Lydia Millet - Mermaids in Paradise - A Novel

Prof. Simonoff, for obvious reasons, was the hub of startlement/amazement; we were bowled over and stupefied, but the professor was in a different category. That guy’s whole self was completely transformed , his bearing, his voice, even his face looked new to me. Although, in any of these arenas, I couldn’t have told you exactly why. The instant change taught me a lesson about mood or affect or what have you — not quite sure what the lesson was, per se, but it was in there somewhere. Something about the spirit animating the body. Or not animating it.

My point is, there was Nancy, a smidgeon paler but alive and well, not decomposing in the least — except insofar as we all are, dying as we live, or living as we die, taking that opportunity. Depends if you’re a glass half-full type or a glass half-empty, I guess.

Nancy was full color, animated, and life-size.

We charged up to embrace her, plowing through the cluster of others, Chip just ahead of me — though Nancy was never much of a hugger, if I’m being honest. Even at that moment, appearing among us like Lazarus from the tomb, the risen Christ, etc., she wasn’t big on hugging. She’s more the kind of person who stands there stiffly, passively enfolded. When she gets hugged her cardboard form sends out a signal of awkward unresponsiveness, with her plainly wondering when the “display” of “affection” will be completed. In that realm she has a maybe autistic quality.

Imagine my shiver of recognition, then indignation when she told us she’d been kidnapped. My kidnapping was extremely small potatoes, next to hers; mine was a casual, throwaway kidnapping where hers was serious (though also highly incompetent). I felt embarrassed by the inadequacy of my personal kidnapping. I was in the bush leagues, as a kidnapping victim.

Unlike me, Nancy had been stuck with a syringe, covered in a sheet, and rolled out of her cabana and across the grounds on a gurney, dressed up as a corpse. Then they’d stowed that expert in a windowless room, a room off the hallways behind the main restaurant, where she’d been found an hour before, while we were on the boat. Annette had been passing the door on her way to a walk-in freezer and heard Nancy’s thin wail of help, help through the wall; she used a key off the ring she’d snatched from the staff pegboard and voilà , set her free.

Not one of the refrigerators, no — the place had simply been a disused storeroom, standard room temp, but they kept Nancy on a cot, shot up with drugs to make her sleep. (“Benzodiazepine, I’d guess,” she said.)

Periodically a man would come in and hustle her to a small bathroom down the hall or give her a tray of restaurant vittles; he wouldn’t talk much at those times, she said, no one had deigned to tell her what she was doing there until she got it out of a second guy, who subbed in with the food one time. The Venture of Marvels needed a certain number of days, he said, to put its claim in place, to establish its rights. Until then, she was stuck.

“No one told me they faked my death ,” she said, as her father stood close beside her and gazed fondly at her living face, with its many-legged eyebrows (Homely virtue! I thought. How good to have her back). He kept a hand posed quasi-formally on her shoulder, as though to indicate to himself that his daughter was there, actual, real and independently breathing — without, however, showing excessive affection: like daughter, like father.

“They never mentioned that,” went on Nancy.

“Why would they,” said Thompson. “No advantage in it. A female; possible hysterics.”

“I don’t get this,” said Simonoff. “Why do that? Why tell everyone she — she had drowned? Good God! I mean! It almost gave her poor mother a myocardial infarction!”

“Probably thought it would shut us up,” said Chip. “Shut us down, right? Keep us from going after the mermaids. Plus we’d stop asking annoying questions about her whereabouts sooner or later, if we thought she was done for. Right?”

“They took my cell records, my email, contact info, the signed paperwork from the excursion,” said Nancy. “And Riley’s digital video? Listen to this. See, Riley was my only visitor, other than the food guys. He felt a little guilty so he asked to see me, but his conscience didn’t go too deep. He talked to me, though, so I do know what happened. He sold it to them. Just outright sold it.”

“He had a contract with us!” said Chip. “With you!”

Nancy shrugged. “He sold it.”

“I thought they stole it,” I said.

“First,” said Nancy. “But then they actually watched it. And decided they needed to own it. So they just made him an offer.”

“We still don’t know who they even are ,” said Rick slowly. “Do we, Nancy?”

She shook her head.

“We know who some of them are,” added Raleigh. “But we don’t know how far up the chain it goes.”

“They just arrested two of them,” I said. “We saw it! On the ship. The woman and the guy with the really dark tan. Arrested. The cops came in a police cutter and arrested them.”

“Scapegoats,” said Thompson solemnly.

“Sacrificial lambs,” agreed Rick.

“Thrown under the bus,” said Chip.

I thought how much I disliked the non-Mormon and the Mike Chance guy: I felt an instinctive distaste for both of them, and had from the get-go. Still, distaste or not, they hadn’t seemed like criminal masterminds. They seemed more like consultants, maybe sales reps.

“Were they acting alone?” I asked no one in particular. “Or was management pulling the strings?”

“I think the point is we can’t know,” said Rick. “Kidnapping Nancy — and you too, Deb, for sure— that , for one, they’re going to want to pin on the PR people. At least, that’s what I’m suspecting.”

“Our orders, which they called a ‘request for emergency assistance,’ came from the suit on the beach,” said Raleigh. “He’s the GM who runs the resort. Reports to the regional veep. I’m gonna make a call, find out what’s going down.”

As he turned away the rest of us fell upon Nancy like a flock of chattering parakeets, trying to pull out strings of explanation with our curved little beaks. How could it even be that Annette had just walked up and unlocked the door, patrolling on her fifteen-minute break, using a ring of keys from the pegboard in the staff break room? (Ronnie.) Why didn’t the company guard its prisoners? (Rick.) Especially when I’d escaped, too? (Me.) Wasn’t she pissed that Riley had turned out to be a Judas? (Thompson.) He’d seemed so cool at first, hadn’t he? (Chip.) And (closely related) how much had they paid him? (Ellis.) Was she starving? (Janeane.) Didn’t she need a shower? (Janeane.) Where were her belongings? (Janeane.) Did she want to go back to her cabana and try to get them? (Janeane.)

Wait. Very important. Did she have legal counsel yet? (Gina.)

Prof. Simonoff, the doctor and Thompson announced their intention to make a sortie to Paradise Bay to reclaim Nancy’s personal items. Thompson, I could tell, was spoiling for a fight, even if it had to be over nothing more epic than a biologist’s toiletries. The three of them, all men of a certain age, went out to the Hummer and roar/chugged away. Gina wanted to debrief her brother on the litigation possibilities, and Ellis wanted to cloyingly massage her shoulders while she did so. Miyoko assented to yet another video interview, Janeane made a midnight snack, etc.

But Nancy had only one objective, amid the hustle and bustle. Grass didn’t grow beneath her feet, the solid feet of that kidnapped parrotfish expert; she waved away the questions, she splashed cold water on her face, she shoved handfuls of salted peanuts into her mouth without even taking a seat. Then she ushered a bunch of us outside, so she could breathe the trade-wind breeze in more limited company. The rooms had gotten claustrophobic.