Fucking Mermaids

Olivia stares at the wooden floorboards and sees pools of water by the sofa. Her eyes focus. Her legs are bent over the arm of the sofa and her jeans are ripped down both sides. Yes they are stuck together. She is perspiring heavily and water is dripping off her. She hauls herself up and over the arm of the chair and slops this great fishtail onto the floor. Needing water, she pulls herself across the floorboards to the kitchen where she levers herself up using the tail and drinks until she is gagging. Her bottom half is scaly, thousands of scales locked into each other, glistening.

She wakes up, groggy and goes to the bathroom and soon water is gushing over her. She waits for Marco to come back.

The door opens. There are two voices arguing in French. The other is a woman. Olivia calls out. Marco opens the door.

“While you were out, I fell asleep and turned into a mermaid.”

“That’s really something. Can I touch your fishtail?”

“Go ahead.”

Marco caresses her feet.

I bought some food and saw Mélanie, my sister. She lives here now. I thought she was out tonight. So that is why the flat is so tidy, Olivia thinks, compared to the last time she stayed.

Later, Olivia watches Mélanie emerge from the kitchen with a bottle of posh white wine. Could be forty, six years older than her. Hair styled to look unkept. The sort of person who walks up and down when they talk on their phone.

“This is Olivia,” says Marco. “This is my sister Mélanie.”

“Who are you exactement, exactly?” asks Mélanie.

“I’m a friend.”

Mélanie puts the bottle on the table and Olivia grabs it, sticks it into her mouth and drinks three gulps.

“What is that?” says Mélanie.

“Thirsty.”

“Marco says you are a … some kind of … model.”

“You know people say that fish predict earthquakes,” says Olivia.

“What?”

They move and flap about like mad before the quake arrives. I’ve been in Japan. Osaka. Tokyo. Been travelling. We were in a restaurant and there was an earthquake in the restaurant, I mean it wasn’t in the restaurant, it was in the area, the region.

Mélanie goes to the kitchen.

“Why did you drink the wine like that?” asks Marco.

“I’m a mermaid, don’t you remember?”

“She’s had some bad news recently.”

“Why you shave your head?” asks Mélanie, returning with three plates of dorade.

“I like it that way,” she says, “just suddenly did it.”

She looks at Marco across the table. His face has thinned and lost its prettiness since last time they met.

“Marco has stopped designing clothes, he’s writing poetry now,” says Mélanie.

Olivia stares at the white flesh on the plates. She can’t eat fish. She pictures them swimming, darting in shoals, swirling in the deep. She is there with them, their brittle scales touch her a thousand times.

“Sorry, have to go.” Olivia tumbles off the chair and staggers out the door. Marco grabs her on the landing.

“You’re just tired from the flight yesterday,” he says.

“Is there a swimming pool near here, Monsieur Poet?” asks Olivia, laughing.

“Stop it.”

“Is this all you do now in Paris, sit in and write poetry?”

Marco follows her onto rue Montorgueil.

“Why did you do that to your hair?” says Marco.

“Slick and sleek. Better for swimming, moving forward, like sharks have to do.”

Marco stands in the centre of the street, feet fixed apart, a woman with a frenzy of yapping dogs passes.

“You’re not coming with me? We could get a kebab,” says Olivia.

“Mélanie is upset. Her boyfriend died last week. In the flat. Overdosed on pills, in the bathroom.”

“Were you there?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I think it does make it a difference if you were there or not.”

Marco glares at her. “My sister needs my support. Mélanie needs someone to be there with her.” Olivia dances around a group of orange-tanned tourists studying a map. The fishmonger is cleaning up, an arc of water splashes Marco. Olivia doesn’t laugh. He edges towards her but a cyclist cuts his path. Too many things in the way, thinks Olivia. Marco looks up at his apartment. Mélanie is at the window.

“Write a poem about it,” says Olivia.

The fishmonger sweeps the gutter and water pools out around Marco’s feet.

“Can we not just sit down and talk about this? I’ve been thinking about you,” says Marco.

Mélanie is studying them from above.

“Well, look, it’s been just great, cheers for letting me crash again, for the night,” says Olivia, marching off. She thinks he mumbled “fucking mermaids” under his breath.

The street is too busy. She rubs her smooth head. It is not that late. There still should be enough time to go back and talk about it. But talk about it, with the sister there? She sees that Marco is now outside the apartment. In between things; in between going back to Marco and leaving again. That is how she likes it. She walks towards Marco but wants to turn back. A group of men, drunk, block her path. A taxi creeps by. Tourists huddle around a menu-board. She could turn down a side street at any time. Will Marco follow?

Then she remembers. There is one nearby or at least she thinks so. She walks through the quieter streets and finds it. She has lost Marco. The building is where she thought it was. It is blue and ugly, with wide dirty windows and too-heavy doors. Marco is behind her. He is saying something about love, something about missing her. She looks at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Thought I’d pop in for a dip,” she says.

“You have a costume?”

“Don’t need one.”

“I can get you something from the apartment,” says Marco.

“Let’s go in, together. Naked. It will be fun.”

“You want us both to go in naked? I can’t do that. As I said, it’s not a good time.”

Olivia walks to the window and pays. The woman tosses the ticket to her. In the changing room there is a woman struggling into her bathing suit. Olivia takes off all her clothes and drapes them on the hook and stuffs her bag in the locker, leaving her cheap paperback on the sweaty bench. She treads through the empty showers letting the spray flick her head and back and climbs the steps up into the swimming pool. It is half full, bodies struggle up and down, flapping, churning the surface of the pool. Naked, she attracts stares; two scrabbling kids gawp and an old woman covers her eyes and the life-guard is elsewhere, but soon she dives in, to be under the water, the warm flow against her head, soft and rippling over her whole body, calming her, calming everything. Outside Marco is waiting. There is a window onto the pool from the street. But all he can see through the glass is shapes. Olivia swims up and down, to and fro, a blur in the water.