Mermaids in Paradise: A Novel (8 page)

The golf cart ascended a steep paved path and then halted in front of a scenic dwelling with wraparound covered porches and resplendent greenery.

“Your cabin, sir,” said the servile individual to Chip.

The manservant addressed his master, not me; he respected the hierarchy, the very reason for his job. Was there a difference between truly being servile and just pretending to be? I asked myself. Servility was the pretense of being a servant, wasn’t it, I answered me, but at the same time, you actually were a servant. The damn thing was the pretense
of itself
.

I’d make a note of that conundrum, I’d bring it up to Chip
when he was bored. There was the problem of service and servility, and then the problem of human cargo. Some people were paid to act servile, others paid out to be human cargo, the burden borne by the payee. Chip and I had paid for the privilege of others’ service; therefore, on the back of a golf cart, we sat and jiggled inertly.

I thought of where the fat was, in this world, and particularly in our home country. In fact the fat was mostly settled on the poor people, the poor and the working class. The poor and the working class jiggle inertly, I thought, more than the middle-class people like Chip and me. We jiggle inertly on vacation, though neither Chip nor I is per se fat—still, what fat we
do
have jiggles, much as inanimate cargo shifts. In short we have some pretty inanimate qualities. In the past, the fat of the human world settled on kings, queens and a few wealthy merchants. But they didn’t have fast food back then. Fast food turned the fat balance upside down, at least in our country. In our country the rich and middle class are thin now and the working poor jiggle inertly—or no. The poor jiggle, but not inertly like the rich. The poor jiggle
overtly
.

Plus also there’s the fact that, among the tragically, morbidly obese in our nation, especially the white people, many are also religious hysterics. There seems to be a link, statistically, between the obesity epidemic and the religious hysterics, morbid obesity and extreme right-wing politics, and then again between those politics and stupidity, or at least “low educational achievement.” What’s more, many of these aspects are also linked to what Chip liked to call Middle America. What can the meaning of this dark pattern be?

I didn’t pretend to understand it—whether the hysteria was caused by the fatness or vice versa was a mystery to me.

This is your honeymoon, I told myself. Try not to think of the fat tragedy. Try not to think of the thin tragedy either, don’t think of the starving millions or the young middle-class girls with self-loathing. Try not to think of tragedy at all, the vile bookends of the fat/thin tragedy. Don’t let it nestle in your mind there, as it tends to, curled cozy like a squirrel. When you go home, then you can think of tragedy. Plenty of time for that.

No sooner had we settled ourselves in the beautiful rooms—where breezes wafted from huge French doors and there were enormous ceiling fans, on top of the natural seaside air currents, fashioned handily of picturesque woody fronds—than another servile professional entered. This one was female, bearing a tray upon which stood frozen drinks and a spray of gargantuan flowers. She walked sinuously in from the terrace, where the reeds of our palapa rustled in the wind, and Chip and I gazed at her like she was Eve in the Garden of Eden. Not in the sense of being tempted by the snake and bringing about the fall of man—no. More in the sense of embodying a primordial womanly grace, with her darkish, gleaming complexion and earthen-toned sarong. With her high cheekbones, bright eyes and regal bearing, she wore the servility lightly, as though it weighed nothing.

I wouldn’t blame Chip, I thought, I wouldn’t blame him at all.

But Chip had eyes mostly for me, as soon as he hefted his long-stemmed, fruit-adorned cocktail glass, trying not to flinch at its excessive femininity, and thanked the Ur-woman.

It wasn’t that I felt like less of a woman, next to her; more, less of a human. She was the one who bore the burden, I was the one who jiggled inertly, and the burden looked better on her than the jiggle did on me.

“Were we supposed to tip?” Chip asked after she left.

“Yes,” I said, though it hadn’t occurred to me before. “Yes! We have to tip! And the other guy, too. We just
insulted
them, Chip, by not tipping. It’s like we slapped that beautiful woman right across the face.”

We resolved to tip twice as hard next time we saw her—unless she was replaced by another majestic female being paid to act servile, which we hoped she wouldn’t be. We prided ourselves on loyalty.

I wanted to ask Chip if he thought the fact that the whole world doesn’t look like a beautiful resort was just a question of money—grinding poverty vs. repugnantly excessive wealth. Was it just money, or was money not really the main problem? For instance, I often hear it said that people don’t starve because there’s not enough food in the world, they starve because the food’s not always in the right places. Is it the same way with beauty? Is there, in fact, plenty to go around?

But we got involved in other actions, it was our honeymoon, after all, not some kind of policy debate forum, it was high time for fornication, so we got that out of the way.

Or no, it wasn’t fornication anymore, I realized—we were married. Disappointing.

I HADN’T THOUGHT
of people, when I thought of our tropical-resort honeymoon, and the initial pure, scenic expanse of beach sands had encouraged me to continue not thinking of them. But as it turned out there
were
some other people at the resort. And wherever there are people, Chip will talk to them.

We’re not the same, in that regard. Chip possesses a wealth of interest in his fellow man, harbors a fascination with his own species, whereas I tend to see the prospect of small talk and tedium. It’s not that I don’t like people overall; I just like to personally
select
the ones I spend time with. I favor screening techniques that don’t involve random proximity.

Chip’s more of an equal opportunity converser.

Even before the first night rolled around—roaming the grounds as I napped and showered—he’d made friends with no fewer than five people including two couples: a same-sex and a homely. He sketched them out for me: they were two well-dressed men from S.F., broadcasting an artsy quality, one in home furnishings and the other in the
independent film industry
; a spinster biologist specializing in reef fish; and a quiet, nerdly heterosexual duo celebrating some anniversary, whom Chip took under his wing no doubt because they were, as he put it, “from the Heartland.”

“What’s the Heartland, Chip?” I asked him right off, because the moniker has always puzzled me.

“The place in the truck and beer commercials,” said Chip promptly. “Where they like New Country, isn’t it? Those guys that sing about
proud to be an American, where at least we know we’re free
?”

“It’s the
at least
part that’s genius,” I said.

“It’s kinda defensive,” agreed Chip.

“But anyway, I don’t think that’s the definition,” I demurred. “I mean some people in New Hampshire like New Country too. They like it a lot, I bet.”

“Yeah, huh,” said Chip. “I bet they do.”

“But New Hampshire’s not the Heartland, is it?”

“That’s true,” said Chip. “Or—I don’t know. Can you have a Heartland that’s kind of spread out, maybe?”

“Maybe the Heartland is spread out,” I mused dreamily.

“Sweetie, you’ll
like
talking to them. You’ll have fun. They’re really interesting.”

“I doubt that, Chip,” I said. “Look, I know how much you’ve dreamed of making friends with the natives of the Heartland—discovering what makes them tick. I know that about you. But are you sure you’d get an accurate
sense
of them in this setting? Wouldn’t it be better on their home turf, in a way? Like, their natural habitat?”

“But we never go there,” he objected, beating me on a technicality.

“It’s such an artificial situation,” I persisted. “I mean, think of this resort as kind of a zoo. Consider the animals in zoos that stalk and pace, wishing to sink their teeth into a passing five-year-old’s carotid artery—or the others who, more the truth-in-advertising types, throw their own feces against the glass. I mean can we really
know
those animals, when we see them in prison like that? No, right? And isn’t all this”—I raised my hands to indicate the splendid hotel—“kind of the same,
without the electrocuting fences and the misery? I just wonder if, meeting these people as tourists so far, far away from where they
evolved
, you’re coming anywhere
close
to getting the real Heartland experience.”

When Heartland people vacation in the coastal cities, we’re certainly zoo animals to them, I was thinking. Despite the fact that it’s our native habitat, they ogle us as though we’re exhibits. Those Heartland tourists strap on their fanny packs like ammo belts. I’ve seen them trundling along the Walk of Fame, admiring the movie stars’ names on those pink terrazzo stars with their faces wreathed in smiles, then looking up and, on beholding average citizens, shutting those faces like barn doors.

“It’s second-best, I totally see your point. But it’s only dinner, babe,” said Chip, and put a strong, smooth arm around me, nestling me in. He smelled his best smell. I don’t know how he does it—must be a mixture of soap and pheromones.

I have my way of ending arguments, and Chip has his.

So there we were, our first evening in the newlywed utopia, fresh from a dip in the warm, aquamarine ocean, sitting around a table with five strangers. I have to admit, the setting had that odd combination of the picturesque and the asinine you sometimes see in vacationland: the restaurant was built over the water, not
jutting
over it but actually on top. It had platforms like little islands, allowing groups of diners to float in the bay as they ate. Chip and the Bay Arean designer talked about the engineering that must have been required to build this marvel of tourist novelty.

Meanwhile the “dining islands,” as the restaurant called
them, made me feel seasick, bobbing around like that. I tried to believe in the romance of it all, and maybe I would have been able to if I’d been alone with Chip, candlelight shimmering over the gently lapping water of the cove as we drifted beneath the lavender sunset. But with all seven of us sitting there raising our forks to our faces (the Middle Americans, the film industry/decorators and the parrotfish expert) we seemed more like a flotilla of pigs. I noticed plenty of the other islands
were
tables for two. And here we were with our table for many, long enough for the Last Supper, practically. We were the biggest floater in the pond.

The dining islands were mysterious, seeming to move around freely, yet whenever a waiter wished to serve us, bringing us near the home port to receive heaping platters of seafood, the ocean’s marvelous bounty deep-fried into oblivion. Then away we floated again, to gaze down, whenever we might wish, at a sea slug glistening on the sandy bottom.

It struck me I should take a trip to the restroom, which thankfully had been built on solid ground, to rid myself of queasiness for a bit. So I made my excuses and stepped off the island onto one of the cunning raised pathways of white, broken shells, smoothed into softness by the tide, which ran like tendrils into the small bay where we floated. I struck out for the ladies’ room like I was fleeing a beheading, concentrating on not turning an ankle as I picked my way over the shells on my platform mules.

I’d already drunk some wine and felt the pleasant, half-drunk turmoil of time passing, that rush of buzzed debasement/elevation
that’s so perfect and delicate a balance. As I wound my way through the restaurant’s more landlocked tables I felt that swift bittersweet isolation, weightless and delighted—here I am, I thought, like all the others before and after me, my brother and sister drunkards, I salute you up and down the generations, from ancient Rome unto the palace of the future—those decayed palaces, those cities overgrown with the weeds and monuments sunk beneath the waves. I floated through my fellow humans in their multitudes—how sweetly, how thinly the blood ran in my veins!

Inside was where the families with children or elderly members dined—the ones who feared some of their number might topple off the islands if they ventured out there, topple and quickly drown. I envied them their nausea-free location, as my buzz faded slightly. Along the corridor to the restrooms I passed an over-the-hill-looking man wearing bulky suede sandals on his hairy white feet, and my heart went out to him—some people have no sense of anything. That was the thought that came to me.

He stood rocking back onto his heels, his hands linked idly behind his back, gazing at a map on the wall; I saw it was one of those cutesy 3D maps they print for tourists, showing poorly drawn pictures of buildings with banners like
SUSIE’S SANDWICH SHOP
written on them. Sweat stains were visible beneath his arms on the unfortunate T-shirt he sported, which bore on its wrinkled back the legend
Freudian Slip: When You Mean One Thing and Say Your Mother
.