Monstrous Beauty (3 page)

She laughed. “Or when you study for finals together and the girl is wearing a week-old sweatshirt and hasn’t showered in three days.”

Peter pushed his glasses up again. “Yeah—Hester—that’s not actually gross when you’re a guy.” He pulled a narrow box out of his back pocket.

“I got you a present.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “No reason. Just something to keep that mop out of your face. You hide behind your hair, you know.”

She lifted the top of the box. Inside, nested in white tissue paper, was a long silver barrette shaped like a seashell. It had smooth, plump whorls that formed a tightly wound cone, with ribs like a staircase traveling along the whorls.

“It’s meant to be a wentletrap, I think,” Peter said. “It’s pretty accurate.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it before.” She hugged him and said into his ear, “I’m going to miss the crap out of you.”

“Me, too,” he replied, squeezing her and then letting go. “But I’ll only be an hour away.”

“You’ll be studying.” She handed him the empty box. He stuck it in his pocket again. “And making college friends.” She put the barrette between her teeth and started to pull her hair back.

He took a breath, as if to say something, and then closed his mouth.

She watched him gaze at the ocean. In the waning light it was the same color as his eyes.

“What’s up?” she said, clipping the barrette in place.

“I’m just thinking about how next year you’ll go to college, too.”

“Yeah.”

“And eventually you’ll become this famous historian who’ll never need to set foot here again if you don’t want to. Meanwhile after college I’ll wind up in charge of Captain Dave Boats against my will and be the fifth generation in my family to die in Plymouth.”

“Captain Dave Boats is more than just sunburned tourists. The naturalist program is really important.”

“Forget about that.” He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant to talk about.”

“What, then?”

“I want you to know—” He stopped. “I just feel like you’re…”

“Two minutes till my departure from hell,” she warned him.

He frowned at her and said in one breath, “There it is, exactly. Why do you always run away?”

“You know I hate parties.”

“It’s because you need to shut people out. Because you’re afraid of something.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know you are. You’re better than fine. You’re smart, and funny.” He smiled. “And now that I can see your face, you’re not as hideous as I remembered.”

She laughed, but she also took a step back.

He raised his eyebrows, as if to say “See?”

Maybe he was right: she did in fact have the urge to pull away from him whenever he got serious; she did always bolt from social situations.

She forced herself to stand still and listen to him.

His voice was quiet, direct. “I’m only saying this because I care about you. I want you to have a normal life—I mean, not that you’re
ab
normal—just that you shouldn’t miss out on a whole chunk of potential happiness. You have to let someone in at some point—let someone care about you.”

The band’s song had changed to a pounding mess of drums and guitar to welcome the crowd, and apparently roil them into a frenzy. It was working. Peter raised his voice over the noise. “So that came out horribly, but I had to say it—once.” He clasped his hands on top of his head. “Honestly, I feel like an idiot right now, so I’m going to walk away. I’ll see you later.”

Hester watched him until he reached the parking lot, and then she turned around and smacked her back against the trunk of the tree. She felt the warning pricks of tears. She wiggled her nose to keep them at bay. She’d lose him soon, but that was the way it always had to be, wasn’t it? She should be glad for him that he was going on to college, where he’d make new friends. Where he’d eventually, inevitably, find a girlfriend. She would be someone lovely, that girlfriend, for sure—lovely inside and out. How could she not be?

She turned toward the ocean and drew in a breath of evening sea air. It had the flavor of salt and moist sand tonight. And right on cue, there was the longing. An image of the shore below flashed in her mind as if it were calling to her. It was the antidote she needed to the party. She left the shade of the tree, crossed the lawn, and walked down the cool stone stairs to the water. The tide was out, leaving a broad swath of beach, so she opened the old iron gate at the bottom and stepped onto the sand.

The farther she walked, the more the music faded to a distant thump, the more she was able to retreat into herself. A little farther, and she could hear the nearly silent expanse of water at her side. There were no lapping waves, just the wonderfully dull sound of a wide sky meeting the horizon. She knew the stillness was an illusion. Below, there were dolphins, porpoises, whales, fish, crustaceans, anemones—a hidden world, consumed with the business of life.

She came to a section of the bluff that was reinforced with riprap: rough-quarried granite blocks jumbled together to protect the shore from erosion. A breakwater made of the same material, which everyone called the rocky outcropping, extended into the bay to her left. She looked ahead and realized that her escape was taking her to the hangout cave—a portion of riprap in which the stones happened to form an opening. The entrance was underwater when the tide was in, but at low tide like this it was rumored to be a den for lovers and potheads. If she was lucky, everyone was up at the party and the cave would be vacant.

The raindrops began to fall in earnest. Within a few paces the splatters on her head and shoulders quickened to a drumroll. She broke into a jog with her chin tucked to her chest, making it inside the entrance just as the sky opened, spilling its contents.

She had never been in the cave before. It was narrow, with a low ceiling, but it was deeper than she had imagined. She couldn’t see all the way to the back.

“Anyone home?” she croaked. She heard only silence. She sighed with relief and slipped her sandal off to shake a pebble out. The fabric of her dress clung to her body, so she peeled it from her legs and shook it. The air against her damp skin made her shiver.

She heard the crunch of shifting rocks outside the cave, and turned just as Joey Grimani stepped inside. The dim light of dusk was behind him, his face was in shadows. He was soaked through, as if he had jumped in the ocean. He shook his head to get the water out of his hair and then ran his fingers through it to make it look tousled—expertly, and without a mirror.

Ick,
she thought.

“Hester!” he said, as if it were a surprise to find her there. “It’s raining buckets, huh?”

He stood between her and the cave opening. She calculated that she’d have to physically move him if she wanted to leave.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “What are you doing here?”

“Gettin’ out of the rain, same as you,” he said.

“All the way down the beach?”

He came toward her. “How about we hang out for a while … and then I’ll walk you home when the rain quits?”

“I don’t want to ‘hang out,’” she said firmly. “Go back up to the party.”

“There is no party; it broke up as soon as it started to pour.”

She tried to squeeze past him to leave, but he caught her wrist and pulled her to him.

“Wait,” he said. He pressed so close that she felt the contours of his chest through their wet clothes.

“I’m glad we’re alone…” he started, sounding suave and practiced.

“Stop it, Joey,” she interrupted. She pushed his upper body away, but he wrapped both arms around her waist and pressed his hips against her.

“You’re not as cold as you want people to believe,” he said in a low voice. “There’s a lot of passion in the way you carry yourself.”

Her voice came out in a growl. “Take your hands off me and get out.”

“I know I can open you up—like a flower.” He started swaying slightly, as if they were slow-dancing. “All you have to do is say yes.”

She was actually considering angling her knee to jam him where it would hurt the most when a man’s voice sighed from the darkness. “This cave is occupied, Lothario.”

“Thank God,” Hester said. “There’s another couple in here!”

Joey stiffened, loosening his hold around her waist. He cocked his head and listened, squinting into the blackness at the back of the cave.

“What’re you talking about?”

“Find your own spot to make love to her,” the voice replied. It was husky and lethargic, as if awakened from sleep, with maybe a little edge of irritation. Hester wriggled out of Joey’s arms.

“Hey!” Joey said.

“I told you. Get the hell out of here.” She pushed hard against his chest; he staggered a step back.

And then she raised her voice to the stranger in the cave. “Do you seriously call that assault
making love
? Are you some kind of fucking misogynist? This jerk doesn’t give a shit about me.”

Joey fixed his hair as he said, “You’re out of your mind, Hester, you know that? A total crackpot. I was trying to get close to you, to lighten you up a little—I forgot what an ice bitch you really are.”

“Get out,” she said.

“I’ve seen you lead Peter on. That wimp
does
give a shit, and a lotta good it’s done him.”

She moved toward him at full force and shoved him out of the cave. “Get out!” she screamed.

Joey stumbled before walking away, shouting insults she couldn’t hear over the pounding of the rain. Hester’s heartbeat was quick with adrenaline. A couple of wet strands of hair had come loose and were stuck on her cheek. She took a deep breath, slid the strands behind her ear, and then checked for the shell barrette, which was still snug.

She kept her back to the rear of the cave. She didn’t want her eyes to get used to the dark, in case the stranger and his date were in some stage of undress.

“Don’t mind me,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll leave as soon as the rain lets up a bit. I promise.”

“Whom are you speaking to?” the voice asked, cautiously.

Another weirdo.
“Do you see any other cave dwellers in here?”

There was a long pause. She heard no kissing, no heavy breathing, no sounds of grappling or moaning. Just silence.

If only it would stop raining,
Hester thought. She wanted to be home, in her pajamas, under her covers with a thick British novel, listening to the rain patter against her window.

“I am not a misogynist,” the voice said after a minute.

“Hey, I don’t give a damn what you are.” Then she felt bad for being rude. He had helped her after all. She should probably apologize, but she didn’t want to engage him in conversation.

She heard a quiet snort. “I’ve known drunken sailors from Liverpool who used fewer profanities.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She had always honored her parents’ request not to swear in front of her brother, Sam, but she had never held back in front of her peers. This voice sounded like it came from a young guy—young enough to take it—but …
different
somehow. It was slow and contemplative—out of the mainstream. Maybe he had been homeschooled as a kid.

He broke into her thoughts. “Though I do admit that the crassness of the word ‘fucking’ next to the erudite ‘misogynist’ seized my attention.”

It was old-fashioned; that’s what his voice was. She had to admit to herself that it was also appealing: rich, measured, and so expressive she could hear a warm timbre when he was smiling. Her curiosity took over, and she turned to peer into the darkness but saw nothing. And then she realized that his eyes would be used to the dark, and that she was standing near the faint light of the cave opening. He would see that she was searching for him. She turned away.

The rain began to slow. It would be weird to stay any longer, she knew. And by all rights a stranger in a cave ought to be giving her the creeps, intriguing voice notwithstanding.

Hester said, “I’d better go now.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” the voice said, with an awkward sincerity that surprised her.

“Tell me,” she said, “are you alone back there?”

“I never said I was with anyone.”

“Huh.” She tried to recall his exact words to Joey and wondered if that was true. “Well, anyway, thanks for helping me get rid of that idiot.”

There was a small hesitation before he said, “Goodbye.”

Chapter 4

1872

A
T HIGH TIDE
, the rocky outcropping was mostly underwater; at low tide, it was possible to clamber all the way to the end, but with difficulty. Ezra picked his way over the slick, algae-covered boulders and started the task of recording the variety and quantity of shellfish along the water’s edge. He worked for several hours, until the light became gray and the color left the sea.

He was on his belly, his head hanging over the edge of a boulder, when something caught his eye. A giant turtle swam in place below him, lumbering from side to side as it swung its flippers, tearing a mussel off the granite block with beaklike jaws.

“A loggerhead so far north,” he whispered. He hurried to sketch it.

He was drawing the eyes, black and heavy-lidded, when a figure swam up in a blur from below and snatched the loggerhead around its middle. It was a woman—as pale and luminescent as a ghost, with swirling white hair. Ezra startled, dropping his pencil into the water. Her face snapped toward him. Her eyes were too large, clear green, and had horizontal, slit-shaped pupils, reminiscent of an octopus.

The loggerhead desperately stretched its neck to bite her, but she twisted to swim down and away with it.

“Come back!” Ezra shouted, without hesitation.

He caught sight of her tail as her body was absorbed into the dark depths. It was longer and more slender than any written account had described—maybe five times her torso length. From the hips down she was covered not in scales, but in armored scutes, like a sturgeon. Her tail fin was shaped like that of a dolphin rather than a fish: muscular, with flukes that lay in a horizontal plane. His heart pounded, his mind tried desperately to memorize what he had just seen.