Read Online Monterey Bay by Lindsay Hatton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lindsay Hatton
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But she wasnât. Rickettsâs appeal, she remembered now, hadnât exactly been benign, and his ambitions hadnât exactly been straightforward. At times, he had watched her a little too closely. He had laughed at her terror and had offered her a beer, and now when she tried to summon the image of them sitting side by side on the bed, she saw not only their bodies and faces and her drawing on the wall, but also the green-curtained window. In her mindâs eye, she looked through it, hoping to see nothing more than the fog moving beneath the beams of the streetlights like the sorts of vapors some mistake for ghosts. Instead, she saw a face looking in at them, a pair of eyes assessing them with curiosity and envy.
She sat up. The daylight was growing stronger, the cushions seeming to actively repel her weight. A train whistle blew in the distance, a gull screamed. She stood and tiptoed over to the clock on the mantelâa German timepiece with a loud, bossy tickâand saw herself reflected in its glass face. She looked the same as she had yesterday: pale, scarred, perched at that odd inflection point between youth and adulthood. But there was also something else. A new severity, a new definition, almost as if her features were too sharp to belong to a child.
When she heard her father waking, she turned from the clock and listened. The rush of running water in the bathroom sink. The hollow plunk of one of his shoes and then the other. The rustle of his files and papers as they were swept into his valise. His suit, she knew, would be pressed and spotless. His thick, colorless hair would be neatly pomaded and parted down the middle. Their descent would be wordless, dignified, her father humming a little as he walked, chin raised and arms rigid. In these ways and more, she knew what to expect. What she didnât expect, however, was how tall he would look when he finally emerged from his bedroom. As they left the house and proceeded down the hill to Cannery Row, his six feet and five inches seemed as distant and immovable as a cathedral ceiling, and she felt very small in comparison: as close to the ground as a dog, unusually aware of smells and the transitions between them.
When they were just a step or two from their destination, thesidewalks dense with cannery workers, the street loud with trucks, he stopped and searched her face and must have been troubled by what he found there, because what came next were the type of words that, in the wake of last nightâs détente, shouldnât have been necessary: instructions that assumed the worst about her instead of the best.
âYouâre not to roam the streets. Youâre not to come here after dark,â he said. âOther than that, all I ask is that you behave in a manner that is least likely to tarnish the simple dignity of your family name. Is that something you can manage?â
âI believe so.â
And moments later, there they were: shoulder to shoulder in front of the dark, salt-swollen door of Ed Rickettsâs lab.
6
THE MAN WHO ANSWERED THE DOOR WAS NOT ED Ricketts. Not in the least.
âJohn,â Anders said. âI was under the impression you had already left for Baja.â
âNot yet,â the man replied, shaking her fatherâs hand and then returning both long arms awkwardly to his sides. âStill trying to talk some sense into Ed, and that could take months.â
The man produced a labored smile, a horseâs set of big, yellow teeth layered across his gums like roof tiles. He was shorter than her father but looked as though he should have been taller on account of his coarse, oversize features. His brow was broad and bunioned, his nose a weighty bulb at the base of a funnel-like bridge, his ears those not of a human being but of some sort of huge nocturnal mammal. She stuck out her hand and tried not to startle when her fingers were engulfed by his.
âJohn Steinbeck,â he
She sat up. The daylight was growing stronger, the cushions seeming to actively repel her weight. A train whistle blew in the distance, a gull screamed. She stood and tiptoed over to the clock on the mantelâa German timepiece with a loud, bossy tickâand saw herself reflected in its glass face. She looked the same as she had yesterday: pale, scarred, perched at that odd inflection point between youth and adulthood. But there was also something else. A new severity, a new definition, almost as if her features were too sharp to belong to a child.
When she heard her father waking, she turned from the clock and listened. The rush of running water in the bathroom sink. The hollow plunk of one of his shoes and then the other. The rustle of his files and papers as they were swept into his valise. His suit, she knew, would be pressed and spotless. His thick, colorless hair would be neatly pomaded and parted down the middle. Their descent would be wordless, dignified, her father humming a little as he walked, chin raised and arms rigid. In these ways and more, she knew what to expect. What she didnât expect, however, was how tall he would look when he finally emerged from his bedroom. As they left the house and proceeded down the hill to Cannery Row, his six feet and five inches seemed as distant and immovable as a cathedral ceiling, and she felt very small in comparison: as close to the ground as a dog, unusually aware of smells and the transitions between them.
When they were just a step or two from their destination, thesidewalks dense with cannery workers, the street loud with trucks, he stopped and searched her face and must have been troubled by what he found there, because what came next were the type of words that, in the wake of last nightâs détente, shouldnât have been necessary: instructions that assumed the worst about her instead of the best.
âYouâre not to roam the streets. Youâre not to come here after dark,â he said. âOther than that, all I ask is that you behave in a manner that is least likely to tarnish the simple dignity of your family name. Is that something you can manage?â
âI believe so.â
And moments later, there they were: shoulder to shoulder in front of the dark, salt-swollen door of Ed Rickettsâs lab.
6
THE MAN WHO ANSWERED THE DOOR WAS NOT ED Ricketts. Not in the least.
âJohn,â Anders said. âI was under the impression you had already left for Baja.â
âNot yet,â the man replied, shaking her fatherâs hand and then returning both long arms awkwardly to his sides. âStill trying to talk some sense into Ed, and that could take months.â
The man produced a labored smile, a horseâs set of big, yellow teeth layered across his gums like roof tiles. He was shorter than her father but looked as though he should have been taller on account of his coarse, oversize features. His brow was broad and bunioned, his nose a weighty bulb at the base of a funnel-like bridge, his ears those not of a human being but of some sort of huge nocturnal mammal. She stuck out her hand and tried not to startle when her fingers were engulfed by his.
âJohn Steinbeck,â he
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