Read Online Monterey Bay by Lindsay Hatton - Free Book Online

popping.
    â€œThe abalones,” she prompted after the proper interval had passed. “What about them?”
    His knife was working again, ripping through a foreign cluster of herbs, rocking and flashing against the wooden board. “It was the local Chinese who reaped the rewards first, who created the overseas market. Then, before they knew it, their big-city cousins had come to town: thousands of San Franciscans withbetter fishing methods and bigger boats and more secure connections to the homeland. When the abalones were gone, the visitors from the north ended up rich. The locals, needless to say, did not. They had to start fishing for squid instead.”
    He smiled at the squid in the skillet as if they had done him a personal favor, then smothered them with a handful of minced greenery. She hadn’t expected it to feel this good—this return to business as usual—but it did. Her father’s sudden enthusiasm was sweeping away any former notions of patience, payback, or restraint.
Just like the burned sketchbooks,
she thought with a shiver: the catharses that were always so final until, at a certain point, they weren’t.
    â€œAnd what about the squid? Did they disappear, too?”
    â€œNo. The bay is still full of them, but that’s not the point. The point is that, for centuries now, people have been doing the same damn thing. Breaking the bay, waiting for it to fix itself, and then breaking it again. And I’m certain there’s a better way.”
    He reached across her to give the skillet a little shake.
    â€œAnd what way is that?”
    Instead of answering, he took a tiny jar from his vest pocket, opened it, and dosed its contents into his palm.
    â€œSmell,” he said.
    She paused. This was the most conciliatory gesture he had made in months, and something about it worried her. But then she bent over his hand and inhaled. Hot, musky, semisweet. As specific and strange as the unknown herbs.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œChinese five-spice powder. Try to guess all five.”
    Guess
, she remembered telling the biologist.
Guess how old.
She closed her eyes and took another sniff.
    â€œOne: cinnamon. Two: cloves . . .”
    â€œStar anise, fennel seed, and Szechuan pepper.”
    â€œI was just about to say that.”
    â€œNo,” he teased. “You weren’t.”
    The powder hit the pan, its smells unifying and then exploding.
    â€œQuick,” he said. “The plates.”
    She opened the nearest cabinet and withdrew two pieces of the good china, which had been placed there without her knowledge, as if in deliberate secret.
    â€œCook it for too long,” he said, easing the squid out of the skillet, “and it turns to rubber.”
    â€œI know.”
    And then the rebirth of another tradition: dinner on foot. For as long as she could remember, they had eaten like this, as if in readiness for fight or flight, their legs shifting beneath them as they chewed, her father’s enjoyment of the meal’s creation vastly exceeding his enjoyment of the meal itself. When they were done, she put down her fork and looked at him. He didn’t resemble the biologist, not one bit. But in a moment like this, when the turmoil within him had been temporarily silenced, when something had been successfully planned,executed, and consumed, the similarity was both unsettling and undeniable.
    â€œSo,” she said. “Have I earned it?”
    He folded his napkin into quarters and placed it neatly on the countertop.
    â€œEarned what?”
    â€œAn explanation.”
    â€œA lucrative opportunity. Nothing more.”
    â€œFrom what I’ve heard, the sardine game isn’t so lucrative these days.” In her mouth, the biologist’s words seemed precious and oddly shaped. “Most of them are already in cans.”
    â€œFor one thing, it’s not a
game
. For another, it’s not the sardines that interest