"I'm waiting for the green flash." He wasn't, really, but sometimes, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, it happened. He needed something to happen.
"Yeah, I seen that. What cause that?"
"Uh, well" — and that was another thing, he didn't have enough of a handle on the natural sciences to keep this whole project going — "I believe as the sun disappears under the horizon, the residual spectrum bounces off the mucusphere, thus causing the green flash."
"Yah, mon. The mucusphere."
"It's science," said Clay, knowing that it wasn't science.
"When the boat clean, then we going out, record whales and like dat?"
Good question, Clay thought. He could collect the data, but he didn't have the knowledge necessary to analyze it. He had hoped that Amy would do that.
"I don't know. If we find Nate, maybe."
"You think he still living, then? Even after all this time?"
"Yeah. I hope. I guess we should keep up the work until we can find him."
"Yeah. Nate say them Japanese going to kill our minkes if you don't work hard."
"Minke whales, yeah. I've been on one of their ships. Norwegians, too."
"That's some evil fuckery."
"Maybe. The minke herd is large. They're not endangered. The Japanese and the Norwegians aren't really taking enough of them to hurt the population, so why shouldn't we let them hunt them? I mean, what's the argument for stopping them? Because whales are cute? The Chinese fry kitties — we don't protest them."
"The Chinese fry kitties?"
"I'm not saying I agree with killing them, but we really don't have a good argument."
"The Chinese fry kitties?" Kona's voice was getting higher each time he spoke.
"Maybe some of the work we do here can prove that these animals have culture, that they're closer to us than they perceive. Then we'll have an argument."
"Kitties? Like, little meow kitties? They just fry them?"
Clay was musing, watching the sunset and feeling sad and frustrated, and words came out of him like a long, rambling sigh: "Of course, when I was on the whaling ship, I saw how the Japanese whalers looked at the animals. They see them as fish. No more or less than a tuna. But I was photographing a sperm-whale mother and her calf, and the calf got separated from the pod. The mother came back to get the calf and pushed it away from our Zodiac. The whalers were visibly moved. They recognized that mother/child behavior. It wasn't fish behavior. So it's not a lost cause."
"Kitties?" Kona sighed, taking on the same tone of resignation that Clay had used.
"Yeah," said Clay.
"So how we going to find Nate so we can do good work and save them humpies and minkes?"
"Is that what we're doing?"
"No. Not now. Now we just watching for a green flash."
"I don't know any science, Kona. I made that up, about the green flash."
"Ah, I didn't know. Science you don't know just looks like magic."
"I don't believe in magic."
"Oh, brah, don't say dat. Magic come bite you in the ass for sure. You going to need my help for sure now."
Clay felt some of the weight of his melancholy lift by sharing a moment with the surfer, but his need to act was worrying at him like a flea in the ear. "Let's take a drive up-country, Kona."
"They really fry kitties in China?" Kona said, his voice so high now that dogs living around the harbor winced.
"Amy, what, how — what?" The lights had come up, and Nate could see that it was Amy in his bed. It was a lot of Amy that he hadn't seen before.
"They took me, Nate. Just like you. A few days later. It was horrible. Quick, hold me."
"A whale ship ate you, too?"
"Yes, just like you. Hold me, I'm so afraid."
"And they brought you all the way here?"
"Yes, just like you, only it's worse for a dame. I feel… so… so naked. Hold me."
" 'Dame'? No one says 'dame' anymore."
"Well, African-American, then."
"You are not African-American."
"I can't remember all the politically correct terms. Christ, Nate, what do you need, a diagram? Crawl in." Amy flapped the covers, threw them back, then struck a cheesecake pose, grinning.
But Nate backed away. "You put your head in the water to listen for the whale. The only other person I ever saw do that was Ryder."
"Look at my tan line, Nate." She danced her fingertips over her tan line, which to Nate looked more like a beige line. Nevertheless, she had his attention. "I've never had a tan line before."
"Amy!"
"What!"
"You set me up!"
"I'm naked over here. Haven't you thought about that?"
"Yes, but —»
"Ha! You admit it. I was your research assistant. You had firing power over me. Yet there you are, thinking about me naked."
"You are naked."
"Ha! I think I've made my point."
"That 'ha' thing is unprofessional, Amy."
"Don't care. I no longer work for you, and you are not the boss of me anymore, and furthermore, look at this butt." She rolled over. He did. She looked back over her shoulder and grinned. "Ha!"
"Stop that." He looked at the wall. "You spied on me. You caused all this to happen."
"Don't be ridiculous. I was just part of it, but all that is forgiven. Look how luscious I am." Amy did a presentation wave over herself, as if Nate had just won her in a game show.
"Would you stop that?" Nate reached over and pulled the covers up to her chin.
"Lus-cious," she said, pulling the covers down, revealing a breast with each syllable.
Nate walked out of the room. "Put on some clothes and come out here. I'm not going to try to talk to you like that."
"Fine, don't talk," she called after him. "Just crawl in."
"You're just bait," he called from the kitchen.
"Hey, buster, I'm not that young."
"This conversation is over until you come out here fully dressed." Nate sat down at his little dining table and tried to will away his erection.
"What are you, some kind of fruitcake, some kind of sissy boy, some kind of fairy, huh?"
"Yes, that's it," Nate said.
For a moment nothing but quiet from the bedroom. Then: "Oh, my God, I feel like such a maroon." Her voice was softer now. She came stumbling out of the bedroom, the sheet wrapped around her. "I'm really sorry, Nate. I had no idea. You seemed so interested. I wouldn't have —»
"Ha!" Nate said. "See how it feels."
The Old Broad had given them iced ginger tea and set Kona up at one of her telescopes to look at the moon. She sat down next to Clay on the lanai and they listened to the night for a while.
"It's nice up here," Clay said. "I don't think I've been up here at night before."
"Clay, I'm usually in bed by now, so I hope you don't think me dense if I get things clear in my mind."
"Of course not, Elizabeth."
"Thank you. As I see it, for years you and Nate have been telling everyone that I'm a nut job because I said I could communicate with whales. Now you drive up here in a froth — in the middle of the night — to deliver the earth-shattering news that what I've been telling you all along is possible?" She leaned her chin on her fist and looked wide-eyed at Clay. "That about right?"
"We never called you a nut job, Elizabeth," Clay said. "That's an overstatement."
"Doesn't matter, Clay. I'm not mad." She sipped her tea. "And I'm not angry either. I've been in these islands a very long time, Clay, and I've lived on the side of this volcano for most of it. I've spent more time looking down on that channel than most people have spent on the planet, but not once did you or Nate ask me why. Didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess. Easier to think I was just a few bananas short of a bunch than to ask me why I was interested."