by Jamie Gann
There were no tables available— the street was packed— so she ate standing up, caught in a throng of joyful strangers. The plate was steaming and drips of spicy chile sauce landed on her toes.
“Sam? Is that you?”
She turned to find herself face to face with Andrew. He was still in his work uniform and smelling like bedpans. She had a mouthful of mildly hot pepper whose intensity was sneaking up on her because there was so much of it. She didn’t know what to say to him, but she couldn’t say anything with her cheeks packed like a chipmunk, swallowing, eyes watering, and brushing sauce from the corners of her lips and cheeks with the back of her wrist.
“What are you doing here?” he said, more surprised than mad.
“Erm—”
“Never mind.” He wanted to cut her off before she said something in public about the incident. “Where’s your friend?”
“Coquette? She’s at my place, carrying the tail.”
“Coquette? Carrying?” Both words sounded absurd on his lips.
“Someone has to. That’s how it works. And it was totally an accident— you looked into the thing before I could tell you not to—”
“It’s— fine.” Andrew would accept any apology to bury it.
“Look, I never wanted that to happen. I just want to tell you...” But no amount of talking was getting it off her chest. Her eyes still watered from the lingering heat in her mouth.
“It’s okay. I liked it,” he lied.
She was struck dumb.
“Have to admit, you were pretty hot.”
“I was?”
Andy glanced around at the crowd to make sure there was no one there who knew him. “Yeah,” he elaborated, “the way it blended into you. And your body— you know, I think your hair’s still fuller.” He touched it, and then her cheek.
She flushed, almost cried, soaking this all up. “I didn’t know...” If someone handed her a magic gemstone at that moment, she would have taken the tail and curled into his arms, no questions asked. As it was, she shared some of her fried quesadilla and walked with him into the cool, deepening night.
* * *
“Just like that?” Coquette said as Sam and Andy arrived, arm in arm.
“You’re... Coquette?” Andrew asked, still uncomfortable with the fact that there was a full-length mermaid reading on Sam’s bed.
“Susan,” she said, holding her hand out to shake. “I took the name Coquette when I became a mermaid.”
Sam was slightly miffed that Coquette had never given her her real name in all the time they’d known each other, but offered it right away to Andy. But that couldn’t break through the glow of love and relief she was feeling right then.
“You make it sound like taking a job,” he said. “So you’re human, just like us?”
She bulged her eyes. “Not like you, man. With voodoo.”
“It’s the necklace,” Sam explained. The gemstone was dangling between Coquette’s breasts. Sam half-wished Coquette had covered up, but she was getting used to it now. Mermaids are held to different standards.
“That’s all there is to it? You look into it, you become a mermaid?”
“You trade up.”
“And whoever used to be a mermaid...” Sam started to add, but Andrew cut her off.
“Yeah. I got that. So what are you planning to do with it?”
“Secret society. Wanna join?”
“What is it with you and secrets?” Sam said in exasperation.
“Honey, he already knows.”
Andy’s eyes were taking guarded journeys down the length of Coquette’s tail. She noticed and splayed the fin for him. He swallowed and said, “This is different from Sam’s tail.”
“And yours,” she added mischievously. Andy acted as though he didn’t hear her say that.
“They’re who we are on the inside,” Sam explained. “Each fish represents some aspect of our personality.”
“Or maybe just where we were born,” Coquette contradicted. “Hear they have a lot of trout up in the midwest, farm girl.”
“Can I touch it?” he asked.
Sam gaped. Coquette slapped him across the face with her tailfin. “Like that?”
He stepped back, raising his hands. “Sorry.”
“So, we were planning,” Coquette said emphatically, to change the subject, “I had been planning to take Sam here on a midnight swim. But she doesn’t want the tail anymore and we’re going to have to find a replacement.”
“You’re not going to be a mermaid anymore?” Andy almost sounded disappointed.
“No, I mean, not unless— I wasn’t planning to. Actually, I just thought you thought...”
Andy glanced from Sam to Coquette.
“Yes,” Sam said. “I should at least try swimming.”
“Yay!” Coquette made a cutely understated cheer.
Chapter 9: So I Dive Straight Back
The discussions took over an hour, mainly because Sam and Coquette had very different ideas of what constituted a “swim.” For Coquette, nothing could compare with the open ocean— part of the fun was wriggling down among the denizens of the deep. “They aren’t even afraid of you. They come right up and you can pet ’em.”
“What if I’m afraid of them?” Sam insisted. The idea of sinking into the black waters with hidden, slimy creatures sent chills up her spine.
“They don’t want to hurt you— they mostly don’t know what to make of you.” Still, Sam shook her head.
Andy focused on the logistics. “We could wrap your tail in towels, but I don’t think we could carry you for very long.”
“A pool,” Sam insisted. “Like, the YMCA.”
“They let women in the YMCA? Wonders never cease.” Two days on land and she was starting to get crotchety.
“After hours. We’d have to break in, obviously.”
“Maybe if we had a wheelchair...”
“Dingy water, gray with the wool of swimming costumes...”
“Filters are much better nowadays.”
“Sorry,” Andy informed them. “The pool at the Y is open air. Anybody driving by would see us.”
“What about on campus? Do they have an indoor pool?”
“I dunno. Check their website.”
“I bet we could get a wheelchair from the hospital where I work. As long as it’s back by morning, no one would even know.”
“Yes, they have an indoor pool. Can anybody pick a lock?”
“Ooh! I can pick a lock!” Coquette offered, forgetting her fundamental opposition to the idea.
“So where do you want to switch? Here or there?” Andy looked expectantly at the two women.
Minutes later, Samantha was a mermaid and Coquette was getting dressed. The operation was planned like a heist, or a sting. They’d take Sam’s pinto to Andrew’s house, swap for his van without getting caught by his parents, take the van to the hospital where he works, nick a wheelchair, use it to wheel Sam across campus, and Coquette (alias Susan) would break into the pool building, where Sam would enjoy the wonders of piscine natation while Andy and Coquette stand sentry at the door. It couldn’t go wrong.
Andy laid out a bedsheet and Sam rolled into it with a bikini top on, making sure that the end of her tail wouldn’t unravel while they carried her. Outside, it took some doing to get her down the stairs, long enough that a neighbor stopped on her way and offered to help.
“What’s this for, anyway?” she asked.
“School play,” was all Sam could come up with on the spot, which explained and didn’t explain anything.
Next, she was in the back of her car, bouncing the way Coquette must have that first night. Andy drove. Coquette had never been behind the wheel of a car, and this wasn’t a good time to start.
Thankfully, Andy’s parents were not at home when they switched vehicles, and if Sam thought the pinto was bumpy, the van set her teeth on edge. Andy’s car wasn’t a minivan or an SUV, it was
an old-style utility van, the type plumbers and painters use to get to a job. He had a dream of one day becoming a fix-it guy.
Sam waited while Andy and Coquette snuck into the hospital. Every sound of a car starting or pulling in beside the van made her freeze. She pulled the sheet around her face and hid her hands. If someone came peering through the windows, she hoped they wouldn't see that there was a body inside, much less a fishy one.
She just about had a heart attack when the back doors flew open and Andy and Coquette appeared, laughing, shoving a folded-up wheelchair beside her.
Coquette had never been sold on the plan, but she was having a lot of fun stealing stuff. She climbed in beside Sam, crouching over the wheelchair. “How’re you doing?”
“You two scared the crap out of me.”
“Almost got caught,” she said with a gleam, then clamored through the mess to sit shotgun beside Andy. Sam was left alone with the thought of what would happen to her if the two of them were taken away somewhere.
The lights never fully went out on campus. Everywhere the three of them went, there were bright blue Help Stations and floodlights artistically splashed on the masonry. Their final surprise was that the “indoor” pool was in a building with glass walls. Sam was the first to notice. “Shit.”
“Oh. That’s not very well hidden, is it?” Andy added sheepishly.
“You wanna call it off?” Coquette asked in a way that was hard to say “yes” to.
Sam shook off her hesitation. “What the hell. Let’s do it.”
“See if there’s a door in the back.” Andy wheeled Sam around the building.
Andy and Sam huddled in the partly shadowed door while Coquette went to work on the lock. It took longer than they were expecting, but Coquette was optimistic. “It’s a good thing I’ve kept my skills up.”
“Lockpicking? Underwater?”
“Shipwrecks.” She fiddled a bit more with the coat hanger and nail file, her ear to the door. “You think it’s hard when you have someplace to stand? Just try— ha!”
A moment later, she “ha-ed” again and the door clicked into a weird state that was neither open nor closed. Carefully, she coaxed it and then rattled it until it came off the latch and swung open. She did a yay-heist-dance.
Andy wheeled Sam into the pool room while Coquette fit a slip of paper in the latch, to be sure they could open it from the inside. In the big, spacious room, there was nowhere to hide. The pool glowed from underwater lights and cast rippling lines on the walls and ceiling.
“What’s that smell?” Coquette whispered, joining the others.
“Chlorine.”
She made a face. “Honey, don’t breathe that shit. You’ll end up like a war vet.”
“I can breathe underwater?”
Andy was tense. “Haven’t you guys covered the basics yet?”
“Don’t try it here.”
Andy helped Sam out of the wheelchair and unrolled her on the pool deck. At the last turn, she checked once more for witnesses, uncovered herself, and dropped into the water in one motion. Immediately, she burst noisily from the water.
“What’s the matter?” Andy gasped.
“It’s hot!”
He felt the water, then her forehead.
“Humans like it that way,” Coquette complained. Now that the fun breaking and entering was over, she was getting crotchety again.
“I guess you’re adapted to... colder waters,” he said.
“It’s alright.” Sam insisted on liking it, now that they’ve come so far.
She sank back into its oppressive warmth, careful not to breathe, and opened her eyes. It was amazing! Sure, the chlorine stung, but she could see everything in perfect clarity. Usually, she’d only see the foggy outlines of lane lines without her goggles— sometimes with— but now she could see down to the cracks in the tiles. It was as clear as air, yet thicker: the surface above reflected like a funhouse mirror everywhere except right over her head, and the underwater mood lights had halos. She was in her element.
She gave the slightest kick and glided across the whole pool.
The heat became more tolerable with this breeze. Stretching herself long, she was reminded of hot yoga, which makes you limber with sweat. She arched at the bottom of the deep end of the pool. My ears ought to be hurting by now, but they aren’t, she thought. She tilted her head. No air bubbles: they were all closed up.
Wondering if that meant she couldn’t hear anything, she yelled underwater. Apart from the bubbles, it came out in a sonorous hum. It reflected off the walls of the pool and reverberated in her entire body, then repeated for several echoes. She swam to the surface and twisted like an otter to gulp another breath of air.
Darting from one end of the pool to the other, she had only one complaint: it was too small. The distance that would take an olympic athlete fifty seconds to cross was done in two shakes of a trout’s tail. She wanted speed, and for that, she had to be constantly steering away from the walls.
She made narrow circles in the deep end, the way a school of fish do to look like a tornado. Whole-body undulation was much more satisfying than kick and glide— there was something sensuous, or even erotic, about the way the water slid over her skin and scales. Perhaps because water is thicker than air— it feels like everything is touching you. The pumping motion was also vaguely like sex. God, Sam thought, struggling to keep hold of her breath, mermaids swim by screwing.
The best part about it was how smoothly the water flowed over her. It made her feel sleek. Not sexy in the magazine-cover sense. She wasn’t buxom— she had small breasts in relation to her shoulders— and that let her glide through the currents without eddies, without disturbing the line. She was beautiful, a perfect curve in motion.
Whether it was the mania for speed that makes professional swimmers shave their eyebrows or a sudden fit of sensual ecstasy, Samantha yanked the bikini top over her arm and head and tossed it on the pool deck with a splash. So what? she thought to herself. We’re all friends here.
Meanwhile, Andy and Coquette were hiding in the shadows, hoping that a band of drunks crossing the football field on the far side of the building wouldn’t see them. The splash and the bikini top split the silence.
“What’s she doing?” Andrew whispered. Coquette said nothing. The dozen or so night-wanderers were all men, probably a frat. Bars were closing.
From their angle, they wouldn’t have been able to see Sam, and they were too far to hear the hum of singing that emanated from the whole pool like a glow. Sam’s twirls for breath were subtle enough— you’d have to be watching carefully at the right time to see it— but a few more splashes like that one and they couldn’t help but notice. Coquette edged toward the water, hoping to get Sam’s attention.
She didn’t have to. Sam twisted around at the deep end, gathered speed, and then launched herself out of the water. She flew like a dolphin and landed like a seal, sliding on the wet tile and then rolling to a stop, laughing.
“Sam!” Coquette stage-whispered. “Look!”
In the middle of the football field, a dozen men stopped, one at a time. They punched each other on the arm to get each other’s attention, and pointed. Sam stopped giggling when she saw.
“We have to go,” Andrew said curtly. “Get your things.”
Coquette’s eyes were fixed on Sam’s chest. “What?” Sam said, as though daring her to speak of it. And then she felt at her neck— the gemstone was gone!
“In the pool maybe?” Coquette answered her unasked question. “You’d better get it back.”
They both crawled to the pool’s edge, Sam sliding on her stomach. The thought flashed through her mind that if she screws this up, she’d be crawling on her stomach for the rest of her life. Without that stone, there’s no going back.
“I don’t see it,” Coquette said, her voice almost breaking. “Jesus, Sam, I carried that for ninety years and you lose it on the second day?”
“The drain!” Sam cried and slipped
into the water to check it with her fingers. The frat boys were already on their way.
“Forget it, we have to go!” Andrew laid out the sheet for Sam to roll herself up in. Coquette shot him a nasty look. The implications of the missing gem hadn’t fully settled into Andy’s nervous mind.
Forever a mermaid, Sam thought as she dashed from one pool drain to the other. Permanent. Always hiding, or maybe she’d have to go out to sea. Unlike Coquette, there’d be no coming back. Or if she got caught— they’d put her on exhibit, wouldn’t they? The freak in the travelling circus.
She heard Coquette shouting her name when she broke surface, water running down her eyes. The two of them were trying to get her attention. Sam held the gleaming stone aloft, laughing. “It was in your B cup!”
“Get over here!”
With one kick, Sam zipped across the pool and up onto the deck, haphazardly rolling herself into the sheet. They picked her up and plopped her in the wheelchair, then ran out the back door. Scurrying between buildings, they managed to lose their pursuers by the time they tossed Sam and the wheelchair into the van, and peeled out of the campus parking lot.
Chapter 10: The Currents have Their Say
Sam expected to get a lecture from Coquette on the way home about how she had to be more careful with the stone and yadda yadda. Coquette, however, was thrilled. “Did you see that? Oh my God. Woo!” Figures, Sam thought. She’s not the one who’d be stuck forever.
The near loss of her humanity made Sam more aware of the tail than ever. It poked out of the sheet— the hasty wrapping job partially unraveled on their way across campus. It writhed in the dampness, fins brushing the cloth, so alien and yet a part of her. “For now,” she added, almost verbally. “I’ll change back as soon as we get home, and then— never again.”
But first, they had to stop at the hospital to return the wheelchair. While Sam waited, alone, in the back of the van, she imagined that they got caught and it was only a matter of time before some parking attendant found her in the van. She cursed herself for not demanding the stone back from Coquette, who must have had it in her pocket as they sat in jail.
Except no— they empty your pockets when you get arrested, don’t they? Some cop would get the surprise of his life— or hers— when they examine the evidence. If that happened while Sam was miles away, would she change back? Or was there a range limit? And if she did, she had no ID, no money, and no clothes. Just a wet bedsheet.