Free Mermaids in Paradise: A Novel by Lydia Millet Page A

though she’d asked me a question.
    “Sorry?” I said.
    “Have you been to the Baths yet?” she asked eagerly. “A ma zing!”
    “I saw them in the ads,” I conceded, turning on a tap and beginning to wash my hands. I was still trying to evict Gina, or rather the goblin Gina, perched cozily on my shoulder and glaring down at the perfectly friendly woman’s shoes. Like her dress, they seemed to partake of a peasant motif, homespun or at least cheaply manufactured. They were fashioned of myriadstrings of knotted leather or possibly vegan leather alternative, none too clean, flowers sprouting, tassels hanging, hither, thither and yon, tendrils of shoe twining around her ankles and up her calves like so many creeping vines in a movie where plants come alive. Or wait, plants are alive. But you know what I mean. The shoes were unflattering, with soles flat as pancakes that showcased the woman’s large, pale toes, the female equivalent of her partner’s; they were nosing out of the Jesus-style footwear like rows of eager hippos. Albinos.
    The Gina goblin wanted to torch the sandals. Failing that, the goblin wanted to take the sandals, along with the chunky ones worn by the Freud T-shirt man, and nail them up on an offensive sign. HIPPIES GO HOME, something like that. Mean-minded and impeccably dressed, the goblin chittered on my shoulder—chittered unpleasantly.
    How many times, I wondered, as the woman said words like mindfulness and fully present , had that Gina homunculus hitched a ride on me? I didn’t always like it, but I couldn’t shake it off, either. Chip and Gina were angel and devil on my shoulders, basically, and there were things I loved about them both. I went Chip’s way when I could—maybe prolonged exposure would encourage me. Gina insisted on judgment, an us-and-them mentality, while Chip, with his earnest friendliness, tried to lead me down the path of brotherly love.
    But brotherly love was sometimes wrong.
    Take the toe situation, I thought to myself.
    When we were kids, Gina and I, and even through college, which we attended together, I’d had some creative ambitions.Young people often do. I wanted to write songs and also sing them for a living, had singer/songwriter fantasies. I took lessons, I wrote songs and forthwith I sang them; excitedly I made demo tapes, performed for myself in mirrors and in showers, concocted videos. Later I put on shows for others, at college bars and grungy yet pretentious cafes.
    But finally Gina showed me the error of my ways, pointing out quite rightly that the world was full of singers already—showcasing the foregone conclusion of my artistic and professional failure. Don’t be a wannabe, said Gina impatiently. It was Gina who persuaded me to go the MBA route, whereby at least, she said, I could grow up to be a loser with money instead of a loser without it. And we’d be at the same school then, she said, because she planned to go to Stanford too and get her PhD. She wasn’t born to make money, she said, because to make money, one way or another, directly or indirectly, you had to build people up. She was born to cut people down, she said, and that’s what she was going to do. Criticize. Therefore: a PhD. But about the singing, we can always do karaoke, she said, we’ll go to karaoke bars whenever you want!
    We’ll get wall-eyed. We’ll belt us out some Bee Gees shit .
    Since then there’s always been a shadow Gina following me, even when the real Gina, in her physical body, is absent, such as during my honeymoon. (Gina, I happened to know from texts received on my cell phone, was enjoying her own honeymoon of sorts with Ellis, whom she’d decided to like for several weeks at least, she texted me, before bringing the hammer down. She also texted me that he was surprisingly good in the sack, you know, for a faggot. She said his Eurofag fashion sense meant he’d given hergood advice on buying a new bag. Also, the décor of his apartment was actually