by Lydia Millet
“But Thompson’s not a criminal. He used to be a Navy SEAL! He fought for our nation, Deb! Or dove, at least. He dove for our great nation.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, unconvinced.
Finally we hashed it out, as much as we could without a therapy session, and emerged into the main room, where the others were running an equipment test. We wouldn’t use it till morning—that was the plan, at least—when we’d likely be broadcasting from the beach.
“Pretty soon now the first boats are due back,” said Chip, checking his phone. “The flagship’s staying out there, from what we overheard, staying out tonight watching the nets, which will have been set by now. But a lot of the smaller boats are coming back in. We’ve got a man on the inside, Deb, did I tell you?”
Turned out they’d bribed the Fox News spearfisher, the one who’d rummaged in my tampon box. He claimed to be acting as a double agent, undercover in the armada. He had no allegiance to the parent company, much as he’d had no allegiance to Nancy or to Chip and me, but for a hundred bucks he’d agreed to tell Chip everything he’d seen, out there on the sparkling waves. And possibly beneath them. He’d promised to make his first report in the evening; Chip had an assignation with him behind the restaurant-bar where the other turncoats would be helping themselves to free libations.
I found myself wishing we were doing some sleuthing, that we had the manpower and the chops to figure out exactly what had led to Nancy’s untimely death. I discovered it was nagging at me, the unresolved question of whether our scientist had died through simple misadventure or someone’s evil intent. It nagged at me. It really did.
But for now, at least, the murder mystery remained unsolved. We had to fortify ourselves, sooner or later, and that was what we did; at a certain point I realized my brush with kidnapping had left me hungry. When dinnertime came we ate Janeane’s vegan fare, we drank, and periodically Chip received cryptic email bulletins from Thompson, whose cell phone was apparently hooking into the yacht’s WiFi. He was hiding in a closet full of mops, pine oil, and bags of scented kitty litter. Whoever the yacht belonged to liked to keep cats aboard, but Thompson hated cats, claiming their shit could make you schizophrenic. (Chip showed me his email: Cats> civilization> toxoplasmosis> people schiz out OR their brains swell/burst.) The smell of the scented kitty litter was making him, as he wrote Chip, “want to upchuck.”
There was the matter of sleeping arrangements, next, complicated by the fact that we didn’t want to split up. The more of us there were, in one locked space, the stronger our chances—who was to say another contingent of hotel employees wouldn’t show up, this time with firearms and greater powers of coercion? So we decided to camp out on sofas and the floor, posting sentries throughout the night. We’d take shifts, two at a time, one at the front window and one at the sliders; we kept the outside lights on. As Rick pointed out, if they had real brains they’d cut the power to our cabana, but it hadn’t occurred to them to do that, I guess—and here again their incompetence, as adversaries, was helpful.
But before we could sleep there was the problem of Chip’s appointment with the undercover spearfisher. He couldn’t keep it alone, since we didn’t do solo travel. We decided that Rick, Chip, and I would do the sortie.
It seems a little poignant, in retrospect, to think how we armed ourselves with kitchen knives—mine in particular, since it was a bread knife with a rounded end. I didn’t feel comfortable carrying a butcher’s knife, figured I’d slice myself to ribbons. So I took up arms with the bread knife, meaning the worst I could have done to an attacker was scrape him, kind of broadside—cause an abrasion of some kind.
But night served us well as we crept along the backs of buildings. Chip had mapped our route out in his head; he had orienteering skills gained while gaming in made-up lands. We didn’t use flashlights, though Thompson had lent us some, but relied on our eyes and Chip’s sense of direction, and whenever we heard the electric whir of a golf cart in the near distance we’d dodge behind a clump of trees, taking cover.
By and by we fetched up behind the main building, near the bar’s patio, where we were screened from view by an oleander hedge. It was five minutes till the meet time. We stood there wordless, waiting. The tampon spearfisher was late, of course, punctuality wasn’t his strong suit. When he finally stumbled out onto the patio, beer in hand, I could see right away he was a few sheets to the wind.
“Psst!” said Chip. “Over here!”
It took the fisherman a minute to make us out, shadowy figures behind the screen of foliage. He fought his way through branches, swearing; he dropped his beer bottle on the flagstones, making noise, and then complained it had been almost full.
“I have your cash,” said Chip. “But first we need the goods.”
“This is some sneaky shit,” said the fisherman, and actually belched. “So what’s your angle, man? Still trying to keep the mermaids for yourselves?”
“Not for ourselves,” said Chip. “That’s not the point at all.”
“Enough with the chitchat,” said Rick. “You’re here to make a buck, right? What’ve you got? Was there another sighting?”
“Nah,” said the fisherman. “They dropped the nets, though, and those nets are massive, man. We’re talking goddamn miles of them. Saw tons of dolphins.”
It was good, I thought, they hadn’t seen any mermaids, but I felt a pang about those long, long nets. I wondered if they were the kind that scrape along the floor of the ocean, wrecking and killing everything. I’d seen a documentary. They probably were, I cogitated gloomily. Otherwise how could they be sure of sealing it all off?
“Then what’s the plan?” said Chip. “What’s next?”
“Tomorrow we search the grid. They’ve got it all mapped out, you know, into these squares. And as we search, they move the nets. We basically search the area, square by square, right? And as we exclude the squares, we bring the nets closer in.”
“I see,” said Chip. “How about leadership? Who’s in charge of this operation?”
“Shit, I don’t know. They brought in suits from Florida. Plus there’s this geeky professor dude.”
Chip and I exchanged glances.
“An anthropologist? From Berkeley?” I said.
“Yeah, right,” said the spearfisher. “An anthrocologist. Yeah, he’s advising the suits. On search logistics.”
I could barely believe it. Nancy’s old colleague was a turncoat too. You couldn’t trust anyone, in this world we inhabited. Or was he just a stooge? Had they even told this guy what happened to Nancy? Did they secure his help under false pretenses?
My mind has cogs, and they were spinning.
“So what’s their endgame?” prodded Chip. “They want to, what? Sell tickets? To this Venture of Marvels? Sell tickets to see the mermaids?”
“Biggest tourist destination in the world,” slurred the fisherman. “It’ll be like Disneyland. You kidding me?”
“They already do fine with tourism,” demurred Rick.
“But see, the reefs, man,” slurred the fisherman. “Everyone knows they’re bleaching. Everyone knows they’re dying out. Shit. You can see it with the naked eye. Every reef man knows. I’m a reef man, see? But it’s some dying shit, those reefs. The reefs are done, dude. Done like a dinner. Global-ass warming. Acid oceans. Hey. Can I go in, get me another brew? I’ll come out again.”
“No, man,” said Chip. “Come on. Talk to us first. Then get your beer.”
“Killjoy,” said the fisherman. “Listen. It’s too bad, but the reefs are over. This is the next big thing, my dudes. Without the coral reefs, out here, we don’t have shit. Sand, water, you can get that boring crap in Florida. Hell, even in Jersey. This is the next big meal ticket. Man, this is it. I mean this is all we’ve got.”
And with that he held out his hand for the cash.
IT’S FAIR TO say we felt downcast, as we walked back to the cabana. I was remembering the first dinner with Nancy, when she’d said the same thing—except f
or the part about mermaids and meal tickets, of course. I know all about economic incentives; it’s my job. This was a big machine, I thought. A big machine you couldn’t stop. Once it was started, it kept moving. And who were we? We were honeymooners, tourists. We didn’t even live here.
“But they’re overlooking something,” said Rick suddenly, just as we reached the Pearl Diver. We were going in from the back, the way we’d come out, fighting our way through more flowering hedges to get to the patio. “That’s what Nancy would say. They’re overlooking one major aspect, if that’s their plan.”
“What’s that, Rick,” said Chip wearily.
“The likelihood that the mermaids also depend on the reefs,” said Rick.
We stood there, on the patio, Chip and Rick and I.
“Exactly!” said Chip.
“That’s where we saw them,” said Rick. “It’s probably their home. Just like so many other fish-type animals, right? Sure, we don’t know their biology yet, Nancy’d be the first to admit it. But chances are, the reefs are probably a major food source for them. Their hunting grounds, as it were.”
We nodded slowly, all three of us, like so many bobbleheads on my coworker’s computer.
“Then, to have the mermaids to show off for tourists, they’d have to save the reefs,” I said. “Right?”
“Easier said than done,” said Rick.
“But that has to be part of our message,” I urged. “What we broadcast with Miyoko. That they’re wrong, these mermaid hucksters have it totally wrong. They can’t use mermaids as their meal ticket when all the reefs are gone. It’s not either/or—it’s both.”
“I bet they plan to feed the mermaids,” said Chip. “They’ll make, like, kind of a zoo for them, I bet. Like, artificial reefs.”
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.
IV.
GLORIOUS REVOLUTION
“Jesus,” 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.
Then we were there, on the sand, vigilant and purposeful, on the lookout for minions. At first the only people nearby were some early-morning beachgoers, who ogled us curiously, their eyes asking: Is that pretty young Asian woman a celebrity? Yes, I answered those curious oglers in my mind, quite a celebrity, well known to millions but not to you. Or me. Then we were setting up; then Miyoko was smiling and smiling and speaking in Japanese, while Rick filmed her and Steve held the small-but-heavy satellite dish. Her small black mic was on her small black collar and behind her stretched the blue-turquoise expanse of ocean, upon which, in the distance, the white dots of the armada could be seen.