understand the stuff. There is no idea in all science that can’t be grasped by the persistent application of the second-rate mind, said Cooksey, quoting Whitehead. He quoted Whitehead a lot, also Yeats, and a bunch of other people Jenny had never heard of. Not, he said on that occasion, that you have a second-rate mind, my dear, for since it is almost perfectly empty, we have not had a chance to rate it at all. And you are in any case persistent, as I have often observed.
They had a large colorful platter shaped like a fish, which the household invariably used to serve fish. Rupert liked it so. Scotty piled the creamy smooth salad in it and added chopped scallion, lettuce leaves, capers, radishes, and other garnishes in such a way that it looked like a Japanese painting of a real fish. Jenny picked up the warmed bread and a chilled bottle of chardonnay and followed Scotty and the tuna platter out to the terrace.
Jenny didn’t know whether the changes she had observed recently in the group owed more to her new status or if something else was going on. She was not, as she told Geli often, all that good at figuring stuff out, but she was real good at vibing when something was off, and here there was. She recalled well that before Moie disappeared, Rupert would usually talk to Luna and Cooksey, and Luna would talk to Rupert and Scotty, and Scotty would talk to Luna and Kevin, and Kevin would only occasionally talk to her, mainly to slip a snide comment sideways under his breath. When Geli came to lunch, she always sat next to Jennifer and talked to her and to Luna. Now everything seemed turned around. Geli and Luna were sitting on either side of Rupert. Kevin was right up there on the good end of the table with them, and now the Professor and Scotty were sitting on either side of Jennifer, at what Kevin always used to call the peasant end of the table. No one commented on these changes. When she sat down, Jenny told Cooksey that she had finished the series. “Really? That’s wonderful, my dear. We’ll have to find you something else to do.” And then he launched into a discussion of orchid pollinators with Scotty, pausing every so often to include Jennifer in the conversation, and after a while, Scotty began to do the same. Normally as silent as a cat, he could talk a blue streak about plants and fish, although he had never done so with Jennifer before this. It sort of made up for Kevin treating her like she was invisible. And what was all this with Kevin and Luna? They hated each other, but here they were, chatting away like nobody’s business. It was very strange; even stranger, Jenny didn’t mind it one bit.
After lunch, Jenny came back from cleaning up in the kitchen to find Cooksey perched on a stool near the microscope station checking through the lab notebook.
“Did you record all of them on this page?” he asked. “These columns seem to show different numbers.”
“Yeah, but there were some that didn’t fit. I must’ve screwed up some way. Sorry. The ones I couldn’t figure out’re in here.” She held up the vial and Cooksey peered at the indeterminate black mass within. “‘Didn’t fit’ meaning that you couldn’t classify them as either gemellus or insularis?”
“Yeah. And I couldn’t find them in the key, either.”
“That’s odd. Well, let’s have a look, shall we?”
He sat at the microscope and placed a wasp on the stage. He peered for some time and then examined another and a third, muttering to himself. He rose and pulled a reprint file down and studied several reprints. He consulted the key, looked in the microscope, checked another reprint. Mutter, mutter, and then, “Well, I’ll be blowed!”
“What? Did I make a mistake?”
He looked her in the face, and she saw that his eyes were shining. He was beaming like a two-year-old with a fresh cookie. “Oh, not at all. Oh, no! I believe you’ve discovered a new species of Pegoscapus. ”
“Is that good?”
“Good? It’s splendid! Epochal! I myself have been studying these little blighters for over twenty years and I’ve only discovered one new species.”
It had never occurred to Jenny, having only recently learned about species and that they each had a name, to imagine that there were animals that didn’t have one. It made her feel peculiar, and she asked, “But, um, what do we call it? I mean, in the notebook.”
“Whatever we bloody well please!” crowed Cooksey.
“Really? You mean just make something up?”
“Indeed. Of course there are certain traditions. Species are usually named for some aspect of the organism, like its shape or habit, or its native heath, or to honor someone in the trade. In Pegoscapus alone, as you know, we find Hoffmeyer and Herre so distinguished. I myself named my Tetrapus after my late wife.”
At this, something seemed to deflate in Cooksey, the light that had just shone from his eyes dimmed, and he appeared to shrink a little. Jenny observed this and found it dreadful.
Into the silence now she blurted, “What was her name?”
“Portia,” said Cooksey dully.
“Like the sports car?” asked Jennifer. She was startled to see the look on his face after she’d said this, a stunned expression akin to one following a blow to the base of the skull, and she began to worry that maybe she had said something insulting, because you could never tell with English people, they thought a lot of weird stuff, and now he looked like he was going to have a heart attack, his face going pink and strange sounds issuing from deep in his chest. She was about to say something when the first unmistakable laugh burst forth. This was even more startling because she had never heard such a sound from Cooksey before, a dry chuckle was more his style, and she knew that he was not really laughing at her, so it was all right, if a little strange.
She watched him as the laughter poured out, tears squirted from his eyes, and his knees wobbled. “Oh God Oh Christ,” he expostulated at intervals, and after a while she started laughing, too, just to join in and for happiness and delight that her own dumb remark (because, although she had known a girl named Chrysler once, obviously a high-class guy like Cooksey wouldn’t have married a girl named after a car) could have caused such a gush of exhilaration.
Cooksey was still in the paroxysm, eyes tight shut and completely out of control now (Oh Christ Oh God); he bounced off the microscope table and would have collapsed on the floor had she not caught him in her arms. She sank down with him under the table, cradling his upper body. He smelled of tobacco and guy. Jennifer’s laughter slowed, then stopped, because what was coming out of Cooksey wasn’t laughter, or not entirely laughter anymore.
After some time and a few long whooping breaths, he opened his eyes and looked at her. His cheeks were slick with tears. “Oh, God,” he said. “How utterly disgraceful. Please forgive me.”
“It’s cool. I guess it was pretty funny to you. And, like, not just funny.”
“No. It was a sort of private joke and it just…I suppose it rather unleashed some…things. It’s hard to explain. I imagine one had to be there.” He made no move to rise but continued, “We were at a conference in Bellagio; it’s a lovely place in Italy, with a palace they use as a conference center. And one of the participants was a young woman named Maserati. I think she actually might have been related to the famous automobile dynasty, but in any case, she was quite pretty in an Italian way, and she appeared to set her cap for me, I can’t imagine why, and of course I was flattered. I’m such a fool at that sort of thing. There’s a good deal of naughtiness that goes on at such affairs, and Portia and I hadn’t been together all that long. Well, Portia was mad with jealousy and being Portia she made no bones about how she felt and we had a row, and in the midst of it, all I could think of to say was ‘How could anyone who has a Portia desire a Maserati,’ and it just stopped her cold, and then I said ‘and she probably leaks oil as well,’ and we both went absolutely mad with laughter. I imagine it was the tension breaking, because it was a very poor sort of joke. Anyway, every time we saw the wretched woman after that, we were positively weak with it, spurting wine through our noses and so on.”
A long sigh and a brief silence ensued. “I suppose I’ve been half dead myself since she died. And then when you said that, it just took me over. I hope I didn’t frighten you with that display.”
“No, it’s totally cool. How did she die?”
He laughed, his usual short bark. “Asks the American girl. You all fly your sorrows like flags, don’t you? And expect everyone else to do the same. Perhaps you’re right. Keeping it all packed away hasn’t done me much good. Well, since you ask, she was bitten by a fer-de-lance.”
“What’s that?”
“A snake. Bothrops atrox. The deadliest reptile in the American tropics. We were in Colombia desperately collecting from a stand of forest scheduled to be clear-cut, a lovely little valley full of the usual richness, and of
