Friday's Harbor by Diane Hammond Read Free Book Online

On the opposite side were an equipment bay, food preparation area, locker room, huge shower and toilet, and an office with an oversized window looking into the pool.
    As soon as the truck stopped, Gabriel sprinted up the stairs to the pool top so he could guide the crane operator from overhead. Truman was right behind him. He came over to greet Ivy, who was struggling mightily to pull herself from the depths of an old Adirondack chair she’d brought with her from San Juan Island.
    “Can you help me get out of this damned thing?” she huffed at Truman. “Otherwise I’ll still be here come Christmas.” She took Truman’s steadying arm. “It’s humiliating, I’ll tell you that. In your mind you’re thirty-five, and then this.” Once on her feet, she freed Julio Iglesias from the Snugli and watched him pick his way along the pool top stiff-legged. “He’s proud,” Ivy said. “But he’s no spring chicken, either.”
    “Hardly any of us are,” said Truman.
    “So it went well?”
    “Very well.”
    “And he’s still breathing?”
    “Still breathing. He tolerated the trip better than Gabriel thought he would. He just went to sleep for most of it. Thank god.”
    “Whew,” said Ivy. “I’m as nervous as a cat.”
    “Here we go, folks!” Gabriel called out, and then a crane lifted Viernes high above the pool. He hung suspended forty feet above the street, illuminated by powerful TV lights and strobing flashes, dripping and calling out in a high, thin, eerie wail. And in the absolute quiet of the moment Truman felt a sudden, nearly overwhelming sadness: that there were orphans in the world, that there were those who deserved better than they got, that isolation could be so profound. This alien creature without hands or ears or facial muscles amplified a hundredfold the incredible hubris of enforced captivity. Maybe in their misguided kindness they had made an appalling mistake.
    And then the moment passed.

Chapter 3
    B Y THE TIME Libertine arrived in Bladenham—a town she’d never even heard of before that morning—the zoo was closed, but brilliant lights shot into the rainy sky from that direction. The streets that were closest were barricaded, so she pulled into a side street and parked, then dug around in the backseat until she came up with a jacket that had once been waterproof, and struck out on foot. By trial and error, she found herself in front of a barricade just a block away from the huge, bunkerlike facility and pool. There she joined a small crowd trying to catch a glimpse of the whale.
    At first Libertine found it hard to concentrate with so many people around, but when the crane lifted Viernes higher and higher, still in his sling, all sound ceased. As he dangled in the air, dripping, his high, keening call sliced through the air and her heart like a razor.
    And then, as he was swung over the pool and out of view, a great cheer went up from the people both inside and outside the fence, indicating that he’d made it safely into the water. When she looked around, nearly all the faces were wet with tears.
    A S SOON AS Viernes was safely installed, Truman trotted back to Havenside, once Max Biedelman’s mansion and now the zoo’s administrative center, riding the crest of a clamorous wave of reporters, videographers, beta cameras, boom microphones, and sound engineers from all the local and regional media outlets, plus Reuters, the Associated Press, Northwest Cable News, and CNN.
    Truman invited everyone into the ballroom, a vast space that had hitherto been used only for charitable events, the annual zoo volunteers’ banquet, and the occasional wedding. He’d had the foresight to have a podium and microphone set up ahead of time, and though Gabriel hadn’t arrived yet, Truman self-consciously moved to the front of the room and introduced himself. Knowing the last news deadline of the night was fast approaching, he gave what he hoped was a fast-paced but thorough review of the zoo’s