The Lover From an Icy Sea (55 page)

“
The Sea King lunges and slams the young merman down with all of his might, impaling him on the lower shaft. It goes straight through his abdomen and out his back—he’s now simply a piece of bait at the end of a spear. Little bubbles escape his mouth as he screams, but he’s quickly losing strength, consciousness—and most importantly for the Sea King—blood. Our would-be monarch, meanwhile, works quickly to bind the merman’s wrists and ankles to the coral fence. He knows that within minutes, sharks will smell blood and come to do more than sniff. It will be a riot of teeth, and the Sea King doesn’t want to be caught anywhere in the vicinity of sharks crushing bone and tearing merflesh to frenzied bits.

“
His job done, he swims home to his castle, where he’s once again and finally the undisputed Sea King. That night, he follows his daughter out to her rendezvous. She pauses momentarily, tail all a-flutter, at the point at which she normally meets her budding merman—a merman, however, who buds no longer. She decides he must’ve grown impatient and swum on alone to the sandy bottom. She goes down blindly, frantically. The Sea King chases her. When she gets to the bottom and discovers that her lover is not in the cove, she turns around and looks back up the watery shaft. That’s when she comes face to face with the Sea King, who promptly wrestles her to the sand.

“
None of this takes much longer than a minute. It’s not counsel or advice the Sea King now wants to give. What he wants to give—and so does give—doesn’t require counsel, advice or more than a few ugly seconds.

“
They return home, though not together. The next day, she stays longer in her seaweed bed than even an especially tolerant mermother thinks appropriate. The mother goes in, and when she comes out half an hour later, she’s no longer a mermother or even a merwife. She’s a Sea Witch.

“
The Sea Witch finds the Sea King repairing his throne of whale- and shark-bones, which he hasn’t sat on comfortably in a long time. He sees her coming—but sees, too, that she’s not exactly catering lunch. He stands up and moves behind the throne in case she cares to sit upon it. With super-merwoman strength, the former mermother—present Sea Witch—tears one of the bones out of the throne.

“
He leaves and never comes back. Sea Witch and mermaiden live not so happily for a while. Then, when the mermaiden becomes a full-fledged mermaid, not so happily ever after at all.

“
You see, the mermaiden then went looking for her father—he was, after all, still her father. At first, the Sea Witch tried to discourage her from looking—but Sea Witches are deal-makers, and so the mermaiden consented to a deal. She let the Sea Witch cut out her heart in exchange for keys to all the wrong places in the kingdom, and Daneka went looking night after night after night.”

Kit was shaken—especially by her last declaration. She couldn’t possibly have made this story up on the spot. There’d simply been too much data for him to absorb in listening to it even to venture a guess at secondary meanings. If it was representative or symbolic, what—he wondered—was it representative or symbolic of?

“
You like that story, Kit?” Daneka asked rhetorically. “I didn’t think so. It’s not a very likable story. And besides, I don’t tell stories as well as you do—which is why I pay other people to write them. I simply make deals and then approve the lay-out.”

“
Daneka—”

“
Oh, don’t worry, darling. I’m not in the least offended. Listen, we’d better get going. I’m not concerned that we’ll miss the plane or anything like that, but you know me—punctuality is next to godliness.”

They walked back to the station in silence. They collected their bags, took an inner-city train to the airport, presented their passports and tickets, went through airport security and passport control and then on to their gate—in silence. Daneka bought a magazine, sat down and began to flip through the pages, all in absolute silence.

Kit was beginning to wonder whether they’d ever talk again.

Chapter 67

When the announcement to board came over the public address system, Daneka closed her magazine, got up and went to stand on line without a word to Kit. The silence, he thought, was becoming almost unbearable. When he went to join her on line, he discovered that a few people had managed to get in between them. He decided—rather than ask permission to step ahead and join his partner—to wait and see whether she’d make the request herself.

He needn’t have waited; she never once looked back.

By the time he got to his seat, he was grateful to see they’d at least be sitting next to each other. If he couldn’t speak to, touch, or look directly at her, he could at least smell her. She’d taken the aisle seat this time—maybe, he thought, the other would make her feel too claustrophobic. Is she now that, too? he wondered. On the other hand, maybe she felt something coming on; wanted easier access to the lavatories; didn’t want to have to excuse herself each time and ask him to get out of his seat to let her get by. Yeah, maybe that’s it, Kit thought—suddenly relieved. He hadn’t really known her that long. Maybe she was premenstrual and hadn’t wanted to say anything. That would explain the mood swings of the last couple of days, her crankiness—towards both him and her mother.

The last passengers where filing in, most of them speaking English, though he noted some Scandinavian language or other now and again. He pretended to leaf through his in-flight magazine. Fucking pabulum. Why didn’t I at least bring a book? Why? Because I thought I might just have a partner for conversation for the next six or seven hours—that’s why. Jesus! Does this mean I’m going to have to converse with myself all the way back to New York?

Before he could answer his own unhappy question, he heard a couple of feminine French voices. Frenchwomen on an American airline flying from Copenhagen to New York? How odd. He looked up as the voices got closer to where he and Daneka were sitting. One of the women looked familiar, though from some other context—he couldn’t put his finger on it. The problem was the clothes—he couldn’t place her in those clothes. He suddenly wondered whether he’d slept with her at some point in his life—and so, never seen her clothed. Then he saw her smiling at Daneka, who was quite clearly smiling back—all trace of premenstrual syndrome having suddenly vanished. Maybe Daneka’s slept with her, he thought bitterly. But then how and why would she look familiar to me? It’s all too fucking complicated was his final thought as he went back to his in-flight magazine.

The captain’s voice came over the public address system—all cheery, confident, bubbly American, just a slight Southern drawl. Why do all airline pilots sound as if they come from Texas? he asked himself while quite intentionally turning off his brain—since he couldn’t plug his ears—to whatever it was the man was saying. “Can’t they at least speak proper English?” he mumbled to himself, thinking he was only thinking the question—which he was—though he’d neglected to first check the volume control on that thinking.

“
What was that, darling?” Daneka asked.

“
Oh … Nothing … The pilot … That’s all.”

“
He’s quite charming, don’t you think? I mean the way he welcomed us all on board, welcomed us to New York—‘a little prematurely,’ he added—ha-ha, and then welcomed any and all of the unescorted ladies on board back to his place for a little nightcap, ha-ha—‘also somewhat prematurely,’ he added—and then extended a very special welcome to the two flight attendants from Air France who were joining us today—unescorted, ha-ha-ha, except by each other.”

Kit found Daneka’s laugh particularly grating. He didn’t find pilots in the least bit funny. But now, at least, he knew who the woman was—their attendant on the flight from Paris to Lisbon. The Veuve Cliquot cocktail waitress with Air France-fucking-wings. No wonder he hadn’t recognized her. Then, lips, mouth and breasts had all been properly buttoned-up in a uniform. This woman, however—the one who’d just passed them in the aisle with smiles especially for Daneka—was wearing a blouse unbuttoned practically to her navel. The only thing between her and the woman walking behind her was a bit of skin, bones, lungs and lace. The lace—even Kit had noticed in the couple of seconds before she’d passed out of view—seemed to reveal more than it covered up—and seemed perfectly coordinated in color and frills with the garter belt his eye zeroed in on as she walked by, but only because the slit in her dress opened up almost as high as the unbuttoned buttons reached down. He liked the way the French could dress for success when they weren’t working.

He felt a headache coming on just as their plane lurched backwards thanks to the gentle nudge of the little four-wheeler tugboat that helped the bigger craft out of their bays. He hadn’t had a headache in years—and so, wondered whether it might be too much French, too much Danish, too much Texas drawl—or some revolting cocktail of all three.

“
Have you got a couple of aspirin by chance?”

“
Oh, no, darling, I don’t,” Daneka lied. “My poor darling. Have you got a headache?” she asked, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Let me go ask one of the attendants. I won’t be a minute,” she said, already out of her seat.

“
But you can’t—”

Kit wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he heard the captain announce that their plane was next in line for take-off, then asked everyone to make sure their seatbelts were securely fastened. He glanced back; she was nowhere in sight. He assumed, then, she’d found a seat elsewhere—at least for the duration of the take-off and until they were ready to begin leveling off at twenty-five or thirty thousand feet. How convenient! How fucking convenient!

Ten minutes later, Daneka was walking back up the aisle towards her seat with something in hand. She paused for a reflective moment, then continued on.

A few seconds later, she was standing next to Kit with the door to the overhead bin open. He heard a zipper, then heard the sound of something he couldn’t quite identify. He looked up, saw her tapping something into the palm of her hand, heard the distinct snap of plastic against plastic. She sat down all smiles and—Kit noticed for the first time that day—with a newly acquired southern exposure of her chest just in time for the cooler winter weather. Or maybe, he thought, she’d just found it a bit stuffy in the cabin. It happened sometimes. People not used to flying might find it difficult to breathe—might just spontaneously start reaching for cramped collars, too-tight ties, bothersome buttons—anything just to get some air. Given how flushed her face is, that must be it. But at least she’s got the aspirin. “Roche” he read on the tab. French fucking aspirin.

“
You didn’t by chance think to bring back any water with this, did you? A little something to wet also my whistle?” Kit said as he noticed the sheen on Daneka’s lips.

“
Oh, darling, I’m so sorry,” she said, and he thought he detected just the hint of something like champagne on her breath. “Shall I go again?” she asked—and Kit mused—like a Golden Retriever straining at the leash.

“
No, that’s okay.” He popped the pill and swallowed, then gave Daneka his best facsimile of a smile. “I’m a little tired. A little headachey. I think I’ll try to sleep.”

“
That’s a wonderful idea, darling!”

Kit thought again of the Golden Retriever—namely, that she’d never so much resembled one as at this moment—and one with a belly just dying for a rub. He wondered at what point she might start drooling.

He forced himself to close his eyes. The world—at least his world—was spinning out of control. He didn’t particularly care for scenes in public places. All he really wanted at this moment was to fall asleep and shut it all out—which is what he promptly did.

*  *  *

Daneka continued to leaf through her magazine, occasionally glancing over at Kit to try to determine whether he’d fallen asleep. At the same time, she was being pulled back towards the galley as if she had a stomach full of filings, while someone in the rear held a giant magnet.

At one point, the French flight attendant walked up the aisle in the direction of the cockpit. Daneka peeked around the seat in front of her to see the attendant first knock, then open the door and disappear within. She knew that this kind of thing was strictly prohibited except to working attendants, wondered how the woman had managed to pull it off and for how long she’d be allowed to remain inside. Her curiosity was satisfied a brief twenty minutes later.

As the attendant walked back—no worse for the wear, Daneka noted, even if somewhat disheveled—her eyes met Daneka’s as soon as she entered the tourist-class cabin and remained there as she walked. She dropped an arm to her side and, at the moment she passed Daneka and Kit, let her fingers run the length of Daneka’s arm from wrist to elbow.

Daneka felt a delicious little frisson. Whether or not Kit was asleep, she simply couldn’t wait any longer. She quietly unbuckled her seatbelt, just as quietly stood up, then walked back and arrived at the galley just in time to see the attendant open one of the lavatory doors and disappear behind it. When Daneka got to the door, she read Unoccupied and immediately got the message. She opened it and stepped in, then threw the bolt. If it had been unoccupied a moment earlier, it now no longer was.

“
Et votre ami?
” the attendant asked, though in her tone it was rather difficult to distinguish whether she was suggesting a
ménage-à-trois
or simply wanted to reassure herself that he wouldn’t come barging in at an inopportune moment.