“Well, honey, there are these phenomena called seiches that happen after a high wind? It’s kind of like when water sloshes back and forth in a bathtub but on a way bigger scale.” He mimes a pendulum swing with his hands. “They’re pretty complicated to explain. But they make it really dangerous for little boats like mine.”

“Actually, seiches resulting from northwest winds on Lake Superior only last for around eight hours,” says London. “If the wind dies down by morning, the water should have calmed enough to go out the next day.”

What the hell. “How do you know that?”

She glares at him. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Well, still,” he says, watching as she makes another note on her clipboard. “What are you writing on there?” he asks, leaning over.

“Nothing,” she says, moving her clipboard from his sightline.

“Stop writing things down.” Adam doesn’t know why, but suddenly this kid with a clipboard scares him more than any high-heeled executive with an artillery of technology tucked into her Chanel bag. This kid, she is securing things. None of her notes are going to blow away. Her pen will never get lost. She is going to change the world, one sheet of paper at a time.

“There must be something we can do while we wait. Some kind of research?”

“I don’t think so.” Adam is suddenly tired of this conversation. He checks the door to the bar, making sure Lisa isn’t standing there watching him chat up a teenager. “All the research is done.”

“What about publicity?”

“No.”

“Do you need any kind of production help, with the cameras? For the show?”

“There’s not going to be any fucking show,” he says through gritted teeth. “Okay? Do you get it? No. Fucking. Show.”

London looks so stunned that he has to avert his eyes to keep himself together.

“But what about the shark rescue?” she asks in a voice so small and sad it almost seems like a joke, a cruel joke that someone is playing to fuck with him even more. “What about counteracting all the shark fearmongering in the mainstream media?”

“No show, no shark rescue,” he says. “Now leave me the fuck alone.”

London stares at him, and in her eyes is pure, unadulterated disillusionment. Then she turns around and walks out of the lobby.

Never meet your heroes, kid, he thinks, leaning his head back against the wall.

“What was that all about?” Lisa asks, coming around a corner.

Adam jumps up. “Nothing,” he says. “Let’s go.” He ushers Lisa out the side door, just praying that he is going in the opposite direction of London. As it is, he knows he is stuck with that look, that goddamn heartbreaker of a look, haunting his fucking dreams for the rest of his sorry, pathetic life.

—