Fish Out of Water

by Ros Baxter

  I opened my mouth to say “hands up, asshole”, but two things happened.

  First, my mouth wouldn’t form the words, and second he collapsed back onto the linoleum floor as though his stealth attack on me, and my response, had sapped whatever strength he had. Those indigo eyes fluttered shut and he groaned softly.

  Okay, so that wasn’t all.

  Third, and worst of all, I knelt down to him again, removing my foot from its sensible resting place on his chest. My traitorous hand snaked out to stroke his red-gold hair, like some freakin’ Florence Nightingale. Luckily, my two-way barked at me. It was Aldus, and a welcome distraction. “Rania,” he croaked across the grainy line. “Whassup?”

  “Ah…” I wasn’t sure where to start.

  “Anything to do with the dead blonde and the fish?”

  At the words, the beautiful man in my arms was suddenly taut, alert. “She’s dead?” His eyes lost the blur, and became almost black, locking onto mine like a gate clanging shut.

  I spun away, needing some space to think, holding him as best as I could with one hand and holding the two-way and the Glock with the other. “You know her? The dead blonde?”

  But before I could get an answer, he had jerked out of my arms with the strength of a boxer. He was up, and back in the shower. For a brief second, I got the full beauty of him, long and compact under the streaming water. He looked right into me as he opened his mouth and sung one low, perfect note. A note I knew too well from another time and a faraway place.

  And then he was gone.

  A tiny blue-green fish flapped frantically on the shower floor. And I was alone, with another mermaid puzzle to solve.

  11:30pm

  There are only two bars in Dirtwater. The Dirty Boar, and The End of Days, a fine establishment I prefer for three reasons. Firstly, it has this dark, ironic feel. Like a bad detective novel. Second, it’s one of the few places in town not named after dirt. Third, it’s where my good buddy (and the coroner) Larry Kramer likes to go to drop off the radar once in a while.

  I needed a drink, but more importantly, I needed to find Larry. And given that he hadn’t been answering his cell phone all night, I was pretty sure I knew where to find him. When he goes AWOL, it’s usually because he’s fallen off the wagon.

  And, for Larry, The End of Days is the softest place to fall.

  I pushed through those swing doors that remind me of an old saloon, rubbing my stinging eyes and popping a No Doz on the way in. It wasn’t just the late call-out, the dead blonde and the naked babe, either. It was the dreams. Insomnia and crazy dreams are nothing new for me, but it wasn’t just the fire any more. It was other stuff. Stuff I can’t remember when I wake up, but that leaves me slick with sweat and panting. Like I’m being hunted.

  I’ve been waking up wondering why I don’t get a different job.

  Three weeks, I could do anything. I could do nothing.

  I could do nothing on a beach. With a drink with an umbrella in it.

  So why was I still working? And why the hell was I getting involved in something that was looking messier and messier by the minute?

  I found Larry pouring drinks, and he looked happy rather than hammered. Marty, the usual barkeep, was kicking back, reading the sports section. “Dunno why you don’t give up the scalpel and admit you’ve found your true calling,” I offered as I slid up to the bar.

  “Sweetheart,” he purred, ignoring Aldus for a moment and sliding a neat So’Co across the counter at me. “Guy like me working full time in a place like this? Ya think I’m in bad shape now? I’d be living under a bridge within two weeks.”

  I nodded at the truth of it. Larry had been an army medic, and he’d done some bad war. Mostly, he was okay, and goddam if he was not the most gifted pathologist I’d ever seen in action. But sometimes it all crashed down on him. He turns off his cell, plays bartender.

  Tonight I was in luck. Looked like I’d caught him at the sweet end of his bender.

  Larry looked me up and down, sharp green eyes taking in blurry brown ones. “Ya look stressed.” He stretched well-muscled brown arms over his head in a faux warm-up and his worn plaid shirt rode up, exposing a waistline still remarkably trim for a guy nudging 65. “Wrestle?”

  “Never get tired of getting whipped, hey?” I rolled up my sleeve as I lowered my aching back into one of the saddle-shaped seats and hooked my steel-capped boots over the footrest.

  Aldus was standing there frowning so Larry motioned with his head to Marty. “Drink for the Sheriff, Marty m’boy.” He gave Aldus his handsome shark’s smile and Aldus stood back to watch, scratching his head, even though he’d seen this a thousand times. Even though I’d whipped his own sorry ass about four hundred times.

  “You sure you ready?” I squeezed Larry’s big, dry hand, giving him a chance to back out.

  “I’ve definitely gotcha this time,” Larry grunted at the force of my squeeze.

  Dr Phil would tell him to “get real.”

  It took four seconds, but for three I was letting him save face. I held his warm, strong grip in mine and barely exerted myself to bring his forearm parallel with the bar. “Say mercy.”

  “Mercy,” he grunted again, smilingly. Then he reached over and chucked me under the chin. “That sure is some fuckin’ party trick. Ever gonna tell me how ya do it?”

  “Ever gonna tell me how you make a Dirtwater Dream?”

  He threw his head back and laughed out loud, a sound like a hundred geese honking.

  “No way, sister. That’s the only reason they let me play bar boy.”

  “I guess the answer’s no then.”

  Aldus broke our intimacy, shaking his head. “I’m off to the little boys’ room.”

  “Knock yourself out,” I encouraged, pulling out a Marlboro and retrieving my beautiful zippo from its hidey-hole in my pants. Time for some me-time. Me and my perfect habit.

  Larry raised an eyebrow.

  Mermaids have no telepathic access to humans but I didn’t need it to see what the shrewd old geezer was thinking. After all, he was the one who’d suggested the patches.

  I started flipping through my notebook. None of the neighboring counties had reported any missing persons matching the description of our Jane Doe. I thought again about that moonbeam hair, and reached up to tug my own short brunette mop.

  That’s what happens when your mermaid mother mates with a Sicilian gangster.

  I motioned at Marty with my eyes and the drink was in the glass before I spoke. Larry idled back over and I knew it was time to ask him the favor I’d come here for, but I couldn’t find the words. I mean, we’ve been friends a long time, and worked some tough cases together. So, sure enough, I’ve said a lot of strange things to Larry over the years. Things like:

  You’ve got to find me some semen on this girl, or the asshole’ll walk. And:

  Go home, you’re drunk.

  And even, once, when I found him sweaty and cowering in his basement:

  Shush, you’re safe now, it’s over.

  We’ve always been straight with each other.

  But then, I’ve never had to say:

  Larry, I need you to help me steal a body and carve it up. And oh yeah, she’s a mermaid.

  Chapter Two

  Blondie and Favors

  But Larry beat me to the punch.

  “Gonna give us one tonight, darl’n?”

  Any other guy and I’d have popped him in the jaw, but I got with the program when I saw him glance over at the corner where a small stool and microphone sat.

  I shouldn’t have felt like singing. My eyes stung, my temples throbbed and I was counting down the minutes til I met my maker. But the invitation was like a sore I couldn’t resist picking. And it meant I could avoid the conversation with Larry a little longer.

  “Ah…” I scrabbled around in my brain for the right excuse.

  “Take your drink,” Larry urged. And it was a done deal.

  I took a moment to consider what to sing
. I couldn’t stop thinking about my corpse and what it all meant. And about death. I said it again in my head: I embrace my fate and welcome each moment until my end. I could hear Dr Phil whispering about closure. I needed to know why she came, my watch-keeper. And who came crashing through Missy’s shower after her. That moonbeam hair played across my mind and before I knew it I was crooning Blondie. The other Blondie, that is.

  The tiny crowd suddenly went quiet and there was this really reverential feel.

  I realized I was singing but I was actually keening. I was taking this dodgy disco track and turning into my own private dirge. She was dead and I was confused but I was also sad, sad, sad. Maybe I don’t cry, but right now I was keening. Keening for my watch-keeper, so far from home and no way back. Her and her half-spilled aquarium of reef-fish.

  And keening for me and all the things I was gonna miss in three weeks. And counting. And the people I was going to have to leave behind to take care of themselves. My gut clenched at the thought. I cleared my throat and reminded myself to harden up as I crooned on about finding divine love and losing my mind.

  Singing on land is easier than under the sea, but not so beautiful. There’s nothing on earth like a mermaid voice, vibrating through deep water. Like a call thrown out over a canyon, bouncing back and forth in curly echoes. More poignant than whalesong.

  The little crowd was clapping and some were crying as I moved into the last refrain. The disco love song was messing with my head too. I shook it as I sang to scatter the memory that kept pressing in: a wet, naked man with indigo eyes, looking at me like he knew me.

  As I finished, the need to go home tugged at me like a toddler at his mother’s skirt, but I wasn’t quite done. Only one way to do it. Like pulling off a plaster.

  I moved back to Larry. “I need to ask a favor.”

  He looked up from the glass he was polishing. “Shoot.”

  This was going to be delicate. But I needed to know what happened to her.

  “Well, Larry, it’s like this. I need an autopsy. Tonight. Off the record.”

  Larry stopped suddenly, put down his cloth. “Can I ask why?”

  “Nothing nasty,” I assured him. “It’s just that there’re things about this girl that State Health aren’t gonna cope with if we file a formal report. She’s… from someplace else.”

  “New York?” He raised a hopeful eyebrow.

  “Sorry Larry.” I paused. “No. Someplace people look real different.” I hesitated, testing the words silently in my mouth. How to explain this? “Inside and out.”

  Those intelligent green eyes considered me. “These people, they… strong?”

  He thought he was close to unravelling not just this mystery, but mine as well. Well good luck to him with that. I knew way more than he did and I had no idea what was going on.

  “Yep,” I confirmed. “Real strong. And good,” I went on, my voice breaking a little and sounding quavery. I squashed it. “Kind, too. But kinda private, if you catch my drift.”

  Larry shut his eyes, laying his fingers over them. I waited, feeling each breath saw in and out of my lungs, until those green eyes flashed open again. “So why you wanna go cut her up?”

  Good question. “Someone hurt her, Larry. Somehow. And it’s the somehow I need to understand. So I can maybe work out why. Because –” I exhaled quickly and let it all spill out. “I think maybe they came for me. And Mom.”

  “Right,” Larry breathed, and held out his hand. I took it and shook it, hard. He searched my face as he went on. “Guess that’s decided then. What time do we meet at the morgue?”

  “Thanks Larry.” I checked my watch. “I need some time first. And the morgue keys.”

  Larry handed me the keys and my Top Gun jacket and pointed to the door. I shrugged into it, and then looked at him dead-on. I hated to ask. “You gonna be up to this?” I motioned at the bar, and he knew what I meant. You gonna be sober enough in a coupla hours to do this?

  Larry looked serious for a moment. “Tonight wasn’t so bad.” He smiled lightly. “I was only getting started. And now I’ve got a better offer.”

  Mom was still up, even though it was past midnight. I could see her in her little spot over on the floor, balancing on her head on a multi-colored Turkish rug, long legs in tight purple yoga pants splayed scissor-style in the air. She was perfectly still, her face smooth and unlined and looking kind of ecstatic. The house was warm and smelled of cloves and toasted coconut.

  “Aldus’d wet himself if he saw you sitting there like that,” I greeted her.

  “Ransha, come here,” she said, as she lowered herself gracefully down and turned to me in one fluid move, a radiant smile lighting her up. I studied her as I moved over. She looks a little like my dead blonde, but different. Blondie would be beautiful anyplace. An Amazonian Grace Kelly. Mum’s face is tougher, more interesting. And it’s not just that she’s older. I’d bet a thousand saltwater pearls she always had that determined look to her cheeks and mouth.

  She wrapped her arms around me and the silky softness of her hair tickled my face as she repeated the childhood name again, “Ransha, Ransha.” As she dropped her arms, I picked up one of her wrists, a childhood habit, and studied delicate web of veins there, waiting. As I concentrated on the spidery blueness, I saw it. Like a flicker of light, so fast you’d believe you had imagined it if you didn’t know it was for real. A tiny shape, zipping along inside the largest vein. Alorah, the life fish. A piece of the sea living within her. The mark of an Aegiran.

  We moved together over to the sofa, our night-time ritual since I’d come home to spend my last couple of years with her. She had the meal ready, she could feel me coming. Soft cheese, coconut bread and Southern Comfort. You’d swear she was the one descended from Sicilians, not me. I laughed at the thought, and settled down to tell her about the night.

  She listened, tucking that waterfall hair behind one slightly elvish ear. Her face had settled into her trademark watchful smile. I swear it’s the trait that saw her elected mayor over all the good ole boys, and the one that keeps them eating out of her hand. Even though she’s an unmarried mother. And she doesn’t go to church. And no-one knows where the hell she’s from.

  “Poor baby Blondie,” she sighed and her blue eyes seemed to turn almost silver. “A watch-keeper. And so far from home.”

  The last word seemed to hang, dark and wistful in the air. “Do you really want to go back? For good?” I searched those silvery eyes, wondering again at why she was considering it.

  “Mmmm.” Mom shrugged non-committedly, pushing her hair back behind her ear again.

  “It’s just…” I picked my way through the words. “It seems kind of impulsive. I mean, you’ve never really told me, you know, what made you leave in the first place?” Or what made you get so down on the whole place. I looked up at her with the question in my eyes and she just met my gaze quietly. “Not that you need to, of course,” I added. But I wish you would.

  “Why thank you, my dear,” she smirked, her face lighting up a little.

  I took a breath and tried again. “It’s just… you should give it some thought first, you know. Before you decide anything. You can be a little, y’know, like I said… impulsive.”

  Mom raised a dark-blonde eyebrow at me, an ironic smile still playing around her lips.

  “Me?” I felt a warmth spread across my cheeks. “I might be hot-headed, but I’m a planner.” It’s true, you should see my will. No will with so few assets ever had so much detail. I focused on Mom’s face. “I don’t know what all this stuff means. The watch-keeper, and the rest. But I don’t think you should be making any plans until I sort it out.”

  Mom’s face, which had been soft and amused as I stumbled through my attempt at bossing her around, grew tighter again at the mention of Blondie, and her eyes got that silvery sheen again too. “Poor baby,” she repeated. “To die so far from home.”

  “Tell me again,” I said, like a child demanding a favorite tale. “Why do w
e send them?”

  Mom sighed, and smoothed her hands on her lap. “Well, like I’ve told you before, Aegira’s been around for ten thousand years, and it’s a very… sophisticated civilization.”

  I snorted. “Tell me about it. It’s got technology that’d give Bill Gates a wet dream.”

  Mom frowned delicately, pushing hair behind that fairytale ear again. “Please, Rania.”

  I raised my folded hands in supplication. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “Well, I guess Aegira learned the lesson Earth is trying to learn now, some time ago. It was during the third millennium, remember. The reign of Queen Eistla.”

  I flapped my hand. Yeah, yeah, cut to the chase.

  She sighed. “We had learned so much, come so far, but we hadn’t learned the really important things. Our emissions began to threaten Aegira’s very existence.”

  I nodded. I’d heard this part before. I often thought about it, when I read about acid rain or global warming. Aegira had been there, done that. Pulled itself from the brink just in time.

  “Well, the early Aegirans, they took stock, remembered why Aegir sank their paradise in the first place, and re-dedicated themselves to living in harmony with all things. They started by learning to communicate with the creatures of the sea.”

  “Especially the dolphins,” I interrupted quickly.

  “Yes, darling, of course, especially the dolphins.” Mom laughed. “You and those dolphins. I never did quite understand your fascination. Anyway.” She shook her head, her blonde hair billowing out as she did like she was in a shampoo commercial. “Where was I? Oh yes, so, eventually we made treaties with them, the nations of the sea. Working to create a better world, on earth and sea. That’s when the tradition of watch-keeping began. And now, Aegira sends them — the most gifted young people — to keep an eye on The Land. And, of course, the land-dwellers. Keep track of innovation, borrow and learn from the best humans have to offer.”

  I closed my burning eyes and it felt good. “So they only come for a short while, right?”