Fiction: New Life

By James Callan

 

She was under the water and I was under her spell, lulled by the seaweed as it swayed in tandem with her rainbow hair. I soaked in her image, careful not to miss all the little things: the stubble growing across the valley of her armpits, the cake of white deodorant embedded in their tiny hairs. I catalogued her bony limbs, and many tattoos, savoring the stretch marks on her hips, those tiger-stripe tallies of adolescence long gone. I discerned that while her eyes were held wide open, they carried in them the sting of discomfort and, beyond that, a longing deeper than the sea.

She floated, she smiled, she twirled. She struck a pose. A playful wink. Was that for me? Sharks glided by, then rays; fanged Ferrari and alien aircraft. She had no fear. This was her domain.

Countered by buoyancy, gravity failed to anchor her to the base of the aquarium. She levitated, weightless as a jellyfish. A tremor of her fins sent clownfish darting through spires of coral, a moray eel retreating into a gloomy, Hadean crevice. She propelled herself above and out of sight. Evidently, it was time to breathe.

“Your abalones are getting cold.” My fiancée followed my gaze to the 210,000 gallon tank that dominated the center of the restaurant. She turned in her chair to observe the performer in her clamshell bikini, her synthetic mermaid tail as she dove back down for more twirls, more red-eyed, strained smiles. “Pretty,” Margo remarked.

“She’s gorgeous.” I concurred.

“I meant the coral, David. And all the colorful fish.”

I forced my attention to the cold abalone. “Obviously.” I prodded what looked like alien dissection with my fork. “That’s some damn fine coral. Pretty little fish, too.”

It was our third consecutive night eating at Neptune’s Banquet, the restaurant attached to The Grand Hibiscus Hotel, where we were staying. My fascination with Mariana, the mermaid performer who swam in the tank that centered the dining arrangement, had not been overlooked by Margot. On the first night, she was as captivated as I. “Look at her among the sharks.” Margot marveled. “Such bravery. Such grace!” But by the second night, Margot’s interest in Mariana had dwindled, while my own enthusiasm had grown. By the third night, Margot’s lack of absorption descended to boredom, sometimes crossing over to critical animosity. “Oh look, here she is again, the Strumpet of the Sea.” Mariana’s stage name was The Star of the Sea, and, for Margot, it hadn’t gone unnoticed: for me, Mariana was the brightest star in all of the sea.

“I hope this rich food doesn’t wreak havoc on my digestion. I’d hate to suffer a bad night’s sleep.”

Margot had to leave the hotel at four in the morning, when, in the darkness of predawn, she’d take a cab to catch an early flight from Maui to Moloka’i. When the sun was barely rising she’d be halfway along her second cab ride to a remote beach on the eastern coast. By the time I’d rise out of bed, leisurely breaking my fast on fresh pineapple juice by the pool, Margot will have already been up for hours, hard at work on another island.

“You’ll sleep like a log.” It was an attempt at optimism, something Margo says I inherently lack. I was trying to be nice. Trying even harder not to stare at Mariana twirling in the water behind my fiancée.

“As long as you don’t wake me when you come in from the pool. As long as you don’t get wasted, like last night.” So much for optimism.

“Wasted is a stretch, Margot.”

“You fell over as you came into the room, David. What do you call that?”

“It was dark. You left your suitcase by the door.”

She rolled her eyes, shoveled mussels into her mouth, eating fast like she does whenever we argue over dinner. I took her hand, tried to reconcile. “Baby, I don’t have night vision. Even when I’m stone sober. Have you seen the scratch on my shin?”

While I was in Hawaii purely for vacation’s sake, to spend some time with Margot, she was here on official terms, acting as the lead seasonal facilitator of a research program for Ocean University. Her focus on the Galápagos tortoise diverted to hawksbill turtles, which led her from a year-long stint in Ecuador to the Solomon Islands and, finally, after nine months in the South Pacific, to Hawaii. This arrangement led to a few changes. It meant Margo and I had a long distant relationship. It meant I did a lot more travelling than I would have had Margot simply remained in San Diego, where we had met, had her time in Ecuador been a one-and-done venture as originally planned.

Not wishing to lose her, fearing I would, I proposed. She said yes. We hadn’t set a date, but we both assumed it would happen in a year, maybe two. That was a little over two years ago now. Still no wedding date, no plans whatsoever. I wasn’t prepared to leave San Diego. Not my apartment. My dog. My life. I’m still not prepared to.

Between our visits back and forth, we saw each other twelve weeks a year. Nine of those weeks were me visiting Margot --18 weeks over two years-- in Ecuador, the Solomons, and now Hawaii, Maui or Moloka’i. It meant we were always playing catch up, trying not to grow apart. It meant I’d learned more about turtles than I cared to. It meant I retained a winter tan.

“You’re here on vacation. I get it. But for my sake, Baby, only one margarita. Okay?”

“Fine,” I agreed. She said nothing about piña coladas, mai tais, or blue Hawaiis.

Margot let her fork drop to the plate. “I can’t eat another bite.” She leaned back in her chair, placed her hands over her belly, sighing deeply. The way she slumped at the table allowed me to see Mariana as she swished her long, iridescent tail. From inside the aquarium, a mermaid approached the glass, engaging with a child on the other side. A girl of eight or nine pressed close with palms and fingers greasy from fish sticks, marring the partition with clouds of white, hot breath escaping from smiles of joy. I smiled too, wishing I could press close. Wishing I could dive in among the sharks and beautiful, mythical monsters.

“I certainly hope we get a better headcount this season, better results.” Margot is studying the hawksbill turtle, its nesting habits and hatchling survival rates. “We’ve lost so many hatchlings to beach settlements with their artificial lights. It’s so sad, David. These tiny, beautiful creatures, already so vulnerable, now have to deal with all our human shit. Beach hotels, street lamps, 24-hour supermarkets with their bright lights. Half the hatchlings turn to the settlements, away from the sea where they need to go fast if they hope to survive. They’re drawn to the artificial lights. They crawl across the pavement, flattened or baked, falling into sewer drains, sometimes going in circles, back and forth, confused, perfect pickings for their predators.”

I’d heard it all before. I’d heard it 100 times if I’d heard it once. No one likes dead baby turtles, it’s true. But honestly, you hear the story more than fifty, sixty times, and you just can’t find the place inside your heart to be sad. “Tragic,” I say. I nod. I wear the right expression. “Just tragic.” And this time I mean it. From behind Margot, Mariana has swum up to the surface, her show at an end.

Margot yawned, looking at her phone to check the time. “I better go to bed,” she announced. “I’m going to head up to our room.”

“Okay, Babe. You get some sleep.”

“Here’s hoping.” She mussed up her hair, let out an exasperated breath. “Don’t be too late.” She got up from her chair and turned to walk away.

“Love you,” I called out across the restaurant.

Margot turned, offering a weak smile. “See you in a few days.”

 

*

 

I thought I’d be bored without Margot around. I thought lounging by the pool and reading whatever celebrity memoir I grabbed at the San Diego airport would be tedious, pointless, banal. I thought gorging on fresh, tropical fruit would grow old, make me feel lazy, and apathetic. But from the moment I woke to an empty bed, a room devoid of one ornery, overworked fiancée, I felt a weight fall off my back. I felt like my vacation had truly begun.

And maybe I would have felt bored, lazy, apathetic, and all the rest. Maybe my days under the sun at The Grand Hibiscus Hotel would have seemed tedious, pointless, banal, had I not one very large distraction to keep my mind fine-tuned with fascination. My book was okay. My fruit was flavorful and full of juice. But what made my leisure time without Margot so serene was knowing that Mariana, the Star of the Sea, was somewhere near, that a woman who walked with human legs by day became a mermaid who swam with a fishtail by night. Her performances moved me, changed me, opened my eyes. Something in me had awoken, stirred by the swish of Mariana’s fins. Something in me had been festering, now having been relieved, removed. In that gap where dissension had grown to the size of a turtle, desire took its place at my core. I thought of the future, its many possibilities, and at once I was both thrilled and terrified.

The first evening Margot and I were apart, I returned to Neptune’s Banquet to dine alone. I arrived early so that I might claim the table closest to the aquarium. Once there, I ordered drinks, coconut margaritas and pineapple screwdrivers. I was tipsy by the time the kitchen opened, by the time my ahi tuna arrived just as the throng of diners filled the other tables. Then, distorted by the tens of thousands of gallons of water and its agitated surface high above, a blue-green tail dipped into the cold aquarium to reveal a female of mythical elegance.

Perhaps it was the piña coladas I had drunk after the margaritas and the screwdrivers, but when Mariana swam close to the edge of the aquarium near to my table I felt emboldened to lean close and touch the glass between us. She turned toward me, sudden but not startled, never breaking her smile. Close up, we locked eyes and, as she swam away, I noticed among her myriad tattoos a hawksbill turtle. A mermaid drifted past, away to share her grace with the other restaurant patrons. I returned to my seat, feeling giddy with more than just drinks in my system.

 

*

 

Later, at the bar, I was busy sobering up. I was halfway through my third soda and lime, and had emptied my little bowl of peanuts several times over. I was about to retreat to the pool, lounge about under the nighttime sky to the sound of the live steel drums and reggae, when a change of plan came with the arrival of an unexpected creature. She was walking on human legs, long and pale and festooned in aquatic-themed tattoos. Her hair was still damp, and while her makeup had been washed away, many of its glittering sparkles stubbornly adhered to the bridge of her nose. She looked tired. She looked drained. She looked more beautiful than any other animal on the planet, on land or in the sea. To my amazement and great pleasure, Mariana sat beside me at the bar.

“Beer,” she hardly called out before the bartender set it down in front of her. I watched, amused and enthralled, as Mariana leaned forward over the bar to sip her PBR. She didn’t use her arms or hands, which were laid out over the polished wood. Instead, she leaned forward, her damp hair falling in ropes of faded dye, bringing her lips to the edge of the brimming suds. I studied her fingers, each one capped in long, acrylic nails alternating in blues and greens. I admired her wrists, wreathed in ink, pink and purple tentacles of octopus or squid. I glanced at her thighs, her human limbs encased in frayed, tight denim, and through the tear in the fabric I saw the face of a manatee and the ocean grasses that it grazed on. Near the floor, I smiled to look upon her ankle, the ocean-bound reptile that I knew more about than I cared to, a hawksbill turtle floating among a branch of coral.

I finished my third soda and lime. Mariana began her beer. I chewed the ice at the bottom of my glass and took it as providence: now was the time to break the ice. “I wouldn’t have guessed beer was a mermaid’s beverage of choice.”

Mariana turned to face me, possibly annoyed, waiting patiently for whatever punchline I left hanging in the air. “Nothing wrong with beer,” I said. “But I was sure you’d order a blue lagoon.” I thought it was clever, but Mariana turned away without a word or smile. The bartender rolled his eyes.

I changed tack. “I like your tattoos,” I told her. “My favorite animal is the hawksbill turtle.”

Mariana looked at me in earnest, as if for the first time. “The hawksbill is your favorite? Not just any sea turtle?”

I tapped into my knowledge of turtles, the facts and stats and tidbits which had been permanently tattooed to my mind. I rummaged through the cluttered annals of my hippocampus, sifting out the information Margot had force-fed to me over the last few years during her many reports of research and fieldwork. By osmosis --no intention of my own-- I had become an authority on reptilian sea life.

“All sea turtles are great,” I declared. “But the hawksbill is easily my favorite. I like the intricacy of its carapace pattern, its two pairs of prefrontal scales and, of course, its pointed beak --hence, hawksbill.”

“You noticed all that on my tattoo?” She wedged her knees up into her body to lift and rest her feet on the bar stool where she sat. She swiveled in her seat to show me, tapping the turtle on her ankle with two fingers, one capped in blue, the other green. I almost reached out to touch, but resisted. Instead, I nodded, looking closely at all the clear signs that marked the image of a hawksbill turtle.

“You sure know your turtles, mister.”

“Name’s David.” I offered Mariana my hand, which she stared at for a while but eventually shook in greeting.

“Mariana,” she told me, allowing her hand to stay in mine for what seemed to me a long and luxurious moment.

“Yes,” I said. “The Star of the Sea.”

She laughed under her breath, withdrawing her hand. She finished her beer.

“Can I get you another drink, Mariana?”

She chuckled again, as if at some private amusement. “Sure, David.” She grinned, squinting at me in a manner I hoped was flirtatious. “I’ll have a blue lagoon.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

 

*

 

I went to bed excited, more than a little worked up. In the dark, in my hotel room, I thought of Mariana. I thought of Margot. I thought I wouldn’t sleep. But I did. Somehow, I slept like a log. I dreamed of turtles and mermaids.

In the morning I felt refreshed, full of new life. I spent the day by the pool with my book, rereading passages over and over again each time I realized minutes had gone by and I hadn’t been reading at all, but daydreaming about mythical women. After what seemed no time at all, the sun began to touch the sea, igniting the clouds with orange flame before dulling to pink, eventually to purple, bruising the heavens and darkening the waves, indicating it was time for another dinner at Neptune’s Banquet, another performance in the tank by the mermaid, Mariana. Somehow, I made it through the day without food, nothing but servings of fruit juice and cocktails. Usually, I eat like a horse, but I guess I was distracted. In any case, I realized then that I was hungry. For food, for dinner, but most of all for Mariana.

I wasn’t early like the night before, so I had to settle for a table in the back. Across Neptune’s Banquet, its many tables and chairs, the mothers, fathers, and children who occupied them, I watched a half human, half fish dance in the water among reef sharks and alien rays.

After her show, I joined Mariana at the bar. She smiled when she saw me, and didn’t resist when I ordered her a blue lagoon and a beer. “Take your pick,” I offered. But she didn’t. She drank both.

We talked about turtles, Hawaii, mermaids, and the business of being one, its allure as well as its low pay. We chatted about movies --her favorites-- The Little Mermaid and Splash. Mariana told me she grew up in the Midwest, far from any ocean, that she hadn’t even seen the sea until she was an adult. “We have lakes in Minnesota,” she explained. “Many are so large that they look like the sea, could be the sea.”

“Except no sharks,” I pointed out.

“No manatees,” she added.

“No hawksbill turtles!” We said together and laughed.

I had already had my dinner, but after three cocktails at the bar I was starting to crave more food. “Have you eaten?” I asked her.

Mariana shook her head.

“Can I offer you dinner?”

She leaned forward, squinted at me, just like she had the night before. I was desperate for her to say yes. I held my breath and waited. “Anything but seafood,” she finally said. “Anywhere but Neptune’s Banquet. Anywhere other than here.”

I consulted my phone, beseeching the wisdom of Google. But Mariana stopped me. “I know a place,” she told me. “It’s close. It’s warm. We can walk.”

Together, we departed Neptune’s Banquet. We left The Grand Hibiscus Hotel. From the moment we crossed the antiseptic, air-conditioned lobby, exiting the building to walk out into the warm, humid, fragrant night, our body language shifted, grew lax and confident. I felt Mariana’s shoulders next to mine. I could smell the sea water in her hair, the menthol on her breath. Leaning into each other, we made our way across the brightly lit parking lot to the dark road beyond. “This way,” she led me, taking my hand. Under the glow of a full moon we walked as if lovers, her blue and green painted fingers interlaced in mine.

The walk was substantial --more than two miles-- and the trek had me hungry again by the end of it. I thoroughly enjoyed the local cuisine served from a food van at the edge of a village that was like another world from the hotel where we had come from. On paper plates, I balanced half a dozen bread buns, which I discovered were stuffed with meat.

“Manapua,” Mariana informed me. “Pork buns.”

“Much better than abalone.” It was true.

“And a fraction of the cost.” Also true.

I ate two, Mariana ate three. We gave the final Manapua to a dog that followed us halfway back to the hotel. We laughed as it took the bun --paper plate and all-- and scampered down the road the way we had come. When we were close enough to see the lights of The Grand Hibiscus Hotel, to hear the steel drums echoing in the distance on the beach, I offered the suggestion of a night swim in the pool.

“It’s not the same.” She complained.

“What’s not the same?”

“Swimming. In a pool. It’s not the same as the sea.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “The pool is safer.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s empty. Soulless water.”

“Water has a soul?”

“Water is full of life. More than that, water is life. The ocean holds the soul of our world.”

Poetic, but likely bullshit. “No swim in the pool then?” I was disappointed.

She shook her head. “Dead water and chemicals.” She pointed to the beach. “But I’d love to go swimming in the sea.”

I looked out at the black water, the crests of white foam breaking upon the wet sand. I imagined sharks, unseen, just beneath the surface, and deep water denizens rising from the depths to sample the nighttime shallows. I thought of my legs, my toes --perfect bait, a tempting snack-- dangling downward for whatever razor-toothed monster chanced to try out human flesh.

“Swimming in the dark? In the ocean? At night?”

“The moon is nearly full. The stars are out.” Mariana pulled me close. “Besides, you’ll be with me. I’m half fish. You’ll be safe by my side.”

My fear of the sea at night was great, but my fixation for Mariana was greater. Tentatively, I agreed. My lust and fascination for the eccentric, mermaid performer was spiked by fear of sharks and dark water. Altogether, I felt more alive than I had in many months, maybe years.

Mariana led me to her car, a well-used Honda Civic that was prodigiously covered in bird shit. She noticed me looking. “It’s the banyan tree.” She pointed upward to its tangled branches that hovered over her vehicle, each gnarled tendril saturated in the same, white and black bird droppings. “It’s a pain in the ass, but I park here for the shade.” She explained that if her car gets too hot, it can damage her tail. She opened the doors and showed me. Sandwiched between several beach towels was a dazzling mermaid tail stretched out the length of the back seats. She grabbed it, as well as some Newport cigarettes from the glove box. She asked me to hold the fish-themed apparatus, which smelled of latex and was surprisingly heavy. Mariana leaned against her car and lit a cigarette. The burden of her tail in my arms, I savored its weight, the feeling of a deep and warm intimacy that I shared with the Star of the Sea.

“Want to see something cool?”

“Always.”

Mariana fumbled around for something in her car. As she leaned in across the seats I diverted my eyes from her backside, blushing amid the night. “Found it!” She exclaimed, but whatever “it” was, she held it behind her back, away from my viewing. “Check this out.” She took a long drag from her Newport cigarette, holding her breath --something she was well practiced at and capable of doing for a long time. She struggled against laughter, giggling out a waft of smoke, needing to start over for another attempt at whatever she had planned to show me.

“Okay, let’s try that again.” This time, she held her breath without laughter, fidgeting with something concealed behind her back. I waited patiently, expectantly. Eventually, Mariana revealed a small bubble wand. She placed the ring of plastic to her lips and blew a bubble, small, then large, as it sailed into the night, opaque and pregnant with smoke. We watched it, smiling. Then, just as the bubble had burst to unleash a cloud of white, smokey vapor, we, ourselves, had burst --burst into a fit of laughter.

I carried her synthetic tail as she led me to the beach, well past the throng of happy hotel guests, beyond the lights of the Grand Hibiscus Hotel and the echo of steel drums and reggae. We stopped at a secluded strand of beach, a patch of sand darker than all before and after it, a locale shaded from the moon by the tropical forest that grew at its edge. Mariana sat on the sand and wiggled into her mermaid tail, which I gave back to her and assisted with pulling up around her legs. She took off her shirt and tossed it to the sand. I studied her bare breasts, the tide pool tattoos that decorated them --starfish, limpets, and sea anemones. It was only when Mariana tugged at my own shirt, the cuffs of my trousers, that I realized I was staring. Like before, I blushed, and smiled under the moonlit shadows. I took off my clothes and tossed them into the night.

We ventured out into the ink-black water, where we waded, grinned, laughed without words or jokes. My heart pounded in fear and in thrill as Mariana took me out deeper, deeper still, and, despite my prior anxieties, I did not think of sharks, of wide-mouthed, ravening beasts emerging from fathoms below.

The stars were out in droves. How many? Who is to say? They glittered high above, and reflected in the water lapping at our chins. Mariana dove, disappeared, and reemerged farther out, or in, or along the length of the beach. And yet, she’d always return, sometimes startling me, rising from the sea, again by my side. At the end of our episode of oceanic bliss --ten minutes, an hour, an eternity, a mere moment measured not in time but in everlasting memory, reimagined, and forever longed for again-- we returned to the shallows where we stood, waist-deep, and drank of each other’s depthless stares.

I thought that we’d kiss. That we may return to my hotel bedroom and become as intimate as two human beings can --or as one man and mermaid might. I thought our evening together would mark the beginning of a new life, a new love. We held hands and pressed close. Then we separated, and returned to the beach.

Wet and cold, conflicted but invigorated, I searched for our clothes. Behind me, etched in starlight, Mariana wiggled out of her tail. I found her shirt, then my own, and down the beach, my trousers, too. Then, among the sand, there was something else…Many shapes, small and dark. Behind me, I saw that Mariana had already noticed, engrossed in the scene that we had inadvertently become a part of.

Under a swollen moon and the fathomless cosmos, baby turtles erupted from the sand, crawling past my ankles into the silver-sequinned sea. Hawksbill turtles. Hundreds of them, each with a glimmer of stars reflecting off their tiny, wet shells. They were all around me. They were everywhere. A profusion of reptiles. So much new life.

 

 

 

 

 

JamesCallan is a writer from Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere.