because he thought the house was on fire. His eyes sprang open at the first hint of smoke. Amanda remained in a dead sleep.
John bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen. Smoke poured from the edges of the oven. John shut it off and opened the window and back door. He picked up a dish towel and snapped it like a matador’s cape in an effort to direct the smoke outside.
The beef Wellington was a charred rectangle solidly attached to the bottom of the roasting tin. The winding pastry vine Amanda had carved and applied to the top was the least burned, so John plucked off a leaf and ate it. He examined her artistry-each leaf was scored exactly six times, and the stem wound in and around itself, a perfect pastry kudzu.
At the beginning of their cohabitation, Amanda had given them both campylobacter poisoning from her improvisations with canned soup. Her remorse was grand and her declarations grander: she wanted to become a gourmet chef. John hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but in retrospect he felt that this was the first time he’d truly seen the sheer force of her will. She bought all of Julia Child’s books, pored over them, and obeyed every command. (“If Julia says peel the broccoli, you peel the broccoli,” she’d said bashfully the first time John caught her doing it. He’d roared with laughter, but after tasting the result never again questioned any bizarre kitchen ritual.)
Tonight, she’d left a fistful of raw puff pastry and all the leaves that hadn’t passed muster wadded up beside the cutting board. Bits of egg and shell were dried onto the counter along with smashed garlic skins and strips of waxed butter wrapper. Flour coated the floor. Every utensil she’d used was abandoned at the precise spot where she’d ceased to use it.
John turned on the water, and waited until it got hot. Although he was tired, he wanted Amanda to encounter a clean kitchen when she rose the next morning.
4
Isabel drifted in and out of a swirling rush. It wasn’t sleep, because she was aware of things happening-people speaking, but not understandably, swooshing noises as she zoomed from tunnel to tunnel-this one orange, this one blue, this one green. Hands manipulated her body and her face, and she suffered the occasional discomfort of being punctured. But reacting or moving didn’t occur to her, and it was just as well, because it wasn’t a possibility. Finally the colors and noise submerged into a merciful, vacuous black.
A high-pitched beeping and intermittent wheezing disturbed her rest, stirring and prodding from the depths. She tried to ignore it like she would a fly, but like a fly, it was insistent. Finally, she surfaced.
She blinked several times and found herself looking at pressed ceiling tiles. Her peripheral vision was obscured by her own swollen flesh.
“Look who’s awake.”
Peter’s face appeared above her, smiling. His eyes had dark crescents beneath them and his chin was flecked in stubble.
“The nurses said you were coming around.” He pulled a chair up and sat next to her, reaching through the bars in the bed rail. His hand was warm and familiar to her: he was missing the first two sections of his left index finger, bitten off by a chimpanzee while he was doing graduate work at a primate center in Rockwell, Oklahoma. She tried to tighten her fingers around his, but was too weak. He reached through with his other hand and stilled hers.
Isabel mumbled, but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Her tongue moved, but her teeth wouldn’t budge.
“Your jaw is wired. Don’t try to talk.”
She lifted a hand and found it encumbered by a finger clamp and loops of IV tubing. She freed the other from Peter’s grasp and gingerly investigated her face. Her fingers met a maze of plaster, gauze, and tape, the tender lumps of swollen lip and lines of wire crisscrossing the brackets that had been glued onto her remaining teeth. Her eyes swung to Peter. She signed, TELL ME.
“Your jaw is broken and you have a concussion. They had to reinflate your lung, so you have a chest tube, and your nose-”
NOT ME. THE APES.
Her efforts were truncated and awkward. She fumbled through the spelling of words that usually took two hands to sign, and improvised others.
“Ah,” he said.
PETER?
“They’re… kay.” The corners of his lips twitched upward in an attempt to smile, but his eyes gave him away.
A cry escaped Isabel’s wired mouth.
INJURED?
“No. I don’t think so. But we’re not sure. They’re still in the trees. In the parking lot. They won’t come down.”
ALL OF THEM?
“Yes.” He stroked her hand and spoke calmly. “Everyone is working on it. The fire department is there. The Humane Society and Animal Control are there. I’ve been going back and forth.”
Isabel let her gaze drift to the ceiling, and then to the window. Sleet drummed the pane, fat droplets of near- hail that coated the black glass. Her eyes welled with tears.
“It will be okay. I promise you,” he said. He took a jagged breath and let his forehead rest on the bed rail. “Thank God you’re awake. I was terrified…”
TAKE ME THERE. PLEASE. IT’S TOO COLD. THEY’LL DIE.
The beeping of her heart monitor sped up.
“Isabel, I can’t.”
MAKENA IS PREGNANT.
“I know, and I promise I’ll make sure she’s okay.”
WHO DID THIS? WHY?
“Extremists. The bastards claim they ‘liberated’ the apes. Wait till you see the video statement. Very Al Qaeda. It’s all over the Internet.” He clenched and unclenched his jaw, his eyes fixed on some point beyond the wall. He suddenly seemed to realize she was watching and softened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just…” He looked down and was silent. A moment later, she realized his shoulders were heaving. He was crying.
After a while he collected himself, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands. “When you’re up to it, the police want to talk to you.”
She blinked deliberately to indicate assent.
“There’s something else you should know. Celia has been taken in for questioning.”
Isabel’s eyes snapped open. OUR CELIA? ARRESTED?
“No. Not exactly. But she’s being held as a ‘person of interest.’ Apparently she has a background in animal activism. I wish I could say I’m surprised.”
Isabel’s mind raced back over Celia’s time at the lab. Although Isabel had shared several of Peter’s concerns over language, she had never doubted Celia’s devotion to the bonobos.
NO. THEY’RE WRONG. I DON’T BELIEVE IT.
Peter looked on sadly. Isabel closed her eyes, sending tears down her cheeks.
A silence stretched between them, broken by the patter of hail and all it implied for the tree-bound apes. When she opened her eyes again, Peter was staring at her. He exhaled, and raked a hand through his hair.
SHOW ME.
He nodded reluctantly. “Are you sure?”
YES.
He looked around the room, in the bathroom, and then went into the hall. After a few minutes, he came back with a hand mirror. He stood by the bed, pressing the reflective side against his sweater.
“This is all very fresh-you know that, right? You have the best plastic surgeons in the city. You’re going to look fine. You’re going to
