Page 8 of Natural Selection

Oh my god, Sophia thinks.

The next day, they see countless sea lions and blue-footed boobies, so many that the group stops taking pictures, though JP’s camera hangs around Sophia’s neck like a medieval shackle. He still hasn’t texted, and in her downtime, Sophia googles “addiction,” which leads her down such a bleak and hopeless rabbit hole that she fears she might never surface. It is, she realizes, a situation that requires all of JP’s emotional resources. If he has time to think of Sophia, he probably imagines her on the boat, living out his dream trip in a state of bliss. From this perspective, it makes perfect sense that he hasn’t contacted her.

After dinner there is, again, a knock on her cabin door. It’s DeAndre. Grant got a sunburn and wants to sleep, and Tucker and Kelly are in for the night as well. “I have a bottle of Malbec from Argentina,” he says. “Want to go to the top and help me not drink it all by myself?”

She notes the irony of her situation: reading about addiction has made her want to drink. Though really what she craves is companionship. “Love to,” she says.

On the top deck of the boat, there’s a welcome breeze. The sky is inky black except for the distinct swath of the Milky Way. New York City has everything, Sophia thinks. Except views of the Milky Way.

DeAndre pours them each a glass of wine; they touch glasses. The wine is rich and plummy: it brings to mind a good steak house, or a fire in a ski lodge. After only a couple of sips, Sophia asks the question she’s been curious about ever since they all gathered at the San Cristóbal airport. “How did you and Grant end up on this particular boat?”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” DeAndre says. “We were both in a rut at work, it’s the middle of the winter, we’ve been to Hawaii a dozen times, and I thought, ‘Why not shake things up?’ This was the only boat that had space left on short notice; it seemed like an incredible deal.” He sips his wine. “The pictures on the website are deceptively good. Kudos to their marketing person.”

Sophia laughs. “I thought it was just me. I mean, it’s fine . . .”

“Fine,” DeAndre agrees. “I’m not going to complain, except in my own head. Grant isn’t the kind of person who cares about things like thread count.”

“You can complain to me,” Sophia says.

“So, the scuttlebutt on the boat is that your husband had an assignment for Travel + Leisure?” DeAndre says. “But then there was a situation at home and he couldn’t come?”

JP isn’t my husband, she thinks. And I believe I said it was Condé Nast Traveler, not Travel + Leisure. What could she possibly add about the “situation at home”? She has no idea what’s going on. She’ll have to remain mysterious.

“Something like that,” Sophia says.

The next day, they see both masked boobies and red-footed boobies. More boobies than the Playboy Mansion! Henry jokes. They see Darwin’s finches, yellow warblers, and land iguanas, which, unlike marine iguanas, have a round tail.

Sophia has now gone four full days without hearing any word from JP. She doesn’t have any precedent for this kind of silence. Even when JP is in Oklahoma City, he’s in touch every few hours. Is Briar . . . dead? Surely if something that tragic has happened, JP would have called. He’s probably just stuck in a really sad and difficult morass, and he might not want to sully Sophia’s trip with somber news.

Sophia and DeAndre agree that they’ve gotten to the point on the trip where they’re completely immersed. Does the outside world exist? Maybe, but the boat now feels like home. Sophia has become an expert at navigating the stairs down to the cabins; she knows that Hugh will inevitably have flecks of food in his mustache after every meal. She has started taking pictures on her phone of all of DeAndre’s outfits, one more fabulous than the next; she wants to show them to Pierce when she gets home. Sophia also gets a picture of Arn holding the thermometer, and Luis Antonio in the panga.

She asks DeAndre to take a picture of her, standing on top of a rocky outcrop with nothing behind her but water and sky. The sun has burnished her skin; she has her hair in two braids beneath her Knicks visor. She grins like she’s just sold the penthouse at 220 Central Park South.

They spend the next afternoon hiking for hours in search of the vermilion flycatcher. This happens to be one of the species on JP’s list—it’s both circled and starred, which must mean it’s important—so she doesn’t protest about the heat or the endless trek over sketchy terrain. When Dolores finally spots a pinpoint of bloodred high in a tree, Sophia raises her camera and zooms in. She takes as many shots as she can before the bird alights.

Back on the boat, she discovers that a couple of the pictures are shockingly good. Sophia shows them to DeAndre, Wanda, Miguel. Wanda says, “This one is magazine quality.” Miguel asks Sophia to email it to him; he’ll put it up on the Dorado website.

The rush of pride Sophia feels is so unexpected and so powerful that, almost without thinking, she texts the picture of the vermilion flycatcher to JP, along with the caption: I miss you.

When it sends, her text bubble is green, instead of blue like it usually is.

Wait, Sophia thinks. What?

She texts a picture of a blue-footed booby to Pierce. As promised, a booby! Pierce’s text bubble is blue.

Sophia sends another text to JP. Now that the dam is broken, she wants to flood him with texts. I hope everything is okay. Can you send a quick update?

The text stream is still green—which means his iMessaging is off, or he’s placed his phone on airplane mode, which he does sometimes when he’s in an important meeting. Sophia decides to call. It’s been five days since she’s heard from him; enough is enough. Her call goes straight to voicemail. She pictures him at a group meeting in a church basement, all phones collected at the door. She hangs up without leaving a message.

The next morning when they wake up, the Dorado is anchored in a harbor—Puerto Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz, home to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where scientists monitor the fate of the giant land tortoise. The night before, Miguel gave a lengthy lecture about Darwin and his theories of natural selection. Traits that favor survival cause those species to produce more offspring, and the traits increase in frequency. The giant land tortoise, for example, has a shell that rises in front like a saddle; this allows the tortoises to raise their heads higher so they can feed on tree cactus.

Sophia was just as comatose as everyone else—Arn was snoring—until Miguel paraphrased what many believed was Darwin’s most famous quote. It is not the strongest of the species that survive, and it is not the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.

At breakfast, the group seems more animated, not because of the land tortoise but because Puerto Ayora is a bona fide town. People want to buy postcards, chocolate cookies; DeAndre mentions a place called the Bongo Bar. Sophia gets swept up; they’ve been away from civilization long enough for the mention of a nightclub to seem exotic. She notices Dolores sitting at a table by herself, and although Sophia is tempted to just sit with Henry, Wanda, and Hugh, it feels cruel to leave Dolores sitting alone.

Sophia takes a seat and considers her huevos and toast. There is nothing on her phone from JP. Something is wrong: her texts aren’t getting through, or JP lost his phone, or he’s in a place so remote there is no cell service.

“Where’s Arn this morning?” Sophia asks Dolores.

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