by J Turbett
"Both Caraway boys back at the same time?"
"It's not normal," his wife replied.
"Something fishy's going on," he agreed. All the whispers in the room couldn't stop Tommy from moving forward. Of course, whose booth did he come to but Alice’s? Now the room was completely abuzz, wondering aloud about the long-lost teenage millionaire and the new girl from the States.
“Where could she have met him?” “Why would he be interested in her?” “Tommy’s been gone for months.”
It went on and on, and her headache returned as quickly as her temper.
"So you're the new girl," the boy said. She stared at him with narrowed eyes.
“What do you want?”
“Your hand, of course.” He smirked, putting an open hand up on the table, offering it to her. She jerked away like it was a poisonous snake. “No? Well, now that that’s done.” He pulled his hand back. He was laughing at her with those dark eyes of his, and the color in Alice’s cheeks became hot.
"I don't need this you, little twerp," she said fiercely. She couldn't contain her nursed anger anymore; it was bursting to escape. It was making her crazy. She felt like a cornered cat, hating so many intrusions into her previously quiet existence.
The boy sneered at her. “Yesterday I was in Okinawa when I heard a tantalizingly strange tale from home. Accounts differed, but everyone whispered the word transform. I just had to see it myself. Imagine my surprise to hear my brother was involved.” He smiled that crooked smile again, “I heard the tale late last night and flipped my fin back here as quick as I could. Population counts mean nothing to a new transform.”
“I don’t care about your stupid story. I don’t care where you were. I just want you to leave.” His expression mirrored his manner.
“Finn said you were annoying. I shoulda known he only woulda said that ‘cuz you were as much of a bitch as he is an ass." Alice's eyes and nostrils flared again. Anger was painful with gills. He laughed, sardonically. There wasn't a serious bone in this boy's entire body, which was not what Alice needed right now. Alice didn’t know what she truly needed, but she knew it wasn’t this. As her brain surged into motion, rebelling at these new facts, Alice had some semblance of life.
"There is something behind the clouds," he said, cryptically. He smiled as she shook. “Well, I can see that you want to be left alone. I just wanted to see the truth of the matter myself. Have a great day, Alice.” He smirked at her and got up to leave as quickly as he had come. He continued smirking as he walked away, everyone staring until the diner door closed behind him.
Alice looked down at the remainder of her meal and pushed it away. She sat for a moment staring at it before sliding out of the booth and paying the check.
She moved out of the diner quickly. Escaping, she entertained the thought of running again, but it disappeared as quickly as the boy. She was headed… actually, she wasn't sure where she was headed. She just needed to get out of that diner before someone else came to harass her about one thing or another.
Walking down the sidewalk she discovered that she couldn't contain her emotions anymore; perhaps it was because she was so out of practice. She ran straight into Finn before she even knew there was someone coming toward her.
"You!" she yelled. She shoved him, shocking him full-force. Finn stumbled backwards, shock plain on his face, watching those green eyes shine through her long, long hair. He hadn't really been watching where he was going, either. He was on an important mission of his own. He stared at her violent eyes and flaring nostrils. "Keep your goddamn fan club away from me!" she shouted, shocking him again as she sped past, leaving him gaping in the road.
She was moving swiftly, and before she knew it she had broken into a run. The ocean was in front of her; it was swirling around her legs and she was screaming for all she was worth. Two people on the beach stared at her. They had been sunbathing, or picnicking; it didn't matter. She hadn't met those people yet, she didn't know if they knew her; it didn't matter. She screamed at them as they gathered their things, leaving her alone on the beach. Alice turned her screams toward the ocean, tears pouring from her eyes.
"Why?" she screamed, "Why me?" She let in a breath as she fell to her knees. The water swirled around her knees and legs, her pants were soaked. She didn't care. "Why me?" she pleaded, softly this time, as her shoulders and head slumped in exhaustion.
Out to sea and out of sight, Tommy surfaced to laugh. He could hear her scream. Unknown to her, her very human scream of frustration had an underlying tone in the language of the folk, the language she could now speak but didn’t know. Alice was telling the world to "fuck off," and this underlying tone was keeping people away. He contemplated going to her, but he had a feeling she would figure things out on her own.
She screamed again. Slowly it dissolved into a whimper. Touching her face, she felt the salt water there. She was crying. She didn’t know when she had started crying or when she had stopped screaming, but there they were, the tears on her face, friends she had lost long ago. Terror had been far more real to her than sadness.
Alice didn't know how long she was there, but she let her body wrack with her sobs in the surf, which gently caressed her with each swell. Wave after wave crashed against her knees. It crawled up to her midsection before she realized that she should get up. Her legs were stiff as she regained her feet, her shoes squishing with water. The tears had dried on her face and she knew exactly where she was going. She hoofed it up to the bar. The only thought on her mind was to drink herself stupid, drink until she puked all her guts out, whatever they were made of now. A few shots of heavy whiskey, certainly a couple of beers, too; beer before liquor, of course. She landed at a barstool, she wanted to be gone, she didn’t want to be a part of this body or this life. Why when she wanted no part of one world was she suddenly being wound into the clutches of another, it wasn’t fair and it wouldn’t do.
Drink her brain told her. Drink it pounded in her temples.
Drink until everything goes black.
Chapter 7
Doctor Knows Best
“Oh, hell no, I want no part of this,” Adam fumed. “How did it happen? What? Fuck!” He yelled at Finn. He spun toward the house. They were in old Mrs. Maygood’s garden. He had been performing a house-call when Finn showed up on the doorstep. “How did you even know where to find me?”
“Natalie.”
“I keep your secret, I hired one of your people, and now you have the audacity to interrupt me while working to throw your problems at me!”
“She’s one of you.”
“Apparently not anymore!” Adam ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “This is not my problem…” he trailed off, “God,” he sighed. He knew he was going to help; there wasn’t really much choice in the matter. After all, she would be one of his patients, sooner or later. He spun back toward Finn. “This is your fault; this is your job. You should be dealing with this.”
“We both know I’m the worst equipped for that kind of thing,” Finn said, narrowing his eyes.
“Donkey’s years and you still throw it in my face; I wasn’t even your doctor then. I didn’t even know then.”
“Your father…”
“Knew exactly what to do: he left. He wanted nothing more to do with any of you.”
“Says the man with the new yacht – bought with whose money?” Adam stared at the boy angrily. He wasn’t wrong: Adam got paid for his troubles, ten-fold. Paid for his discretion.
“I have work to do; I’ll find her after that. I have a feeling I know exactly where she’ll be.”
Adam blew through the coconut entrance to the bar. He looked at the bartender. He was still irked at Finn, but he tried to make himself appear as his smiling self. There was a sense of urgency to his pursuit by now. If she was bad off as he figured, she probably wasn't going to be getting home. Maybe he should rephrase that: he couldn’t let her go home.
"The Bailey girl, she here?"
"Yep. She
moved out to the wall ‘bout, oh...an hour ago?" the barkeeper replied, gesturing.
"How much has she had?"
"Oh...three martinis, maybe four shots of Jack, and two grogs." He reached up and sheepishly scratched his head. "Seppo can really drink, doc."
"She all paid?"
"Nah, she's got a tab open."
"Here." Adam handed the bartender his credit card.
"Awfully nice of you, doc," said the bartender as he ran the card through the machine, then handed it back. Adam took a deep breath, then headed toward her table.
Alice didn't know where the time had gone; her brain was completely fuzzy when she looked up into Adam's face. She was on the concrete wall behind the bar. She had been watching the ocean, or the stars, or something; she didn't really remember. All she knew was that no one had bothered her – until now. Adam loomed above her, staring at her, probably trying to gauge just how drunk she was. Alice was wasted and didn’t rightly care.
"Hi," he said.
"The fuck you want?" she demanded with a slur, trying to sit up and almost falling over the edge. He grabbed her arm and, supporting her, lifted her off the wall and positioned her so she sat facing him. He was doing something, touching her face, looking at her pupils; it was uncomfortable and she didn't like it. A shock ran through her body, making him jump a little.
"Hell of a day?" he asked. He was putting her arm around his shoulders. His arm snaked around her waist, lifting her. She thought about struggling, but she probably couldn't have walked right then anyway.
"Your stupid town sucks!" she answered. She sent another jolt of electricity through his arm. It didn’t hurt; he knew she could do worse if she weren't so intoxicated. He smiled that good-natured, winning smile, though this one was a bit strained.
"Come on, you don't need to be here."
"You wanna take me to some cozy lil alley?" She demanded defensively, or as defensively as she could, drunk as she was.
"No," he said seriously, "I need to get you away from people.
She looked him up and down suspiciously. She didn't look good. She bent forward and in the next moment, she was vomiting. He stood over her, supporting her; trying to keep her hair out of the way.
"Come on, Miss Martini," he helped her out of the bar. “Clean-up out there,” he called to the bartender apologetically, who nodded as he watched them leave with relief.
Adam kept walking as Alice sent dull shock after dull shock through his body. He moved her down toward the marina where his boat was moored. It was a decent-sized sailing yacht that could function with or without the sails. He laid her on her side in the bunk with a bucket next to her, and then went out to call her parents.
"Hello?" Sarah picked up the phone.
"Hi, it's Adam Carson."
"Are you okay, Adam? You sound out of breath."
"Alice had a little too much to drink tonight, so I wanted to let you know that she can't make it home, but she's safe." There was silence on the other end. Then he heard a sigh.
"Thank you for taking care of her."
"It's no problem." They hung up and he went back to the boat and got underway. He hadn't been honest with her mother. Surely her mother assumed Alice was safe on Adam's couch, not sailing out to sea. A drunken person on a boat wasn't usually recommended. Adam couldn't take her home, though. He couldn't put Alice in their custody without them knowing something was very different about their daughter. Late that night he fell asleep in a lawn chair on the deck, staring at the stars above, listening to the sounds of the water against the ship. It would be very soothing if it hadn't been for the sound of heaving he heard from the cabin every so often.
Alice sat straight up in a strange bed, banging a head that was already pounding. She reached one heavy, tired arm up to rub the bump as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. She smelled the heavy cigarette smoke from the bar clinging to her exceedingly wrinkled but familiar clothes. She hated feeling so unkempt, though she wouldn’t admit it. She looked with slit eyes at the table next to her. There was a concoction sitting there, and a couple of what she could only assume were aspirin. She downed the foul liquid and took the aspirin, hoping the medicine would help her make sense of this strange, small room.
She lay back down and looked around carefully. There was no bucket on the floor, but she remembered one had been. Her purse was nearby, slouched by the door of a tiny bathroom. She suddenly realized that the back and forth motion was not her headache, but waves beneath her. She was on a ship. That didn't scare her much. Even in her current state, she knew that she could get away from any ship. The burn in her nose reminded her of how little she had to fear from the water now. She stood and moved toward the bathroom, where she threw some cold water on her face and filled the empty glass with some water. She felt a little better; at least she didn't feel like she was going to throw up anymore.
She moved slowly up to the deck, not sure exactly what she would find. What she found was the doctor. The anger flared in her again.
"You have some real nerve," Alice said, upon seeing Adam. He smiled at her.
"What, dragging some flailing, electric, drunk woman to my ship in the middle of the night?"
"I shocked you?" For a moment, Alice was horrified, but he seemed so calm about it.
“You should come with a warning label: handle with welding gloves, or maybe with one of those things the nature show guys use to hold giant snakes,” he joked. “Bartender would have thought that was a little strange.”
Alice just stared at him. That was Adam's way of explaining; Alice understood that. What she didn't understand was the doctor himself. "Are you…?"
"I'm not a mer, no,” he said, turning to smile at her. It put her off her guard, the way he smiled: there was sadness in his smile, or stress, something. He laughed at her expression, at the way she watched him with suspicious eyes through her hair. His laughter broke through the air like a smashed vase; Alice stumbled backwards in response. For a moment, both just stared at each other, contemplating the other.
"Here," he finally said, tossing her an ornate belt.
She caught it, barely. It looked handmade. It seemed like leather, but it wasn’t; she honestly couldn’t tell what it was made from. It had a little scabbard that hid a knife, of all things. She looked at it with a strange sense of horror. The handle shone in the light, decorated with shells and shiny rocks that could have been gems. She looked back at him, eyes large with disbelief.
"Tommy was going to bring it to you. He said that he thought you might have started a scene in the diner had he given it to you then." She narrowed her eyes at him. "You had a hell of a day yesterday no?"
"You knew all along," she said flatly.
"About you? No. I knew about you only after Finn came and told me yesterday; after he had an interesting run-in with you, actually. He told me he didn't know what you were going to do, but that I should make sure you didn't risk the folk. That’s why I went to the bar to find you. I didn't really have a choice in the matter."
“And what the hell is this?” she said, holding the belt out as far away from her body as she could.
“It’s a knife.”
“You know what I mean!”
“It’s for fighting. Why do you think the town doctor has to know about the folk in the first place? They sound like silly little duels, but I’m the one who has to stitch ya’ll up afterwards, and sometimes it gets bloody. After all, you think a local doctor could afford a rig like this?” Alice looked around. The boat looked brand new, and far too nice for a little-known town like Brassila Cove. It also explained why he didn’t have a choice to pick her up: retrieving a drunken mermaid was simply a paycheck to him. Alice scoffed and turned away, dropping the knife onto a nearby chair. As she looked out at the sea she could smell that scent, feeling its pull on her.
“That story you told me. You knew.”
“Very secretive, your new friends are. I thought you could use a little fantasy.”
"Out of the blue...Brassila was a mermaid," she said calmly, reiterating what she had already known on some level. She turned back to the ocean, feeling the sun warm her skin.
“Yes. This town is here because of the mer, because of one man’s crazy obsession with a particular mer.” He sighed, “Look, I don’t want to hold you hostage or anything. You’re welcome to have breakfast with me.” Alice turned back to him, surprising him with the glint of sunlight in her eyes. She looked away quickly. It looked like she wasn’t used to making her eyes focus on anything. He watched her carefully. She looked toward the little booth and table. It looked comfortable. It seemed his boat was designed less for sailing and more for entertaining. “I’ve got orange juice and a bit of cereal,” he said.
“What you’re telling me is, I’m a paycheck to you, but you want to feed me breakfast anyway?” Alice wondered aloud as she slid into a seat across from him. He reached forward and poured her a glass of orange juice. She watched the juice steadily fill the plastic glass. "Why me, anyway?" He moved to get her some cereal but she put her hand up. She wasn't sure she could eat anything solid at the moment. Her head was pounding and the gulls above were screaming in her ears. He said nothing; he didn’t want to interrupt the normally taciturn woman. "I mean, I go for a swim for the first time in a long time, and all of a sudden I'm trapped in the middle of two worlds! I’ve got girls threatening me, boys smirking at me, and a whole other set of guys coming out of the blue asking for something akin to my hand in marriage. At least, that’s what I think he was doing…"
Orange juice burst from Adam’s nostrils as he burst into earsplitting laughter once again. Alice stared at him, pressing herself back into the cushions of the booth.
"I'm sorry, it's just… Ashley and her sharks..." He laughed, she stared. He regretfully calmed his outburst. “It’s not too uncommon that you might have that gene. What's uncommon is that you would come in contact with one of the folk. The folk have been integrating into human society for a long time: just like the Disney movie, a maid or man will fall for a human. It's sharply discouraged: when you leave the water for a human, you leave the water for good."