Diary of a Radical Mermaid (17 page)

Since I had spent the two days since the Heathcliff incident in deep brooding at Tula’s cottage, I looked at her blearily over an empty soda bottle and said, “In case you’re wondering, I’m not a naive, thirty-five-year-old virgin who goes dewy over male hotness. I have managed to lure a couple of fully accredited men into my lair over the years. But frankly, they didn’t fulfill my fantasies the way Rhymer does. So I’m not interested in hooking up with some merman.” I paused. “Or maybe the operative term is ‘hooking’ a merman.”

She smiled. “I’m not taking you to a Mer brothel, for goodness sake. Just a nightclub.”

“Under the circumstances, I have no intention of partying. Because of me and Heathcliff, Orion may be on his way to Sainte’s Point. I can’t just—"

“Rhymer asked me to take you out.”

I stared at her. “He asked you to find me a man?”

“No, he asked me to keep you distracted. He says there’s no point in you sitting and worrying. It won’t help. Think positively and cheer up.”

“Think positively and cheer up?” I stood furiously, pounding a fist on my bad leg. Heathcliff leapt from my lap to the back of Tula’s overstuffed white couch. He loved racing around her cottage, amazed at his own new youth. “Do you know what would cheer me up? If I could make my gimpy leg work well enough to swim long distances! If I could find Orion and lead him off the track of Rhymer and the girls! I want to help Rhymer defend Stella, Isis, and Venus!” I searched for a mantra. “I want to be a Singer, not a Floater, with real webbed feet!”

“Well, in the meantime, let’s dress your inner Mer in something sassy and go see some naked men. I brought you an outfit.”

She held up black leather pants low enough to show my inner Mer’s hipbones and a white leather bustier barely long enough to lace under my inner Mer’s outer boobs. Even Britney Spears didn’t show that much stomach.

I took a last, long swallow of soda. On the melodrama meter, my mood clicked from depressed to reckless. “Give me those clothes,” I told Tula.

* * * *

It was the Mer equivalent of a Chippendales show. A girls’ night out at the most elegant nightclub imaginable on the decadently elegant riverfront of one of the south’s most decadently elegant old cities, Savannah. I stared as a sleek, gorgeous, web-toed man wearing nothing but a flesh-colored thong undulated to the ethereal beat of some New Age Celtic rhythm, flexing with provocative masculine grace as a coordinated lightshow of shadows cascaded over and under him. His powerful body and barely concealed erection weren’t more than a quick tickle away from me. I could have stroked him, except for four inches of brilliant glass between us. He floated inside a giant tank as large as a room. He smiled at me from inside a glorified goldfish bowl.

A penis on the half shell.

“Blow him a kiss,” Tula whispered. “You’re the famous Mer author, M.M. Revere. Everyone’s watching you. It’s only polite for a celebrity to flirt with the performer.” Thank goodness for the darkness, which was lit only by the flickering light of our table lamp. Tula’s breasts were barely visible inside a diaphanous blouse. Her long legs were sparsely topped by a black leather mini skirt. She should flirt with Mr. Penis, not me.

When I continued to sit there like a red-faced monkey, she elbowed me gently.

“Tula,” I finally managed, “if I lift my arm to blow him a kiss, one breast will fall out the bottom of this bustier.”

“So? Be brave. Risk flashing a nipple.”

Slowly I put my fingertips to my lips. I kissed them, then reached out to tap my fingertips on the glass in the general vicinity of the swimmer’s smiling lips. But at the last second he swirled upward and, grinning, pressed his pelvis to the glass.

My fingertips planted a symbolic smooch on his erection.

Everyone laughed and applauded.

I slumped back in the shadows, mortified. Tula put an arm around me. “Now see, you’re becoming a wild libertine, just like the rest of us. Mers aren’t shy. We’re the beautiful people. That was fun, wasn’t it?”

“I just wish he’d kept his waterlogged woody away from my fingers.”

Tula laughed until her eyes watered. I hunkered miserably over my tumbler of vodka, then pushed it aside and downed a chaser of fizzing tonic water. The hard stuff. Cool, sea-scented air curled around my bare midriff like a seductive breath. Leave me alone, I told it. I’m a librarian-slash-author from staid old Boston. I’m not here to be seduced. I’m worried about Rhymer and the girls.

The haunting Celtic music faded away, and the handsome male performer disappeared through a nearly invisible tunnel at the bottom of the enormous tank. Seconds later the music changed to a throbbing dance beat. A magnificent young couple plunged from perches high in the nightclub’s elaborately carved rafters. They speared the water of the giant bowl, then curled toward one another in perfect symmetry. He wore nothing but a bulging thong of gleaming fabric; she wore little more than a shimmering band of ribbon between her legs. As the lighting system strobed them, they entwined, touching, kissing, undulating in a yin/yang dance of pure, fluid sexuality.

I lost myself in their thrall. This is what I want. To be made in the water, by Rhymer. To be made of water, with Rhymer.

Beside me Tula gave a soft, unhappy sigh. Loneliness suddenly radiated from her like a bleak aura. Someone had hurt her, or she’d hurt him, and the memories returned. I wasn’t drunk enough to ask for details, and her thoughts were closed. She proceeded to polish off nearly a dozen glasses of bubbly water over the next two hours. I designated myself the chaperone and switched to straight vodka.

By the time we left the club, Tula was wobbling and I had to take her by one arm to keep her on course. I thumped my cane’s silver tip on a rustic, cobblestoned path that led to a patio overlooking the river. “Follow the sound of the tapping cane,” I quipped. “What kind of stones are these? It’s like an obstacle course.” The stones were rounded. Even sober, it was like walking on stone eggs.

Tula lurched and nearly pulled us both down in a heap. “Ballast stones. Thousands of ’em. Tossed from the hulls of big ships coming up the river to harbor since the sixteen hundreds. They’re everywhere in the old part of Savannah. Streets, walls, you name it. The weight of old trade, under our feet. That’s what life is all about, isn’t it? The weight of our trades? Our compromises? Trying to walk when we just want to fall down?” She stumbled again. “I’m so sorry,” she moaned. “Juna Lee always says I shouldn’t watch the couples’ acts. She says I get morbid and start babbling clichés from old soap operas. She’s right.”

“Let’s sit on the patio edge over there.” I guided her like a tugboat pushing a tanker. We made our way to a heavy wooden railing, which gave us something to hold onto. A lamp post cast a soft cone of light around us. We sat down and dangled our legs over the side. A dozen feet below us, the Savannah River made a slow, deep highway to the Atlantic. Across the river, the lights of the city’s historic cotton exchanges winked in the hot night air. Now the grand old buildings were full of shops, restaurants, and bars. I heard the faint sound of music. On a summer night the riverfront surged with young people, rowdy and carefree. I had never been rowdy or carefree, at least not outside my imagination. An enormous freighter slid by, heading downriver to the ocean, blanking out the scene, a peaceful monolith in the moonlight.

I clasped Tula’s hand. “Feeling better?”

“A little.” She slumped a little, staring into the blackness. “I owe you an explanation.”

“Being a newly liberated Mer who air-kissed a stranger’s penis tonight, I’m now frank enough to say, ‘You betcha.’ So explain. Is this mood of yours about a man?”

She nodded wearily. “He was a Lander. But not just any Lander. Most Lander men are easy for a Mer to control; they’re as docile as pet puppies. They can’t resist us. They’re fun to play with and easy to forget. We use them; we break their hearts. For that reason, conscientious Mers don’t indulge in Lander romances. But there are the rare ones — the special ones — the ones who catch a Mer off guard.” She exhaled wearily. “And in those cases, the outcome is almost never good.”

“But there are some happy cases?”

“Yes. Lilith’s younger sister, Mara, tormented a Lander for years, and he tormented her. But now they’re together, and happy. He’s Griffin Randolph’s uncle. Griffin is only a Mer on his mother’s side, you see. Randolph men are notoriously strong-minded when it comes to Mer women. But the story of Griffin’s parents — now, that’s a different story. A typical Mer/Lander tragedy. His mother was a beautiful McEvers, from Scotland.”

“Related to Rhymer?”

“Yes. An older cousin of his and Tara’s. Undiline McEvers. She came here to visit the Bonavendiers, then fell in love with a Randolph shipping heir. Porter Randolph. Pure Lander, through and through. She hid her Mer heritage from him.” Tula raised a foot, clad in a shimmering, high-heeled sandal. She spread her toes slightly, showing off the beautiful webbing. “She even mutilated herself for him. She cut the webbing from her feet.”

I raised one of my low-heeled, sandaled feet, staring at my plain toes wistfully. “How could she bear to do that?”

“She adored him. He adored her. She feared he couldn’t accept the truth. So she hid her Mer status from him and married him. They were deliriously happy when Griffin was born. She had a doctor secretly remove his webbing, too. So Griffin was raised not knowing he and his mother were Mers.”

“Oh, Tula.”

“But eventually Porter discovered the truth. She’d been right to worry about his reaction: He couldn’t take it. Couldn’t comprehend that Landers aren’t the only kind of human beings in the world. Couldn’t accept that the essence of reality, as he knew it, wasn’t real. As I said, Randolphs are strong-minded. Meaning hard to control. Otherwise she’d have saved him’— soothed him, planted sublime understanding in his mind. That’s how we coexist in the Lander world. By putting forth our illusions.”

“What happened to her? And Porter?”

Tula looked at me sadly. “He killed her. And then he killed himself. They’re buried on a bluff at Sainte’s Point. Their graves face your cottage. They built it. They were happy there.”

I stared at her, speechless. Another giant freighter inched past us, blocking out the view. Eventually it slid by, a man-made eclipse, and the bright necklace of Savannah’s riverfront appeared in the distance again. Tula frowned. “Landers and Mers shouldn’t mix. Juna Lee always says so. She’s right.”

“My mother was a Lander. She and my dad were very happy. I have only good memories.”

“She wasn’t a Lander.”

“What?”

Tula gave me a gentle smile. “There are a lot of people in the world who love the water beyond reason, who have special talents, who know they’re not quite like everyone else. Almost always they’re Floaters, like you. They have Mers in their recent bloodlines. They just don’t know it. Your mother was a descendent of a Mer clan in northern California. Lilith told me so, before she left Sainte’s Point. Your mother was a Miakawa.”

“A Miakawa? But . . . that’s a Japanese surname, and my mother wasn’t Asian-American. She was a brownish blonde with light eyes. She and Dad ran a bookstore on Cape Cod. She grew up on the coast of Maine, helping her father catch lobsters.”

“But her great-grandmother was a Miakawa who migrated from Japan. A full-fledged Singer. So you’re a Mer on both sides of your family tree. That is, your family river, as we Mers say.” Tula smiled. “Did she ever mention whether she and her father caught lobsters in a trap — the Lander way — or by hand?”

After a long moment, I said numbly, “She did mention something about the fun of outwitting the average crustacean.”

“There you go. A true Mer. She loved a hands-on hunt for shellfish. For Mers, chasing lobsters is the equivalent of fox-hunting. Royal sport.”

I held my head with both hands. “Let’s get back to the present. About your own romance — wasn’t there any hope?”

She hugged herself and shut her eyes. “No. When I let him know about me — about being a Mer — when I dropped the illusions and let him see the real me, he was . . . repulsed.”

“No. Surely—”

“Repulsed, yes. Horrified. Afraid of me. Is it so hard to imagine? Look at you. If you weren’t a Floater, with an inborn instinct to accept what Juna Lee told you about yourself when she kidnapped you, wouldn’t you be in shock? Traumatized? Afraid? Wouldn’t you question your own sanity?”

“I suppose. Yes. Yes, all right. I’ve questioned it anyway. But I’ve accepted my new reality easier than I expected.”

“Because you’re a Mer.”

“Just a Floater.”

She squeezed my hand. “You’re one of us. That’s all that matters.”

“The man you loved. What happened to him?”

“I made him forget me.”

“Made him? But I thought you couldn’t control—”

“There are ways. Drastic ways. Lilith helped me find a Healer.”

“Like Rhymer’s nieces?”

She nodded. “They’re rare. But effective.”

“This Healer—”

“Had the power to heal the mind as well as the body. She healed him.”

“You mean she made the man you loved forget he ever loved you?”

“Yes. It’s as if I never existed to him.”

“Where is he?”

“He travels a lot. He lives in London, New York, Los Angeles. Other places. He has plenty of women to keep him company. Lander women. But he’s never married. I think, somewhere deep in his soul, he remembers me.”

“Couldn’t the Healer have made you forget him, as well?”

She looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Yes. But I didn’t want to forget him. No matter how much it hurt.”

“Oh, Tula.”

We hugged. She drew back, crying a little, wiping her eyes. “Enough. Enough. I was supposed to take you out for a good time, but here I am, stoned on tonic fizzes, depressing you with tales of my morbid romantic history.”

“At least you didn’t air-kiss a penis tonight.”

She laughed hoarsely. “I’m going inside and wash my face. I’ll be right back. Then I’ll take you to a club out on Tybee Island. We’ll eat raw oysters and watch an Elvis impersonator.”

“As long as he’s fully clothed.”