"Oh, never mind. It's a long story,” she said, continuing to drink her tasty frozen drink. It was making her feel a little woozy. The sun beat down, and, as she grew warmer and more relaxed, she stretched out on the blanket beside Josh, away from the umbrella. With him having red hair and freckles, she knew he wouldn't be able to lie out there and roast too long. She was hoping so anyway.
Glancing in Celeste's direction, she saw that three guys had stumbled her way. It never took her long to find an audience of interested guys.
In the warm sun and with the effects of the drink, her judgment wasn't all it should have been. I should never have taken that drink from Josh. Oh great. Now I've gone and done it. Now Josh thinks I really like him. Chastising herself for having accepted the drink, Marina looked for Celeste, now nowhere in sight, as she worried about how to get away from Josh gracefully.
"Hey, hottie.” A woman nearby motioned to Josh. “I need lotion on my back. Can you help me?"
Josh scrambled to his feet, obviously more than willing to lend a hand to the woman sitting to the right of them.
Marina saw this as her chance to escape. Collecting her wits, she made a quick getaway while he was busy slathering the coconut scented lotion on a woman who was interested in some male attention. Both of them were laughing at one of Josh's off-color jokes. Heading back to the place where she'd last seen Celeste, Marina walked past the huge statue of King Neptune.
"How about using that pitchfork to jab a guy over there?” she asked the statue as though he could talk back.
A few women standing nearby looked at her and laughed, knowing looks on their faces.
"We know exactly what you mean,” one of them said. The strange thing was one of them looked like the blonde she'd seen walking with Dave. What was up with that? She wondered if they had had a rift. Maybe there was a chance for her, after all.
The women walked away, leaving Marina's head spinning. Why didn't she have the nerve to introduce herself to the blonde and at least find out who she was? After all, how can you fight the competition if you don't know enough about them and what kind of ammunition to use?
Marina spotted Celeste walking toward her, her usually pale figure now a little red from the sun. The same three guys from earlier followed closely behind. All of them looked young, but then Celeste usually ran with a younger crowd when she had the chance. Maybe a little immature, but that was what made her so much fun to be around.
Celeste saw her looking through the crowd on the beach, as though searching for someone.
"Who do you have in your scopes there?” Celeste was curious.
"Just checking out my competition."
As soon as she said that, she spotted Dave off in the distance. A number of people around him seemed to be having a discussion. A heated one at that. From the sound of things, tempers were rising, and the volume turned up just a notch. Josh was the loudest, arms flailing madly about, with his face red as fire.
She couldn't tell from her location what they were talking about, but she did overhear someone walking by say that some redheaded guy had angrily kicked over a mermaid sand sculpture.
"It had to be Josh,” Marina whined to Celeste. “He's the only one who fits that description and could have done something like that. I can't believe it."
"What a jerk. Why would he be so angry with you?"
"Maybe because I disappeared on him after he'd lured me over to his blanket. The woman beside us wanted him to put some suntan lotion on her, and I took it as my chance to split. There's something about him that gives me the creeps."
Talk among the judges before the event was over confirmed that because Dave's sculpture was the best in the show, even though it was destroyed, they would award him the prize.
"Well, I'm happy to hear the outcome of the contest, and I'm glad that Josh didn't succeed in ruining the competition for Dave,” Marina said as she put her hands on her hips. “I just wish I had taken a picture of the sand sculpture. Only in my dreams can I imagine him again with his hands on me the way he used to. Yet, in a way they were ... when he made that mermaid in my likeness."
"Oh boy, somebody get me a tissue."
She heard a familiar voice as she whirled around and saw Josh standing there. “I can't believe they haven't run you off the beach,” she said, giving him an irritated look. “Why would you do something like that?"
"Well, while they were confronting me about what I did, I told them the mermaid looked like you. The sculptor looked at me and asked me how I knew you. What is it with you and the sculptor? It's obvious he has the hots for you."
"He does?” Marina's eyes were getting bigger all the time.
"Yes, he does. So I told him that you and I had a thing going—"
"You didn't! I can't believe you told him that."
"Well, I thought we did. Anyway, he told me he had a message for you. He wrote it down and told me to safeguard it. I put it in my van."
Marina glanced toward the boardwalk and down the direction where Josh pointed. Was he telling the truth? Could she trust him? If he was telling the truth and she didn't find out what the message was, she could be turning away a chance with Dave again.
"You need to follow me there to get the message. I think he said he had a new phone number too."
Anxious to get the information, Marina followed Josh down the sidewalk, passing restaurants that were now serving their seafood dinners outside, and the smell made her hungrier by the minute. Aromas of shrimp and crabmeat wafted through the air, making her drool. Pushing that thought aside though, all she could think about was Dave's message.
Finally reaching Josh's van, he went around to the back and opened the door. He climbed into the back and seemed to be having trouble finding something. “Climb up here. You may as well have a seat while I look for the note and a box he left for you."
Marina climbed up into the back of the van and sat on a bench. The wind whipped up a swirl outside.
"I've got to shut this door before I find the note and the wind blows it away,” said Josh as he pulled both doors shut.
When he turned around, he pushed Marina back up against the bench. “Now I have you where I want you,” he said. He ran his hands across her chest and pulled down her top, planting his mouth securely over one of her full breasts.
Marina struggled against him, but she was no match for his muscle-bound body.
"No ... Stop! No. Get away from me. Let me out of here!"
She pushed against him but wasn't succeeding in cooling his jets. Nothing seemed to get the message across that she wanted him to release her.
When he roughly planted his mouth against hers, his stubble burned her face. He tasted of garlic and cigarette smoke. He held her down and grabbed at the bottom to her bathing suit. Just as he was about to snatch it down, she heard a banging noise on the outside of the van.
"Who is it? Go away."
"Open this door immediately. We've been following you, Josh Turner. Open this door right now."
Josh released his grip on the side of her bathing suit bottom. “Humph. All right, I'm opening the door."
Marina caught her breath when he took his hands off her. She adjusted the top of her bathing suit. Light poured in through the opened doorway. Whoever stood outside saw an angry man and a frightened woman, one about to endure something traumatic.
To her surprise, it was Dave coming to her rescue. He said he watched Josh's angry behavior from the time he kicked his sand sculpture over to the moment he got Marina up into the van.
"I saw you with him when you left the beach. You were just too far away for me to do anything about it. I knew he was up to no good when he acted weird about the sand mermaid."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, he kept saying something about how maybe I had the sand version but he had the real thing. And that he really did intend to have the real thing before the day is over."
Marina suddenly felt sick inside. Josh's attitude toward women left her cold. It was a
s though who they were on the inside didn't really matter at all, as long as he got what he wanted. And besides that, she barely knew him. She wasn't the kind of girl to wantonly spread her stuff around to just anybody.
Looking back at the van and thinking about how scary Josh had been, Marina looked at Dave and felt faint. Grateful he'd been in the right place at the right time, but still weak in the knees.
Stopping to give him a hug, she caught a glimpse of the cute blonde coming toward them. The sick feeling rose in her stomach again. So close and yet so far away ... How can I compete with that? “Now, I really have to go,” she told him.
Dave looked disappointed that she was leaving. His smile disappeared, and the look on his face disturbed her.
The blonde was getting closer, and Marina knew she couldn't tell Dave how she felt. “Thanks for saving me from the jerk.” She fell into Dave's arms, pressing toward him, resting her face on his chest. She could sense her heart rate increasing. Then she stiffened and pulled away.
She walked away and him left standing there, scrambling for the right words and wondering what had just happened. By the time his cousin reached him, Marina was nearly at her car down the street at one of the pay parking lots.
Blinking back tears, Marina held her head down as she leaned against her car, cell phone in hand. Her day at the beach was over as far as she was concerned. She felt her voice catching in her throat as she scrambled for words. Suddenly, the world seemed to be spinning around. Trying to steady herself, she finally got out, “Let's leave now, Celeste. Where are you?"
"I'm with Michael. You know ... that friend of mine. He finally showed up."
"Ditch Michael. I need to go home. Come to the parking lot now."
Fuming, Marina scrambled through her purse for her keys. Unlocking the door, she slid into the seat, eyes glued to the rearview mirror. She saw Dave and that woman walking away from Josh's van.
Jamming the key into the ignition, she took a deep breath. To cool things off, she turned the air conditioner up full blast. So Close and Yet So Far Away was the first thing she heard coming from the radio. Tears stung her eyes, and she thought about Dave creating that lovely sand mermaid to look like her. She thought about his hands shaping and curving the mermaid body around the contoured tail, around those swelling breasts, and wished it had been her instead. Somehow, she felt as though it had been. A sense of déjà vu came over her. Looking back out over the ocean, there was a sense of another lifetime washing over her. Deep in her heart, she knew he had also been part of that time.
Putting a window down, she took a deep breath, and the smell of salt and sea filled her lungs. For a brief moment, she had an image of another world. As though encased in a moment where time could stand still, she saw herself as a mermaid. Voluptuous and siren-like, she pictured Dave by her side, swimming through schools of fish, finally ending their synchronized stroking inside a shipwrecked vessel; his muscular chest and large arms ploughed through the water as he swam.
Instinctively, she swam into a passageway and there they found a vacuum-sealed room. Just as they opened the door and saw a room lined with bookshelves, Celeste opened the car door, and Marina's daydream was over.
"Yoo hoo, is anybody home?” Celeste asked her.
Marina sighed heavily. “Kinda sorta."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me."
"Okay, it sounds crazy. Don't say I didn't warn you."
"All right ... tell me."
"I just saw myself as a mermaid, and Dave was a merman. It's like in another life I was a mermaid."
"Get outta here.” Celeste turned and looked at Marina like she'd really gone off the deep end.
"No, this seemed so real. What is it telling me? Why would I visualize such a thing?"
"I don't know,” Celeste said. “Maybe in time you'll know the meaning of all this."
Marina drove home in silence.
After dropping Celeste off, Marina decided to stop by the library. It was time for some research. Something about the shipwreck in her dream looked familiar.
"Where can I find books on shipwrecks?” she asked a reference librarian who looked to be maybe in his thirties.
"Look in that section over there.” He smiled and pointed to a shelf nearby. “Shouldn't be too hard to find for a mermaid like you,” he winked.
Marina blushed and froze to the spot. Was there something about her that now showed through the surface? Was there some semblance of a former past life?
He saw her embarrassment, laughed and pointed to the books about mermaids he'd just seen her eyeing on a nearby table. “Sorry, I couldn't help but call you one after seeing you look at those. Plus, I've always had a fetish for fish-like sexual fantasies.” He smiled broadly, licking the side of his mouth.
Gestures like that unnerved her; she hurried away from the desk toward the aisle to which he directed her. Strangely, the first book in that section was about the Titanic. Opening it, she flipped through the pages, seeing one interesting and strangely recognizable thing after another. It seemed to jog her memory.
She flipped past pages about the vessel before it sank—pages about the passengers playing games, eating, socializing and unaware of what lie ahead. It was as though some memories were flooding back. If only the captain had listened to me at the port. I remember flirting with him in the waves, slapping my tail, winking at him. This is so weird...
"Don't go,” she'd said.
"Who are you? You aren't real."
And then she disappeared. The captain knew the warning. He heard it and just ignored it.
And now his ship was documented in a book for all mankind to read. Commemorated in a noble way, tangible as he no longer was, having gone down with the ship.
Marina felt a strange sense come over her. She realized she'd known the captain. She saw his face in the book and knew his name even before reading it.
But she hadn't been the only one to warn him. The day before she warned him, a sculptor met him at the marina and told him of a bad dream he had about icebergs.
"Can I help you with anything else, ma'am?” the librarian asked.
For a moment, Marina was caught up in a distant memory of her merdad telling her if anyone ever made a modeled likeness of her she would one day become mortal.
The next page in the book showed a shore where artifacts had washed up. Alongside them was a sand sculpture in her likeness.
"But that was over seventy years ago,” Marina said out loud.
"Yes, that shouldn't be a surprise,” the librarian said.
Ignoring him, she looked down at her legs, pinching them, as though questioning her human state.
A glimmer of memory flashed through her mind like a flashlight piercing the night in a building with a power outage. It was as though she could see the big ship again. People laughing, enjoying themselves, the captain standing on deck, briefly looking for signs of her, no one else knowing what was coming ... no one but the sculptor and her.
With a huge gasp, she realized that the sculptor from the past had been Dave in his prior life. It was all coming together now.
"I said it shouldn't be a surprise.” The librarian waited for her response.
Suddenly, it was all very clear to her. She and Dave were destined to be together. If she could just figure out how to handle the situation with that blonde woman.
"Thank you for your help,” she blurted out. She checked out the book that had her memory finally coming together like the pieces of a puzzle.
On the way home, her gaze alternated between pages of the book and the road in front of her. No wonder when she and Dave had seen the movie The Titanic a year ago they'd both left the theater speechless. She was afraid to tell him it seemed like a former lifetime.
She remembered passing a mermaid sculpture that night and thinking it watched and winked at her as if to say remember where you came from.
* * * *
On waking the next morning, she looked in the mirror. Hmmm. I feel different. What's changed? Same eyes. Same hair. My smile is bigger, less wistful now. She took her finger and ran it under her lips. Could it be that I'm just now realizing who I really am?
Taking her index finger, she touched it to the corner of her eye, wiping away a grain of what felt like sand. Sand ... The mental image of a sand sculpture came to mind. She looked down at the grain of sand.
Feeling that somehow this was a magical grain of sand, she carefully placed it in a small vial. Maybe if this grain of sand touches Dave's face he will come back to me. I have to try. There's no one else I'd rather be with. Maybe if I invite him to lunch, it'll rekindle something once this magic works its charm.
Hands trembling, she pressed the numbers on her cell phone to reach him. As it rang, she closed her eyes and could almost breathe in his scent, taste his kiss and feel his embrace as though he was right there with her.
"Hello?” Dave's voice sounded boyish and playful.
Her own voice caught in her throat. “Lunch,” was all she could get out.
"Excuse me?"
"Let's do lunch."
There was a silence on the other end. Marina felt her heart pounding out of her chest. She took a deep breath and thought she heard heavy breathing coming from his end of the line. She felt her heart skip a beat. Maybe something could be rekindled.
"You have no idea how many sleepless nights I've had just thinking about you, Marina. I have wanted to hear that for so long now. The last time we were together, you didn't give me time to explain things. I wanted to let you know that you were the one I really cared about. And now, Marina, with this lunch date suggestion, I don't know if you are making a request or a statement.” He sighed deeply.
She could hear sincerity in his voice. Her gut instinct told her he really meant what he said. If only she'd known he felt like that all along, she would have called him earlier. She felt sick for the length of time she had beat herself up, thinking he was in love with someone else.
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