Mermaids in Paradise, Lydia Millet [ebook reader 8 inch txt] 📗

We’re not the same, in that regard. Chip possesses a wealth of interest in his fellow man, harbors a fascination with his own species, whereas I tend to see the prospect of small talk and tedium. It’s not that I don’t like people overall; I just like to personally select the ones I spend time with. I favor screening techniques that don’t involve random proximity.

Chip’s more of an equal opportunity converser.

Even before the first night rolled around—roaming the grounds as I napped and showered—he’d made friends with no fewer than five people including two couples: a same-sex and a homely. He sketched them out for me: they were two well-dressed men from S.F., broadcasting an artsy quality, one in home furnishings and the other in the independent film industry; a spinster biologist specializing in reef fish; and a quiet, nerdly heterosexual duo celebrating some anniversary, whom Chip took under his wing no doubt because they were, as he put it, “from the Heartland.”

“What’s the Heartland, Chip?” I asked him right off, because the moniker has always puzzled me.

“The place in the truck and beer commercials,” said Chip promptly. “Where they like New Country, isn’t it? Those guys that sing about proud to be an American, where at least we know we’re free?”

“It’s the at least part that’s genius,” I said.

“It’s kinda defensive,” agreed Chip.

“But anyway, I don’t think that’s the definition,” I demurred. “I mean some people in New Hampshire like New Country too. They like it a lot, I bet.”

“Yeah, huh,” said Chip. “I bet they do.”

“But New Hampshire’s not the Heartland, is it?”

“That’s true,” said Chip. “Or—I don’t know. Can you have a Heartland that’s kind of spread out, maybe?”

“Maybe the Heartland is spread out,” I mused dreamily.

“Sweetie, you’ll like talking to them. You’ll have fun. They’re really interesting.”

“I doubt that, Chip,” I said. “Look, I know how much you’ve dreamed of making friends with the natives of the Heartland—discovering what makes them tick. I know that about you. But are you sure you’d get an accurate sense of them in this setting? Wouldn’t it be better on their home turf, in a way? Like, their natural habitat?”

“But we never go there,” he objected, beating me on a technicality.

“It’s such an artificial situation,” I persisted. “I mean, think of this resort as kind of a zoo. Consider the animals in zoos that stalk and pace, wishing to sink their teeth into a passing five-year-old’s carotid artery—or the others who, more the truth-in-advertising types, throw their own feces against the glass. I mean can we really know those animals, when we see them in prison like that? No, right? And isn’t all this”—I raised my hands to indicate the splendid hotel—“kind of the same, without the electrocuting fences and the misery? I just wonder if, meeting these people as tourists so far, far away from where they evolved, you’re coming anywhere close to getting the real Heartland experience.”

When Heartland people vacation in the coastal cities, we’re certainly zoo animals to them, I was thinking. Despite the fact that it’s our native habitat, they ogle us as though we’re exhibits. Those Heartland tourists strap on their fanny packs like ammo belts. I’ve seen them trundling along the Walk of Fame, admiring the movie stars’ names on those pink terrazzo stars with their faces wreathed in smiles, then looking up and, on beholding average citizens, shutting those faces like barn doors.

“It’s second-best, I totally see your point. But it’s only dinner, babe,” said Chip, and put a strong, smooth arm around me, nestling me in. He smelled his best smell. I don’t know how he does it—must be a mixture of soap and pheromones.

I have my way of ending arguments, and Chip has his.

So there we were, our first evening in the newlywed utopia, fresh from a dip in the warm, aquamarine ocean, sitting around a table with five strangers. I have to admit, the setting had that odd combination of the picturesque and the asinine you sometimes see in vacationland: the restaurant was built over the water, not jutting over it but actually on top. It had platforms like little islands, allowing groups of diners to float in the bay as they ate. Chip and the Bay Arean designer talked about the engineering that must have been required to build this marvel of tourist novelty.

Meanwhile the “dining islands,” as the restaurant called them, made me feel seasick, bobbing around like that. I tried to believe in the romance of it all, and maybe I would have been able to if I’d been alone with Chip, candlelight shimmering over the gently lapping water of the cove as we drifted beneath the lavender sunset. But with all seven of us sitting there raising our forks to our faces (the Middle Americans, the film industry/decorators and the parrotfish expert) we seemed more like a flotilla of pigs. I noticed plenty of the other islands were tables for two. And here we were with our table for many, long enough for the Last Supper, practically. We were the biggest floater in the pond.

The dining islands were mysterious, seeming to move around freely, yet whenever a waiter wished to serve us, bringing us near the home port to receive heaping platters of seafood, the ocean’s marvelous bounty deep-fried into oblivion. Then away we floated again, to gaze down, whenever we might wish, at a sea slug glistening on the sandy bottom.

It struck me I should take a trip to the restroom, which thankfully had been built on solid ground, to rid myself of queasiness for a bit. So I made my excuses and stepped off the island onto one of the cunning raised pathways of white, broken shells, smoothed into softness by the tide, which ran like tendrils into the small bay where we floated. I struck out for the ladies’ room like I was fleeing a beheading, concentrating on not turning an