“No, don’t drink yet, we gotta ‘cheers’!”Celeste insisted, smacking at his wrist.Blake was starting to notice that they were still a little tipsy from pre-gaming earlier.Ryan laughed.
“Okay.Cheers!”Ryan lifted his shot up and the other three mimicked him, clinking the little glasses together.Marin followed suit without instruction, throwing back his shot.Celeste slammed their shot glass back down on the table with a satisfied hiss.
“Damn that was good!”they said.“I’m gonna go get a lava flow, do you guys want one?”
“I’d be interested,” Marin told him, then he gestured towards Blake.“We can share.”
“Ooh, good idea!”Celeste snapped their fingers.“Ryan, you can bum off of me.”
“What if I wanted my own?”Ryan groused, but Celeste was already making their way back towards the bar.Ryan sighed.
“There are mermaids here?”Marin asked, raising his voice over the din of the bar.Ryan nodded.
“Yeah, they usually only have them on weekends, but I guess it’s every night for the summer,” he told Marin, rolling his empty shot glass across the table.
“I’m surprised they don’t have a cover charge for that alone,” Blake remarked.
Ryan shrugged.“I guess it drums up enough revenue on its own—” He stopped talking as the tank filled with the white foam of a splash.
From the tiny bubbles emerged the billowing shape of a head.Long brown hair streaked through with green snaked through the froth.Her face materialized next, temple decorated with a fanciful coronet of shells and pearls.As she twisted and oriented herself in the water, the sequins on her emerald tail glittered and winked beneath the show lights, the fins splaying out like damp gossamer.
Pushing her tresses out of her face, the mermaid peered down at the patrons of the bar, waving her hand at them coquettishly.Placing the fingertips of both hands at her mouth, she blew out a stream of bubbles, shaping them into a heart with her hands before returning to the top of the tank for air.
Blake looked over at Marin; he was watching the mermaid with a pensive look, head tilted as if he were searching for something in her actions.There wasn’t the same sort of excitement on his face that he’d had when he’d been with Noel, simply a flat expression that fell just short of longing.
Above them, the performer returned to the tank—now toting a hand mirror—and began to admire her reflection, lying in repose over the decorative shelf of rocks.
Celeste returned with a pair of lava flows in novelty Tiki mugs, clunking them down onto the standing table.
“Really fast service here,” they remarked, taking a pull off of their straw.They glanced up at the mermaid in the tank.“Oh, she’s already on?”
They watched the mermaid in silence for a few minutes while she preened and flirted with the crowd, twirling and swimming in the tank.Blake had never seen a mermaid performer before, but after seeing the real thing, he could say that the imitation did not compare.There was absolutely none of the same gravitas.
He was struck by a realization and felt a little guilty for bringing Marin to watch a captive mermaid performing.
“Does it bother you?”Blake asked him in a low tone.He received a shrug in response.
“Not really,” Marin told him.“It’s… it’s different because she can move around.Even then, she may be trapped in a small space for now, but she’s free to go whenever she wants.”
“I wonder if she does parties,” Celeste remarked over him.“My cousin’s kid isobsessedwith mermaids right now.”
Blake watched Marin shake off his pensive expression, producing a forced smile.
“Oh, how old?”Marin asked.
“She’s turning five in September,” Celeste said.“Lord knows it’ll still be like ninety degrees by then—great weather for a mermaid pool party.”
Marin smiled, looking reminiscent.“Five’s such a cute age.Peanut wasobsessedwith Scooby Doo.I made her a little stuffy of him that she carried around everywhere with her until she was in middle school.”
Blake and Celeste stared at him in shock.
“Peanut?”Blake echoed.
“I…” Marin blinked several times, looking mystified at what he had said.
Ryan, thankfully, hadn’t caught on.“Your sister?”
“Uhm.”Marin squinted, looking upset.
