***
John’s head ached. His head and torso felt as if they’d been hollowed out and then stuffed with a mix of sandpaper and wool. He groaned and rolled over onto his side, misjudging how close he was to the edge of the bed. He crashed against the floor hard, but the pain receded quickly as he realized that the air washing over his face was cool. Looking up to the clock on his bedside table, he read 4:08 p.m.
He lay there for a long time. The headache only grew sharper and his tongue, now swollen and hairy inside his mouth, commandeered his thoughts once he noticed its state. With willpower alone, he pushed himself into a seated position, wincing as an invisible pick plunged through his skull and out his left eye. He remembered enough to focus his energy on standing up and getting into the bathroom where water and ibuprofen awaited him. His legs had fallen asleep while he lay on the floor and prickles danced up and down his calves and out his toes as he hobbled across the room.
Every act of getting ready took much longer than it should have, but by dinnertime John had managed to shower, shave, and dress in clean clothes. He still felt tired, but his headache no longer plagued him and the gallon of water that he’d ingested one cup at a time had returned his tissues to their normal fullness. A residue clung to his tongue even though he’d brushed it with toothpaste.
He walked to Señorita’s and asked for a table in the corner away from James, the ever-present double of Ernest Hemingway that he’d seen during his first stay on Culebra. James would happily buy him a hair of the dog, but John didn’t feel like listening to his exploits or his complaints this evening. When Janelle came to take his order, she clucked and grasped his chin in her free hand to tilt his face toward the light.
“Sweetie! You look like someone mugged you! Are you all right?”
John shrugged and pulled away. “Just too much to drink, Janelle. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
“I’ll bring you a club soda with lemon. Order something healthy, too. No fries, hear?”
John sank back into his chair after Janelle brought him his drink and fussed over him. He kept his eyes on the tiled tabletop, but there was no one around to meet his gaze. Although the weekend beachgoers arrived on the ferry this morning, Playa Flamenco absorbed their numbers and town remained quiet. Very few tourists came to Culebra during the summer—that hot, dry hurricane season—and no one followed John into Señorita’s for the next half an hour. After she delivered his food, Janelle retreated to a barstool next to James and across from Tim, the bartender, and the three of them gossiped in the otherwise empty restaurant. John cut up his fish and lifted food into his mouth, but every bite tasted like sawdust.
He heard laughter near the entranceway just as he finished eating as much of his dinner as he could swallow. Looking, he caught sight of Raimunda. Wearing a tight t-shirt and blue jeans, she stood gazing up at Pablo, whose right arm curled around her waist. So. She was a free agent, but he knew that, didn’t he? Maybe he should renew their relationship. Same terms as before, even if he didn’t have a girlfriend anymore. He didn’t know how he felt about Zoë. Or Tamarind. He did know how he felt about Raimunda. It was lust, plain and simple. And he deserved the funk that swallowed him every time it came over him. John pushed his plate away from him without taking his eyes from her and put his feet up on the seat of the chair opposite him. When Janelle came to collect the plate, he put his hand on her wrist and ordered a Medalla.
“If you say so, honey,” she said, but he only half heard.
John watched Raimunda as he sipped his beer. She never turned to look at him but kept her attention on Pablo and the bottle of beer Janelle brought her. When Pablo left Raimunda to head to the bathroom, John tipped his beer up and drained it before pushing his chair back with a loud squeak. At the sound, Raimunda turned to watch him, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.
“Hola, gringo.”
“Buenas noches.” He sat down in an empty chair. “I came to steal you away from Pablo.”
She smirked and lifted her beer to her mouth. John watched her throat pulse as she swallowed. Above the collar of the t-shirt, a small shell pendant rested in the hollow at the base of her throat. She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip as she set the bottle down in front of her.
“Perhaps I don’t wish to be stolen away, mi amigo.”
John leaned forward and traced the inside of her upper arm with his index finger. “Perhaps I don’t care what you want,” he said into her ear.
Raimunda laughed and tossed her hair out of her face. “Oh, I think you care what I want all right.”
John picked up her hand from where it rested on the table and pulled it into his lap. “I know what you want.”
“John? Qué pasa?” Pablo materialized not far from them.
Raimunda slid her hand up and around her beer bottle before Pablo reached the table. John wondered if Pablo had seen.
“Not much, amigo. Just saying hello to Raimunda.”
“John and I are old friends,” she said as Pablo sat down. John saw her hand disappear under the table and he imagined it on Pablo’s thigh. From the look on Pablo’s face, he’d guessed right.
“Well, it was good to see you two, but I’ll leave you alone to enjoy your dinner.” John stood.
Pablo, whose eyes had fastened on Raimunda’s ripe mouth, barely nodded. “Hasta la vista, John.”
John walked around Dewey for the next hour, passing by Señorita’s entrance a dozen times before Pablo and Raimunda finally left together. He watched Pablo weave down the sidewalk north toward his apartment. Raimunda propped him up as he chattered incomprehensibly next to her; she intermittently uttered soothing sounds in response to his commentary. After they’d gone fifty yards, John followed them. When they reached Pablo’s apartment, Raimunda folded her arms and leaned against the wall of the building while Pablo tried to insert his key into the deadbolt. John waited until he’d caught her eye and pointed to Pablo, then shook his head and pointed to himself. Raimunda grinned and took Pablo’s arm. Waving to John over her shoulder, she took the key from Pablo and unlocked the door. Pablo nearly fell into the building as she swung the door open and away from him.
John waited, his lips compressed. After only a few minutes, Raimunda reappeared in the doorway—alone. She scanned the far sidewalk and when her eyes met John’s, she smiled and leaned again, this time onto the doorframe. John strode toward her; when he reached her, he gripped her elbows.
“Pablo can’t hold his beer, can he?”
She shrugged. “He’s sitting on his sofa muttering in front of his TV. Good thing he’s got a satellite dish.”
“Let’s go find out if I know what you want.”
Raimunda rose up on her toes and kissed him, hard. “I want exactly what you want, gringo.”
She threaded her fingers through his and together they walked toward Posada La Diosa and his room there.
Twelve
Wet sand clung to John’s bare feet as he strolled along the strip of Isla Verde beach owned by the Ritz-Carlton’s San Juan Hotel. He heard dozens of voices from other conference attendees as they spilled through the hotel’s doors to the beachfront, chattering without seeing the beauty in front of them. He’d already presented the paper that he’d written about the difficulties in storing and accessing large amounts of digital video while onboard a marine research ship. He’d escaped the ongoing presentations and milling graduate students as soon as the last questioner scurried out of his particular conference room on the way to another talk. Somewhere inside, his advisor deftly worked his industry contacts, always looking for a way to turn a spark of interest into funding.
“Hey, man, you look like you should be combing the beach for loose change, the way you’ve got your pants rolled up like that,” said a voice several feet behind him.
John whirled. His friend Stefan stood at the edge of the manicured lawn holding a wineglass and a notepad.
“And you look like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop when he lied h
is way into the Beverly Hills Hotel. You ever think maybe a t-shirt and blue jeans weren’t the best things to wear to the Ritz?” John walked over to where Stefan stood. “Have they put out lunch yet?”
Stefan nodded and raised the wineglass to his mouth. “The wine’s actually pretty crappy. But I doubt too many of the others will notice. They’re too wrapped up in debating optimal bit rates and lossless compression. They don’t have our refined sensitivities.”
“We’ll just have to make do with the hotel buffet for lunch, but tonight I’ll take you across the street to this Cuban place I know, Metropole. They have the best moros y cristianos in Puerto Rico. Their pastelitos are also very tasty. I eat there about once a week now.”
They turned and made their way toward the Vista Mar Terrace where the largest number of graduate students, faculty members, and industry researchers now congregated around open bars and tables laden with crudités, cheese and crackers, and fresh fruit. When they’d managed to fill their small plates and gotten full glasses of wine, they positioned themselves in a corner furthest from the building and chatted between bites.
“So I met Elí Arroyo López from Polytech last night at the reception. He’s very excited to have an ‘exchange’ student as he puts it for the summer. He told me he’s been working for some time to create a real department instead of offering a single EE degree.”
John popped a water cracker laden with Brie into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Elí’s a good guy with a lot of ambitions for his beloved PUPR. Who knows? Maybe he’s prescient about the need for high-tech degrees in Puerto Rico. A lot of people are talking about India these days, but Elí thinks there’s a large pool of talent closer to home.”
“You getting a lot of work done here? I read your paper in the proceedings and it looks like you might have yourself a thesis topic percolating in there.”
“Actually, I’ve been working on another research paper for the Video IR Symposium in October. It’s amazing how much work you can get done when you don’t really know anyone.”
“No? I thought maybe there were one or two women in this tropical paradise.”
John shrugged and looked down at his plate. “I’ve been spending weekends on Culebra where I have some friends. Some of them happen to be women.”
“That explains why Zoë’s been a regular storm cloud around the CS department. You two still together?”
“No.” John didn’t elaborate.
“Ah. Well, no wonder you’re in no hurry to get back to Pittsburgh.” Stefan grinned, his Cheshire-cat grin. It irritated John. “Let me know if you need a place to stay when you get back.”
“I’m in no hurry to get back to Pittsburgh because I needed a break, Stefan.” John set his empty wineglass down on the terrace wall a little harder than he intended. A passing waiter glared at him as he rescued it. “My time away from CMU hasn’t been wasted. I’ve seen endangered leatherback turtles struggle onto dark beaches where they exhaust themselves digging pits for their eggs, which they leave, trusting that the next generation will survive the greediness and stupidity of people. I’ve also spent a lot of time teaching an illiterate woman how to read. Compared to those two activities, worrying about which RAID scheme works best for video storage seems a tad inconsequential.”
“So what’s the answer then? Chuck it all and live on a Caribbean island?”
John looked out over the horizon. “If I figure out a way to do it, I just might.”
Later that night, John left the window looking out on La Isla Verde open. The moon illuminated his suite so well that he found himself unable to sleep until long after he lay down on the Egyptian cotton sheets. He slept without knowing he slept, or so he came to believe. In the vivid light, he saw Tamarind standing framed in the window. She wore the blue batik dress that she’d worn the night that they went dancing and even in the shadows around her head he could see the hue of her eyes. Pearls studded her hair, which flowed as smooth as water around her head; abalone and obsidian ornaments dangled from her ears and neck. She studied his face without smiling, but her eyes hinted at mirth. After a moment, she hummed and clicked until John lost the dream and sank into sleep.
***
Ana trod barefoot over the dusty path toward Playa Tamarindo, her calloused feet insensitive to the hard stones and uneven ground. The dry heat burned her lungs as it had done for more years than she cared to remember, but she knew that she had long passed the point where she could choose a different home, a better life. Above her, her favorite laughing gull hovered protectively and occasionally dropped down to her shoulder and chuckled reprovingly in her ear.
She stopped just as the path began to descend again toward the shore and peered down through the opening in the thorny scrub ahead of her to Tamarind’s scraggly-haired silhouette embossed against the night sky. Around the motionless form emanated an aura like a grease slick on wet pavement. Seeing it, Ana’s breath quickened and she bit her lower lip. Half the rainy season had already passed and still the mermaid pined for the weak, lustful man that she’d saved from a watery death. Ana could no longer wait for Tamarind to abandon her mad hope for something more to happen with John. She must entice her with a powerful alternative.
***
Shifting her buttocks a little, Tamarind shoved her feet against the stones in front of her and lifted her face into the breeze, her eyes closed. The fan-leafed palms and tamarind trees lining the beach’s edge whispered as the breeze tickled their leaves and the ocean shush-shushed them; otherwise, the reverent night was silent beneath the moon overhead. She felt the strength of the trees rooting down into the ground and she leaned into their strength, wanting to draw it into herself and keep it there.
“So. I find you here.” A raspy voice and the scent of cloves came from behind her.
Tamarind didn’t answer; she only closed her eyes.
“T’won’t do you any good to sit here and moon over that idiot.”
“What business is it of yours what I’m doing?” She didn’t look at the old woman.
For a moment she heard nothing; then she felt Ana’s presence next to her on the stones.
“None of my business, that’s what. I’m neither kin nor friend to you. But I speak from experience, young one.” She paused. “I was once a mermaid like you and also fell in love with a human man.”
Tamarind stared at Ana. “What happened?”
Ana shrugged and sucked hard on her clove cigarette without looking from the distant horizon. The sound of burning paper and her harsh exhale mingled with the rich scent of clove. “Not important what happened. All you need to know is I put off my tail for love. Long after I left this island behind, I found myself alone. Came back here and begged the island midwife to undo what she’d done, to send me back to the waves. She said it was impossible for me. I was no longer the same person; I might die trying to put a tail on again. I insisted anyway, saying I was as likely to die from grief.”
She turned to look at Tamarind. Both opaque eyes appeared blind in the starlight.
“Obviously didn’t work. But it wasn’t a complete failure. Instead of dying, I lost only the sight in my eye. If you’d been paying attention, you’d’ve seen the mer in me. I still hear mer speech, though not like I once did. Along my flanks are pores for sensing movement underwater.” She smoothed the side of her shirt. “Mine no longer work. Only give the Culebrenses something to gossip about.”
Tamarind studied Ana in the brilliant moonlight. She thought that she must always have known. Signs of the mer showed clearly on the old woman: she had a bit of webbing between her fingers, almost indiscernible now from the loose skin of old age, and her eye, piercing as it was, was the changeable blue of Mother Sea.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because, unlike you, I didn’t really have a choice. I tried to force my way back, but it wasn’t my fate. You gotta choice.”
“What choice? When the rainy season ends, I’ll revert back to being mer. You said I co
uldn’t remain human unless I consummated my love with John.”
“Yeah, I did say that. But you can keep your legs if you copulate with any human male while you’re transformed.”
Tamarind started to speak, but Ana cut her off. “I’m getting old and need an apprentice, Tamarind. There’s always been a midwife. She tells the dragos what she can about the humans on her island. She casts and keeps glamours. Sometimes she helps a mer put off a tail. Took me a while to see I’d been chosen, but I came to accept my fate.”
Her last words hung, heavy as ripe tamarind pods on slender branches, over them.
“You’re offering me the choice of becoming a midwife, like you? To remain human?” Tamarind paused, shaking her head. “I don’t want to be human if I can’t be with John.”
Ana squinted her eye before pushing the stub of her clove cigarette into the stones at her side. She exhaled smoke in twin streams from her nostrils. It writhed and expanded in front of her face. “Don’t have to decide now. You still have time before the rains end. Think over my offer. That’s all I ask, young one.”
Tamarind noticed the book that lay on the ground near Ana like a dark smudge in the moonlight. Thick, with a dirty cloth cover that was torn and water-stained, its yellowed pages exuded age—and power. She’d seen Ana consulting this book numerous times, but Ana had always guarded it and said that it was for no one’s eyes but her own.
“You can’t read,” Ana said the first time that Tamarind asked about it. “What’s the point in looking at a book when you don’t have any idea what it says?”
At the time, Tamarind shrugged and said nothing. Now it lay between them like a promise. Ana saw where her gaze fell and she put withered fingers on it.
“Intrigued by my book?”
Tamarind looked at the old woman’s face. Ana gazed back at her with a mild expression. So she picked the book up with reverent fingers and pulled it into her lap. Her eyes, used to the dimmer underwater world, had no difficulty distinguishing details, faint as they were. Turning pages as fragile as dried seaweed, she glimpsed lists of herbs, spices, sea creatures and underwater plants—many items were words that she didn’t recognize from her short reading experience. Underneath the lists, she saw directions for preparing the items and instructions for keeping and administering the final preparations. In the margins, there were handwritten notes and occasional drawings.
An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant Page 15