"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-
Exactly where her heels had been.
"This is fucked up! I didn't pass out in the fuckin' woods! Somebody dragged me here! They dragged me out of the shed and left me!"
But who? And why?
Jonas? Slydes? Why would they do that? Or maybe one of those nature photographers, she thought, but that didn't make sense either.
Then she thought again of her position. Like she'd been deliberately laid out spread legged-in wait of something.
Like bait, came the next, odder thought. Somebody left me here on purpose…
The rustling chopped off her remaining thoughts. Just a few feet away, she noticed leaves moving on the ground. I don't need this fuckin' shit!
She ran back to the shed and slammed the rickety door.
"Fuck!" she exclaimed yet again.
Ruth's less than complex mind crapped out on further contemplations. Dread and terror left her winded. We just need to get the fuck off this fuck-hole shit-bird island, was about the most sophisticated assessment she could make of her situation.
And whatever had been outside rustling beneath the leaves…
Ruth didn't think about it.
The heat inside the shed wrung more sweat from her pores, which plipped like rain on the dry wood floor, leaving dots. Fuck! You could cook pizzas in here! Her marijuana hangover hindered her as she pulled her shorts and top back on. It was so hot she paused a moment and leaned against the wall.
And noticed that the spots her sweat had made on the floor-
Ruth stared.
– were moving.
She steadied herself, squinting.
Her vision shifted further: dehydration, fatigue, mental trauma, and now the oppressive heat all conglomerating. Was she seeing double?