Beware the Mermaids Page 7

  On her way out the front door, Nancy looked at the Nest, a fancy thermostat mounted on the wall that could be controlled from a smartphone. Roger had bought it last year over Nancy’s firm objection. She had hated the new device, mostly because she preferred the familiar, reliable old thermostat, which she knew how to use and which had never let them down. She hadn’t understood why it should be discarded for this new, trendy model. It had taken her more than three months to learn how to operate the damn thing.

  She frowned at the round, shiny face of the Nest and realized how much she had in common with the old thermostat. Disposed of for no good reason other than its age. Nancy tapped the Nest app on her smartphone; it opened with a swirly flair as an animated thermostat popped up right there on her screen. She turned on the AC and set it to a chilly fifty-two degrees. Then she changed the password on the high-tech instrument, closed the app, and walked out of the house she had lived in for more than twenty-five years.

  CHAPTER NINE

  UNCHARTED TERRITORY

  Halfway through a carne asada taco, Nancy found her initial anger waning and giving way to helplessness and anxiety. The girls had listened, appalled at Roger’s threats, as she relayed the story from their confrontation, then the credit card incident at Terranea. The girls’ plans for payback were in full swing, while Otis had his own problems to contend with, as Suzanne the Cat had smugly taken over his dog bed. Revenge was not a normal affair for Nancy, so she struggled with it.

  “How about we hire a couple of thugs to go over and beat some sense into him?” Lois offered.

  “No, Roger would just offer them triple the money or worse, put them on staff as security. Plus, I don’t want to actually cripple the man.”

  “Public embarrassment? Get on social media and talk about the incident with Claire?” Judy said.

  Nancy thought for a few seconds and then shook her head. “No one over fifty uses social media. Besides, Stella could find out that way.”

  “What about a scandal?” Ruthie offered. “Roger Hadley ‘and his good name’ cannot afford a scandal.”

  “Hmmm. Could I dangle the prospect of a scandal over him to force the divorce?” Nancy mused as she finished her margarita. “Back in the day, cheating was scandal enough, but men barely get a slap on the hand for that nowadays. We’d need some type of business scandal, but I don’t have any proof of that. Besides, I have to start thinking about my next steps. I only have what I took from the bank accounts. Enough to live on for now but not enough for more than a year.”

  “You can stay here as long as you like,” Ruthie said as she fed some salami to poor, bedless Otis, who sat uncomfortably on the hard tile floor, far from the razor-sharp claws of Suzanne the Cat.

  “I know, Ruthie. But I can’t stay here forever. We’re not Laverne and Shirley.”

  “I loved Laverne and Shirley,” Ruthie protested.

  “Plus,” Nancy continued, “I have to figure out my options if Roger does tie up the divorce. I mean, am I going to end up in some bougie apartment complex like Bali Hai Gardens? They’re the only places with rent control, right?”

  “My flight attendant friend Holly lived in one of those for a few years,” Lois said. “Constantly got hit on by other tenants. I think even the pool repairman took a shot. She said she could never relax. And they kept hosting tiki-themed potluck dinners in the courtyard. Lots of seven-layer dip, I recall. Very depressing.”

  “Oh god,” Nancy whined. “I hate seven-layer dip.”

  “You will not wind up in Bali Hai Gardens, for Christ’s sakes. We can think of better options,” said Judy.

  Nancy shrugged. “Real estate in Hermosa is out of control. Even a two-bedroom hovel on the east side of PCH is running around a million and a half dollars. It’s insane.” She sighed. “I’d be happy if the old bastard just left me the boat. I’d live on that.”

  “That seems reasonable. Why not ask him for it?” Lois asked.

  “I did. In so many words, he said he’d sooner chew off his own foot than give Bucephalus to me. Not because he loves the boat but because he knows how much I love it. Spiteful shithead,” she muttered.

  There was a momentary pause in the brainstorming session as all four women thought about and dismissed one option after another. Judy popped an olive into her mouth, then sat up suddenly and said, “Hey, why don’t you buy your own damn boat?”

  All three of them stopped for a minute and considered it. Nancy said, “You know, that’s not half bad. I could find a good used boat and get a loan. I mean, it might require some major repairs, but I know a lot about boats. Living on my own, with a slip in King Harbor, would cost a fraction of what it would cost to buy a house in Hermosa or Redondo. It would also be more affordable than renting here. That would mean I could have my own space.” Nancy was becoming more hopeful with every sentence. “Plus, it has the added benefit of driving Roger crazy.”

  “I love this idea,” Judy said, excitement growing in her voice.

  “Could you teach us to sail?” Lois asked. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to sail.”

  “Oh, me too,” Judy added.

  “I know I could.” Nancy studied the carpet, thinking about the prospect of living on a boat. It was a latent dream from a long time ago. But to actually be able to do it …

  “How much would you need to buy a decent boat?” Judy asked.

  “I imagine, depending on the year, it would cost upwards of sixty or seventy thousand.”

  Judy poured another margarita, took a quality-control sip, nodded, and motioned to Nancy to bring her glass over too.

  “Then I have a better idea,” Judy said. “Why don’t I use part of Gordon’s life insurance money to buy us a boat? And, Nancy, you can live on it.”

  Nancy, Ruthie, and Lois all stopped middrink. Their notoriously indecisive Judy had just announced a pretty solid financial decision.

  “Jude, that’s the tequila talking,” Nancy said, as she dismissed her offer.

  “No. It isn’t. I was at the Back Burner this morning for breakfast, and as I sat there munching on my hash browns, I overheard Evelyn Cooper and her brood. They’re what, ten years older than us? I listened to them talk for two solid hours about their hiatal hernias, incontinence pants, and colonoscopies.”

  “Those old crones are only ten years older than us?” Lois looked appalled.

  “The point is, ever since I got this life insurance money, I’ve been completely paralyzed. I don’t know what to do with it—so I don’t do anything with it. I feel like I’m frozen, afraid to move on, afraid to hit the Add to Cart button for even so much as a book on Amazon. I’m tired of being afraid and unsure.”

  “I’m impressed you buy books on the internet,” Ruthie said. “I don’t trust the interwebs.”

  “Showing your age,” Lois muttered in Ruthie’s direction. Ruthie swatted her.

  Judy continued, “But as we’re sitting here, it occurred to me that this is how I want to spend my money. It’s effortless to say yes. That’s how I know it’s right. Not only do I get to help one of my best friends when she needs it most, but this decision has the added benefit of getting our butts on a sailboat instead of sitting at the Back Burner talking about our impending death or, worse, incontinence pants. Horrible things happen to the asses of old people who sit too long.”

  Judy seemed invigorated, almost bouncing with enthusiasm. She hadn’t been like that since before Gordon went missing.

  Lois nodded along with Judy and said, “You know, Chris has all this cool stuff he does with his friends. Ski trips, tennis tourneys, golf outings. I don’t have anything like that. I just run on a treadmill in our garage. Alone. It’s depressing. Maybe sailing could be my thing.”

  “You could all learn the basics inside of a long weekend,” Nancy said with confidence.

  “Well, Nance, you do love the water, I’ll give you that,” Ruthie said, with a little more reluctance in her voice than the others. “But living in a marina? It’s like the las
t bastion of aging divorcees who drink, party, and carouse.” She thought for a second and then added, “I’m beginning to see the brilliance of your plan.”

  “Judy, are you sure?” Nancy asked. “I mean, is this how you want to spend your money? It’s a lot of money.”

  Judy sat in her armchair and looked out into space. “When I was a girl, I went to Copenhagen with my parents. We went to that bay where we saw the statue of the Little Mermaid, her forlorn expression encased in marble forever. Maybe it was the rain or the fact my parents were fighting over something, but I found her so sad. Sitting there, waiting throughout eternity for her love to come back.”

  “Your grim story has a point, I hope,” Lois said.

  Judy shot her a look and continued. “I kept thinking about all the other mermaids below the surface, frolicking around, not caring about some two-legged, clueless man on land. Granted, I was a kid. But what I figured was that kind of blind devotion can be a trap. Sometimes love can do the same. When it’s real, it can be a wonderful trap. One that wraps you up in love and support and togetherness, kids and dogs and safety. There might be other things out there, but you don’t care, because you appreciate and nurture what you’ve got. That’s what I feel Gordon and I had. We had big dreams when we were younger; then life and family changed the dreams. We were happy. But to take the safe route, to stay with someone who doesn’t treat you properly or to hope for someone to change when all evidence points to more of the same, to wonder what could have been—that’s the real trap, the painful one. I guess that’s what I saw when I looked out at that little mermaid.”

  “She is a sad little thing,” Ruthie acknowledged.

  “So, I guess my point is, let’s be the other mermaids,” Judy said.

  “Yes,” Ruthie said slowly, and then she started to gain steam. “The other mermaids. The fun ones. The sultry sirens of the sea!”

  “Exactly,” Judy said. “The ones who have fun and frolic.”

  “I’m overdue for some frolicking,” Nancy said.

  “Ditto,” Lois added.

  “Maybe this is our adventure. We haven’t done something crazy together since we went to Tahiti in the eighties. And when you don’t do things, you get old, like Evelyn Cooper old. Judy’s right. Maybe this is our time,” Ruthie said, plucking the lime from her margarita. “We can frolic in a marina whenever and wherever the hell we want.”

  “Bring it on,” Judy said.

  “Gordon would fall out of his chair,” Lois said as she looked at Judy, impressed.

  “Even an ole biddy like me is allowed to have a wild side!” Judy whipped her silk scarf around her neck and adjusted her glasses. Then she added more quietly, “We’re going to get insurance, right?”

  “Good lord. The marina will never know what hit them!” Ruthie laughed.

  Judy stretched out her hand in the center of the girls. Lois followed and put her hand over Judy’s. Ruthie joined in, and the only hand left to be put down was Nancy’s. They waited for her. Nancy finally put her hand on top of the three hands of her best friends, and the solidarity felt like a bolt of electricity as they all grasped hands.

  Lois said, “To the boat.”

  Judy responded, “To the adventure.”

  Ruthie added, “To ruling the marina.”

  And finally, Nancy added, “To the Mermaids.”

  They all paused, looked at each other, grinning like pirates. “To the Mermaids!”

  Two days ago Nancy had been in a full-blown depression, awash in self-loathing, feeling lost and unmoored. Now she felt a sense of renewal. An unexpected force buoyed her, a sense of hope, togetherness, and a call to adventure that kept the sadness at bay, like a strong, stiff wind stifling a cold, damp fog. This idea of a boat with her best friends had an energy to it, and inside her something bubbled to the surface, like little butterflies in a glass jar finally freed. Or perhaps like the mermaid who finally picked herself up, left that cold rock, and swam back into the sea.

  * * *

  That night Roger arrived home after spending two agonizing hours schmoozing Calvin Eldridge, one of nine members on the powerful California Coastal Commission, at Arthur J’s, a swanky steak house in Manhattan Beach. He came home with a bad case of indigestion, a receipt for several hundred dollars’ worth of chilled jumbo shrimp, and a dry-aged $180 tomahawk steak. Back in the day, you could buy a whole side of beef for that. Yet, after all that, he still hadn’t been able to get a clear read on whether he could count on Eldridge to support his development deal for the Redondo Beach pier. Roger needed the support of Eldridge for his larger, more devious plan to work. Eldridge was solidly conservative, in the old-school Reagan kind of way. While he thought Eldridge would vote with the four other pro-development-at-any-cost bloc on the California Coastal Commission, he needed to be certain. Roger had those three votes locked up, but he was still two short of his magic number of five. But Eldridge was so goddamned straight, Roger had trouble coming up with acceptable topics of conversation.

  Worse, the stiff did not drink (club soda, no ice, please) as he explained, because of his colitis. There was no cajoling him with bawdy stories from college or Vegas, there was no sly insider talk of undervalued stocks that the SEC might frown upon, and there were no rounds of three-olive martinis, those great lubricators that made big business deals happen. Instead, they’d ended up talking about Eldridge’s rare stamp and coin collection. At one point, Roger had considered stabbing himself with his fork just to stay awake.

  Also, he still hadn’t heard from Nancy. Perplexed by her silence, especially after he’d cut her off from any conceivable way to buy wine and cat food, Roger checked his phone one last time to see if there was any message from her. No luck. After he left the boring Eldridge dinner, he’d returned home to find all the lights off and the AC running full bore. It was freezing. California nights could dip below the low sixties, so the air running made no sense.

  He checked his fancy Nest thermostat and saw that it was set to fifty-two, with frigid air blowing from the vents above. He moved the thermostat manually by turning the knob until the digital numbers read seventy-two. After drinking two double Scotches while watching a SportsCenter recap, Roger stumbled up to his bedroom, plopped two Alka-Seltzers in a glass of water (which he always drank before they totally dissolved), took off his tie, and promptly fell into a fitful sleep filled with lurid visions of Claire Sanford naked and laughing like a deranged, wanton hyena.

  Two hours later, Roger woke in what he thought was a cold sweat. But when his senses returned, he stripped off his clothes, got into bed, and realized it was a hot sweat. It was as hot as the tropics in August in the bedroom. He stalked over to the Nest, which somehow was now set at ninety-two degrees, radiant heat blasting from above. He turned the thermostat back to a civilized seventy-two degrees and stood there for a second, wiping beads of sweat from his brow, making sure the thermostat wasn’t going to move. After it seemed to be working, he headed back to bed and landed facedown on the sheets.

  * * *

  Over in Redondo Beach, as Nancy tucked herself into Ruthie’s guest bed, she heard a small ding on her phone. It was an alert from the Nest that the temperature had been manually changed. She opened her Nest app and quietly tapped the numbers to set the thermostat back up to a balmy ninety-two degrees. Just the right temperature for Hell, Nancy thought. She went to sleep with a smile.

  CHAPTER TEN

  HER SHIP COMES IN

  Two days later, Nancy and Brad Warren, the most beloved local yacht rep in all of Southern California, had agreed to meet at the Rusty Pelican, a classic sailor’s hangout in Long Beach. It was the very same place where Brad had sold Bucephalus to Roger and Nancy nearly twenty years ago. The place had an anchor over the door, brass portholes for windows, and a beautiful polished cherrywood bar.

  Nancy arrived early and walked in through the teakwood door. A strong smell of stale rum hit her first, and it took her a moment to focus in the dimly lit establishment, but
she could tell she was in a world-class dive bar. Her sandals were sticking ever so slightly to the floor near the barstools. Beer steins with loyal customers’ names like Fat Paul and Iron Horse hung on hooks from the ceiling next to the obligatory dusty double-D bras. Little had changed, including Doris the bartender, who came waddling out of the kitchen.

  Doris’s faculties and feistiness were still intact, even though nearly everything else on her had been replaced. Knees, hips, and a part of her spine were now fortified with the finest titanium and cobalt money could buy. She had one glass eye and two hearing aids turned up to full volume, so she could hear any whisper of conspiracy or discontent from across the room. Her hair was sparse, bright white, and teased to heaven, like a glorious bundle of cotton candy for the angels.

  To Nancy’s great surprise, Doris remembered her.

  “Hi, Tootsie, it’s been a while,” Doris said, her good eye sharp and clear. “You up for your usual?”

  “Oh,” Nancy said, “I’m not sure what my usual was back in the day.”

  “Captain Morgan and OJ with a splash of coconut liqueur.”

  Nancy stared for a second, bewildered that Doris remembered, and then shrugged. “That sounds like a winner to me.”

  “I never forget a drink or a deadbeat. It’s the motto I live by.”

  Doris turned her back on Nancy and began making her cocktail. It was only eleven AM, but Nancy remembered that when you walked through the doors of a sailors’ bar, somehow time lost all meaning.

  Just then the door swung open, and Nancy squinted at the bright light, which cast the long shadow of Brad Warren. Brad stood there in his Hawaiian shirt, his long, skinny, tanned arms outstretched to greet her, his friendly, crooked smile slowly coming into focus under his aviator sunglasses.