannery Row, both the place and the book, had at that time been only tangential to his interest in Ricketts’s scholarly work. It wasn’t until he’d moved there that he’d thought to read the book with a different perspective.

  Maybe it was time to look at it again. After ten years, surely his perspective on Monterey had changed enough that his reading of the book would be more nuanced. And he hadn’t read anything for pleasure in, well, in too long.

  He was passing the aquarium. Stopping, he turned and walked toward the members’ entrance at the rear of the building. Flashing his card, he walked up the stairs past the jellyfish exhibit, crossing into the main building via the walkway, and descended past the life-size orca models that were suspended from the ceiling as if they were flying. Then he entered the teeming gift shop, moving through the mobs of tourists looking at stuffed seal pups and dolphin calendars. The book section was at the rear of the shop, inconveniently nestled between the posters and a storeroom door. Fortunately, it was sparsely populated, and he had no trouble finding the well-marked display of Steinbeck-related material.

  Picking up a copy of Cannery Row, a pile of which sat on the shelf, he made his way to the lesser-used checkout stand in the shop’s far corner. There he had to wait while an elderly woman, apparently doing her Christmas shopping, paid for half a dozen ocean-themed items. He briefly reprimanded himself for not simply going to a bookstore, and weighed the value of his member discount against the frustration of having to listen to the woman prattle on about how darling Victoria was just going to love her harp seal barrettes.

  Then it was his turn. He paid, declined the offered bag, and exited the museum through the closer main entrance. He was so relieved to be leaving the tourists behind that he didn’t notice as he passed not ten feet away from his daughter as she made her way through the doors and into the main rotunda.

  CHAPTER 13

  For twenty-three bucks, this place better be amazing, Caddie thought. She couldn’t believe it cost so much to get into a freaking aquarium. And that was with the student discount. She’d almost turned right around and left, but the thought of sitting in the house with nothing to do made her stay.

  She looked around. Admittedly, the place was beautiful. She could do without the whales and dolphins hanging from the ceiling, but other than that it was a pretty amazing place. She walked over to an information stand and picked up a map, then put it back again. She didn’t really care what she saw; she was just killing time.

  Her attention was drawn by a sudden collective shriek that came from a knot of people standing before a display ahead of her. Curious, she went to see what all the fuss was about and discovered that two sea otters were putting on a show for the assembled visitors. The animals frisked about the tank, batting at one another and doing barrel rolls, swimming up to the glass and bringing their little whiskered faces close to the children standing in front. The kids reached out, squealing, and the otters retreated, chasing each other to the surface somewhere out of sight above the onlookers.

  They were cute, but Caddie wasn’t in the mood for waiting around for their return. She moved on, retracing the path her father had walked not fifteen minutes before. Entering the smaller Outer Bay Wing of the aquarium, she entered a dimly lit hallway that promised to take her to the mysterious world of the jellies.

  Looking through the round windows set in the walls, she watched the jellyfish float, their long tentacles hanging beneath them. At first they seemed nothing more than amorphous blobs, bits of gelatin dropped into the water and left to hang there. But the longer she watched them, the more alive they became. Within the bowl-shaped bodies she noticed specks of color. She started to notice the delicate ripples of movement, the fluttering of flowerlike central cores, the almost-imperceptible exhibitions of decisive motion, easily missed by those who, glancing at the jellies and seeing nothing, moved past them to more interesting specimens.

  The jellyfish changed as she moved through the gallery, becoming larger and more fantastic. Some, reminiscent of eggs, featured yellow centers suspended in cloudy white bodies. Others, with tentacles yards long, swam in never-ending circles, their arms entwined, living knotwork with no end and no beginning.

  She was reluctantly impressed. The jellies were undeniably beautiful. She liked, too, that their beauty was inextricably tied to their deadliness. What made them so awesome to behold also made them efficient killers, their spectacular colorations and variety of designs being not merely decorative but entirely functional.

  Still, she grew tired of them after twenty minutes and moved on after being jostled once too often by other visitors who, disoriented by the lack of lighting that made the jellyfish appear in such startling relief, neglected to notice her presence and stepped on her feet or ran into her with baby buggies. Coming full circle, she exited the exhibit very near to where she had entered.

  Dismissing a display devoted to vanishing ocean wildlife as needlessly depressing, her next stop was devoted to the Outer Bays. This, she quickly saw, was essentially an enormous fish tank, stretching floor to ceiling and extending from one side of the cavernous room to the other. Behind the glass, a variety of sea life swam past: huge yellowfin tuna, sleek and sharp-eyed barracuda, a pair of sea turtles.

  The star of the attraction, however, proved to be a juvenile great white shark, which she learned by reading a sign placed nearby had been successfully kept at the aquarium for some months after being accidentally caught in a fisherman’s net. Because the tank and its inhabitants were so large, it was difficult to tell where the shark was. However, the unmistakable gasps of the crowd alerted Caddie to its presence.

  The shark, seemingly unaffected by its celebrity, passed by several feet above the heads of its audience. It was perhaps four feet long, a perfect miniature of what Caddie imagined a great white to be. Its black eye revealed nothing of its thoughts as it moved, its tail curving in a gentle S and its mouth open wide enough to show the teeth of nightmares. The other fish, when it approached, either swam away or formed tight clusters with their like kind.

  “Apparently it took a bite out of one of the tuna last week,” a woman said to her companion.

  “I think he’s cute,” said a child beside her, and the woman laughed.

  “Sharks aren’t cute, honey. They eat people.”

  Caddie, seeing the look of consternation on the child’s face, said, “I think he’s cute too.”

  The child grinned as her mother, glancing quickly at Caddie, tried to push her way closer to the tank. Keep fighting, kid, Caddie thought.

  The shark having gone, she lost interest in trying to differentiate one type of tuna from another. To her they were all big silver fish, more interesting as sushi than as living things. She hoped the little great white ate a few more of them, wished even more that she could see it do so. That would be something, she thought, imagining the carnage.

  She decided to explore the other wing of the aquarium, reached by crossing a narrow walkway that passed over the heads of entering visitors. Reaching the far end, she saw below her another huge tank. Unlike the other one, however, this one was filled with rocks and plants in addition to fish. Also, there was color. Instead of the monotonous variations of silver, these fish were alive with yellows and reds. The rocks, too, were pretty in purple and brown, much more interesting than the endless blue of the open ocean.

  She followed a set of stairs down and approached the tank. The various signs affixed around the bottom identified the habitat as one of California’s famous kelp forests. And indeed, kelp was central to the design. It filled the tank, reaching forty or more feet to the top of the room. Some unseen magic created movement, causing the kelp to sway back and forth slowly, the myriad stalks moving in unison first in one direction and then the other. Fish darted in and out of the thick fronds.

  Sensing movement of another kind, Caddie looked toward a group of rocks in time to see something slither out. A yard or more long, its body was mottled gray and black, looking much like the rocks from which it had emerged. The snakelike body culminated in a huge, monstrous head that resembled nothing so much as the face of a very old man. Large eyes sat above a huge, thick-lipped mouth as the creature rested on the sandy bottom.

  Caddie searched the various signs until she found the animal’s picture and identified it as a wolf eel. The eel’s description assured her that its ferocious appearance belied a gentle nature, a claim she found hard to believe. From the look of the thing, it could take her whole hand off if it wanted to.

  Behind her a set of bleacher-like benches were arranged auditorium style. A handful of people sat on them, watching the kelp forest tableau. Caddie decided to join them. Her feet hurt anyway, and sitting down allowed her to view the tank without having to fight for real estate near the glass. Choosing the least occupied of the benches, she sat down.

  Seconds later, her solitude was taken away as a family of five moved past her and, predictably, chose to sit right beside her. The mother, holding one child on her lap and trying to get a second to settle down, asked her husband how much longer it was going to be. “The show starts in a couple of minutes,” he replied tiredly before instructing the remaining child to stop kicking his feet against the bench.

  As if the man were cuing a scene, a voice erupted from invisible speakers to announce, “The afternoon feeding is about to begin at the kelp forest exhibit.” This was followed by a sudden influx of bodies as people streamed in from all sides, quickly filling up the benches and the surrounding standing areas. Caddie, looking for a means of escape, found her way blocked and the crowd impenetrable without drawing unwanted attention to herself. And so she sat, annoyed at herself for having fallen into a trap and thus appearing to be yet one more tourist slavering for entertainment.

  The calm within the tank was broken as a body descended from the ceiling. It was a diver. His head was encased fully in a mask that allowed him to look out at the audience and, as Caddie discovered, speak to them through a microphone. He hovered amidst the kelp as the fish, clearly well used to the routine, swarmed about him with great interest.

  “Good afternoon.” The voice, although slightly tinny, was warm. “Welcome to the kelp forest exhibit of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. My name is Brian, and I’ll be your tour guide today.”

  Reaching into a bag at his side, he removed from it a handful of something and released it into the water. The fish, frenzied, darted around him, eating. “As you can see,” Brian said, “they know when it’s lunchtime.”

  He then launched into a description of the kelp forest ecosystem, presenting facts about the fish that Caddie heard and then immediately forgot. She was more interested in the way in which the diver hung so effortlessly in the water. He moved his legs only occasionally, and yet he neither fell nor rose. She found herself looking at his face through the mask and realizing that he was cute.

  How does he know all this stuff? she wondered. She tried to picture herself giving a talk to so many people. There was no way, not only because she knew nothing about the ocean, but because she couldn’t stand the idea of all those faces looking at her.

  “This little fellow is a garibaldi,” Brian said, pointing to a bright orange fish that seemed to be attacking his mask. “He’s the state fish of California. Right now he thinks I’m trying to get at the eggs he’s guarding in his nest over there; that’s why he’s getting all up in my face.”