ON THE FIRST Sunday morning in November Truman woke up at six o’clock, his favorite time of day, when the rest of the world was still asleep and no one needed him for a single thing. Beside him Neva was sprawled on her back with the covers kicked aside, her mouth slightly open and her fiery hair going every which way across the pillows. She was an energetic sleeper, giving the appearance of being on her way to someplace else—an impression she also gave him sometimes when she was awake.
Miles, a light sleeper like Truman, got up from his nest of blankets on the floor with a piggy stretch and a soft grunt and followed on his soft little hooves as Truman tiptoed out of the room and pulled the bedroom door closed with great care. Man and pig paused for a moment to listen to Winslow’s gentle snoring—the boy suffered from year-round allergies—before padding downstairs to retrieve the Sunday New York Times from the front stoop.
Truman yawned with pleasure, knowing that for now and the next hour or two, the people he loved most were safe beneath his roof. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that if he were to drop dead at this exact moment, he would die in a state of contentment. After the terrible drama of his marriage to Rhonda, he didn’t take for granted even an instant of grace.
As always, Miles followed him to the den, where he curled up on his special blanket at Truman’s feet, resting his head cozily on Truman’s instep. Truman patted and scratched him a little here and there, whereupon Miles heaved a deep sigh, gave Truman one last adoring look, and fell utterly asleep. Say what you would, the pig did have an undeniably sweet and accommodating nature.
Truman shook out the business section of the Times. As a boy, he had spent every Sunday morning with his parents in their white-and-chintz sunroom with a carafe of excellent coffee and cinnamon rolls. Lavinia always wore a pair of white cotton archivist’s gloves to keep the ink off her hands, about which she was vain; Matthew chewed the stem of a pipe he hadn’t lit since 1982. They had encouraged a lively give-and-take over the news of the day, and sometimes the discussions had gone on between his parents until midafternoon. In those cases they excused Truman, who went off to his room and solitary play.
Truman realized once he’d had Winslow that Lavinia had treated him less like a child than like a very small defense attorney. There had been no mother-and-son afternoons of Let’s Pretend or play with wooden blocks. Truman’s earliest construction had been a set of bookshelves; his blanket-fort had been a courtroom. He rarely had friends visit—he had very few friends to begin with, which Lavinia preferred—and was hardly ever invited to the never-ending circuit of birthday parties and sleepovers he’d heard about in school. He was a solemn boy, responsible, careful, and disciplined. Family lore had it that his first words were “May I be excused?” Life was not a festival as his parents led him to believe, but a set of increasingly serious challenges to the concepts of what was right and what was wrong and why.
Giving Miles to Winslow on his eleventh birthday was arguably the first indefensible thing Truman had ever done. It had been a heady experience, fueling a faint suspicion that the older he got, the more childish he would become. Running out for ice cream in place of a meal; taking a drive to nowhere in particular and staying there overnight; falling in love with Neva, a woman who lived almost entirely in the right-now: these were all outgrowths of his hike through the unspeakable muck and stink of Miles’s barnyard, and among his proudest moments.
If they had had shortcomings as parents, Matthew and Lavinia had been more successful as spouses, each finding in the other a best friend, which hadn’t prepared Truman at all for Rhonda. When she left him, and despite her awful nature, he’d felt stricken. His days had been defined by her: what they ate, what movies they saw—even who they saw on holidays and weekends. At first it had been because she had cared so much more than he did, but within a year he had just found capitulation easier.
With Neva, it was all so different. They liked the same foods, hated the same movies, talked the same politics. When conversing with Rhonda—and not even deep conversations; it could be a quick exchange in the cereal aisle at Safeway—Truman had always felt she had the whole thing scripted out, only to have him blow his lines. With Neva, there were no lines or unmet expectations. She wasn’t as well read as Rhonda, or as sophisticated in her tastes in art and music, but she was fiercely committed to what she believed in—which, to his everlasting amazement, included him; she was earnest and generous; she knew how to make Winslow, naturally a grave child, get silly; and she was a superb auto mechanic. His household had gone from bleak and lonely to a sunny meadow. Not a day went by that didn’t find him raising his face to the heavens in thanks.
Just before ten o’clock, Winslow slap-slap-slapped into the den in his new wet suit, hood, booties, and flippers. Miles rose from Truman’s feet to greet him and squeeze into his favorite spot beneath the den’s piano while Winslow removed his flippers, placing them within easy reach beside the piano bench. The boy had Rhonda’s dark eyes and Truman’s tendencies toward gravitas and introspection. Truman loved him fiercely. From the first trimester, Rhonda had proudly declared the pregnancy difficult, saying that from the moment he’d quickened, the baby took perverse pleasure in punching and kicking her where it would inflict the most pain. When she was awake, she claimed, he slept; when she tried to sleep, he not only woke up, but he brought out weapons. He’s like Hephaestus, she liked to say. It’s like he’s in there forging armor.
But in this as in nearly everything else, Winslow, as well as Truman, had proved to be a disappointment. He was a placid, sober, sleepy baby who, as long as there’d been music playing, could happily deliberate over his hands and feet for hours. Later, perversely, Rhonda had refused to acknowledge that the boy might in fact possess a prodigious musical talent, which Truman chalked up to her disinclination to acknowledge any talent that might burn brighter than her own. Truman had taken Winslow’s musical education upon himself and quietly presented him to Mrs. Iris Leahey, a classical concert pianist who took on a student or two by audition when she wasn’t on tour.
Now Truman said, “What are you going to practice, La Mer?”
“Ha ha.”
“Come on, that was good.”
Winslow failed to suppress a smile. “Yeah, it was.”
“So what does it feel like in there?” Truman asked, of the wet suit.
“Hot. I bet its gets really stinky, too. All that sweat. I hope we get to go in the pool soon. Neva said the saltwater and the neoprene make it so easy to float that if you want to go to the bottom you need dive weights.”
The thought of sharing a pool with one of the ocean’s top predators, even a debilitated one, didn’t strike Truman as nearly the great opportunity everyone else seemed to think it was. “Let’s just take it one step at a time, Winnie. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
By now beads of perspiration had begun to dot Winslow’s forehead and upper lip, and his cheeks were blotchy. He turned his back on Truman and said, “Can you undo the zipper?”
Truman unzipped him from neck to waist, releasing a wave of muggy heat. Winslow shucked off the suit until he stood there in nothing but a pair of faded swim trunks—a soft-bodied, moon-pale boy of minimal athletic prowess and late-onset puberty. Truman couldn’t help smiling. “Winnie, let me ask you something. What do you think of Friday, overall?”
“Are you kidding? He’s awesome! The kids at school all want to come meet him. Nobody teases me or Reginald anymore, because Reginald told them we might be able to invite them over.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that,” Truman cautioned. “He’s not a pet.”
“Yeah, we know, but Reginald says just because we know doesn’t mean they have to. Not yet, anyhow.”
Truman sighed and shook his head. “That boy’s going to grow up to be either a millionaire or a con man.”
“He says he might be president one day.”
“Which combines them both. Anyway, no one’s ever going to be allowed to come over and swim with Friday, not even you—at least not until Gabriel says it’s safe.”
“At least I can see him whenever I want. Do you think he likes that, having people come to watch him?”
“Apparently—especially little kids.”
Winslow ruminated. “Yeah. Maybe seeing them keeps him from getting lonely, at least until Gabriel gets something else to put in with him.”
Truman looked at his son sharply. “Did he say he planned to do that?”
“No. Me and Reginald think he should, though.”
“Reginald and I,” Truman corrected. “You know, not everyone agrees he should have come here. There are people who believe he’d be better off dead than in captivity.”
“Nuh-uh. How can you let anything die if they don’t have to?”
“I happen to agree with you, but there are people—lots of people, according to Gabriel—who think otherwise.”
“Max Biedelman saved Hannah from dying, and she got to live for over forty more years,” Winslow pointed out.
“But she was also alone here that whole time. That was the trade-off for getting to live.”
“That’s not true. She had Sam.”
“And Friday will have us, but some people are going to say we just saved his life so we could exploit him, turn him into a lucrative attraction, a sideshow.”
“Like Siamese twins in the old days?”
“Exactly.”
“Actually, that would be cool to see,” Winslow said. “I bet Reginald would want to, also.”
Truman sighed. “That wasn’t exactly my point.”
Winslow wrapped his arms around himself. “Now I’m cold.”
“All right—go take a hot shower. And rinse out the suit while you’re at it. You can leave it hanging in the tub.”
“If I promise to practice tonight instead of now, can I go over to the pool? You’ve had all this time over there, but I haven’t.” Truman had refused to let Winslow go after school, only on weekends, and then only if he had his homework done.
Truman conceded. “Call Reginald and see if he wants to go, too. Tell him if it’s okay with Sam and Corinna, I can pick him up.”
But before Winslow had even left the den, the phone rang and it was Gabriel. Truman raised a finger to Winslow—don’t leave yet—and listened with a series of uh-huhs and sures. When he hung up the phone he told Winslow there had been a change of plans: Gabriel wanted to try something new with Friday and he needed their help to do it.
“Oh boy,” said Winslow. “Reginald, too?”
“Reginald, too.”
Within half an hour, they’d all squeezed into the pool’s small office: Neva, Gabriel, Sam, Libertine, Truman, Winslow, and Reginald. Friday hung in the window, watching them.
“Here’s the deal,” Gabriel told them. “We’ve been working with him on finding a shape or object in the pool windows. So far it’s been easy stuff.” He nodded to Neva, who held up a cardboard triangle, circle, and square. “That’s the problem, though: it’s too easy. So I want to put a bunch of other stuff in the viewing gallery windows to throw him off, and then send him to find one of the shapes.
He distributed among them not only the triangle, circle, and square, but a ratty stuffed goat, a coffeemaker, a flat white cardboard star edged in black, a similar hexagon, a bright blue notebook, and a basketball. While everyone else scattered to the viewing windows, where they placed the objects and shapes, Gabriel fed Friday, then gave him the directive to go find the triangle.
Friday swam straight to the gallery windows, scanning all three as he approached. Gabriel had told everyone to stand well away from the objects, so they didn’t accidentally broadcast the correct answer, but it was still no contest. Though he seemed to enjoy looking at the ratty stuffed goat, Friday gave it a regretful last glance and zeroed in on the triangle.
At the postsession confab with all the players, Gabriel announced that he would suspend the shape identification program. It was simply too easy.
LIBERTINE CAME TO the whale pool every morning with a glad heart, knowing the day would be full of meaningful work, intelligent company, and an increasingly healthy and fun-loving killer whale. She enjoyed even her menial duties because they meant she was right there, where the real work was being done. She didn’t think of the pool as a prison; didn’t even realize she’d stopped thinking of it that way. For her, as for Friday, it was simply a place of event and excitement.
And Gabriel was always nearby.
It had been a long time since Libertine had had a crush of any kind, never mind one so epically inappropriate. Her last one had been nearly eleven years ago now—Paul Fortunati, a baked-goods supplier who had serviced the ferries between Anacortes and the San Juan Islands. A cheerful, hearty soul, he’d been as meaty and solid as an old prizefighter, and she believed he was capable not only of keeping the world safely at bay, but of doing so with a smile. He’d called her Libby—Hey, there’s my Libby, talked to anyone interesting lately?—and would periodically toss her a muffin or baguette or cookie as a treat. In fact, he was the only man who’d ever crafted a nickname for her, which she treasured. When she was alone she’d sometimes contemplated a different life, a life filled with fresh yeasty smells and warm, papa-san embraces that would envelope her and keep her from harm. She had spent a fortune on the ferries that year just to see him, though she always claimed pressing business when he asked her, which anyway he hardly ever did. In her experience, he was a man of the moment, cheerfully taking in the world around him, slapping backs and calling out hearty greetings to other favorites, none of whom were women, though she jealously watched, prepared to fight for her position.
A year—one full year of feeling cosseted and shielded from the full blast of a lonely life, and then, just like that, he’d stopped coming to the ferry—any ferry. She knew because in her desperation she’d started riding on different routes, at different times, hoping he’d simply been transferred, in which case she was prepared to adjust her own schedule accordingly. But after two weeks without a sighting she’d broken down and asked his replacement, an impossibly tall, thin, awful woman named Deirdre, who told her he’d retired and was moving to Arizona. Libertine called the phone number the woman gave her, a lapse in judgment she deeply regretted to this day. When she’d identified herself, carefully giving her first and last names, he’d said the single most terrible word ever uttered: Who?
She had never seen him again.
After that she rarely stayed home for more than a few days, avoiding the ferries, driving hither and yon to consult with her clients face-to-face. Bit by bit, animal by animal, her emotional hemorrhage was sopped up with their neediness until Paul Fortunati became a memory she could regret from a safe distance.
But now there was Gabriel, a man who didn’t share her beliefs and who reviled her profession. She listened for him on the stairs; she watched him from the office window; she conjured him at night as she fell asleep. He had completely stripped her of the brittle dignity she’d worked so long and so hard to create.
Libertine was in love.
SHE AND IVY had taken to eating dinner together every Thursday at the Oat Maiden, since Ivy continued to spend the majority of her time in Bladenham. Now, over a classic pepperoni pizza, Libertine described to Ivy her most off-the-wall interview yet with Martin Choi—as approved by Truman.
“He wanted to know what Friday thinks about having so many people come see him.” Libertine watched Ivy pick pepperoni from her pizza slice and put it in a paper napkin. “Don’t you like pepperoni? You should have told me when I ordered it.”
“What? No, I’m saving them for Julio Iglesias. He loves pepperoni. It gives him gas, but it gives me gas, too, so we just pretend it isn’t happening and fart away.”
Dismayed, Libertine said, “If you’d said something we could have ordered something else.”
“You said pepperoni was your favorite.”
“It is, but if I’d known—”
“My god, will you just stop?” Ivy reached across the table to give Libertine’s hand a stinging slap.
Libertine blanched. Ivy had once told her that she had the lowest self-esteem of anyone she’d ever met. “We have to work on that,” she’d said; and Libertine had been secretly thrilled by the use of the word we.
“So what does the whale think of all the people?” Ivy asked, slurping at a cup of coffee.
“I assume he loves it.”
“Of course he does. He’s a star. Who doesn’t love fame?”
“But he’s still living in a box. It’s a nice box, but it’s still a box. He’s completely cut off from everything natural.”
“Is that you talking, or him?”
“Neither. It’s just the truth. He was wild-caught, you know. He experienced the larger world, even if it was a long time ago. He was born into a pod and swam in the North Atlantic. That’s not something you can unknow.”
“And you think after all this time he still remembers?”
“Maybe not consciously, but of course he remembers. If nothing else, he’ll always have a visceral sense of loss. Any sentient being would.”
“Has he told you that?”
“It doesn’t really work like that.”
“You always say that.”
“I always say it because it’s always true,” Libertine said evenly. “I sense him, and I assume he senses me—though it’s been weeks and weeks now.”
“Really?” Ivy sat up a little straighter, intrigued. “Do you think you’re not psychic anymore?”
Libertine had long since given up trying to get Ivy to call her a communicator. Now she smiled in spite of herself. “It’s not a superpower. I just have this . . . ability. For all I know, anyone can do what I do, if they learn how to listen—or sense, really.”
“Huh,” said Ivy, clearly losing interest. “So anyway, listen. I was thinking of driving home for the weekend. I love my brother and sister-in-law like life itself, but if I don’t get away from them soon I might kill someone. I thought you might want to come along.”
“To Friday Harbor?”
“Yes. We can catch the last ferry tomorrow night, then stay Saturday and come back on one of the late ferries Sunday. Or you can keep me company on the drive and go home to Orcas.”
“No, I’d love to come with you.”
“Great. And if you want some stuff for your apartment, I have rugs and a desk and couch I don’t know what to do with, plus a bed if you like a hard mattress. I’ll have whatever you want shipped down here.”
And so, at five o’clock the next day—after Libertine had finished working, a commitment she took very seriously even if, as Ivy kept reminding her, it was volunteer work, and therefore flexible—Ivy pointed the nose of her old Mercedes north to the ferry in Anacortes. One windshield wiper stuck and the other smeared the rain around unhelpfully. Julio Iglesias rode on Libertine’s lap, jubilant that the booster seat sat empty. Ivy squinted through the heaviest rain, and when it finally let up just south of Olympia she said to Libertine, “So tell me, what do you do when you’re not channeling the animal kingdom? You never talk about anything.”
Libertine shrugged, looking out her side window. She wasn’t used to talking about herself. Over the years she’d found that if she didn’t volunteer information, very few people solicited it, especially in her line of work. “I garden. And I paint sometimes—watercolors. I walk.”
“You’d have made the perfect paid companion.”
Libertine looked at Ivy blankly.
“Haven’t you ever read Rebecca? No? Anyway, you’re brave, I’ll give you that.”
“Not really,” said Libertine.
“Sure. You do what you do in spite of three-quarters of the world thinking you’re certifiable. If that’s not bravery, I don’t know what is.”
Libertine could feel herself flush.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Ivy said, seeing her. “You know I’m only stating the facts. Take it as a compliment.”
“It didn’t sound like a compliment,” Libertine said doubtfully.
“You’re probably just not used to them.”
Libertine nodded: it was true. They continued in silence for several miles before Ivy said idly, “Why do you think it’s so much easier to talk in the car than anyplace else?”
“Because you’re not looking at each other.”
“Do you think?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Maybe so,” Ivy said thoughtfully. “You know, my brother Dickie and I drove from home to Amherst, Massachusetts, once, while he was going to college there, and by the end we were ready to throttle each other—but in a very insightful way. Until then he’d still been the twelve-year-old kid who liked to beat me at chess and feed his peas to the dog.”
Libertine closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat-back. “A road trip—I’ve never traveled like that. My mother used to talk about driving to California, but we never did.”
“Why not?”
“She was very disorganized.”
“How much organization does it take to get into a car and drive?”
“None, if you have money,” said Libertine.
“Ah,” said Ivy.
They drove in silence past winter-flooded pastures and ramshackle barns and mossy woods, until Ivy said, “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. If you had had a family, or at least children, do you think you’d still, you know, hear animals?”
Libertine took the question in her gut like a blow. “I’ve sensed them ever since I can remember,” she said carefully.
“You didn’t have siblings, right?”
“No.”
“So couldn’t it just be, I don’t know—loneliness?”
“You mean could I be making it all up, like imaginary friends?”
“All I’m saying is, couldn’t it just be your way of filling a void?”
“At three years old? What you really want to know is whether it’s real. My sensing them.”
“I just don’t see how it’s possible.”
“Me, neither, but I do.”
Ivy looked sidelong at her.
“What you really mean,” Libertine said bitterly, “is, could I be schizophrenic or have some weird personality disorder?” How many people had asked her that over the years?
“You do seem lonely.”
“Maybe I’m lonely because I sense animals. It sets you apart.”
Ivy nodded. “Chicken and egg, then.”
“What—the voices came first, and because of them I got lonely? Or I was lonely first and then the voices came?”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know. I only know what I know. One day maybe I won’t hear them anymore.” Then she gave an uncharacteristically sly smile. “One day maybe they’ll choose you, instead.”
BY THE TIME they reached Ivy’s house it was too dark to see much besides the fact that it was wood-sided and sprawling, as though additions had been added haphazardly over the years. Once inside, Libertine looked around avidly, finding to her surprise that the house didn’t look at all like the home of a wealthy person, or at least not as she’d pictured it. The rugs, though Persian, were worn and spotted; the leather furniture was cracked in several places, and a number of dead flies lay on some of the windowsills. Still, it was cozy in its own messy way, and she breathed in the delicious smell of basil, a spice her mother had worn like a fine perfume.
She excused herself while Ivy spooned out coffee grounds for the morning and set up the pot. Julio Iglesias accompanied her into the bathroom, where he lodged a host of complaints. When they got back to the kitchen she said to Ivy, “I’m afraid Julio Iglesias has something he wants me to mention to you.”
Ivy stared at her and then said bitterly, “It’s the Snugli, isn’t it—it’s about the damned Snugli.”
Libertine couldn’t help smiling. “You’d think so, but no. He’d doesn’t like being outdoors so much when you’re at the pool.”
Outraged, Ivy protested, “Are you kidding me? He’s dressed to the nines in a custom-made Gore-Tex jacket with special pockets all over it to hold those little chemical hand warmers you get at REI. Mink costs less. And if I don’t take him outside with me, he bitches about being left behind, by himself, in the office. He has his own set of china dishes and he sleeps on a memory foam mattress that costs almost as much as mine did.”
Libertine looked at Julio Iglesias, who looked back at her sulkily, and then she said, “Never mind.”
OVER A DELICIOUS late dinner Ivy made with groceries delivered to her house that afternoon—Dungeness crab, asparagus, potatoes—Libertine sipped the last of a whiskey sour Ivy had mixed for her. “I’ve never had one of these before,” Libertine said. “It’s yummy.”
Ivy smiled. “See? I told you I thought you’d like them.”
“Mmmm,” said Libertine.
“They’re potent, though.”
“You’ve already had three,” Libertine pointed out.
“Yes, but I’ve been drinking them since I was eleven.”
“Then I better catch up.” Libertine drained her glass and held it out for another, and then one more. They talked about everything and nothing, and watched the rain run down the windows, and a couple of hours later, when she was tottering down the upstairs hall toward the guest room with Ivy’s protective arm around her waist, she said dreamily, “Do you think maybe we’re falling in love?”
“Oh, honey,” Ivy said. “The only thing falling is you. C’mon, let’s get you into bed.” She opened the guest room door and led Libertine inside with some effort, tumbling her onto the bed and saying cheerfully, “You’re going to feel like death warmed over in the morning.”
“Mmmm,” Libertine purred softly, cozying into the sheets and thick down comforter, which she pulled up to her shoulders. “Night night. Sleep tight.” She giggled. “Sleep tight, get it? I just made that up.”
IVY STRAIGHTENED THE bedding over Libertine, who’d passed out cold, and sat beside her for a while in a little slipper chair that had once belonged to her mother, keeping watch and contemplating friendship. She had never imagined that she would reach the age of sixty-two alone. There had been so many people in her life over the years, but then the falling-out came as surely as springtime, and though the details varied, the outcome was inevitable. Still, she continued to hope she would one day find someone capable of loving as fiercely as she did, who wouldn’t break and run before the roaring winds of her affection.
Maybe we’re falling in love. Ivy would like to be in love, to have someone fall in love with her, and she didn’t even care whether the quality of the affection was platonic or flavored with a watery hint of sexuality—intimacy was the key thing, the kind of intimacy that allowed you to offer up the worst, least attractive, most shameful things about yourself; the kind of intimacy that came with the bottom line, I know you and I love you anyway.
Perhaps she’d find, even this late in life, that she was drawn to other women and had been all along without recognizing the fact. She’d even welcome it—on the whole, she enjoyed the company of women. Plus her sexual experiences with men over the years had been consistently disappointing: wet, nasty kisses followed by groping and fumbling, then panting and pain and a final few merciful wheezing breaths in the dark to signal it was finally over. There might be such a thing as orgasms, but if so, they were happening to someone else. Hardly the stuff blared from the covers of magazines read by young women.
She bent over the sleeping figure and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Libertine sighed and slept on.
Ivy turned off the light and went out, whispering, “G’night, little bird.”
THE NEXT MORNING, once Libertine’s atom bomb hangover had begun to lift and she’d been able to stomach a hearty breakfast of French toast, bacon, and jam made from wild berries harvested right there on San Juan Island, Libertine decided to go home after all. Ivy’s keen attention always left her feeling flayed, plus she suddenly missed her little house, with its cheerful glass and garden art.
If Ivy was disappointed at Libertine’s leaving, she didn’t show it; she simply reiterated that Libertine should pick out furniture before she left so Ivy could have it sent down to Bladenham. In the end Libertine chose the bed she’d slept on in the guest bedroom. The cost to Ivy, she knew, would be considerable, but the soft mattress on the little twin bed Johnson Johnson provided gave Libertine terrible backaches which, combined with the physical nature of her work now, produced enough misery for her to buckle under Ivy’s insistence. The bed was a pretty walnut piece and, granted she’d been drunk, but it had given her a blessedly comfortable night’s sleep. She also capitulated to Ivy’s insistence that she accept the chintz-covered slipper chair that had sat beside the bed. “Julio wants you to have it, and there’s no turning him down,” Ivy had said. “You know how easy it is to hurt his feelings—I’ll have a pee-fest on my hands if you say no.”
They agreed to meet in Anacortes the next day at noon for the return drive to Bladenham, and Libertine walked onto the interisland ferry to Orcas Island with a sense of vast relief. Once home, she petted her walls and gave the refrigerator a light kiss on its old white door. In all the world, this was the one place where she was perfectly herself. She had just put on the teakettle—hoping green tea might flush out any lingering toxic remnants of Ivy’s whiskey—when her old wall phone rang. Libertine picked it up before she had time to think better, and heard the unwelcome voice of animal activist Trina Beemer.
“Oh, good! I’ve been trying to reach you—you’ve become quite the hero around here. How did you manage to infiltrate that place?”
“Pardon me?” Libertine said disingenuously. Trina would have to work for whatever she was after.
“The zoo! The Biedelbaum or whatever. They had that poor, sweet elephant—and now this. We’ve always had them on our radar, of course, what with their building that new porpoise pool, but a killer whale! It’s so much worse. I can’t tell you how happy we are that one of us is on the inside!”
“What do you mean, worse?” Libertine said, ignoring the one of us reference and banging around in her cupboards for some honey for her tea.
“Well, I mean, at least the elephant was a terrestrial animal. Keeping a killer whale in captivity, never mind alone, is no different than putting any one of us in lifetime solitary confinement.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a difference,” Libertine said, turning off the burner and pouring scalding water into her mug.
She could feel the woman hesitate. Then Trina said, in her oddly atonal delivery, “We’re hoping you’d be able to work for us from the inside. You are still on our side, right?”
“I’m not really on anyone’s side,” Libertine said. “Well, I’m on Friday’s side.”
“You know, a lot of people are saying the whole rehab story is just a cover-up for the fact that they’re bringing in a show animal. Is that true?”
“No,” said Libertine.
“No?”
Libertine sighed. “Look, he was dying, pure and simple. Go back and watch the TV footage.”
“He was wild-caught, you know.”
“He’s nineteen years old. That was a long, long time ago.” She had no intention of fueling Trina’s fire.
“Not that long ago,” Trina said. “Killer whales have excellent memories. And they know when they’re incarcerated.”
“You know, it’s funny,” Libertine said. “He’s never once indicated that, at least not to me. Not once. Sick, yes. A prisoner, no.”
“That just means he’s given up hope. They do, you know.”
“Really,” said Libertine neutrally, taking her tea into her little living room and settling into a perfectly lovely chintz chair she’d found once by the side of the road.
“Really,” said Trina grimly. “I’m surprised you don’t know that, given that they talk to you and everything.”
“It’s not exactly talking,” Libertine began, and then decided, Oh, to hell with it.
“You know, we’d love to have you as a speaker at our January meeting,” said Trina, evidently deciding to try another tack. “Would you be able to do that?”
“No,” said Libertine. “Probably not.”
“Really?”
“Really. But listen, if you’re willing to keep an open mind and want to go down there sometime and see what we’re doing, I can probably arrange it.” And then, just like that, she hung up and had the most seditious thought: Wait until I tell Gabriel!
ON THE DRIVE down to Bladenham, Libertine told Ivy about the call from Trina.
“Hah!” Ivy crowed. “I knew it would work.”
“What would work?”
“Inviting you to be part of the project.” When Libertine turned in her seat to face her, Ivy patted her hand. “It’s nothing Machiavellian. I just thought if you could see for yourself what was involved in caring for our boy, you might feel less black-and-white about his being in captivity. So to speak.”
“So it was your idea to make me a volunteer?” Libertine asked, startled. The thought had never occurred to her before. She’d always assumed it was Truman’s, but Ivy must have planted it.
“It was. Of course, Truman and Gabriel had to agree.”
Libertine looked out her window at the flooded pasturelands while she collected herself. As a longtime loner, she wasn’t used to having other people direct her life, and though in this case she knew she should be grateful—was grateful—there was still something high-handed about Ivy’s pulling the strings. “I don’t know how I should feel about that,” she finally said.
Ivy glanced over at her. “You shouldn’t feel any way about it. We invited you and you accepted and now you know how much work and thought is involved in his rehabilitation. And if you happen to spread that word, it wouldn’t do any harm, either.”
“And what if I hadn’t ended up feeling that way?”
Ivy just smiled complacently. “I had faith.”
“This is making me really uncomfortable,” Libertine said, looking hard out of the passenger-side window.
Ivy glanced over, surprised. “Really?”
“I feel manipulated.”
“You shouldn’t. If anything, it was a vote of confidence in you. You know, your profession doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.” Libertine’s jaws clenched, but Ivy, apparently oblivious, went on. “Anyway, I wanted to give you a chance to have firsthand access to the whale. To help him, if he needed you.”
“And to help you, if he didn’t.”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” said Libertine doubtfully, “I guess I can’t fault your logic.”
“Of course not,” said Ivy.
But Libertine had moved on. “And Gabriel—what does he think of me now?”
“As far as I know, he’s accepted you as a member of the team.”
Is that all? Libertine thought but didn’t say. She could feel Ivy looking over at her, trying to get a read on her state of mind.
“No, more than that,” Ivy amended. “I know he’s glad you’re there. You’re providing a valuable extra pair of hands, and you don’t get in the way.”
“He told you that?”
“He did.”
At least it was better than Who?
THEY REACHED BLADENHAM in a driving rain. After waving good-bye to Ivy, Libertine pulled up her hood and reached into her raincoat pocket for the keys she was sure she’d put there. No keys. She scrabbled in her purse, with the same result. Getting wetter by the second, she was relieved to see lights on in Johnson Johnson’s house. He’d have an extra key. She dodged the puddles and knocked at the kitchen door. When there was no answer she gently pushed the door open and called out.
Johnson Johnson appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “Have you ever walked on the ceiling?” he asked her.
“What?”
“Walked on the ceiling.”
“Metaphorically, you mean?” She tried and failed to dampen a rising sense of impatience.
Johnson Johnson offered her the little square mirror he’d been holding and she declined.
“I’m sorry—I don’t know what—”
He demonstrated, holding the mirror against the bridge of his nose and looking down into it. “You have to be real careful not to step on the lights or kick them. Sometimes I trip over the door jambs, so you have to watch out for them, too.”
Helplessly Libertine watched him weave and giant-step his way around the kitchen and wondered if there was someone she should call.
“Here,” he said, holding out the mirror to her. “Now you.”
“I don’t really think—”
He held the little mirror to her face helpfully. She flinched, but he said, “Now look down.”
She looked down—and instantly understood. Reflected back to her was the kitchen ceiling, giving the illusion that this, not the floor, was where her feet were firmly planted. “Now walk,” Johnson Johnson said excitedly. “Go ’head.”
Sure enough, Libertine found herself circling the light fixture, which appeared to be growing vertically at her feet, its chain magically transformed into a stem, the glass shade a mushroom top. She laughed out loud. When she lowered the mirror after completing a thorough circuit of the kitchen, Johnson Johnson was beaming, his hands clasped to his chest in delight. “See?” he said, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “See?”
“I really was walking on the ceiling,” she marveled, handing the mirror back. “I felt like I could sit right on the light and it would hold me.”
“I like to jump from the kitchen into the living room and back. You have to jump pretty high, though, because it’s a long way from the ceiling to the archway. Sometimes I don’t even make it.”
Libertine high-stepped over the doorway and almost immediately caught sight of the upside-down living room wall beyond. Lowering the mirror, she saw that the entire wall was covered by a fun-house array of carpeted shelves and ramps and tubes and hammocks. Several holes in the ceiling led to upstairs rooms. In the very center, Kitty was peacefully snoring in a suspended faux-fur hammock. Libertine stood motionless in the doorway, transfixed. “Oh!” she cried. “Neva described this to me, but I had no idea it was so wonderful!”
“The hammock is heated, so Kitty can sleep there in the winter,” Johnson Johnson said. “He has arthritis.”
“He’s told me,” Libertine said. “I guess on an especially damp day even the small bones in his tail hurt. So I can imagine how much he appreciates this.”
“I know,” said Johnson Johnson.
Libertine checked her watch and saw that it was nearly six o’clock. “Hey, shouldn’t you be at the Oat Maiden?”
“Truman says I have to take at least one evening off every week.”
“Well, that’s smart. So you don’t burn out.”
Johnson Johnson nodded soberly.
“Just out of curiosity, what do you do on your days off?” Libertine asked.
“I make treats for the bears.”
“Bears?”
“At the zoo.”
“What kind of treats?”
“They really like fruit bars.”
“They do?”
“With apricots. And raisins.”
“Sounds like a busman’s holiday.” She suddenly became aware of her rain-damp jeans and the leaking seams of her jacket, and set down on the counter the small mirror she still held in her hand. “I almost forgot why I came over,” she said. “I’ve lost my key.”
He looked grave. “But then you can’t get in.”
“Exactly. If you can unlock the door, I’ll find my key eventually, or I can have a copy made tomorrow if I don’t.”
“Course.”
So she followed him into the rain, pulling up her hood and concentrating on his Doc Martin–booted feet splashing ahead of her down the little path to her apartment.
“I’m so glad you were home,” she said when he’d unlocked the door.
“Me, too,” he said, and she wondered whether he meant he was glad to have been home because he so seldom was, or that he was glad he’d been there to help her—nuance was not his strong suit. In any event she watched him until he’d reached his back door and ducked into the warmth and light without looking back. For the merest fraction of a second, she felt his presence in her head, the first human she’d ever perceived, as sweet and light as a whisper.
THE NEXT FRIDAY, on one of Libertine’s days off, the phone woke her from a sound sleep. Neva was on the other end.
“Hey, we just stopped at the Oat Maiden on the way to work to pick up a muffin and it wasn’t open. No sign, no explanation, nothing. We called Delilah and she said she’d waited for half an hour and then she went back home. She tried calling Johnson Johnson, and then she tried calling you, but no one answered.”
When she wasn’t working late Libertine had fallen into the habit of having a mug of milk and a chocolate chip cookie at the Oat Maiden just before closing. Once the door was locked, she helped Johnson Johnson and sometimes Delilah clean up the kitchen and restock condiments, top off the soda dispenser, and wipe down and set the tables for the following morning.
“Maybe he’s sick. But I saw him yesterday and he was fine,” Libertine said.
“He worked a few months ago with a temperature of a hundred and four,” Neva said. “So he’s not sick. Can you check on him?”
That woke her up. She pulled on jeans and a Biedelman Zoo sweatshirt and ducked out into the rainy morning. When Johnson Johnson failed to answer her knock she tried the kitchen door, pushing it open when he didn’t answer; and saw him sitting on the kitchen floor cradling a dying cat in his arms, his cheeks streaming with tears.
“Oh, no—oh, honey, not Kitty.” Libertine squatted down beside him, her knees going off like gunshots.
Johnson Johnson looked at her, brokenhearted. “He always comes to eat. He likes tuna, which is what we have on Friday mornings, but he didn’t come. I found him in his favorite basket, the one in the bathroom where all the clean towels are.”
“And he was like this?” Libertine sat on the floor. “May I see?”
Johnson Johnson nodded miserably. Libertine gently lifted the old tomcat in her arms, smoothed his fur, listened to him breathe; and then, returning him to Johnson Johnson’s arms, she sat down on the floor. “He’s in no pain,” she said softly. “And he isn’t frightened.”
They sat together for five, then ten more minutes before the old cat drew a few deep breaths, pressed a little more heavily into Johnson Johnson’s arms, and was gone. Johnson Johnson gave an involuntary cry.
“I’m so sorry,” Libertine said. “He was a wonderful cat and you gave him the best home in the world. He knew how much you loved him, and that you were with him at the end.” She plucked a paper towel off the roll and gently blotted his face.
“Can you hear him?” he whispered.
“No.”
“I’m going to miss him so much,” Johnson Johnson said.
“I know you will,” Libertine said.
“Do Chocolate and Chip know?”
“I’m sure they do. Animals can sense when death is near.” Libertine was quiet for a long beat, and then said, “Neva and Truman stopped by the Oat Maiden a little while ago. They’re worried about you. I want to call so they know you’re all right.”
Johnson Johnson barely nodded.
“And then let’s bury Kitty and get some flowers for his grave. I think he’d like that.”
Soberly he said, “Yes.”
“May I have him?”
Johnson Johnson allowed Libertine to take the body gently from his arms. “Do you have any clean dishtowels?” He pointed mutely to a drawer and she pulled out two plain white linen cloths, shrouding the body tenderly on the kitchen counter.
“One of us needs to call Neva back,” she said. “Do you want to do it?”
Johnson Johnson was still sitting on the kitchen floor. “You,” he said; and so she did, telling her their sad news.
“Oh, no.”
“He’s devastated.”
“I’m sure.” Libertine could hear Neva cover the mouthpiece and say over her shoulder, presumably to Truman, “Kitty died. The old one—the tomcat.” And then to Libertine she said, “I’d like to come and pay my respects. He was a good cat. I know how much Johnson Johnson loved him.”
Libertine put her cell phone against her chest and said, “Neva and Truman would like to come pay Kitty their respects. Is that okay?” Johnson Johnson nodded mutely. Libertine turned the phone back and said to Neva, “How soon can you get here?”
“Half an hour, plus or minus.”
“They’re coming in half an hour,” she told Johnson Johnson once she’d hung up. She extended a hand. “Come on—let’s get you off the floor.”
Johnson Johnson took her hand and she pulled as hard as she could, until they were perfectly balanced, and then he flew forward and she staggered backward right into the kitchen counter.
“Ow,” said Johnson Johnson, looking at her with alarm.
Libertine rubbed her back ruefully. “I’m fine. Do you have coffee? I could make coffee. I think we could use some.”
Johnson Johnson directed her to a bag of beans, a grinder, and the coffeemaker—a very good one, she was surprised to find. She wouldn’t have pegged him as a coffee drinker; he seemed like more of an herbal-tea-with-sugar type. She didn’t really want coffee and he probably didn’t, either, but it gave her something to do, and that was the point. Once the machine was burbling and huffing, she admired the room, as she always did when she was here. Like the Oat Maiden, it was a cheerful masterpiece, with a black-and-white checkered mopboard and a compass painted on the floor.
Johnson Johnson was standing in a corner of the room with his arms abandoned at his sides. “I’d love to hear what Kitty was like when you first met him,” Libertine said. She motioned Johnson Johnson to sit across from her at the kitchen table, which was painted with the kind of black-and-white spiral used in optical illusions and 1960s movies to denote a time change or entrance into a dream state.
To Libertine’s surprise Johnson Johnson pulled his chair in to the table and closed his eyes. “I was taking out the garbage and I heard meowing in the bushes—those purple rhododendron by the mailbox. I looked underneath and it was Kitty. He was bleeding from his ear, and he was really brave, because I had to use a little shampoo to get the blood out of his fur. He didn’t try to bite me or run away or anything. After that I gave him some milk and a can of tuna, and he ate the whole thing. Maybe he hadn’t eaten in a while. So then, when he was done, I fixed him a nice bed in a box and told him he could live with me if he wanted to, and he did.”
“You could tell he was very happy here.”
Johnson Johnson nodded solemnly. “I know.”
Then they both got quiet for a few minutes. Libertine was surprised at how comfortable the silence was, as though talk between her and Johnson Johnson was unnecessary—something she’d never felt with anyone before, not even with Larry Adagio. “Do you have any family here?” she asked after a while.
“My parents,” he said.
“But I thought they were . . . gone.”
He nodded. “They’re in the cemetery, but that’s here.”
“Oh. No brothers or sisters?”
“No. After me, I don’t think they wanted anybody else.”
“I’ve heard you were a very good son. Truman said you took excellent care of them right to the end.”
“Well, I mean, they were home and I was home, so. . . .” He appeared to struggle for a minute with a thought. “Do you think Friday misses his family?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure he must have, at least in the beginning. He was caught when he was still very young and dependent. I’ve definitely had the sense that he was frightened. His mother was on the other side of the net, I think, trying to get him out, but she couldn’t do it.”
“I didn’t know they caught him. Why did they catch him?”
Libertine could see his distress. “So people could come and see him. There’s a lot of money in that.”
“Oh. Who caught him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe someone should catch them.”
Libertine laughed, but he was deadly serious. “Then they’d know.”
They sat with their thoughts until Libertine said quietly, “You know, neither one of us has family nearby—living family, I mean—and everybody needs that. So I have an idea: would it be okay if I’m your family, and you’re mine?”
Johnson Johnson looked at her solemnly before nodding.
“So from now on,” she said, “if you need help, if you’re sad or happy, if you’re unsure about something, come to me and we’ll figure it out together.”
Johnson Johnson nodded emphatically. “Yes,” he said.
WHEN THE COFFEE was ready Libertine found thick white mugs in a cabinet over the stove and poured them each a brimming cup that neither of them touched. Outside, a freshening wind made skeletal branches tap insistently against the window over the sink and sorrow filled the room. Neither of them said another word until Neva and Truman arrived with a dozen carnations for Kitty’s grave—Neva had gotten to know Kitty well during the year she’d rented the little apartment that Libertine lived in now. Ivy roared up in her emissions-belching Mercedes, and Sam and Corinna pulled in right behind her. Sam put a box of Dunkin’ Donuts on the counter and Corinna hugged Johnson Johnson tightly and Libertine slipped out back during the commotion and dug a grave beneath a rhododendron.
When they were all outside, Neva asked Johnson Johnson, who carried the shrouded Kitty with the utmost care, if he would like to say any last words, and when he looked stricken Corinna placed a hand on his arm and said, “Honey, would you rather have one of us to do that?”
He nodded and they all exchanged glances—You? No, you—and Libertine noticed that through the telepathy of close friendships they all agreed it should be Truman. Clearing his throat and with heartfelt solemnity, he said, “We are gathered here to honor a cherished family member and comfort our good friend.” He turned to Johnson Johnson and said, “Kitty found unconditional love in your heart as well as your home. Because of you, in his senior years he never went hungry, never suffered in the cold and rain, and always knew he was safe in the home you gave him. No gifts are greater.” He paused a moment, and then concluded, “Here lies a good cat. He will be missed.”
There was a low murmur and then Johnson Johnson lowered Kitty into the grave Libertine had prepared. She handed him the trowel, and he spaded several clods of dirt on top of the body before gulping and handing the trowel to Neva, who handed it to Truman when she was finished, and so on, until the grave was filled. Then Libertine took his elbow and led Johnson Johnson back into the kitchen—it had started to rain, a halfhearted, weepy drizzle—and the others followed.
And then Truman said to Johnson Johnson, “You know, it just occurred to me there’s someone who I think would really like to meet you.” Johnson Johnson looked at him through puffy eyes and Truman said, “Let’s do this. Let’s swing by the Oat Maiden and leave a sign on the door saying you’ll open again first thing in the morning, and then we’ll take you over to the zoo. It’s really high time you met Friday.”
WHILE JOHNSON JOHNSON and Truman placed a note on the café door, Neva called Gabriel to warn him that they were on the way to the pool, explaining about Johnson Johnson and Kitty. “I’m so sorry,” Gabriel told him with the utmost gravity when they got to the pool.
Johnson Johnson nodded numbly.
“Let’s take you upstairs so you can meet our boy.”
They all trooped upstairs. Gabriel had already staged a bucket of fish in the wet walk, and now handed an extra pair of XtraTufs to Johnson Johnson. “Put those on and wade right out there.” Friday was already at the poolside, keen to see what this new visitor might hold in store. He put his chin on the side of the pool and opened his mouth. “You can hand him a fish or two,” Gabriel suggested. “And he likes to be touched. Just go slowly at first so he has a chance to look you over.”
Neva waded out beside Johnson Johnson, handing him a fish to give to Friday. When Friday accepted it, Johnson Johnson reached out with exquisite care, touching the whale with just his fingertips. Neva could hear him draw in a rapt breath. She encouraged him. “Go ahead. Give him a couple more.” Friday exhaled lightly, as though he didn’t want to startle the fragile man before him.
Gabriel called, “He won’t break, and he’s already decided you’re okay or he would have backed up or left by now. Go ahead and scratch him. He likes that.”
Johnson Johnson fed and scratched Friday for ten minutes, then fifteen minutes, until the steel bucket was empty and he admitted that his hands were numb from the icy water. As he left the pool top, Friday followed him with his eyes until he disappeared down the stairs.
“I think he knew who I am,” Johnson Johnson told Neva gravely as they brought the empty bucket downstairs.
“Yes,” she said. “I think so, too.”