Free Mermaids in Paradise: A Novel by Lydia Millet

palace of the future—those decayed palaces, those cities overgrown with the weeds and monuments sunk beneath the waves. I floated through my fellow humans in their multitudes—how sweetly, how thinly the blood ran in my veins!
    Inside was where the families with children or elderly members dined—the ones who feared some of their number might topple off the islands if they ventured out there, topple and quickly drown. I envied them their nausea-free location, as my buzz faded slightly. Along the corridor to the restrooms I passed an over-the-hill-looking man wearing bulky suede sandals on his hairy white feet, and my heart went out to him—some people have no sense of anything. That was the thought that came to me.
    He stood rocking back onto his heels, his hands linked idly behind his back, gazing at a map on the wall; I saw it was one of those cutesy 3D maps they print for tourists, showing poorly drawn pictures of buildings with banners like SUSIE’S SANDWICH SHOP written on them. Sweat stains were visible beneath his arms on the unfortunate T-shirt he sported, which bore on its wrinkled back the legend Freudian Slip: When You Mean One Thing and Say Your Mother .
    It was only a matter of time till Chip made friends with him.
    In the bathroom a similar-aged woman stood in front of the mirror, doing something to her eyeballs. Something with contact lenses, judging from the plastic paraphernalia on the sink counter. I could see at once she was a matched set with the Freud T-shirt, her hair a mixture of gray and brown, wearing a frumpy dress from some place Guatemalan or similar, Nicaragua, I don’t know, a place where underpaid women bend over wooden looms, honest and kindly, with their whole bearing giving the impression that they welcome a life of fruitless toil.
    A muumuu deal, it had embroidered flowers and a pear-shaped quality. I tried to like the outfit, though, as I beheld it—mainly to counteract Gina. Gina’s opinions rent out a space in my brain, and try as I might I can’t ever completely evict them.
    “Isn’t it gorgeous here?” the muumuu wearer half yelled at me, as I tried to sidle past into a toilet stall.
    “Mmm, hmm, wmm,” I said, or words to that effect. I don’t want to talk on my way in or out of the stalls. Not to a stranger, possibly not to anyone. It’s a moment for keeping your own counsel.
    As I peed I thought of how probably, when Chip made friends with the sweaty Freud T-shirt guy, I’d have to act pally with this woman, his bookend, who now wished to prattle on to me as urine streamed between my legs into the toilet bowl. Well, sure she did. Why not? I was a person; to go with my urethra, I had ears. Urethras were for peeing, ears were for receiving the random chatter of orbiting life forms. Her own life-form equipment included a mouth for talking from—a generous mouth above a muumuu of embroidered flowers, as it happened. Red,green, yellow, purple, and blue. Yes, she was a life form displaying other life forms and reaching out to even more life forms, willy-nilly. Out there, beyond the metal door, she was saying something about Pacifica or maybe spina bifida—I couldn’t hear past the rushing sound of pee. I wished she would stop, though.
    I’d known Chip long enough to predict when he would make friends with the strangers I’d spotted; what it came down to was simply whether the person in question would consent to talk to him . Because Chip was going to talk to them, it went without saying, so if the other party was also a scattershot, arbitrary extrovert like Chip, nine out of ten times they’d connect. And here was my answer, right in front of me: the woman, who had never met me before, was talking about spina bifida, or possibly the beer Pacifico, as I peed.
    And it was all for naught, I thought, as I loudly, deliberately flushed—on the subject of spina bifida I was a blank slate. No help to give. No expertise at all.
    There was a pregnant pause as I came out, as