Sleeping with the Fishes (10 page)

She prayed he knew how the toilet worked.

"I see the problem. Okay, you just turn this one here, and turn this one here…" She leaned in, felt his arms slip around her waist, sighed, adjusted the water level, grabbed the shower head, and squirted it at
his
head.

"
Aaggghhkk
!
Very well, Little Rika, I will desist." He groped blindly and she handed him a towel. While he blotted, he added, "For now."

"Right.
Well, you're all set up for a while. In fact, it was awfully nice of Thomas to let you stay in his suite—"

"I am aware of my responsibility to my host," he sulked. "I cannot help it if I preferred a different host."

"Great. Work on helping it. I'm going."

"Going?"
Artur
looked (and sounded) alarmed. "But there is sufficient room for you to stay."

"Yeah, finding a place to sleep isn't the problem."

"Then what is?"

She gave him a look.

He smiled. "Ah. That."

"Yeah.
That. And so I bid you fond farewell, sweet prince."

"The words seem correct," he said suspiciously, "but the tone—"

"Can't put one over on you, handsome."

She turned and walked out, ignoring his hollered, "So you do find me pleasing to the eye?"

Meanwhile, Thomas had emptied his pockets. She suppressed a smile; he carried around more junk than a little kid.
Cell phone, spare change (from several countries), money clip, string
(string?)
, earring (?), broken pencil, and T-pass.
The debris was scattered all along a table she suspected was brought over on the
niña
. He was jabbing at his cell phone but looked up when she walked in.

"Taking off?"

"Yes."

"Already?"

"Finally."

"I'll walk you to the door."

"The door's six feet away. I can find it."

"Now, what kind of a host would I be?" He hurried to her side.
"Uh-oh."

"Name of all the gods, now what?"

"Check it out." He held something yellow over her head. "Mistletoe!" he said brightly, leaning in for a kiss. He caught her on the bottom of her chin, since she was looking up.

"That," she informed him, "is a leaf from a maple tree."

"It is?" the scientist asked. He yelped and leapt out of the way as she jerked the door open. "Aw, don't leave already. It's early. Hey,
Artur
! She's jamming!"

"I am aware," the prince's voice drifted out.

"See you tomorrow," Fred said and thought, to her credit, that she deserved full points for saying it without groaning.

Jonas got to the NEA just in time to hear
Artur's
roar.

"I detest this puttering about! I insist on action at once!"

Whoa
. Jonas practically scampered over to the jellies exhibit, where Fred had promised the three of them would be when the NEA opened the next morning. He waved his pass at the elderly woman staffing the cash register and ran past the penguins, his nostrils flaring at the fish-poop smell he knew he wouldn't even notice five minutes from now.

Before he could triangulate their position from
Artur's
scream, he was waylaid by a little blonde cutie waving a schedule of events at him.

"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 "Nan-
tucket
" 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.

lib

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."

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.