Six thousand miles away, as Isabelle closes the bedroom window of her mother’s house and takes a last look at the hypnotic spin of the Point Perpetua lighthouse before turning in, Professor M. Weary shuts off his computer.
Henry North has been on Parrish Island for exactly six hours.
The professor knows this, and much, much more. He knows when Henry left, and how much his ticket cost. He even knows where Henry sat on the Island Air flight from Seattle: seat C, which on that model of Cessna is behind and to the right of the pilot. At least, that was the assigned seat on North’s ticket, paid for with his Visa card.
It’s all so easy! People will keep on being who they are, for starters, and on the Internet you can find out anything. The glorious, ever-flowing, ever-providing Internet. Even when the Wi-Fi goes in and out and in and out, a little perseverance and patience will pay off. Professor Weary loves, loves, loves the Internet. It’s technological magic, information gratification. What did we ever do before? How did we spy, stalk, and scheme? How did we look up the answers to crucial, nagging questions, like the name of that actor on the tip of your tongue or the whereabouts of one’s enemy?
It’s 4:45 P.M. in New Caledonia, eighteen hours ahead of Parrish Island. It’s almost like seeing into Henry North’s future.
Professor Weary sighs, satisfied. If he were the type to rub his hands together in glee, he’d do that, too, but it’s overkill. Now that the cyclone season is nearly over and the strong winds have stopped, a swim sounds nice. A swim before a lovely dinner of the leftover cassoulet with maybe a glass of wine. (Maybe? Who is he kidding.) The pool looks so inviting. In this hillside cottage with a view of the Coral Sea and Mont Dore, only the mynahs will see him in his swimsuit. He may be aging, but aren’t we all? In spite of everything, he’s fighting the good fight, damn it. He still tries to stay in great shape. Vanity is a curse.
Professor Weary drops his robe on the wooden deck of the pool. Birds twitter, as birds always do in Grande Terre. It is humid and warm. On Parrish, Isabelle climbs into the cool sheets that smell of her mother’s linen closet. She settles in to that complicated time before sleep, when competing thoughts crash and battle, when good sense and future mistakes fight each other using the jagged pieces of your sorry psyche. She tries to talk herself out of the everlasting thought of the overly responsible and anxiety-ridden—that she needs to pee again—as Professor Weary takes the plunge. This sounds like the title of a children’s book, which pleases him.
He pops up, slicks his hair back. He keeps it a little too long, long enough for one of those inadvisable yet somehow alluring ponytails streaked with gray, a concession to his younger self and the longed-for days of the past. After a few easy laps, he gets out and quickly wraps a towel around himself. He’s starving. It’s the exercise, and the excitement.
It’s the anticipation.
After these hard, hard years, this time of loss and heartbreak, his luck may be changing at long last. Henry North is on the move. He’s migrating. And while birds migrate to find better climates and avoid predators, they also change locations to feed and breed. Now Weary will just have to wait, which is the hard part. Wait and watch, just as he watches Grande Terre’s Corvus moneduloides.
Weary does not yet know about Isabelle, finally drowsing before the lurch that comes with dreams of falling. He is still only wondering who it will be—who Henry North will choose this time. If she’ll be a blonde, or another brunette. If she’ll be delicate, like Virginia, or more sturdy and broad, like Sarah. Either way, it’ll be tragic. Either way, it’ll be the thing he most wants, finally happening.