The Mermaid's Secret (18 page)

I'll have to cover up. People will notice. Matthew will notice.

Hell, I
want
him to.

I reach into a drawer and pull out a faded flannel, roll up the sleeves, button the bottom two buttons. It's going to be hard to hide these curves. Hopefully plaid will do the trick. I throw on some flips-flops and I'm tomboy-ready.

My hair is coarse with the salt water, and I twist it into a loose bun. I add some shimmery lip gloss and head out.

The Schooner Wharf Bar is at the far end of the Galleon Marina, and I still don't have my vision back when I leave the apartment and head down to the harbor. My legs are a little wobbly. I put my head down and focus on the sidewalk, trying not to trip. As I cross Spinnaker Street in the middle of the late dinner rush, I can feel eyes on me. I'm hyperaware of the new curves of my body swaying as I walk, even though, inside, I still feel like the skinny tomboy I've always been.

When I get to the Schooner Wharf, I slouch my shoulders to hide what's underneath and walk in.

The place is packed. A Jimmy Buffett cover band plays on the tiny stage outside on the deck, where the masts of tall ships stand as tall as giant pine trees. Laughter rings out from the tables of people. The smell of warm bodies and spaghetti sauce fills the air. I don't see Sammy anywhere. I don't see much of anything right now, other than vague shapes and shimmering bottles of alcohol behind the bar.

I walk around, squinting at everyone, looking for familiar faces, feeling lost and self-conscious. A fish out of water.

I fumble my way around the perimeter of the deck, hoping Sammy or Matthew, or even Tony, will find me, but no one calls after me. It's too crowded. People are packed in as tight as the pollock at the edge of the cliff. As I head back into the main bar, I feel a pulsing down my sides, like the vibrations of a shark.

I bump into someone, or rather, someone bumps into me. Strong hands clasp both my arms in a way that's too familiar. At first I think it must be one of the Slack Tide guys—Ian, Stefan, Tony. The hands linger. Hands like bear claws.

“Sorry about that,” says the man who belongs to the hands. It's a voice I don't know.

His face is blurry. I can tell that he's tall and built like a lumberjack. Older. In his forties, at least. He's got a beard and a red ball cap, and his breath reeks of cigarettes.

“Don't worry about it,” I say, and step to the side so he can pass, but his hands stay. They slide down my arms to my wrists.

I give him the best back-off-motherfucker expression I can manage, although I don't know how effective it is, since I can't even be sure that I'm looking him in the eye.

“Why in such a rush?” the man says.

I shake his hands away.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he says.

“Buzz off.”

He laughs. “Aren't you a little spitfire?”

I turn my back to the lumberjack and step away from him into the anonymous crowd. My eyes slowly adjust.
Where are you, Sammy?
Through all the chatter and music, I find my answer. That laugh—an explosion of gasps and whoops that ends in a snorting fit—that only Sammy can get away with. I follow it to the bar.

Sammy hugs me. “How come I've never noticed how cute Matthew is before?” she whispers, and I can tell she's been drinking. “And he's sweet, too. Did you know he was so sweet?”

I look around the bar, but I don't spot him. Maybe he already left. “He is sweet,” I say.

“Why doesn't
he
have a girlfriend?” she says. “You should get all over that. I mean, he's
hot
. And he's actually
nice
. What are you
waiting
for?”

“Well, he's a fisherman and I'm a fish, for starters,” I whisper.

“So?”

Spencer walks up to us before I have a chance to explain any more of my hang-ups.

“You been working out, Jess?” Spencer asks.

Ugh. I knew I should have covered up.

“Your legs are … really…”

“What?” Sammy says, getting in his face. “Why are you noticing my best friend's legs?”

“They're really strong,” Spencer says, eyes glued to my cutoffs. “I mean big. Bigger than normal. Like a dude's.”

“Nice save, Spencer,” I pat him on the back.

He plants a kiss on Sammy. She kisses back aggressively. Then they start making out, right in the middle of the bar, and I'm just standing next to them like a big dope.

“I guess that means more spaghetti for us,” Matthew says brightly, sneaking up beside me.

“I think I lost my appetite,” I say.

“Not into public displays of affection?”

“Public display of disgustingness is more like it.”

He smiles and leans his back against the bar so our arms touch. Standing next to me, broad-shouldered and sun-kissed, he looks like a sea god. Rugged. Tough. Like someone who could survive in the ocean. How
have
I ignored his hotness all these years?

“How was your penance aboard the
Mack King
?” Matthew nudges me.

Fisherman by morning, fish by afternoon.

“Mackerel fishing isn't exactly glamorous,” I say.

“Neither is watching Tony and Sal fight over who's on chum duty.”

I can feel the heat of his skin against mine. “Ben drives to the same spot every day.”

“Wolf Rocks?”

“Yup.”

“Mackerel are pretty consistent out there.”

“You're a better captain,” I say. “You understand the fish.”

He laughs. In the dim light of the bar, my eyes adjust. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar and do a double take. My hair is wild, my eyes seem lit from within. The light overhead accentuates my cheekbones and the strong lines of my jaw. Even my skin sparkles, with remnants of salt.

I look like my mother in pictures I've seen of her when she was young.

“At least I'll have you back on my boat in a couple days,” Matthew says. He's so close I can smell soap on his skin. I sweep a hand down my thigh.

“How about a drink?” he says. “Dark 'n Stormy, right?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

The bartender is an older woman, tattoos up her arms, wispy bangs around her face.

My scalp itches and I scratch it, only to find, tousled within the gnarled dreadlocks of hair, a hermit crab. I steal a quick look at Matthew, but he's trying to get the bartender's attention and doesn't notice. I close my hand around the crab and stick it in my pocket. Poor little thing. I'll release it later, where it can find its way back to the sea.

While Matthew hails the bartender, a burst of tremors travels down my spine. I look up. The lumberjack in the red ball cap is staring at me from a high-top table across the bar.
Predator,
the vibrations are telling me.

Leave me alone.
The words vibrate out of me.

But he's only human and can't hear them. He continues to stare at me.

“To the end of your exile,” Matthew says.

“I'll drink to that.”

We clink glasses.

He asks about the spaghetti, since he's never been to spaghetti night at the Schooner Wharf.

I have to lean in close to hear him, so close I can smell beyond the soap on his skin, deep down to his chemical makeup. I can smell his desire.

“It's food and it's cheap. And if you don't get here by eight, it's gone.”

“Sounds impossible to resist,” he says.

He says something about the fishing this season. It's good; it's bad. I can't pay attention because now the vibrations from the lumberjack are jolting me to attention. I look at him, my vision sharp now. He smiles crookedly and tips his grungy hat my way, as if he might stand a chance. There's a buzzing in my ears. And the Jimmy Buffett music, and the laughter of strangers all around.

“Jess?”

“Yeah?”

Matthew looks at me expectantly.

“Did you say something?” My senses are too fired up. The sounds are overwhelming—shoes shuffling sand on the floor, the fizz of a beer tap, the drainage pipe dripping into the marina, the clanging of rigging on sailboats.

“I was wondering if you have plans this weekend?” Matthew asks.

I try to focus on his words, on his delicious smell, on the notes of desire in the air. But too many other smells creep in. Rancid trash in the street, mosquitoes burning into lightbulbs, spaghetti sauce, seaweed, and seawater, and lust.

I feel my heart beating and the bass thumping and the air growing thick and humid.

Suddenly Spencer appears. “Jay Delgado says he saw you surfing Tutatquin Point today. I told him he must have been high.”

Sammy's right behind him. “Jess can surf wherever she damn well pleases. She's better in the water than all you guys.” A drunk finger points indiscriminately around. “You have no idea what she can do.”

“Sammy, please,” I whisper.

“Jay swears you caught a barrel there,” Spencer says.

Sammy, emboldened with Corona, keeps going. “Jess is part fish. She lives in the water. Bet ya didn't know that.” She jabs a finger into Matthew's chest with each word.

“No one can surf Tutatquin,” I say. “That would be suicide.”

“Yeah,” Spencer says. “That's what I told him. ‘No way, bro,' I said. I mean,
I
wouldn't even be able to surf there.”

Sammy's about to do battle with Spencer and his ego, but her attention is snatched away by Spencer's wandering eye when a pretty blonde from the catamaran crews walks by. Sammy, on the verge of spilling my secret along with her drink, grabs her boyfriend by the arm.

“Whoa,” Spencer says. “I think it's time to get you home.”

“In a minute. I want to dance,” Sammy says, shimmying her way to the dance floor.

I turn back to Matthew. I feel the heat of his skin. I feel desire.

And I smell the blood of the haddock from the fillet table on the dock, and a diesel engine, zinc and steel. I smell fudge from the shop down the road, garlic frying at a nearby restaurant, beer on the floor.

There's too much stimulation. I'm like a caged animal. I need to get out of here.

But first … I put my drink down and look Matthew in the eyes. “Will you go out to dinner with me?” I ask. It just comes out fully formed. I can't take it back.

Matthew laughs. “Well, if you insist.”

“Good.” My heart is beating like a jackhammer.

“A real date,” he says. “Just the two of us. Someplace a little quieter than this. How about Saturday?”

“Yes.” I smile, but my ears are thumping and my senses are on overdrive and I need air.

“I'll pick you up at seven o'clock.”

I smile and nod. “I need to go.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

“Let me take you home.”

I press a hand against his chest. “No. I live right down the street. I'm really, really tired. Lots of surfing this week. I'll see you tomorrow at work.”

*   *   *

I step outside and let the fresh air fill my lungs. It's a welcome relief. I start walking home, thinking of Matthew, our date, taking it to the next level. Maybe, in a quiet moment, I can tell him about the humpbacks and he'll believe me. I'm daydreaming about it, when I hear that voice again.

“Hey, baby, where ya going? Why in such a rush?” The lumberjack with the red ball cap is smoking a cigarette in the alley.

I smell his aggression and testosterone. There is no fear in his smell. The vibrations pulsing in my body are screaming
predator
.

“Leave me alone.”

“Come on, I won't bite.”

He reaches for me.

All I can hear is my heart pounding. And all I can taste is the surge of adrenaline like metal on my tongue.

 

S
IXTEEN

It all happened so fast.

His hands on me, the weight of his body pushing me into the wall, the crack of bone. Cigarettes on his breath. The raw, rancid smell of aggression.

Did I scream? I don't think I did. I don't think I felt fear.

Instinct took over.

This I know: I struck his neck first, the way a shark, bear, or cat stuns its prey before it goes in for the kill. He froze, stunned, shocked by what was happening. I swept his legs out from under him. He fell to the ground. The rest is a blur.

There were punches, mine mostly. Kicks. Also mine. A small voice deep inside me pulling me back, telling me to stop. I overpowered him so easily it was like the time Sheriff took me spearfishing at night for black crappies in the creek behind our house. We shone a light into the dark water and the crappies raced toward it, rubbing themselves onto the tip my spear. There was no sport in it.

The lumberjack had that stunned look in his eyes. Like he couldn't believe what was happening. And then he was flat on the dirt, a rivulet of blood beside him.

Had I killed him? Did I want to?

I checked for a pulse, but the carotid artery was hidden in the depths of his thick neck. Was he breathing? I leaned toward his face to listen, but all I could hear was the thrumming of my heart. There were people nearby, people spilling out of the bar. I could hear voices coming toward the alley.

I fled, a small voice inside of me tearing me away. I ran and only when I started running was I afraid.

*   *   *

I check the
Daily News
the next morning, and the morning after that, for anything about an assault at the Schooner Wharf. The police blotter has a wide assortment of freaky crimes: a teenager hiding a potato gun in his pants, a woman who was reported by neighbors for keeping a five-hundred-pound pig in her living room, a guy who stopped traffic by riding his bicycle naked down the middle of Ocean Road. Island living can screw with your mind. It can send you over the edge. There are also plenty of run-of-the-mill crimes: drunk-and-disorderly arrests, traffic violations, petit larceny, fire, a breaking and entering at Nipon Beach.