FOR CHRISTMAS GABRIEL bought Friday a fire truck—not just any fire truck, but one that was nearly three feet long, weighed fifteen pounds, and could produce a realistic siren and flashing lights as it sped by remote control along the smooth concrete floor of the visitors’ gallery. Rapt, Friday chased it up and down the gallery for an hour, watching it raise and lower its four-foot ladder, flash its lights, sound its siren, and speed away.
“He loved it,” Libertine told Gabriel once she returned from the gallery. “It was the perfect choice.”
Neva had hung a wheel of Christmas lights on the office window, one hundred feet of LED lights still coiled in its packaging. It cast a piercing light all the way over to the viewing gallery from the opposite side of the pool. She had also set a small fiber-optic tree on the office windowsill, where it blinked red to green to red. Sam and Corinna brought Friday two magnificent salmon, wild-caught in Puget Sound, and Ivy, on Gabriel’s advice, brought him an irregularly shaped white plastic cube the size of two hay bales placed side by side, made by the same company that made Friday’s beloved blue ball. Ivy also gave Neva and Gabriel a present: a bright yellow underwater scooter, which towed them through the water fast enough for a spirited game of killer whale tag.
But it was Libertine who gave him the most unusual gift of all: a swim with Johnson Johnson.
With Gabriel’s permission, she’d asked Johnson Johnson a week ago if he’d like to be Friday’s Christmas gift, and he’d nearly collapsed with excitement; he hadn’t been back to the pool top since the day Kitty died. So at two o’clock on Christmas Day afternoon, just as Ivy, Truman, Neva, Winslow, Matthew, and Lavinia were sitting down to Christmas dinner, Johnson Johnson pulled on a borrowed secondhand wet suit that almost fit him, and booties that did, and walked through the shallow water of the slide-out area straight into the deep water of the pool with no hesitation. He sank down until he was head-to-head with Friday, who had his mouth wide open, possibly in astonishment.
Gabriel toed a bucket of fish to the edge of the pool so Johnson Johnson could reach in. “Go ahead and offer him a few. It might take him a little while to get used to you.”
Johnson Johnson placed one fish after another in Friday’s wide-open mouth. “I think he’s already used to me.”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it,” said Gabriel. “Okay, hold back about half the bucket for later.”
“Can I pet him?”
“You can do whatever you want. If he doesn’t like something he’ll just swim away from you. You’re on his turf now. So to speak.”
Johnson Johnson rubbed and scratched and patted and positioned himself to look Friday straight in the eye. “He sees me,” he said.
“Absolutely. Pet his tongue,” Gabriel suggested. “He likes that, too.”
But Friday closed his mouth and sank out of sight. “Is he done?” Johnson Johnson asked, clearly disappointed.
Gabriel was grinning. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Wait. . . .”
And then Friday rose up beneath him and swam away with him sprawled across his back, clutching the whale’s tightly curled dorsal fin. Johnson Johnson was so overcome with delight he didn’t make a sound. Gabriel shouted to him, “Stand up!”
Like a surfer, Johnson Johnson carefully rose until he was standing upright on Friday’s back, wobbling a bit.
“Okay, the game is, he’s going to try to make you fall off,” Gabriel called. “And you try not to let him.”
Friday rolled and arched and twitched and Johnson Johnson fell off again and again. Each time, Friday came back to retrieve him. After nearly an hour, tired at last, he swam Johnson Johnson to the side of the pool.
Johnson Johnson leaned down and gave him a gentle kiss just behind the blowhole.
“This was a big treat for him,” Gabriel said. “We don’t let him do that during the day because Truman thinks it looks too much like we’re making him perform tricks, and he’s retired. Personally, I don’t agree, but he’s the boss. Anyway, why don’t you get out and feed him what’s left in the bucket? Then you can get back in the pool if you aren’t too cold. You’ll have company.”
“I’m not cold,” said Johnson Johnson through chattering teeth.
A minute later, Libertine stepped onto the pool top, smiling tremulously, in Neva’s wet suit and booties. “Merry Christmas,” Gabriel said.
Tears stood in Libertine’s eyes. “Thank you so much,” she said. “Is it okay if I’m a little nervous?”
“You’d be a fool not to be. Okay, as soon as you’re ready, go ahead and get in.”
While Gabriel and Johnson Johnson watched, Libertine sat on the wet walk and then slipped into the pool. Friday had been watching her curiously, but as soon as she was in the water he swam away.
“Is he afraid of me?” she said, disappointed.
“It’s because you’re scared,” Gabriel said. “He’ll come back when he’s ready. Well, when you’re ready.” To Johnson Johnson he said, “Let’s get you back in, too.”
Johnson Johnson jumped into the water near Neva. “Oh!” Libertine cried breathlessly as Friday, who had been in the depths of the pool, surfaced unexpectedly beneath her. Instead of carrying her on his back the way he’d done with Johnson Johnson, he slowly rolled beneath her until he was completely upside down and she was sprawled on his chest between his pectoral flippers.
“Go ahead and stand up!” Gabriel called. “Hold on to his pecs and he’ll swim you around the pool like that.”
“Oh!” Libertine grabbed the edges of the paddle-shaped flippers and found her footing between them. “Doesn’t this hurt him?” she called a little breathlessly to Gabriel as Friday began to swim around the pool.
“If it did he wouldn’t do it,” Gabriel called back. “You weigh nothing, by his standards. Well, by our standards, too, but you know what I mean. When he’s ready for you to get off, he’ll just go underwater and you’ll float away.”
Libertine held on, feeling how completely their roles had been reversed—she was in Friday’s environment now, clumsy and helpless. She could feel a great reserve of gentleness in him, as though he knew how fragile she was. He carried her with exquisite care.
And then he tipped her off, rolled right side up to take two deep breaths, and swam to Johnson Johnson across the pool, putting him on his back. Then he picked up Libertine, so she was riding behind Johnson Johnson, and took them for a fast circuit around the pool. “He likes this,” Johnson Johnson turned to tell her.
“Me, too!” she said.
“I’m glad you gave me to him. I’ve never been anyone’s present before.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with a suddenly full heart. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” said Johnson Johnson.
When an hour later Libertine and Johnson Johnson got out of the pool, both of them shivering uncontrollably, Libertine walked over to Gabriel and said quietly, “Thank you for this Christmas. It’s been a wonderful day.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“I hope Friday liked it as much as we did.”
Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “Hasn’t he told you?”
“Not in the way you mean. I still haven’t sensed him since the beginning, except in the way you or anyone can.”
“Any idea why not?”
“I assume he hasn’t needed me,” Libertine said. “He must know he’s in the best possible hands. And he knows I’m around, if something comes up.”
“I thought you said he was in prison,” he said, but he was smiling.
“I don’t think I’ll ever change my mind about that,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s unhappy. You’ve opened up a lot of worlds for him.”
He looked down at her. “Careful—I may remind you that you said that one day.”
“Go right ahead,” she said. “You can remind me anytime. That will be my Christmas present to you.”
BUT THERE WOULD be one more gift for Friday that holiday season, this one engineered by Gabriel: a child. Gabriel’s sister in Seattle had a six-year-old daughter named Nicolle. Though she might have been the only six-year-old on earth who was not impressed with Friday—she’d rather play with the new Barbie she got for Christmas—he’d wheedled and bribed until she agreed to come and play. At about the time when most people were finally shaking off their New Year’s hangovers, Nicolle was running at top speed directly at Friday through the shallow slide-out area. She didn’t pause or even slow down as she approached, but the whale didn’t flinch, even when she arrested her flight on his face. Gabriel could see that his eyes were wide and keen. Gabriel’s sister Stella stiffened, but Gabriel held her back. “She’s fine,” he said very quietly, so the child wouldn’t hear him. “She’s safe with him.”
Friday allowed Nicolle to rub and pet him for several minutes, and then he swam slowly away, hugging the side of the pool. After twenty feet, he stopped. Curious, the little girl followed, kicking water in the wet walk with her Barbie boots as she went. Each time she caught up with him he swam on, repeating the pattern over and over. Gabriel’s sister Stella watched as Gabriel explained that Friday was teaching the little girl a game of Follow Me. Once Friday was satisfied that she’d learned that, he embellished: the next time they stopped, he rolled on his side and very slowly, with infinite delicacy, raised his pectoral flipper and touched Nicolle on the very top of her head, again and again, until they’d made a complete circuit around the pool. When Friday put his chin on the side of the pool, Nicolle stopped and leaned on Friday’s nose.
And then, without warning, the whale sank, making it look as though Nicolle had pushed him under. Startled, the little girl kept her empty hands outstretched—and from the depths Friday surged out of the water and into them. Gabriel’s sister screamed, but Gabriel restrained her, understanding that Friday was only teaching her daughter a new game: Push Me, Push You. Over and over Nicolle sank him, and over and over he rose into the tiny cup of her hands.
GABRIEL’S RESPECT FOR Friday was huge. He was easily the smartest, most tractable animal Gabriel had ever worked with. As his health continued to improve—by Gabriel’s calculation he’d gained nearly a ton since arriving—Gabriel had thrown a lot of new challenges at him, and he’d caught on and mastered every one. His innovative behavior count had climbed to nearly a hundred and twenty-five, and he dreamed up new ones every day with a spirit of joyfulness. His breaches and bows were high enough for people approaching the visitors’ gallery to see above the pool top; his speed-swims were now fast enough to create a breaking wave that followed him around the pool.
He was also starting to challenge them. Last week during a work session, Neva had asked him to breach. The whale took off crisply, agreeably, but instead of leaving the water in a forward jump, he leaped out of the water backward, spitting water between his teeth.
Next Neva had rolled his blue ball into the pool and asked him to touch it with his pectoral flipper. He touched it with his flukes, his nose, his head, his belly—everything but a pectoral flipper. She’d looked at Gabriel and said, “What the hell?”
“Give him a time-out,” Gabriel said. “He’s screwing with you.” Neva removed the bucket of fish and walked off the pool top with Gabriel. When she returned five minutes later, she found Friday waiting contritely, his chin on the poolside, mouth open.
She signaled him with a raised finger: attention! Then she asked him for a speed-swim.
He leaped from the water in three flawless breaches.
AT THE END of January, Libertine approached Gabriel on the pool top, where he was watching Friday and Neva play grab-ass with the help of the yellow water-scooter. She said, “I want to thank you again for finding work here for me, and treating me like one of you. I know it wasn’t your idea, and I understand why. But it’s been a long time since I was part of something bigger than just me.” She thought about this, then smiled ruefully. “Something human, anyway. I’m going to miss it.”
Surprised, Gabriel asked, “Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m just about out of money. We volunteers have to eat and make house payments like everyone else.”
“Have you talked to Truman about this?”
“No—I haven’t even told Ivy yet. I’m trying to gather my resolve. They’ve both been very good to me.” To her mortification, Libertine teared up.
He looked at her. “You okay?”
“I don’t want to go,” Libertine blurted out. “I love it here.”
Gabriel gazed out across the pool, waited a beat, and then said, “Funny you should bring this up now, because I talked to Truman about you yesterday.”
“Uh-oh.”
He broke into a grin. “He agreed to let me hire you. Full time.”
Libertine put her hands to her mouth. “Oh!”
“So should I tell him you want to think it over?”
She wiped her eyes and smacked him on the arm. “You,” she said.
“Then how about you go buy a wet suit so you can play with the boy.” Seeing her look he said, “No, on the zoo’s dime. I’d also like you to take scuba lessons. If you’re going to be part of the paid staff you’re going to have to help keep the pool clean, which means diving. I have some ideas about training Friday on the bottom of the pool, too, but it’s going to take the three of us. Anyway, the Y is giving a class in a month, so I’ve already signed you up. Call me crazy, but I suspected you wouldn’t turn the job down.”
She clasped her hands in front of her, brimful of gratitude and excitement. She’d never once considered that she might be valued in her role at the pool; she’d been grateful to be allowed there at all. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. Isn’t there something you should be doing? Go!” He shooed her away. “Go!”
LIBERTINE SHARED HER news with Ivy that evening, at the Oat Maiden. “I feel like, I don’t know—like I’ve been let out of the dungeon and allowed to play with the other children after being all by myself for years,” she said.
“That’s because people who hear what you do assume you’re a wing nut,” Ivy said placidly, feeding Julio Iglesias a stretchy thread of mozzarella. “Actually, you are a wing nut. Very nice, but still, a wing nut.”
Libertine nodded matter-of-factly and reached across the table to take another slice of pizza. Julio Iglesias, who was sitting up in Ivy’s tote bag on her lap, growled.
“Oh, you,” Libertine said happily, rapping him smartly between the ears. Julio Iglesias lifted his lip.
“Boy, if looks could kill,” said Ivy.
“Short of stabbing me in the heart,” said Libertine to both of them, “nothing you can do is going to bring me down tonight, so don’t bother even trying.”
Ivy looked at her doubtfully. “Truman did tell you what the job pays, right?”
“Compared with zero? Yes. So you knew about this all along?”
Ivy waved this away. “It includes housing—he told you that, right?”
“It does?”
“He didn’t tell you.”
“I didn’t actually talk to him—Gabriel was the one who told me.”
“Well, the zoo will keep on paying your rent until June. After that you’re on your own.”
Libertine pressed her hands together in rapture. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“You really must be poor,” Ivy said.
“I have forty-four dollars and thirty-seven cents.” She gestured for Ivy to pass her Julio Iglesias across the table. In transit he sneezed over the pizza. “Talk about a class act,” Libertine chided him, settling him in her lap and kissing him on the top of the head.
“I’ve never seen you this happy,” Ivy said. “It’s unnerving. Julio thinks so, too.” The dog was stiff-arming Libertine, who was trying to hug him. “Here, you better give him back before he bites you in the face.”
“I haven’t had very many friends in my life,” Libertine said matter-of-factly.
“You have me.”
“I do have you. I had my husband, too.”
“You were married?” Ivy said, surprised.
“I know,” Libertine said ruefully. “It always surprises people. Do I look like that much of a spinster?”
Ivy thought about that for a minute. “No, you look like that much of a loner. A sad sack and a loner.”
“I wasn’t always.” She told Ivy about Larry Adagio. “He got me. I still miss him.”
“So do you, you know, hear from him or anything? From the Beyond?”
“I’m an animal communicator, not a medium.”
“Did he know that?” Ivy asked.
“He knew I could talk to our cat and an old dachshund his mom had, but I didn’t start working with wild animals until he died.” Libertine said. “I think he’d be proud of me, though. He always said he had more faith in me than I had in myself.”
“So some things don’t change,” said Ivy.
“I guess. What about you—no husbands, no fiancés?”
“Nope. Oh, I went out with a fair number of men in my day. I used to spend my winters in Egypt until recently.”
“Hence the dresses.”
“Hence the dresses,” Ivy confirmed. “There’s no getting around the fact that Arabs know how to dress for comfort. Anyway, I saw a few of the men in the Egyptian ex-pat community, but nothing serious—most of them were married. I was reading a biography the other day about Wallis Simpson, and did you know she didn’t really even want Edward? But after he abdicated the throne, what was she supposed to do, throw him over and call him a mistake? Not likely. They were apparently a phenomenally dreary couple, by the way—sponges and parasites and boring. After what they went through, you’d think they’d be fascinating but I guess they weren’t. Bigots and fascists, yes, but fascinating, no. How on earth did I get onto that subject?”
“Beaus,” Libertine prompted.
“Ah. Nothing else to say about that. It would be nice to have someone fall madly in love with me, a little less nice to fall madly in love with someone else, especially if it wasn’t reciprocal, but I don’t spend time thinking about it anymore. I’m sixty-two, set in my ways, and I love sleeping alone.”
When dinner was over, Ivy reached for the check first, as always. Libertine tried to stop her. “No, let me. After all, I’m employed now!”
“Honey, if you paid you’d only have twenty-five dollars and thirty-seven cents, and I can’t imagine any emergency that could come that cheap. You hang on to what you’ve got—you can take me out another time.”
Libertine gave in.
IVY HADN’T BEEN completely honest. There had been just one man in Egypt—a married man. They had met in a club frequented by U.S. State Department diplomats and functionaries; ever since, the shush of overhead fan blades turning in the heat had aroused in her a vestigial feeling of regret and longing. Ivy had been forty-nine, he’d been forty-two, and his wife had been thirty-seven—too old to be a trophy wife and not old enough for Ivy to feel sorry for. The feet touching beneath the table, the calves intertwined, the furtive hand-holding they’d succumbed to, had been agony. He had had the most beautiful forearms and hands she’d ever seen, before and since, though Gabriel’s were close contenders. They had met away from the club only once during their seven-month relationship, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo. But instead of the tryst they’d both been anticipating for so long, he had broken down and wept.
“What should I do?” he’d begged her. “Just tell me what I should do and I’ll do it!” But the mere fact that he tried to appropriate her strength killed the passion. She would not shoulder his adultery; nor was she capable of loving someone with unclear priorities. Dutifully she’d held him, even wept with him, but she flew home the next day and never saw him again.
IN EARLY FEBRUARY Ivy invited Gabriel to her house on San Juan Island. “You need to get away,” she’d told him in making her pitch. “When’s the last day you had completely off?”
“I don’t know. A while ago.”
“When’s the last time you were away from Bladenham?”
“Longer.”
“I’ll pick you up at the pool at two-thirty on Friday. Plan on staying overnight.”
“You don’t have to do that—I can find my way back.”
“I know, I just assumed we’d both be drunk enough not to want to deal with ferry schedules and unlit roads.”
“You do have a way of laying things out, don’t you? Does anyone ever tell you no?”
“Damned few, as a matter of fact—but it’s usually because I’m filthy rich. You don’t seem to care about that.”
“Why should I? You’re the one who’s rich, not me.”
“You have a point.”
“Almost always.”
Ivy put together a grocery list and faxed it to the market in Friday Harbor, asking them to put everything in a box, charge it to her account, and have it ready for her to pick up on the way home from the ferry. Included: Dungeness crab, butter clams, fresh mussels, asparagus, romaine lettuce, various bell peppers, mushrooms, radishes and any other available vegetables that would work up nicely in a salad, freshly baked artisan bread, and a whole bakery cheesecake. They stopped at the liquor store to pick up several bottles of a superb Chilean Pinot Grigio kept chilled and in stock especially for her, and arrived home with enough time for Ivy to assemble and serve an excellent dinner, which she followed up with a very nice port.
By the end of dessert they were blotto, sprawled in the deep, comfortable club chairs in Ivy’s living room. “I wish I were younger,” Ivy said earnestly, picking through Julio Iglesias’s fur for nonexistent fleas. When the dog bared his teeth she smacked him lightly on the nose and went back to rummaging through his coat.
“Doesn’t everyone?” asked Gabriel.
“No—I mean I wish I were younger but you were your age.”
“Ah.”
“Is it tragic or just maudlin when old women lust after younger men?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t think I’m the kind of man women lust after.”
“Au contraire.”
To his credit, Gabriel let the remark go; to hers, in an act of uncharacteristic restraint, Ivy didn’t pursue it. She sipped her drink and licked the rim of the glass ruminatively. “You know, it’s a terrible thing to be alone.”
“What do you mean?” said Gabriel.
“What do you mean, what do I mean? Just what I said.” Ivy pushed Julio Iglesias off her lap and sat up straighter. “I bet you think I’m spunky. Just a spunky ol’ gal.”
“Well, aren’t you? Not the old part, but the other.”
“Yes, but that’s not the point.”
“So what is the point?”
“No one chooses to be alone. Maybe that’s why I relate to Friday.”
“Now you’re being maudlin.”
“I’m not. I just love him and I hate that he’s all by himself.”
Gabriel stared at her. “Are you kidding? One of us is with him eighteen hours a day, most days.”
“You know what I mean,” Ivy said, slumping back into her chair.
“If I do, I don’t want to talk about it.”
Ivy subsided. “Would you say you have to love the animals you work with?” she mused. “Because why else would you spend all day and most evenings waiting on them hand and foot? Hoof—hand and hoof? No, wait, wait—flipper and fluke.”
Gabriel frowned over this. “Love? Not necessarily. Respect—you have to have a high degree of respect for them. And they have to have a high degree of respect for you. Otherwise there’s a good chance they’ll kill you.” He closed his eyes.
“Well, that’s no good.” Ivy raised herself on one arm, squinted at him, then collapsed again. “How can you be so damned smart about animals and so clueless about people?”
He cracked one eye open in protest. “What do you mean?—I am not.”
Ivy nodded vigorously. “Oh yes, you are. Take little Libertine. She’s head over heels in love with you—love, not lust—and you probably don’t even know.”
“Now I do,” Gabriel pointed out.
Ivy snickered. “That’s true. Now you do.”
“You know, you’re a mean drunk,” Gabriel said, pointing at her with his wineglass, sloshing a little port on his shirt.
“Me?”
“You. She’s your friend and you just outed her.”
“I did not,” Ivy protested lamely.
“Yeah, you did,” Gabriel was saying. “Now we just have to hope I get drunk enough not to remember, because then you’ll have outed-her-not.”
“He loves me, he loves me not,” sang Ivy. “Are you drunk enough?”
“No.”
“Then we better fix that.” Ivy rose with some difficulty. “You know, I have a very, very good scotch. Want some? Accepting would be the gentlemanly thing.”
“Then I accept.”
Ivy rummaged in a liquor cabinet until she found the bottle, then soda, then two glasses. Clumsily, before putting the drink in Gabriel’s hand, she slopped some of it on Julio Iglesias, who’d been dozing on Gabriel’s lap. The dog gave her a bitter look before jumping down and walking slowly, deliberately, to the other side of the room, where he glanced back at her to make sure she was watching before depositing a small, perfectly formed turd on the carpet.
“I don’t know what he holds against me,” Ivy said sadly, making no move to clean it up. “I’ve given him everything and he treats me like crap.” Her eyes filled with tears. “They say maiden ladies—does anyone use that expression anymore?—maiden ladies use dogs as surrogate children. Some child. A real child would treat me better, I’ll tell you that.”
Gabriel slapped his chest. “Come on, Julio. Come to Papa.”
The dog trotted back and hopped up. “Want a sip?” Gabriel held his scotch-and-soda where Julio Iglesias could lap up a healthy dose, then raised it overhead. “That’s enough,” he said. “You’re the designated driver.”
Ivy thought that was a scream.
By midnight Gabriel had fallen asleep on the living room sofa with Julio Iglesias curled on top of his chest and snoring like a wino. Ivy was in a similar state of dishabille on a fainting couch across the room, her voluminous dress twisted around her, her Nikes and athletic socks kicked off to reveal a fresh and immaculate pedicure. One of her pet peeves was women who, in their senior years, neglected their nails—one of the few body parts which, when skillfully attended to, could still compete with those of women half their age.
She finally roused Gabriel long enough to lead him upstairs, putting him in the same guest room Libertine had used. “G’night, you luscious thing.” She gave him a peck on the cheek and said, “Dream of beautiful virgins.”
The next morning they were halfway through a hangover breakfast of hash, eggs, and Bloody Marys when the phone rang. It was Neva.
“I think you’d better come back,” she said starkly. “There’s something wrong with Friday.”