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“Don’t you ever worry?” I said.
“About what?”
“Your heath? Your safety?”
“Not really,” she said. “I take all the necessary precautions, and I always use plenty of hand sanitizer when I’m performing fieldwork.”
Performing fieldwork. Interesting euphemism. “But is that really enough?” I said. “I mean, with all the germs and diseases out there?”
“Oh, trust me, I always wear latex gloves when I’m making physical contact. But it’s more for their sake than for mine. The fact is, they’re way more in danger of getting a disease from me than I am from them. One touch from my bare skin, and I could infect an entire population.”
You don’t realize how important a functioning heart is until you feel yours exploding. “Should I be worried?” I asked. “I touched your bare skin when I lifted your head off the steering wheel this morning.”
She evidently thought my concern for my impending death from an STD cocktail was the funniest thing she ever heard, because she started cracking up.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t need gloves when I’m operating intraspecies. It’s only when I work outside my species that I’m a communicable danger. Particularly when I’m collecting stool samples. To get the sample you have to do a scraping in a very sensitive area and it can draw blood.”
Explosion number two. Jumping out of a moving car was sounding better by the second. I suddenly had a desperate longing to rewind back to when the most disturbing thing in Clara’s world was New Jerseyans fornicating in the canopy while she sat in a beach chair taking videos.
“In retrospect,” she continued, “I probably should have worn safety gear when I was on the beach. I’m not kidding when I say I would sit there for three or four hours straight. I can’t tell you how many times I got my head pooped on. And knowing what I know now about the communicable hazards of fecal exchange—”
“Can we please pull off at a gas station?” I interrupted. Although I was trying to seem composed, I was about two seconds away from a major coronary event. “I have to use the bathroom.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said, hitting her right blinker. “I should have asked if you needed to stop. We can get off at the next exit.”
CHAPTER 9
Clara
He liked Ben Harper. He was quick-witted and clever. And he was fascinated by my career, asking question after question. I could barely believe it: I liked Ian and enjoyed his company. And he liked me and enjoyed my company.
And he evidently really, really needed to pee. He was maniacally pulling at the door handle before I even came to a complete stop.
“Take it easy,” I said as I put the car into park. “It gets stuck sometimes.” I leaned across and grabbed the door handle. “You just have to pull it up a lit—”
I stopped when I saw the look of terror on his face. His back and arms were plastered against the seat in desperate attempt to avoid physical contact with me. “Sorry for disgusting you with my mere existence,” I said, sitting up straight. “I promise not to come within two feet of your aura again.”
“Thank you,” he said.
And just like that, he was an obnoxious jerk again.
“Seriously?” I said. “That’s the best you can do?”
“What else do you want?”
“How about instead of a thank-you, you give me an apology?”
“Apology for what?” he said.
“For recoiling just now when I leaned over to open the door. Am I really that repulsive?”
“No,” he said. “You’re not repulsive. At all. You’re really quite attractive. And interesting and fun and clearly very intelligent. Which is why I don’t understand your choices. You could do anything you wanted. Why this?”
My heart sank. He was just like all the others. He thought my love of birds and my passion for conservation and ecology were a waste of time, and that devoting my life to preserving endangered species wasn’t a “real job.”
“I happen to be very proud of what I do. And I’m damned good at it. I’ve gotten awards.”
He looked at me like I was completely delusional. “Who the hell is giving out the awards?”
