How I Learned to Love the Walrus

by Beth Orsoff

  "What if I miss and hit the calf by accident?"

  "Don’t miss."

  I lowered my crossbow. "No way, Ethan. Pick another one."

  "Pick another one?"

  From the tone of incredulity in his voice, you’d think I’d told him to swim over there and arm wrestle one to the ground. "There are tons of them. Just pick another. One without a baby glued to its side."

  He continued to stare at me with his jaw hanging down.

  "What? You heard me. Pick another one."

  Then he started to laugh.

  "What’s so funny?" I was trying to keep a straight face, but it was hard with him laughing at me, and even Mac sporting a wide grin.

  Ethan stopped laughing and cleared his throat. "Since when are you giving the orders?"

  "Someone has to."

  "Yeah, me."

  "Listen, Ethan, I agreed to come up here and help you tag walruses, but I never agreed to take orders from you."

  His eyebrows shot up so high, they looked like two centipedes crossing his forehead. "You damn well did."

  "When?"

  "Yesterday, when you almost fell through the ice."

  I shook my head. "That’s not how I recall it. I believe you admitted it was your fault for not warning me."

  "I did no such thing."

  "Sorry, but you did."

  We continued bickering, half serious, half in jest, until Mac said, "You two want to keep it down, you’re scaring the walruses."

  We both stopped talking and turned around. Ethan reached for his binoculars while I stared in horror at the sudden walrus stampede. Apparently the ones closest to the edge were moving too slowly because the ones in the center of the ice floe were stomping on top of them and digging their tusks into their hides trying to push them out of the way.

  "It’s a polar bear," Ethan said.

  I grabbed his binoculars, but all I could see was a furry white head sticking out of the water as it dog paddled its way toward the herd. By the time the polar bear hauled itself onto the ice, all the walruses had dispersed into the sea.

  "How come he’s not following them?" I asked, when the polar bear just lay down.

  "Look at him," Ethan said. "He’s exhausted."

  I scanned the horizon for more ice floes, but all I could see was open water. "Where did he come from?"

  "I don’t know," Ethan replied. "He’s a long way from land."

  "Is that normal for a polar bear to be out swimming in the middle of the ocean like that?"

  Ethan sighed. "There is no normal any more." Then he lowered his binoculars and told Mac to go.

  Twenty minutes later we came upon a new herd of walruses sunning themselves on an ice floe in the gray afternoon light.

  "Someone should go back and tell the polar bear. I’m sure he’d be happy to hear dinner’s only a few miles away."

  "He’ll figure it out," Ethan said, handing me my crossbow.

  "What if he doesn’t? What if he swims in the wrong direction?"

  "Then he’ll either find something else to eat or he’ll starve."

  I didn’t want to watch a polar bear devour a live walrus, but that didn’t mean I wanted it to starve to death either. What I didn’t understand was how someone who supposedly cared about these animals could be so cavalier.

  "Has anyone ever told you you’re a cold-hearted bastard?" I asked.

  "Yes," Ethan calmly replied

  We tagged two more walruses before heading back to the ship—one bull and one cow. I was so caught up in the moment that I’d temporarily forgotten that this wasn’t actually my job. I remembered again as soon as I turned on my sat phone.

  Chapter 41

  "What the fuck are you doing in the middle of the Arctic Ocean?" my boss’s voice boomed through the sat phone’s tinny speaker.

  "Tagging walruses." I wanted to strangle Blake for ratting on me, but to be fair he didn’t know he was ratting. I never told him not to tell anyone.

  "You’re what?" Rick yelled again. I started to explain, but he cut me off. "You know what, Sydney, I don’t fucking care. Either get back to work or hand Blake off to Lindsay." Click.

  Damn Blake for driving drunk. Thankfully no one was hurt, and his blood alcohol level was so low he didn’t have to spend the night in jail, but someone leaked his mug shot to the tabloids and it was popping up everywhere.

  While the rest of my shipmates ate dinner, I sat out on the deck and called every editor I knew alternately begging, threatening, and cajoling them not to run the story, or at least not with the mug shot. Two of the classier magazines agreed on condition that I get them exclusives in the next six months. The rest just laughed at me. I was still on a conference call with Blake’s agent, his U.S. lawyer, his Australian lawyer, and the studio’s publicist when Ethan, Joe, Patti, George, and Mac walked outside.

  "C’mon," Ethan said, "we need to go."

  I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. "I can’t, I have a situation here."

  "Is someone dying?" he asked.

  "My career if I don’t fix this."

  "Then get in the boat."

  Ethan refused to leave without me, and I couldn’t hang up, so I took the phone with me and talked from the dinghy. It was difficult to hear over the sound of the wind and the roar of the boat’s engine, and I had trouble taking notes with water spraying over the side, but I managed to finish the call before I lost the signal or the battery died.

  "You couldn’t have waited ten minutes?" I hissed at Ethan as soon as I hung up.

  "Your call couldn’t have waited?" he shot back.

  "No, Ethan, it couldn’t. That job pays my rent. This one’s just for fun." Although "aggravation" would’ve been a more accurate description.

  "I realize tagging walruses may not be as glamorous as celebrity DUI, but it’s a hell of a lot more important."

  I knew he’d been listening. "Well, if it’s so goddamn important then why won’t you help me write the script?"

  "I told you I would and I will. I just didn’t want to work on it last night."

  "Great," I said, and folded over the cover of my pad to a clean sheet. "No time like the present."

  "How about we tag a few walruses first?"

  I badgered Ethan into working on the script on the boat ride back. By the time we joined Patti in the lounge, we were barely speaking.

  "What’s wrong?" she asked, glancing up from her knitting.

  "Ask him," I said, as I joined her on the couch.

  Ethan sat down at the opposite end. "Patti, were you aware that I know absolutely nothing about wildlife documentaries?"

  "I never said that," I told Patti, before returning to glaring at Ethan. "It’s obvious you know tons about the boring ones. You just know nothing about the ones people actually want to watch."

  "You think providing information is boring?"

  "When it’s done your way, yes."

  "Then you’re free to write it without me," he said, and folded his arms across his chest.

  "I think I will," I replied, then grabbed my plastic bag and headed for the stairs.

  "Don’t come crying to me when you can’t write a word," he called after me.

  "No need to worry," I shouted back from the stairwell, "you’re the last person I’d come crying to, on any topic."

  I didn’t cry, but I wanted to. Damn Ethan for always being right. It was one of his most annoying traits. I’d sat in front of my laptop for over an hour and the only words I’d typed were: Blake’s voice-over. I was about to go up on deck to see if I could pull anything useful off the internet when Patti stuck her head into the galley.

  "How’s it going?" she asked.

  I shrugged. "It’s going."

  She nodded at the open bag of pretzels on the table. "You know Will left you a plate in the fridge."

  I microwaved my dinner of leftover shrimp pasta while Patti read my one-page script.

  "This is really good," I said, returning to the table. I could tell by Patti�
��s expression that she wasn’t thinking the same about my writing. "I know, it’s terrible. Ethan’s right. This film’s going to be a disaster."

  "Not at all," she said. "It just needs a little work."

  "A little work? How about nine more pages and a complete rewrite of the one that’s there."

  Patti gave me a sympathetic smile. "Well, you don’t have to finish it tonight, do you?"

  "If not tonight, then very soon. Blake thinks I already sent it to him and it got lost in cyberspace. Although with the drunk driving arrest, he’s probably a little preoccupied right now, so that ought to buy me another day."

  "He was arrested for drunk driving?"

  I gave Patti the ten second synopsis, emphasizing that the blood alcohol limit in Australia was much lower than in the U.S, and that no one was hurt. "The local lawyer told us he’ll likely get off with a fine, so it’s really more of a PR problem than anything else. I’m not sure it’s even a problem. He’s hardly the first celebrity to get arrested for drunk driving. A little good publicity to counteract it wouldn’t hurt though."

  "Then we should get to work. First, I think you need to narrow your focus."

  "Narrow it how?"

  "You’re making it sound like this is a documentary about global warming, instead of the story of the endangered Pacific walrus."

  "Aren’t they tied? I thought they were ‘inextricably linked,’" I said, attempting to imitate Ethan’s practiced tone of moral outrage.

  Patti laughed at my bad impersonation. "Of course they’re linked. But global warming’s an abstract concept. A cute and cuddly walrus drowning because the sea ice melted out from under it is something everyone can relate to."

  I didn’t know where we’d find a cute and cuddly walrus but I understood her point. "Are you sure you don’t want to write this? Because I think you missed your calling."

  Patti smiled again just as Ethan appeared in the doorway.

  "I’m only here for a refreshment," he said, as he walked past us and into the kitchen.

  "Don’t just concentrate on the melting sea ice," Patti continued. "Off-shore drilling’s a major threat too."

  "You mean like what happened in the Gulf? I thought they cleaned that up really fast, once they shut down the well."

  "You did not just say that," Ethan said, peering around the fridge.

  "It’s true. I saw it on TV. The beaches are open and everything."

  "Sydney, all they did was flood the Gulf with a toxic dispersant that sunk the oil. It didn’t make it magically disappear. It’ll be years before we know the true extent of the damage."

  "There’s still no effective way to clean up an oil spill in icy water," Patti said. "A large spill here would be catastrophic, not just for the walruses, but for the entire Arctic ecosystem."

  "And we’ve already gotten a preview," Ethan said, then slammed the fridge door shut.

  "What a nightmare that was," Patti acknowledged before turning her attention back to me. "Do you know about the spill at Prudhoe Bay?"

  "I know about the Exxon Valdez." It had been a case study in my marketing class at UCLA, an example of how not to handle a corporate crisis.

  "Different spill," Ethan said, "but the result’s the same. Rush Oil’s was one-tenth the size, but it still managed to wipe out almost an entire species of wild geese and thousands of tundra swans. Six years later the area still hasn’t fully recovered, and probably never will."

  "They’re still drilling though," Patti said, shaking her head. "Without adopting even one of the safety measures we suggested."

  Ethan shook his head too. "Rush Oil really is the worst of the worst."

  I pushed my plate away and started typing. A few minutes later Patti stood up, insisting it was past her bedtime even though it was only ten-thirty at night. When I couldn’t convince her to stay I turned to Ethan, who was still leaning against the counter sipping his soda. "Well, are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to help me?"

  To my amazement, he did. Naturally I discarded most of his suggestions. But they always got me thinking in a different direction, which really was useful. And he did provide lots of information about walruses that I never would’ve discovered on my own.

  Three hours later we had a ten-page script. It wouldn’t win any Academy Awards, but it was good enough to send to Blake. After I saved it to my hard drive and made a backup copy, I ran down to the cabin for my jacket.

  "You don’t have to come with me," I said when Ethan pulled on his jacket too. "I can take it from here."

  "What if you get struck by a rogue wave and fall overboard before you can hit send," he said, following me up the steps. "Then all my hard work would’ve been for naught."

  "A rogue wave?"

  "Anything can happen when you’re out at sea."

  I was too tired to argue, so I ignored his hovering as I hooked up my computer to my satellite phone and locked onto a signal. It took two attempts, but I e-mailed Blake the script, which presumably landed in his in-box 10,000 miles away.

  I was so relieved that I laid down there on the deck. Ethan was right. It was colder than lying in the dinghy. "I wish we had champagne. This deserves a celebration."

  Ethan looked down at me with a sly grin. "No champagne, but I’ve still got whiskey."

  I glanced up at the bridge. Will was on duty tonight, but he didn’t seem to be paying us much attention. "Okay, but bring a mixer this time. I can’t drink that stuff straight."

  I closed my eyes to the solid mass of clouds blocking the midnight sun and almost dozed off before Ethan returned with his quarter bottle of whiskey, a can of Coke, and two paper cups filled with ice.

  "What, no peanuts?"

  "I couldn’t find any, so I brought these," he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a handful of pretzels.

  "It’s a party. Should I get the lawn chairs?"

  "We’ll have more room in the dinghy."

  I waited until Ethan finished wiping the bottom of the boat with a dirty towel Mac kept under the wheel before I joined him.

  "What are you smiling about?" he asked, as he poured equal parts whiskey and soda into my cup. "You haven’t even tasted it yet."

  "I’m just so happy not to have this stupid script hanging over my head." We still had to shoot the film, but as far as I was concerned the hard part was over.

  "Christ, Sydney, it was ten pages. I’ve written hundreds of articles longer than that."

  "Yes, but has anyone ever read one without falling asleep?"

  He shot me a half smile before he took a long swallow from his drink. "So now that I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain, I want an answer to my question."

  "And what question would that be?" I asked as I leaned my head back against the dinghy’s pontoon. I was so much more relaxed now I probably could’ve fallen asleep even without the whiskey.

  "Why are you making this film?"

  "I already told you. Blake wanted a cause and—"

  "Not the canned version, the real reason."

  I smiled as I shook my head. "I can only imagine what kind of dark and twisted scenario you’re concocting but I swear to you, Ethan, it’s the truth."

  He gave me a skeptical stare.

  "Fine. Clearly you think you know my mind better than I do, so why don’t you tell me why I’m really here." I leaned back and closed my eyes again. This ought to be good.

  "Blake McKinley," he pronounced.

  "Brilliant deduction, Doctor Watson, especially considering I already told you that."

  "You told me it was about keeping your client satisfied, but that’s not the real reason."

  "It’s not?" I said through a yawn.

  "No, you’re in love with him, or at least you think you are."

  My eyes flashed open and I bolted upright. How could he possibly know? I’d barely mentioned Blake the last ten days.

  "And somewhere in that jumbled brain of yours you think if you do all this for him," he said, gestur
ing to the ship, "he’ll love you back. Obviously you’re already sleeping with him."

  "Obviously?"

  "Or you wouldn’t have panicked when I suggested you might be pregnant." A smug grin spread across his face.

  The cocky bastard. I wanted to slap his face. Instead I said, "I never thought I was pregnant. That was all you. And my relationship with Blake is none of your goddamn business." Then I turned my back to him so he’d know this conversation was over.

  "Okay, I’ll concede maybe you weren’t panicked. Although I was right about you sleeping with him. If you weren’t, you would’ve just denied it. Unless . . ."

  "Unless what?" I said, turning around in spite of myself.

  "Unless you’ve tried and failed."

  "Tried and failed?" What did he think, just because we didn’t have doctorates we couldn’t figure out how to place penis A into vagina B?

  "Do you honestly believe if you go to these great lengths for him, he’ll love you out of gratitude?"

  "GRATITUDE! Are you fucking kidding me? You might find this hard to believe, Ethan, but some men actually want to sleep with me. Not everyone views me as a pity fuck like you apparently do."

  "Sydney, I never—"

  "Shut up, Ethan. Just shut up. We’re done speculating about my love life, now it’s time to talk about yours. I have no doubt it’ll be a short conversation."

  "I’m divorced," he said, the smile disappearing from his face.

  "I know. Duncan told me. What I want to know is why." Although the real question was why anyone would ever marry Ethan in the first place.

  "You know why," he answered, a hard edge to his voice.

  "No, I don’t. Although I can imagine."

  "Can you?" he said, his voice rising too. "Can you imagine what it’s like to watch your child die in your arms? To bargain with God to take your life and spare his, only to have him spit in your face? To reach the point where you can’t even go through the motions any more until you wake up one morning and find that everyone and everything you’ve ever cared about is gone? Can you really imagine that, Sydney?"

  No, I couldn’t. I was afraid to say that though, or even breathe. His fingers were digging into my shoulders so hard I couldn’t move. Eventually he seemed to realize that he was holding onto me and let go, then collapsed against the boat’s pontoon.