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

At that point I considered making a scene, even yelling/screaming. But that’s where my personality got in the way, my personality that, especially as I got older, I hadn’t worried about so much. I’m not a screamer, never have been, and it turned out this situation was no exception to the rule. The idea of screaming seemed foolish. Here we were in a Caribbean resort. What was the worst that could happen? Then I caught sight of Nancy’s cabana and thought of her bathtub, but still the scream stuck in my throat.

So I didn’t do anything except call out Steve’s name a couple times, then Miyoko’s—probably not loud enough to be heard from inside. And for once there was no one around, not even a single golf cart transporting its inert, jiggling cargo.

We went through a side door into the main building, the building with the lobby and most of the restaurants, and then we were in a service elevator, and then a narrow corridor, and then we were in a room that, if it was the famed Conference Room B, was certainly a small one. It’d be your two-, your three-person conferences that took place in that baby.

There was barely room for the man-huddle; they pressed me in, then hovered at the threshold. The room had a table with two chairs, a TV, another door and one window—a picture window overlooking the beach and the sea.

A picture window that, of course, didn’t open.

At the door of the room they looked around at each other for a second, and then, abruptly, without saying a single thing, the one who’d stood at the front leaned out and just grabbed Chip’s tablet, which I was still holding. Just like that he took it from me. And then every one of them left. They sluiced out the door fast as liquid.

I was alone.

I stood there for a second, kind of in disbelief, and then stepped toward the door they’d sluiced through and rattled the knob hopelessly. Locked, of course. I crossed the room and opened the other door; there was a toilet, a sink and a pink plug-in air freshener shaped like a butterfly.

I walked back to the middle of the room—we’re talking maybe a twelve-foot room, so it wasn’t far—and stared out the picture window. I was in a bad situation, and really the person I had to blame it on was me, me and my personality, which, as a prisoner with nothing at all to do, I was now free to worry about. Who the hell wouldn’t scream, being kidnapped like that? I’d been abducted in broad daylight and I hadn’t even put up a fight. There was something wrong with me, and now I had plenty of time to ponder that. For all I knew Steve, Miyoko, and Rick were also in rooms like this, just stuck in idiotic rooms, like me. For all I knew it was the same with Chip, Thompson, and Ronnie. I hoped that wasn’t the case. I hoped, for the mermaids’ sake, that they had better personalities.

I blamed myself, standing there in my bikini and skirt, utterly powerless. Then I remembered something. I touched my loose, flowing sarong and felt a hard thing against my fingers and my bare leg. I said the word yes.

I glanced around me to see if there was a camera in evidence, a little electronic eye. Could I be sure? I investigated the TV. I looked at the electrical outlets. I even looked under the table, where a camera would be no use. There was one floor lamp, and I checked that. I stood on a chair and touched the sides of the fluorescent light fixture. But I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure. These days, who knew how small and camouflaged a camera could be? So I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. There were no cameras there, unless they’d made cameras completely invisible, with their technology.

I slid my hand down into my pocket, standing there next to the toilet, and I took out my phone. There it was. They hadn’t seen I had pockets. They hadn’t seen that at all. I smiled. My kidnappers were even less competent than I was.

I felt slightly better about my personality—compared to theirs, anyway. I turned it on. Three bars.

I said the word again, somewhat triumphantly. Yes.

THE FIRST THING I texted Chip was an SOS. I let him know where I was, locked in a room with a picture window. I told him the elevator had taken us to Floor 3; I told him I didn’t fear bodily harm, though maybe I should. But I didn’t want to stop the mermaids from being saved, with my stupid predicament. On the other hand, I texted, I was locked up against my will.

It took him a few minutes to text back. During that time, I found out later, he was visibly upset. But then he gathered his wits and texted me back, asking what door we’d come through and could I take a picture out the picture window, just in case it helped them to locate me.

So Chip wasn’t also locked in a room, and that encouraged me. I emerged from the bathroom, throwing caution to the winds; I snapped said photo with my phone and sent it off.

I sent a text describing the path we’d walked along, the part of the building we’d come into. I wondered in passing how humankind had existed before the advent of cell phones—my own life, before cell phones, was often a featureless blur. I sent off a picture of the door, too, although I didn’t think it’d be particularly useful. From the outside it probably looked like every other door along that narrow corridor. Next I considered whether the men, watching me via a camera I hadn’t found, would come back in and try to grab my phone from