by Lydia Millet
“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.
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.
“Let them in!” said Chip. “Please. We’re decent.”
So two people entered, dressed business casual, both dark-skinned like most islanders, slight of build and faultlessly polite, a woman and a man. Their accents were a kind of soft quasi-Brit Creole; they had a genteel quality. (Ellis told me later they weren’t elected officials but appointed by the Queen.) Gina tried to offer them coffee but gave up when she couldn’t find any. They were very concerned, they said, that required commercial-fishing permits had not been even applied for by the parent company. There’d also been a number of related “irregularities,” they realized, concerning the actions of the “constabulary.” They’d be going out to investigate shortly, heading out to meet the armada in an unannounced visit aboard the U.S. Coast Guard’s cutter.
The woman, who turned out to be the deputy governor, said we could hitch a ride, if we wished to. Could our party be ready by 6 a.m.?
It was then that Raleigh and Sam appeared at the open door; Raleigh winked at me. I grabbed Chip’s arm and inclined my head in the soldiers’ direction, impressing on him via sharp finger-squeeze that we probably shouldn’t shout out a joyful greeting. These were the “higher-ups” Raleigh had been avoiding, I figured; orders had finally come down.
Luckily, the natives seemed friendly.
“Look here!” said Ellis to the bureaucrats. “I really am dashed grateful you took my phone call seriously. I’m chuffed to bits.”
Usually when he went old-school Gina accused him of “getting lordy.” But this time she let it sail right past.
Soon the others were up and bustling, Nancy “over the moon,” as Ellis said, about the presence of the two civil servants (the man was the head of some government ministry). There was a shortage of vessels, she’d found out the night before, so if Ellis hadn’t reached out to the colonial authorities a lot of us would probably have been stranded on land. Thompson’s borrowed speedboat could have been called back into service, possibly, but its capacity was limited.
Before long we were driving straight to the main marina, no fear this time, no need to hide. We had the government with us; we had the troops. Steve and Janeane watched us motor away from the dock, as—Chip with one arm slung over my shoulders, the two of us floating in a crowd of soldiers—we stood at the bow in the leaping spume.
Janeane waved a yellow scarf in the air. It looked so old-fashioned, lifted by the breeze.
THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR invited us to call her by her first name, which was Lorna, but we both felt awkward so we avoided calling her anything. The minister guy didn’t chat with us much, he mostly hunkered down talking to the Simonoffs, but the deputy governor talked to Ellis, and because we were near Ellis, she also talked to us.
This was on the deck of the Coast Guard cutter, you understand—there was a kind of excitement, a festive atmosphere, a bonded, band-of-brothers situation, though detail-wise, on a technical level, we weren’t brothers or even all men and some of us didn’t like each other.
But we dismissed the issue of not liking each other, then. Liking each other, not liking each other, who cared, was our thinking aboard that charging white vessel of law enforcement. It was beside the point. Gina’s disgust with Thompson, Thompson’s pathological fear/hatred of “the gays”—it was meaningless, on the deck of the Coast Guard cutter.
I thought of when I’d first met Janeane, harshly indicting her sandals, observing the plantlike tendrils as they wound up her fishbelly calves—my frustration as she talked to me during peeing. How small it seemed to me now. I felt a real pang of affection for her, the way I’d seen her just minutes before, standing on the shore and waving her yellow handkerchief. She’d looked nostalgic then, as though we’d boarded the Titanic and away we steamed.
I’d first deployed my devil/Gina half, judging Janeane, but then my angel/Chip half had taken over. Yet seeing Gina and Janeane together, I’d noticed there wasn’t any conflict between them. Sure, they were opposites—Janeane deploring polymers while Gina ironically loved them, Janeane getting choked up over industrial meat production while Gina ironically ordered full plates of bacon at the all-American diners she frequented.
But still there was a kind of understanding between them, right? I thought of Gina raising a sly eyebrow at what Janeane was saying; of Janeane, sometimes, gazing at Gina in startled confusion.
We didn’t know what was going to happen, but at last something would—we had a trajectory. We had new strength with the government on our side: from what Nancy said to me, passing us on the deck, it seemed the civil servants might be interested in her idea for a mermaid sanctuary. They already had some plan in mind, she said, for “marine protected areas.”
We were aloft, moving forward at last, and not a single one of us was currently dead.
As we neared the armada, though—the first time I’d approached it in daylight—my mood changed rapidly. Damn! It was a floating citadel. It was a whole city on the ocean, with nets and cranelike structures, complicated metal architectures of utility. Small boats were moving among the larger ships, serving them, ferrying. My stomach flipped when I saw the armada/citadel. Who were we, really? And what was the law, even? We were a handful of men wearing berets, we were two very polite civil servants, one of whom was named Lorna; we were a small group of tourists, vacationing from our lives.
As the yachts and the trawlers towered over us, some soaring up gracefully in their white fiberglass slickness, some stolid as factories in their black rust and barnacles, what
I saw was mass—I saw solidity. The law was ancient runes on a parchment, a parchment you might see in one of Chip’s gameworlds. Law was a tale and government was more a wish than a reality. A smart dresser, maybe, but simply not effective. For the first time I understood its quaintness.
Government! Once we’d believed in it.
Those ships were really big.
We did have guns, at least (I reassured myself, looking sidelong at Raleigh’s face). He stood straight-backed at the prow, hands clasped behind him, jawline firm. The guns were a factor in our favor, I could see the logic there, but where there are guns there are always more guns. Seemed like another can of worms. The guns didn’t comfort me, for that reason.
There’d been some radio communiqués back and forth, I guessed, because we had a destination in the vast armada: the flagship yacht, where management resided. Now we circled the periphery, engine rumbling and wake churning as we cut a swath. I looked down at the white curls, at my flip-flop-clad feet on the deck, damp from the spray. I thought of the defectors, those former dive companions and partygoers. Where were they now, the blond-headed profiteer Riley, the toe fetishist from the Heartland, the substitute teacher? Where was the Fox News spearfisherman who’d rummaged around in my tampons?
I looked up at the rails, the gunwales, idly hoping to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. But if there were any people there, they were hidden from my sight.
Then the bureaucrats were climbing into an orange rubber motorboat—a Zodiac, Raleigh called it. Then he was boarding, then Nancy, then a couple more soldiers. I thought we’d all be left behind, till Nancy waved impatiently at Chip and he gave me a quick kiss and hurried to board too.
My husband was among the chosen people, but I wasn’t, apparently.
I raised an eyebrow at Gina and tried not to resent it, the fact that I hadn’t made the cut. I did resent it, though. I wondered whether I had offended Nancy somehow (bad breath? Or had she read my mind about her caterpillar eyebrows?). I felt only a bit better when, as the boat sputtered away toward the flagship yacht, Raleigh turned, smiled, and saluted me mockingly/flirtingly.