Thirteen

Breakfast

Somehow, through the night, the residents of Pine Cove, especially those who had been withdrawing from antidepressants, found a satisfied calm had fallen over them. It wasn't that their anxiety was gone, but rather that it ran off their backs like warm rain off a naked toddler who has just dis-covered the splash and magic of mud. There was joy and sex and danger in the air - and a euphoric need to share.

Morning found many of them herding at the local restaurants for breakfast. Gathering together like wildebeests in the presence of a pride of lions, knowing instinctively that only one of them is going to fall to the fang: the one that is caught alone.

Jenny Masterson had been waiting tables at H.P.'s Cafe for twelve years, and she couldn't remember a day out of the tourist season when it had been so busy. She moved between her tables like a dancer, pouring coffee and decaf, taking orders and delivering food, catching the odd request for more butter or salsa, and snatching up a dirty plate or glass on her way back to the window. No movement wasted, no customer ignored. She was good - really good - and sometimes that bugged the hell out of her.

Jenny was just forty, slender and fair-skinned with killer legs and long auburn hair that she wore pinned up when she worked. With her husband Robert, she owned Brine's Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines, but after three months of trying to work with the man she loved and after the birth of her daughter Amanda, who was five, she returned to waitressing to save her marriage and her sanity. Somewhere between college and today, she had become a bull moose waitress, and she never ceased to wonder how in the hell that had happened. How had she become the repository for local information bordering on gossip, and how had she become so damn good at picking up her customers' conversations, and following them as she moved around the restaurant?

Today the restaurant was full of talk about Mikey Plotznik, who had disappeared along his paper route the day before. There was talk of the search and speculation on the kid's fate. At a few of her two-tops were seated couples who seemed intent on reliving their sexual adventures from the night before and - if the pawing and fawning were any indication - were going to resume again after breakfast. Jenny tried to tune them out. There was a table of her old-guy coffee drinkers, who were trading misinformation on politics and lawn care; at the counter a couple of construction workers intent on putting in a rare Saturday's work read the paper over bacon and eggs; and over in the corner, Val Riordan, the local shrink, was scribbling notes on a legal pad at a table all by herself. That was unusual. Dr. Val didn't normally make appearances in Pine Cove during the day. Stranger than that, Estelle Boyet, the seascape painter, was having her tea with a Black gentleman who looked as if he would jump out of his skin at the slightest touch.

Jenny heard some commotion coming from the register and turned to see her busgirl arguing with Molly Michon, the Crazy Lady. Jenny made a beeline for the counter.

"Molly, you're not supposed to be in here," Jenny said calmly but firmly. Molly had been eighty-sixed for life after she had attacked H.P.'s espresso machine.

"I just need to cash this check. I need to get some money to buy medicine for a sick friend."

The busgirl, a freshman at Pine Cove High, bolted into the kitchen, tossing "I told her" over her shoulder as she went.

Jenny looked at the check. It was from the Social Security Administration and it was above the amount she was allowed to accept. "I'm sorry, Molly, I can't do it."

"I have photo ID." Molly pulled a videotape out of her enormous handbag and plopped it on the counter. There was a picture of a half-naked woman tied between two stakes on the cover. The titles were in Italian.

"That's not it, Molly. I'm not allowed to cash a check for that much. Look, I don't want any trouble, but if Howard sees you in here, he'll call the police."

"The police are here" came a man's voice.

Jenny looked up to see Theophilus Crowe towering behind Molly. "Hi, Theo." Jenny liked Theo. He reminded her of Robert before he had quit drinking - semitragic but good-natured.

"Can I help here?"

"I really need to get some money," Molly said. "For medicine."

Jenny shot a look to the corner, where Val Riordan looked up from her notes with an expression of dread on her face. The psychiatrist obviously didn't want to be brought into this.

Theo took the check gently from Molly and looked at it, then said to Jenny, "It's a government check, Jenny. I'm sure it's good. Just this once? Medicine." He winked at Jenny from behind Molly's back.

"Howard will kill me when he sees it. Every time he looks at the espresso machine, he mutters something about spawn of evil."

"I'll back you up. Tell him it was in the interest of public safety."

"Oh, okay. You're lucky we're busy today and I have the cash to spare." Jenny handed Molly a pen. "Just endorse it."

Molly signed the check with a flourish and handed it over. Jenny counted out the bills on the counter. "Thanks," Molly said. Then to Theo, "Thanks. Hey, you want a collector's edition of Warrior Babes?" She held the videotape out to him.

"Uh, no thanks, Molly. I can't accept gratuities."

Jenny craned her neck to look at the cover of the tape.

"It's in Italian, but you can figure it out," Molly said.

Theo shook his head and smiled.

"Okay," Molly said. "Gotta go." She turned and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Theo staring at her back.

"I guess she really was in movies," Jenny said. "Did you see the picture on the cover?"

"Nope," Theo said.

"Amazing. Did she look like that?"

Theo shrugged. "Thanks for taking her check, Jenny. I'll find a seat. Just some coffee and an English muffin."

"Any luck finding the Plotznik kid?"

Theo shook his head as he walked away.

Gabe

Skinner barked once to warn the Food Guy that he was about to collide with the crazy woman, but it came a little too late and, as usual, the dense but good-hearted Food

Guy didn't get the message. Skinner had finally talked the Food Guy into stopping work and going to get something to eat. Catching rats and hiking around in the mud was fun, but eating was important.

Gabe, covered with mud to the knees and burrs to the shoulder, was head down, digging in his backpack for his wallet as he approached H.P.'s Cafe. Coming out, Molly was counting her money, not looking at all where she was going. She heard Skinner bark just as they conked heads.

"Ouch, excuse me," Gabe said, rubbing his head. "I wasn't watching where I was going."

Skinner took the opportunity to sniff Molly's crotch. "Nice dog," Molly said. "Did he produce B movies in his last life?"

"Sorry." Gabe grabbed Skinner by the collar and pulled him away.

Molly folded her money and stuffed it into the waistband of her tights. "Hey, you're the biologist, huh?"

"That's me."

"How many grams of protein in a sow bug?"

"What?"

"A sow bug. You know, roly-polies, pill bugs - gray, lotsa legs, designed to curl up and die?"

"Yes, I know what a sow bug is."

"How many grams of protein in one?"

"I have no idea."

"Could you find out?"

"I suppose I could."

"Good," Molly said. "I'll call you."

"Okay."

"Bye." Molly ruffled Skinner's ears as she walked off.

Gabe stood there for a second, distracted from his research for the first time in thirty-six hours. "What the hell?"

Skinner wagged his tail to say, "Let's eat."

Dr. Val

Val Riordan watched the lanky constable coming through the restaurant toward her. She wasn't ready to be official, that's why she'd taken herself out to breakfast in the first place - that and she didn't want to face her as-sistant Chloe and her newfound nymphomania. She was months, no, years behind on her professional journals, and she'd packed a briefcase full of them in hope of skimming a few over coffee before her appointments began. She tried to hide behind a copy of Pusher: The American Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacological Practice, but the constable just kept coming.

"Dr. Riordan, do you have a minute?"

"I suppose." She gestured to the chair across from her.

Theo sat down and dove right in. "Are you sure that Bess Leander never said anything about problems with her marriage? Fights? Joseph coming home late? Anything?"

"I told you before. I can't talk about it."

Theo took a dollar out of his pocket and slid it across the table. "Take this."

"Why?"

"I want you to be my therapist. I want the same patient confidentiality that you're giving Bess Leander. Even though that privilege isn't supposed to extend beyond the grave. I'm hiring you as my therapist."

"For a dollar? I'm not a lawyer, Constable Crowe. I don't have to accept you as a patient. And payment has nothing to do with it." Val was willing him to go away. She had tried to bend people to her will since she was a child. She'd spoken to her therapist about it during her residency. Go away.

"Fine, take me as a patient. Please."

"I'm not taking any new patients."

"One session, thirty seconds long. I'm your patient. I promise you'll want to hear what I have to say in session."

"Theo, have you ever addressed, well, your substance abuse problem?" It was a snotty and unprofessional thing to say, but Crowe wasn't exactly being professional either.

"Does that mean I'm your patient?"

"Sure, okay, thirty seconds."

"Last night I saw Joseph Leander engaging in sexual relations with a young woman in the park." Theo folded his hands and sat back. "Your thoughts?"

Jenny couldn't believe she'd heard it right. She hadn't meant to, she was just delivering an English muffin when the gossip bomb hit her unprepared. Bess Leander, not even cold in the grave, and her straitlaced Presbyterian husband was doing it with some bimbo in the park? She paused as if checking her tables, waited for a second, then slid the muffin in front of Theo.

"Can I bring you anything else?"

"Not right now," Theo said.

Jenny looked at Val Riordan and decided that whatever she needed right now was not on the menu. Val was sitting there wide-eyed, as if someone had slapped her with a dead mackerel. Jenny backed away from the table. She couldn't wait for Betsy to come in to relieve her for the lunch shift. Betsy always waited on Joseph Leander when he came in the cafe and made comments about him being the only guy with two children who had never been laid. She'd be blown away.

Betsy, of course, already knew.

Gabe

Gabe tied Skinner up outside and entered the cafe to find all the tables oc-cupied. He spotted Theophilus Crowe sitting at a four-top with a woman that he didn't know. Gabe debated inviting himself to their table, then de-cided it would be better to approach Theo under the pretense of a rat news update and hope for an invitation.

Gabe pulled his laptop out of his shoulder bag as he approached the table.

"Theo, you won't believe what I found out last night."

Theo looked up. "Hi, Gabe. Do you know Val Riordan? She's our local psychiatrist."

Gabe offered his hand to the woman and she took it without looking away from his muddy boots. "Sorry," Gabe said. "I've been in the field all day. Nice to meet you."

"Gabe's a biologist. He has a lab up at the weather station."

Gabe was feeling uncomfortable now. The woman hadn't said a word. She was attractive in a made-up sort of way, but she seemed a little out of things, stunned perhaps. "I'm sorry to interrupt. We can talk later, Theo."

"No, sit down. You don't mind, do you, Val? We can finish our session later. I think I still have twenty seconds on the books."

"That's fine," Val said, seeming to come out of her haze.

"Maybe you'll be interested in this," Gabe said. He slipped into an empty chair and pushed his laptop in front of Val. "Look at this." Like many sci-entists, Gabe was oblivious to the fact that no one gave a rat's ass about research unless it could be expressed in terms of dollars.

"Green dots?" Val said.

"No, those are rats."

"Funny, they look like green dots."

"This is a topographical map of Pine Cove. These are my tagged rats. See the divergence? These ten that didn't move the other night when the others did?"

Val looked to Theo for an explanation.

"Gabe tracks rats with microchips in them," Theo said.

"It's only one of the things I do. Mostly, I count dead things on the beach."

"Fascinating work," Val said with no attempt to hide her contempt.

"Yeah, it's great," Gabe said. Then to Theo, "Anyway, these ten rats didn't move with the others."

"Right, you told me this. You thought they might be dead."

"They weren't, at least the six of them that I found weren't. It wasn't death that stopped them, it was sex."

"What?"

"I live-trapped twenty of the group of rats that moved, but when I went to find the group that hadn't, I didn't have to trap them. There were three pairs, all engaged in coitus."

"So what made the others move?"

"I don't know."

"But the other ones were, uh, mating?"

"I watched one pair for an hour. They did it a hundred and seventeen times."

"In an hour? Rats can do that?"

"They can, but they don't."

"But you said they did."

"It's an anomaly. But all three pairs were doing it. One of the females had died and the male was still going at her when I found them."

Theo's face was becoming strained with the effort of trying to figure out what in the hell Gabe was trying to tell him, and why he was telling him in the first place. "What does that mean?"

"I have no idea," Gabe said. "I don't know why there was a mass evacuation of the large group, and I don't know why the smaller group stayed in one place copulating."

"Well, thanks for sharing."

"Food and sex," Gabe said.

"Maybe you should eat something, Gabe." Theo signaled for the waitress.

"What do you mean, food and sex?" Val asked.

"All behavior is related to obtaining food and sex," Gabe said.

"How Freudian."

"No, Darwinian, actually."

Val leaned forward and Gabe caught a whiff of her perfume. She actually seemed interested now. "How can you say that? Behavior is much more complex than that."

"You think so?"

"I know so. And whatever this is, this radio rat study of yours proves it." She swiveled the screen of the laptop so they all could see it. "You have six rats that were engaged in sex, but if I have this straight, you have, well, a lot of rats that just took off for no reason at all. Right?"

"There was a reason, I just don't know it yet."

"But it wasn't food and it obviously wasn't sex."

"I don't know yet. I suppose they could have been exposed to television violence."

Theo was sitting back and watching now, enjoying two people with three decades of education between them puffing up like schoolyard bullies.

"I'm a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. Our discipline has moved more toward physiological causes for behavior over the last thirty years, or hadn't you heard?" Val Riordan was actually grinning now.

"I'm aware of that. I'm having the brain chemistry worked up on animals from both groups to see if there's a neurochemical explanation."

"How do you do that again?" Theo asked.

"You grind up their brains and analyze the chemicals," Gabe said.

"That's got to hurt," Theo said.

Val Riordan laughed. "I only wish I could diagnose my patients that way. Some of them anyway."

Val

Val Riordan couldn't remember the last time she'd enjoyed herself, but she suspected it was when she'd attended the Neiman-Marcus sale in San Francisco two years ago. Food and sex indeed. This guy was so naive. But still, she hadn't seen anyone so passionate about pure research since med school, and it was nice to think about psychiatry in terms other than finan-cial. She found herself wondering how Gabe Fenton would look in a suit, after a shower and a shave, after he'd been boiled to kill the parasites. Not bad, she thought.

Gabe said, "I can't seem to identify any outside stimulus for this behavior, but I have to eliminate the possibility that it's something chemical or envir-onmental. If it's affecting the rats, it might be affecting other species too. I've seen some evidence of that."

Val thought about the wave of horniness that seemed to have washed over all of her patients in the last two days. "Could it be in the water, do you think? Something that might affect us?"

"Could be. If it's chemical, it would take longer to affect a mammal as large as a human. You two haven't seen anything unusual in the last few days, have you?"

Theo nearly spit his coffee out. "This town's a bug-house."

"I'm not allowed to talk about my patients specifically," Val said. She was shaken. Of course there was some weird behavior. She'd caused it, hadn't she, by taking fifteen hundred people off of their medication at once? She had to get out of here. "But in general, Theo is right."

"I am?" Theo said.

"He is?" Gabe said.

Jenny had returned to the table to fill their coffees. "Sorry I overheard, but I'd have to agree with Theo too."

They all looked at her, then at each other. Val checked her watch. "I've got to get to an appointment. Gabe, I'd like to hear the results of the brain chemistry test."

"You would?"

"Yes."

Val put some money on the table and Theo picked it up and handed it back to her, along with the dollar he'd put there earlier for her fee. "I need to talk to you about that other matter, Val."

"Call me. I don't know if I can help though. Bye."

Val left the cafe actually looking forward to seeing her patients, if for no other reason than to imagine grinding up each of their brains. Anything to address the responsibility of driving an entire town crazy. But perhaps by driving them a little crazy, she could save some of them from self-destruction: not a bad reason for going to work.

Gabe

"I've got to go too," Theo said, standing up. "Gabe, should I have the county test the water or something? I have to go into San Junipero to the county building today anyway."

"Not yet. I can do a general toxins and heavy metals test. I do them all the time for the frog population studies."

"You wanna walk out with me?"

"I have to order something to go for Skinner."

"Didn't you say that you had ten rats that diverged from the pack?"

"Yes, but I could only find six."

"What happened to the other four?"

"I don't know. They just disappeared. Funny, these chips are nearly indestructible too. Even if the animals are dead, I should be able to pick them up with the satellites."

"Out of range maybe?"

"Not a chance, the coverage is over two hundred miles. More if I look for them."

"Then where did they go?"

"They last showed up down by the creek. Near the Fly Rod Trailer Court."

"You're kidding. That's where the Plotznik kid was last seen."

"You want to see the map?"

"No, I believe you. I've got to go." Theo turned to leave.

Gabe caught him by the shoulder. "Theo, is, uh..."

"What?"

"Is Val Riordan single?"

"Divorced."

"Do you think she likes me?"

Theo shook his head. "Gabe, I understand. I spend too much time alone too."

"What? I was just asking."

"I'll see you."

"Hey, Theo, you look, uh, well, more alert today."

"Not stoned, you mean?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean..."

"It's okay, Gabe. Thanks, I think."

"Hang tough."

Jenny

As Jenny passed Estelle Boyet's table, she heard the old Black gentleman say, "We don't need to tell nobody nothin'. Been fifty years since I seen that thing. It probably done gone back to the sea."

"Still," Estelle said, "there's a little boy missing. What if the two are connected?"

"Ain't nobody ever called you a crazy nigger, did they?"

"Not that I can remember."

"Well, they have me. For some twenty years after I talked about that thing the last time. I ain't sayin' nothin' to no one. It's our secret, girl."

"I like it when you call me girl," Estelle said.

Jenny went off to the kitchen, trying to put the morning together in her mind, pieces of conversations as surreal as a Dali jigsaw puzzle. There was definitely something going on in Pine Cove.