“But they were there,” said Hudson. “And we saw them. That doesn’t just disappear.”

  “But what did we really see?” Ben asked him. “Let me guess, you saw nature in all of its perfect glory. The sun on the trees. The deer in the grass. It was beautiful, right?”

  “Right,” said Hudson. “Didn’t you think so?”

  “It was beautiful,” Ben agreed. “But the reality is that we were looking at two animals whose fur is more than likely crawling with fleas, who harbor half a dozen parasites in their digestive tracts, and who breed so much that they’re straining the ecosystem.”

  “If you’re trying to turn me into a cynic, it won’t work,” said Hudson. “I’m incurable.”

  “Then there’s no hope for you,” Ben informed him with mock gravity.

  They had taken a fork in the road and now were walking toward the water rather than away from it. The grass gave way to gravel, and then to the sand and asphalt of the parking area where they’d left Ben’s Volvo. Ben walked to the car, opened the door, and removed two plastic grocery bags, which he carried to one of the two picnic tables situated on the lot’s outer edge by the cinder block bathrooms. Hudson sat down opposite him as Ben handed him one of the bags, the lunches they’d picked up at a Safeway in town before making the trip to Pt. Lobos.

  Ben unwrapped his sandwich and twisted the top from a bottle of water. “Can I ask you something?” he said as Hudson tore open a bag of chips and put one in his mouth. Hudson nodded in response to Ben’s question, crunching the chip between his teeth.

  “If you’re such a hopeless romantic, how come you don’t have a partner. Boyfriend. Whatever.”

  “I did,” Hudson answered. “Once.”

  “He wasn’t as romantic, eh?” Ben remarked, removing the bread from the top of his roast beef sandwich and squeezing mustard from a plastic pack onto the meat.

  “He died,” said Hudson.

  Ben looked up. “I guess it’s my turn to say I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Hudson told him. “To answer your question, no, he wasn’t exactly the romantic type. He was more like you. Methodical. Logical. Reliable.”

  “You sound like you’re describing a car,” said Ben.

  Hudson took a bite of his sandwich. The turkey was dry, he noticed. He wished he’d taken more mustard packets. But the tomato was good, and the lettuce wasn’t at all soggy. He chewed slowly, thinking about Ben’s comment.

  “Paul was the kid at school you always wanted to be like,” he said. “Smart, handsome, totally charming. He could get people to do just about anything he wanted.” He took a sip of 7UP and set the bottle on the edge of the sandwich wrapper to keep it from blowing away. “I take that back,” he said. “Paul never had to get people to do anything. They wanted to. He had this thing about him where people wanted to take care of him, almost as if he were a child. I don’t think he even realized it.”

  “Did you?” asked Ben. “Want to take care of him, I mean.”

  Hudson wiped a bit of mustard from his lip. “Yes,” he said. “And I did. At least until the end.”

  Ben was breaking up a piece of bread, which he tossed to the small group of tiny birds that had been watching them from a few feet away. They descended on the crumbs, snatching them up and looking at him expectantly. “How did he die?” Ben asked, wiping his hands together to get rid of the last bits of bread.

  “Cancer,” Hudson said quickly. “It happened really quickly. He was diagnosed in June and died in September.”

  “How long ago?” asked Ben.

  “Two years,” Hudson answered. “Almost, anyway. That’s how long we were together, too. He’s been dead almost as long as I knew him. I hadn’t thought of that until now.”

  “I’m sorry to have brought it up,” said Ben.

  Hudson picked up the second half of his sandwich. Although Ben was already finished with his, Hudson ate slowly. “No,” he said between bites. “It’s good to think about him. I tried not to at first. I thought it would help me move on. I was wrong.”

  “There’s been nobody since him?” Ben asked.

  Hudson shook his head. “Nobody that stuck around longer than a night,” he said. “Sorry if that was too much information.”

  Ben laughed. “I don’t shock that easily,” he replied. “Besides, I think Caddie’s doing a bit of that herself at the moment. Like you said, it doesn’t help to pretend it isn’t happening.”

  “She’s a little young for that, isn’t she?” said Hudson.

  “I think so,” Ben said. “But I’m her father, so I’m hardly objective.”

  “What about that scientific remove you were talking about?” Hudson teased.

  Ben crumpled his bag and tossed it into the nearby garbage can. “I’m finding it a little difficult to maintain that when it comes to Caddie,” he said.

  “You sound surprised,” said Hudson.

  “Frankly, I am,” Ben admitted. “I thought—hoped—I’d be able to approach this whole situation with at least a reasonable hope of understanding how it’s supposed to work. I’m afraid to say that I seem to be failing miserably.”

  “She’s a girl,” said Hudson. “A person.”

  “I’m finding that out,” Ben said. “It was easier when she was just my daughter, especially when she was her mother’s problem. Then she was more or less an abstraction. Now she’s ...” His voice faded away as he searched for the right words.

  “Reality,” Hudson suggested.

  Ben nodded. “It’s like the difference between theoretical physics and engineering,” he said. “Those theoretical guys can sit around for days talking about how ants building a colony in Africa can result in floods in New Orleans, but try to get them to make a levee out of sandbags and they don’t have a clue what to do.”

  Hudson, like Ben minutes before, threw some bread to the birds. He watched as one, a small junco, grabbed a piece that barely fit in its mouth and stood, puffed up and menacing, as larger birds attempted to take its prize. If it dropped the bread in order to break it into smaller pieces, it risked losing it altogether. But unless it did, it wouldn’t get to eat, as the piece was too large to swallow whole.

  “Good luck, fellah,” Hudson said sympathetically.

  Ben grunted, and Hudson looked up. “Not you,” he said. “Mr. Bird here.”

  Ben looked under the table, where the junco was hopping away from three determined chickadees. “Looks like he’s outnumbered,” he commented.

  “Caddie seemed okay at dinner the other night,” Hudson said, getting back to the topic at hand.

  “That’s because she had an audience,” said Ben. “Every night since then we’ve had the usual one-word-answer conversations.”

  “Give her some time,” Hudson said. “She’ll come around.”

  Ben didn’t say anything. He was looking over Hudson’s shoulder at something behind them. Hudson turned and saw two divers slowly walking up the ramp from the ocean. They were talking and laughing with one another.

  “Anything down there, boys?” Ben called out.

  The men walked toward them, stopping just short of the picnic area so that the water from their suits dripped into the sand. The first, a stout man with very red hair and a matching beard, greeted them with, “Ben Ransome, you dirty son of a bitch. What’s this favor you wanted to ask me about?” He turned to his companion, a short, thin man with salt-and-pepper hair and a scar that crossed diagonally through both upper and lower lips in a thin white line. “Ben here left a message for me saying he needs something from me,” he told him. “This after he’s skipped out on poker night for three months straight.”

  “Bastard,” the second man said jovially to Ben, shaking his head.

  “Now, Al,” Ben said to the red-haired man. “I think I’ve left enough of my money on your table that you can do me one little favor.”

  “Well, what is it?” Al demanded. “Might as well ask so I can say no.”

  Ben indicated Hudson. “Al, meet Hudson Jones. Hudson, these dive rats are Al Blackmore and Ollie Kipperling. No bigger thieves and liars in Monterey than these two.”

  “Then I definitely want to know you,” said Hudson, nodding at the men as they erupted in laughter.

  “Hudson here is doing some research on Ed Ricketts,” Ben explained.

  “And you’re wondering if I can get you into the lab,” said Al before Ben could continue. He glowered at Ben. “What do I look like, the goddamn Visitors’ Bureau?”

  “I’d say you’re just about the same color as their hut on the Row,” said Ben calmly, and Al and Ollie laughed some more.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Al. “No promises,” he added, looking at Hudson.

  “I won’t hold you to any,” Hudson assured him.

  Al smiled. “I like this one,” he said to Ben. “Bring him to poker night. We’re getting together next Tuesday.” He looked at Hudson. “You play poker?”

  “Badly,” Hudson told him.

  “That’s the best way,” said Al. “Bring cash. We’ll be gentle.”

  The two men said their good-byes and retreated to a beat-up pickup at the lot’s far end. “They seem nice,” Hudson said to Ben when they were gone.

  “Al’s a good guy,” Ben said. “Ollie too. Al’s the one who first took me diving here. He’s been coming since he was a kid.”

  “What’s his connection to the Ricketts lab?” Hudson asked.

  “That’s not entirely clear,” said Ben with a lopsided grin. “Technically, the lab is owned by the city. Unofficially, it’s controlled by a group of old-timers who don’t want to see it turned into a tourist trap like the rest of Cannery Row. Al’s the ringleader, if you will. He lets the city run tours a couple of times a year during the Steinbeck celebration, and he and his buddies maintain the place. In exchange, the city doesn’t interfere.”

  “Don’t people ever ask why the lab isn’t open to the public?” asked Hudson.

  “Sure they do,” said Ben. “And the Steinbeck folks would love for it to be on permanent display. But Al knows the right people, or at least knows the right people’s secrets.” He laughed. “He’s quite a character.”

  Hudson wondered what Helen Guerneyser thought about Al Blackwood. He might just have to ask her the next time he saw her. Then again, he didn’t want her thinking he was friends with someone who was apparently her enemy.

  They walked to the Volvo, waved good-bye to Al and Ollie after once again promising to show up for poker night, and drove toward the park entrance. Hudson, looking out the window, searched for the deer but saw nothing. Beside him, Ben drove with one arm on the edge of the open window. He liked Ben and was pleased they had been brought together.

  Then why did you lie to him about Paul? asked a voice in his head.

  He leaned out the window so that the wind blew his hair into a tangle and the roaring drowned out the question, which echoed through his head like the howling of the sea wolves.

  CHAPTER 27

  Caddie, watching the nudibranch laying its endless coil of eggs around the base of the tube anemone, turned and looked with irritation at Brian. He was tugging on her fin and motioning for her to follow him. She looked once more at the nudibranch and reluctantly left it.

  They were once again following the pipe. This time, following a lesson from Brian, Caddie knew how to use the dive computer that hung on her left side. She looked at it now. They were at forty-five feet. The temperature was fifty-two. And, she saw, she had more than half a tank of air left after almost thirty minutes underwater.

  She liked knowing all of this. Besides providing a measure of safety, it made her more confident. She’d realized after their first dive that Brian wasn’t the best teacher. Since then, she’d deliberately asked questions and made him answer them. He seemed amused by her desire to understand how the equipment worked, but she didn’t care.

  Ahead of her, Brian was swimming quickly. How does he see anything? Caddie wondered. Where’s he in such a hurry to get to?

  She kicked harder to catch up with him. A glance at her gauge showed that they were at fifty feet. It was the deepest she’d been. When she looked up, she couldn’t see the surface, although shafts of sunlight penetrated the water and she could see quite a distance ahead of her.

  She was surprised when the pipe suddenly came to an end. They paused, and while Brian fiddled with something on his computer, Caddie peered into the open mouth of the pipe. A large fish, long and thin, looked back at her. It was resting on its stomach, the fins on either side moving slowly, as if it was fanning its brown mottled skin. Its mouth was open, and she saw that it was filled with a row of tiny, sharp teeth. Large dark eyes watched her warily. What are you? Caddie thought at it, but the fish only blinked its eyes and fanned more rapidly.

  Brian tapped her on the shoulder and pointed, indicating their new direction. Caddie followed him across a barren stretch of sand, the landscape dotted with the occasional sea star but nothing else. Already the sea stars had become overly familiar to her, and she let her eyes pass over them in search of more interesting sights.

  A few more kicks brought them to something that took her breath away. A cluster of rocks rose from the sand, and all over them huge white flowers bloomed on stalks thicker than her arm. They look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, she thought. The flowers, some of them at least three feet tall, swayed like palm trees. The top of each was capped in cauliflower-shaped petals (she could think of no other word for them) seemingly spun from cotton.

  Brian swam up and over the rocks, hovering just above the strange things. Caddie followed, trying her best to maintain her buoyancy and not crash into the flowers. When she was over them, she looked down. They’re anemones, she thought. Not like the tube anemones, or the short round ones, but they’re anemones.

  The anemones’ petals were moving in and out. At first she thought they were just being moved around by the water, but then she saw that the movements were deliberate. The anemones, like dozens of ghostly conductors, were making music only they could hear, drawing water into their open mouths. They’re eating, Caddie realized, and the idea thrilled her.

  Brian led her over the field of anemones. It felt to Caddie as if they were soaring over snow-capped mountains. Below them the anemones floated like clouds. She was disappointed when they reached the other side of the rocks and returned to the plain old sand. But Brian swam around the far edge of the outcropping, and Caddie saw that in addition to the anemones, the rocks were covered with nudibranchs, crabs, and many other things that roamed the anemone forest like jungle animals.

  All too soon it was over. Apparently recognizing some landmark Caddie couldn’t identify, Brian headed away from the rocks. Caddie, with a last look at the anemones, went with him. She didn’t know how Brian knew where to go, but she had no choice but to trust him. She made a mental note to ask him about getting around with more than just a vague idea of where the shore was. And now that she thought about it, with the pipe for reference, she didn’t even know where that was. For all she knew, they could be swimming out to sea.

  Then the pipe appeared, and she relaxed. The fish was still there, and she winked at it as they passed by. See you later, she thought. Brian, as she’d discovered was his habit, was swimming quickly back to shore. She wished he would slow down, but a glance at her computer showed that she was running low on air, so she increased her pace and swam beside him until, at about fifteen feet, they both ascended.

  “How’d you like the metridiums?” Brian asked as they floated on the surface, not far from shore.

  “Metridiums,” said Caddie. She tried the odd-sounding word again. “Metridiums. They’re anemones, right?”

  Brian nodded. “Good call. We’ll make a marine biologist out of you yet.”

  Caddie snorted and started toward shore. This time it was Brian who had to catch up with her.

  An hour later they were in Brian’s bedroom. Brian, naked, was stretched on his back. Caddie, wearing one of Brian’s T-shirts, was sitting on the side of the bed, trying not to look at his penis. Soft, it reminded her of a baby rat, all pink and helpless looking. Even Brian’s balls were hairless. She wondered if he shaved them, considered asking, then decided she didn’t want to know.

  “Wow,” Brian said, putting his hand on her thigh and petting her like a puppy. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

  Caddie grunted. “Mmm,” she said vaguely. She stood up, Brian’s hand sliding from her leg, and walked into the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom. She shut the door behind her and turned on the water in the sink. Then she sat on the toilet, her elbows cradled in the T-shirt and her fists pressed together.

  She hadn’t come. Not even gotten close. Brian had pumped away at her, and she’d tried, but she couldn’t. Instead, she’d thought about the metridiums. She’d closed her eyes, imagining she was swimming above them, naked, her skin caressed by their gentle petals. But Brian’s breath on her neck, his sweaty skin sticking to hers, had ruined everything. Finally he had come, shuddering and gritting his teeth in an absurd grimace of release before falling beside her.

  “You okay in there?” Brian’s voice penetrated through the door and the sound of the water.

  “Yeah,” Caddie called back. She stood and flushed the toilet. Then, turning off the water, she returned to the bedroom and picked up her underwear from the floor, slipping it on.

  “Want to grab some dinner?” Brian asked. He was still naked, absentmindedly playing with himself while he talked, as if his dick were some kind of toy.

  Caddie shook her head. “I’ve got some stuff to do at home,” she said.

  “How about diving tomorrow afternoon?” Brian suggested.

  Caddie removed his T-shirt and tossed it on the bed. She put her own on, tucking it into her jeans. “I’ll call you in the morning,” she said. “But probably.”

  “Great,” Brian said as he slipped his T-shirt over his head and stood up. He grabbed Caddie and kissed her. She felt his dick against her hand and recoiled at the stickiness of it.