Diary of a Radical Mermaid (26 page)

The enforced niceness of women is all a great scheme to keep us girls clamped up like nervous oysters. All those hidden, dangerous pearls! Lander girls are brainwashed early on to think they have no real power beyond their boobs, butts, and sweetie-pie submissiveness.

Landers, don’t even try to tell me you’re not submissive — yes, you work at an important job, and pay your own bills, and aren’t afraid to tweak a male buttock strolling past you at the local fern bar, but you know, deep in your dusty little Lander heart, that the show of independence can’t clobber generations of social conditioning.

You want to be submissive and devalued. Admit it. It’s much more noble and safe that way. You can’t float easily because you weigh yourselves down with like-me-please-like-me worries. Oh, puh-leeze. Even if you’re the nicest little peach in the pie you’re eventually going to realize that the Grand Brainwash was primarily intended to control women so they don’t run amok doing all the things they naturally want to do. Since they’re not encouraged to do much besides be pleasant and attractive, they’re just waiting for some hairy masculine hand to clamp them into a marriage contract for baby-making.

News flash: Being nice and sweet and pleasant and demure and polite and go-along-get-along cooperative is not going to stop the fact that you’ll eventually stop being that cute little kitten everyone wants to adopt. Whether you like it or not, you’ll turn into a grown cat, and then either you’ll the use claws Mother Nature gave you to make the world respect you or you’ll sit around in a furry little Lander-cat puddle of your own niceness, getting your tail stepped upon but only whispering meow, oh, meowowow, in response, because God forbid you offend anyone or demand to be noticed.

You poor cat-fish.

Thus, I am thrilled to be your role model for change. Please pay no attention to the following scene. It in no way compromises my lecture on not compromising your values in order to please men.

Jordan and I lounged next to his pool at Hilton Head. The ducks quacked contentedly as they paddled around the pool’s faux-mountain setting. Maybe they thought they’d escaped to a summer resort in Aspen. I draped a lazy hand over Jordan’s naked body. “What’s all this nutty talk about UniWorld trying to become the evil empire? I own several million dollars’ worth of UniWorld stock. It’s solid. I’m not selling.”

Jordan grunted. “Don’t worry about it. Just stick with me.”

“How condescending. Don’t worry my pretty little head?”

He trailed a hand down my bare stomach. “Or other parts.”

I grumbled. “Don’t change the subject. Now, listen, be sensible — world crises, secret plots, hidden undersea oil reserves, conspiracies — you’ve spent far too much time reading conspiracy theories on the Internet. And watching Nostradamus specials on the Discovery Channel. I want you to stop filling your pretty little head with all those quirky ideas.”

“My sweet, darling, annoying periwinkle.”

“Periwinkle?”

“Hiding in the sand.”

“You seriously believe all that mumbo jumbo about UniWorld trying to enslave us all?”

“Yes. And so does Lilith. Lilith knows it’s time to pull our kind together. That’s why she’s searching out the Floaters. Spreading the word. Why she didn’t object to your diary. She knows battles are coming. So does Riyad. He has connections in the oil world who tell him everything. There’s going to be trouble in the years to come, and Mers will be at the center of it.”

“So what to do we do right now? Besides drink a stiff tonic and vodka and try not to panic?”

“Well, first, we . . . merge our talents. We . . . merge our interests. We merge our strengths.”

I leaned toward him, cleavage to the forefront, chin up, lips slightly parted. My heart fluttered like a hyperventilating romance heroine hoping for a ripped bodice. “Mergers are for CEOs. How boring.”

“Agreed. Let’s put it in terms you can wrap your little finger around. We get married.”

Rip. There went the first button on my inner bodice. I sat up on my lounge chair, fanning myself lightly, eyes narrowing to slits, voice dropping to a soulful drawl. “Why, that is the most preposterous idea I’ve ever heard. Presented with no more aplomb or charm than a request for sliced salmon at the deli. Certainly you’re just teasing little ol’ me, because a gentleman would never, nevah, pledge his troth in such a base manner.”

Jordan got up lazily. He arched one brow. He placed one hand over his bare heart. Then he dropped to one knee and wrestled my fanning hand into his. “My darling Juna Lee,” he said in a sardonic, syrupy accent, “you have given my very life meaning beyond all hope of hopes, beyond all deserving. Please look down upon my crude, simple, but heartfelt plea for mercy. Please, please my darling, make me the happiest man in the world. Honor me, my darling. My darling Juna Lee, will you marry me?”

“Now that’s a marriage proposal. I’ll think about it and get back to you—”

He pulled me to my feet, then swooped me over one shoulder and slapped me on the bare ass. “I’ll take that as a Yes,” he growled.

“Yes,” I said, upside down.

He dumped us both in the pool, scattering ducks everywhere. We wrapped ourselves up in each other and stayed under so long that the mallards stuck their heads underwater to stare.

I’ve got Jordan just where I want him, I told them. Inside me.

Not So Fast . . .
Chapter
25

Dear Diary:

Just when I thought I was free, I’m being thrown back in the clink. I got this note from Lilith today. She’s back at Sainte’s Point. Just read this, and you’ll feel sorry for me:

My dear Juna Lee,

No, you have not been cleared of all charges by the Council. You kidnapped Molly Revere. You shot Orion. Even though you had the best intentions at the time, your impulsiveness once again makes you less than a solid citizen, in the eyes of the Council. Thus, you’re still on probation, and I’m still your probation officer. So I have another job for you to do regarding your community service. Since you’ve demonstrated a certain, ahem, talent as a guidance counselor for your fellow Mers, I’m assigning you to do a makeover on a Peacekeeper who needs to fit discreetly into Southern society.

She’ll arrive in Charleston from Brooklyn, New York, in late summer. She’s been assigned as an undercover bodyguard to one of the coast’s most important Mers, whose name you would recognize if I mentioned it, which I don’t intend to do outside the privacy of a face-to-face meeting with you. In today’s world, discretion cannot be overemphasized. Suffice to say, this man is no helpless choir boy, and he is not happy to be assigned a babysitter.

Since you’ll be spending considerable time on this case in Charleston, you might want to take up residence in the old Poinfax mansion again. You should consider blocking off that storm drain in the backyard. Yes, I know you see it as a quick portal to the ocean, but it’s also a quick portal from the ocean to your back door. Trust me, given the nature of the Peacekeeper you’ll be meeting, and the enemies she’s dealing with, you may not want to encourage strangers to pop up among your azaleas.

Call the island and schedule a meeting with me soon. We’ll go over the details. Oh, and bring back the sapphire necklace you borrowed from your Great-Aunt Mara’s collection while we were on the cruise. If you don’t, Mara has spoken to Aphrodite Araiza about having your fingers broken.

Love, Lilith

I sighed at my continuing servitude, then typed in return:

All right. I’ll do my duty. Don’t worry about me. As long as I have credit cards and a makeup kit, I can handle anything.

* * * *

Dear Diary:

I’m off to Charleston with Jordan by my side, to see what the ocean burps up. A tough New York Mer cop, trying to fit into Charleston society as a Southern belle while doing kick-ass undercover work as a bodyguard for a Mer VIP who qualifies as King of the Untamed Horndogs? Oh, please. Just wait until I get my French-tipped nails into that messy pile of pearls.

It’ll be so much fun.

An Appendum of Facts & Fables Regarding the Mer People

Sanctioned for release by the World Council, this date.

Visit the Council’s official website, courtesy of Webmistress Juna Lee Poinfax:

www.deborahsmith-mermaids.com

Beyond The Ordinary Shore, or Whatever

Interesting facts and snarky pseudo-scientific gossip about Mers

by Juna Lee Poinfax

Okay, Mer afficianados, listen up:

The three primary oceans — Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian, combined with their junior buds such as the Mediterranean, Arctic, Antartic oceans, and others, aka Oceanus to Mers, cover 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and fill the vast majority of the globe’s spherical surface volume. In other words, land-based critters are like the Hindu cashier in the corner convenience store outside Shreveport. Not exactly a majority, you dig? Over 90 percent of the planet’s recorded species live in Oceanus. Only about one percent of this vast World Ocean has been mapped and explored by human eyes.

Well, by Lander eyes, at any rate. Mers can tell you things about the Deep that would curl your butt hairs. Just consider the possibilities that things you never suspected can exist out yonder in the briny deep. The average ocean depth worldwide is two miles. The deepest known ocean depth on Earth is a canyon in the Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean, near Guam, where the ocean floor is over seven miles below the surface. If you sank Mount Everest into the Mariana Trench, the Trench would pat it on the head and say, “What a cute little hill.”

It is estimated by Lander scientists that vast numbers of unknown marine species are yet to be discovered in the oceans. An understatement. Landers don’t even know they’re not the only kind of humans on the planet.

The average Lander can only hold his/her breath underwater for a few minutes; Mers can remain submerged for a minimum of an hour. How do Mers do this? Various physiological processes are involved, but in lay terms, it boils down to this: just like whales and other marine mammals, Mers hoard oxygen. Mers are the Federal Reserve of oxygen bankers. We also conserve heat and take to cold temps like a, well, a fish to water. Cross-section our subcutaneous fat and you’ll find a layer of cellulite so dense not even a bulimic sorority girl could puke it out of her system. We are insulated, baby. As long as the water’s not frozen, we’re happy and chillin’.

Mer people can’t really exist. It’s genetically impossible, you say? Oh right, Darwin breath. Considering the huge gaps in scientific documentation of humanoid stepping stones in the staircase of homo sapiens, and the sparse theories based on bits and pieces of primate and hominid fossils scattered over thousands of years, for all Landers know they could have ancient cousins who are bunny-eared mutant rabbit people. Alternative theories abound about the possibilities of semi-aquatic homo sapiens (casually described under the pseudo scientific name, home aquaticus.) So why haven’t archaeologists found evidence of a single web-toed aquatic humanoid? Because the evidence is all underwater. Like, duh.

Using compressed air (scuba tanks) Landers can only descend at most 500 feet below the surface (and that’s stretching it). After about a hundred feet most Lander scuba divers go into a rapturous death trance because their blood gases are in deep sea-doo. Mers, on the other flipper, often comfortably explore the waters at depths of a half mile or more, with the record being set by British Mer Sir Phineas Argo Bonswith, who dived down at least 5,000 feet in the icy North Atlantic to retrieve a fumbled champagne bottle on a dare. When he surfaced, triumphant, his luxury ride, the R.M.S. Titantic, had sailed on without him. Sir Bonswith disgustedly swam back to England. In 2003 his daughter, Lady Penelope Bonswith Sirgade, sold the empty champagne bottle on eBay to a Mer collector for 30,000 dollars.

Why can’t Mers fly in airplanes easily — i.e. what’s the deal with Mer altitude sickness? It’s all about handling the pressure, baby. Oh, not the pressure of picking out the perfect Jimmy Wongo slingbacks to match a new summer frock — that’s a given, natch, but air pressure, you know (yawn-from-lack-of-oxygen). Landers get the bends when they dive too deep below sea level. Mers, who could happily survive in a (well-decorated) cave at the ass-bottom of the briny deep, get their own version of the bends when forced into the skies. I mean, if God had meant for Mers to fly he’d have given us webbed armpits instead of toes, right? Anyway, put us in your average commercial jet and we’ll be lying in the aisle moaning. Not just because the airline’s showing yet another Jennifer Lopez movie, but because every joint in our body hurts and we want to upchuck our dinner lobster into the nearest carry-on tote.

Mers who insist on flying do so in specially pressurized jets. Put a Lander on such an aeronautical high-pressure ride and he’d curl up in a gasping, fetal ball. Like my reaction to an Emenem CD. Excruciating.

So what’s the deal with this “psychic illusion” card trick by which Landers only see whatever Mers tell them to see? Look, it’s simple: Landers are gullible. Evidence: they believe celebrities are innocent and politicians are honest. Let Simon Cowell (a Mer on his father’s side), tell them a scrawny nobody who sings like one of the Bee Gees on helium deserves to be the next American Idol and they’ll believe it. Tell them the A tickets at Disney World are worth the price and they’ll believe it. Tell them electronic voting machines can’t possibly jerry-rig elections faster than a Haitian poll officer with a pack of number two pencils and they’ll believe it.