Lydia Millet - Mermaids in Paradise - A Novel

Then we all felt discouraged again. A mermaid zoo. Yep: we could see that happening in a heartbeat.

It was a rollercoaster for us, the hope followed by the disappointment.

MIYOKO, I THINK, stayed up most of the night working on footage for the “B-roll,” as she put it. I slept a total of four hours, tossing and turning on my blanket on the narrow couch when I wasn’t on sentry duty. Chip slept even less; he finally settled down at three only to wake up again at five, when he received a text from Thompson: Santa Claus was coming down the chimney.

Chip didn’t wake me up right then — he was worried about me getting enough sleep after what Janeane called the psychic trauma of the kidnapping —but when dawn came I was woken by the soughing, restless trade winds rattling the palm fronds.

And then he told me right away.

I think it was the first time I’d seen him crack a real smile since Nancy.

I donned some fresh clothes borrowed from Janeane, since I didn’t want to wear my bikini for another day running, so I was dressed like a bona fide hippie, in a flowing, brightly colored dress that looked to me like maternity wear, when Thompson knocked on the sliding doors. And when I pulled the curtain back he raised two fingers in the V of victory.

I FOUND I warmed to Thompson quite a bit, after that. I appreciate a person who can get things done. And though his methods are sketchy, i.e. illegal, unsafe, and destructive, Thompson simply is such a person.

For here was our tape — now in the form of a shining silver unmarked DVD — and there, right on the screen when we popped that disc into the drive on the side of Miyoko’s laptop, were the mermaids, just as I remembered them. As soon as I saw that familiar footage, I had a renewed appreciation for the cunning and expertise of our nation’s armed forces, and in particular the Navy. A sigh of delight ushered from us — a sigh, some whoops, a couple of happily uttered swear words. Thompson was embraced, clapped on the back, heartily congratulated and thanked.

Had he been discovered? asked Chip. Had he met with any resistance?

Thompson shook his head. Surgical strike. He’d actually encountered people a few times, he said, as he made his rounds of the yacht, rummaging in strangers’ rooms and belongings; but he’d played it cool, like his presence was completely authorized, and no one ever questioned him.

“Well, not quite true,” he admitted. “A drunk woman asked me what my star sign was. A lady of a certain age. But I told it to her straight: I don’t give a shit about star signs, and I like my ladies young.”

“You’re a hard case,” said Chip.

“Huh. Not too young, I hope,” said I.

We drank some coffee and planned the logistics of our media strike. Go time was 8 a.m., the hour of Miyoko’s program in Japan, I guess, which came on at night, around the same time as the news. We wouldn’t be able to hide, once we were broadcasting, so the stealth team was going to be retasked: their new job was security. We’d make a circle around Miyoko, except for Rick, who would be filming her, and me and Chip, who would be guarding Rick. (Janeane would stay in the cabana, to guard it, as she said, though frankly Janeane couldn’t guard a hamster. She didn’t like to be alone there, she conceded, but she’d done it the day before and she could do it again.) Miyoko had to send the mermaid footage first — she swore her producers were trustworthy — and that would take a while to upload to their server, along with her B-roll, so we were on a tight schedule. She bent over her computer, focused, industrious.

“No guns, right?” I asked Thompson. “No guns.”

“Agreed,” he said. “Guns would attract undue attention. Give the rent-a-cops an obvious excuse. However, we will have other weapons. From my martial-arts collection. I stashed them in my jeep. Mostly numchucks. Correctly known as nunchaku .”

“No way,” said Chip, gleeful. “That’s pretty rad.”

“You’ll need a brief tutorial,” said Thompson. “It’s an ancient art form. No hope you kids will master it. We’re shooting to look credible, that’s it. A fifteen-minute tutorial will have to do.”

So the security team set off for the jeep, while we women, and Rick, stayed in the Pearl Diver, Miyoko typing away, Rick fiddling with his camera obscurely. Before I knew it Miyoko was done with her script-typing — she’d put in what we asked her to about the mermaids likely depending on the reefs; she’d reviewed and even memorized it — and moved on to her makeup. She didn’t have her professional kit with her, she said, but she had some odds and ends; before long, with the aid of some hair gel, eyeliner and fake eyelashes, she was a hipster Tokyo VJ again. She even stuck a small jewel to the side of her nose, to look like a piercing, I guess.

When our security detail returned — Chip swinging his numchucks happily like a man who’d been born to them, Ronnie carrying the things with what I can only describe as distaste — we loaded up our tech and, after a cringe-inducing breathing exercise mandated and led by Janeane, set out across campus. We were passing the side of the main building, trying to keep a low profile (the numchucks, at that point, were largely out of view) when a group of new arrivals filed into the lobby lugging their suitcases. We turned our faces away, avoiding eye contact studiously until I heard, behind my back, a British-accented voice call out, “What ho!”

I feared — all of us feared — an obstruction to our progress toward the beach from the minions of the parent company. And so I turned slightly, a wary, even hostile look upon my face, no doubt.

And there I saw not minions of said parent company but two highly familiar faces and forms. Standing in front of the lobby, smiling widely, were none other than my friends Ellis. And Gina.

“J esus,” said Gina disgustedly, before she said anything else. “What the hell are you wearing, Deb? You look like a hangover from Woodstock. I mean, you look really bad.”

We ushered them to us hastily, decamping to a small clump of trees behind a stucco half-wall where we weren’t in full view.

“We’re in a hurry, G.,” I said. I was suddenly seeing myself the way Gina saw me, clad in Janeane’s hippie hand-me-downs, my hair like a cheap fright wig from Walmart. I tried to shake it off. “We’ve got to keep moving. My God. I can’t believe you’re here!”

She and Ellis stashed their roller bags in an oleander and we kept going. Miyoko had a broadcast appointment to keep; we’d timed our walk to the minute because we hadn’t wanted to hang out, waiting, in the open. We hoped that, once we were broadcasting live, we’d have a little more protective cover.

As we hurried down to the beach in our group, heavily laden with AV equipment and numchucks, Gina explained she’d had to come. It was a moral imperative. Honeymoon or no honeymoon, she had to be in on the mermaids. It hadn’t sounded like we had much privacy anyway, right? “I’m being obviously euphemistic,” she added, “what I mean is, no time for sex.” (Chip and I acknowledged that reality with mournful head bows.) And once she decided to book her ticket Ellis had flatly refused to stay behind — the British Virgin Islands being, of course, Her Majesty’s territory.

I gave Gina the plot summary as we hastened along, breathless and no doubt confusing. She wanted to see the footage, couldn’t wait, but she also yearned to tangle with the parent company. She’d flirted with the law once, Gina had, I mean, not flirted with a cop — though she’s also done that, almost serially. I mean she flirted with the idea of becoming a lawyer, before she decided academia was more her speed (the law being, as she put it, a little too much real work). Still, she had a few law courses beneath her belt, as well as a brother who’s a hotshot litigator in D.C., and she was foaming at the mouth to threaten litigation.