I turned to Mick, who was seated at my side.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought you weren’t supposed to interfere with the animals here. Not ever. Isn’t that the biologist’s credo?”
I meant this to be an aside, a private exchange. But the room was quiet, and everyone turned to look at me. Lucy flushed.
“I study birds,” she snapped. “Does Oliver look like a bird to you?”
“No,” I said.
“He’s a pet,” she said. “Pets are different.”
She glared at me a moment longer, then stomped over to the aquarium and plunged the octopus into the water with a vicious movement. He sank, ballooning outward, changing shape. His tentacles glittered with bubbles.
22
IN A PLACE like this, it should be hard to keep secrets. Southeast Farallon is small, and the cabin is smaller still. All of us live on top of each other. We all know about Lucy’s crying jags. We are all aware of Galen’s nocturnal restlessness, pacing his room with quick footsteps. We all know when Mick engages in a late-night snack, banging around the kitchen at three in the morning. Until recently, I had begun to think that I knew everything there was to know about the islands.
But as it turns out, there has been a secret right under my nose for months.
Last night I woke to the sound of voices. It is January, the heart of Seal Season, and the archipelago is never quiet, regardless of the hour. The males boom, the females grunt, and the pups squeal all night long. Their constant noise sets my nerves on edge. It is a perpetual reminder of mating and birthing and suckling. I do not want to think about these things. I do my best to tune out the roar. Now I lay awake, assuming I’d heard wrong, mistaking animal sounds for human speech.
Then it came again. A man’s voice. Someone was outside the window.
My heart began to pound. I sat upright, tugging the blinds aside. It was a bright, moonlit night. The landscape was a jumble, the familiar contours transformed into a lurid black-and-white photograph. Gradually I saw that there were two figures moving on the slope. They had been talking, but they were quiet now.
The scene continued to clarify as my eyes adjusted. It was a bit like watching the shape of an undersea stone coming clear through the ruffled surface of water. The silhouettes belonged to Mick and Forest. I recognized the former’s bulk and the latter’s delicate slimness. They were heading away from the cabin. They were whispering together. Forest laughed, a high-pitched sound, something I had never heard him give before. Then he leaned in. Before my eyes, the two men kissed.
It registered as an electric shock. There was no mistaking what was happening: it was a passionate, abandoned, drowning-without-each-other sort of lip-lock. There had been a line of radiant blue separating their frames, but now they merged. Forest went up on his toes. They swayed back and forth.
I reached for my camera. It was an automatic reflex. Tomcat, one of my digital SLR instruments, was settled, as always, on the night table. I kept it there for emergencies — a shark attack, a whale sighting, the return of the ghost. I did not think. I merely acted, lifting the camera to my eye.
Mick’s face came into focus, all snowy planes. Forest was harder to track. I kept zooming in on the back of his head. Their hands met in space, fingers reaching. I still had not adjusted to the firework display of stars on the Farallon Islands. Cassiopeia and Orion blazed above the horizon like configurations of torches. Mick and Forest paced with a practiced step across the granite. They were moving toward the coast guard house. Mick was almost skipping. Something — a bird calling, a seal barking — made them pause and gaze to the left, toward the ocean. At the door of the coast guard house, they engaged in a funny little pantomime, each attempting with exaggerated politeness to give way and allow the other to go first.
Once they were inside I adjusted the focus, skimming frantically across the windows. The upper story was as lightless as a black hole, nothing there but the whirling and flickering of the bats. Biting my lip, I waited. One minute passed. Two minutes. Then something pale darted across my lens.
Mick and Forest had stationed themselves in the moonlit hollow of the living room. I sat up straighter. It was more difficult now to keep an eye on them. Since they were framed in the window, the slightest shift from side to side could remove either of them entirely from my field of vision. And they were moving fast. I watched them kiss hungrily, almost angrily. Mick was unbuttoning Forest’s shirt.
I began taking pictures. Because it was tricky to catch a glimpse, I wanted to keep what I caught. The sound of the shutter echoed around the room like gunfire. I snapped Forest’s marble rib cage, bare to the navel. I snapped another wild kiss, Mick’s hands flying upward in a blurred, avid surge. I snapped Forest tearing off his own scarf and flinging it aside. Soon they were both unclothed. The window cut off their bodies at the waist. Still, it was easy enough to follow what was going on. Forest swiveled so his back touched Mick’s belly. Two moon-pale torsos moved in concert. Mick wrapped his arms around Forest’s chest, and I marveled anew at Forest’s slimness, not an ounce of fat on him. At first their dance was tentative, graceful. Mick buried his cheek in Forest’s shoulder. Forest’s head rocked back. I heard the cry he gave, a moan that would ordinarily have passed for the rowdy wind or the rumble of the elephant seals. He threw out a hand, bracing himself against the wall.
I lowered the camera for a moment. The sensation was an odd one. For the first time in a long while, I was remembering desire. The spark of hunger. The pull of lust. That part of myself. But the memory was faint, distorted, as though from a dream. Once upon a time, I had experienced these things. But that had been another life. I remembered it now the way a ghost might. All mind, no body.
After a while, the inevitable happened: Mick and Forest tumbled onto the floor and vanished. I waited, my heart hammering. Perhaps their lovemaking would not last long. Perhaps they would reappear. The wind picked up. The sea roared in the distance. Mick and Forest stayed out of my sight.
I sat back on the mattress, brushing my hair out of my face. So many things made sense to me now. The more I considered the matter, the clearer it became.
To start with, there was the issue of cohabitation. The cabin now had six people and only five bedrooms. Charlene, as the lowest member on the totem pole, lodged in a bedroom that was quite literally a former closet. (Her bed took up the entire floor, and the decorations on the walls were racks of coat hooks.) In the past, Andrew and Lucy had shared a room. Until now, however, I had never understood why Mick and Forest had also chosen to share. It would have been a great deal more practical for Forest to bunk with Galen — his fellow shark addict, on his same schedule.
Other questions were now answered, too. Forest’s reserved nature. His impenetrable demeanor. His stillness and silence. In his presence, I’d always had the feeling that he was keeping himself under tight control. Now I understood why. He was hiding a key facet of his personality, the core of his nature. By the same token, Mick’s lack of romantic interest in me no longer felt like an insult.
I flicked through the pictures I had just taken. Mick smiling as Forest nuzzled his throat. Forest laughing in the wake of a hearty kiss. Their arms tangled, fingers entwined.
For the first time, my conscience pricked me. Obviously, both men had put a premium on secrecy. They shared a room, after all; they could easily have engaged in their romantic adventures there. But the cabin was ancient and creaky. I shuddered, remembering the many times I had been an unwilling audience to Lucy and Andrew’s trysts. Mick and Forest, it seemed, regularly risked injury and illness to keep their relationship hidden from prying eyes.