TWENTY-FIVE
“This might be the dumbest thing we’ve ever done,” I announced.
“Ha!” Marc stuck a finger in my face, which was just as annoying as you’d think it would be. “You’ve got nothing to back that up and you know it. This isn’t even close to the dumbest thing we’ve ever done.”
“The most annoying, then,” I countered. I was tired of holding the bag, so I dropped it on the dock at my feet. “Or idiotic.”
“Well, you might have something there.”
“Children,” Sinclair murmured. Usually he’d be glued to his phone, but we were outdoors and it was a sunny spring day, so not this time.
It was still super cute to see Sinclair luxuriating in sunshine. Most vampires burst into a cloud of fanged, wailing ash if exposed to sunlight, and for decades Sinclair had to work to avoid that sad, ashy fate. But the devil owed me a favor, so I asked her to fix it so he could bear sunlight, handle holy water, et cetera. She knew she owed me for killing her (long story*), and granted my wish, because nothing about my afterlife makes any sense at all.
This, as anyone could have foreseen, led to lots of alfresco sex (Between Sinclair and me. Not the devil and me. Obviously.) and Sinclair joining the church choir. It also led to Sinclair taking Fur and Burr outside for walks about seventeen or eighteen times a day.
Now he had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his black greatcoat, head tilted back so he could close his eyes and turn his face up and just soak in the sunshine like a sexy sponge. He occasionally hummed and rocked back and forth on his feet because now and again he was the cutest thing ever.
“Am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that we haven’t even talked about the dock or the tunnel in years—”
“We means you, Betsy. Just you.”
“—and now we’re in the tunnel twice in twenty-four hours?”
“Yep. You’re the only one.”
“Also, we’ve got an Assembly of vampires about to descend on us in all their fang-gnashing rage.”
“Are you pronouncing assembly like it’s capitalized on purpose?”
“Yes. Murder of crows. Pack of wolves. Flock of geese. Assembly of vampires.”
“Asshat of vampires,” Marc suggested, and I giggled like a kid—couldn’t help it.
“Nice to see you lighten up, Betsy. You’ve been pretty grim lately. Well, grim for you.”
“Well, weird shit is happening. More so than usual, even. Perfect example: we’re hanging out on a dock waiting for a mermaid to swim up and say howdy.”
Sinclair glanced at me. “Undersea Folk, my queen.”
“Sometimes she’s got legs; sometimes she’s half fish.” At all times, she’s a grump. “Mermaid.”
“You can’t use that word!” Marc faux snapped. “That’s their word!”
“Oh my God.”
Hours. Hours we’d been waiting on a dock in the chill when I could be running Hell or doing something to ruin Laura’s life or sitting for another disastrous TV interview or reading chapter eight of Smoothie Nation: “All Things Citrus.”
It’s been eleven minutes, my own.
“Why are you talking like everyone doesn’t carry clocks?” I took out my phone and waved it at him.
“Oh, just another of my idiosyncrasies. But you need fret no longer, as Dr. Bimm approaches.”
“No.”
“Beg pardon?”
“That’s not Fred Bimm.” I pointed. “That is an angry coconut that has been steadily bobbing closer because of the current and not under its own power. And the reason it’s a coconut and not our out-of-town guest is because there’s no way in hell someone is swimming in the Mississippi River in March. There’s also no way she’s going to dog-paddle right up to this dock and either flop out of the Big Muddy on her own like a fish deciding to evolve or wait for us to haul her out like the world’s biggest smallmouth bass.”
“Now, there’s a mental image,” Marc said, equal parts disapproving and impressed. “A couple of them.”
“Indeed.”
“Although”—I nudged the bulging bag at my feet—“that would explain why the text she sent to let us know she’d arrived consisted of ‘bring towels.’”
“Unreal,” Marc breathed, watching the coconut. Then: “My God. I’m seeing it and I don’t believe it. That is definitely a person and she is definitely swimming this way. And she doesn’t appear to be in any sort of stress. Also she appears to be naked, because why the heck not?”
And a shameless exhibitionist on top of everything else! Mermaids: nature’s hussies.
She can hardly be expected to swim with a tail while fully clothed, Sinclair pointed out, which was just annoying.
I take issue with that. I absolutely can expect her to take a cab from the airport and not swim UP THE DAMNED RIVER LIKE AN UTTER WEIRDO.
“Where d’you think she went in?” Marc speculated, never taking his gaze from the angry coconut moving closer. “What, she took a cab from the airport to the Highway 5 bridge, stripped, and just dove in? ‘Here’s the fare, keep the change, see ya.’”
Actually, yes. I can see her doing exactly that. Fred wasn’t much for social conventions. Or long cab rides.
The coconut raised a pale arm and waved, so yeah, probably not a coconut, probably Fredrika Bimm waving at us and swimming closer. I’d seen her in action before, and I didn’t think I’d ever get used to how quickly her kind could move through water. I mean, you knew intellectually they were like sharks, but seeing it was always startling. And, to be honest, a little frightening.
Then she was at the dock reaching up, and Sinclair courteously bent, took her hand, and hauled her out of the river in one swift, easy motion. She had a waterproof bag on a string slung around her neck and was otherwise totally naked. Not even a ponytail holder in her hair.
“Welcome to St. Paul, Dr. Bimm.” Once both her feet were on the dock, Sinclair politely turned his back. Which was dumb. Not only had we both seen her naked before, Bimm didn’t give a shit about stuff like that. Because, again: nature’s exhibitionists.
“Thanks, Eric. And it’s Fred.” She accepted one of our giant towels and started drying off. And because she was a huge show-off, she wasn’t even shivering. Totally pretending it wasn’t cold just to spite me.
“Oh my God you’re real I can’t believe it your tail just disappeared retracted whatever and how are you not deep in the throes of hypothermia?” Marc rushed out in one breath. “Please don’t be offended I’m not staring because I’m a perv actually I’m gay so you don’t have to worry about me creeping on you my curiosity is strictly professional I used to be a doctor and how did you do that? Any of that? How? Dr. Bimm? Hi?”
“I don’t care if you look.” But she cracked a smile, and who could blame her? Fascinated Marc was fun Marc. “And I’m biologically engineered to withstand extremes of temperature as well as water pressure, so. That’s why I’m not dead. Or tired. Or frozen.”
“It is so nice to meet you! Can you stay until Christmas?”
Don’t even joke about that! My thought was so strong and horrified, Sinclair had to fake a cough to hide his chuckle.
Fred Bimm had unlooped the bag from around her neck and was rooting through it while smirking, because she was big on multitasking. “Hear that, Betsy? Your nice friend would like me to stay with you for nine months. Doesn’t that sound grand?”
I made a sound. Some sound. It wasn’t a word, unless “Ggrrbbl” meant something. Meanwhile Fred had towel-dried her hair and wrapped a towel around her head, spa-style, then used the other towel to rub herself dry.
The hair on her head was deepest, darkest auburn (from a box, I knew), and her pubic hair (which—ahem—could have used a trim) was green. Apparently Fred’s natural hair color was green. Or blue, depending on whether you were in love with her or not. I’m not making this up, by the way.* That’s her deal: hair color dictated by love, or the absence of same.
While I pondered the riddle of her pubes, Fred stepped into black hipster underwear, pulled on white athletic socks and a pair of battered jeans, and shrugged into a New England Aquarium sweatshirt. No bra, BTW. And no wonder—she didn’t need it. Neither did I, but only because I’d died with perky boobs; the twins would be thirty forever. Fred had tried to explain about gravity and water and pressure and centers of gravity, blah-blah . . . bottom line, mermaids had naturally perky boobs, because it wasn’t enough to be super strong and fast and blessed with unfathomable stamina, I guess; they also had to hog all the good boobs.
She finished by stepping into and tying sneakers that looked like they’d rolled off the assembly line the day Kennedy was shot.
“Ggrrbbl.” I’d forgotten about her horrible taste in clothes. The first time I saw her she was wearing flip-flops. And she denied it was punishment for losing a bet, which, let’s be honest, had to be a lie.
“Thanks for offering to come.”
“Thanks for taking me up on it.” Fully clothed save for a heavy jacket—which she clearly didn’t need—she balled up her now-empty bag and stuck it in her pocket. I saw she’d also brought a small battered purse, probably to hold cash and ID. “I wasn’t sure you would. We got off to a bit of a rocky start.”
“Still holding a grudge, huh?” I found out the hard way that vampire mojo didn’t hold mermaids very long. Fred had expressed her severe displeasure by hitting me hard enough to knock me out of my Alice + Olivia Devon floral pumps, then throwing me across the room, and that had been just the warm-up. What can I say? She got my attention. “How many times should I apologize?”
“The last time was the magic number,” she conceded. “I’m here, aren’t I? And I’ll bet the Wyndhams preceded me by . . . I’m going to guess twenty-four hours.”
Have I mentioned Fred’s a bright cookie? I didn’t even know she knew the Wyndhams existed—I sure hadn’t told her—and how could she guess they were in town? She was a little like Sherlock . . . stuff nobody else noticed was like a road flare to her.
“I saw you on the cover of Time and I know this is irrelevant but you’re much prettier in person.” This from Marc, who was still fangirling all over the place. My God, man, where is your dignity? Or was I just jealous? He used to fangirl all over me. I had pretended it was annoying and oh my God, he was still burbling away. “They had a picture of your mom, too, in the article—you don’t look much like her so I guess you take after your dad? He was full-blooded USF, right? I’m sorry, I’m babbling.” Babbling, burbling. Tomato, toe-mah-toe.
He sure was. But it was good that he said what he did, because it reminded me that Fred Bimm was a busy woman. On top of her genius marine biologist duties, whatever those were, and giving talks at aquariums all over the world, and talking all things Undersea Folk on the news (CNN loved Fred), she was the liaison between the Undersea Folk and, er, all of humanity, apparently. Because as Marc had reminded me, her mom was human, and her late father had been all merman. Fred was half ’n’ half, though she preferred the term—
“I prefer the term hybrid.”
Bottom line: she had stuff to get done. But she’d come to town anyway. That counted for a lot with me. Especially since if our positions were reversed, I don’t know that I would have reached out and offered help. Not until I knew her a bit better.
Which made me wonder: what did Fred need from me? Probably nothing right now. So: what did Fred think she might need from me in the future?
No idea.
I whined about a lot of things in general, and (today) Dr. Bimm in particular, but if I have to be honest, I will always cut that bitch some slack because a slave trader used his ill-gotten gains to build a meeting hall in 1743, which resulted in the best food court ever: the Nathanial Hall Marketplace.*
That place. I can’t even tell you. So many food choices. It smelled like your grandma’s kitchen had a baby with Christmas. And they had not one, not two, but three smoothie bars. Three. Monkey Bar. Cocobeet. The Juicery. The best trinity ever.
The marketplace alone was worth the trip, which was a good thing since we’d almost died. The whole thing turned out to be super dangerous, not least because that was how I found out Fred Bimm didn’t like hippies. Also, a wheelchair-bound bad guy tried to kill a bunch of people, but that was after Fred tried to kill me. Fun weekend!*
“We have a car waiting, if you would come with us? Your room has been made ready if you’d like to”—a pause so teeny I was probably the only one who caught it—“freshen up.” Translation: wash some of the mud and crud from your leisurely spring swim through the Mississippi out of your hair and other, um, places.
Fred’s smirk just got wider. “That bad, huh?”
“Not really,” I replied, because Sinclair was too polite. “I told you when we met, you guys don’t smell bad to vampires. Just different. But you don’t have to shower. If you don’t mind smelling like mud, we don’t.”
“Well, then, lead on.” She fell into step behind Sinclair as he climbed the bank leading to the side road. Because—yay!—we weren’t taking the tunnel home. I’d decided a tunnel-free day was a good day.
Dr. Bimm probably wasn’t out to get us, but that didn’t mean we should make it easy for her if she—if any merjerks—were.