“No. I can eat many of your foods.”
“Uh, you guys—aren’t you going to be cold? I mean, it’s probably only sixty degrees outside today.” He gestured to their T-shirts and shorts.
Fred and Artur looked at each other, then at Thomas. “No.”
“Oh. Right. Well then. Fancy? Or fast? Raw or cooked? Or Souper Salad? Subway? Clam Shack?”
“Let’s go to Faneuil Hall,” Fred suggested. “Artur can get a look at all kinds of stuff. And there’s bound to be something there for all three of us.” Also: she loved Faneuil Hall. Well. The food. Not the crowds.
It was only a few blocks from the NEA, and they were there after five minutes of brisk walking. Brisk walking in silence, Fred was relieved to see. She felt exhausted: not just physically—in fact, not physically at all—her brain was tired. Being around Artur and Thomas was like walking a tightrope. Made of glass. In bare feet.
And their little shit problem—when she got hold of the nasty fuck who was dumping his crap into the ocean, they were going to have a long talk. Possibly in the ICU.
The sights and smells of Faneuil Hall lifted her spirits and she quickened her step so that she was almost running to the food stalls. Even better, at this time of day, it was hardly even that crowded.
“Is this a gathering place for your people?”
“Only the hungry ones.”
Artur sniffed appreciatively. “I smell…”
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Pretzels, steamed clams, clam chowder, hamburgers, turkey legs, ice cream, sushi, gelato, bagels, doughnuts, pizza, chocolate chip cookies, milk.” Fred took a breath. “Smoothies, rice, curry, noodles, frozen yogurt, lemonade, enchiladas, milkshakes.”
The marketplace was brilliantly lit, and they went into the main building which, from one end to the other, was stall after stall of food.
“Great oceans,” Artur gasped. “I have never seen so much food in one place!”
“Do you guys even cook your food?” Thomas asked. He tried to sound idly curious, but Fred wasn’t fooled; there was barely contained eagerness there for anyone who cared to see it.
“At times we collect on land and have feasts, yes. The ones who can build and control fire are revered in our culture.”
“I’ll bet.”
“But never in all my years—”
“How old are you, anyway?”
“I have forty-nine years,” Artur answered absently, his gaze shifting from Steve’s Greek Cuisine to La Pastaria.
“For… forty-nine? As in, almost fifty?” Fred was shocked. If asked, she would have put Artur at early thirties. “Wow! You’re way older than I am.”
“That makes sense, though.” Thomas put his big warm hand on her face. “Cool to the touch. I bet your BP’s in the basement, too. Sluggish heartbeat. And all that time in the water, of course. Keeps you looking young. Because you don’t look twenty-nine, gorgeous. Not even close.”
“How’d you know how old I was?”
“Took the time to find out,” he said carelessly, like it was no big deal. Like it wasn’t borderline stalking.
She took his hand away and gave him a look. “Well. It’s true, I get carded everywhere I go. But—”
“You know, Fred, I think it’s great that you don’t look your age. I mean, I don’t care how old you are, I wouldn’t care if you were an ancient, drooling doddering old man like Artur is.”
She grinned. “Watch it, pal. You may have flipped him once; but I get the idea you might have gotten lucky that first time.”
“Not lucky enough. You were naked, as I recall.”
“Thomas. I didn’t have legs. And, by necessity, the place between them.”
“A guy can dream, can’t he?”
She laughed. “I can’t tell if you’re open-minded or just a pervert.”
He edged closer. “Find out,” he said, his breath warm on her lips. She couldn’t help it; she closed her eyes and moved closer to his warmth, and—
“You two! Come at once! I require a King Corn Dog!”
Thomas groaned and backed off. “Honey, I thought we were going to get a sitter for the baby.”
She snorted and trotted after Artur. He was standing in the middle of the walkway (bad Faneuil etiquette, but she’d tell him later) staring wildly all around. It almost looked like he wanted to try everything at—
“I also require a bread bowl of clam chowder and a fruit cup and a Frappuccino and an eclair.”
“Jeez, Artur, I didn’t win the lottery on the way over here. Hey, rich romance novelist! Get over here!”
“Oh, bad enough he’s living with me? I have to pay to feed him, too?”
“Produce the money items from your clothing,” Artur commanded. “I shall start with the eclair.”
It was great fun watching Artur sample everything from coffee-flavored gelato to a chicken sandwich. He had a stomach of iron and was inexhaustible. He even wore Thomas out; the guy finally just handed Artur a bunch of twenties and sat back to watch.
“You don’t have any allergies that I as your roommate should know about, do you?” Thomas asked, nervously watching Artur slurp down another Frappuccino.
“By my father’s name, this food is fit for a king! I ought to know. What is this?”
“Lo mein.”
“And this?”
“A sugar cookie.”
“And this?”
“A lobster roll.”
“And this?”
“A slice of pepperoni pizza.”
“Mmmph,” Artur said. He had pretty good table manners for a man mastering eight cuisines at once.
“I have to admit,” Thomas said, grinning, “this is a shitload more fun than I thought it was going to be. Wait ‘til he discovers room service.”
“Don’t say ‘shit’,” Fred groaned. She picked at her salad. “My appetite was almost coming back.”
Artur shoved a lobster roll under her nose and she recoiled. “Artur, I’m allergic! I’ll puke for half an hour if I eat that thing.”
“Little Rika, you do not know what riches you deny yourself.” A small bit of lobster roll hit Fred on the left cheek; she brushed it away. “I wish the High King were here. He loves a fine feast.”
“Maybe you should go home,” Thomas suggested with all the subtly of a sledgehammer. “I mean, to bring him back for a visit. Someday.”
“Someday, perhaps.” Artur was in too good a mood to be baited. “Again my thanks, good host.”
Thomas waved it away. “Glad you’re enjoying it. They open in the morning, in case you want to come back for breakfast.”
“Ah. Breakfast!”
Fred smirked and forked a cherry tomato into her mouth.
Chapter Twenty-five
The next morning, Fred grimly followed the sound of the singing. It was (ugh!) “Part of Your World” from the Disney (ugh!) soundtrack. The voice was a perfectly on-key soprano, pleasant and carrying, and Fred followed it all the way up the stairs to the top level of Main One. It was after hours, and, thank heavens—no crowds. But it also meant that she had Madison (bleah) to herself.
At the top of the tank she found Madison, leaning over the edge and crooning to the fish.
“Stop that immediately,” she ordered, resisting the urge to clock the woman on the side of the head with the bucket of fish.
Madison jumped. “Oh! Hi, Dr. Bimm! I didn’t hear you come up. You’re rilly rilly quiet.”
“How could you hear anything over all that yowling? What are you doing?”
“Oh, it’s one of my theories, like,” the girl explained helpfully, dressed in a pink shell top and a miniskirt so brief it looked like linen panties. Real appropriate for the workplace. “I think the fish do better if they can hear pleasant things like music n’ stuff.”
Know any Pet Shop Boys? “Yeah, that’s… yeah.” She peered into Main One and dropped a smelt, which was quickly scooped up by a passing barracuda. Excellent. The strik
e, brief as it was, appeared to be over. She’d pop into her scuba suit after she finished interrogated the idiot and feed them properly.
The idiot was talking; better pay attention.
“You’re the marine biologist, Dr. Bimm. What do you think?” She blinked her big blue eyes at Fred and twisted a blonde curl around one finger.
“About what?”
“About singing to the fish. Do you think it helps them?”
You don’t want to know what I think. “So, your parents are rich, huh?” She cursed herself; Thomas would be better at this. And Jonas would be masterful at it. But the crumb had disappeared and Thomas was ass-deep in lab work. And Artur would probably scare the hell out of this twit. “Old Boston family and all that?”
“Umm-hmm.”
“So what brings you here?”
Her big blue eyes got, if possible, bigger. “Oh, Dr. Bimm, I’ve just wanted to work with dolphins since I was just a kid.”
“Since the Dark Ages, huh?” Fred watched the younger woman dabble her long pink fingers in the water. Hope one of the turtles mistakes those for a shrimp, she thought viciously. “You’re aware there are no dolphins at the NEA?”
“Huh?”
“There. Are. No. Dolphins. At the NEA.” You. Fucking. Idiot.
Madison smirked. “Not yet.”
“Oh.” Fred thought that one over. “Your folks are buying you dolphins and plunking them into a new tank in the NEA?”
“After they fund the new habitat.”
That made sense. It was stupid, but it made sense. “So that’s why you’re here?”
“Of course!”
“But what if it takes longer than the length of your internship?”
“Oh, Dr. Barb said I could, like, volunteer here as a long as I wanted.”
“Of course she did. Your folks haven’t, uh, built a new hotel and designed the bathroom pipelines to empty into the bay, have they?”
“ Ewwwwwwwwwwww!”
“Interview over,” Fred said, bored, and left. The strains of “Part of Your World” followed her all the way down the stairs, out the door, and onto the cobblestones.
Chapter Twenty-Six
She pounded on Jonas’s door for the third time, pressed her ear to the wood, and—yep, she was positive. Someone was rustling around inside.
“Jonas, open the damned door! It’s been three days! If I find you dead in there it’s going to be a huge inconvenience for me!”
More sinister rustling.
“Jonas! You have until I count to one. Then I’m kicking your door in and you’ll lose your security deposit. Ready? One—”
She raised a foot just as the door swung wide. Jonas stood there, wrapped in the goose down quilt from his bed. His blond hair stood up in clumps, not the carefully moussed waves he usually spent hours coaxing to life. His eyes were bloodshot. And for the first time in recorded history, he wasn’t wearing Aramis cologne.
“My God. You look like the run half of a hit and run. Where the hell have you been?”
“Dying,” he said hollowly.
“Well, it’s going around because Dr. Barb’s got it, too.”
She’d been following him past piles of takeout boxes and nearly walked into him when he stopped short. “She has? I mean, she hasn’t been coming to work?”
“Yeah. Which makes it easier to sneak the guys in, but it’s seriously weird not having her there. Nobody can remember her ever being sick. I mean, it’s gotta be a plague of some sort.”
“Of some sort,” he mumbled.
“God, it reeks in here. You’ve got some explaining to do, chum. How could you disappear for three whole days like that? Artur and Thomas have been driving me up a goddamned tree.”
“Leave me alone,” he moaned, plopping facedown onto his couch. “Can’t you see I’m dying?”
“You’re not dying. You’re sulking. What’s wrong, did Sergei pack up his salon and leave town? Did Ralph Lauren stop making shirts?”
“Worse,” he said hollowly.
Fred was stymied. Jonas didn’t have problems. Ever. She was the one who was often plunged into despair.
She played the guilt card. “You haven’t called, you haven’t come around—I was half afraid you had left town without saying anything to me.”
“Sorry.”
Time for the sympathy card, “Uh—cheer up?”
“I appreciate the effort, Fred. Go away now.”
She prowled around the living room, racking her brain. “Uh—want some breakfast?”
“No.”
“Come en. Pull yourself together. Whatever it is, it’s not any worse than my problems. It can’t be.”
He sighed and rolled over to face her. “Fred, just because they’re not your problems doesn’t mean they’re not problems.”
“Oh yeah? Try this on for size. If Thomas isn’t trying to steal kisses, Artur is. And Artur is going to blow pretty soon; we’ve been spending a lot of time in the lab because I have zero interest in jumping into the shithole that is Boston Harbor.”
“What?”
“See? If you’d been hanging around you’d know. The mysterious toxins? It’s shit.”
“You mean—literally?”
“Oh yeah. Gah, I can still smell it. So we’ve been going through permit paperwork and toxin reports and all that happy crappy—literal happy crappy, I guess—and we finally narrowed it down to a couple of suspects, one of which I was able to eliminate, but not until I’d hear way too much singing, and now, I’m sorry to say, we’re taking the Lollipop out today.”
He looked alarmed. “Fred, you can’t get on a boat.”
“I know.”
“You’re terrible on boats!”
“I tried to tell them. But the alternative is letting them go alone, and they’ll probably beat each other to death.”
“Your love life is twice as exciting as mine.”
“This kind of excitement I can do without. And they’re not in love with me. It’s just an infatuation.”
“Sure it is.”
“Don’t start that whole ‘Fred dismisses love because she has a fear of abandonment’ bull again.”
“But you do. And you do.” Jonas stared at the ceiling. “I’m in love. I finally told her.”
“And?” Fred assumed it was going to be awkward.
“She ran out. Ran.”
“Oh, ouch. Who is this bim? Just point her out. See how well she can run when I break both her legs.”
He sighed. “Tempting, for all sorts of reasons, but never mind.”
“Well, forget the loser. Whoever she is, you can do better.”
“She’s not a loser,” he snapped, showing signs of life. “Don’t call her that again.”
“Jonas, if she couldn’t see how wonderful you are, she’s a big fat stupid giant loser and I never plan to call her anything else.”
“I’ve been in love with her for six years’.”
“Uh—time heals all wounds?”
“Nice try.”
“Look, clean yourself up and come down to the NEA with me. It’ll do you good to get out. And I could really use your help. You’re so good at distracting the guys from hurting each other.”
He sighed again. “I can’t.”
“How come?”
“I don’t have any underwear.”
“Since when,” she demanded, “do you feel the need to wear underwear everyday?”
He thought about that for a moment. Then: “Point.” And went to take a shower.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The Lollipop was moored at the NEA dock beside the Voyager 777, which tourists used for whale watches. Much smaller, the Lollipop—
“As in, ‘the good ship’?” Jonas asked. “Get it? No? Never mind.”
—was for the aquarium’s scientific expeditions and research. As a water fellow, Thomas could sign it out and commandeer the crew whenever he wished; so could Fred.
With Dr. Barb’s permission, of course. But she
wasn’t around, so they dodged that bureaucratic bullet nicely.
“See?” she said, forcing cheer that sounded unnatural. “Isn’t it nice to be out on this beautiful, um, autumn day?”
“It’s raining.” Jonas turned up his coat collar.
“Oh, a little water won’t hurt you. Take it from me. At least you’re getting some fresh air. Want to come on the boat?”
“With you?” He shuddered, the insensitive creep. “Absolutely not. No way. No. I’m only here because you bullied me out of my safe cocoon. Once I bid you toodle-loo, I’m sinking back into despair.”
“I promise I’ll sit in one spot and not move.”
“Fred. No.”
“Okay, okay. It’s probably all for the best.”
They heard clomping noises at the far end of the dock and turned to see Artur and Thomas heading toward them.
“Oh, like Undersea Folk never take a shit in the ocean!”
“Our shit, as you put it, breaks down when exposed to seawater. Certainly we do not pump concentrated loads of it into our living room.”
“I’ve had about enough of the smug routine, Artur. Show me the living breathing person who never screws up and I’ll show you nobody alive on the planet.”
“But surely you agree that your kind ‘screws up’ at a level unsurpassed by any other species. And many who ‘screw up’ aren’t in fact making a mistake at all. They do it purposefully, and generally for the sake of conquest.”
“Profit, really.”
“Same thing.”
“A million Undersea Folk running around the oceans eating all the raw fish they can get their hands on, and you guys aren’t causing any damage?”
“You did not know of our existence until this week.”
“Yeah, but every culture has mermaid legends. They sprang from somewhere, pal. People didn’t just pull the stories out of their asses. And you guys probably control those krakens that yanked all those seventeeth-century European ships into the water, killing—”
“I tire of this topic.”
“Tough nuts. We—”
“Ah, my boys,” Fred said with mock fondness. “What would I do without them? They’ve quit with testing each other physically, so now it’s debate, debate, debate. Kill me now.”