Lydia Millet - Mermaids in Paradise - A Novel

Once out there, standing beneath some rustling fronds beside the pool, she asked Raleigh for a full report on the status of the Venture of Marvels.

“Here’s what I’m being told,” said Raleigh. “The general manager’s claiming he had no knowledge of your kidnapping. He says he, too, was told you’d drowned. That he wasn’t in on that bullshit. He’s helming up the Venture, of course, that much he’s copped to — he’s taking ownership of that part of it. But where the backstory’s concerned, his version is: Mike and Liza brought him the mermaid video. He had no idea they’d taken it from Riley, he thought you’d just drowned and the tape and other mermaid-related texts, excursion records, and all that shit was in your personal effects. In a nutshell, he’s doing his best to avoid criminal liability over what happened to you, Nancy.”

“Why’d they bother with that meeting? Where we first met, uh, Liza?” I asked.

“That was to get everyone’s contact info,” said Raleigh. “That was part of our briefing a couple days ago. They had a manifest from the boat trip, that’s how they knew some of the people to invite, but they needed everyone’s names , emails, and cells. Hadda make sure everyone came under their umbrella, ideally came over to work for them. At that point they only had Riley on board.”

“Sleazebags,” said Chip.

“But they never got you guys signed up, so the plan was, instead, to round you up, lock you up, and shut you up. Like with Nancy,” said Raleigh, looking at me. “Mostly, I get the feeling, they screwed up. They had some miscommunications. There were a couple power struggles, with them and the Keystone cops — a lack of unity, some confusion. So honestly? You lucked out.”

“How about the search?” asked Nancy. “And my colleague from Berkeley, what’s happening with him?”

While Chip talked to her I ran inside, went through my clothes and threw on a swimsuit. (I’d lost the bikini by then, but I had reinforcements.) I was unkempt and I needed liquid immersion, so I listened to the conversation from down in the water, clinging to the concrete lip of the pool. Occasionally I’d reach for a cocktail Janeane brought out to me, a tepid, mojito-like beverage in a flimsy plastic cup. I listened as Chip and Raleigh told stories, occasionally interjecting an anecdote of my own, and watched velvety bats flit under the patio overhang of a vacant room.

I floated in the pool throughout the planning session, in fact, dipping my head occasionally, smoothing back my wet hair. Periodically I’d hold a mouthful of mojito in my cheek pouches, just see how long I could keep it there. After a while Gina joined me, and we hung side by side, our arms adrift in the chlorinated water, our fingers pruney. A soldier would pass by, now and then, stopping to refill our cups. We felt strangely content. (“Here we are,” said Gina, “in a swimming pool in the tropics, and at regular intervals young, muscular men in uniforms supply us with intoxicants.”)

She’d already shelved her vow to drink no cocktails, in fear of Thompson, and I didn’t remind her of it.

It was so satisfying, such a relief to watch Nancy sitting, talking, every bit as alive as a person can reasonably be. A reassurance of comforting proportions — almost enough to dispel the fear I’d been nursing earlier of loathing, of all the loathing crowds, the mermaid haters descending.

And I could consign them to the screen, almost, for a brief time: I could believe they only lived in that small, glowing rectangle. When I was a child and got scared by a TV show or movie, my mother used to say to me, “It’s not real, darling. It’s just pretend.” I’d loved it when she said that. I willingly believed everything bad was made up only for entertainment — nothing terrifying was real, nothing real was terrifying. Only in stories did the witches cackle, their mouths gaping open to show yellow, razor-sharp teeth; only on Hollywood sets were there wars, cruelty, the tragic deaths of unspeakably beautiful and innocent creatures. In life there were none of these.

I said that to myself when I thought of the screen, full of the angry words of people who had never seen the mermaids but nonetheless hated them.

How small it was, that screen. Irrelevant, maybe. A triviality.

Anyway, Nancy was determined to go out again first thing in the morning. We’d line up some boats, we’d motor out to where the armada had dropped anchor, and we’d boldly confront it. Nancy said she didn’t even know if it was legal to drop those commercial fishing nets where they were dropping them, near the reefs — in fact, she strenuously doubted it. She’d like to hire a local attorney, she said, but that would have to wait — at least till businesses opened on Tortola, maybe even the U.S. islands, St. Croix, there had to be some lawyers familiar with the local situation.

In the meantime, we’d go out onto the ocean and board the armada, take on its leaders. Why, we’d defy them openly.

I swear, that parrotfish expert seemed to have no fear. She’d been far less affected by her death than we had.

In her experience, she’d been kidnapped; she’d been locked in a storeroom for a few days, treated with casual rudeness and brought paper plates of cold French fries to eat. There hadn’t been a microwave, plus the ketchup was watery. And they’d unlawfully injected narcotics. But still, she hadn’t particularly feared an escalation of the violence (Janeane could barely believe this, thought Nancy was the bravest woman ever to walk the earth). She’d fallen asleep fully clothed after the party in Chip’s and my cabana; next thing she knew she woke up on a cot in a storeroom that smelled of disinfectant and onions.

So that’s what Nancy had endured, but meanwhile, we’d endured her death — possibly even her murder!

Later she’d come back to life, but still. Attitude-wise, we’d taken a hit. Nancy had a can-do sensibility, while the rest of us were hesitant — with the exception of Thompson. He was still waiting impatiently for a chance to lob his grenade.

Anyway, Nancy got Miyoko on board — this scene too, she said, we needed to broadcast live; could Miyoko arrange for it? — and then she asked Raleigh for the loan of his beret-clad troops.

At first he hemmed and hawed, mulling it over since it wasn’t exactly low-profile, but eventually, once he had enough mojitos/beers in him, he seemed to give his consent. You got the feeling the soldiers hadn’t seen too much action, there in the British Virgin Islands. You got the feeling what they really wanted was just for something to happen.

Plus Miyoko had just agreed to go out to dinner with Sam, once the mermaid emergency was past. I think Raleigh wanted to show his solidarity.

IT WASN’T EVEN light out when Ellis came barging into our room. He and Gina’d been sleeping in the adjacent one, through the unlocked door, and now he stumbled across the threshold in a torn, oversize Sex Pistols T-shirt and Monty Python boxers, mumbling and pushing his bangs out of his eyes. He typically sports a tousled, Hugh-Granty look. “The deputy governor’s here,” he said, having reverted to his approximately Oxbridge accent and away from the fake cockney of indignation. “Also a minister. I rang them yesterday.”

I was groggy, but awake enough to register shock: apparently Ellis had accomplished something. In general he carries off the dentistry, the accent, and the women; there the triple whammy ends. Things Ellis doesn’t do and rarely remembers to delegate: Stock his refrigerator. Clean his condo. Pay bills. Fix what’s broken.

Chip and I pulled on some clothes and joined Gina and Ellis in their room, where they stood at the door talking.