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

stood there in silence till Chip felt able to speak again. A few feet away Steve and Janeane were not dissimilarly clenched. Among the squash-sized flowers the four of us made up two couple-units, each standing close.

“What I was saying,” he said after a minute. “So. The slashers usually start with a beautiful, slutty woman getting the ax. Or cleaver. Butcher’s knife. Sword. Stiletto. Anyway, blade. There has to be a slice, a gouge, or a full-on carving. Often the sacrificial non-virgin is wearing white, right? She’s really young, too, maybe a teenager even. That isn’t anything like Nancy.”

I thought of the eyebrows and I agreed; if this was a slasher movie, it was the weakest possible knockoff. Like a Mickey Mouse doll fashioned of dirty straw in someplace like Guangdong.

The box office would be a bust.

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

We heard the whir of a golf cart and shuffled out of the shadows to greet it.

THE NEXT TIME we saw Riley was at breakfast.

Only he wasn’t Riley, or not exactly the Riley with whom we’d briefly had an acquaintance. He was the “after” photo in a before-and-after pair. He carried himself with more of a swagger; his hair seemed blonder. That he was actually blonder seemed pretty unlikely—a dye job performed so quickly and out of the blue—yet it was true: he seemed blonder. Even Chip noticed it.

More to the point, he’d turned against us. That’s the best way I can put it.

When Chip saw him and dashed over to his table we’d been loading up at the buffet, so Chip was hefting a huge plate of waffles, strawberries and whipped cream, scrambled-egg mounds, bacon, and green and orange melon balls that threatened to fall off and roll willy-nilly. Chip, with his happy, golden-retriever attitude, waxed joyful that Riley was in one piece, holding his heaping plate awkwardly all the while as he stood at Riley’s solo table with the videographer looking up at him impatiently.

But instead of thanking Chip for his concern, Riley brushed off Chip’s worry like it was girlish. He came off superior and breezy, with a grin from shampoo commercials.

I was standing a few feet away, holding a table open for Chip and me in the busy all-you-can-eat buffet scenario, so I didn’t hear all that Riley said. I just saw what I saw.

“Huh,” said Chip, coming over to me and sitting down.

His golden-retriever light was dimmed.

“That guy’s kind of douchey,” I said. “Isn’t he.”

“He said that Nancy drowned and I should just get over it,” said Chip, staring down at his cooling plate of buffet bounty.

I waited a second until I was sure: Chip had a tear in his eye—one at least, possibly two. I took his hand. “You know what, Chip?” I asked gently. “Someone just bought him off. That’s what it is.”

Chip met my eyes, touched his teary one with the back of a hand, then said gruffly, “Bought him—?”

“I’m in the business world, remember? I hear when money talks. Yesterday he was average or below, finance-wise—in terms of people who can afford to take Caribbean vacations in the first place, that is. But today he’s coasting. Today he feels rich. I can tell by looking at him.”

“His hair does seem yellower,” Chip mused, slowly returning to his baseline mood.

“And how come he’s here? He’s not a hotel guest.”

“He said he’s taking a meeting.”

Riley got up and strolled out then, leaving only a coffee cup behind. Wherever he was taking a meeting, it wasn’t in the buffet zone.

WE WENT DOWN to the shore later to forget our troubles, swim and snorkel off some buffet calories; Steve came with us, dressed in a cruel Speedo. We saw it when he shucked his oversize Pink Freud T-shirt. Janeane was recuperating in their cabana: she was much better, he said, he’d dosed her with sedatives the night before and at sunrise they’d done yoga and meditation.

It was while we were stretched out on some cotton-padded lounge chairs between snorkels—Chip scrolling and tapping, Steve touching his toes and grunting, me reading a dog-eared paperback from the resort’s library of exuberantly stupid books—that I noticed the crowds. Down the beach at the marina, out on the docks, there was a flurry of activity. There were more boats than usual; there was more movement.

“Huh,” said Chip, frowning down at his phone. “People are unsubscribing from my list! The fishermen, the guy with the foot fetish, a bunch of them . . . they’re leaving the Listserv, sending me messages saying they want to be taken off. It was down to eleven when we got up. And now it’s down to six!”

I studied Chip’s bemused face; I swiveled and studied the scene at the marina, its far-off hustle and bustle.

“Let’s take a walk,” I said. “I need to stretch my legs. Shut off your phone for fifteen minutes, Chip, won’t you? Try to relax. Think of this as our honeymoon.”

We ambled along the sand toward the marina, me acting casual and leisurely on purpose, Chip trying to pretend he wasn’t hurt by the defection of his Listserv and speculating, to distract himself from those feelings, about Nancy’s family and what they had or had not been told. Steve, a relentless exerciser whose physique completely, utterly failed to reflect this apparent fitness obsession, was executing, as we walked, some arm-and-chest movements that resembled a slow chicken dance.

“We have to keep after the resort management,” said Chip. “At any time there could be brand-new information.”

“Mmm,” said Steve noncommittally.

“Mmm what?” asked Chip.

A pelican flapped slowly along the shore beside us and I felt a stir of fondness for the foolish-looking yet steadily graceful creature. I thought about how it must be inside the pelican’s throat pouch, the stench of bile and rotting fish. Nameless debris.

Steve and the pelican, each with their own flapping, made a nice parallel/contrast.

“I’m just not sure we’ll be told more than we know now,” said Steve. “That’s my feeling.”

“But that’s not