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

was obviously our death, entombing us prematurely. But that’s not all, she said, there’s more! The passive, consumer posture of fatness was a perfect embodiment of our “object status,” I think that’s what she mumbled out, though I may have got it wrong.

Our life of abundance, our tragic lack of agency, our infinite foregone conclusion of abject uselessness—our fat was a death that went beyond death, Gina orated (as nearby men, with some belligerence, began to stare).

Fleetingly angry because the Journey song was not available, she settled for “Urgent.” A drunk guy stumbled over to us and asked Gina to give him some sugar, please. She said Fuck off and he asked if her sister was less of a bitch than she was (leering at me).

I tried to cheer myself up, after these unpleasant ruminations, by watching Chip’s lean, muscled ass as he jogged effortlessly alongside (Janeane did too, I noticed). It was a solemn time, an anxious time, but we still had eyes and there was still Chip’s ass, running. His beige cotton slacks showed it off—the grounds of Paradise were dark by then, of course, but the golf cart had headlights and there were footlights at intervals along the path.

When I turned to Janeane to talk to her, after a minute, she moved her eyes away in a small, shifty motion, like they’d alighted on my husband’s ass purely by chance, and purely by chance were moving off that ass again.

“We’re going into a rainforest,” she announced. It was a couple of scraggly bushes. “Look! Thick vegetation, big, waxy leaves, giant, bulging flowers like penises, gonads, flowers are sex organs, you know that, right?” Her voice was rising in pitch and volume. “In the tropics they’re huge—what does that mean? They threaten you! Tropical flowers are rapists! It’s a jungle! Giant rapist flowers!”

“Are you worried about, uh . . .”

I trailed off. I didn’t know where to start.

“. . . flowers?” I struggled on. “Hey. Don’t worry about them. You know—no legs. They can’t run after you. To get raped by a flower you’d have to, like, put yourself on it. But by accident. But then how could—no. Plants can’t be rapists, I don’t think.”

I was getting a little obscure, a little nitpicking, thinking about it. The day had been bad—man. So bad. I felt delirious.

But it didn’t matter. Janeane had already moved on.

“She was murdered. I know it!” she squeaked. “I’m sure she was murdered. Alone in her bathroom. Naked! In the tub! He burst in and he murdered her. He probably had a knife! Or gun! He wanted to shoot her face off! That poor, poor, poor woman. So full of life! Like we are now! Alive!”

I nodded. Nancy had been alive.

“The murderer could still be nearby. Concealed. He could be lurking in the bushes!”

By this time she was rubbing her hands together anxiously—wringing them, I guess you could call it. But the cart was already slowing down; we’d passed through the bushes and come out into a small parking lot, at the end of which was a dome-shaped building, gleaming gray. The cart stopped.

Chip was instantly pleased by the dome. He pulled up short. He hadn’t broken a sweat, and he hadn’t had to listen to Janeane, either.

“Deb, we should get a dome home,” he enthused.

I sprang out of the cart, leaving phobic Janeane behind; I wasn’t equipped to comfort her. There were lights shining out from the dome’s windows onto the parking lot’s pavement, making it look blackly wet. Light fell on the clumps of red flowers Janeane had talked about (admittedly they were large, roughly the size and shape of butternut squashes). Chip and I passed them, with Steve and Janeane lagging, and went through the door into a room with yellowing botanical drawings on the walls. It had to be some kind of disused educational facility. There was a small fleet of schoolroom desks near the back of the dome-shaped room, where the ceiling was low—wood, ink-stained children’s desks with chairs attached to them.

Some of the other members of our expedition were already sitting, legs awkwardly folded beneath the miniature desks. Some of them stood; some grazed along a foldout table against the wall. It bore a vat of coffee, a stack of plastic cups, and a couple of plates of cookies. I don’t know what I’d expected—a PowerPoint? Wreaths? There was a nondescript woman with a plastic name tag pinned to her lapel, wearing a long, Mormonish skirt and standing near the front of the room with her hands clasped.

“The gang’s mostly here,” said Chip. “Though I don’t see Riley the videographer. Still AWOL, I guess.”

“I hope he’s OK,” I said uncertainly.

“. . . glad you could make it tonight,” the Mormonish woman was saying. We’d already missed part of her spiel.

“. . . doesn’t feel like a safe space!” Janeane stage-whispered to Steve, nearly into our ears. She seemed to be gearing up to a panic attack. “How many bars does your cell have? Steve? Steve! How many bars?”

“We at Paradise Bay want to be sure that you, both our guests and members of our larger community, feel supported in this time of bereavement,” said the Mormonish woman.

It was her skirt, really, that made her a Mormon, an ankle-length floral thing a Mormon wife might wear; I couldn’t make out her name tag from where I stood.

“Here’s the thing,” said the old Navy SEAL, whose broad back I was looking at since he’d sat down in the front row. “We’re not buying the bathtub story.”

“Sir, my personal area is guest relations and community outreach,” said the Mormon. “Anything legal or technical—of course, you’d have to take that up with the police.”

“Don’t kid a kidder,” said the old salt. “I’ve been around the block. And back.”

“I’m sure you have!”

“I live here,” he went on. “The island cops? You’re joking, right? Those kids only take the job so they can dress up in the outfits. Not a man jack among them with half