“Hi! Welcome to the NEA! Would you like a schedule for the seal shows?”
He slowed down for a look. What the hell; she was awfully pretty. A little shrill, and disturbingly bouncy, but mighty pleasant to look at.
“I’ve been here lots of times,” he told her, noting the I Heart Dolphins pin over her left breast. Ah-ha! The annoying new intern Fred had bitched about. “I’ve pretty much got all the schedules memorized.”
“It doesn’t help to keep a reminder,” she giggled, waving the paper at him.
“You must be one of the new interns.”
“You bet! My name’s Madison. Say, if you’re so familiar with the place, maybe you could give me a tour.” She giggled again, hiding her mouth with perfectly manicured fingers.
“Nice offer, but I’m supposed to meet a friend.”
“Oh.” She pouted. She was a good pouter, and he suspected she knew it. “Maybe next time.”
“Yeah, maybe. Nice to meet you, Madison.” He wondered how much time would pass before Fred strangled the poor girl, and gave her about seventy-two hours.
Hurrying away from the delectable intern, Jonas saw Fred, Artur and Thomas, and approached the group from behind. They were in a tight little huddle, Fred’s hair shining like blue cotton candy under the ultraviolet lights, Artur and some other guy sort of blocking her—kind of protectively?
Jonas skidded to a halt and took another look. Hard to miss Artur with the height and the shoulders and the hair looking like it was on fire, especially now, with all the yelling. And hard to miss Fred, trying (unsuccessfully) to shush him, bony arms like windshield wipers as she held up her hands in a soothing, un-Fredlike way.
But the third guy filled up space just the same way those two did; almost as tall as Artur, almost as broad, dark instead of fiery but more intense, waving his arms around and trying to be heard over Artur’s roars.
The new water fellow! So Fred had hooked them up, as she had planned. But was still stuck with them, which he knew was decidedly not in the plan.
Jonas stilled the urge to cackle. Oh boy, oh boy! I didn’t miss anything! He raced up to the group, nearly trampling a busload of Girl Scouts.
“Hey,” he panted. “What’d I miss?”
The small circle froze in midargument and turned to him.
“Well, the Prince of the Black Sea isn’t a big believer in the scientific method,” Fred began, blowing a lock of hair out of her eyes with an irritated puff. “Wanting instead to just jump in the harbor and start kicking ass. Because it’s just that easy, don’t you know.”
“That is not what I—”
“And Thomas, here, thinks we need to do a tad bit more research first before we get an injunction, and when Artur found out an injunction was essentially a strongly worded piece of paper—”
He waved the rest of her explanation away. “Never mind. I get the gist.” He stuck out a hand and the water fellow, looking bemused, shook it. “Hi. Jonas Carrey. Fred’s best friend. Her oldest, best, dearest friend. The one from whom,” he added, testing New Guy, “she has no secrets.”
“I know they’re Seafolk, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Oh, good. Everyone’s on the same page.”
“I don’t think everyone is,” Fred grumbled. She was looking rumpled and out of sorts in a “Nantucket” T-shirt, cutoffs (the legs of which did not match in length, he noticed with an internal groan), and sandals. He shuddered at the state of her sandals, but as usual, Fred made it work. Or, rather, nobody looked at her clothes when they looked at her.
Certainly these two gents didn’t give a crumbly crap that Fred was disheveled and hadn’t had a pedicure since the first Pirates of the Caribbean hit DVD. In fact, they were looking at her the way Jonas looked at a plate of freshly steamed edamame sprinkled with sea salt.
fib
He tried to intervene. “C’mon, Artur, you gotta give it more than half a day. The whole reason Dr. Pearson—”
“Thomas.”
“—Tom—”
“Thomas.”
“God, you’ve been around Fred a day and look what’s happened to you! Okay, okay. Artur, the whole reason Thomas is on the team is so he can do all the grunt paperwork.”
“Hey, thanks. You really know how to make a guy feel welcome. Why are you on the team?”
“Because we’d have to kill him to get him off,” Fred muttered. She looked awful, even for Fred; now that he was closer he noticed the enormous dark circles, almost like bruises, under her eyes. He had a pretty good idea what had kept her up all night. “Don’t knock it, Thomas. He can go out for sandwiches and stuff. He knows every waitress between here and Comm. Ave.”
“That’s true,” he said modestly, inwardly bristling at being reduced to Sandwich Boy.
“This endless rambling grates on me unendurably.”
“I gathered from the whining.”
“Royal sons do not whine.”
Thomas and Fred snorted in unison.
“Look, Artur, just give us another couple of days. We—” Fred looked around, motioned Jonas closer, and they all bent together in some sort of geeky, multispecies football huddle. “Thomas already has a bunch of the info compiled. We need to pinpoint the source, we can’t just wade into the harbor and start kicking random ass.”
“That’s true,” Jonas said. “Random ass is never a good thing. Though there was this girl from Revere once, who—”
“Then what am I to do in the meantime?” Artur had looked momentarily startled when Jonas and Fred each slung an arm around his shoulders and urged him to bend forward, but now his frustration was evident—more than evident, in his odd football huddle position. Jonas felt a stab of sympathy for the guy, who was probably used to wrestling great white sharks in his spare time. And he probably didn’t like anything that would give Thomas an edge—even if it helped his cause. “This frittering is—”
“Yeah, we got that,” Fred interrupted. “Look, this is all quite weird already, thank you. Don’t do anything to make it—”
“Dr. Bimm?”
Fred audibly groaned, and Jonas inwardly cheered. An exciting morning, made even better by the appearance of the yummilicious…
He turned. “Dr. Barb!”
Dr. Barb looked startled at the volume of his greeting, and Jonas cursed himself. “Uh, hello, Jonas. Dr. Bimm. Dr. Pearson. Ah—” She tipped her head way back to look at Artur. “Sir, I couldn’t help but notice your voice is scaring the—”
“That’s why we came over to talk to him,” Fred said.
“What?” Thomas asked. Then, “Right! Dr. Bimm and I, having no lives, came to work bright and early on a Saturday but on the way to the labs, via the jellyfish exhibit on the other end of the building, we saw this guy making a ruckus, and came over to see if he needed to be escorted out.” Then, lower, “Wouldn’t bother me at all to kick his ass again.”
“Oh.” Dr. Barb looked slightly bewildered at both the glib response and the idea of Fred a) noticing a tourist, b) caring about a ruckus, and then deciding to c) tend to the problem. “Ah. Good work, Dr. Pearson and, uh, Dr. Bimm, but we have, uh, security for that sort of thing.”
Fred made a noise that sounded an awful lot like ‘ha.’
An awkward silence fell. Around them visitors were chatting and the din was pretty good, but the five of them were just looking at each other without a word. Even the glowing jellyfish bobbed around silently. In one of the curious silences that sometimes fell over a large crowd, Madison could be clearly heard to say, “Yes, I’m doing my paper on the dolphins in Boston Harbor.”
Freshly distracted, Fred practically spat. “Good God!”
“Dr. Bimm.”
“There are no dolphins in Boston Harbor!”
Dr. Barb sighed. “Dr. Bimm.”
“How did that half-wit get into Northeastern? And why the hell are we stuck with her?”
“Dr. Bimm. Remember, the NEA is heavily dependent on charitable donations.”
r /> Dr. Barb was practically dancing from one small black-flat clad foot to the other; he imagined she’d rather go for a quick jog around the lobster tank.
Then: “Why are you here this morning? Neither of you are on the schedule.”
“Uh,” Fred began, then looked at Jonas. It must have been a long night for all three of them, because they all looked a little helpless. “We—”
Jonas coughed. “Hey, Dr. Barb, you had breakfast yet?”
“I—what?”
“The first meal of the day? Start you off right? Give you sprinting energy through the lunch hour? Eggs? Bacon? Pancakes with real Vermont maple syrup?” As if there were any acceptable substitute in New England.
“I had a cup of yogurt,” she replied, blinking up at him with her exotic, almond-shaped eyes. Oooooh, he was getting that trembly/firm feeling he got whenever he talked to Dr. Barb. And not just because he knew he could give her a kick-ass makeover. “Nonfat.”
“You call that breakfast?” he cried.
“Well. Yes.”
“Ham and eggs, that’s breakfast. Grits and anything, that’s breakfast,” he added, taking her by the elbow and trying not to be obvious about dragging her away from the group. “Eating nonfat yogurt is punishment for jaywalking, right? Come on, I know a great place right across the street.”
“Well,” she began, and it must have sounded so good she said it again. “Well… I couldn’t be gone for long.”
“Aw, who are you kidding? You probably weren’t on the schedule for this morning, either.”
“Well… I’m the one who draws up the schedule…”
“So cross yourself off it long enough to have a bagel with yours truly.” He noticed her toes were practically skimming the tile and eased up, but didn’t let go of her arm.
“Well… as I said, I couldn’t be gone very long…”
“Right, right, place’d probably implode if you left for more than ninety minutes. We’ll have you back in eighty-nine.” After Fred and the guys get lost. “But you can’t expect to go charging all over the NEA on yogurt. I thought you were smarter than that, Dr. Barb.”
“I had no idea you were so worried about my welfare. Thank you, Jonas.”
Jonas felt a thrill inside. Was it possible that Fred—dour, sour Fred—was shooting him the most grateful, sweetest smile of her life? And he was about to take his longtime crush on their first date?
This is the greatest day of my life! he thought, exalted, as he steered Dr. Barb past the throngs of tourists and students. He saw Madison’s stare turn into a glare, but managed to give her a cheery wave. And it’s not even ten fifteen in the morning!
Chapter Nineteen
Barb Robinson was having a a puzzling morning.
First, her dry cleaner hadn’t had her eight lab coats ready, so she was down to three, low starch. Having so few symbols of her authority available to her made Barb extremely nervous. How was she expected to keep order at the NEA when everyone else there was so much smarter, younger
(better-looking)
and better educated? Answer: a crisp, blinding white lab coat with her name (Dr. Barbara Robinson, Ph.D.) in red script over the left breast. She could feel her authority shoring up whenever her coat settled over her shoulders, when she buttoned it all the way to the top. She kept her long hair in a braid so everyone could see her name. So the volunteers and fellows could easily spot her.
You could, Barb had thought more than once, talk people into almost anything if you were wearing one of the things. It reeked of authority. The lab coat whispered to their subconscious trust me, do your work as diligently as I do, tell me your troubles, promise to work late on Friday.
It was less effective, she thought wryly, in an Au Bon Pain.
“You want to take that off?” Dr. Bimm’s nice gay friend said to her. He’d insisted on paying, almost like it was a real date, and had bought her a bagel with lox and cream cheese, and two milks. (”Dairy is dandy,” Barb’s nutritionist mother had been fond of saying.) “So you don’t spill on it?”
“Oh, no. I’m fine. Thank you for breakfast.”
Jonas gave her an odd look. “No big, Dr, Barb. You looked a little hassled.”
“Oh. Well, you know. Saturday morning at the aquarium. Always a bit of a madhouse.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t all need to be on your shoulders. I mean, you’ve got ticket takers and volunteers and stuff to worry about all that, right?”
“Well, I—yes. But the NEA is my responsibility.”
“Boy, you and Fred,” he muttered, working on his second chocolate croissant.
“Dr. Bimm is very dedicated to her work,” Barb said proudly, for she had handpicked Dr. Bimm from a pool of several dozen highly qualified candidates, and had been justified in her decision many times over.
Of course, the odd punk hair made some of the fellows nervous, and Dr. Bimm wasn’t the cheeriest employee she’d ever had, but her work was top quality and her devotion to duty was unwavering. She could think of no greater compliment to bestow upon anyone. “She is a credit to the NEA.”
“Yeah, and two guesses when she had her last date.” Jonas colored and Barb watched, puzzled, then realized Dr. Bimm’s last date—oh, no. It couldn’t have been—
“Not…Phillip?”
“Phillip,” Jonas confirmed with his mouth full, lightly spraying her with crumbs.
“That was most likely a mistake,” she admitted, taking another bite of her bagel. “But she seemed so—and we parted amicably enough—at least I did.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what happened? Who’d be crazy enough to drop-kick somebody like you out of their marriage?”
Barb smiled, feeling a warm glow of pleasure. It was nice that Dr. Bimm’s best
(only)
friend was so nice. It was a pure crying shame he was off the heterosexual market, with that blond hair and the incredible body which, she happened to know, he honed weekly in the dojo.
She had seen Madison flirting with him and felt sorry the girl; she probably should have taken her aside and warned her, but Jonas’s orientation was nobody’s business. Certainly Madison’s flirting was nobody’s business also.
She realized he was waiting for an answer.
“I dumped him, actually.”
“Oh.”
“It was my fault, really. I just couldn’t overlook all the sleeping around.”
“Oh,” Jonas grinned. “Don’t stop now. Dish!”
She found herself telling him. How they’d met at a fund-raiser for the NEA. Both in their late thirties, both ready to settle, both wanting to get married.
But getting married wasn’t the same as staying married. Phillip had really wanted someone to go to events with, someone to be on his arm. A name on a mortgage application. The ability to check the “married” box on any form. Not a living, breathing, loving wife who expected him to stay out of other beds.
“The nerve!” Jonas mock-gasped. “You and your incredibly unrealistic expectations.”
“Right,” she said dryly, sipping her milk.
“What a dumbass! Man, if I’d known that, I never would have let Fred go out with him. No offense.”
“None taken. But could you have prevented Dr. Bimm?”
“Well… she only went because—I mean, she didn’t want you to—I dunno. It was, what? Six years ago?”
“About that, yes. Who is Dr. Bimm’s new friend? The large man with the red hair?”
“Oh.” Jonas’s blue-eyed gaze went vague, and he waved off something invisible. “Just some guy from out of town. Let’s get back to the dumbass you married. I mean, he’s got you and he’s out cheating?”
“Uh, yes. But I—” She looked down at her lap. She’d never see forty again, she didn’t get much exercise, she was devoted to her work, and she had worn her hair the same way since ninth grade. Why wouldn’t Phillip look for something a little
(younger)
fresher? Somebody like
&n
bsp; (Madison)
a college student?
“I guess the thought of a long-term marriage just made him feel blue,” she said, her smile fading. Blue made her think of Dr. Bimm’s hair, and Dr. Bimm made her think of… “This man, he’s from out of town, you say? How does he know Dr. Pearson? And why were they all—”
“Shit!” Jonas leapt out of his chair, and she saw the dark stain spreading across his shirt.
She jumped, too, grabbed her napkins, and dabbed at him frantically. “Are you all right? Are you burned? Get that shirt off,” she ordered. Coffee burns could be nasty, even after all the silliness with the suit against McDonald’s. If she could get the hot cloth away from his skin in time, he might not be—
In response to her command, Jonas instantly stripped off his polo shirt, revealing a lightly furred chest, gorgeous pecs, nicely defined shoulders, and a by God six-pack set of abs.
She stared.
“I don’t think I’m burned.”
She stared.
“Dr. Barb? Am I burned?”
She stared some more.
He clicked his fingers in her face. “Dr. Barb? Come back now.”
“My God.” she said at last, almost shaking herself like a dog out of a pond. “I could grate cheese on your stomach.”
“Uh—maybe later.”
She inspected his skin closely and after a minute actually remembered why she was staring at his taut, muscular flesh.
“You’re not burned,” she assured him. She was feeling rather warm, but that was just too bad. Jonas was always nice, always seemed pleased to see her, always hanging around Fred, always lugging around Aveda bags, and—
“Look, let’s go up the street and hit Filene’s. I need a new shirt, and you’ve got to let me do something about those lab coats.”
—loved to shop.
It just wasn’t fair.
Chapter Twenty
“Ah Little Rika. At At last I have you alone.”
“Sshhhh!”
Fred had Artur by the hand and was leading him to the waterline. That was tricky at the NEA on Saturday mornings, as the place was jammed. She and Artur couldn’t just strip in public and leap in.