by Lydia Millet
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. “I really don’t think that’s it.”
“Then what is it?”
I pointed at a banner flapping behind Mike and his coworker. And that was our introduction to the new mermaid tourism company—incorporated, as it turned out, with mysterious rapidity as a wholly owned subsidiary of the multinational chain that also owned our resort—that called itself the Venture of Marvels.
Beside the words, a logo of a fishtail sticking out of a frothy, stylized wave.
“They’re going out there to market them,” I said.
THERE’S NOT A lot of anger in Chip, really; I’d say he’s well below average on the anger meter, for his demographic. He’s white, he’s male, and he’s quite young, but he’s got no serial killer in him—none at all. No tendencies to violence that I’ve ever seen. Or if he does have them they channel completely into the gaming, sex, and athletics.
And yet, when he looked up at those words and that logo and then looked down at the Guest Services team standing beneath it, their tans glowing against the white of the yacht like twin beacons, I saw blood rush to his face. His face, all of a sudden, looked lightly mottled, and I actually caught the movement of his jaw clenching. I thought I heard his molars grinding, even amidst the pandemonium on the docks.
“No,” said Chip. “No. No. No. No. No!”
“Hey,” I said, “hey, there.” But as I reached out to comfort him I reminded myself of Steve the Freudian wrangling Janeane, which made me jerk back my hand from his arm. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to be comforted, just that I didn’t want to act like a life partner, exactly. I figured the process would have a neutering effect.
“They can’t do this,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just like Nancy said! They’re going to wreck everything!”
I didn’t doubt what he said, which made it hard to come back with a soothing remark.
“The others from the dive are working for them! For these people. The Venture of Marvels, whatever that is.”
“I suspect it’s the same people who run the resort. Or at least their parent company,” I said, inclining my head toward the tanned people astride their yacht, above us.
Chip’s brow knit.
“That’s why they left my Listserv, I bet they felt guilty,” he said. “They felt guilty because they were cashing in. They were betraying Nancy and everything she stood for! And violating our contract! They’re getting paid to sell out the mermaids!”
“Yes,” I said. “I think that’s a pretty fair assumption.”
“Deb,” he said, “you’re the strategist. What can we do?”
I looked around for a place to sit; all I saw was the top of a piling, a sawed-off stumpy thing spattered with seagull white. Any port in a storm, I said to myself, but then I disagreed.
“First,” I said, “who’s still on your Listserv, Chip? Who hasn’t defected yet?”
He lifted his phone, tapped a few times, studied the screen. “Thompson,” he said. “Rick. Ronnie . . .”
“Thompson? Who’s that?”
“The retired wreck diver, you know, the ex-Navy guy with all the great stories. You called him the old salt. Then Rick and Ronnie from San Francisco that we had dinner with. And then—just—no way! Another unsubscribe. Right now!”
“And?”
“There’s only one other person left, I guess, Miyoko. Young, Asian, some kind of big-wave surfer but she came here just to dive. She wanted to see the reefs. Dolphin tattoo on her ankle. Remember?”
I vaguely did. She was quiet and self-possessed, with excellent skin; we hadn’t spoken much.
“OK, Chip. We’ve got to call a meeting.”
AFTER WE SAW the banner for the so-called Venture of Marvels I didn’t know whether to feel invisible or paranoid. On the one hand, we were afraid that Nancy had been murdered for her mermaid discovery, in which case we should be paranoid because we, too, could be killed if we didn’t toe the line.
On the other hand, it was in fact possible that Nancy had died a natural, if unlikely, death and that our mermaids had been discovered by the resort only after her death, basically because of her death—from Nancy’s cell phone records, which led them to Riley’s video.
In that case we’d invented the cover-up, invented the idea that the resort had murdered her in order to profit off the mermaids; in that case we didn’t need to be paranoid, possibly, because although the resort’s parent company, if that was true, had been repulsively quick to leap into a niche—had leapt into that niche unethically, cynically, and with the most craven of motives—it wasn’t per se criminal, necessarily. Or it was more a form of white-collar crime or maybe just moral turpitude (a favorite phrase of Gina’s). So maybe the parent company didn’t care what we thought or even what we did.
But of course, we didn’t know which it was, theft or murder. We had to err on the paranoid side, ultimately. Should we operate covertly, sneaking around like spies, or in the wide-open spaces?
In the end I opted to start with wide-open spaces, figuring that our best insurance might be obviousness. Or it might not. It was a risk. Anyway we gathered, the seven of us, in the gazebo of a palm garden (Janeane was still in the Pearl Diver Cabana, building her confidence). There was Steve, Thompson, Rick, Ronnie, Miyoko, Chip, and me. That was all that remained of our catered excursion force, our motley crew of spearfishermen, dive pros, vacationers, and parrotfish experts—all that was left of the boatload that had, for the first time in human history, videotaped mermaids.
Around us the palms were planted in a geometric pattern around the colorful tiled patio, creating a sense that we were on the grounds of some raja’s palace and might at any moment see a line of elephants lumber into sight, caparisoned in finery and bearing howdahs for some Indian royals. Of course we saw no elephants, only the golf carts, loaded with tourists like ourselves. There were also human-size statues of knights, kings, queens, and pawns, arrayed along opposite edges of the patio beside our gazebo. A couple lay on their sides, fallen. The patio was a giant chessboard.
“I guess my question is,” Chip said, when we were all sitting, “what’s our first priority? Justice for Nancy? Or helping the mermaids?”
“We gotta go where we can get shit done,” said the old salt Thompson, with his usual gruffness.
“Nancy would want us to help the mer-people,” put in Rick, the independent film guy.
“That’s right, she would,” agreed Ronnie, his boyfriend the designer. “That’s what Nancy would want. Definitely.”
Miyoko gave the slightest of nods.
“Makes sense to me,” said Steve.
“So the next question,” said Thompson, twiddling the knobs on his elaborate wristwatch, “is how far are we willing to go? To save these critters? Where do we draw the line?”
“Nonviolent protest?” offered Ronnie.
Thompson barked out a laugh.
“No, seriously though,” he said, turning to Chip. “One thing. I’ve got experience with explosives. Another thing. I’ve got explosives.”
“Jesus,” said Rick.
“What kind of explosives?” asked Chip curiously.
“Need-to-know basis. Just saying.”
“A middle ground, maybe,” said Steve. “Between the sign-waving and the bombing?”
“What’s the specific goal, Chip?” I asked. “If we’re trying to stop this hotel chain from destroying the mermaids, OK, but what’s the deliverable? What’s the actual outcome that we’d like to see?”
“It’s Terriault-Smith, right?” mused Rick. “The parent company? They also have a pharmaceutical arm, I think. And maybe frozen foods.”
“I know what Nancy really wanted,” said Chip. “She wanted, like, a mermaid park. That was her vision, a national park in the ocean, but for mermaids. Like with the Channel Islands, remember that trip, Deb? It’s set aside for nature, and then you’re not allowed to fish for them.”
“So how do we do that?” asked Thompson.
“That’s a political deal. Got nothing to do with us.”
“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.
They nodded grudgingly, but a couple of minutes later—as we walked along the path that passed Steve’s cabana—I found myself jostled and forced away from it, surrounded by a wall of men.
At that point I considered making a scene, even yelling/screaming. But that’s where my personality got in the way, my personality that, especially as I got older, I hadn’t worried about so much. I’m not a screamer, never have been, and it turned out this situation was no exception to the rule. The idea of screaming seemed foolish. Here we were in a Caribbean resort. What was the worst that could happen? Then I caught sight of Nancy’s cabana and thought of her bathtub, but still the scream stuck in my throat.
So I didn’t do anything except call out Steve’s name a couple times, then Miyoko’s—probably not loud enough to be heard from inside. And for once there was no one around, not even a single golf cart transporting its inert, jiggling cargo.
We went through a side door into the main building, the building with the lobby and most of the restaurants, and then we were in a service elevator, and then a narrow corridor, and then we were in a room that, if it was the famed Conference Room B, was certainly a small one. It’d be your two-, your three-person conferences that took place in that baby.
There was barely room for the man-huddle; they pressed me in, then hovered at the threshold. The room had a table with two chairs, a TV, another door and one window—a picture window overlooking the beach and the sea.
A picture window that, of course, didn’t open.
At the door of the room they looked around at each other for a second, and then, abruptly, without saying a single thing, the one who’d stood at the front leaned out and just grabbed Chip’s tablet, which I was still holding. Just like that he took it from me. And then every one of them left. They sluiced out the door fast as liquid.
I was alone.
I stood there for a second, kind of in disbelief, and then stepped toward the door they’d sluiced through and rattled the knob hopelessly. Locked, of course. I crossed the room and opened the other door; there was a toilet, a sink and a pink plug-in air freshener shaped like a butterfly.