Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet (debian ebook reader .txt) 📕

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