The activity (first sonaring the other’s genitals and chasing each other for a while, then coupling stomach to stomach) appeared to happen just as often between different genders as between the same gender. She wondered if this also was because they had nothing else to do.

Considering their genders, she renamed them. Burn became Bernie. Junior stayed Junior.

Cut and Other became Kat and Mother.

She wrote down their genders on the pages with their sketches. She did not write down how she knew. She wrote down that they roughhoused, but not about the coupling. She didn’t want the men to imagine her watching this. Her notes so much less than what she’d seen.

9:55 A.M.: Bernie chased Kat @ 10 minutes, squeaking. Junior and Mother watched.

Each morning on the way to the research center, she stopped by the fishermen’s dock and picked up a crate of butterfish, the bodies still shiny from the sea. When she arrived at the center, she stood on the beach, on the far side of the boulders, out of sight, lobbing fish into the lagoon. Once the first fish hit the lagoon, the dolphins would swim to the surface, watching for more. If her hearing glasses were adjusted right, she could hear the clap of a dolphin’s beak catching a fish in midair.

Every day, she stepped a few inches closer to the lagoon to throw the fish. After a few days, she sometimes spotted a dolphin’s tail or fin as it jumped for the fish. She didn’t know how good their vision was, if they could glimpse her standing there watching.

After she’d thrown the last fish, she’d wait twenty minutes, then circle around the lagoon and walk in, coming from a different direction each time. She wanted them gradually to wonder if she might have something to do with the fish raining down from the sky, to get used to the idea bit by bit, and adjust to it. Once they accepted it, assuming they did, she would be able to get close enough to make sure all of them were eating, to watch for any changes in diet that could signal health problems.

For now, each day, she wrote down how many total fish they ate.

June 16: 193 butterfish, 42 lbs. eaten.

* * *

For her, the slow part of the day was during the noonday heat, because this was when the dolphins didn’t move much.

They lay close together under the dock, the only part of the lagoon that remained shaded when the sun was high overhead. They rested against the sand, in the deepest part of the water in that shade. They didn’t seem to be sleeping, since their eyes were open.

(The first time she saw them sleeping was when she’d slipped into the water earlier than normal one morning. They were in a circle at the far end of the lagoon floating near the surface and at first she hadn’t understood what they were doing. Every few seconds, each of them would surface, a deep slow exhale, and then submerge, sewing their way through the surface. As she swam slowly closer, none of them looked at her. At first she felt slighted. Gradually she became alarmed; it was like they were hypnotized, or turned into robots. Surface, breathe, submerge. Surface, breathe, submerge. She noticed each of them had one eye closed and one open, the gaze of the open eye motionless and staring. With each of them, the open eye was the one facing out toward possible danger.