Page 7 of Natural Selection

Miguel leads the hike, walking backward so the group can hear him. Española Island is dusty and covered with scrubby vegetation. Sophia has JP’s camera around her neck. She took some practice shots in her cabin, although even the gentle listing of the boat made her unsteady. First, the narrow bunk beds. “Here, JP,” she said aloud, “is where I’m sleeping alone.” She took a picture of the bathroom, which was so small and smelly that she was glad they didn’t have to share it. “When will you tell me what’s going on?” she asked the tin can toilet.

“The marine iguana!” Miguel announces, pointing to an outcrop of rocks by the shore. “Two, three, four, look at all the marine iguanas!” Sophia hears the group behind her, scrambling for a place to see.

“Ugly little buggers, aren’t they?” Kelly says.

The marine iguana is black with dark-red splotches. It looks like a miniature dinosaur, spiny and scaly with a long, slender tail.

“Their tails are flat, you see,” Miguel says. “Helps them to swim. They eat algae. If there is a lot of rain one year, not so much algae, the iguanas die.”

“Do they bite?” Tucker asks.

“They eat algae,” Miguel says.

Sophia unfolds JP’s photograph list. “Are these mature marine iguanas?”

When Miguel nods, Sophia lifts the camera. She can get three of the iguanas in the picture, although they’re impossible to see clearly—black bodies on wet black rocks.

“Marine iguanas leave their eggs in the nest after laying. They are incubated by the sun and hatch on their own,” Miguel says. “The mother never sees them again.”

One of the marine iguanas drops off the rocks into the water. Its tail whips back and forth, propelling it through the waves. Sophia can’t help thinking of her sister Emmeline, sitting at a bar alone in Manhattan while her kids are farmed out at sleepovers where they eat Sour Patch Kids and watch inappropriate videos on YouTube. (Why is Sophia feeling so judgy? Emme deserves a night to herself.)

They walk on. Miguel points out a Galápagos hawk sitting majestically in the bare branches of a tree, a mass of brilliant-orange Sally Lightfoot crabs scuttling through the underbrush, and, out at the far end of the island, the blue-footed booby.

“If I take a picture of a booby,” Henry says, “is that considered pornography?”

The blue-footed booby! Sophia thinks. So much ado has been made about the blue-footed booby that Sophia assumed it would be revealed only at the end of the trip, after an arduous quest. It’s almost anticlimactic that they’re seeing the booby so easily, on day one. Even so, they all rush forward as though spotting a celebrity—Bradley Cooper on the 3 train, Taylor Swift at Minetta Tavern. The boobies look like large cousins of the seagull, except they have huge webbed feet the color of robin’s eggs.

“Over here,” Miguel says. “We have the mating dance of the blue-footed booby.” Sophia watches as two birds face each other, spreading their wings and dipping their heads like women curtseying in a Gilded Age ballroom. Then one of the birds, the male, picks up his blue feet and shows them to the female.

“He’s trying to impress her,” Miguel says. “He shows her his blue feet in hopes that she will mate with him. If she mates with him, they will build a nest together in the dirt here, and they will spend equal time sitting on the egg until it hatches. This partnership is fifty-fifty.”

Sophia raises her camera to another pair of boobies that have started dancing near the edge of the cliff. She takes a stream of pictures on JP’s camera, then pulls her phone out of her pocket and takes a video. She thinks about how all the things JP has done in their relationship—from appearing at her apartment with her favorite wine, her favorite flowers, and an earnest declaration of love, to spending that weekend in January, to booking this trip—have been a mating dance. He was showing her his blue feet. But now it’s as though he’s flown away, or fallen off the edge of the cliff. They’ve been apart a full twenty-four hours, and she’s had no word from him. He’s become like any other guy Sophia has hooked up with on Hinge. I’ll hit you up—and then she never hears from him again. Sophia used to make up elaborate excuses for why the Jamies or Aidens weren’t calling, but Pierce put a quick end to that. If he wanted to reach out, Pierce said, he would.

If he wanted to, he would, Sophia thinks. Sending a text takes five seconds. So, what can Sophia conclude but that JP just doesn’t want to.

When they get back to the Dorado, Arn is standing on the deck, beaming. “Look at this!” he says, holding up a thermometer. “I left it out on the deck while you were gone. A hundred and six degrees. You people are crazy!”

Miguel toots his whistle. “This afternoon,” he says, “swimming!”

Gardner Bay is a curve of sand that is whiter and finer than sugar. It is talcum powder sand, Sophia thinks, cocaine sand. There are no palm trees; there’s no vegetation at all. Here the beach ends in volcanic rock, sharp and dangerous looking. There’s seal shit peppering the sand, but Sophia won’t complain. She sets out her towel and lies back, soaking up the sun.

“I hope you have sunscreen on,” Wanda says as she settles in the spot next to Sophia.

“I do, Mom,” Sophia says, and Wanda laughs, which is a relief. Sophia has Mediterranean blood on both sides of her family—Greek and Sicilian. She’ll be bronze in an hour. JP has only ever seen Sophia winter pale. She’s definitely sending him pictures.

The water of the bay is fairy-tale blue and clear to the bottom, the temperature of a cool bath. Sophia falls back into it; she goes under then resurfaces, smoothing back her hair. Several yards away, Tucker and Grant splash around with the sea lions. Hugh insisted on bringing a mask and snorkel, even though Miguel told them this wasn’t a snorkeling spot. Snorkeling would happen later in the week, but Hugh said, in a loud, stern voice, “I’m bringing it anyway.” Now he floats around near Sophia, inspecting the smooth, sandy bottom.

Sophia swims back to shore and takes her place next to Wanda, who is reading the New York Times Book Review. Sophia should have brought a book; she likes romantasy novels—but JP picked Iron Flame off her nightstand and said, You read this stuff? Sophia admitted that she did, and he humphed. He reads books about business and trends and maximizing productivity, and Sophia decided not to bring her sexy dragon book on the trip. She thought she would be too busy being in love to read. Now, of course, she regrets letting JP’s opinion influence her. Hugh shoots water out of his snorkel like a whale from its blowhole. Sophia notices a couple walking toward them from down the beach. She squints, wondering, Who could be here but us? Then she sees it’s not really a couple but Henry, walking with Arn’s wife, Dolores. Sophia looks at Wanda, who is reading, scanning the lines with her finger.

Dolores stops, covers her face with her hands. She’s crying—which piques Sophia’s interest. This is like some middle-aged version of Love Island. Henry puts a hand on Dolores’s back, bends his head to talk to her. Sophia is tempted to take a picture; this drama is far more fascinating to her than the marine iguana or the blue-footed booby. Dolores wipes at her eyes, then wades into the water and starts to swim out. Henry heads back toward Wanda and Sophia; he pulls a towel out of Wanda’s bag. Wanda raises her head and smiles at Henry, shielding her eyes with the folded paper. “Is the beach the same at the other end?”

“Pretty much,” he says. He sits on his towel and puts his hand on Wanda’s knee. “I guess they’ve been having problems for a while—he may or may not have had something going on with one of his sales reps at work, they tried counseling, that didn’t work, so Dolores planned this trip as a last-ditch attempt to fix things. But it’s not working, she said. He hates the boat, hates the heat. He thinks nature is for losers.”

Sophia isn’t sure she’s supposed to be hearing any of this, but she laughs anyway.

“They’re headed for a divorce,” Henry says.

“She can do better,” Wanda says. “She should have come on the trip by herself. We could have set her up with Hugh.”

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