Cora attempted to interrupt with phrases like Excuse me and I’ve noticed, but the men talked right over her. Angry, they were beginning to make more categorical statements, both moving further from the truth. They would not let her speak.

So she got mad. She was the one who’d been living twenty-four hours a day in a swimming pool with a dolphin for seven weeks now. She was the one scooping up his poo and being woken at night by water spat in her face. She was the one working to teach him to speak. She was the expert here.

She broke in loudly, using the men’s vocabulary, talking in the cop’s voice.—His fricatives are improving, but his occlusives are not clear.

Both men stopped, turned to her surprised. She explained what she had observed. She did not overstate. Both men listened.

After that, she used their jargon more often to explain Junior’s progress. Tibbet responded by listening, his chin jutted out, but still he listened.

Blum seemed to hear what she said only enough to feel encouraged. His shirt unbuttoned, his wood necklace swinging on his skinny chest, he would describe the future, Junior’s potential, the ability of the whole species. Each day these visions seemed to get more grandiose. He said once they had learned how best to teach Junior to speak, they would teach a whole group of dolphins and then release them into the sea, where they could teach others. He had an image of this, all the dolphins free to come and go as they wished, conversing and interacting with the people at the research center. The exchange of information, the enrichment of both species.

Think of all the dolphins will teach us—he said.

When he talked like this, Cora would wonder if she could be mishearing his words. From where she stood on the lawn, she could see the corner of the dolphin surgical tank in the living room with its restraints. She knew the hammer and nail and other equipment were still laid out beside it. She wondered if he understood what he was doing to the dolphins, that if they were released, they would never return.

When Blum spoke like this, Tibbet and Cora were careful not to look at one another. They looked at Blum, keeping their faces blank.

* * *

Junior wanted to play catch with her for hours each day. He’d pop the ball over to her and then start to squeal, insistent. She would demand he talk before she threw the ball back.

She’d say—Junior, I have one ball here. Can you say that? Talk. One. One.

He’d squeal and blat, impatient, until finally he’d exhale and say—Nnn.

She’d throw him the ball right away and tell him that was great.

This game of catch was a way to get him to talk even when he wasn’t hungry for fish. The way he now seemed to prefer to return the ball was by pinching it with his beak until it popped out of his mouth and through the air.