A ripple of laughter ran through the audience. Brian went on to tell them about the sheephead, a large pink and black striped fish that kept itself near the bottom of the tank. “Do you think that sheephead is a boy or a girl?” he asked.

  “A boy!” one of Caddie’s younger neighbors called out, while elsewhere the opposing view was presented by someone else.

  “Well, you’re both right,” Brian said. “The female sheephead can actually change from a girl to a boy when there aren’t enough males around to reproduce.”

  “Dude,” a teenage boy behind Caddy said to his friend, “it’s a transvestite fish.”

  “Actually, it’s a transsexual fish,” Caddie said, turning around. “Transvestites just wear the clothing of the opposite sex.”

  The boy laughed as she turned back around. She noticed the mother next to her give her a questioning glance and resisted the urge to lean over and say, “I know because I’m wearing men’s underwear right now.”

  “I bet you guys have a lot of questions,” Brian said, and a dozen hands shot up.

  “Why doesn’t the eel eat the other fish?” was followed by “Do fish sleep?” “Can you eat kelp?” and other questions, all of which Brian answered with, Caddie thought, enormous patience considering the stupidity of most of them.

  “Anyone else?” asked Brian when the raised hands had all been lowered. “How about the pretty girl in the third row. You look like you have a question.”

  Caddie looked around, surprised that he would call on someone specifically. She was even more surprised a moment later when she realized that people had turned and were looking at her. She looked at Brian, floating behind the glass, and held a finger to her chest.

  “Yes, you,” he said. “What would you like to know about the kelp forest?”

  Knowing she was turning red, Caddie was thankful for the low lighting. However, the realization that a hundred people were waiting to hear what came out of her mouth made it impossible for her to think. She just sat there, shaking her head.

  “Come on,” said the boy behind her. “Ask him something else about those queer fish, like do they take turns being the man.”

  He and his buddy erupted in horsey laughter. Thankfully, the anger she felt at his remark helped Caddie focus her thoughts. “If you could be any animal that lives in the kelp forest, what would you be?” she said loudly.

  There was some tittering from the crowd, but she saw Brian smile behind his mask. “That’s a good one,” he said. “I guess I would want to be a sea lion.”

  “Why?” Caddie found herself saying.

  “Because they don’t worry about anything,” said Brian. “They just play all the time. And when they’re not playing, they’re sleeping. I think that’s a pretty good life.”

  The audience applauded as Brian thanked them for coming and waved good-bye. As they filed out, he rose out of view, until only the tips of his fins were visible. Then they too disappeared as, Caddie assumed, he got out of the tank.

  She stood up, stretched, and left the animals of the kelp forest to do whatever it was they did when no one was around. Having already seen most of the aquarium, she returned to the second floor and checked out the remaining sights. It was as she was watching the bizarre-looking cuttlefish that she sensed someone standing too close to her and turned to see Brian there. The wet suit was gone, replaced by shorts and a T-shirt bearing the aquarium’s logo. His blond hair, cut short, stuck up in unruly spikes.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “You look different without your work clothes on,” Caddie said.

  “I hope I didn’t embarrass you,” he said. “You just looked like you wanted to murder someone.”

  “So you thought you’d poke me and see if I exploded?” she asked. “Nice.”

  “Hey, it works with the puffer fish,” said Brian, smiling. His eyes, a greenish brown, asked her to forgive him.

  “Is this how you always pick up girls?” Caddie said.

  “Usually the uniform is all it takes,” answered Brian. “Who can resist a guy in neoprene?”

  Caddie turned back to the cuttlefish, which hovered, alien-like, an inch above the sand. The edges of its blue-tinged mantle rippled incessantly while one weird gold eye, the iris a black W, stared back at Caddie. A cluster of fingerlike tentacles dangled from its head, twitching idly at the water.

  “That is one seriously weird fish,” she remarked.

  “Actually, it’s not a fish,” said Brian. “It’s a mollusc. It’s related to snails, squid, and octopuses.”

  “Look at you, getting all Jacques Cousteau,” said Caddie.

  Brian ran his hand through his hair. “I like marine biology,” he said.

  “You should meet my father,” Caddie told him. “He works over at that Hopkins Marine whatever.”

  “And you don’t know the difference between a fish and a cuttlefish?”

  Caddie faced him. “I didn’t inherit the fish-loving gene, I guess,” she said. “Besides, if it’s not a fish, then they shouldn’t put fish in its name. It should be the cuttlepus or something.”

  “I liked your question,” Brian said.

  “Sorry it wasn’t all scientific,” said Caddie.

  “No,” Brian said. “I really liked it. It was different. You heard what everyone else asked. It’s almost always like that. It’s nice to have someone ask something interesting.”

  “Well, I try,” said Caddie.

  Brian, pointing at the cuttlefish, said, “Did you know they can change color? Like chameleons, only way more sophisticated. They have these receptors on their skin that can reflect light in a bunch of different colors, so they can blend in with their surroundings.”

  “That would be a neat trick,” Caddie said.

  Brian looked at her. “I don’t think you could blend in anywhere,” he said. “You’re too pretty.”

  Caddie snorted. “Next you’ll tell me that my tentacles are the longest ones you’ve ever seen.”

  “I’ve seen longer,” said Brian. “But I’m not really a tentacle man anyway, so it’s all good.”

  Caddie was enjoying the flirtation, even if it was a little too reminiscent of her first meeting with Nick, which she’d actually managed to forget about until then. But Brian was no Nick. He seemed to actually have a brain. But he might also have a girlfriend, she reminded herself.

  “So I didn’t just track you down to apologize,” Brian said, hesitating enough that Caddie knew what was coming. “I was wondering if you might like to hang out.”

  “Hang out?” said Caddie. “You mean like play video games and read comic books?”

  “I mean like maybe dinner or a movie, smart-ass,” Brian replied.

  “Now you’re calling me names?” said Caddie. “I have to tell you, neoprene suit or not, you’re not doing so well here.”

  “Okay,” Brian said. “Let me start over. Would you be interested in getting something to eat and seeing a movie?”

  “With you?” asked Caddie.

  “With me,” Brian said.

  Caddie bit her lip, thinking. Brian watched her, obviously nervous. It was sweet, she thought. And he was cute.

  “Okay,” she said. “But you’d better take me somewhere nice.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Have you found the Holy Grail yet?”

  Hearing Marty’s voice on the phone, Hudson laughed. “Give me a few more days,” he replied. “Those Knights Templar were clever boys, you know. They hid it pretty well.”

  Marty chuckled. “So, how’s Monterey?”

  “Interesting,” Hudson told his friend. “It feels strange being here. I’ve just sort of been walking around, taking it all in.”

  “Talking to ghosts,” Marty remarked.

  “Something like that,” said Hudson. He appreciated that Marty understood. It was difficult to explain his feelings to people who weren’t from the academic world, who had never lived through the singularly lonely and paranoiac experience that was chasing a theory. He liked that he could shorthand his feelings and that Marty would know what he meant.

  “How long do you think it will take?” Marty continued.

  Hudson sighed. “About ten minutes if I find out I’m wrong,” he said. “But if I’m right, it could be awhile.”

  “Well, take your time,” said Marty. “It’s nice having the place to myself.”

  Hudson knew he was teasing. Marty hated living alone; whenever Hudson went away for any length of time, he almost immediately reverted to a state of near squalor. Laundry went undone, piling up on the floor around Marty’s bed. Dishes, when he didn’t simply eat straight out of cans, sat unwashed in precarious piles. Showering became a biweekly event.

  “Have you turned into Mr. Severin yet?” asked Hudson, a reference to a professor of Marty’s who, failing to turn up for class following one three-week winter break, had been discovered dead in his office at home, surrounded by years-old stacks of mathematics journals and drifts of accumulated filth, his toes half eaten by his three starving cats.

  “Not so far,” Marty answered. “But it will be your fault if I do. You shouldn’t have left me.”

  “You poor thing,” Hudson teased. “I’m sure you can find some comely undergraduate who needs help with his calculus to take care of you.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Marty, “how’s the man action there?”

  “One gay bar,” Hudson informed him. “And I understand it’s mainly filled with pool-playing dykes. My sexual drought seems destined to continue unabated.”

  Marty feigned a sigh of sympathy, to which Hudson said, “I know you feel my pain.” This was followed by the sound of beeping.

  “I’ve got to go,” said Marty. “That’s my dinner.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t use the microwave,” Hudson said.

  “Relax,” said Marty. “It’s just a can of soup.”

  “Can!” Hudson exclaimed. “As in metal? Are you—”

  “I’ll call you in a few days,” said Marty, and hung up.

  Hudson started to call back, then put the phone down. Visions of the house going up in flames filled his thoughts. He couldn’t believe Marty would do something so stupid. Yes I can, he corrected himself. The man doesn’t even know you’re supposed to add water. But he didn’t call back.

  Instead, he looked at his own dinner. He’d picked up Chinese from a restaurant nearby. Now the cartons sat open before him on the table on the sunporch. It was a warm night, still very much light, and the room retained a feeling of summer, as if it had soaked into the very fabric of the couch. Hudson took up a fork, plunged it into the Schezuan pork, and took a bite.

  It had been a good day, he thought. His initial disappointment in the state of Cannery Row had dissipated somewhat, mostly due to his meeting with Ben Ransome. Knowing that someone else lamented the effects wrought by time and progress made him feel that he at least had company in his desire to experience life as it was. And if Ben could get him into Ed Ricketts’s lab, that would be a real thrill.

  He would try not to get his hopes up. In his experience, people often made promises but seldom came through. He’d given Ben his number, and that was really all he could do. Still, he hoped he would call, if only because it would be nice to talk to him again.

  Switching from the pork to the tangy slickness of sweet and sour chicken, he turned over the pages of the manuscript that he’d spread out on the table. He’d been making notes—again—and wanted to compare a later section to the one concerning Tom’s near-battle at the bar.

  It seemed to Charlie, walking home, that the Row was something of a dream. Whenever he thought he understood it, it changed itself, becoming a new mystery. Some days he woke up thinking that he knew who he was, and where he was going. But as soon as he stepped outside, he would find himself once again in an unfamiliar landscape. It made his head hurt, trying to figure it out. So he’d mostly stopped trying.

  He’d once accused the place of deliberately trying to make him crazy. Its treachery, he’d announced to the man next to him at the bar where he’d been drinking steadily for some time, was now clear to him. Cannery Row wanted his soul. Well, he’d said, he’d be damned if he’d let any building built of fish stink and oil have him. He’d leave, by God, and leave that night.

  Of course, he hadn’t. He’d meant to. He’d even gone so far as to pack a suitcase. But somewhere between trying to choose what undershirts to take and which to leave behind, he’d fallen tiredly onto his bed and fallen asleep. In the morning he’d woken up, eyed the suitcase suspiciously as if it had crept into the room during the night and meant to rob him, and tried to remember why he’d gone to sleep with his boots on.

  He’d since come to accept the Row as a reality. Still, he resented it, insulted it in his thoughts, if not to its person, lest it hear him and exact some kind of revenge. He regarded it the way he regarded immunizations, or the United States Congress. It wasn’t for him to understand, but he respected it as something capable of both great harm and great good.

  Now, having left Tom at his own doorstep, he wondered if maybe he wasn’t wrong about taking such a stance. For it seemed to him that the Row was becoming a harder and harder master. It was asking too much of its people. They were tired. He saw it in their faces. He felt it in his bones.

  Look at Tom. Something was making him unhappy. While the obvious source of misery was usually a wife, Charlie suspected that Alice was no worse nor no better than any other woman. It was something else that was eating at Tom and making him act the way he did. And Charlie had felt it too. It was like something had bit him, and now the itch was starting to get too bad to ignore.

  He reached his boarding house and went up to his room. He was too late for supper, and he didn’t want to ask Mrs. Ring to make him up a plate, even though he knew she’d do it.

  She’d cleaned his room. The floor was swept, and the window was open. He’d left it closed. Now the air came in. It smelled like sardines. He closed the window, then took his boots off. He didn’t sit on the bed. Instead, he removed his overalls and carried them into the bathroom. He’d taken the room because of the bathroom. He didn’t like to share, didn’t like people knowing the secrets of his body.

  He filled the sink and, taking up the small box of De-Luxe Laundry Powder he kept on the shelf beside it, sprinkled some into the water. It foamed up nicely, making drifts of white bubbles he thought probably looked like snow, which he’d never seen.

  He washed the overalls, taking care to work the soap into the stains. Then he removed his shirt and washed that too, particularly the collar and the cuffs, where his body left its marks.

  He drained the sink and ran fresh water over the clothes until no more soap came out. Then he wrung out as much of the water as he could and hung the clothes over the line he’d nailed up between the walls over the tub. The tub faucet had not worked for some time, but he bathed in the sink anyway and didn’t miss it.

  He returned to the bedroom. This time he did sit on the bed, his bare feet on the floor and his hands in his lap. He got up again and turned on the radio. A girl’s voice filled his room, singing something about a robin and its nest. Charlie sat down again and listened to her for a minute, but then the song ended and a commercial for Ford automobiles came on. He had no use for a Ford, so he ignored it.

  He wondered what Tom was doing. Probably he was asleep already. Maybe Alice had helped him off with his clothes. Or maybe she’d just let him fall into bed with them on. He doubted that. Women didn’t like things dirty. She’d probably made him take off his overalls and shirt, even if she hadn’t made him wash.

  What would it be like to take care of someone like Tom? he wondered. Did Alice worry, or was she used to his behavior? She must be, he thought. After all, they’d been married a long time.

  Tom was twenty-eight. Charlie knew this because Tom had mentioned once when his birthday was. It was August the seventeenth. He’d remembered it, and when that date had come around, Charlie had bought Tom a beer. Tom had been surprised that Charlie remembered. He’d clapped his hand on Charlie’s back and told him what a friend he was. But he hadn’t asked Charlie his own birth date, which was February the ninth.

  On Charlie’s last birthday he was twenty-six. He’d received a nice letter from his brother, Pete, who was living in Oklahoma and working on his wife’s father’s farm. Pete had wished him many happy returns and told him that he was welcome anytime he wanted to come visit, and was he thinking about getting married yet, because it was a good thing to be married. Charlie still had the letter, in a box in his closet. One of these days, he would write Pete back and tell him he was just fine.

  He thought about being married. Pete made it sound like the best thing that could ever happen to a man. But Tom told him he was lucky he wasn’t hampered by any woman. He told Charlie he wished they could trade places sometime, because he was starting to forget what it was like to be a free man.

  Maybe he should get married. Maybe it would settle him and make him stop feeling so itchy. If he was married, maybe he wouldn’t feel like he was getting eaten up a little bit at a time with every passing day. If he had a wife, he’d mean something to somebody. That, he thought, would be a good feeling. Maybe the most wonderful feeling in the world.

  Tom had married Alice when he was just seventeen and she was sixteen. He’d once told Charlie that they’d had to get married because Alice thought she might be having a baby. She hadn’t, but by then they were already living in an apartment over a pharmacy and it was too late to do anything about it. Tom had told Charlie that since Alice hadn’t produced any baby in all the time they’d been married that he sometimes thought maybe she’d made the whole thing up about that first baby on purpose, but he couldn’t prove it and she wouldn’t say.

  Pete and his wife had two babies. Charlie had never met them, but he knew all about them from Pete’s letters. They were five and three, two boys, Pete Jr. and Amos, named after his and Charlie’s grandfather. Pete said he’d saved Otis, which was their dead father’s name, for Charlie to give to his own son. Charlie had thanked him for his kindness, although he thought he maybe preferred the name Luke.