An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (24 page)

He said
nothing but returned to his Samurai and drove to the parking lot next to Playa
Flamenco. He hadn’t visited this beach since his first weeks in Culebra, but it
took him only moments to find the head of the trail leading to the beach locals
called Impact Beach. He walked the narrow dirt trail among dusty, drooping
plants while overhead terns and brown boobies patrolled the skies where Navy
bombers once descended upon decoy targets. The effulgent sun scorched his
vision and parched him until his forehead ached and his crown burned. At last
the trail ended at Carlos Rosario.

The
beach appeared deserted. Then John recognized Tamarind’s shape on the far side
where she kneeled among the tall grasses. He halted on the beach and watched
her as she searched, tendrils of her unmistakable hair floating on invisible
air currents around her head. When she looked up and saw him, he smiled and
waved. She didn’t wave back.

John
trotted over to where she waited, her face never leaving his and her arms
still.

“Hey.”
He stood close enough to see the blue of her eyes.

“Hello.”

“You
weren’t at the dock today.”

“No.”
She turned back to combing through the grasses near her.

“I
brought you a book.
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
. I enjoyed it when I learned to
read to myself.” He held the book out, but she didn’t turn back to him. After a
moment, he slid it back into his backpack.

“Is
something wrong, Tamarind?” His voice caught on her name. “That old woman
you’re living with—Ana—she said you didn’t want to see me. Can I ask why?”

Tamarind
sighed and sat up. She pulled out a small bottle of something and poured it
into her left palm before rubbing her hands together. After a moment she lifted
a bottle of what looked like water from the ground near her left knee and
poured it over her hands. When she finished, she wiped them dry on her shorts
and then she pushed her hair out of her eyes, only to have the wind send it
fluttering into them again.

“It’s
been a long week, John. I have a lot of things to do and you shouldn’t expect
to see me at the dock any more when you come to Culebra.” She stood up and
pulled the burlap tote next to her feet up onto her shoulder.

John
fell into step beside her as she walked across the beach toward the path. “No
problem, I understand. So, dinner at Isla Encantada and then I’ll read some of
these fairy tales to you?”

Tamarind
stopped and looked at him. “Actually, I have a date to go dancing with Jesus
tonight.” She started walking again. “Maybe we’ll see you there later with
Raimunda.”

John
said nothing until she reached the head of the trail. “Yeah, sure.”

Tamarind
waved over her shoulder without slowing down. “You can keep the book. I’ve got
plenty to read right now. Thanks anyway.” Her last words drifted back to him as
she disappeared around a turn in the path.

Overhead,
a seagull laughed as it bobbed and glided away toward the south.

Tamarind waited until Ana left
for Dewey with her bag full of
remedies, love potions, charms, and the secret cache of poisons that she didn’t
know Tamarind had discovered. Although Ana had already spent the morning in
town waiting for weekend vacationers from the ferry, she’d returned because a
wealthy patron from San Juan had arrived unexpectedly with a special request.
Tamarind had grown used to Ana’s frequent absences to treat wealthy locals and
so she bided her time until Ana had gone from sight. When the old woman
disappeared over the hill on the path toward the road, Tamarind shut the door
and headed toward the shore.

Not far
from the water she stopped on the path and crouched down. Moving several rocks
and chanting under her breath, Tamarind released the cloaking spell that she’d used
to hide her clothes and hair ornaments. She hummed for the first time all week,
clicking through several octaves in a complex melody familiar to every
mer
.
She checked over her growing collection of items and then stood up, removed her
shorts and dirty t-shirt, and walked into the water until it was over her head.
She lay back on the buoyant saltwater and stared above her where terns and
brown-footed boobies played games in the cerulean sky. Around her, the water
mirrored their antics. If she closed her vestigial earflaps against the water
and wove a glamour between herself and the edges of her vision, she could
imagine that she drifted on air currents with the sea birds. When one landed on
the surface of the water not far from her, she shifted her head and studied it.

After a
long time, Tamarind released the glamour. The horizon and the uneven outline of
Culebra’s plant life disturbed her soak so she rolled onto her stomach and
kicked toward the shore. Walking from the water on her own legs almost made up
for the struggle to move against the inherent power of the lagoon.

She
noticed that the lapping waves had deposited several shells and strands of
seaweed near where she emerged. She stopped to look at them. Their resting
places suggested that they’d been placed there by design, but she had no idea
what they meant. In a moment a wave fingered the closest shell, lifting it a
bit and sliding it into the design further. All at once, Tamarind understood
that Mother Sea sought to tell her something. Sinking down, she cracked her
knees on the slippery stones, plunged her hands into the water, and closed her
eyes.

Mother,
I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me?

Her
thoughts flowed from her fingertips into the current and for a moment she felt
tension fill her and something powerful surged around her mind, but the meaning
was lost. A residue of fear and warning remained as the power drained out of
her.

Tamarind
slapped the stones with both palms and stood up, water dripping from her hair
and shoulders. She closed her eyes again and let out an audible breath. After a
moment she hummed softly and gestured. Her fingers pulled continuous warm air
strands over her body and hair. When her hair and skin had dried she uttered a
single word and sliced the air in front of her with her right hand. The air
calmed.

She
returned to the hoard of clothes and searched around until she found the
patterned halter dress that Valerie had helped her find on her first shopping
expedition to San Juan two weeks ago. Even as she picked it up from the bundle
and slipped it over her head, the memory of that trip played itself before her
mind’s eye. Gray asphalt ribbons hosted multitudes of cars like speeding
schools of amberjack while concrete and glass buildings hemmed them all around.
Her chest tightened at the images and she remembered John’s words about having
difficulty breathing sometimes.

 After
she tied the halter around her neck, she stepped into a pair of panties. She’d
lingered in the lingerie store where the feel of silk on her fingertips
engrossed her so long that Valerie laughed at her and strode around the store
to pluck pairs from tables without a second glance. If she hadn’t spent so long
gazing at the tern earlier, she might have scattered the panties around her on
the warm stones and tried them on one by one. Should she live to be half the
age of a
mer
elder, she would never grow accustomed to the feel of silk
rubbing against her crotch as she walked, the way the elastic encircled her
upper thighs and the material hugged her buttocks. As she repacked her clothes,
she shoved the red wisp of material that Valerie called a thong deep into the
bottom of the bag. The power suggested in that triangle made her heart beat
faster.

She
extracted the smaller bag that Valerie had given her along with a variety of
barrettes, hair bands, and hair clips. None of the manmade items worked half as
well as her shell ornaments, but the sticky, thick liquids and foams that
Valerie showed her how to use tamed her hair so well that the fragile things
sufficed. Even so, the colors and patterns of the plastic pieces rivaled the
beauty of her former underwater home and the crystals had no equal in her
experience, except for the reflection of stars on the night sea.

At last
she found the large flat barrette crusted with sparkling cabochons. She laid it
alongside her thigh while she squirted a mound of fragrant foam into her palm.
She distributed the foam between her hands and then worked it through her hair.
She plucked through her curls with the long tines of a comb and then gathered a
handful from either side and clasped the barrette around it. The mirror in her
small bag reflected the tiny stones in her hair when she glanced at the
stranger that she’d become within in its hard edges.

Done
transforming herself, Tamarind stowed all of her human possessions back beneath
the stones and reset the protective glamour. No prying eyes could discern where
she’d hidden them. She glanced at the late afternoon sky and stuck her tongue
out to taste the relative humidity of the air because her skin always felt dry
since she’d put off her tail. Slowly she headed back to Ana’s where she waited
to walk the twenty minutes to Isla Encantada. Once the sun kissed the horizon,
she set off barefoot toward the access road.

Jesus
sat outside the restaurant on the curb talking to some of his friends. When he
happened to look up and see her fifty feet away, a grin split his dark face and
he leaped up. His deep brown eyes gleamed.

“Look at
you,
mi chica linda
! We’re going to make everyone else look like clumsy
beasts tonight.” He took her hands in his and held her arms up so that he could
look at her. “Ah, I have dreamed of this all summer.”

Still
holding her left hand, he turned to face his friends. “I told you. I am the
luckiest man on Culebra. Come,
cariño
, let’s go get something to drink.”

They
went in and found a table not far from the bar. As she sat down, Tamarind felt
a prickling along her flanks and the sides of her neck where
mer
sensory
pores still pocked her skin. She looked around and saw John sitting in a far
corner, staring at her. Their gazes met, and for the few seconds that they held,
Tamarind felt shock rise up her spine and electricity pulse in her brain. Then,
as in her brief contact with Mother Sea, the charge flowed away. This time, her
arms and legs trembled.

She
turned back to Jesus and slapped the table with an open palm. “Where’s my
drink?”

He
startled, then grinned. “Only tell me what you’d like to drink and it’s yours,
mi
corazón
.”

“Beer.
I’d like to have a beer.”

***

John
ordered another Tom Collins even before finishing his first. In the dark of
Isla Encantada he could see only indistinct shapes where Tamarind and Jesus
sat, but he’d recognize her profile under a burqa. Tamarind sat sideways to him
so that he glimpsed little flashes from the barrette she wore as it caught what
ambient light existed. When she leaned over to speak to Jesus, he saw in the
candlelight that her tame curls cascaded across her shoulders and framed her
face. As she laughed, candlelight caressed a reflective pendant at her
collarbone. She laughed a lot—especially after drinking from the dark bottle
Jesus brought her from the bar. After their earlier eye contact, she never came
over to say hi or even turned in his direction. The snub hurt more than he
could have imagined. 

John
scowled and sipped from his Tom Collins. He glanced at the door, but Raimunda
didn’t saunter through it wearing a clinging white shirt and ruffled skirt.
Several Culebrenses came in and settled down at neighboring tables while the
band fiddled with keyboard and drums before their set. The smell of fried food
reached his nose as a waitress emerged from the kitchen with a plate of
yellowtail snapper and plantains. He’d skipped dinner and should have been
hungry, but his stomach only tumbled.

He
switched to drinking
coquitos
on his third drink and the coconut and rum
congealed in his knotted gut. Then the band began playing and the din tunneled
into his brain unopposed. He leaned his face into his raised hands and massaged
his temples with his thumbs. When he looked up, he saw Tamarind and Jesus
dancing. She had eyes only for Jesus, who led her in the peculiar rolling gait
of the salsa; his arm wrapped around her waist and his stomach pressed against
hers. The small triangle of chest above her dress shone and the dim light glittered
off the pendant and the stones in her barrette as they danced. Her delicate
feet, as bare as always, lifted and settled on the tiled floor.

“
Hola
,
gringo
,” said Raimunda at his side. “She’s a tasty bit, that one is,
isn’t she?” She leaned over and kissed him, long and hard. “But I’m a full
meal,
mi amigo
.”

John
said nothing as she sat down on his left side and held up her hand to signal
the waitress. While she waited for her beer, Raimunda leaned closer to him, her
hand on his inner thigh. She nuzzled his neck and nibbled his ear. John lifted
his
coquito
and drained it.

“Let’s
dance,” he said and stood up, his chair scraping loudly.

He
pulled Raimunda to her feet. She grabbed her Medalla, tilted it at her mouth,
and gulped half of it down as he strode to the dance floor ahead of her. When
John pulled her into his arms, she laughed and clutched the half-full bottle
between them. As they danced, John closed his eyes and focused on the music.
Raimunda sinuated about him, her full breasts brushing now against his upper
arm, now against his chest.