Before long the personal calls and texts started rolling in to my cell phone. I ignored them all—people from work, friends, even B-school people I hadn’t heard from in years. There were three calls from Chip’s mother alone.
Chip ignored his calls too; the long conversation with the Simonoff family—Nancy’s mother, to be specific—was draining. As it turned out, the family had known something was terribly wrong, because someone unfamiliar had answered Nancy’s cell phone when her mother called to check in. That person had said Nancy wasn’t available and not to call again, then promptly hung up. When the father called back (by then the mother was too distraught), no one picked up, so they called the resort and were put through to Guest Services, where they were given the run-around. As a result, the father was already en route to us. Worried sick about Nancy, he’d simply gotten on a plane.
When Chip broke the news to Nancy’s mother about what seemed to have happened, the woman went into shock. It took a while to get her back on the phone, at which time, without prompting from Chip, she brought up the possibility of foul play. Nancy’d had her inhaler since she was in preschool and there was no way, her mother said, she would have failed to use it. She always had extras, too: she was always stocked to the gills.
The family had heard about the mermaids from Nancy before they ever saw the video—they’d been the first ones she called. Nancy had never been a liar or one whit fanciful, they said, on the contrary, she’d always been painfully literal. She had no interest in movies, except for documentaries on marine life; she never played non-educational games or read make-believe stories, and she abominated the frivolity of novels. When other girls dressed up as princesses for Halloween, she put on a snorkel mask and went as Jacques Cousteau. (And once as a blowfish, her mother admitted, which set off a bout of weeping that called for a phone handoff to a neighbor and delayed the conversation another twenty minutes.)
The parents had retired to Florida when the father went emeritus, so it was a short flight and Prof. Simonoff was due in shortly. Chip’s new directive was to keep him from falling into the clutches of the parent company. He’d meet him at the ferry, and this time there’d be no interception from the marine police: we were the only ones who knew he was coming. And not only was the Prof. coming, Nancy’s mother had told Chip, but he was bringing some medical expertise with him—a doctor friend from their retirement community. You never knew when that might come in handy.
The problem was, the armada was still out there. As far as we knew, they were moving full steam ahead with their plan to cordon off the mermaids and “bring them in.” The way we saw it, none of our activities, no part of our energetic bustle was going to bear fruit in time to stop it. We needed an injunction, a court order that would make them cease and desist their mermaid-corralling activities. And that was something we didn’t have.
Time flew that day, with many of us doing video interviews as well as phone—I made sure to shed the muumuu, now that I had access to my own clothes again—and a couple of meltdowns, like when Janeane first saw (against Steve’s explicit wishes) the beach footage, complete with soldiers/guns. She barricaded herself into the bathroom and we had to call in Steve, who was making his rounds in the Hummer, to lure her out again.
There was also an altercation between Thompson and Rick when Thompson referred to him and Ronnie as “the two fairies”; it ended with Rick getting First Aid from Steve for a small cut above his right eye, while Ronnie prepared an ice pack. Thompson refused to say he was sorry, claiming that fairy was a purely descriptive term having nothing to do with homophobia/hate crimes/being a giant bigot. Also, Thompson maintained, when he’d inquired whether Ronnie was “the gayer one” he’d just been honestly trying to understand their deal. They didn’t have to be so touchy about it.
Gina attempted to show solidarity with Rick by dumping a whole bottle of cayenne pepper from Janeane’s travel-size spice rack into Thompson’s whiskey flask when Thompson wasn’t looking, then admitting it openly after Thompson spit whiskey all over the motel bedspread and complained the skin was peeling off his gums. Thompson wouldn’t hit a woman, that was as much a part of his code as calling gay men fairies, so Gina was protected from brute-force retaliation. Still, she hid the other spices just to be safe, and watched her own food and drinks like a hawk subsequently. From then on she’d only drink beers she opened herself, and no cocktails at all, she vowed.
For there was some drinking going on, no harm in admitting it; the stress, the pressure was getting to us, plus we were all on vacation. Those of us who normally had five o’clock rules suspended them (save for Janeane, a teetotaler), and those of us with no such rules, such as Thompson, proceeded all the more vigorously.
Chip, in his cups by 2 p.m., needed a designated driver to pick up Prof. Simonoff, so I, who at that time had only had two light beers, volunteered. I didn’t like going out just the two of us, so Thompson got the Hummer back from Steve—who’d met with rudeness and disbelief, for the most part, in his outreach activities and wanted to spend some time with the fraught Janeane—and we set out for the
