Lydia Millet - Mermaids in Paradise - A Novel

“A petition!” said Ronnie.

“Feh,” said Thompson, shaking his head, and started to roll a cigarette, pinching tobacco from a leather pouch.

“Well, we’re in a British territory,” said Rick. “So yeah, no. It’s kind of out of our hands. You live here, don’t you, Thompson — would you happen to be a British citizen?”

“Yeah right,” said Thompson.

Finally we decided the first step was to stop the parent company from dropping its long nets. The mermaids (none of us ever called them “mers,” no matter what Nancy had said) didn’t deserve to be imprisoned, we decided, whether we could do anything else for them or not. There was no call for imprisonment — it just didn’t seem fair. The nets might catch and hurt them; there could be sharp hooks on those things. I pictured them struggling in those nets like dolphins, asphyxiating, possibly. I saw their half-human blood dispersing cloudlike in the sea. It would be our fault: we would have brought those hooks to them. Not on purpose, but still.

We all agreed we didn’t like the idea.

“Time to monkey-wrench,” said Thompson. “The hour of sabotage is here.”

“We can’t stop the boats from sailing,” objected Rick. “Some are already out there.”

“The nets?” said Thompson. “Blast holes in them? Cover of night?”

“With terrorism going on, and that, we probably shouldn’t blow stuff up. I say we talk to the folks in charge, you know?” said Chip earnestly. “Just set up a meeting with whoever’s in charge and plead our case — plead on the mermaids’ behalf. Maybe we’re underrating them, maybe they’ll listen to reason.”

“A poodle pissin’ on a wildfire,” said Thompson. “Come on , Chip. And you too, what’s your name, the smaller homosexual — Lonnie?”

“Uh, Ronnie.”

“Boys, put some lead in your peckers. Sit-ins, writing letters, corporate-office chitchat, it’s for wussbags. Poltroons and pantywaists.”

The rest of us were momentarily silenced by this. Then, for the very first time since we’d gathered, Miyoko spoke. English wasn’t her first language; I hadn’t been sure how fluent she was, up till then. Her voice was small but firm.

“TV.”

IT TURNED OUT Miyoko was some kind of personality on Japanese television. She wasn’t a reporter, exactly — more of a VJ type. She talked to teenage girls about fashion crazes and middle-aged office ladies about weird fetishes; she interviewed pop stars and other brainless celebrities.

Millions of people watched her show, she said. She stated the figure offhandedly. She’d come here on vacation, she had no broadcasting equipment with her, per se, but she did have her ultra-powerful laptop with its various capabilities, and we could get our hands on whatever else was needed, she assured us.

“You think people will care about the mermaids, in Japan?” asked Chip.

Rick chimed in.

“Your, uh, Japan’s a whaling country, pretending to kill whales for scientific purposes, then eating them?” he asked. “Not exactly eco-freaks. Plus they do those dolphin slaughters on the beach.”

Miyoko didn’t take offense.

“The mermaids are very special,” was all she said. “My viewers will love them.”

Two prongs were needed, we determined; ours would be a two-pronged campaign. Thompson wouldn’t relinquish the idea of stealth; as a former Navy SEAL, he insisted on it. And he was right, we decided: there was a place for stealth, if not for heavy-duty weaponry. (At this stage in our discussions, we dispatched Chip and Rick, alternately, to walk the perimeter of the chess patio, checking for both skulking resort employees and security equipment; we couldn’t risk having our new plans overheard.) The place of stealth was this: we wanted to steal back our mermaid video. The chance of us finding the mermaids again anytime soon, under conditions ideal for recording, was virtually nil. And for those millions of Japanese viewers, we needed evidence. We needed the visuals. We figured that, by now, the parent company must have made copies; there’d be a few in existence, by this time, we guessed, and all we had to do was lay our hands on one of them.

Thompson and Chip and Ronnie, who was a decent diver, would make up the stealth team; Rick really wanted to go, I could tell — get in on the man-of-action deal. But with his filmmaking expertise he was needed for AV stuff on the media team, which included Miyoko, Steve and me. We split into our teams to plan, with media retiring to the Pearl Diver Cabana, where Steve made us vegan sandwiches and Miyoko discreetly checked the room for bugs. (We didn’t want to frighten Janeane.) She knew her way around a microphone, she said, even a small one; luckily, she didn’t find any.

Janeane was doing a lot better, I was glad to see, though her hair was flattened on one side of her head. Also she was wearing a housecoat garment that gave her an invalid/shut-in aspect. But she was smiling now and then and speaking normally, not screeching or gibbering. With her Steve tried to downplay the enterprise a bit, didn’t let on how sizable the allied forces were, the forces of the parent company. He didn’t mention the armada of yachts and fishing boats arrayed at the docks, the trawlers, the droves of eager, commandeered labor earning overtime pay and, afterward, free liquor. He didn’t tell Janeane how most of our own diving party members had defected to the other side. He didn’t mention the stealth prong, the fact that Thompson had advocated for the use of powerful incendiary devices, which he apparently had the means to produce and deploy. Janeane would ideate nonstop if she knew that.

While we sat around their bamboo table and ate our chunky sandwiches — which combined hummus, beansprouts, and diced cucumber into a substance neatly devoid of flavor — Miyoko typed out a few texts on her cell phone (it looked like a handheld, razor-thin spaceship). She had a quick conversation in Japanese, holding her phone in front of her so she could see the other person’s face and they could see hers too. I peered over, inquisitive: another Japanese person, this one with spiky hair. Probably male, either quite young or with skin as smooth as Miyoko’s. Hard to tell more.

“They’re ready when we are,” she said when she hung up. “For optimal quality, we need a portable satellite dish.”

“On it as soon as I’m done eating,” said Rick, his lips daubed in beige hummus-paste. I was gratified by the media team’s efficiency, though I personally had failed to contribute one iota.

We’d have a waiting game to play, when our tech ducks were in a row, until the other team fulfilled its own mission — which wouldn’t happen until dark. We planned to fill the time setting up social media, under Miyoko’s direction. Rick and Steve would be tracking down equipment while Miyoko and I labored to put together a mini-presentation on the reefs and islands, to go along with our mermaid story.

I needed Chip’s tablet for the task — I hadn’t brought my own on the honeymoon — so after lunch I headed back to our cabana to fetch it. I said I’d be back in ten minutes.

But on my way out of our cabana again, tablet in hand, I was met at the door. Of all five men standing there, blocking my free egress, I recognized only two: the bouncer from our party and the blond Riley.

“Ma’am,” said the man at the front, who wore a suit and no name tag at all, “we’d like you to come with us, please.”

I DIDN’T CAVE right away. I didn’t like the man-huddle. I felt their eyes burning into me, as I stood there in only my bikini and sarong. On the other hand, there were enough of them hulking there that I was in a bind. (Riley avoided my eyes, I noticed, looking pointedly off to one side like he had better things to stare at.) I protested, first asking why — they shook their heads and shrugged as if that was an irrelevant question — and then saying I had to tell my friends where I was going. Where was I going, by the way? A meeting in Conference Room B, said one of them. Can my friends come too, then? I said, but the man at the front said they were already there. Really? I said, because I’d just left them. In that case I’d stop at the Pearl Diver Cabana, I said, just to make sure my friends were all included in the meeting.