through the door to see his son naked on the floor playing with a small wooden train set. Together they pulled on their T-shirts and shorts and flip-flops, and Charlie put on a hat, and they walked down to the beach.
“Daddy?” said the boy. His jaw was set, and he seemed to be pondering something.
“Yes, Marcus?”
“Who was the shortest president?”
“You mean in height?”
“No. In, in days. Who was the shortest.”
“Harrison. He caught pneumonia during his inauguration and died. He was president for forty-something days, and he spent most of his time in office dying.”
“Oh. Well, who was the longest then?”
“Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He served three full terms. Died in office during his fourth. We’ll take off our shoes here.”
They placed their shoes on a rock and carried on walking down toward the waves, their toes digging into the damp sand.
“How do you know so much about presidents?”
“Because my father thought it would do me good to find out about them, when I was a kid.”
“Oh.”
They waded out into the water, making for a boulder, one that could only be seen at low tide. After a while, Charlie picked the boy up and let him ride on his shoulders.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, Marcus.”
“P’choona says you’re famous.”
“And who’s Petunia?”
“At playgroup. She says her mom has all your CDs. She says she loves your singing.”
“Ah.”
“
“Not really. A little bit.” He put Marcus down on the top of the boulder, then he clambered up it himself. “Okay. Ready to sing?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to sing?”
“My favorite song.”
“I don’t know if she’ll like that one.”
“She will.” Marcus had the certainty of walls, of mountains.
“Okay. One, two, three—”
They sang “Yellow Bird” together, which was Marcus’s favorite song that week, and then they sang “Zombie Jamboree,” which was his second favorite, and “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” which was his third favorite. Marcus, whose eyes were better than Charlie’s, spotted her as they were finishing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” and he began to wave.
“There she is, Daddy.”
“Are you sure?”
The morning haze blurred the sea and sky together into a pale whiteness, and Charlie squinted at the horizon. “I don’t see anything.”
“She’s gone under the water. She’ll be here soon.”
There was a splash, and she surfaced immediately below them; with a reach and a flip and a wiggle she was sitting on the rock beside them, her silvery tail dangling down into the Atlantic, flicking beads of water up onto her scales. She had long, orange-red hair.
They all sang together now, the man and the boy and the mermaid. They sang “The Lady Is a Tramp” and “Yellow Submarine” and then Marcus taught the mermaid the words to the Flintstones theme song.
“He reminds me of you,” she said to Charlie, “when you were a little boy.”
“You knew me then?”
She smiled. “You and your father used to walk down the beach, back then. Your father,” she said. “He was quite some gentleman.” She sighed. Mermaids sigh better than anyone. Then she said, “You should go back now. The tide’s coming in.” She pushed her long hair back and jackknifed into the ocean. She raised her head above the waves, touched her fingertips to her lips, and blew Marcus a kiss before vanishing under the water.
Charlie put his son onto his shoulders, and he waded through the sea, back to the beach, where his son slipped down from his shoulders onto the sand. He took off his old fedora hat and placed it on his son’s head. It was much too big for the boy, but it still made him smile.
“Hey,” said Charlie, “You want to see something?”
“Okay. But I want breakfast. I want pancakes. No, I want oatmeal. No, I want pancakes.”
“Watch this.” Charlie began to do a sand-dance in his bare feet, soft-shoe shuffling through the sand.
“I can do that,” said Marcus.
“Really?”
“Watch me, Daddy.”
He could, too.
Together the man and the boy danced their way back up the sand to the house, singing a wordless song that they made up as they went along, which lingered in the air even after they had gone in for breakfast.
Acknowledgments
To begin with, an enormous bunch of flowers to Nalo Hopkinson, who kept a helpful eye on the Caribbean dialogue and not only told me what I needed to fix but suggested ways to fix it; and also to Lenworth Henry, who was there on the day I made it all up, and whose voice I heard in the back of my head when I was writing it (which is why I was delighted to hear that he would be narrating the audio book).
As with my last adult novel,
Roger Forsdick and Graeme Baker gave up their time to answer my questions about the police, and fraud, and extradition treaties, while Roger also showed me around the cells, fed me dinner, and looked over the finished manuscript. I’m very grateful.
Sharon Stiteler kept an eye on the book to make sure the birds passed muster and she answered my birding questions. Pam Noles was the first person to read any of the book, and her responses kept me going. There was a small host of other people who lent me their eyes and minds and opinions, including Olga Nunes, Colin Greenland, Giorgia Grilli, Anne Bobby, Peter Straub, John M. Ford, Anne Murphy and Paul Kinkaid, Bill Stiteler, and Dan and Michael Johnson. Errors of fact or of opinion are mine, not theirs.
Thanks also go to Ellie Wylie; Thea Gilmore; The Ladies of Lakeside; to Miss Holly Gaiman, who turned up to help whenever she decided I needed a sensible daughter around; to the Petes of Hill House, Publishers; to Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Jack Womack, and Julia Bannon; and to Dave McKean.
Jennifer Brehl, my editor at Morrow, was the person who persuaded me that the story I told her over lunch that day really would make a good novel, at a time when I really wasn’t sure what the next novel was going to be, and she sat patiently when I phoned her up one night and read her the first third of the book. For these things alone she should be sainted. Jane Morpeth at Headline is the kind of editor writers hope to get if they’re very good and eat all their vegetables. Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House, with the assistance of Ginger Clark, and, in the
