Her mother, amazingly resilient considering the vast quantity of vodka she put down between dinner and bed the previous night, sings out a cheerful good morning. “Coffee, honey?” she offers, waving the Pyrex pot in invitation.
“Okay, yeah,” Alma hears herself say. “But I’m going to have to take it with me — I’m already running late — so put it in. .” She’s reaching for her special mug, the one with the picture of the gnashing razorback Freeman gave her as a joke, but it’s not there. Her mother, for some unfathomable reason, seems to have rearranged things, not only the cups, but the toaster oven, coffeepot, microwave and radio too. The trash container has vanished. The pictures on the refrigerator are bunched haphazardly. And where’s the calendar?
But here’s the coffee and here’s her mother pouring it and asking if she’s got time for a bite and she’s saying, “No, Mom, got to run,” even as Ed — jaunty and athletic still, despite the hips — saunters across the room with his morning Bloody Mary to ease into the table where a plate of redolent bacon and a mound of scrambled eggs, Mexican style, awaits him. “Morning,” he says.
“Morning, Ed.” She tries for a smile and so does he.
But has she got everything? She sets down the mug and pats her pockets, then slips into the front room for her laptop, sunglasses and three-ring binder, and in the next moment she’s making her getaway amid a flurry of regrets. “Wish I could stay and spend the morning with you,” she says, easing out the door, “but I’ll see you tonight. And, Mom, don’t bother to cook because I wanted to take you to this seafood place, okay?”
She’s belted in, her laptop and notebook on the passenger’s seat, mug in the cup holder, the car fuming silently beneath her. Then it’s out the drive to meld with the traffic coming off the freeway ramp, which is already backed up from the stop sign at the end of the block. To connect going south she needs to make a left at the intersection, go two blocks north past banks of condos on both sides, then across the freeway overpass to turn right on the southbound ramp. Just as she swings out onto the surface street ahead of a little yellow convertible going too fast, something darts across the road in front of her — a blur, a shadow — and she hits the brakes to the blare of the convertible’s horn at the instant she feels the thump of mortality under the left rear wheel. In the next moment, heart pounding, she pulls to the side as the convertible slashes by, peering anxiously in the rearview to identify this thing she’s hit, the creature, the animal — a squirrel, is it a squirrel? — writhing at the curb behind her.
There are other cars, three, four of them, easing past as she fumbles for the emergency blinkers and steps out of the car. Across the street, incongruous in this neighborhood of condos, is a white colonial with dark trim, a generous lawn and a stand of junk trees screening it from the freeway beyond and below it. Oaks, she’s thinking, there must be some oaks back in there or why else the squirrel? Squirrels are rare here, the native vegetation displaced by ornamentals and citrus trees, their niche taken by the roof rats that thrive on the avocado, orange and loquat the developers have planted for their delectation. But — she’s moving toward it now, watching its eyes, bark brown and luminous with shock — this is definitely a squirrel, a western gray, Sciurus grisens, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The weight of the car has crushed its rear legs and tail, pinning them to the pavement in a glutinous mélange of fur, gristle, bone and blood. Its head and neck are rigid and the front legs — the miniature paws with their shining claws black as pencil lead — scrape spasmodically at the unyielding blacktop as if to dig their way free. She tries to be dispassionate about it — she’s at risk of being late for a meeting that will help determine the fate of any number of species interlocked in a unique ecosystem while this animal before her, this unfortunate individual, is superabundant in its range. But when she’s standing over it and the eyes, trembling, liquid, unplumbable, are fixed on her and she examines the fine arrangement of the black-tipped hairs and the perfect cream white arc of the chest, she feels the emotion come up in her. This perfect thing and she’s killed it. Or crippled it. Crippled it beyond hope. But what should she do? Nudge it to the gutter with the toe of her shoe? Wrap it in something — newspaper, the old pair of shorts Tim keeps in the trunk to wear under his wetsuit — and take it to the vet? Or animal rescue? Or just — put it out of its misery?
As it happens, the decision is taken out of her hands, because in that moment a kid she vaguely recognizes — a boy of twelve or thirteen, from the pricey condos that give onto the oceanfront across from the hotel — rattles up to her on his skateboard and lets out a low whistle. “Oh, man,” he says, looking from her to the writhing squirrel, “gross. Did you hit it?”
“Yes,” she says, and why is her voice reduced to a whisper? Why is she suddenly on the verge of tears?
Before she can say anything further, before she can think, the boy steps forward on his own initiative and grinds his heel into the animal’s head till the gray and pink strands of the neural matter sluice free, like spaghetti.
She’s chosen the Docksider for breakfast because it’s close to the office, has unmatchable views and an upscale menu. Frazier — he’s a Kiwi, having founded Island Healers back at home in New Zealand where the invasive species practically outnumber the native, a man’s man who prides himself on his ability to handle anything, any terrain, any animal — would no doubt have preferred a coffee shop without the vaguest aroma of pretension, but there’s no harm in elevating the ambience a little. Plus, while he might put on a rough exterior the way a bushman might wrap himself in a hide against a cold night, she’s begun to notice that he’s as conversant with a good wine, nouvelle cuisine and a snifter of Armagnac as anybody she’s met in the committee rooms of Sacramento or the District of Columbia. As for Freeman and Annabelle, they’re just happy to be out of their offices and looking at a tablecloth instead of a scored card table with a pot of coffee and a straw basket of stale bagels set in the middle of it.
Of course, everything’s a bit off kilter from the first, because by the time she’s found a parking spot, darted across the lot and up the outdoor stairway to the restaurant, she’s thirteen minutes late and they’re all sitting there waiting for her, cranked up on their second — third? — cups of coffee and talking nonstop. For a moment, watching their expectant faces as she propels herself across the room, notebook and laptop tucked under one arm and her hair flying out behind her like a deflated parachute, she considers making an excuse — telling them of the contretemps with the squirrel, the congestion on the freeway, the way the lights, every one of them, seemed to have been timed against her by an evil DMV bureaucrat tracking her Prius on a computer screen — but excuses are for children, kids like the boy with his skateboard and gory heel trying to explain the blood spoor on the carpet to his mother, and she opts simply to slide into the seat next to Annabelle and whisper, “Sorry.”
But everything’s relaxed, everybody on the same page, working toward the same goal without animosity or bickering or internecine competition. So what if Annabelle’s constituency has possession of nine times the land the Park Service has? So what if the main ranch, sitting squarely on the Nature Conservancy property, is the jewel of the island and Alma would give her eyeteeth to be able to set up there in the old Stanton house and has to make do instead with Scorpion? So what if Carey Stanton, rubbed raw by some Park Service functionary twenty years ago, ceded the property to the Nature Conservancy instead of her and Freeman and the people of the United States of America? So what if Annabelle had pushed so hard to hire a concern out of Wet Bone, Idaho, over Island Healers that Freeman had twice stormed out of the room? So what? They’re all in this together and they’re all friends — old friends now — and they’re sitting down to breakfast together in a place designed to make everybody feel good so they can hear what each in turn has to report about the progress from Phases I and II to this, the climax of the entire campaign: Phase III, the unleashing of the hunters, not to mention their dogs, ATVs, helicopters and lead-free bullets, which is already now in its fourth month.