by Lydia Millet
I glanced around me to see if there was a camera in evidence, a little electronic eye. Could I be sure? I investigated the TV. I looked at the electrical outlets. I even looked under the table, where a camera would be no use. There was one floor lamp, and I checked that. I stood on a chair and touched the sides of the fluorescent light fixture. But I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure. These days, who knew how small and camouflaged a camera could be? So I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. There were no cameras there, unless they’d made cameras completely invisible, with their technology.
I slid my hand down into my pocket, standing there next to the toilet, and I took out my phone. There it was. They hadn’t seen I had pockets. They hadn’t seen that at all. I smiled. My kidnappers were even less competent than I was.
I felt slightly better about my personality—compared to theirs, anyway. I turned it on. Three bars.
I said the word again, somewhat triumphantly. Yes.
THE FIRST THING I texted Chip was an SOS. I let him know where I was, locked in a room with a picture window. I told him the elevator had taken us to Floor 3; I told him I didn’t fear bodily harm, though maybe I should. But I didn’t want to stop the mermaids from being saved, with my stupid predicament. On the other hand, I texted, I was locked up against my will.
It took him a few minutes to text back. During that time, I found out later, he was visibly upset. But then he gathered his wits and texted me back, asking what door we’d come through and could I take a picture out the picture window, just in case it helped them to locate me.
So Chip wasn’t also locked in a room, and that encouraged me. I emerged from the bathroom, throwing caution to the winds; I snapped said photo with my phone and sent it off.
I sent a text describing the path we’d walked along, the part of the building we’d come into. I wondered in passing how humankind had existed before the advent of cell phones—my own life, before cell phones, was often a featureless blur. I sent off a picture of the door, too, although I didn’t think it’d be particularly useful. From the outside it probably looked like every other door along that narrow corridor. Next I considered whether the men, watching me via a camera I hadn’t found, would come back in and try to grab my phone from me. I retreated to the bathroom. But there was no lock on its door, anyway, so I slunk out again.
I didn’t want to keep texting Chip, but I knew someone else who wouldn’t mind hearing from me. So, staring out at the empty beach and the sea, I went ahead and texted Gina. She prefers text to voice.
Kidnapped, I wrote. Locked in a room in our resort. Chip coming to save me (hope). Saw real mermaids. Even got video, but video stolen. Someone died. Possibly murdered.
That should pique her interest, I thought smugly. For once I’d be the one to shock Gina, instead of the other way around.
Gina’s never far from her cell, love nest or no. So I knew it wouldn’t be long before she texted back. Indeed: five seconds.
Fuck off! she wrote.
Of course, Gina would never credit such a fanciful-sounding tale. Her irony was far too bulletproof for a mermaid sighting; her irony was a Kevlar of the mind.
Then I remembered our code. The words we used to show we weren’t joking, that we were hardcore, that we meant every word. We’d used those words since we were kids, but only a handful of times and always in deadly earnest. Those words were not ironic. Those words, once spoken, could never be doubted and could never be taken back.
On your mother’s life, I typed. On the life of your mother.
Because Gina had lost her mother not long after we met. Ninth grade. Cancer, long and drawn-out. I was there for her from then on; I’ll never forget the depth of her grief. It changed her forever. It’s fair to say she never recovered.
For once there was a text silence.
Finally, broken.
Do you need me? she typed.
Just that.
It’s OK, I typed. You’d never get here in time. I’ll be OK. Chip’s coming to bust me out.
Mermaids, typed Gina, after a few moments. I’ll be goddamned.
I THINK PART of me expected, when I sent my SOS to Chip, that he’d show up in fifteen minutes. Maybe thirty. I thought Thompson might be in tow, possibly packing a sidearm.
But this was not reasonable. Also it was not the case.
I heard occasional footsteps outside the room; each time I did I got excited, all prepared to leave. But each time the footsteps faded. My texts to Chip came back unanswered, creating anxiety. I knew I couldn’t call the island cops; Thompson had said they were fully in the pocket of the parent company. I didn’t want to use my phone much, because I didn’t have a charger with me, and the battery was in the red. That phone was my lifeline; besides the toilet and sink, that phone was all I had. The TV, on its metal trolley, didn’t seem to get reception—when I turned it on there was nothing but gray static.
So I drank some water from the bathroom sink, splashing it into my mouth; then I sat and stared out the picture window. It was blocked on one side by the building itself, which stretched out to my right; ahead was a strip of beach and ocean, which stretched out to the left until some palm trees blocked the rest of the view.
After a while I saw boats on the ocean. First one, then many. White dots of varying sizes. It had to be the Venture of Marvels: the armada was going out, I guessed. The mermaid site must be within my field of view—too distant for me to see anything, though.
I got frustrated, without any response from Chip; I imagined scenarios, and those scenarios were not pleasant. I’d be like Janeane, I thought, if I let my imagination have free rein. That road was a bad road. I wouldn’t go down that road. I’d leave here, I’d get out, I vowed, and I’d be none the worse for wear, either.
In fact, I decided, I wasn’t going to sit around waiting to be rescued. My country didn’t have princesses—or if it did, they weren’t the kind you bowed down to. They weren’t the kind that got saved by princes, certainly.
I’d made my first mistake not screaming; I wasn’t going to make a second. I felt around for my key card, the plastic key to my room, remembering when Gina had taken a lock-picking course because she was pissed off that she had to pay a locksmith every time she locked herself out of her car. That was back in the days when cars had actual keys, obviously. Gina’s always been prone to losing keys, as well as phones, credit cards, and cash money. Back then she’d tried to convey her newfound knowledge of locks to me. I lost interest fast, regrettably, but I had a couple of the basics and it seemed to me there was quiet outside the door now. So I decided to give it a whirl.
My bet was they hadn’t planted a sentry; from the rare footstep sounds it seemed they were content to check on my locked door periodically. So I listened to make sure it was silent, and then I slipped the card between the door and the jamb and tried to get somewhere. I got nowhere, was where I got, with that flimsy rectangle—it simply didn’t have the thickness and quality of credit.
Then I noticed the knob was the kind with a hole in it; it wasn’t made to be secure, really. All I needed was something to fit in that hole. What did I have? I had a wedding ring. I had flip-flops. I had a pink butterfly air freshener. There had to be a thin piece of metal here somewhere. The TV was all plastic, nothing to break off there …
Eureka. I’d put my hair up before we went to the beach; the bun in its elastic was falling now, wispy tendrils on my neck, but yes—a bobby pin. In fact I had two of them.
Gina had said you needed the curved end. The curved end could hook around the lock button inside the knob.
So I slid the bobby pin into that small hole. At first I jiggled, but then I thought that movement wasn’t right, too hasty, too chaotic. I pushed the knob in with the other hand as I moved the bobby pin slowly around. Now and then I got discouraged, my wrists aching a bit from the pushing and the turning, and took a break, and then I started up again, always listening for footsteps. Sometimes crying a bit, that weird dry-crying you
do when there aren’t any actual tears, mostly from frustration. A few times I stood up, walked around, shook out my hands and aching wrists, gave myself a pep talk like a madwoman. Twice I thought I almost had it, I felt the pin catch, but then I lost it again.
The third time I thought I almost had it, and then I did. I turned the knob.
HOOKING MY FLIP-FLOPS from a couple of fingers, I bolted from that room like a bat out of hell. I ran, skin tingling, vision bleary with fear, to the service elevator. Then I didn’t want to be in another tight space, so I kept going right past it to the stairs, down the stairs on my bare feet, one flight, two flights, three flights and four—there was the door to the outside. It was a great feeling, coming out into the breeze and sunlight. I’d freed myself. I felt proud.
And from there I kept running, just ran and ran on those paved paths all the way back to the Pearl Diver Cabana. Now there were golf carts around, now when I didn’t have any use for them at all there were plenty of hotel guests moving to and fro, but I didn’t stop, just ran, smiling to be free, my phone hitting against my leg until I grabbed it in the non-shoe hand; I ran, not worrying about the sharp pebbles I stepped on, the stray leaves and grains of sand and flower petals that stuck to my heels and gathered between my toes.
It was the best I’d felt since we arrived, with the exception of a few seconds of sex on the first day. (Maybe.) Then I was banging on Steve’s door, breathing heavily, shooting worried glances over my shoulder.
It was Janeane who opened it, Janeane who said, “Good Goddess! I heard from Chip they kidnapped you—are you all right?” She pulled me in and shut the door, then bolted it. “We’re safe here. You poor thing!”
She was alone; the others had gone out before Chip called her about me; he’d told her not to worry them, that he and the stealth team had me covered, to just let them get the AV equipment.
We called Chip on Janeane’s cell, not wanting to use the hotel phone in case the bad guys might be listening in; I told him what had happened. Chip, whose voice cut out and in again, said they’d been on the brink of finding me, he was certain, but he’d tell me later about the obstacles they’d encountered. For now Janeane and I were in what she called a “safe space,” though I wasn’t so sure. But the doors to the patio locked too, and I figured that was probably the best we could do. Coasting on the high of my lock-picking self-liberation, I felt newly powerful.
Full steam ahead, damn it, said Chip, and I concurred. Those hotel-running, abductor bastards weren’t going to get us down.
I picked a lock, I texted Gina after plugging my phone in with Steve’s charger. Rock on, she texted me.
It was late by now, well into the waning afternoon, and before long Janeane and I were joined by Miyoko and Rick and Steve. They were loaded down with equipment, even a satellite dish, which Steve was manfully struggling to carry. There were no big-box electronics stores in the vicinity, so I was pretty amazed, but I didn’t have time to ask where they’d got the stuff, because Janeane was too busy squeaking out my kidnapping story.
“Jesus,” said Steve. “You actually escaped? Picking a lock with a bobby pin?”
“Must have been a cheap lock,” I conceded.
“Very good,” said Miyoko, but her composure wasn’t affected. She gave me a small, pleased smile. It’d take more than an amateurish kidnapping to faze Miyoko; I saw that now.
“Why you?” asked Rick. “Why bother with just one of us, wouldn’t they need to put all of us out of commission?”
“Maybe I was just the first,” I said. “I was the only one alone, anyway.”
“Phase one?” said Steve.
“Well, you were a sitting duck, going off by yourself like that,” nodded Rick.
“Blaming the victim!” said Janeane.
“So we have to stay in groups from now on,” I said. “I guess that’s the lesson here. No solo travelers.”
“Right,” said Rick. “I wonder what the situation is, litigation-wise. The parent company’s U.S.-based, you know. You should be able to sue these guys.”
“Instead we’re paying them,” I said. “I paid these people good money to stay here, and they go ahead and kidnap me.”
I found I could make light of the abduction, now that it was over.
We busied ourselves getting the tech set up—or at least Rick and Miyoko did, while Steve and Janeane and I offered moral support. Miyoko had brought her laptop in; she charged me with finding open-source video of the island that we could use. That was more up my alley than the AV end, so I set myself to the task.
It was almost dusk by the time Chip and Ronnie showed up—Chip and Ronnie, but no Thompson. They looked sub-bleached and waterlogged, with salt crusted on their skin and in their hair. When Chip and I were done with our reunion—not tearful, but a tad private, so we withdrew to the bedroom for a few minutes—he told me Thompson had stowed away. After they’d done some homework to identify the armada’s flagship yacht, and Thompson had equipped himself with a duffel bag of night-diving gear brought up from his condo down the beach, Thompson had snuck aboard the flagship while Chip and Ronnie created a diversion.
“What kind of diversion?” I asked.
“You’re going to be pissed at me.”
“What? Why?”
“So it probably wasn’t the best alternative. But we didn’t have many choices, was how we saw it. How Thompson saw it, anyway. With the time pressure and all.”
“Chip. Oh no. Chip! Did you guys … blow up something?”
“It was just small, though, Deb. Just minor. Believe me.”
“Chip! You could have blown your arm off! Or someone else’s! You could have gotten arrested by Homeland Security! You still could! Jesus, Chip!”
“We’re not at home, though, is one positive. I don’t think they have DHS agents here.”
“Chip! Explosives? Who knows what file your little prank could end up in? You think I want to be married to some kind of PATRIOT Act jailbird? Seriously!”
“It was a broken-down part of the dock that was already wrecked, a couple of pilings off in the ocean there, not holding up anything at all. Just a small explosion. Deb, it was just a minor dynamiting. Hell, construction crews do way bigger things all the time. It wasn’t even that loud.”
He sounded a little disappointed, frankly.
“You’re missing my point completely.”
I’d been spot-on, I was thinking, to worry about Thompson’s powerful influence on Chip. Show Chip an ex-Navy father figure with a bomb, I’ll show you a bomb-exploding Chip. We were lucky it hadn’t gone terribly wrong, that no one had been injured. There’d be some serious work to do, when we got home, I told myself, on my better half’s daddy issues. Chip needed a personal Freudian.
“But it worked, Deb. It worked like a charm. They got so freaked out, running around and panicking, that they weren’t even watching when Thompson boarded her. Not a single one of them. Then they saw it wasn’t even anything and it all went back to business. No cops even showed up. None at all, Deb, not a single one! Mission completely accomplished.”
“Was this before or after I called you all kidnapped?”
“Deb. How can you even ask that?” Chip looked pained. “It was after you escaped. Of course.”
“Chip. I know you look up to Thompson, although, as far as I can tell, he’s a certified, wing-nut paramilitary freak. But from now on, acts of terrorism and violence are family decisions. OK, Chip?”
“Fair enough, honey,” said Chip. “I promise, though, there were no people anywhere near.”
“A boat could have passed,” I said. “Anything, Chip. Once the bombing starts, all safety bets are off. Look. I don’t want to argue about it now. But promise me.”
“Done,” said Chip, overwhelmingly relieved. “Done and done.”
“Thompson didn’t take more explosives with him, did he? That wasn’t part of his little kit?”
“No, no,” said Chip hastily. “None at all. The next phase is the
robbery, that’s all. He’s just going to get the tape. And then he’ll swim back, in the dark, in his diving gear.”
“He must be a very strong swimmer. Those boats are pretty far out.”
“He’s super strong,” said Chip. “He once competed. Distance.”
“How about guns, Chip? Did he take a weapon with him?”
“Of course not. Guns can’t get wet, Deb.”
“He’s doing the robbing before he’s doing the diving, right? I could see that guy sacrificing a gun. If he got a chance to wave it around first. Plus which—you ever hear of dry bags, Chip? Maybe he just took a gun in a dry bag. I mean surely he took his cell with him, right, to communicate with you? That’s got to be in a dry bag. Maybe, while he was packing it, he also stuck in a gun.”
I didn’t put it past Thompson to go rogue. With the so-called minor dynamiting, he already pretty much had.
“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.