The Galapagos Story (part 1)

George Parker was thinking about tortoises and their high value on the market when he ran into his first night wanderer. It was the solo girl, the only one in a group of thirty-one tourists on the Galapagos cruise he was on. She was oddly pretty: large, bouncy real breasts, good muscle tone, big high ass. George was an ass man, or had been back when he was interested. But that was a long time ago, before It had happened. 

Lines of laughter mixed with shadows of something he couldn’t identify etched fatigue onto her face, but her big hungry eyes were lively and observant, two bright brown balls of contradiction. 

“Hey there,” she said, as if she’d expected him on a deck walk at nearly two a.m. 

“Hey you,” he responded, retracting into himself like a tortoise. 

“Jones” she said. “Rhymes with drones. Bones, hones, loans, moans, phones — phony if you stretch it. And a river in France.”

He laughed, but he couldn’t come up with a good rhyme for George, so he said “Orgy,” which sent her into a hoot of hilarity that made her whole body rock. 

They strolled around the deck together. The ship was anchored far from shore, the water deep and black around them. The moon was too dim to illuminate the sea, but scattered lights from the boat patchworked the water, making its tiny watery peaks sparkle. On the far side of the deck, a sound like the splash of a sea lion swooshed.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, doubling his pace.

“Something went into the water,” she said, matching his speed.

A sign, they always left a sign. Sometimes it was a scratch on the railing, sometimes a footprint; once he’d even found a fancy silk scarf tied into a bright bow. He knew the swoosh wasn’t a body but he had to check. 

No struggling form or widening circle of ripples was visible when they got there; a few fish, that was all. At his side, Jones scrutinized with him. “Nothing,” she murmured. 

 She tried to brush him off when he said he’d walk her to her cabin, but he insisted. It was nearly three in the morning and he wanted to be sure she was safe. She was big enough to be strong and he could tell she was clever, but he didn’t know whose eyes might be watching them. 

When her door closed, he raced back to the deck. With a flashlight he checked every inch of the railing. There wasn’t a new mark anywhere to be seen. His pounding heart settled back into a regular rhythm. The light lap of water, the distant whir of a boat motor, the slap of waves against the hull hummed in his ears. The music of the sea. 

 

Earlier that night, one a.m. or thereabouts, George Parker had wakened from a deep and welcome sleep. The seesawing motion of the boat as she’d rolled and pitched over swells he’d found soothing, but the noise of anchoring rocked across the silence like reveille. George strained to listen past it. A body plunged into deep water, emitting a swooshing sound that dissipated like ripples around a tossed stone. This he was used to, his own personal tinnitus, an echoic reminder of the horror that had negated his life. Beyond the low shouts of the crew, he listened for the quiet rowing swish of the panga, sneaking across the water to make an illegal landing. He heard nothing except footsteps, but it was enough to get him up.

George was registered as a passenger, but he was animal traffic security, a private investigator for a firm that specialized in animal investigations, anything from pet theft to rare species smuggling. The client for this job was an international connoisseur of rare species, alive or preserved after death like museum specimens. A deep-pocketed, eccentric man, he was passionate about one-of-a-kind acquisitions. Fascinated by Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his species, he had tried to buy his remains, but the American Museum of Natural History beat him to it. Now he was obsessed with the tortoise Umina whose traits were so distinct she had her own species category. She was the Mona Lisa of rare animals and he wanted her desperately. 

George stealth-footed his way aft and positioned himself in the dark shadows near the stern. The crew was speaking Spanish, mostly about their tasks and their families, a few bawdy jokes about the new crop of girls on the tour. It was their first night of the twelve-day cruise through the Galapagos, an archipelago of seventeen islands six hundred miles west of the coast of Ecuador. These were the islands that had inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution. They were also a trove for smugglers. 

  Tonight was not a good night for covert activity. A plethora of crew was around, too many to make a wildcat expedition viable. Tour boats inevitably drew their share of late night wanderers: revelers, oddballs, night owls, solitude seekers, and George wanted to identify them. He decided to make his first night round. 

And that’s when he met Jones.

 

Centuries ago, in the era George liked to imagine, the islands were home to so many tortoises you had to walk across their backs like they were rocks. In Spanish, Galapagos means tortoise. Tortoise Islands. The English word sapped the mystery out of them, George thought. There was so much magic in a name. Not in his, not in Parker, an ordinary name, easy to forget. No magic in Jones either, though her rhyming of it wove a spell. He felt like a tortoise when he was with her, wrapped in his heavy carapace of secrets. But somehow, inside the carapace, he felt lighter too. Effortlessly, he rolled over and sleep came for a visit.

Three and a half hours later he hauled himself out of bed. His bones creaked, his body ached and he knew it was the loneliness. Would he ever get over it? The day he’d lost her, he had stopped playing the guitar, stopped boating, stopped writing travel articles, stopped anything that reminded him. Danger was his business now. Danger he welcomed. Dropping to the hard floor, he did a hundred pushups and a hundred situps, pumped the endorphins that passed for happiness into his system.

Horribly cheerful music came from the loudspeaker installed in the ceiling, followed by the irritatingly jovial voice of the cruise director inviting passengers to “a fabulous breakfast in the dining hall on deck two, aft.” In a comedy George once saw, a night person, bleary-eyed and cloaked in rumpled bedclothes, shambled onto the stage and shot the happy morning person. 

Lifting the sleeve of yesterday’s tee shirt, he sniffed the under the arm. Raunchy, but good enough to wear. The slogan Save the Humans blazed over a cartoon of a waved albatross. He’d bought it in San Francisco. Of course. 

From the buffet line, he studied the passengers. Off in a corner, absorbed in their own conversation, sat the nerdy, happy physicists, Freddy and Jane. In their eighties, George figured; at least he was, what hair he had left a tangle of off-white down to his shoulders, hers thick, mussy and rat-brown. At the neighboring table sat the Chilean family, the husband twenty-thirty years older than his wife, the two boys, maybe nine and twelve. Handsome, all of them. The photographer was there too, teasing the boys in his big, jovial manner. Next to him sat the solo Jones. Her laugh lines looked less chipper this morning. Too long his gaze rested on her and he pulled it away.

 At the center table relaxed the Bennys, a wiry fit couple, still attractive in their eighties, coiffed and outfitted in the perfect gear, treating their entire clan to this cruise. Three kids, two spouses, five grandkids, two cousins and a niece: fifteen in all. Eighty, ninety grand, George figured. Slanting close to her father, flirtatiously close, leaned their daughter, Barb, fifty-ish, her sharp triangular face an alternating study of sad and radiant. On her other side lounged her two children, the girl around twenty, thick wavy hair, an aura of confidence, the boy, Noah, a bit older, sullen and handsome. The Benny’s unmarried son perched between his parents, attentive to both, a balding, mid forties, boy-man. No trouble record on any of them. A bit of debt, that was all.

Zeke and his family huddled in a corner. Tall, slow-moving Southerner, minus the drawl, hair slicked back like a Wall Street trader, Zeke — rhymes with freak, reek, weak, and, damn, George thought, seek. Geek. Blue streak, if you stretch it, which fit Zeke’s aging, flirty, nattering wife. An unpleasant man, Zeke, face like a bulldog, manner bumbling and crude. At the introductory party, he’d trumpeted on about his arthritis, letting everyone know it crippled him, invoking an invalid’s right to special privileges. Yet, around the photographer, he seemed to man up. 

 In the photographer, Butch, George sensed a potent ally. A man with an informed heart, he thought, watching the swing of the photographer’s eyes, observant even as he joked with everyone, a man who’d be cool-headed and effective in crises. 

An odd threesome took seats at a small table. The guy’s perfect features were Greek-god handsome, Apollonian even, and his was body trim, yet he fell so far on the cusp of his gender, he struck George as a wimp. Plus he was there with his mother, her aging body stout and sturdy, her face a coarsened version of his. But he was also married, his wife fit, strong and fat-free, as homely as Lark was pretty. He seemed completely dominated by the two of them.

George plunked down with the D.C. part of the Benny family clan, who ignored him as expected. He concentrated on his food, three fried eggs, hot sausages, hash browns, toast, butter, two mugs of strong black coffee. When he looked up, the brilliant, extraverted wife was sliding her hand down her husband’s arm, the habit of tenderness flashing between them. The gesture evoked a shower of sweet memories that turned dark at the rise of the swooshing sound. George crossed his knife and fork on his plate and pushed it away. There was too much happiness on this boat, couple happiness, the kind he’d had with Her for so many years. But that was before she’d done what she did and he hadn’t done what he didn’t. Now he was unsure he could ever be happy again.

He glanced over at Jones. Boiled eggs and dry toast for breakfast and she couldn’t even get that down. She looked at her plate like it was an unflushed toilet and George almost laughed, the feeling was so familiar. Even her big breasts looked droopy this morning, and the ample flesh of her gorgeous ass hung tiredly over the side of the chair. Unlike her ass, her face was smiling, looking not miserable but amused. A surge of tenderness surprised his heart and he picked up his coffee mugs and strode out of the room.  

 

 Using small strong binoculars, George watched people on both pangas during the early morning ride beside the northwestern bluffs of Isabela Island, not far from Punta Vicente Roca. In the recesses along the cliffs nested the plump seabirds renowned for their playful rituals of courtship. The dinghy listed towards them as the excited passengers clustered starboard to get a look.

When George saw the webbed blue feet of the boobies, he wanted to be one; imagined himself striding along, lifting each blue foot like a treasure, his black wings tucked behind his torso, casual yet preening, like a guy with his hands behind his back, placing himself in front of the girl Jones like a mirror: here watch this! And he stretches out his winged arms in a great unfolding and waits, his heart thumping, will she won’t she. She’s a big one; he likes them big, his taste carrying over to his boobie girls. And she does it! She stretches out her grand wings and he admires their size, that beautiful bend at the elbow, gorgeous wings, elegant long beak, dense flecks on her crown. He lifts up one foot, then the other, lifting high, showing off: see this wonderful color, this brilliant blue like a jewel, displaying his best feature, the strong blue of his feet, letting her know what a healthy specimen he is, what a good mate, what good DNA to bring to their offspring, what a great warm blanket his webbing will make for their eggs. And again, she mirrors him. Beak touches him, a booby kiss. On and on they flirt, and then they are paired, mated; it’s settled, though the courtship rituals go on. Can’t leave those females unattended too long; they’re flirty girls in their season, though loyal, and that was enough for him. 

Now the girl reminded him of a booby, the way she spreads her arms in joy greeting each new species: the sea turtles mating in the water, the brown pelicans, the common noddy terns. Sometimes she does a little dance with her feet, a seated jig, like a French or an Appalachian musician, happy bare browning feet, large and ungainly with toes so long they look like digits. How he’d love to touch those feet, slide his fingers right between her toes in a foot courtship dance. 

Later, he put on his turquoise socks and high stepped into dinner. No one got it but the girl; watching him, her shoulders rocked with laughter and she threw part of it to him, a grin spreading like wings across her face. Two big boobies, that’s what they were. She’d beak kiss him if she could. But he lowered his feet and avoided her table, sitting instead with the two loopy scientists who seemed to love every bit of knowledge in the universe.

 

One thing he’d learned: wealth didn’t mean anything when it came to collecting, nor did social position, profession or anything else. Obsession struck unpredictably, randomly, ferociously, and the stricken would do anything to get what they wanted. Rare species — legal or illegal — sold or auctioned at spectacular prices. Increasingly, people like George, incognito security, were placed on these trips. Not even the captain knew, not even the crew. 

Normally, thirty-one passengers, two guides and seventeen crew were too much for one man to cover. But this was a special assignment, its sole purpose reconnaissance for the tortoise Umina. Such a simple job required neither partner nor backup. A seasoned agent like George could do it on his own. And the big boss had told him, except for the new hires, she thought it wasn’t crew. 

Aside from the photographer and Jones, the cool head on the boat was the grandmother Candace. An unlikely suspect, although her preference for the company of birds over that of her grandkids struck George as odd. But to bring three generations of family on a smuggling trip? Not a good strategy. Good cover, though; excellent cover. Mean streaks in those grandmothers, his wife’s ancient grannie liked to refer to him as the killer, the sweetest of smiles crinkling her old face when she said it. 

 

The next island, Fernandina, was home to flightless cormorants and large colonies of marine iguanas. Thirty-one eager passengers descended into the pangas, along with the drivers and the guides: Darwin — concentrating, tense, in charge; Elena, friendly, easy, chatty. She’d come here as a girl, she said, and the sirens beguiled her: this is your destino, they crooned, the outdoor life, the active life. A beautiful girl, dark hair down to her waist, brows that met, probably a big thatch of crotch hair greying in spots, she was slim but starting to thicken, fatty slabs around her waist, breasts like low fruit. A note of falseness in her stories, a public, practiced sound, so different from the authenticity of Jones that stripped him to the core.

A young island, just over 100,000 years old, Fernandina featured a shield volcano that had erupted six years earlier. Examining the lava rocks as they drew into Punta Espinoza, George imagined the ear-splitting rumble, the orange-red blowspout of molten lava, the fiery hot flow as lava rivers and tributaries ripped through the land, their murderous fluid too unstable to approach. Like his blood felt when he thought of what he might have done differently. Looking up, he saw Jones watching him and he felt certain she saw the lava of sorrow and self-reproach flowing inside him. Never again would he subject anyone to his negligent love. 

Before he could say anything to her, Butch slid in beside him. “I don’t see a cone,” he said, “do you?” 

Fernandina is a different type of volcano. George explained. Flat or slightly rounded rather than conical. Called a shield because it looks like an old time soldier’s shield face up on the ground. Across the panga, Jones leaned forward to listen, inspiring George to wax on. Most volcanoes spout lava that’s like molasses or honey, viscous lava. It’s too gluey to flow very far, so it builds up into the mountain we think of as a volcano. But shield volcanoes lie low to the ground because their lava is thinner, more like water, so it flows over a bigger area.

“Does watery lava even burn?” Butch asked, curious whether shield volcanoes could erupt.

“They all have craters at the center,” George continued, enjoying his rare moment of expertise and how Jones was listening. Holes that vent – that’s what they’re doing when they erupt, sending hot fluid rock from a chamber deep in the ground out onto earth’s crust. Underground that hot fluid rock is called magma. When it spurts out it’s called lava, but it’s basically the same thing — boiling rock that really makes up lot of earth’s interior, shooting out when there’s an eruption. 

George glanced at Butch’s face, expecting that he’d be bored, but his face was alert, his eyes riveted on George’s mouth. “What’s the big deal about this one,” Butch said. “They talk about it like it’s some kind of special Galapagos volcano.” 

George laughed. The guides talked that way about everything. He checked to see if Jones was listening and her face was intent. “Well it’s not. There are shield volcanoes all over the world. What’s special about this one is the caldera. When a monster explosion blasts through the roof of the magma chamber and the whole thing collapses, you get a caldera. That’s what happened here. So there’s an enormous crater you can actually see. There aren’t many like it. And this one’s hot. It’s been erupting off and on since ’09.”

  “Fuck, I should have brought my good telescopic.”

Butch and George were the last two off the panga, not long after Jones sprinted away to find Elena’s group. Tall, brawny, macho men, high school football players, sport lovers, facile with equipment, easy with pain, the two of them had snapped right into the big man bond. Bulky and broad, Butch tucked his wavy gray hair under a baseball cap, the bill tipped backwards over his neck, making his face look round as a soccer ball. Everything about Butch ballooned, his personality, his patter, his paunch; even his features were voluminous, like a sly cartoonist had taken Greek idealism to extremes. Equally big, though with angular muscles, George had a smooth, spadelike face, bland classical features, a pate thick with straight hair the color of bamboo, broken by a cowlick sticking up like a cactus from the crown. Smart but introverted, except for the odd, charismatic fascination, he made little impression on anyone unless they saw him in action. Wanting time to think, George took off by himself. Butch wouldn’t make anything of it, he knew. Men gave you that.  

The black volcanic rock cleaved into serpentine fissures, swirled into labyrinthine patterns, as if great art were organically linked to great pain. Blades of basalt — sharp, pointed, primal — spiked upward like natural weapons. How good it would feel to crush his hand on a piece, let its shards pierce through skin, tendon, muscle, making his own wounds tangible, bearable. Beautiful, dangerous rock: if George were to collect anything, it would be that black hard lava rock. 

Along the hidden trail, he spotted a lava lizard, sunning itself on a rock. As it raised its head and torso to peer around, George realized it wasn’t perched on a rock but on the head of an iguana. Immediately, it struck an attitude of defiance. “I dare you to take me on,” it radiated, its barely six-inch body projecting a dinosaur-sized confidence that tickled George. The little lizard roamed on fallen logs, low branches, rocks and pebbles, inhabiting the bottom level of ground life, yet there it was, lifting its head like a king. Beautiful creature, its speckled hide brightened by a yellow patch at the throat, indicating maleness. A female’s would be red. Not valuable as a species, lava lizards were sold as rare pets or medicines. 

He could see Jones, bending close to examine one, wanting to touch it. Was she the incognito smuggler? Flirting to find out what he was up to? The possibility made him shiver. Ecuadorian jails were not pleasant places. Better the SuperMax: for all its cruelty, it was clean and well lit. Her mouth was moving and it dawned on him that she was talking to the lizard, relating. Stepping up, he could hear her ask, had he had enough to eat, toasty sun to keep him warm, was he okay with her being so close or did humans make him feel unsafe? She was a seeker, he realized; she knew creatures could sense relationship and she offered herself. It was beautiful and lonely and, not for the first time, he wondered what had happened to her. 

From nowhere, Butch was all over her lizard with his mammoth lenses. Whirling, she reached out, grabbed his big lens and wiggled it. As she tugged it away from the lizard, a mischievous grin lit up her face. Butch laughed and said something in a teasing way. How George longed to joke with her like that, to be as outgoing as Butch. Guiding her by the shoulders, Butch positioned her near the lizard and started to shoot a series of pictures. 

Striding up came Butch’s unpleasant acquaintance, Zeke. There he stood, leaning over that lava lizard like it were the vein of a motherlode. Jones chose to ignore him, but he wasn’t interested in her reaction. It was Butch who drew him. Zeke made a crack about how many lizards appeared in his steamy Mississippi backyard. 

“My wife doesn’t like them.” Zeke’s voice sounded remote, unconnected to his physical being. “I don’t imagine she’ll care for this one either.” He was right. Callie-Mae, bare-midriffed in between tight white capris and a halter top, walked right by without a second glance. Zeke couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was pretty in a fading way, George thought, but scrawny and affected and scrawny of spirit too. He felt sorry for Zeke, loving that one so much. 

 He ducked along the trail, putting distance between himself and the joking threesome as he headed towards the sea. On a promontory jutting over the slapping aqua waves, he spotted three Galapagos cormorants. Their heads tapered into long thin beaks and they had elegant bodies, but dominating everything were their distorted wings. Short, stunted, misshapen, the ugly appendages were spread out like circus exhibits. From their crooked bones dangled sparse feathers: stubby little plumes that had never adapted to the water and had to be hung out like laundry in the sun to dry. Shapely birds, beautiful in their regular avian features, their shrunken wings made them look like big, awkward critters. George identified with them. They had made peace with their brokenness. The cormorants had lost the use of their wings in order to swim. Though he had to admit, the change had taken them a long time – about two million years. He hoped his own would be a little faster. 

The younger Chilean boy was hopping around and flapping his arms like a cormorant, only at about twice the speed, while his older brother made fun of him. Their riotous laughter eddied around the rocks. Trotting up, Butch flapped his arms with them, his big jiggling body and stubby bent arms making the people who had gathered laugh out loud. Jones materialized at George’s side. 

 They watched the cormorants dive into the water and George inadvertently gasped. Fast little buggers, they were as graceful in the water as they were ungainly on land. 

Next to him, Jones murmured, “Never.” 

“Me either,” he said.

“You a pilot?”

He nodded. “Small craft. And helicopters. You?”

She laughed. “Just ultralights. Couldn’t resist them.”

“They’re birds,” he said, because in them you flew slow and close to the ground, your cockpit open to the air. 

“As close as I can come,” she said.

“A real adventurer.”

The light burst of her laugh held a surprising note of self-mockery. “Not a hope,” she said. “Scared all the time.”

He wanted to say me too, but his fear wasn’t of physical things. It was of the sleepless nights when he wanted to slither out of his jangling skin or lance his amygdala so it would heal him or kill him.

 One of the cormorants returned to stand in the mellowing afternoon sunlight, his backlit silhouette a dark sculpture against the amber sky. As fellow travelers snapped pictures of the bird and each other, George scanned what they carried. No one had a pack big enough to hold a large, drugged bird. 

The cormorant-watchers dwindled, stragglers wandering off. Butch was gone, probably doing a photo shoot of exotic wildlife. Zeke had scrammed too, his showy wife hanging out with their daughter as though they were sisters. Granny Candace was gone. Hugh, the young actor. His mother Barb, the South Carolina girl with the double mastectomy and the radiant glow of someone still alive who thought they were dying.

George came upon the two of them quietly. They were stooping over a big marine iguana that looked like the one the group had watched earlier, doing his territorial strut. His reptilian head had thrust forward and back like a sword, making the spikes of his external spine threaten. His feet cake-walked, his legs using their odd curl to pull like a swimmer, his slow gait accelerating to a sprint as he asserted his rights.

Now he lay sunk on a rock, sunning himself in preparation for the cold night. Barb stroked his scaly hot skin, cooing in a way not meant as discourse but as pacifier. A net in Hugh’s hand poised over the iguana. Barb shoved something into its mouth, a tranquilizer of some kind. Squatting with her butt resting on her heels, she hummed a lullaby. Her son stood over her, an arm on her hot back, the other holding the net.

George bided his time. It was the act he wanted to film, not the prelude. Hugh carried a pack that George didn’t remember seeing. 

The wait wasn’t long. The iguana’s body slackened and sagged into a limp heap on the rock. Slipping the net over his prey, Hugh transported the creature to a cavity to hold him, plucked him from the net and placed him in the pack. George couldn’t see the interior, but he guessed what it would look like: an amateur’s idea of a smuggler’s pack: velcro straps, compartments for food, water, prey and drugs. Whatever it had would be better than the way black market smugglers crammed conscious prey so tightly into containers they often died of oxygen deprivation, never mind starvation. George filmed the entire kidnap sequence, taking a closeup when Hugh strapped the iguana into immobility and closed up the pack. A look of elation crossed his sullen face and he leapt up, pulling his mother with him. 

We did it. We did it, he sang. His quivering tenor was beautiful, completely on pitch. He threw his arms around his mother and they danced, whirling in slow circles around the rocks and the dirt. Then she kissed him, a motherly kiss, yet one of deep affection, creepy at the edges. This too, George recorded on film.

As the panga bounced along the choppy water back to the ship, George thought sadly about what he’d seen — how easily nice people slid into forgetting that taking a wild animal home was kidnapping not rescue, harmful not kind. Not even sand was legitimate to transport from island to island. Take nothing; leave nothing: that was the eco-ethos of the Galapagos. It was also the law.

That night, Barb looked radiant. Wearing a yellow sundress, shawl draped over her shoulders, she sat in beside her father, up front so his eighty-something ears could hear the naturalist briefing. Hugh, sullen as ever, slouched in a seat on youth row along the back wall. In his hand was a cocktail in a tall glass, not the first of the night, it seemed, given the way his head lolled in and out of sleep. 

 

George conked out for a half hour before the first snorkel outing, stumbling in just as everyone was suiting up. Twenty-nine confused passengers zigzagged around, trying to find the right mask, wet suit, flippers and mesh bag. Everyone except Granny Candace who hated water, never even waded. Lots of time alone on the ship for her, George thought. 

The size was chalked onto every black neoprene suit in big letters. His own was an XXL, the photographer, the same height but fatter, got an XXXL. The girl picked out an L for herself, but they gave her an XL instead – big ass, they indicated, drawing butt silhouettes in the air with their hands, smiling. Her good-natured laugh rocked out, but he saw spots of pink come and go on her face. George liked the bigness of Jones: the broad shoulders, lopsided breasts, the layer of fat making her strong build soft and curvy, like the nudes in the paintings and sculptures of the world’s great museums. Outdoors picnicking or bathing on the beach, as though she’d stepped out of a Renoir or a Rubens, that was how he pictured her. 

The neoprene suit made him feel like a big, floppy fish, bulky and insensate, too clumsy to catch up to anyone in spite of his strength. Equally irritating was the mask; the tight suction of its grip and the long upright breathing tube hampered his vision and speed. Anyone who intended to snatch prey underwater would have to be damn good. Still he eyeballed the packs. Hugh hadn’t bothered to bring a pack. Butch carried a big one stuffed with photography gear. The leaders wore diver first aid packs, imprinted with bright red crosses, large enough to carry a significant amount of things. Both guides had money problems: Darwin was divorced with two households and three kids to support; Elena was caring for a mother crippled by arthritis. George wore a sizeable pack himself, equipped with rescue gear and weapons.

Snorkelers all around George climbed onto the inflated sides of the panga to get into the water. The Chilean boys stood up and leapt in. The raggedy blond — Hugh’s mother — and her daughter, twinned like fish in tiger striped wetsuits, dangled their finned feet in the water and slid in. Butch plonked overboard like a whale, while Jones, who had partnered with him, tested her mask with deep breaths before clambering over the side. Knowing Butch would forget everything but underwater photography, George planned to keep an eye on her. No one noticed he hadn’t partnered; no one would. He knew these tour guides. They would watch everyone for trouble, fatigue, pleasure, but not for partners. Though he hated water since It happened, George was a good swimmer, swift and quiet. His own whoosh echoed in his ears.

He watched the girl first. She’d frozen when she got in, churning her legs to tread water, her breathing irregular. The panic of the solo heart, he thought. He watched her force herself to relax until she breathed easily through the snorkel, began to glide through the water, dove down to take a closer look. Then he swam away.

It was beautiful that first day. Great schools of surgeonfish, yellow and black and white striped fish, moving in dense groups that he could swim right through. A blue fish, turquoise-blue with flashes of silver, a big guy, a loner, skimming close to the rocks. A shark, black and sleek and elegant less than an arm’s reach away. The penguins, tiny versions of their Arctic cousins, darting around, playful as children. Children. She’d been pregnant when It happened. 

He could see Jones swimming fast after a sea turtle. She was a strong swimmer in spite of her fear, and she was rapidly closing the gap. But she was alone, her snorkeling partner absorbed in his passion. Radical currents lurked in these waters, able to pull anyone a long way in a nanosecond. George reversed direction and sped after her. His breath whooshed through the tube and he hardly noticed, his concentration was so intense. She stayed near the sea turtle for a long time, watching its grace and skill in the water. Its flippers like wings, its domed back a home, a yurt, a meditative space of deep patterned green. George felt a sudden longing to be inside it.

A second turtle rose out of the water near the first and they mated, the big male cambered on top of the smaller, more agile female, holding onto her with his large fins, his extra long tail inserted between her legs for grip. Cleaved together, they drifted, floating upwards towards the surface as their energies went into mating. Jones drifted with them, using her limbs like fins when she needed to, surfacing only to catch her breath. She didn’t take photos; she just watched, her wet suit raggedy at the neck, her big shapely butt protruding, the zipper closing along her vulnerable underbelly. A surge of desire to mate with her there underwater, two turtles in their black neoprene shells, hit him, electrifying after so long of not wanting. He wanted to flee, but she couldn’t stop watching the turtles mating until he finally swam up to her, grabbed her arm and held it tight, pointing far in the distance towards the cove where the others were swimming. Come, he motioned. She nodded, signaling thumbs up to let him know she was ok. 

He pushed her ahead of him to keep her safe from the currents, his big hand encircling her butt cheek through the neoprene, slipping between her legs, where it wanted to be. She turned then, her dark hair a swirl of Medusa strands, her features under the mask distorted — the nose fat as a sausage, the bulging eyes sparkling with mischief — communicating joy. Yes, she was saying. Yes to him, yes to life. He pulled his hand away. 

He followed her back to the group, then paddled to and fro to survey the others. They were bunched around the tiny penguins, who were diving and playing in the water. One of the passengers had transformed. From a nondescript wimp with a self-effacing droop to his bland handsome face, Lark had turned into an amphibious sea creature. Freed of his wetsuit, his skin gleamed iridescent as he swam round and round the penguins, somersaulting in front of them, his hands and feet waving in the same dance as their fins. The penguins swam with him, darting all around, delighted, the raft of them, like kids playing tag.

Lark’s wife was nowhere near as comfortable in the water as he. She swam by sheer will, her body dragging like a log her mind towed behind her. Swimming up to her, Lark flexed his body into a playful arch, sensual and fluid as the water itself. The thin trail of bubbles from his mask effervesced like hope. 

In the panga, Butch spat water from his mouth and banged it out of his ears. The psychiatrist gulped air and performed breathing exercises. Not enough nerve in her to be a smuggler, George thought, remembering how Jones had gotten through her panic.

He liked the psychiatrist though; her warmth reminded him of the one he’d seen after he nearly jumped off a bridge. She’d given him so much empathy the swooshing sound, diagnosed as a form of tinnitus, had disappeared for days at a time. Yet the empathy felt slightly misplaced, almost critical. It wasn’t quite accurate, her therapeutic absolution, because even when his guilt was stripped away, his sense of responsibility remained. Responsibility like his was existential. It didn’t matter how things actually went down. Whoever could understand that would be the person he could trust with his tainted, broken heart.

The guides motioned their groups back to the pangas. Elena kept her group tight; Darwin allowed stragglers. His group would be the magnet for scoundrels.

For the post-snorkel snacks and drinks, George sat with Jones. In a sheer pouf of a cover over a ruby red bikini, every curve of her showed, her nipples popping out like two raw pearls. “What’s your first name,” he said abruptly.

“Gili. Try it and I won’t answer.” She gave him a roguish look. “It means happiness.” 

Effervescence bubbled between them. It pushed him right out of his seat, as if he’d sat on a stingray. Everyone he touched died. 

 

He tried to avoid the dinner crowd by going late. Hallooed by Butch, he found himself at Jones’ table again, seated right beside her. Her hair was blowsy and frizzy and she had no makeup on; she looked beautiful and natural, at home in the universe. Her conversation with Butch stopped abruptly when George arrived.

“You watched them too,” she said, referring to the sight only the two of them shared. “I was trying to explain the magic of it to Dummy here.” Her smile sparkled at George like a whitecap in sunlight and joy popped out of his eyes before he could hood them. 

His head bobbed while his legs tensed, his body relaxing and resisting at the same time. 

“They never uncoupled.” Awe softened her voice. “They mate as slow as they move. So unpretentious.” 

“No long courtship.”

“They just find each other and link.” She shook her head, in respect as much as reverence. 

“Not a turtle sound made. They just know.” 

“The simplicity.”

“The ease.” 

The engines started up and they journeyed to a secluded place to anchor for the night.

 

After dark had fallen and the tuckered passengers retired to their cabins, George heard the sound of the panga preparing to leave. The ship was moored not far from shore and the tide was rolling in. Throwing a jacket over his clothes, he hurried down. Only two people were aboard, Pedro and Jones. Not even a guide. Grabbing a life vest, George jumped the distance onto the dinghy as they paddled away. Jones was all geared up, tiny pro of a camera, big carry pack, warm clothes. She gave him a furious look.

“What do you think you’re doing,” she asked him, sotto voce but outraged.

“I could ask you the same.”

“Don’t you know?” The incredulity in her voice bordered on contempt. “She’s going to lay her eggs tonight. Pedro is taking me.”

 “Impossible!” Sad that the facts would ruin her fancy, he mumbled about how it would take four to six weeks before the oviparous turtle would be ready to lay her eggs. 

 “Not her,” she said, sliding into yearning so tender it seemed to destabilize reality. “But her. A symbolic her. It’s the height of the season. Someone will be laying her eggs. And I’m going to imagine it’s her. Because it gives me pleasure. Because the story in my head doesn’t hurt anyone. Most of all, because we saw her together. I don’t care who it really is. For me, it’s her. And if you spoil it, if you make a fucking sound that scares her back into the water, I will . . .” but she couldn’t come up with a threat. 

 From the happiest way to see an experience, she’d built a story. In a flash of borrowed clarity, his fog of culpability dissipated along with the story line he’d fabricated from a constellation of shock, horror, despair. An alternative story burst forth: he learns to fly, buys a small plane, marries a woman who co-pilots, cherishes him just as he is. And he understood that the cruelty of that night had spun entirely from his wife. 

 And then it all evaporated. 

“I came for this,” Jones whispered. She told him about the caves in the South of France: Chauvet; Lascaux; Font de Gaume. How when she’d seen the beautiful art work rendered with perspective, precision, movement, color, rich in spiritual essences, she knew she had glimpsed the product of an evolved culture of earth that had died out millennia ago. “And I knew we’d survive. Even if we killed each other now, if the planet survived, we would come round again. We could become extinct for millennia – as a civilization — but we’d rise again. And it gave me peace.

“The sea turtles are like those caves,” she went on. “They’re so old. Dinosaur-old and still here. It takes them so much effort to reproduce. She’ll lay a hundred eggs and maybe one will survive . . . Shh. Don’t wear shoes. Take off your pants if they rattle. Take off everything if you must.”

She stepped down. The night air was salty and cold, and she wore only shorts and a loose sweatshirt. They’d made a wet landing so the panga would not crunch against the sand. 

They waded ashore silently. The air grew colder and bumps popped out all over her arms and legs. They sat on a rock and waited. She wouldn’t talk, not even whisper, just searched with her eyes. The night brightened as his pupils adjusted to it. Away from the water, they could see the stars adazzle in the black equatorial sky. 

Suddenly her torso stiffened and the sound he hated, the sound of a body swooshing through water, cut through the tide. 

And there she was, a giant sea turtle not a hundred feet from them, pulling herself onto the sand, exhausted from the effort of carrying all the egg weight inside her. The sight was magical, thrilling, this lone prehistoric sea creature, using her flippers to drag herself painfully, slowly, across the sand to find a place to nest. 

Jones adjusted her camera on her forehead, filming in silence as she traced the action with her head. Giving the turtle a hefty lead, she shadowed her, signaling George to do the same. George trailed along in her wake, shortening his stride to match hers. If the turtle sensed them behind her, she would not nest; she would turn and head back to the sea, wait for a safer time. Everything was a predator to her now, a threat to the survival of her young. 

When she found a place in the soft sand, she started to dig, throwing the sand with her flippers until she had a hole about three feet deep. The depth was a serious calibration on her part: too shallow, incubating in warmer sand, and they’d all be female; too deep, in the colder sand, and they’d all be male. Jones moved closer when she began to lay her eggs, for she had nested and would not leave now until it was done. 

 Eggs the size of ping pong balls dropped out of her, forming a pile. Dozens of them, a hundred and more by the time she finished. Weary as she was, she blanketed them in sand, then flung sand about to disguise the nesting site. The odds were against the embryos hatching, against the hatchlings making it from the nest to the sea: the sand was prone to cave-ins; mammals dug up the eggs for dinner; frigatebirds, hawks and herons scooped up the babes as they struggled towards the sea; if they made it to the water, sharks and fish hunted them. Even with a clutch as large as hers, the likelihood for the survival of any of her offspring was slight. Hauling her depleted postpartum body and the house she carried on her back by sagging flippers towards her watery home, she dragged herself toward the sea. 

At last she made it, slipped into the waves, let their saline buoyance spirit her lightened body away, toward a place she could rest. It was hours later.

Gili Jones lifted her face towards George Parker, her eyes aglow in the starlight, and pressed a finger against his lips. She wanted to hold the experience in its raw form, not talk it into a shape. George gave her a thumbs up. It was his way too.

 

Two nights later, close to dawn, he heard the sound of another panga. 

The oars were so silent they could hardly be distinguished from the lapping water, especially over the hum of the engines as the tour boat motored through the dark towards their next destination. No one would expect a panga to be out at a precarious time like this. George almost didn’t believe it himself.

 He took up a position where no one could see him. From there, he could make out two figures, tall and short, aboard the dinghy. Sounds drifted across the water.

As they neared the stern, they fell into silence. Short tethered up while Tall slung a bulging pack over his back. If it hadn’t been dangerous, their furtive movements, exaggerated as an old-time pantomime, would have made George laugh out loud. The mystery smuggler leapt like a landlubber from the panga to the docking deck, wobbling before he found his balance. Once stable, he drew himself up into a lofty stance. His hair was tucked into a bandana tied backwards, his face covered by a wrap. His grandiose bearing bore no resemblance to anyone on board. 

Then he made a mistake. He tore off his bandana and wrap to inhale deep breaths of fresh air. A pro would have waited.

The difference was shocking. It wasn’t that he was off George’s radar; he was a prime suspect. It was the way his disguise had changed his character. On board, around the others, he bumbled, slouched, slept through excursions, complained about his arthritis, the food, the guides, the Chilean boys. He seemed dumb rather than dangerous, insensible rather than cruel. On his own, he came across as confident, if overbearing. Had he not removed his bandannas, George would have taken the witness stand and sworn to they were two different people. Though when he’d said buena suerte, amigo to the driver, his voice — his deep, loud blare — should have been a clue.

 It was Zeke, the Mississippi boy with the flirty wife and the lesbian daughter; Butch’s friend, the so-called independent film producer. So-called because when George had checked, it turned out his films were porn, produced on the cheap, sold on the dark internet. The whole sordid business made George wonder if Zeke trafficked mostly in humans, the young girls and guys in the films. It was a neat explanation for his seafaring deficit and his amateur m.o. with the animals. Watching him skulk down the corridor, George noticed something alarming about his backpack. Though small, it was a waterproof concealed carry tactical assault Molle pack — a Molly pack — that came with a holster whose Velcro fastener allowed a quick draw. Like the kind NATO and the US military used. Maybe not a pro, Zeke, but a dangerous man, for sure.

 

The next day, George skipped the snorkel to search Zeke’s quarters. Ship policy regulations stated that all stateroom doors were to remain unlocked, but Zeke had excepted himself from the rules. Hardly a lock existed that George couldn’t pick, but keeping watch over his shoulder slowed him down. He didn’t like lurking in the corridor, didn’t like feeling like a crook. 

In moments, he was in. Triumph, relief and adrenaline raced through him, succeeded by the curiosity that fueled his work. For a small tour boat, Zeke’s was a large, luxurious stateroom. No surveillance equipment jumped out at George, but he scanned the room with his laser detector to be sure. A couple of drawers and a section of the closet were locked. Again the unbolting, the picking. The drawers contained cages filled with lava lizards, land and marine iguanas, as if they were planning an alternate Galapagos. The Galapagos of Mississippi. 

Seeing these beautiful wild creatures drugged, strapped and caged after watching them run and prance and fight revolted George; little did he loathe as much as the deliberate cruelty of animal traders. In the bottom drawer, packed in a habitat of sand, lay dozens of sea turtle eggs. Sea turtle eggs! How it infuriated him after seeing how hard the mama turtle worked to lay them, how exhausted she was when she hauled herself back to the sea; after watching all that with Gili. George inscribed markings on every kidnapped reptile and egg, took photos, DNA samples, gathered all the evidence he could. He wouldn’t charge for any of this; it was beyond the scope of his mission. 

As he began to install surveillance gear, he heard a key turn in the lock of the suite next door. The existence of the key meant housekeeping could come into this suite, would be here next, meant the Brady’s had an arrangement with the crew. Was it collaboration, he wondered. If so, at what level? The closet lock was a hard one to open. His hands were clumsy, his brain split between two tracks. A bribe to housekeeping? A tie to the Captain? The lock gave way with a satisfying pop. He swung the door open. A large cage, empty of prey. Empty, period. The vacuum cleaner next door switched off. He heard footsteps and the sound of a flush. They wouldn’t do much in the bathroom; water was scarce on a boat. Closing the closet door, he locked it back up. The cage could be for anything, but he didn’t have time to search for paraphernalia that would give clues. His hand was on the door lever when he realized he hadn’t relocked the drawers. Careless, he thought, unusually careless. He tucked the thought away to consider later, fastened the drawers. Footsteps squeegeed along the tile floor of the next suite. He hustled out the door, not quite soundlessly given the loud click of the lock. As he sidled around the corner out of the alcove of doorways, he heard the other door handle whir, a housekeeping crew member step across the corridor and turn the key in Zeke’s lock. He leaned his back straight against the wall and breathed, letting his body relax, his heart slow. That both suites had been locked meant the daughter and her wife were in on it too. So innocent and so in love, the two women: the thought saddened him. The daughter Francine was a jealous one, though; hatred flared in her eyes when people spent too much time with her mate. 

As he climbed down the stairs from the private suites, George bumped into Jones coming up. No, he thought. You can’t be part of this. You just can’t.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped, rattled.

“Exploring the ship,” she said. “I thought this would be a good time. With the staterooms unlocked and everyone gone, I can see how folks live.”

A travel writer: he’d forgotten. Snooping gave her material. The dope on people made her pieces sell, she’d told him. God, he thought, she had no idea what jeopardy she might be in. “Drink?” he said. It came out of his mouth without stopping by his judgment. 

 “You bet,” she said. He followed her to the bar.

The two of them took seats far from non-snorkelers, and he bought drinks, a cappuccino for her, a tonic for himself. The pull between them was multidimensional, unstoppable. Like it had been with Her. How hard it was to say the names of the women he loved, he noticed. Women. Plural. 

“You?” she said, taking a generous gulp of cappuccino. “What were you doing there?” Her tone was curious, edgy. 

 Suspicion was part of the job, he reminded himself, feeling its nip. He’d been fooled occasionally, but not enough to change his trust in his instincts. 

“Exploring, like you.” 

 She looked into him with eyes that knew and he felt this sudden urge to tell her the whole truth, all of it: those eyes, those lovely, beautiful, accepting eyes.

She put her drink down and started to get up.

“Hey,” he said, gesturing at her half-full cup.

“No point,” she said. “If you aren’t going to tell the truth, what’s the point?”

He guided her into her seat by the hand. He promised he’d tell her the truth. He asked why she’d come.

“There’s no bullshit here,” she said. “The people might, sure. But the place is honest. All I want to do is be with the wildlife. It makes me happy.”

She had a story, but she didn’t need to tell it. She was on the route back to happiness and she was inviting him to join her. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even open his mouth.

She shook her head, as if she’d heard him. “I told you what I was doing, Snooping. Poking uninvited into people’s private lives. Finding stories. Of course there’s more. But that’s all I’m asking from you. One step forward. One piece of the truth.” Her eyes blazed like flora after a cloudburst, luminous with the clarity that comes after pain. “What were you doing,” she asked again.

When was the last time he’d told anyone the truth? Not since Clare died. Omigod, he’d said it. Clare: rhymes with air, dare. Fair. One step forward. 

Gili, rhymes with silly, she said to people, if she told them at all, preferring the neutral Jones. To him, she said, means happiness. That light irony in her voice. 

“I was snooping too,” he said. “Investigating, actually. I’m here for a reason. And it isn’t pleasure.” 

Her eyes turned serious, deepening her presence. Their raw edge made his own pain rise to the surface. She asked why he was here.

“To save wildlife.” He’d never heard himself put it that way: she stimulated something fundamental in him. “There’s a huge international traffic in rare species and the Galapagos is full of them. Smugglers come in droves. They’re not kind to animals, to say the least.”

Revulsion quivered across her face. “Who buys animals treated badly,” she muttered.

“Collectors, zoos, healers, rare medicine peddlers, eco rescue groups. Museums after they die. You’d be surprised.”

 Questions about the business poured out of her: How do they catch the wildlife? What do they do with them? How do they treat them? He explained the best he could, telling her how for larger species, they took the eggs because they were easier to transport. How rare species and mating pairs commanded high prices. How flightless cormorants were prized for their deformed wings, an adaptation that made them extremely rare. How smugglers drugged and caged their contraband, but were usually too ignorant to know how to care for them, even if they wanted to keep them primed for sale. And those were the good ones. In the Asian markets, like Bangkok or Jakarta, they didn’t bother with such niceties. They just piled their valuable plunder into any old sack, let them fend without food or water or a decent amount of air to breathe, and whoever died, died; they sold the survivors. But he didn’t tell her what he’d just seen. He didn’t tell her about the sea turtle eggs. 

“So were you searching everybody’s rooms? Or just the Brady’s?”

 “Just them. Though they’re not the only possible traffickers. No one big league; they use their own ships. But there are always some petty ones – small time crooks. Impulse snatchers: the kind who think some creature they see would make an exotic pet or that they’re doing a rescue. On this trip it’s the woman from South Carolina and her son. They’ll be shocked when they find themselves arrested at the dock. They have no idea the magnitude of what they’ve done.” 

“They’ll go to jail?”

“No. But they’ll get a scare and a hefty fine.”

She leaned towards him, intent. The depth of her caring pulled him closer. He heard the swoosh and started to draw back but couldn’t go past an inch or two. She was offering him life and in spite of his resolution to stay away from her, he was going to take it. But first he had to tell her one more thing. His diaphragm heaved out a giant sigh. Connecting talk with meaning was a habit he’d foregone.

“I’m not here on a big investigation. Just to check the safety of a specimen of interest to a collector I know. “ Aloud, the job would sound ridiculous. A mythical being. A billionaire willing to shell out his whole fortune. Because he wanted to be healed of aging. And live forever. Who wouldn’t pay billions?

 But it was a risk. Umina didn’t heal everyone. She picked and chose, and no one had yet penetrated her criteria, even with multivariate analyses and ultra-sophisticated computer programs. It was like judgment day, consulting her, George thought.

“Hey,” Jones said. “Yoohoo, George? Hello-o?” 

A few hearty head shakes and he pulled himself out of the thought morass. 

“The job,” she prompted. “The collector and the specimen.”

 “Well, there’s a giant tortoise said to be mythical, living on Santa Cruz.” His voice tottered like an old man with a cane, so much effort did it take to make the words climb up his vocal chords and stump out his mouth. “According to the records, one like her only appears every few generations, that’s how rare she is. People come from all over the world to see her. They bask in her healing powers and, if all the research is genuine, and it appears to be — it’s replicable — they go away cured.” 

“Is that the celeb tortoise we’re seeing on the last day?”

“Yup. Umina. She’s the most valuable specimen in the whole archipelago. Probably in the whole world. My client has a contract to purchase her after death, and he’s prepaid a very large sum. I knew Brady’d been sneaking out nights and coming back with loaded packs. So I searched his room, yeah, but it was on my own ticket. I didn’t expect to find anything relevant to my assignment and I didn’t.” He paused, debating if he should pull her into this.

“Did you see anything in the daughter’s room?”

“Their rooms were locked,” she said. “I couldn’t get in.” 

“Thank God. They’re dangerous. And they might have alarms, booby traps.”

“Pun intended?” From her seat she tapped the floor like an old-time fiddler, raising her feet high in a boobie mating dance, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

He caught her amusement and scrunched his mouth into a mock beak. She leaned forward and beak kissed him. Passion blazed between them. 

He pulled away. “Did you know Bobo or bubu is Spanish for stupid? The Spanish explorers thought boobies were stupid because they didn’t run away. People who get caught in booby traps are the same. Fools, stupid fools.” Like he felt about himself. Like the stare on her face reflected.

But his worry wasn’t foolish. He knew this business, knew danger when he smelled it. “I’m serious,” he said. “Stay away from their rooms. Be careful where you snoop.”