Swimming Without a Net

  “Dr. Barb,” Fred sighed, tossing her book bag onto the nearest counter.

  “Dr. Bimm.” Her boss was a stickler for titles under all circumstances, even if Jonas’s hand was trying to undo her bra clasp.

  “Dr. Barb, you’ve been dating my friend for a year. Don’t you think it’s time you called me Fred?”

  “No, Dr. Bimm.”

  Fred sighed again. She liked her boss, under normal circumstances, but since the woman had started banging her best friend, it was harder and harder to be around the two of them.

  For one thing, they were still in the “oooh goo oooh” stage of courtship, when anything either of them did was greeted with cries of delight. Jonas could find a worm in his oatmeal and Dr. Barb would find it charming.

  For another thing, like most couples, they felt all Fred’s problems would be solved if only she could Find Someone. To that end…

  “Sam’s going to be here any minute,” Jonas informed her, like she could forget. “Is that, um, what you’re wearing?”

  “Yes.” She almost snapped. For the hundredth time, she wished she hadn’t given Jonas a set of her keys. She never knew when she’d find him (them) lurking in her apartment. “Why, what’s the matter?”

  “Besides the fact that it’s sixty degrees out and you’re wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt? And would it kill you to wear a bra?”

  Fred barely restrained a sniff. As a mermaid, she didn’t much notice the cold—Jonas ought to try the Arctic sometime if he thought Massachusetts autumns were chilly. And, frankly, she didn’t need a bra. Never had. Either gravity was being kind, or it was another benefit of her half-and-half heritage.

  “At least a pedicure,” Jonas was begging. “And brush your hair. You’d be so gorgeous if you—”

  “That’s not nice,” Dr. Barb said reproachfully. Jonas had performed one of his miraculous makeovers on her just before they’d started going out, and it had gone straight to his head.

  Normally tightly bound in a braid, Dr. Barb’s beautiful dark blond hair now tumbled halfway down her back. Her almond-shaped eyes were carefully made-up, and she was wearing a tailored red suit. Her tiny, red pump–shod feet dangled several inches above the floor and she snuggled farther into Jonas’s lap.

  “Fred doesn’t need any help to look good,” her besotted boss was saying. Fred, meanwhile, had opened her fridge and was desperately hunting for a beer. Or Drano. “You leave her be.”

  “Sorry, baby.”

  “You’re forgiven, for a kiss.”

  “Two kisses!”

  Fred kept hunting. Could she get drunk off of two measly wine coolers? Maybe if she spiked them with the spoiled milk…

  “Done!” Jonas cried, and then various smacking noises cut off the annoying conversation. Of course, now she was dealing with a whole new set of annoying, but—

  “Success!” She snatched the Miller Lite left over from some party. Let’s see, the last party Jonas had made her host had been in the twentieth century…Did beer go bad? Oh, who cared?

  “Your hair is so soft,” Dr. Barb sighed, running her fingers through Jonas’s carefully coiffed locks.

  “So is yours, baby, but you should use more of that deep conditioner I left at your place.” Jonas was a chemical scientist who worked for Aveda, and was always dropping off free product. Fred ignored it, but Dr. Barb took it to heart. “Just wrap your hair in a towel and leave it in for half an hour or so, then rinse.”

  “I will…” Fred looked around for a bottle opener, then gave up and wrenched the cap off with her bare hand. “For a kiss.”

  Fred guzzled.

  “Done!” More smacking sounds.

  Fred finished the beer and noted, with despair, that her damned superior metabolism had taken care of any meager alcohol offered by the good people at Miller, Inc. She should have known. But desperate times called for desperate—

  “I love your eyes,” Dr. Barb sighed, coming up for air.

  “I love yours,” Jonas said, caressing Barb’s long strands of hair.

  “I could look into yours all day and never get tired of the view,” Dr. Barb said, stroking Jonas’s shoulder.

  Jonas nibbled on her ear in response. Fred coldly watched the primates groom each other and actually wished her blind date—the third in two weeks—would show up already.

  In answer to her prayer, there was a sharp rap at her door.

  “Oh thank God,” she mumbled. Then, louder, “Get out, you two. I’ve got to go. Uh…what’s this one’s name again?”

  “Sam Fisher,” Dr. Barb said patiently.

  Fred shot Jonas a look. Dr. Barb didn’t know Fred was a mermaid…yet. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  “We had the same advisor in graduate school. It’s not his fault he ended up in marine biology.”

  “Out!”

  “We’re going, we’re going,” Jonas said.

  “I’m sure you’ll just love him,” Dr. Barb said doubtfully, climbing out of Jonas’s lap. “You’ll have lots to talk about.”

  “And brush your hair before you take off,” Jonas added, following his ladylove to the door. Jonas yanked it open, nearly got a fist in the face (Sam liked to knock, lots, and loud), and said, “Nice to meet you, good-bye.”

  The door shut behind them and Fred sized up her latest blind date.

  To her amusement, he was frowning at her. Tall and whip thin, with wire-rimmed glasses and a shaved head, he had the most amazing green eyes she’d ever seen, the color of moss on a rainy day.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Fred Bimm.”

  “Sam Fisher. Look, the only reason I’m here is because Barb has been on my ass to hook up ever since she started getting laid regularly.”

  Fred swallowed a cough of surprise. “It’s, ah, nice to meet you, too.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “And I bet you’re only here—besides the fact that you live here—because your friend wants you to hook up, too.”

  “It’s not the only reason.”

  He frowned at her.

  “It’s the only reason,” she admitted.

  “I’m perfectly happy with my life right now, not to mention you’re too young for me.”

  “I’m thirty,” she protested.

  “A mere infant. Also, my TiVo is on the fritz and if I take you to dinner, I’m going to miss Lost.”

  “You’re trying to get out of a date to watch TV?”

  “It’s the season opener!”

  Fred shrugged. “They’re not going to really tell you anything. You know that, right? Every week is just another hand-job, courtesy of ABC.”

  Sam’s frown deepened. “If the subtle clues fly over your head, that’s not ABC’s fault.”

  “Hey!”

  “But as I was saying. Assuming we went on this travesty of a date—”

  “Hey!” Fred was used to being the most irritating person in the room. Sam’s attitude was startling, to put it mildly.

  “—we’d take the T to Le Meridien—I’d treat for the subway tokens.”

  “I have a T card,” Fred volunteered.

  “Fine. We’d have drinks and dinner and, since I’m a generous tipper…” He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “Call it a hundred fifty bucks.”

  “No dessert?”

  He ignored her. “Then we might decide to take in a late show. Call it another twenty bucks. Plus popcorn and drinks. Another twenty-five.”

  “I’d still be full from dinner. No popcorn for me.”

  “Nothing must be left to chance. So that brings us to one hundred ninety-five dollars. But since you’re a modern woman, you’ll insist on paying for half.”

  “Also, I don’t want to feel obligated to put out.”

  “Too right. Which makes your share ninety-seven dollars and fifty cents.”

  Sam waited expectantly. Fred swallowed a grin and said, “Will you take a check?”

  Two

  “So that’s what you do? All day? You feed fish?” Blind Da
te Number Four (she could not remember the man’s name for her life) asked, forking more linguine with clams into his maw, which was always open—either for food or inane chatter.

  “That’s all,” Fred replied, repressing a shudder and attacking her salad like a moray eel going after an angelfish. She was allergic to shellfish and watching Number Four shovel it in was fairly nauseating. “I feed the fish, make sure the little ones aren’t getting chomped, like that.”

  “I think I’ve see you in the tank!” Number Four exclaimed, and a tiny piece of masticated clam hit Fred’s left cheek. “You’re one of the guys in the scuba suits who hang out in that big tank.”

  “Main One,” she corrected him, concealing a shudder as she wiped her cheek with a napkin. It was telling how much this one was irritating her; she never called it Main One. That was strictly a Dr. Barb rule. “And I doubt you’ve seen me.”

  If he’d seen her flailing around in her wet suit, he certainly would have remembered. She couldn’t swim with legs; only with her tail. It made her job trickier than it had to be, for sure. For one thing, she always ended up upside down in Main One, and her scuba gear always tried its best to get tangled, despite her years of certification.

  “I monitor the water levels and pull out any sick fish and stuff like that.”

  “Cool! So what’s that pay?”

  She gave him an odd look. Number Four had managed to work money into the conversation a record seven times. She already knew what his house cost, what his annual salary was, what his tax bite was, and what a flight to Tokyo cost these days.

  “Enough to keep a roof over my head.”

  “I’m gonna say fifty,” he guessed. He looked like an accountant—brown suit, brown hair, mud-colored eyes, stubby fingers. Not unattractive, just…blah. “Fifty K. You’ve got an advanced degree, that’s gotta be worth some bucks.”

  Fred laughed. “Shows what you know about advanced degrees…and private nonprofits.”

  “So quit and work in the public sector.”

  “I like my job.”

  “I bet you could make six figures in the public sector.”

  “Sure, thinking up new and improved crap to dump in the ocean. No thanks.”

  “Six figures!” Number Four repeated, spraying more clam sauce.

  “Don’t care. Don’t need it. Getting bored.”

  “Want dessert?”

  “Hell, no.”

  For the third time, Fred explained to Number Four that he didn’t need to drive her to her apartment in his new Lexus hybrid ($75,000, after rebate).

  “It’s just twenty minutes by subway. I’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, come on. Leather seats!”

  “I’m all atingle,” she replied. They were walking past the restaurant toward the Park Street T stop. “Really.”

  “Then how about something for my trouble?”

  “Nope.”

  “Leather seats!”

  “Go away,” she told Number Four.

  “Aw, come on! I took the whole afternoon off for you.”

  It was true; it hadn’t been dinner, it had been lunch. Dr. Barb had given her the day off, which should have instantly roused her suspicions.

  “And I’m pathetically grateful. Good night.”

  He reached out and seized her arm. “Just one kiss,” he said, breathing clams and garlic in her face. “And maybe a hand-job.”

  Fred blinked. It wasn’t that she was inexperienced, or a prude. She just hadn’t met an asshole of this magnitude since she, Thomas, and Artur had killed Dr. Barb’s ex-husband last fall.

  She smiled at him. She wished, in that moment, she’d inherited the sharp teeth of her father’s people instead of the flat grinders of Homo sapiens. “I’ll be happy to give you a hand-job,” she said.

  “Great!” He yanked her by the elbow toward the cemetery outside the T stop. “C’mere, we can have some privacy.”

  “No need for that,” she said, effortlessly extricating herself from his grip, seizing each of his thumbs, and popping them out of their sockets.

  He didn’t scream so much as whinny, and bent forward to cradle his odd-looking thumbs between his thighs.

  “Thanks for dinner,” she said, stepping around him and already fishing for her T card.

  Three

  Fred saw the lights on in her apartment and stomped up the stairs. This time she’d give Jonas a piece of her mind, as well as Dr. Barb, never mind that the woman was her boss. Enough was enough! Clam globs in her face, garlic breath, sexual harassment. And it wasn’t even Wednesday!

  She unlocked her door and shoved it open, and was momentarily startled to see the happy couple sitting stiffly on her couch as opposed to grooming each other or, worse, getting to third base.

  Standing just inside her doorway were two strangers. One was a young man—early twenties?—with startling orange hair ( jack-o’-lantern orange) and matching eyes. Beside him was a petite young woman of about the same age, with dark blue hair and eyes that were even darker, the way small sapphires almost looked black in the right light.

  She knew at once they were Undersea Folk, and mentally she groaned. Apparently the high point of her day was going to be dislocating Number Four’s thumbs.

  Before either stranger could speak, Jonas leapt up from the couch, said (too heartily), “Good, great, you’re here, we told your friends we’d wait with them, but now you’re here so we’ll be going, see you, good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” Dr. Barb managed as Jonas dragged her out the door. “Young lady, whoever does your hair is doing a magnificent—”

  Jonas slammed the door.

  Fred surveyed the mermaid and merman. “Hit me,” she said at last.

  The two exchanged puzzled glances. “Those are not our instructions,” the man said. “I am Kertal. This is Tennian. We were sent by the High King.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you were here to take a survey. Something to drink? Some chips?”

  “No, thank you,” the woman—Tennian—said in a soft, lovely alto. “You are Fredrika Bimm, of Kortrim’s line.”

  “If Kortrim is my bio-dad, you’re right. But I prefer to think of myself as being of Moon Bimm’s line. That’s my mother,” she added helpfully.

  “Yes, His Highness has told us of your lady mother,” Kertal said. He towered over her and had the ropy muscles of a long-distance swimmer. Which, of course, he was. She was having a terrible time not staring at him. Both of them. Their coloring was so extraordinary! It was odd to be in a room and not feel like she had the freakiest hair there. “We were instructed to try you at your home if we did not find you at the aquarium.”

  “You went to where I work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God,” Fred said, and collapsed on her couch.

  “We asked of you, and spoke of you to your friends. They brought us to your”—Kertal looked around the tiny apartment with an unreadable expression on his face—“home.”

  “You didn’t tell them who you were, did you?”

  “Our business is with you, not them.”

  “I’m going to take that as a no.” She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. “Thank God. My boss doesn’t know I’m a mermaid and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Again, the two strangers exchanged glances, and again, it was Kertal who spoke. “We are charged by the High King to summon you to the Pelagic.”

  “The Pelagic?” Fred could almost feel her mind buckle under the strain and she giggled until she lost her breath. “I don’t know what you guys think it is, but here a pelagic is an open zone in the ocean that’s not near a coast or even a sea floor. How can you bring me to a pelagic? And will you sit down? You look like a couple of Army recruiters. Unclench.”

  Neither of them moved. “A Pelagic is a meeting that can only be called by a majority of the Undersea Folk.”

  “I thought you guys were a monarchy.”

  “Our good king has acceded to the request of his people,” Tennian almost whisper
ed.

  “Can you speak up, please? It’s hard to hear you over the roaring in my ears.”

  “Will you come?” Tennian asked, slightly louder.

  “To this Pelagic thing? Sorry, I’ll need a little more info before I go gallivanting off with you two. Like, what exactly is it? Where is it? And why am I invited? And will you two sit down? I’m freaked out enough.”

  The two Undersea Folk gingerly sat on her kitchen chairs. Fred’s apartment was an open design. The kitchen, the dining room, and the living room were all one big space. The small bedroom was off to the left, the bathroom off to the right.

  Fred had fooled the eye into thinking the place was large and airy by painting all the walls white. The place was stark enough to belong to a monk, which suited her fine. She hated clutter.

  She spotted the brand-new Aveda bag beside the kitchen chair, and nudged it beneath the table with a toe. “So. You were saying?”

  “As you know, Fredrika, the royal family makes its home in the Black Sea. It is also the seat of our government.”

  “Right, the king and Artur. Got it.”

  “And His Highness Rankon, and Her Highness Jeredna.”

  “He’s got sibs? He never said. And would it kill you guys to have a Jenny or a Peter?”

  “It is not for us to know the workings of the royal mind,” Tennian murmured.

  “Ha! I know all about the workings of Artur’s mind, and he’s only got one thing on it. That’s—Never mind. You were saying?”

  “May I have a glass of water?” Kertal asked.

  “Sure.” Fred jumped up, glad to have something to do. She guessed what Kertal’s problem was—simple dehydration—and filled two glasses, one for each of them, to the top. As Artur had told her last year, Undersea Folk could walk around on land, but not for long, and they weakened quickly.

  Tiny Tennian drained hers in three gulps and politely asked for a refill. And another. Thus, it was a good five minutes before either of them got back to the subject at hand.