Monterey Bay by Lindsay Hatton Page A

escalating signs of nervousness as the years passed, as the biological determinants made themselves apparent, but even on the day she first began to bleed, Anders had remained professional, expedient, her new bodily complications assessed as drily and succinctly as if he were calculating the depreciation on a piece of factory equipment. But now he was angry about it, and his anger seemed deeper than logic: a fact that, as the days passed, made their interactions twice as distant and volatile as before.
    And then there was Ricketts’s strange comment, the one about the Methodists and the butterflies, the hymns and the tents. It seemed to imply something impossible: that Anders had been to Monterey before and had voluntarily returned, a choicethat went counter to everything he had always told her about how lives should progress.
    So, restless with confusion and sour with dreams, she took the only action she could. She gathered information. She left the house and began to explore the town much as she had once explored the manor in the Philippines: mapping it out in her mind’s eye, alert for patterns or aberrations. She went up and around the hill on which they lived, she saw the richest neighborhoods at its peak, the poorest neighborhoods at its base. She went over the hill and down Pacific Street, where she encountered the big, Federalist-looking anomaly that had once housed the state’s constitutional convention. She dipped down into the badlands at the head of the wharf and watched the prostitutes melt away into the old adobes when they saw her approach. She paced the perimeter of the large Chinatown on Washington Street and the smaller one on McAbee Beach. She even went back to the Hotel Del Monte to see if it was still empty of guests, which it was.
    The only place she didn’t go was Cannery Row. As long as everything was still so flammable, such proximity seemed unwise. So she went only as close as seemed strategically advisable, to a little outcropping of land at the base of David Avenue beneath which lay a small beach and a small building with what seemed like too many windows. Here, she sat on a rock and read the local paper, absorbing whatever details seemed most relevant: about how there were battles under way between thereigning Italian fishing conglomerate and the unions; about how the Japanese and the Chinese were also in the mix, fighting for a share of what seemed to be a dwindling cache of spoils. Something was happening here. Something much like the cycle of abundance, exploitation, and famine that her father had once taken such pleasure in describing.
    The next morning at breakfast, she broke several days’ worth of silence to voice the obvious concerns.
    â€œPermission to speak candidly?” she asked.
    â€œGranted,” her father replied, his eyes boring holes into his toast. They weren’t cooking together anymore. Instead, they were cobbling together ad hoc, unplanned meals or, whenever that felt too intimate, not eating at all.
    â€œThe canning industry seems like an unworthy target. Too complex. Too corrupt.”
    â€œLike I said before, my interests lie elsewhere. Dramatically so.”
    â€œReduction, then. More profit, less labor. And the laws still haven’t caught up. Did you know there are floating reduction plants just offshore? Domiciled at sea to avoid municipal regulations?”
    â€œA compelling opportunity,” he hummed. “But not for me.”
    At this, a brief thrill. For the first time since their squid dinner, he was challenging her, goading her into playing along, and the urge to continue was almost irresistible. But she didn’t want to give him what he wanted. She didn’t want to surrender to hismomentum, especially when she knew that by the time they finished, everything would probably remain unclear. So she put her dishes in the sink, went outside, and remained standing as she made her usual inspection of the hill, her eyes