The next week, Gabriel nursed his sore knuckles and spent the end of every work day hiding from Dwight in order to make it to his mother’s apartment on time. During lunch in the staff room, he nibbled Sofia’s excellent ropa vieja and yuca con mojo, reheated in Tupperware, in the hope that if he stayed there long enough Harper might happen to show up with her own food. He hadn't been bold enough to ask her outright to join him for lunch, but thought she'd taken the hint. Looking at her just a little, exchanging a few words might satisfy the hunger he felt inside for the Southern girl with the sexy voice and the modest smile.
Then again, she probably thought he was a creeper for finding her on Facebook, and too polite to tell him so. He'd be better off playing it cool and waiting till they ran into each other. He needed to observe her some more and see if she was relaxed around him.
Rachel showed up every day at the lunch room, sat by him, tried to start a work-related conversation while giving him squinty-eyed looks that communicated her disappointment.
Monday:
Rachel: “Hey, San Diego Zoo called, some guy used to know your dad.” Rachel’s eyes: You shouldn’t have dumped me.
Gabriel: “Sure, give me his number.”
Rachel: “I have it on my desk.” Rachel’s eyes: You shouldn’t have dumped me.
Gabriel: “You tell him dad passed?”
Rachel: “Yeah, papi. Was I supposed to?” Rachel’s eyes continued to accuse him.
Gabriel: “That’s fine.” She shouldn’t still be calling him papi. He wasn’t her boyfriend anymore.
Rachel’s eyes continued their resentment and rage.
Though it hadn't felt like it at the time, it had been kind of fun that night being with Harper, fighting for her, fighting alongside her. Rachel would have just shrieked and run away flapping her arms like a duck.
Wednesday:
Gabriel: “Life is hard, you know. Responsibility is hard. You can’t always do what you want.”
Rachel: “I don’t think you know about responsibility, papi. But you can still grow up, know what I mean?” Rachel’s eyes: Take me back. You owe that to me.
Gabriel: “I was just thinking out loud.” He rubbed the knuckles on his right hand, which had dark scabs.
Rachel: “Hey, what happened to your hand?”
Gabriel: “I was in a bar fight last Friday.”
Rachel: “Holy shit, really? What happened?”
Gabriel: “Never mind.”
By Friday, Harper had never showed up in the staff room. Gabriel guessed she was eating at her desk, and if he wanted to see her, he was going to have to do something more effective than taking small bites of his lunch casserole. He considered going to her office before lunch was over, on some excuse, and say hi and see how friendly she was. Things had been good at the Hole, so why was he so shy now? Wait, what was Rachel saying?
Rachel, waving the remaining corner of her ham and cheese sandwich, was saying, “Hey, that new girl is doing the little kids’ tour today cause I have a doctor’s appointment. I don’t think she has what it takes, you know? I hope she don’t fall in the pool or nothing. Kevin said he might make her keep doing that and free me up for other duties. Whatever that means.”
An image of Harper holding the hands of two children, speaking at them with her lovely lilt, came to his mind. “I think she’ll be great with kids.”
“Oh, you know her, do you?”
“A little.”
“I think she’s a dumbass hick beeyotch.”
“Whatever, Rachel.”
****
Jorge and Pepper had been a little off all that day. Pepper was a little sluggish, and had upchucked some food at his feet. Gabriel got through the shows, and placed a call to the office of Dr. Max Shahini, the marine life veterinarian who cared for the sea lions. Max was away on an overnight tending a sick dolphin at Mystic Aquarium. Gabriel didn’t feel the situation was urgent, so he just left a message with Max’s service. Then he called Arnie and told him what was going on.
“I’ll ease up on Pepper a little for the rest of the day,” he told his boss. “I could stay overnight and keep an eye on him.”
“That’s okay. I’ll call Max too when we hang up and make sure he comes as soon as he can.”
Gabriel breathed heavily as he secured his phone in his locker and headed back to the amphitheater for the two o’clock show. It was the one the little kids’ tour would see. He would see Harper. He really wanted to see Harper. Being bored at lunch with Rachel every day had made him wonder what he had ever seen in her? She was loud, she was controlling, she was accusing. She was way too concerned with how people looked at her and what they thought of her. Harper was lively, but she felt more honest and more in touch with herself -- or was he imagining that? Was it just wishful thinking to assume she was a kind, sweet, good-natured, roll-with-the-punches kind of girl?
The stands were beginning to fill with tourists, and Jorge was circling the pool busily in contrast with Pepper’s lazy pace, when the school group arrived at ten till two.
Harper stood amidst a group of some twenty black and Hispanic Brooklyn fourth graders. It was as he had imagined; she was holding the hands of a little girl on the left and a little boy on the right. The facial features of both kids revealed that they had Down’s syndrome. Harper leaned down to talk to the entire group.
“This is going to be a great show to finish your aquarium tour. Look. You can see the animals are already in the pool. We have seats arranged in the front. And that’s Gabriel, our seal trainer. He has a special bond with the animals that goes all the way back to working with his dad to teach them their tricks. But Gabriel isn’t just a trainer, kids. You know what? He takes care of those two big seals virtually day and night. All right, just this way. Just up those steps to the front row. You have to be careful, though. You might get splashed!”
Seals? Gabriel thought. He chuckled a little. He loved how she pronounced the word, even though she was naming the wrong animal.
“Do they have killer whales?” a kid asked. “Like that one that killed a bunch of guys?”
“Um, no,” said Harper. “This aquarium doesn’t have an orca show. And you don’t have to worry about anything. Jorge and Pepe, our two seals, are just as friendly as can be! Even in the wild, seals aren’t dangerous to humans. Do you know why?”
Gabriel considered the best way he could correct Harper’s goofs. He didn’t want to destroy her confidence. She was busy arranging the kids in their seats with the help of a young woman teacher in a suit and two other adults whose more casual dress marked them as parent chaperones.
Ah — he had figured it out. He walked the length of the cross-pool platform and leaned on the fencing right by the kids.
“What a treat!” Harper said. “Kids, this is Gabe, our seal trainer. He’s come to pay us a visit!” She looked at him bright-eyed and cheerful. Was that more about the performance? Or was she as happy to have him there as he was to be near her? Her eyes seemed to linger on him a bit, in a way that was more personal than polite. “So, what’s on tap for today’s show?”
The show was starting earlier than two PM today. “Hi, kids. I’m Gabriel Castillo, and I’m afraid Miss Wheeler and I decided to test you today before the show. Does anyone know the secret of what we changed to see if you would notice?”
Several kids raised their hands. One of the other kids made a remark about needing to pee.
“Yes?” Gabriel pointed at a girl with a cute, chubby face wearing a t-shirt that said "fourth grade."
“I was confused cause it says sea lions on the signs and on the map and she was saying seals,” said the girl.
“That’s right! You are a smart girl. So I’m going to give you a special treat before the show.”
He whistled and raised his arm with two fingers extended out from his palm. There was some splashing behind him, but no sea lion emerged. He whistled again. A closer-up splash, and Pepper finally flopped out of the water and posted up partway to touch his nose to Gabriel’s hand.
It wasn’t good if Pepper needed to be called twice. There was definitely something wrong.
“This is Pepper,” he said, trying to smile. “So, do you kids know how to tell a sea lion from a seal? Yes?” He pointed to a small boy with his hand up.
“Cause they can stand up.”
“That’s right. Sea lions have feet. See, like Pepper does here? It lets them stand up. Seals just have flippers, so they stay on their bellies when they’re on solid ground. What else?” Gabriel took a quick look at Harper. She was flushed and had her lips tight. It's okay, he mouthed at her. She nodded, gave him a slight smile. He went through the other differences with the kids — the brown hide, the visible ear flaps, and a loud bark which Pepper demonstrated on the third command — checking with Harper at each point to see how mad at him she was. He just couldn’t tell from her expression. Showtime came, and he sent Pepper back across the pool to the far side of the platform and followed.
After the show, in which Pepper continued to perform below par, he put Jorge into the holding pool and brought the bigger sea lion onto the platform. He checked Pepper’s entire body for wounds, hard or swollen spots, or discolorations. He opened Pepper’s mouth and looked for any sign of a problem with his teeth. He looked at Pepper’s eyes for unusual coloration. As he was doing this, Pepper heaved and threw up on his shirt front.
The stench was awful — much worse than Pepper’s normal fishy breath. The problem, whatever it was, was affecting the sea lion’s digestion. Gabriel stripped off his t-shirt and dunked it in the pool, then wrung it out to get rid of most of the stink. Then he guided Pepper to the holding tank also. With sea lion vomit lingering in his senses, he walked up to the main office to see Arnie.
Gabriel’s boss had a small, cluttered office with only two extra seats. His desktop computer was covered with sticky notes, the desk covered with paper coffee cups. Arnie was a rotund, baby-faced man in his fifties who wore light-colored dress shirts and loose ties.
“Pepper’s sick,” he said. “I’m canceling the four o’clock show. Can you try to get Max here first thing?”
“Sure,” said Arnie. “Hey, how did Harper Wheeler do subbing for Rachel on the school tour?”
“She’s a natural with kids,” Gabriel said. “She was a great hire, Arnie. Tell Kevin we should keep her around if we can.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” said Arnie. “But I heard she screwed up and called the sea lions seals. That true?”
“That’s something we worked out together to get the kids interested in the show. Should we keep doing that?”
“Naw,” said Arnie. “Pretty playful for you, Gabe. But I do like the idea that you go talk to kids in the front row before the show. You should keep doing that.”
“Harper’s idea.”
“You guys make a good team.”
“Thanks, Arnie.”
"Oh. I have some candidates for the new mascot job. I'll do a couple of interviews and probably have someone for you by middle of next week."
"Great," Gabriel said. He didn't mean it.
Arnie was just an office guy, little more than a bean-counter, and there was an opinion that mattered more. Gabriel realized he had to go talk to Harper. Her desk, her cubicle really, was right near Rachel’s, he knew; it was just down the hall from Arnie’s office. He went straight there, opened the office door softly. She was there at the desk, back turned to him, looking at a website with pictures of sea lions. As he stepped in and shut the door, considering what to say, she swiveled in her chair, her nose wrinkling.
“What’s that smell — oh. Oh, hey.”
“Hey,” he said. “Listen, I came to say sorry about before.”
“Nothing to say sorry about. You even told me at The Hole about sea lions. I can read the signs. I messed up. I got so nervous about doing the kids’ tour, you know?”
“You were absolutely great,” Gabriel said. “I’ve always been pretty clumsy around kids. I don’t know what to say to them, but you were so caring to those kids. I was impressed.”
“Yeah, well… You know, my brother and I didn’t have such a great time growing up. Kids need all the loving they can get. What’s that … oh, God, what is that smell?”
She was looking at the irregular, pinkish brown stain on his white uniform t-shirt.
“That’s … oh, I thought I washed off enough of it. That’s Pepper’s stomach contents. He’s sick.”
“Oh no!” Harper’s eyes crinkled. “You must be worried. Is there anything you can do? Did you call the vet?”
“He’s up in Connecticut. Arnie should be able to get him here in the morning.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I’m not a vet, but I’d start by checking for leptospirosis. He’s had his shots, but they don’t always work.” He looked at her, realized that despite her friendly eyes she was struggling to put up with the stink from his clothes. “Look, I should get out of here and get showered and changed. But I do want to say sorry. I didn’t want to embarrass you. I was using your idea from the other night, about going to talk to kids in the front row. That was a good idea.”
“Yeah, it worked out. Gabriel, you should know. I thought you did pretty good with those kids, too. I think you’re a natural with kids, if you trust yourself.”
“Really?”
He took a step away, turned back. “Arnie said we make a good team. I… Well, I think he’s right. Listen, maybe we could go for a drink again, or get some dinner? That is, if you want to join me…?”
“Yes,” she blurted. “Yes, I’d like that.”
“Tomorrow night. Leave from work?”
“Uh huh.”
“Great.”
“Now — please. Go clean up, huh?” She grinned.
As he walked out to head for the showers, Gabriel was grinning like a fool. If only Pepper would be okay, then tomorrow night might turn out to be one of his best nights in a long time.