An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (28 page)

“So.”
Zoë eyed him. “Back at last? Bring any mermaids back with you? Or have you
grown up after dallying so long in the tropical sun?”

John
winced and broke eye contact first.

“Ah.” He
could have shaved with her tone. “You came to your senses then? Playing
Pygmalion isn’t your strong suit?”

John
expelled his breath, but little air returned to fill the void. “Listen, Zoë,
I’m sorry you’re still upset with me. But I think it’s in both our interests if
we agree to a truce right here and now—CMU just isn’t a big enough campus for
us to be at each other’s throats.”

Zoë
squared her shoulders and stood straighter, her book bag falling down her right
arm unnoticed. She appeared to consider his words. For the first time, he
noticed that her dark hair had been cut level with her chin, swinging at an
angle to the back of her head. Her makeup, always minimal—foundation and powder
to cover less-than-perfect skin—was now a bit more obvious, though applied with
a light touch. Her nails were still short and unpolished so he suspected that
she hadn’t abandoned her Tae Kwon Do or sports. The style of her clothes
remained clearly in the black-is-artsy-and-cool realm—her Doc Marten boots
added a good two inches to her five-nine height—but they were less
secondhand-store chic and more mall-hip. Zoë had always drawn attention
wherever she went, but now she demanded it.

“I don’t
see why not.” She shrugged. “It’s not as though I’ve gone to pieces over our
breakup—I’ve moved on. You just gave me a shock, that’s all.”

John
nodded and felt his chest ease. He was about to offer to buy her a coffee
sometime when a rather tall man dressed in black jeans, red t-shirt, and black
leather jacket came up behind Zoë from the direction of the fine arts building
and put his hand familiarly on Zoë’s forearm.

“Hey,
Zoë.” When she turned to face him, he gave her a kiss. “I’ve finished fixing
the problems with the design of the gallery for the new student union and I
thought I’d come and take you to Buns’n Udders for coffee.”

Zoë
caught John’s eye, smirking. “Sure, Greg. I was just saying goodbye to my
friend John here. John, this is Greg Moreland; he’s a prof in the architecture
department.”

Greg
barely glanced toward John. “Hey, nice to meet you.”

“Nice to
meet you, too.”

John
watched them head into Wean Hall, presumably to take the elevator to the first
floor where they could take the shortcut through the parking lot behind Wean to
Forbes Avenue. Zoë threaded her arm through Greg’s as they walked, never
glancing back at him.

***

A month
later, John biked into CMU in an early-morning shower that left him drenched;
in a few weeks, he’d be forced to drive again to campus to avoid the cold, but
today it was still warm enough for biking while wet. A few leaves had fallen
already and wet clumps of them clung to the edges of Schenley Drive and Frew
Street and to the sidewalks. Students and staff alike, indistinguishable from
each other in their yellow rain slickers and backpacks, hurried to shelter
wherever he looked. When he came up to the fourth floor of Wean later in the
afternoon for a cup of coffee, he saw that the day remained gray and overcast,
bathing the lobby in its steely light.

After
he’d grabbed his coffee, he planned to go up to Steve’s office on the sixth
floor and drop off his latest chapter, the first one not rehashing old
material. He had a surprise for Steve: instead of proposing to pursue a limited
number of algorithms for recognizing underwater objects in order to model the
environment captured in his Trench video, he planned to design a genetic
algorithm that learned as it filtered out common noises. He’d already toyed
with some basic genetic algorithms for fun when he’d gotten tired of working on
networking problems for Steve and had set up a Web page of genetic haikus that
“evolved” as visitors voted on lines that they liked best. It hadn’t been
anything fancy, but he’d gotten some notice and inspired a few other grad
students to write more advanced algorithms.

If Steve
didn’t keep him too long glancing over his proposal’s new direction, John
planned to take a break for a couple of hours and drop in on a talk by some
guys from Pixar over in Porter Hall, one of whom was James Wilson, a former
member of the graphics group. Half an hour later, he and Steve were headed over
to Porter, laughing about the current crop of first years, who were both a tad
too uptight and a little too business-oriented, when Zoë fell into step at his
side. He managed to say hi in an even voice and to keep talking as the three of
them walked together. Zoë said little, her long legs easily keeping stride with
them, her arms swinging slightly and her hair pushed behind her ear. A spicy
scent warmed the autumn air between them and enveloped her in a soft, invisible
cocoon.

“So you
think they’re gonna show some outtakes from
Toy Story
?” Zoë asked as if
her presence wasn’t explosive.

“Absolutely.”
Steve eyed them but said nothing.

“You
planning to see it when it comes out?” John thought that he knew Zoë’s answer.

“Sure—are
you asking me to go?” She swiveled her head and leveled her gaze on him.

John
blinked. “Yeah, why not?”

The
conversation halted as they reached the door to Porter and another group of CS
grad students came up behind them. Members of the combined group conjectured
about how much Disney had influenced the work of the Pixar animators and
storytellers, but Zoë said nothing more. She remained at John’s side, however,
and when he sat down next to Steve, she took the seat at his left. He became
preternaturally aware of her forearm brushing against his, the swell of her
breasts beneath her red camisole, the smell of her perfume.

When
did she start wearing perfume?

Without
bidding, images of Zoë, naked and sweaty above him, haunted his thoughts,
overriding texture algorithms and rendering pipelines.

He
didn’t remember much of the talk afterwards and later told Steve that he’d been
too consumed with his proposal to focus on what was being said. Zoë chose to
take her leave outside Porter, murmuring something about an appointment on the
other side of campus and then she was gone with the crowd spilling from the
auditorium. John watched her go, her hair swinging confidently about her face
and her lovely legs encased in black tights under a black-and-white checked
mini-skirt. He remembered them wrapped around his torso.

“That’s
one cool customer.” Steve’s voice broke his reverie.

“What?”

“Nothing,
John, nothing at all.” Steve grinned.

Slowly,
John walked back to his office. When he got there, Stefan half sat on the long
table next to his desk, one leg on the floor and the other bent in front of
him, chatting with John’s office mate, Patrick. Stefan gestured for some time
with his long fingers as he talked, his long face animated and his dark eyes
gleaming underneath the overhang of his choppy brown hair. John sat down and
began to type.

“Oy, it
looks like John hasn’t got the time o’day for you.”

Stefan’s
hands stilled in mid-air as he turned his face toward John.

“Hey,
man! What’s up with you? You look like you just ate some unmarked leftovers in
the lounge refrigerator. Steve ridin’ you hard these days?”

John
stopped typing and leaned back in his chair. He stomach roiled.

“No more
than I deserve.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and
forefinger. “What’s up? Going to tonight’s IC at Gilgenoff’s house?”

Stefan
grinned. “Absolutely. You have to ask? Have you seen that new first year?
Astrid? She’s smokin’.”

“No, I
got better things to do these days.”

“Once
burned? Anyway, that’s not why I’m here, actually. I just saw CNN in the student
center and there’s another tropical storm developing in the Caribbean. They’re
already talking about naming it Marilyn. With all the hurricanes coming through
these days, I guess you got outta there in the nick of time, man.”

John
blinked rapidly and frowned. “No shit?”

“Would I
lie to you?”

John
rubbed his palms along the sides of his head and rocked around in his chair.
“Dewey’s got one of the safest harbors in the Caribbean,” he said, more to
himself than to Stefan and Patrick. “It’s been a really busy season, but
nothing’s come close to Culebra, not even Luis. I’m sure they’re in no danger.”

“You
look more than a little worried, my man. Don’t tell me you forgot to love ‘em
and leave ‘em.”

John,
who sat staring at a pile of tech reports next to Stefan on the table, missed
this last remark. “What?”

“Nothing,
nothing. Hey, wanna come with me tonight to Gilgenoff’s?”

John
heard Stefan, but he still had difficulty processing his words. “Uh, what? Oh,
yeah, sure. I’ll be here until you come and get me. Loads to do.”

“Okay,
I’ll swing by at 6:30. But, hey, John, do me a favor and find another ride if I
happen to hit it off with Astrid, okay?”

“Sure,
sure.” John waved Stefan away.

He sat
immobile long after Stefan had gone whistling down the hall. He didn’t move, in
fact, until Patrick rolled his own chair over and very gently pushed John
around to face his workstation and put his fingers on the keys.

***

Tamarind
stood outside Ana’s house frowning at the sky, her hands on her hips and her
hair teased by the wind. Yesterday, she’d heard the news on Ana’s radio that a
ferocious storm terrified the humans living on the islands south and west of
Culebra and she knew, even without Ana’s oyster-tight lips, that this storm
would scour Culebra long before it blew itself out. Among the
mer
, it
was said that these devastating winds and waves were the result of angry
quarrels between Mother Sea and Father Sky and, until these two elements made
peace, the
mer
sought refuge in the Hidden Caves. Without a doubt they
swam there now, her father’s mind urging her family and community to swim
faster while his strength bolstered the flagging energies of the older
mer
and his will compelled the youngest to stay on task. When they arrived, he
would discover her deceit.

She
studied the sky, gauged the feel of the air on her skin, and tested the
humidity with her tongue. Each hour the air pressure dropped further. Her
experience and her instinct told her that they must find shelter before the
storm hit in two days. While she stood there, Ana squatted at the shore,
arranging shells, pebbles, and seaweed into an elaborate and inexplicable
design. Tamarind had no idea what more Ana hoped to learn from Mother Sea. She
dug hard fingertips into her hipbones and waited.

A
laughing gull glided silently over the spot where Ana stood. Tamarind frowned
at it before turning on her heel. She flopped down into an aluminum chair
outside Ana’s front door and nudged a big toe around the basket that Ana had
packed that morning. It reminded her of the first-aid kit that the park rangers
brought along for their turtle watches. She didn’t recognize all of the vials
and baggies, but Ana had included tamarind-and-lemon syrup for an antiseptic, a
diluted cone-snail extract for numbing a small area, and a plankton tincture
spiked with turtle grass and algae as a sedative.

She
reached into her pocket and pulled out the moonstone that Valerie had given
her. Just this week they’d traveled to San Juan and a jeweler that Valerie knew
there. The jeweler had studied the gem for some time before lifting her
eyepiece and smiling at them.

“Valerie,
this is a beautiful specimen. Where’d you get it?”

Valerie
shrugged. “I have a friend in New York who keeps a lookout for me. Cabochon
cut, do you think?”

The
jeweler rolled the moonstone between her fingers before answering. “No, I
wouldn’t. This one needs to become a bead. Then I can polish it on my wheel for
you, but it will take some time.”

“No,
that won’t be necessary. We’ll polish it by hand.”

The
jeweler nodded and pulled her eyepiece down again. “So what are you going to
use it for? It’s so fine. You could make it the centerpiece of a pendant. Make
a lot of money on it, too.”

“It’s
not for sale. It’s a gift for a friend.” At her words, Valerie smiled at
Tamarind.

When
they picked the moonstone up later, all its knobby edges had been sheared away
and it shimmered expectantly. Tamarind held the bead in her palm and raised it
to the light. For the first time, she understood that transforming power
existed outside of the sea. Even after she’d slid the moonstone into her
pocket, its light called to her fingers and she rubbed it without being aware
that she did.

Today
while she waited for Ana to return from communing with Mother Sea, she polished
the moonstone as she’d done every free moment since their return from San Juan.
Valerie had given her a strip of clean felt and a small jar of tin oxide paste.

“A wheel
would polish it faster but not better. Besides, I rather believe in the lore
around this gem. By polishing it yourself, you make it your own. Just remember
to keep the tin oxide moist.”