At
times, she found that more disturbing than the tales of his
perversion she'd heard from Victor. The period of forced coexistence
on the island had let her see that beneath his apparently calm,
disdainful surface lay a churning volcano of desires to be the best,
to be number one.
That's
the sole purpose of every single thing he does or says.
She
realized obsession was eating away at him, and not only from inside.
He had developed new tics; his lips and right leg twitched
convulsively whenever he sat at the computer; his naturally anemic
skin tone had grown even paler; and the bags hanging under his eyes
were so big they could have been nests.
What's
the matter with him? What is he up to?
He
was so fixated that she felt sorry for him. And she knew that feeling
even the tiniest speck of pity for Valente Sharpe meant she was at
least halfway to earning a place in heaven, maybe well on her way to
having done so. But she'd grown so used to his presence that she did
feel sorry for him.
At
least until that day she met him on the beach.
On
the afternoon of Wednesday, August 10, one day after she'd handed in
her first attempt at a calculation for the Jurassic time strand,
Elisa went down to the beach. Nadja wasn't there yet. In her place on
the sand stood a white statue that someone had clothed with a few
rags that flapped in the wind.
When
she realized who it was, she was dumbstruck.
Valente
stood stock-still. In fact, he was petrified. And he was staring at
something. It must have been the sea, because she looked in the same
direction and all she could see was a glorious horizon of green
waves, blue sky, and clouds. He didn't even realize that she was
there.
"Hey,"
she ventured. "What's up?"
That
seemed to shake him from his stupor, and he turned around. Elisa felt
a chill run down her spine. For a brief moment, the expression on his
face reminded her of an old classmate of hers, a physics major who
was schizophrenic and had to drop out of school altogether. She was
pretty sure he didn't even recognize her.
In
a split second, though, his face changed completely and the old
Ricardo Valente Sharpe peered down at her.
"Well,
looky here," he murmured, his voice hoarse. "If it isn't
little Elisa, the prick tease. What's up, Elisa? How you doin',
Elisa?"
"Listen,
asshole," she said, quickly switching from fear to anger. "I
realize we're both under a lot of pressure, but I'm not going to let
you stand there and insult me. I've had about enough. I'm serious. We
work together, like it or not. And if you insult me again, I'll file
an official complaint with Blanes and Marini and get you thrown off
the project."
"Insult
you?"
The sun was in Valente's face, and he squinted as if he were sucking
lemons. "What are you calling an insult, sweetheart? I'm merely
stating fact. I can see your body through that T-shirt, and I can
practically see up your shorts, and it gets me hard; that's teasing
my prick, as far as I'm concerned. A raised temperature and a sudden
stiffness in the male member, that's what I'm talking about. And it's
not my fault. That's like accusing me of saying that the first law of
thermodynamics applies to heat engines. I'll make an official note of
that, too. Wait, where do you think you're going?"
Valente
blocked her way.
"Let
me go," Elisa said, trying to dodge him.
"I
know where you're going. You're going to strip on the beach and
increase the temperature of my member even more. If you weren't such
a prick tease, you'd put on your bikini in your room, like your
friend, but since you're such a fucking prick tease you get naked
right here on the beach so we can all watch you. Isn't that right?"
Elisa
dodged him again. She was now incredibly sorry she'd wondered if he
was OK a minute ago. And it was about to get even worse.
He
stood in her way once more.
"So
you're going to report me for telling you what you technically and
scientifically are?" Suddenly, she realized that this wasn't one
of his jokes. Valente was livid, even more irate than her. "That
would be like me accusing you of something unthinkable, something
monstrous, like ... fantasizing about me when you jack off. Something
impossible..."
She
froze. All of a sudden, she had no desire to go for a swim, to be
with Nadja or anything else. She wasn't embarrassed or humiliated;
she was scared.
"It
would be like accusing me of bestiality just because I like your
tits," he continued in the same tone, as if it were all part of
the same joke. "You're such a drama queen. If you don't want to
hear the truth, then don't go asking for it..."
He
saw me. He must have seen me. But that's impossible. He's just saying
it.
She
tried to see through the mocking gleam in his eye to the truth, but
she couldn't. Two weeks had gone by since that night she'd been
touching herself in her room, and she was sure that nobody had seen
her.
But
then, how...?
"Let's
all just calm down," he said. "You think you've got the
solution, don't you, sweetheart? That all your calculations have paid
off. Well, then, let the rest of us dimwits do our work and stop
flaunting yourself around like the tease you are..."
He
turned and stalked off, leaving her standing there. Nadja arrived a
minute later, but she was gone by then. It was several days before
she felt like going back to the beach, and from then on she always
changed into her bikini in her room. She didn't bother telling her
friend what had made her change her routine.
Afterward,
when she looked back on things with some perspective, she saw that
she
had
been
a little dramatic. She considered Valente's attacks from a
competitive perspective and realized that it was clear he couldn't
stand
seeing
her get results before he did. What was more, she took him too
seriously; there was no need to shrink back in his presence. Valente
might seem like some indescribable, bizarre, freakish being, but when
it came right down to it, he was a total dick who happened to be
really smart and got off on trying to hurt her whenever he saw the
chance. But that was more because she let him than because he was so
great.
She
was sure that what he'd said was just bluster. There was no way
anyone could have seen her, not even through the peephole, and she'd
already cleared up the mystery of the footsteps. Mrs. Ross had been
down in the pantry that night; she'd told Elisa the next day. So that
was all cleared up. Valente was taking shots in the dark just to see
if he could rile her.
He'll
get over it. Maybe this will make him realize he'd be better off
spending his time working and not sleeping with his colleagues.
She
thought no more about it.
In
fact, she felt remarkably relaxed. Since she'd finished her
calculations, she slept like a log and had stopped seeing shadows and
hearing noises.
On
Thursday, August 18, the energy for the Jerusalem time strand was
placed on Blanes's desk on a clean sheet of paper. They set up the
experiment for the next day. After Craig and Marini obtained the
sample images and made them collide at the level of energy they'd
calculated, the whole team began to endure a nail-biting wait.
Elisa
was on cleaning duty, which had suffered some neglect over the past
few days, and she was glad to have something to do. She and Blanes
were in the kitchen together. Seeing Blanes wash dishes was not
something she ever thought she'd experience, especially back when she
was in his classes at Alighieri. But this was the kind of thing that
happened when you lived together on an island.
Suddenly,
there was silence. Several long faces stood in the kitchen doorway.
Colin Craig was the one who told them.
"Both
images diffused."
"Don't
cry," Marini tried to joke. "But that does mean you'll have
to go back to the drawing board and start calculating again."
No
one cried right then. But maybe alone, in their rooms, they did.
Elisa was sure they cried.
She
did.
And the next day, everyone had red-rimmed eyes, puffy faces, and no
desire to talk. Mother Nature seemed to be in mourning, too, and the
last days of August were filled with thick clouds and a warm,
driving, almost horizontal rain. It was monsoon season, Nadja said,
something a majority of the planet experienced. "The summer
months are when the southwest winds—the
hulhangu
—blow,
and when driving rain is almost a daily occurrence, like in the
Maldives." Elisa had never seen anything like it. It didn't look
like drops, but like strings. Millions of strings being pulled by
furious puppeteers and hammering down on rooftops, windows, walls. It
didn't patter; it sounded more like a low, guttural, constant snore.
Sometimes Elisa looked up and stared out the window, zombielike, at
the fury the elements were unleashing. She thought it accurately
reflected her state of mind.
The
first Monday in September, after an unpleasant argument with Blanes,
who upbraided her for working so slowly, she felt an odd, cloying
bitterness. She didn't cry. She didn't do anything at all. She just
sat motionless in front of the computer in Clissot's lab, thinking
she'd never get up again. Time passed. Maybe a few hours, she wasn't
really sure. And then she smelled perfume and felt a hand on her bare
shoulder, as soft as a leaf drifting down from a tree.
"Come,"
Nadja said.
If
she'd done anything else to try and convince her, if she'd hurled
abuse (like her mother) or tried reasoning with her (like her
father), Elisa would never have obeyed. But her smooth movements and
sweet voice cast a spell on her. She got up and followed her friend,
like one of the Pied Piper's rats. Nadja was wearing sturdy pants and
boots that looked too big.
"I
don't feel like going to the beach," Elisa said. "We're not
going to the beach."
She
led her to her room and pointed to a pile of clothes and another pair
of boots. Elisa laughed when she realized that the clothes actually
fit her pretty well.
"You
have a soldier's physique," Nadja said. "Mrs. Ross says
those boots and pants are for Carter's men."
Thus
disguised, she smeared on a strange-smelling lotion that Nadja called
"mosquito repellent"; Elisa thought it was just plain
repellent.
Then
they went outside and walked toward the heliport. It wasn't actually
raining, but she had the impression that the monsoons were just lying
in wait, camouflaged, biding their time. Elisa's lungs filled with
humidity and the smell of vegetation. The north winds brought in a
constant flow of quick-moving clouds that hid and uncovered the sun
every other second, producing an almost strobe-light effect.
They
left the heliport's landing pad behind. In front of the soldiers'
garrison, Carter stood talking to the Thai soldier, Lee, and the
Colombian, Mendez, who was on guard duty at the gate that led into
the jungle. Elisa liked Lee because he always smiled at her, but
Mendez was the one she spoke to most. Right then he was smiling
widely, his white teeth contrasting with his dark skin. She was no
longer as afraid of the soldiers as she had been. She'd realized that
beneath their metal and leather exteriors, they were just people. And
now, she tried to concentrate more on what was underneath, not on,
their uniforms.