Nora paused a moment, rubbing her eyes. Stop going nuts, she ordered herself. "I think it's weird, Loren. This place. It's army property that the army has abandoned. It's a missile base with no missiles anymore, right?"
"Right," Loren agreed, still trying to contain his smile.
"Yet they got this guy 'Dent-some sort of liaison officer-who comes out here every month to check the island for damage. What's to damage?" She pointed to the wall. "These ugly-ass brick buildings that are empty?"
"All right, I guess that seemed a little strange at first-"
`There! See? You agree!"
"Not really. Trent's an army gofer, an errand boy. And it just happens to be part of his job to keep tabs on army land that's no longer in use. You heard him. He said they get squatters out here sometimes, and college kids partying. It doesn't matter that the army's not using the land for anything right now. These empty buildings belong to the friggin' army, and so do the water purifiers and the generator and whatever else is out here. Trent spot-checks the place to make sure nobody's screwed with his employer's property. Simple. It's a busywork job, and the military is full of stuff like that."
"I think Trent's hiding something," she finally said.
Loren shook his head. "He's not hiding anything, Nora, and that's not really what's bothering you anyway, is it? Either somebody pissed in your granola this morning-and I happen to know you don't eat granolaor you're having some giant PMS, and that can't be the case either because you had that two weeks ago."
Listen to what he's saying, she told herself. Be honest. "All right. You're right."
"So what is it?" and before she could answer, he raised a finger. "Ah, but let me guess. The photographer."
Nora's face felt clamped in a cheese press she was frowning so hard. "Yeah, I guess that's it-that priss photographer, and, yes, I know it sounds juvenile and insecure but she really pisses me off."
"That's no secret, the way you were glaring at her for the entire trip over."
She sat down on a collapsible field stool. "How else am I supposed to feel? You saw the way the pilots were gawking at her. And Trent, too. Nobody ever gawks at me."
"I do." Loren winked, and made a lewd pelvic gesture. "Hubba-hubba. Any time you want to make the smartest babies on earth, let me know."
Nora sighed. "I'm serious, Loren. It's depressing. What do I need to get some notice? A boob job? A platinum-blond wig?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. You're a good-looking woman. In fact, you're the best-looking female polychaetologist in Florida."
Nora didn't hesitate to give him the finger. "Loren, you know damn well I'm the only female polychaetologist in Florida."
"Well…"
She plopped her chin in her hands. "I'm a nerd, Loren."
"Don't feel bad. I'm a nerd, too. I can't get laid in a whorehouse with a fistful of fifties. And you know what? I don't care. Sure, Nora, we're nerds, we're geeks, but you know what else we are?"
"What's that?" she droned.
"We're smarter than everyone else, which makes us-" He cut a toothy grin and pointed at her like a gun. "Superior."
Superior, Nora thought. That was the last thing she felt. I'm thirty years old now and my nickname is still Pipe Cleaner. I'm still a virgin, and in Florida? That makes me more rare than afucking Gutenberg-Bible.-
"Another thing to consider," Loren rambled. He rambled a lot. "Of course, we're smart. Our IQs, in addition to the fund of our general knowledge, probably puts us in the top two percentile of the population, and I mean the advanced-educated population."
Nora winced. "Loren! We're a couple of egghead misfits! We're the sore thumbs of the modern American societal mainstream! We're dorks! If we walk into a singles bar, we don't even know how to pull up a stool and order a drink!"
Loren ignored the judgment, continuing, "Aaaaa- aaand, I might add, with specificity, you and I in all likelihood probably know more about polychaetes than anyone else in North America."
Nora felt like slapping him. "That and six bucks will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks… maybe."
.You are the queen and I am the king of our field. We're marine zoologists of the first water. It may even be-and I mean no arrogance when I say this-that we may be the best polychaetologists in the world. So. That's something to be happy about, isn't it?"
Now Nora had to laugh. "I appreciate your positivity, Loren."
"Good. Revel in your life! Celebrate your essence of superiority in the void of the soul-dead hoi polloi."
"Whatever," she muttered, and forced herself to her feet. "Let's go find G.I. Joe and the Barbie doll, try to keep this day from turning to total shit."
"Well said!"
They left their cinder block lab, headed back toward the campsite. Nora knew she had to snap out of this mood. There was no reason for it. Midlife crisis and I'm not even middle-aged, she thought. What a ripoff. But was that it, or something else?
The woods pressed in on them as the trail narrowed. "And another thing," she remembered. "That big pot plant."
"What about it?" Loren said, following her up.
"That's pretty weird, isn't it? Something like that, growing here?"
You heard Trent. He told us right off the bat, sometimes kids sneak on the island to make whoopie. Some kid dropped a seed and-presto-it grew."
"Um-hmm, and how convenient an explanation." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Or maybe I'm right. Maybe Trent really is hiding something."
Loren's chuckling floated forward. "You really have a problem with Trent."
"Think about it." Subconsciously, her eyes roved through the forest's plush vegetation. Searching for spiky plants? "Secluded location, abandoned government land. And the only authority is our buddy Lieutenant Trent. He could have a veritable farm of pot growing out here, and who would know?"
"And it must be pretty good weed, too, because you've obviously had a few bowls already today."
"Oh, kiss my ass, Loren!" she snapped back.
"Drop 'em and I will."
"You wish."
"No, you wish."
"No! You-" But then Nora dropped it. Listen to us!
"I know," Loren said after the contemplative pause. "We sound like a couple of kids in junior high."
"Yep. And you know why, don't you? Because that's about as far as we've evolved socially."
"How wonderfully pathetic!" Loren cheered. "But you're not really serious about Trent, are you? Please. Tell me you're not."
Nora didn't say anything, trudging on down the trail.
They stopped at a marshy pond that stretched off to their right. A reddish brown bird with a white head pecked at the water.
"Fresh, not brackish," Nora noted.
"Looks like a brown noddy, too. Haven't seen one of those for a while."
Their presence seemed to agitate the bird, which then flew off, yacking. Nora pointed to a scurry of tadpoles in the water. "Southern cricket tadpoles?" Nora questioned. "What's that? Gryllus dorsalis?"
Loren stooped to one knee. "Maybe, but look at the flake of the eyes. Probably a Hyla cinera."
Nora squinted. "Yeah, you're right. The Gryllus doesn't get the gold till the tail falls."
Loren stood back up. The oddest stasis seemed to take hold of them.
Finally Nora said, "This is depressing, Loren. We're looking at a pond and identifying the tadpoles by the Latin classification. That's pretty fucked up, isn't it? I mean, really, that's not normal."
Loren scratched his head, cruxed. "Are we really that nerdy?"
Simultaneously, they looked back down, eyed their reflections in the water. Like a carnival mirror, the water made Loren's buckteeth look like horse teeth, and his Adam's apple as big as a popover. Nora stood five four, but in this mirror of water she looked seven feet tall and bent, a big frizz-mopped ball for a head jutting from a stick: a geek scarecrow. The knees on her broomstick legs looked grotesque: Elephant Woman, she thought.