When We Believed in Mermaids(18)

“My mother. She’s staying with my cat.”

“Not the cat with her?”

I laugh softly. “He’s afraid to leave my house, so she came to him.”

“That’s very kind of her.”

I look up at him, recognizing the truth. “It is.”

A sign alerts me to the shopping area I’d been hoping to find. “I think this is it. How much time do we have?”

“As long as you need. There is no hurry.”

“I just want to duck inside here and ask around.”

“Of course.”

In a bar of shade, I pause to pull out my phone and then find a still I lifted from the video of the nightclub fire. I show it to Javier.

“This is your sister?”

“Yep.” I look down at it, feeling butterflies flutter around in my gut.

“You’re very different.”

I snort slightly, a very unladylike sound I wish I could take back. “Understatement of the year.”

He cocks his head, and a swath of light undulates over the waves in his hair. “How so?”

“She was tiny. I’m tall. She loved—loves—metaphor, and I love facts.” I look up at the various shops. Boutiques with seven dresses hanging in rows. It’s hard to imagine Josie ever shopping for clothing like that. “She was a complete hippie. I’m a doctor.” An upscale florist. Several restaurants. “She was outgoing, and I was introverted.” I don’t say, She was beautiful. I am not, but that might have been one of the more obvious things. Josie and Dylan and my mother were beautiful. I was the sturdy, sensible one.

Not that I minded, honestly, except for that small, heady stretch of time when I fell in love with James in high school. Otherwise I was relieved to be free of the demands of beauty. It didn’t seem to serve any of them particularly well, after all.

A cluster of professional women passes, wearing stockings and pencil skirts. The stockings surprise me, especially on such a warm day, and I stare after them, trying to remember the last time I wore a pair of stockings for any reason. Do people even do that anymore in the US?

Again I scan the storefronts. Javier waits.

For a second, I feel anxious and resistant and overwhelmed. Why am I on this ridiculous errand? And what am I going to do if I find her? The thought makes me feel queasy.

“Do you wish to show her photo around?”

I take a breath. “I guess I do.”

He takes out his phone and shoots a photo of my screen. “I will try the shops across the way, yes?”

“Sure.”

He heads across the way, and I weave in and out of the boutiques and shops on my side. At the end of the row, he joins me, and together we approach the Italian restaurant I spied earlier on Google Maps. I pause, faintly nervous, to glance at the menu attached to an elegant stand, and my mouth waters a little. “Ooh, they have Sicilian-style cannoli.”

“What makes them Sicilian?”

“Ricotta instead of cream inside. So good.”

A tall, tidy woman with a shiny fall of copper hair stands at the open-air hostess stand, getting things ready for the day. As I approach, she gives me a bright smile. “We’re not quite ready to serve, but I’d be happy to take your name.”

“No, thank you. I’m looking for someone.”

“Oh?” Her hands still on the napkins she’s folding.

I hold up the phone with my sister’s face. “Have you seen this woman?”

Her face smooths. “Yes. She’s a regular, but I don’t think I’ve seen her for a while.”

A bolt of shock runs through my body, like lightning. She’s alive. “Do you happen to know her name?” She cocks her head, and I realize too late that it’s odd that I have her picture but don’t know her name. “I know her as Josie, but I think her real name is something else.”

“Hmm.” Her face shutters slightly, and if she does know the name, she’s not saying it. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Okay.” I tuck the phone in my pocket, pushing down both disappointment and relief. “Can you tell me if there was anything happening around here the night of the nightclub fire? Like an event or a concert or something?”

Her lips go pale. “Was she in the fire?”

“No, no. Sorry. I just wondered what else might have been going on.”

She glances at Javier, and something I can’t quite read crosses her face—admiration, recognition, startlement. Her spine straightens even more. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Thank you.” I glance up at Javier and nod once. “Let’s go sightseeing.”

“Sure?” He touches the small of my back as we depart, and I see him nod at the woman.

We head for the wharf. “Was that like your father’s restaurant?” he asks.

“It has some things in common. The cannoli dessert, the fresh mozzarella, pasta with squid ink, and there’s something”—I look over my shoulder—“about the way it looks. I think if my sister knew about it, she would probably like it.”

He nods and doesn’t press me for more information. It’s only a couple of blocks to the wharf, and we duck into the comparative coolness of the building. “What would you like to do?” Javier asks as we stand, side by side, looking up at the offerings.

I’m deeply relieved to have something besides my sister to focus on. None of the names has any meaning to me, and I half shrug. “I have no idea.”

“Shall we do everything?”

Recklessly, I say, “Why not?”

He pays for the tickets, so I buy us some coffees in paper cups and a couple of pastries from a vendor. Settling on a white bench in the ferry building, I sip a flat white and nibble an apple Danish, watching Javier make a tidy diorama with a napkin spread wide on the bench, his coffee at one side, his pastry in the middle. After the morning swim and walk, I’m starving, and I watch people milling around talking to each other, the irritated kids hauled by their parents, tourists from everywhere. A line of people dressed in good hiking gear are lining up to board for an island volcano. The boat bobs gently.

“I love ferries,” I say.

“Why?” He’s hung his sunglasses from the placket of his shirt and admires the flaky edges of his pastry. A finger of sunlight makes a shadow fan of his eyelashes across his cheekbone, exaggerating their length. He takes a lusty bite.

“I don’t know,” I admit, and think about it, naming the images as they pop up in my mind. “The stairs. Those tidy rows of chairs. The open air on sunny days.” I sip my coffee. “It’s just being on the water, really. I always like that. In my family, we always say we can’t sleep if we can’t hear the ocean.”

“It is a soothing sound,” he agrees. “I like ferries because you climb in, and the boat takes you where you’re going. No bothering with maps and cars. You can read.”

“I thought all men liked driving.”

An expressive shrug. Not so much, it says, but what can you do? “It’s a modern necessity, but it brings no pleasure most of the time.”

I incline my head, trying to guess what he drives. “Huh. I would have imagined you flying down some twisty road in a convertible.”

A very small grin lifts one side of his mouth. “Romantic.”

“Sexy.” I hold his gaze. “Like one of those sixties movies of the guy navigating the coast of Monaco.”

He laughs. “I’m afraid I would disappoint you.”

I lean back. “So what do you drive?”

“Volvo.” A small translucent square of sugar falls on his thumb. “How about you? Or shall I guess?”

“You won’t get it.”

“Mm.” He plucks the sugar from his hand and tucks it in his mouth, narrowing his eyes. “I don’t know American cars so well. A Mini?”

I laugh. “No, but they are cute. I drive a Jeep.”

“A Jeep? Like an SUV?”

“Not exactly. I need room to take my surfboard to the beach, so—” I scan the horizon. “It’s practical.”

“Ah. Surfing.” He looks a bit perplexed.

“What?”

“I have to think how to say it.”

I smile, knowing what the struggle is. “Take your time.”

“I thought only teenagers surfed?” he says, instead of saying, Aren’t you too old for that?

“Well done.” I crumple my napkin and drop it in the paper bag they gave us, offer it to Javier. “I started surfing when I was seven years old.” I think of Dylan standing behind me on a longboard, his hands in the air beside me in case he needed to catch me. He never did. “It’s in my blood.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Not really. I mean, I guess it is a little, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing, but I do. Have you ever tried?”

“I have never had the opportunity.” He leans backward against the bench, one arm along the top, the fingers of his right hand warm behind my shoulder blade. “What do you like about it?”

I cross my legs, lace my hands around my knee, and look toward the water. I think of my palms skimming the water, the taste of salt on my lips, the board shivering under my feet, Dylan offering encouragement—there you go, that’s right, you can do it. “It’s exhilarating to get a wave just right, ride it a long way. You don’t think about anything. Just that.”