Mermaid

Every day I sit in the open mouth of a giant clam. At nights a bright, wide spotlight beams directly on me. And I shimmer and glow like gold in the middle of Fantasy Cove Putt Putt. During the afternoons I stretch out on the spongy tongue and bathe in the sun. I glisten. From time to time I dive out the mouth of the clam and into the turquoise water. I concentrate on my form, long legs straight and together inside my glittery tail. I’ll give it a flick or two in midair. Sometimes people applaud. My goal is to always look good. I take a lap or two in the man-made stream weaving through the course until the chemicals make my skin itch.

During my shifts, men come to see me. Most times it’s lonely men. But they all say the same things, some drunk and blatant, others subtle and secretive with notes written on golf balls. They say things to get me to have sex with them. Only, I have rules. My sex is reserved strictly for handsome men who have lots of money. Princes, if you will.

I have learned patience.

This is a tourist town. An ugly tourist town. A fat town. A town where men pour from all-you-can-eat seafood buffets, the hair they let grow on their faces has turned to gnarled beards matted with melted butter sauce and beer. I’m still waiting for the right one.

I’m still waiting for a gentleman to approach me on my throne. I’m still waiting for a prince to come to the eighteenth hole and line up his final putt. Still waiting for muscled shoulders and a chiseled jaw to move and make the words, “Beautiful, I have all the money in the world and I want you to run away with me, to live with me.”

I imagine that I am powerful. I imagine my beauty as the ticket out of the trailer park. I imagine the fetish that I am, my long, sun-bleached hair, my seashell-covered breasts, my slender, finned tail, solving all my problems. I imagine a millionaire Russian immigrant who understands me, who’s dreamed all his life for a mermaid mistress, who came to America because it is where dreams can come true, one day finding me.

But out from around the statues of seahorse lovers, through the walkway of their intertwined tails, emerges a bony body. One time I read a line, there is no loneliness like theirs, and this is what I think now, seeing the horses and the boy. He is so gorgeous but frail. I’m afraid that he will take his next step and fall to the ground. Fall down and break into blossom. I think maybe he’s starved himself waiting for me.

He can’t break his gaze. And I remember that I do have powers. I am here to keep people from making holes-in-ones, from winning free games. I am the sexual distraction. Now, though, I want some-thing new.

“I want you to win me,” I tell him.

He makes a face like he doesn’t understand.

“Sink this putt and I am all yours,” I say.

This is something he does understand because his nerves take over and he is like one of the old-timers who’s played so long, stressed over so many putts, that they’ve come down with the yips. And as he bends to put the ball on the mat his knees wobble, his shaky hands and trembling thin fingers fail, the golf ball drops. He stoops and squints and lines up the putt.

“Left to right,” he asks, “about a hole outside?” like I am his caddy. But he is correct and I nod.

He stands, for a lifetime, over the putt.

I see the future. Him with me by my trailer in the sand, we’re broke and skinny and bronzed by the sun. It’s all I could ever want.

His body quivers while he tries to be still. But when his arms...