"Haven't you?" she asked softly.

"She's been making some noises, but ..." His voice trailed off.

"You might find hope," she suggested timidly. "In El Salvador."

"You're starting to sound like Sylvia." He tilted his head up and looked at the sky. "I know that centuries of science and medicine have a thing or two to say about it." He placed his hand over his heart and bent forward slightly. "Sylvia thinks she's the only one who has intuition. But I have a brain and a heart, and they're both telling me that Yvette is not going to recover. Not as the old Yvette, not even as a fraction of herself. She'll never speak or look up at the sky and say, 'Wow, what a pretty moon.' I've already made peace with that. And I don't want to add any more damage to her condition."

Monica looked down and kicked at some dirt with the edge of her flip-flops. "It's a long shot, huh?"

"Like trying to sink a golf ball from here to a hole in Boston." He stepped in closer and put his hands on her shoulders. "Get ready. I have a feeling this is going to be a h.e.l.l of a fight."

His skin was warm and fragrant, and she froze with the overwhelming temptation to touch him, to press her fingers into the hard wall of his waist. She nodded but didn't hug him back. Her arms hung wooden at her side.

"I'm glad you're coming," he said. "Your history with the place is going to help." He turned and looked down the road, where Bruce's Lincoln had disappeared. He leaned down, kissed her politely on the forehead, turned around, and walked to his truck. As he opened the door, he stopped and pointed up at a window of her house. "Kick those monkeys out and get some rest. You'll need it."

Monica c.o.c.ked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. His truck turned the corner and left a fading comet tail of red light in the darkness. She heard a noise from above. She looked up and saw someone's figure standing in the window frame.

"Need some rest for what?" It was Kevin, slurring his words.

"We're going to El Salvador," Monica said calmly. Someone spoke to him from inside the room, and Monica saw Kevin step back from the window and turn his head. Kevin had been working a lot of hours over the past week, and she had the feeling he'd only been half listening when she had explained the progression of events prior to tonight. She wasn't about to explain it all now.

She found a beach blanket in the trunk of her car and took it to a hammock she had set up between two trees in the small strip of yard next to her house. She hopped in and looked out to the water and the lights of Long Island. She could hear Kevin inside the house, searching for her; Paige's protest at being woken up, then the crunch of his footsteps on the gravel of the driveway. Kevin didn't know that Monica had found a nook under a tree for a hammock. Veiled from view behind the skirts of an elm tree, Monica rocked herself, impervious to his calling. He went back upstairs. She listened to the agitated murmurs upstairs until they quieted down and the house went dark and silent.

The Connecticut coast was quiet, placid, foggy, civilized; a world away from the pounding waves that smashed the ancient volcanic boulders of Negrarena. She had always known that there was an immense difference between this crowded, domesticated seash.o.r.e and the majestic ocean of her childhood. She imagined that the difference in character of those two bodies of water was like the difference between contentment and awe.

Part TWO

chapter 9 THE FIRST DOSE.

No one noticed that Yvette Lucero mashed her jaw as the needle injected a tiny amount of clear fluid into her spine. Had anyone noticed, it would have counted as a pain response and would have represented a b.u.mp of two whole points on her Glasgow Coma Score. The pain was cold, dazzling, and pure as a plunge into ice water. She felt a stunting and weighty rage. But the pain pa.s.sed as quickly as it began, followed by a blinding deluge of snow that pattered on the roof of her brain and pulled her down into the emptiness of sleep.

Yvette squeezed through a hatch that led to unconsciousness-three levels below sleep-and hunkered down to weather the storm. She got back to the daily task of digging her way out of her prison with fingernails that were beginning to turn the bruised color of denim. No one knew that she was here. She sensed that the outside world had set sail without her, and she was alone on this island, with no way to get home. She could only feel and smell the existence of an external world. And she could think, of course. The outside world had changed, she was sure of it. The air smelled unfamiliar-like wood varnish, sea weed, and coffee. She could feel the shifting tide of the sea nearby in the movement of air, tasted it on the spongy fibers of her tongue every time she took a breath.

She had also been working on the reconstruction of the past. Her mind did the backbreaking work of a chain gang with its incessant digging. She had a few tattered fragments of her life, three bright strips of living material that didn't fit together or suggest anything useful. The first was an image of the yellow chiffon sleeves of an anemone, waving through the thick and distorting gla.s.s of a public aquarium tank. The second was an image of a man's leg, muscled and flexing back and forth with the effort of lifting something. And finally, there was the memory of standing in a magnificent rose garden. In this frame, a man holds a camera. The sun behind him is bright and all she can see is the outline of his figure. She is about to tell him that it's not a good angle, that she's going to look overexposed and squinting, when he shouts, "Smile!"

Flash!

As always, those three strips of footage were stilled and mounted against the gray cinder-block walls of her mind, loud and bright as graffiti on a subway wall. But this time, something was different. She blinked with disbelief.

Yvette was standing before an explosion of new, living, moving strips of imagery. She didn't know which to look at first, with all of them moving at the same time, in different directions, skateboarding across her vision faster than she could study them. She had the impression that she was looking through the eyepiece of a pair of binoculars, peering out at a distant sh.o.r.e from the bouncing position of a boat. She was excited and happy and devoured the explosion of colors and shapes. She got to work trying to group them together, comparing them to each other like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, keeping some, rejecting others. She was elated to find that each memory contained irrefutable evidence of her own existence in the world.

chapter 10 UNDULATIONS.

Bruce, Monica, and Will arrived in El Salvador three full days after Sylvia's departure, due to the unavailability of seats on flights headed into San Salvador. They eventually picked up separate connections, Will and Bruce through Miami and Monica through Atlanta. His old friend Claudia Credo came through on her offer and ended up making two separate runs out to the airport on the same day to scoop all the travelers.

They were to spend the first night with Claudia and her parents in San Salvador. Within an hour of her arrival, the phone rang for Monica. It was Kevin. He was jealous of Will, he admitted, and equally hurt that Will was now "in" with Bruce. Not that Kevin wanted to be included in the trip-he just didn't want Will near Monica. "Give me a break," Monica said. "He's here because of his wife." wife."

"Time can tear down anything," Kevin warned.

"If two years hasn't done it, then two weeks certainly won't."

"How can a man love someone who can't talk, laugh, have s.e.x, or cook a meal? He can't even get yelled at for leaving his clothes on the floor. Nothing. Nada."

Outside, it was beginning to get dark. A small, lime-green parakeet landed on the sill of her window, scratched at something, and flew away. Monica said, "Kevin, you should see her. The unfairness of it makes you want to drop to your knees and scream."

She heard him take a deep breath. "I bet." But he persisted with his rivalry. "Will must see you as a possible escape."

Annoyed at the conversation, Monica said, "Maybe he already has someone on the side. What do we know? It's none of our business, anyway."

"Be very careful, Monica."

Monica felt her face get hot with embarra.s.sment at the thought that someone might overhear this conversation-it presumed so much. She felt vain just entertaining the concept that Will might have felt the same flicker of attraction as she did, which at the moment seemed horribly cra.s.s even to her secret self. Was she that transparent?

"Point taken, Kevin. I'll be home in two weeks. You've been so busy lately, you won't even miss me."

"Monica," he said, in a long, drawn-out breath that made Monica anxious to get off the phone. "I wasn't expecting someone like Will to come along or for you to run off to El Salvador, but it did force me to stop and appreciate what I've got. I haven't been putting in a lot of effort lately. I'm sorry about that."

"Please, no need to apologize. You helped me with the new deck and you do all kinds of nice stuff for me." Between yawns, she added, "What we're looking at is called territoriality. Sociology 101. Remember?"

"It's called love. I miss you."

She looked up at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the night table. "It's eleven o'clock here, sweetie. One in the morning your time. I'm exhausted. I'll call you when I have some news."

In bed ten minutes later, Monica realized that she had not told him that she loved him too. Its significance hunkered in the darkness long after she had hung up the phone. Monica kicked off the sheets and stared up at the blades of the ceiling fan, her arms extended at her sides as she waited for the sweet refuge of sleep.

CLAUDIA CREDO estimated that Kevin's four phone calls would cost him close to two hundred dollars if he didn't have a special international calling plan. estimated that Kevin's four phone calls would cost him close to two hundred dollars if he didn't have a special international calling plan. "Mil seiscientos colones!" "Mil seiscientos colones!" Claudia's elderly mother gasped, quickly computing the exchange rate and placing four bony fingers over her stretched lips. "He must really love you," she said with a nod of approval, then went back to rocking herself to sleep in her chair. Claudia's elderly mother gasped, quickly computing the exchange rate and placing four bony fingers over her stretched lips. "He must really love you," she said with a nod of approval, then went back to rocking herself to sleep in her chair.

Claudia shuffled her houseguests into the dining room, which had been set up with a linen tablecloth and casual china. Will slung one hand over Monica's back and squeezed her shoulder. "Bruce, what do you think of this guy Kevin for your daughter? Do you see him as your future son-in-law?"

Monica turned and frowned at Will. "He made a bad first impression, I know."

Will raised one eyebrow. "The second impression wasn't so great either. I really could have lived without seeing his bare a.s.s out on the seawall."

"He had too much to drink, like everyone else."

Will just smiled, tilting his head and holding one hand out, encouraging her to continue defending.

"Sit," Claudia said, pulling out chairs. In the courtyard just outside the window, a huge, chesty parrot prattled incessantly, calling out for someone named Chabela, who turned out to be a housekeeper who had died over ten years ago. "It gives us the creeps at night," Mama Mercedes confessed.

The housekeeper rushed about, setting down plates of steaming eggs, tortillas, refried beans, and Mama Mercedes's sweet tamales. "Adelfa," Claudia reprimanded. "I told you to serve the orange juice first."

Bruce praised Mama Mercedes's tamales ad nauseam, and they all enjoyed making the old lady's ancient eyes sparkle with pride. She rang a small silver bell that sat on the table. When the maid failed to appear, she got up and shuffled off, complaining how hard it was to find a good muchacha muchacha these days. these days.

By the time they'd sat down to eat, Monica had forgotten that Will had pressed Bruce about Kevin. But ten minutes later, Bruce extracted a prune pit from his mouth and placed it on the side of his plate and turned to Will. "To answer your question, Will, I think Kevin is a very nice fellow. In fact, I consider him a friend. But I don't think Monica lets Kevin drive," he said, his hands gripping an imaginary steering wheel. He turned to his daughter. "Kevin has zero influence over what direction you take."

Monica frowned. "Is that what you think love is? A drive down the parkway?"

"I think you could do better, Monica," Will said, his voice dropping into a more serious tone. "You are ..." He held his hand out flat, as if he were presenting her to an audience of strangers. "You're beautiful. You're a smart, professional woman with grace and talent, and Kevin may indeed be 'nice,' but he's not as impressive a man as you are a woman." He folded his arms over his chest and looked at Bruce. "There. I said it. Not another word or I might get my a.s.s kicked by a pack of naked ex-frat-boys when we get home." He covered his mouth and looked at Claudia and Monica. "Oops. Pardon my French." Claudia shook her head, indicating she didn't understand the expression.

Monica felt a wave of sadness over the futility of her relationship with Kevin. They were right, it wasn't it it, and she had known it all along. The morning had dawned on the realization that she didn't love Kevin. But still, she had grown to care about him a great deal, and they knew each other so well; saying good-bye seemed like such a waste. Her eyelids pressed out two thin, hot tears and she hunched one shoulder to catch them with the fabric of her blouse.

"I'm sorry," Will said, "I hit a nerve."

Claudia got up and put her arms around Monica's shoulders. "You'll work it out."

"Gracias," Will said at the same time, accepting a gla.s.s of orange juice from the maid's tray. He took a sip, closed his eyes, and moaned a little. "Oh ... fresh squeezed." When he opened his eyes, he looked at Monica. Sympathy crossed his face. "Keep it in perspective, Monica. I'd give anything to be back where you are." Will said at the same time, accepting a gla.s.s of orange juice from the maid's tray. He took a sip, closed his eyes, and moaned a little. "Oh ... fresh squeezed." When he opened his eyes, he looked at Monica. Sympathy crossed his face. "Keep it in perspective, Monica. I'd give anything to be back where you are."

"And where's that?" Monica asked, using her cloth napkin to dab at the corners of her eyes.

"The time in your life where the future is still up to you."

WHEN CLAUDIA'S DRIVER pulled into the circular driveway of Clinica Caracol, Monica could feel Bruce, Will, and Claudia searching her face for a reaction. She bulged her eyes out and said, "What?" She had to admit it did feel odd, but not overwhelmingly so. In fact, what she was beginning to feel was a giddy sense of happiness at approaching Negrarena, still the mother of all beaches. Even though she lived near the sea in Connecticut, the feeling of approaching the coast in El Salvador was far more perceptible, since the contrast between land and sea was so much more p.r.o.nounced. Its presence called upon all the senses. First, the sudden thickening of the air, followed by quick glimpses of blue that appeared between the surrounding mountains, the feeling of descending into an expanse of magic. Then the soothing sound, the smell of salt and fish. Will said, "My G.o.d, it's gorgeous." pulled into the circular driveway of Clinica Caracol, Monica could feel Bruce, Will, and Claudia searching her face for a reaction. She bulged her eyes out and said, "What?" She had to admit it did feel odd, but not overwhelmingly so. In fact, what she was beginning to feel was a giddy sense of happiness at approaching Negrarena, still the mother of all beaches. Even though she lived near the sea in Connecticut, the feeling of approaching the coast in El Salvador was far more perceptible, since the contrast between land and sea was so much more p.r.o.nounced. Its presence called upon all the senses. First, the sudden thickening of the air, followed by quick glimpses of blue that appeared between the surrounding mountains, the feeling of descending into an expanse of magic. Then the soothing sound, the smell of salt and fish. Will said, "My G.o.d, it's gorgeous."

They drove up to the great gates of Villa Caracol and the driver honked his horn. A man came out and took their information and let them in. The exterior of the sprawling beach villa was the same as Monica remembered, only it had been freshly painted a warm, sunrise pink with terra-cotta brown detailing. The row of coconut palms still lined the entrance and led to an old marble fountain upon which a mermaid blew into a conch sh.e.l.l. The trees and lush, flowering shrubbery that Monica remembered had been cut down. The driver parked the van under the carport, turned around, and looked at Claudia, waiting for his instructions. "Hang around, Santos," she said. "We'll be about two hours."

Monica kept her head down as they stepped from the bright sunshine into the deep shade of the foyer. She welcomed the familiar cool air, like stepping into a library or a museum on a hot summer day. The ancient smells of the thick stone walls blasted her with a rush of memories, and she looked around with wonder at the vaulted ceilings and large, Italian terrazzo tiles. All of it was somewhat smaller than she remembered, but it still made for an impressive entrance. Monica closed her eyes and filled her lungs with the fragrance of time, the antique furniture and tobacco and coffee, all of it laced with undertones of sea smells. Tears sprang up in her eyes for the second time that day. She felt a smile spread across her lips as she imagined Abuelo smoking his pipe and reading the morning paper. She remembered him sitting in a huge, Mexican wood chair, under the sun beaming through an arched window with pink and indigo blue stained-gla.s.s edges. She opened her eyes and the scene evaporated into what was now the lobby of a medical clinic.

Abuela's heavy, baroque wood-and-gla.s.s display cabinet now housed a collection of seash.e.l.ls from all over the world. The other monstrous dark-wood armoires and overwrought chairs had been replaced by shiny gla.s.s cases, illuminated from within. Monica rushed up to them and pressed her hands against the gla.s.s until the edges rattled in their tracks. Each specimen was labeled with both its common and scientific name, its country of origin, its discoverer, and the year it was discovered. They were grouped by species-cowries, scallops, murexes, limpets, slit sh.e.l.ls, lightning whelks, cones. At the center of the room was the star-a single cone sh.e.l.l in its own case, polished to a high, beige, blood-speckled gloss.

"The molluskan hall of fame," Bruce mumbled in Claudia's ear.

Claudia nodded and said, "They're beautiful. I never paid much notice to seash.e.l.ls. I had no idea there were so many varieties."

"This doesn't even come close," Monica whispered breathlessly. "She had more than this."

"Who?"

"Mami. This is her collection." Monica said, smiling hugely. She could feel herself tremble with excitement. "They're so ... beautiful. I'd forgotten ... to see so many of them together. ... They're like works of art."

Bruce said, "You can't possibly say with certainty that she owned these specific sh.e.l.ls."

"Yes, I can," Monica said, speaking quickly now, authority strengthening her voice. "The fingerprint of a collector is in the choices she makes in what to collect. The furiosus furiosus species," she said, tapping the gla.s.s with her fingernail, "was registered over a century ago, and this particular specimen was collected by my great-grandfather." She took a few steps along the front of the case. "That species," she said, tapping the gla.s.s with her fingernail, "was registered over a century ago, and this particular specimen was collected by my great-grandfather." She took a few steps along the front of the case. "That Conus gloriamaris Conus gloriamaris was a birthday gift to my mom from Abuela. It's the one I told you she spent thousands of dollars for back in the 1960s." was a birthday gift to my mom from Abuela. It's the one I told you she spent thousands of dollars for back in the 1960s."

"Alma kept her sh.e.l.ls in smelly boxes in a room at her parents' house," Bruce said to Will and Claudia. "This is all news to me."

"Abuela must have created this display after Mom died," Monica said, "because I remember Mom kept them in smelly boxes too." The mention of the odor of rotting snail flesh released a brief recollection of her mother's clever use of black ants to eat the carca.s.s of the dead snail lodged inside a difficult-to-clean sh.e.l.l interior.

"Have you added any new ones?" Monica asked the receptionist as she approached them and greeted them in Spanish. The young woman shook her head, but said that she had been charged with ordering more from a catalog. She rolled her eyes and said, "I've been putting it off. Like I know anything about buying sh.e.l.ls."

Monica almost jumped out of her shoes. "I can help," she said, sounding more like an excited child than she meant to. The woman looked at her as if she were the biggest nerd ever born, then recomposed herself and asked who they were. She got their names and returned with the office manager-a tiny, rotund matron named Soledad Mayo. They all rushed to the center of the room and began speaking at once, Bruce and Monica in Spanish and Will in English.

Soledad held up a hand, then folded her arms behind her back, as if to force her own body language to appear friendly. She spoke to them in heavily accented English. "La Senora Sylvia told me that you would be arriving, Senor Lucero. We are here to serve you and honor your wishes, whatever they might be, and would like you to feel comfortable with whatever treatment you elect for your wife," she said, all the while giving Will a cautious sideways look. "All we ask, before we take you to see her, is to consider our treatment before making your final decision."

"I did make a final decision, and it was to keep her in the States," Will said, his voice echoing off the tile floor. "My mother-in-law betrayed my wishes and the doctor's recommendations. I'm here to take my wife home."

The woman looked at the other three for support and, not finding it, turned back to Will with large kohl-rimmed eyes. "La Senora Sylvia told us that her financial and medical platform of support is being gradually withdrawn because Yvette has made little progress since her accident."

"That's not the point," Will said, raising his voice, his face turning bright red.

Bruce put a hand on his shoulder. "Take it easy, man. Let's take the tour, become informed, then we'll get Yvette out of here," he said, winking at Soledad and pulling a notepad and a pen out of his hip pocket. "I'm the reporter who spoke to you on behalf of Urban Science Urban Science."

Soledad's face brightened, then clouded, as she shifted her eyes to Will. "Oh, yes, Mr. Winters. I ... didn't know you were together."

"Originally we weren't, but then Sylvia ..." Bruce's voice trailed off and he pointed toward the door. "It's a long story."

Nothing in the ensuing rooms reminded Monica of her ancestral beach home. The vaulted ceilings had been dropped with acoustical ceiling tile; it could be an outpatient facility anywhere. The staff moved about their business, looking up with occasional curiosity, but otherwise, the labs, administrative offices, and conference rooms were both professional and unremarkable. Monica kept glancing at Bruce, trying to read his face as he sized up the new construction against what he remembered of the old floor plan.

"Who owns this property?" Monica asked Soledad.

"This property is privately owned by a family and is on loan to the venture. Caracol was completely decrepit and abandoned for a long time. It all came together when Dr. Mendez secured funding from a British company named BioSource to study the effects of cone sh.e.l.l venom on humans."

"Back in the States, we begin with mice," Will barked.

Soledad closed her eyes as she spoke. "This treatment is beyond that point."

"How did the Borreros get involved?" Bruce asked, putting his hands on his hips.

The woman looked surprised that he knew the name. "The Borreros have a long history of expertise with mollusks. It began with Reinaldo Marmol, a doctor who used the venom of a local cone species as an anesthetic upon the request of Indians who distrusted Western medicine. His daughter, Magnolia Marmol, was a collector of rare and beautiful seash.e.l.ls. She married the wealthy industrialist Adolfo Borrero. Their daughter, Alma Borrero, was the one who took that interest to the level of pa.s.sion. She collected most of the specimens you saw in the lobby."

Monica almost burst out with triumph, but managed to restrain herself and settled for clearing her throat and giving her father a quick glance. He pretended not to notice, underlining what he had told her back home-that he didn't want the staff to know their connection to the family. He claimed that it could compromise his access to information. Fortunately for him, so far they had only run into the clinic's staff, none of whom would recognize them or link them to Alma.

Soledad continued, "The Conus furiosus Conus furiosus variety that was used so successfully by Dr. Reinaldo Marmol in his medical practice disappeared from sight for a half century. It was his granddaughter who inspired the search for the elusive species by her family members, friends, and local entrepreneurs who saw it as an opportunity to re-create it synthetically-in a lab-and manufacture it primarily as a far superior subst.i.tute for morphine." variety that was used so successfully by Dr. Reinaldo Marmol in his medical practice disappeared from sight for a half century. It was his granddaughter who inspired the search for the elusive species by her family members, friends, and local entrepreneurs who saw it as an opportunity to re-create it synthetically-in a lab-and manufacture it primarily as a far superior subst.i.tute for morphine."

"Really?" Monica said playfully. "That's just remarkable. So what happened next?"

"Alma died tragically before she ever found the cone. A few reappeared two and a half years ago, in Mexico, El Salvador, then Guatemala, and they seem to be coming back strong in Panamic waters near Costa Rica."

"So who grabbed the bra.s.s ring?" Bruce asked, and Monica knew him well enough to know that her father was straining to appear cool and only mildly interested. Soledad looked down at her own ring finger, confused.

"It's an expression," Bruce said. "Who created this clinic? Who made it a reality?"

"Oh," she said. "Mostly a woman by the name of Dr. Mendez."

"And who is Leticia Ramos?" Monica pressed. "I know she's the one that Sylvia spoke with initially."