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

it could have been redirected, not stopped per se, deflected just microscopically along its path so that it wouldn’t hit and wouldn’t bring on the extinction event. Like in a high-concept blockbuster movie, we could have knocked it off its course with a missile, or maybe a few. Apparently, some of that Hollywood shit was true.

But the time for whining had passed.

So in the end we’d failed the whales, much as we’d failed the mermaids. I wondered if they already knew. Did they see to the end, the way we did?

I wished there were some perfect retreat for those whales and those mermaids—the beauty we knew, the beauty we thought we’d made up or maybe only dreamed, we’d never been quite sure. I wished there was a safe haven for them, locked deep in the endless blue.

We smiled at each other, Chip and Steve and I, sadly. I flattered myself that the men were thinking fondly of each other and of me, as I was thinking so fondly of them—of all the milling friends and partygoers—longing for what couldn’t be.

When it came to the future, we all acted as if. Only way to proceed, said Gina firmly, and Chip and I agreed.

So we did the wedding, we did the honeymoon. There’d never be a better time for it.

Still there are instants when it pierces me, it pierces all of us—we all have those instants of remembering—a terrible love that passes in a flash, our terrible love of everything.

It brings us closer than we’ve ever been.

But the closeness is fleeting.

Tears stood on my bottom eyelids again, twice in a single day now, but I wouldn’t let them spill over—not this time. This time I restrained myself, determined to keep my personality intact. From now on, that’s what I’d do. No more slipups. It wasn’t the best personality, I’d been reminded of that recently, but it was mine. You work with what you’ve got.

I’d keep my personality intact, I decided. Give it the old college try.

I raised my cup and toasted; the others raised theirs too. We went on smiling, smiling, and smiling, until the very moment when the whiskey touched our lips.

ALSO BY LYDIA MILLET

Magnificence

Ghost Lights

How the Dead Dream

Love in Infant Monkeys

Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

Everyone’s Pretty

My Happy Life

George Bush, Dark Prince of Love

Omnivores

FOR YOUNGER READERS

Pills and Starships

The Shimmers in the Night

The Fires Beneath the Sea

Copyright © 2015 by Lydia Millet

Illustrations by Sharon McGill

All rights reserved

First Edition

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