“I’m one of the curatorial staff. You American?”
Janie nodded. “Yeah. Actually, I–I wanted to see about volunteering here.”
“Lifewatch desk at the main entrance.” The man cocked his head toward the door. “They can get you signed up and registered, see what’s available.”
“No — I mean, I want to volunteer here. With the insects—”
“Butterfly collector, are you?” The man smiled, his tone mocking. He had hazel eyes, deep-set; his thin mouth made the smile seem perhaps more cruel than intended. “We get a lot of those.”
Janie flushed. “No. I am not a collector,” she said coldly, adjusting her glasses. “I’m doing a thesis on dioxane genital mutation in Cucullia artemisia.” She didn’t add that it was an undergraduate thesis. “I’ve been doing independent research for seven years now.” She hesitated, thinking of her Intel scholarship, and added, “I’ve received several grants for my work.”
The man regarded her appraisingly. “Are you studying here, then?”
“Yes,” she lied again. “At Oxford. I’m on sabbatical right now. But I live near here, and so I thought I might—”
She shrugged, opening her hands, looked over at him, and smiled tentatively. “Make myself useful?”
The man waited a moment, nodded. “Well. Do you have a few minutes now? I’ve got to do something with these, but if you want you can come with me and wait, and then we can see what we can do. Maybe circumvent some paperwork.”
He turned and started across the room. He had a graceful, bouncing gait, like a gymnast or circus acrobat: impatient with the ground beneath him. “Shouldn’t take long,” he called over his shoulder as Janie hurried to catch up.
She followed him through a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY, into the exhibit laboratory, a reassuringly familiar place with its display cases and smells of shellac and camphor, acetone and ethyl alcohol. There were more cages here, but smaller ones, sheltering live specimens — pupating butterflies and moths, stick insects, leaf insects, dung beetles. The man dropped his net onto a desk, took the jar to a long table against one wall, blindingly lit by long fluorescent tubes. There were scores of bottles here, some empty, others filled with paper and tiny inert figures.
“Have a seat,” said the man, gesturing at two folding chairs. He settled into one, grabbed an empty jar and a roll of absorbent paper. “I’m David Bierce. So where’re you staying? Camden Town?”
“Janie Kendall. Yes—”
“The High Street?”
Janie sat in the other chair, pulling it a few inches away from him. The questions made her uneasy, but she only nodded, lying again, and said, “Closer, actually. Off Gloucester Road. With friends.”
“Mm.” Bierce tore off a piece of absorbent paper, leaned across to a stainless-steel sink and dampened the paper. Then he dropped it into the empty jar. He paused, turned to her and gestured at the table, smiling. “Care to join in?”
Janie shrugged. “Sure—”
She pulled her chair closer, found another empty jar and did as Bierce had, dampening a piece of paper towel and dropping it inside.
Then she took the jar containing the dead brimstones and carefully shook one onto the counter. It was a female, its coloring more muted than the males’; she scooped it up very gently, careful not to disturb the scales like dull green glitter upon its wings, dropped it into the jar and replaced the top.
“Very nice.” Bierce nodded, raising his eyebrows. “You seem to know what you’re doing. Work with other insects? Soft-bodied ones?”
“Sometimes. Mostly moths, though. And butterflies.”
“Right.” He inclined his head to a recessed shelf. “How would you label that, then? Go ahead.”
On the shelf she found a notepad and a case of Rapidograph pens. She began to write, conscious of Bierce staring at her. “We usually just put all this into the computer, of course, and print it out,” he said. “I just want to see the benefits of an American education in the sciences.”
Janie fought the urge to look at him. Instead she wrote out the information, making her printing as tiny as possible.
Gonepteiyx rhamni cleopatra
UNITED KINGDOM: LONDON
Regent’s Park Zoo
Lat/Long unknown
21. IV.2001
D. Bierce
Net/caged specimen
She handed it to Bierce. “I don’t know the proper coordinates for London.”
Bierce scrutinized the paper. “It’s actually the Royal Zoological Society,” he said. He looked at her, and then smiled. “But you’ll do.”
“Great!” She grinned, the first time she’d really felt happy since arriving here. “When do you want me to start?”
“How about Monday?”
Janie hesitated: this was only Friday. “I could come in tomorrow—”
“I don’t work on the weekend, and you’ll need to be trained. Also they have to process the paperwork. Right—”
He stood and went to a desk, pulling open drawers until he found a clipboard holding sheafs of triplicate forms. “Here. Fill all this out, leave it with me, and I’ll pass it on to Carolyn — she’s the head volunteer coordinator. They usually want to interview you, but I’ll tell them we’ve done all that already.”
“What time should I come in Monday?”
“Come at nine. Everything opens at ten; that way you’ll avoid the crowds. Use the staff entrance, someone there will have an ID waiting for you to pick up when you sign in—”
She nodded and began filling out the forms.
“All right then.” David Bierce leaned against the desk and again fixed her with that sly, almost taunting gaze. “Know how to find your way home?”
Janie lifted her chin defiantly. “Yes.”
“Enjoying London? Going to go out tonight and do Camden Town with all the yobs?”
“Maybe. I haven’t been out much yet.”
“Mm. Beautiful American girl — they’ll eat you alive. Just kidding.” He straightened, started across the room toward the door. “I’ll you see Monday then.”
He held the door for her. “You really should check out the clubs. You’re too young not to see the city by night.” He smiled, the fluorescent light slanting sideways into his hazel eyes and making them suddenly glow icy blue. “Bye then.”
“Bye,” said Janie, and hurried quickly from the lab toward home.
That night, for the first time, she went out. She told herself she would have gone anyway, no matter what Bierce had said. She had no idea where the clubs were; Andrew had pointed out the Electric Ballroom to her, right up from the tube station, but he’d also warned her that was where the tourists flocked on weekends.
“They do a disco thing on Saturday nights — Saturday Night Fever, everyone gets all done up in vintage clothes. Quite a fashion show,” he’d said, smiling and shaking his head.
Janie had no interest in that. She ate a quick supper, vindaloo from the take-away down the street from the flat; then she dressed. She hadn’t brought a huge amount of clothes — at home she’d never bothered much with clothes at all, making do with thrift-shop finds and whatever her mother gave her for Christmas. But now she found herself sitting on the edge of the four-poster, staring with pursed lips at the sparse contents of two bureau drawers. Finally she pulled out a pair of black corduroy jeans and a black turtleneck and pulled on her sneakers. She removed her glasses and for the first time in weeks inserted her contact lenses. Then she shrugged into her old navy peacoat and left.
It was after ten o’clock. On the canal path, throngs of people stood, drinking from pints of canned lager. She made her way through them, ignoring catcalls and whispered invitations, stepping to avoid where kids lay making out against the brick wall that ran alongside the path or pissing in the bushes. The bridge over the canal at Camden Lock wasclogged with several dozen kids in mohawks or varicolored hair, shouting at each other above the din of a boom box and swigging from bottles of Spanish champagne.