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even for holidays. He had a chip on his shoulder and blamed his parents for the shortcomings of his childhood.
    Lacking Rankin’s effortless confidence, he feared failure and preferred remaining in the background where he felt comfortable. The consequence was that his friends knew little if anything about his family though he kept in touch with his older sister who had a similar upbringing. Unlike her brother, she blamed “the system” for her family’s poverty, was angry about it, and vowed never to let it hold her back.
    However, Johnson was not an angry person and had an on-again, off-again crush on Rankin, who was oblivious to his feelings, which he never made known. As much as he was infatuated with her, he was afraid to say anything personal for fear of exposing himself to ridicule or, more to the point, rejection. Rankin liked him as a friend but never flirted with him. He was of average build, and she was drawn to muscular men. He was not very athletic, and she liked jocks. His intelligence appealed to her but academia was filled with smart, often flawed, men. He was a good lab partner, always finished assignments, and had slightly better grades than she had. Since coming to Manaus, they had gotten to know each other better as professionals, but because of Johnson’s fear of rejection, their personal encounters were generic and not memorable.
    Alison Peeples wasn’t into entomology at all. She was a naturalist working for an environmental organization whose central issue was climate change. Her research focused on quantifying the effect of forest die back. While much of the current research suggested the die back wouldn’t occur until at least the end of the century, she believed that die back would kill off the forests no matter what, but that combined with intentional deforestation the forests would largely revert to vegetation found in hot semi-arid climates such as in West Africa by mid-century. While her view was in the minority, she managed to convince her organization’s administrators that to overlook her theory for the sake of more popular ones was imprudent.
    Maggie Cross was a self-taught lepidopterist. She had an undergraduate degree in humanities and just happened to be born into a family that owned commercial real estate in New York. She was the only surviving child when her parents and older brother died when TWA Flight 800 exploded in midair near New York, in July 1996. Twenty-nine at the time, as a child she had adopted her father’s interest in butterflies and used a portion of her inheritance to fund a small nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of Monarchs.
    George Hamel had a graduate degree in business finance and met Cross on an Alaskan cruise. Unambitious and not interested in a nine-to-five lifestyle, he lived frugally and spent his time following his many interests, which included girl watching, poker, carousing, and history. He was especially interested in the U.S. revolutionary period and believed the country made a mistake by adopting the Constitution instead of modifying the Articles of Confederation. He was an inveterate blogger and never shied from expressing an opinion. Cross took a liking to him, and since the cruise they were often together. She trusted him enough to ask for investment advice, which he provided eagerly. Nowadays, he went where she went, and he found Manaus to be an endlessly interesting place. He understood Portuguese and could speak it with some sophistication, though slowly, often sounding out individual syllables. But he could be understood, and that’s what mattered to him. Cross was terrible at languages and so relied on Hamel on this trip more than usual. They shared a short-term rental of an Italianate colonial house near the Teatro Amazonas. Cross paid the bills, of course.
    These were the people Duncan was thinking of when he found himself planning an expedition to find blaberus and needing financing. While Rankin and Peeples could provide their