Read Monterey Bay for Free Online

were supposed to be helping me collect. One of the animals Arthur failed to properly anesthetize. The tubular part is called a tunic. And the skinny part you’re holding on to is called the stalk. Which explains its common name: stalked tunicate.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œSome people also call it a sea squirt.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œGive it a squeeze and see for yourself.”
    She held it over the edge of the bed and did as instructed. The result was precisely as he had described: a little bit of the sea squirting out onto the floor.
    â€œAre people always so literal?”
    He laughed. “For the most part, yes. But every once in a while you get a pleasant surprise. The sarcastic fringehead. The Portuguese man-of-war.”
    She pinched out the last of the seawater and put it in her lap.
    â€œGo ahead,” he said, picking up the sketchbook and pushing it at her. “I know you want to.”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    â€œYes, you do.”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI just don’t.”
    â€œIt has a heart, you know. It literally has a heart. The water came out of the atrial siphon.”
    â€œI don’t care.”
    â€œAnd it may not look like it, but it’s a closer relation to you and me than any other invertebrate. As larvae, they have backbones and spinal cords. Just like us.”
    â€œThat’s nonsense.”
    â€œIt most certainly isn’t.”
    â€œYou’re trying to trick me.”
    â€œWhy on earth would I do something like that?”
    Her father was never coming back, she told herself. And now everything was up to her, just as it had been in the tobacco fields.
    â€œI’d like another drink,” she said.
    â€œMe too.”
    As he reached over to the windowsill to retrieve the jug, she could see the strip of skin above his belt. She would squeeze him around the waist just as she had squeezed the
Styela
; she would see the ocean coming out. He passed her the jug. Her mouth and throat were completely accustomed to the sensation now; it was only her belly that continued to respond. The fire flaring up, the fire cooling down.
    â€œYou know,” he said, watching her closely, “last time I drank this stuff, some strangeness happened.”
    â€œWhat sort of strangeness?”
    â€œWell, a slapping contest for one thing. Right on top of my desk. Joe and I sat there for hours and hit each other as hard as we could. Then John took a turn.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He smiled and looked sheepishly at his essay, which was still sitting on the bed. “We wanted to see if we could break through.”
    It was as if he were speaking in code. And the most puzzling thing was that she hadn’t even earned it yet. It usually took so much more than this to be invited inside a stranger’s world.Money, connections, shows of good faith. But she had offered him none of this and yet, here she was.
    â€œLet’s do it,” she said. The tequila was a sword in her brain: brave and shimmering. “Let’s do another slapping contest.”
    â€œAbsolutely not.”
    She raised a hand and tried to connect it to his face, but he grabbed her wrist and forced her arm back down. When he released her, she shifted onto her side and faced the wall. There was only one light source in the room—a rawhide-shaded lamp on the bedside table—and the shadow it cast of her body was huge against the expanse of paneled wood.
    â€œDon’t pout,” he said after a moment. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway.”
    Sleep was overtaking her now, quickly and violently, and she was glad of it.
    â€œThere’s another technique, though.” His voice cut through her drunken fatigue like scissors through wet silk. “One that’s a bit less likely to leave a mark.”
    In response, she didn’t flip all the way around to face him. Instead, she rolled onto her back and