“And we’ll be able to help them again.”
“Maybe . . .”
“They need our help.”
“Maybe,” Arby said. He didn’t feel convinced.
Kelly said, “I wonder what they have to eat here.” She opened the refrigerator. “You hungry?”
“Starving,” Arby said, suddenly aware that he was.
“So what do you want?”
“What is there?” He sat on the padded gray couch and stretched, as he watched Kelly poke through the refrigerator.
“Come and look,” she said, annoyed. “I’m not your stupid housekeeper.”
“Okay, okay, take it easy.”
“Well, you expect everybody to wait on you,” she said.
“I do not,” he said, getting quickly off the couch.
“You’re such a brat, Arby.”
“Hey,” he said. “What’s the big deal? Take it easy. You nervous about something?”
“No, I am not,” she said. She took a wrapped sandwich out of the refrigerator. Standing beside her, he looked briefly inside, grabbed the first sandwich he saw.
“You don’t want that,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s tuna salad.”
Arby hated tuna salad. He put it back quickly, looked around again.
“That’s turkey on the left,” she said. “In the bun.”
He brought out a turkey sandwich. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Sitting on the couch, she opened her own sandwich, wolfed it down hungrily.
“Listen, at least I got us here,” he said, unwrapping his own carefully. He folded the plastic neatly, set it aside.
“Yeah. You did. I admit it. You did that part all right.”
Arby ate his sandwich. He thought he had never tasted anything so good in his entire life. It was better even than his mother’s turkey sandwiches.
The thought of his mother gave him a pang. His mother was a gynecologist and very beautiful. She had a busy life, and wasn’t home very much, but whenever he saw her, she always seemed so peaceful. And Arby felt peaceful around her, too. They had a special relationship, the two of them. Even though lately she sometimes seemed uneasy about how much he knew. One night he had come into her study; she was going over some journal articles about progesterone levels and FSH. He looked over her shoulder at the columns of numbers and suggested that she might want to try a nonlinear equation to analyze the data. She gave him a funny look, a kind of separate look, thoughtful and distant from him, and at that moment he had felt—
“I’m getting another one,” Kelly said, going back to the refrigerator. She came out with two sandwiches, one in each hand.
“You think there’s enough?”
“Who cares? I’m starving,” she said, tearing off the wrapping on the first.
“Maybe we shouldn’t eat—”
“Arb, if you’re going to worry like this, we should have stayed home.”
He decided that was right. He was surprised to see that he had somehow finished his own sandwich. So he took the other one Kelly offered him.
Kelly ate, and stared out the window. “I wonder what that building is, that they went into? It looks abandoned.”
“Yeah. For years.”
“Why would somebody build a big building here, on some deserted island in Costa Rica?” she said.
“Maybe they were doing something secret.”
“Or dangerous,” she said.
“Yeah. Or that.” The idea of danger was both titillating and unnerving. He felt far from home.
“I wonder what they were doing?” she said. Still eating, she got up off the couch and went to look out the window. “Sure is a big place. Huh,” she said. “That’s weird.”
“What is?”
“Look out here. That building is all overgrown, like nobody’s been there for years and years. And this field is all grown up, too. The grass is pretty high.”
“Yes . . .”
“But right down here,” she said, pointing near the trailer, “there’s a clear path.”
Chewing, Arby came over and looked. She was right. Just a few yards from their trailer, the grass had been trampled down, and was yellowed. In many places, bare earth showed through. It was a narrow but distinct trail, coming in from the left, going off to the right, across the open clearing.
“So,” Kelly said. “If nobody’s been here for years, what made the trail?”
“Has to be animals,” he said. It was all he could think of. “Must be a game trail.”
“Like what animals?”
“I don’t know. Whatever’s here. Deer or something.”
“I haven’t seen any deer.”
He shrugged. “Maybe goats. You know, wild goats, like they have in Hawaii.”
“The trail’s too wide for deer or goats.”
“Maybe there’s a whole herd of wild goats.”
“Too wide,” Kelly said. She shrugged, and turned away from the window. She went back to the refrigerator. “I wonder if there’s anything for dessert.”
Mention of dessert gave him a sudden thought. He went to the compartment above the bed, climbed up, and poked around.
“What’re you doing?” she said.
“Checking my pack.”
“For what?”
“I think I forgot my toothbrush.”
“So?”
“I won’t be able to brush my teeth.”
“Arb,” she said. “Who cares?”
“But I always brush my teeth. . . .”
“Be daring,” Kelly said. “Live a little.”
Arby sighed. “Maybe Dr. Thorne brought an extra one.” He came back and sat down on the couch beside Kelly. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head.
“No dessert?”
“Nothing. Not even frozen yogurt. Adults. They never plan right.”
“Yeah. That’s true.”
Arby yawned. It was warm in the trailer. He felt sleepy. Lying huddled in that compartment for the last twelve hours, shivering and cramped, he hadn’t slept at all. Now he was suddenly tired.
He looked at Kelly, and she yawned, too. “Want to go outside? Wake us up?”
“We should probably wait here,” he said.
“If I do, I’m afraid I’ll go to sleep,” Kelly said.
Arby shrugged. Sleep was overtaking him fast. He went back to the living compartment, and crawled onto the mattress beside the window. Kelly followed him back.
“I’m not going to sleep,” she said.