13

A.Z. has been doing a good job keeping her arms crossed when she’s around her mom and not discussing her hand, which has become sort of greenish under the bandage, which doesn’t make sense because the salt in the seawater should be kind of sterile and healing.

She probably shouldn’t keep swimming, but Kristoff has been making good progress. After only three days, he can dog paddle and sort of do the breaststroke—although he likes to pretend he’s sinking even when he’s not, and come up laughing in that gurgly way that also sort of sounds like drowning.

As soon as they find wood long enough to make oars, they’ll be ready to row out with their research vials into deeper water.

Actually, right now, they’re ready to eat at the She Sells Sea Shells Grill for clam alfredo night with A.Z.’s parents. It was her mom’s idea. She invited Kristoff, which is nice, but nerve-racking, in case Angie is working and says something about A.Z. crying over Kristoff, or in case her mom says pretty much anything, or Kristoff accidentally mentions their swim lessons, or really a lot of other subjects.

“I can’t believe Mud Beach is closed because of chickens,” Angie says when she drops off the basket of cheese rolls, raising her eyebrows at A.Z. in a way A.Z. hopes her parents and Kristoff don’t notice. “We’ve been slammed with all these pissed-off pilgrims since we opened.” She glances at the other tables.

“Mud Beach is closed?” It seems impossible that A.Z. doesn’t already know this, but of course she hasn’t been going to Mud Beach or hanging out with her dad as much as she used to.

For a second, she pictures Sahara’s chicken protest shutting down Mud Beach. But the chicken protest ended days ago. The chickens are all in the Ark Park and her dad already published “Chock-Full of Chickens.”

“I guess,” Angie says. “I keep getting stiffed because what they really want is somewhere for their snotty kids to make sandcastles.”

“But Mud Beach never closes during pilgrim season,” A.Z. says.

After Angie scribbles their order and disappears through the swinging doors, A.Z.’s dad leans toward the table to take a cheese roll and stays leaned in. “I’m not supposed to say this,” he says quietly, “but the beach isn’t closed because of chickens. I got an anonymous call this afternoon.” He’s almost just mouthing the words at this point. “Apparently the alligator is missing from the Ark Park.”

“What?” A.Z. says. “There was really an alligator?”

“Apparently,” her dad says, still super softly. “I guess it came after the flamingos.”

“The alligator went to Mud Beach?” Kristoff laughs, his mouth full of cheese rolls.

A.Z. can’t imagine an alligator loose between the Ark Park and Mud Beach, which is pretty much where the cave is. She’s never considered watching for alligators in the water or the underbrush. She and Kristoff could have been eaten together, which is really romantic and terrifying.

“I guess the cage wasn’t very well locked, or that’s what my anonymous source said.” Her dad obviously likes saying “anonymous source.” As far as A.Z. knows, this is the first one that has ever called.

“They had an alligator at the Flagstaff zoo,” her mom says. “Arthur and I went the summer he was working on a ranch there.”

“Who’s Arthur?” Kristoff says.

“My first boyfriend,” A.Z.’s mom says in a way that makes A.Z. feel weirdly as if she’s pointing out that A.Z.’s first real boyfriend is asking.

“I thought I was your first boyfriend,” A.Z.’s dad says. He makes this joke sometimes.

Her mom smiles perfunctorily and continues. “He was breaking horses. It’s such dangerous work. He’d broken his leg the summer before I met him, but of course that was nothing compared to the way he died.” She looks as if she’s about to continue that story and maybe embarrassingly lecture A.Z. again about her bike light—which she made A.Z. buy yesterday at Aqua Hardware, which is conveniently in Compolodo but inconveniently way more expensive than Wal-Mart—even though A.Z.’s hand isn’t well enough to bike yet.

But before her mom can continue, Kristoff says, chewing into his third cheese roll, “Yves Klein broke his leg, too. He was jumping into the infinite void.”

“I’ve seen some photographs,” her mom says. “There’s a biography I could interlibrary loan for you.”

“Cool,” Kristoff says.

“I don’t see how it’s infinite if he broke his leg,” A.Z. says. She doesn’t want to question the void, but, from a scientific perspective, landing implies finitude. And she’s feeling sort of frustrated with her mom and Kristoff talking about what she thought was hers and Kristoff’s story. “I mean, if he landed, isn’t the void technically just the air before he hit the ground?”

“Yeah,” Kristoff says. “But it was infinite before he landed.”

Fortunately, Angie arrives with their side salads, and A.Z.’s mom launches into a story—that at least doesn’t have to do with voids—about a new book that speculates Monet had a retinal disease that caused the blurring in his Impressionistic paintings. This is sort of a cool scientific explanation, but her mom goes on about her uncle having the same disease, which got him out of being drafted, while her father had better eyes and wasn’t spared.

“I used to think my father was dead,” Kristoff says. “Actually, my mom used to tell me he was dead, but then I found out she just hated him.”

A.Z.’s mom nods as if it’s totally normal to spend dinner talking about dead boyfriends and broken legs and fathers. “Is your mother still working at Chuck Chicken?”

“Yeah. She hoses the brains out.” Kristoff laughs, but not his happy gurgly laugh.

“It’s hard being a single mother,” A.Z.’s mom says. “When Curtis and I divorced, if Rose Barnett hadn’t wanted to retire from the library, I would have been in dire straits.”

A.Z. is picking at her salad, left-handed, the cherry tomato rolling around like the ball in one of those little plastic maze games. She’s always thought cherry tomatoes were stupid.

“I used to walk to the library every day, just as a patron,” her mom says—and then as if this relates: “Alligator or not, be careful where you’re going on walks. People can be very defensive about trespassing. My brother got shot once in Arizona just for climbing a fence.”

“We haven’t been trespassing,” A.Z. says.

“Private property is overrated,” Kristoff says.

“This is impossible to eat left-handed,” A.Z. says quickly.

“I’m sorry, honey,” her mom says, “but it’s actually good to learn to be ambidextrous. Arthur could write with either hand.” She clears her throat, like she’s gotten a clam stuck in it. “He was so artistic and so misunderstood. You remind me of him,” she says, looking at Kristoff.

“How big is the alligator?” Thu asks. She’s alternating stirring the chow mein and gesturing so enthusiastically with her long stirring chopsticks that A.Z. is sure they’re going to poke either her dad or the grease-splattered Buddha on the shelf above the stove.

“At least six feet,” A.Z.’s dad says, “or that’s what Sy Gording thought. He spotted it this morning out in the swimming lagoon near the dock.”

Her dad has just picked up a Gording Foundation press release, which confirms yesterday’s anonymous call. He’s gearing up for an emergency edition. He’s going to use what reporters apparently call the “second coming” font: letters so big they fill the front page between the header and the fold. It’s reserved for unbelievably unique events—like World War III or the return of the Bubonic Plague or an “ALLIGATOR ADVISORY ALERT!”

“Everyone says they’re delicious,” Thu says. “They have them in Cat Tien, but not Saigon.” She pokes the chopsticks in the air again as punctuation.

“I need to go back to the beach,” A.Z.’s dad says. “And to the library for ‘Magnificent Muscled Mouths.’” He hurries out with his to-go box.

He’d come for egg rolls because he didn’t have time to eat breakfast, and A.Z. has come to tell Thu she can’t wash dishes for a few more days, until the Neosporin starts working on her hand. Having more time off should be useful, but the alligator means she and Kristoff obviously can’t keep swimming, and they’re going to have to make extra sturdy oars in case they’re out on the water and the alligator tries to attack them like that whale shark did with the Kon-Tiki.

“I’ll run a special on alligator egg rolls,” Thu says. “Many pilgrims will want to come eat them.”

“You’d need alligator meat,” A.Z. says. “There’s just one alligator.”

“Green dye and chicken,” Thu says cheerfully, setting her chopsticks across the rim of the wok and smiling in that way that changes her face from I-have-to-get-this-stir-fried-in-a-hurry to really pretty. “Sam can make a sign. Alligator wonton, too.”

“The alligator is somewhere out in the Sea for sure,” A.Z. says when she gets to the cave to meet Kristoff. “Sy saw it by the dock, but now it’s disappeared. It must have swum under the buoys.”

“Cool,” Kristoff says flatly. “Maybe it’ll eat someone.”

He’s leaning against a tree, sketching something that doesn’t look like a plan for an oar, unless you can make an oar out of a series of 3-D triangles.

“Except they’re keeping the beach closed until they find it. That could take ages. What are you drawing?”

“Art can’t be explained.”

“I thought you were working on oars.” She glances down at her bandaged hand and then at the still-pink boat, feeling kind of anxious. “We still haven’t really gone out on the water.”

She doesn’t admit how worried she is about her research. Maybe she’s been one-handed dropping too much or too little water on her refractometer, but the last saline samples she got from swimming tested as 18 and 16 ppt, which is really brackish.

She’s thinking maybe the Sea of Santiago is like the Baltic Sea, stratified, with more salt near the bottom. But if she still doesn’t have any samples from the deeper bottom, she has no way to prove this.

“Water is overrated,” Kristoff says.

“What?” A.Z. says.

“It’s overrated.”

“Regular water maybe. And pool water and stuff, but seawater is amazing, and it’s already July eleventh, and we’re still waiting to really research it.”

“Research is overrated,” Kristoff says.

“Research isn’t overrated,” A.Z. says. “It’s important. It’s how you understand the world.”

“The world is overrated.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Hey!” Kristoff says.

“What?” A.Z. says. But then she realizes Kristoff is looking at something behind her. She jumps—looking desperately for the nearest tree to escape the alligator, which is clearly in the underbrush, about to eat her.

But then a voice says, “Hey!” back, and when she turns, Big Bob is standing by the cave. He’s wearing his sweat suit in the sticky heat, with grass stains and dirt stains and better-not-to-think-about stains, and the legs are rolled up like he’s been wading, although he isn’t wet. He looks different than she remembered: rounder-faced, with a fringe of white-blond hair. It takes her a second to realize she’s never seen him without his coonskin cap.

“You smell that fish?” he says.

“What fish?” Kristoff says cheerfully.

“All the fish in the Sea,” Big Bob says, smiling and showing his few teeth, which don’t actually look like teeth so much as pecan shells. As he walks closer, A.Z. can’t imagine him smelling anything over himself: sour and animaly, like the cages at the Ark Park. “Back in Frisco, I only ate what I caught for one whole year. I was building a yacht. That’s the life. Twenty thousand miles and the sky for free.”

“That’s the life for sure,” Kristoff says.

“Caught myself a girl, too,” Big Bob says. “On New Year’s Eve. This fine Korean girl asked me to dance the dragon dance, and I couldn’t say no.”

“Cool,” Kristoff says. “Are you living down here again?”

“Just passing through for a swim.” Big Bob makes a wavy motion with his hand.

“You know there’s an alligator out there?” A.Z. says. She’s sort of hoping this will make Big Bob leave.

“Yup,” Big Bob says. “All sorts of snakes in these woods.” He smiles again. This time, A.Z. is positive his teeth really are pecan shells. “Nell wants me to make her an underwater sensor.”

“Cool,” Kristoff says. “We were just about to make oars for this boat.”

It’s nice that Kristoff is talking about their oars, but A.Z. also wishes he hadn’t drawn attention to the boat—even if it’s totally visible. She has the irrational desire to throw her body across to try to hide it.

But before she can move, Big Bob turns and lays his grimy hand right on the bow. He pats it, like it’s a dog or something. “Nice to see this old thing up and running.” He looks out at the Sea and then back. “Now if Nell really wants to catch that gator,” he says. “All she’s got to do is get a lady alligator and put her up on shore. All the animals in the world understand that language.” He sways his pelvis forward and back. “The croc’ll come right out.”

“Yeah,” Kristoff says, laughing.

“You hear me, brother,” Big Bob says, heading, finally, toward the water. “Hope you don’t mind if I wash my ass!”

A.Z. turns away but not fast enough. He splashes for a minute, and climbs out, drying his hairy white ass with his dirty clothes.

“Sayonara,” he calls.

“Sayonara,” Kristoff calls.

“That was totally freaky,” A.Z. says, once Big Bob disappears up the hill, pulling on his sweat suit as he walks. “I can’t believe he just did that.”

“What?” Kristoff says.

“What do you mean? Everything. Him taking his clothes off. And that joke about the alligators. It’s disgusting. And what if he tells Nell about the boat and that we’re down here?”

“He won’t,” Kristoff says, as though he knows Big Bob really well and Big Bob is actually predictable.

“He might,” A.Z. says. “And you’re acting like he’s your friend and agreeing with everything he says. He’s totally creepy and crazy and touching our boat.”

“Maybe it’s his.”

“It’s not. Nell has never let anyone out on the water, and he’s too crazy to build a boat.”

“He built a yacht.”

“Maybe,” A.Z. says. “But we fixed this boat. It’s ours. We just need oars so we can really get out on the water and won’t just turn in a stupid circle.”

“Everything turns in a circle,” Kristoff says.

“No it doesn’t,” A.Z. says.

“Logic does,” Kristoff says.

“Only circular logic,” A.Z. says.

“Exactly,” Kristoff says.