Mermaids of Glendale - a novel

Chapter 1

I'm drowning.

This thought occurred to Lorna O’Shene in slow motion as she sank, the lights of the aquarium's after-hours event twinkling like stars overhead and being obscured now by the moving bodies of the sea lions escorting her into darkness. As surprised as Lorna was by this sudden turn of events, she found that she wasn't panicking -- at least not yet. Somehow, this felt like memory.

Somehow, this felt like love.

The sun had slipped beyond the horizon, its distant light lingering at the edge of the Earth. Lorna had slipped her hand into Kitt's and held it. Kitt had turned to her, slowly raised his hand to her face, the warmth of his palm exploding like that of sunlight across her skin.

Lorna remembered watching an Animal Planet documentary about sea otters. It had been on TV late at night and Mom had let her stay up to watch it, curled up on the couch in her mother's arms. Lorna remembered the smell of hot chocolate and her mother's perfume and the sound of the accented voice -- somewhat similar to Kitt's own -- narrating about the life of sea otters.

"Sea otters hunt, groom, play, rest, sleep and even mate, almost entirely at sea… They hold onto each other to avoid drifting apart and getting lost."

Another memory occurred to Lorna as she sank through the cool depths of the sea lion pool. Another memory of falling through water. She'd been a child at the public pool, watching the older kids leaping so effortlessly off the diving platform, their bodies curving like parabolas and then becoming rigid, arrow-straight, entering the water smooth as dolphins. Lorna climbed the steel-edged cement stairs, walking up to the edge of the platform as though it were the edge of the known world. She leaned over the edge and looked down to the surface of the rippling water that seemed so far away to a child but must in reality have been only a few meters. Lorna had hesitated at the edge of the platform and couldn't go through with it, could not now even imagine herself canon-balling like some of the other kids did. Lorna looked and didn't leap. She backed away from the platform's edge, seeking safety on the ground but in her retreat Lorna collided with a boy who was ignoring the No Running signs. The boy's shoulder connected with Lorna's chin, snapping her head back and making her bite her tongue, the salty-copper taste of blood filling her mouth as she stumbled backward, arms pin-wheeling. Her body passed the Rubicon, her feet leaving the platform and Lorna fell for an eternity through the air and through the water and through the center of the Earth and into memory...

The first drops of water went unnoticed, dripping from the leaking fire sprinkler in the shopping mall ceiling into a potted plant on the third floor between Nordstrom and the Hugo Boss store. Lorna O'Shene was minding her own business, sipping at a too-hot cafe latte as she strolled through Glendale Galleria, enjoying a day of relaxation. She was glad she didn't have to work today at the spa, glad to give her hands a rest from kneading the back-flesh of bored L.A. housewives.

Lorna's cell phone chimed, signaling an incoming text message from her sister, Marina. Lorna reached into her handbag, searching for the phone -- her hand diving past her wallet and lipstick, swimming down past the shipwreck tumble of a handkerchief and Tic-Tacs, alongside the coral reef of a Susan Rockefeller charm bracelet, finally finding her cell phone on the far-away ocean bottom of her over-sized cerulean-blue Juicy Couture handbag.

Lorna brought the phone to the surface and read the message:

Hey, I am in Newport for the day. There is a guy I met, so hot. Are you home later? I will call you. Byeeee!!!!

 

Lorna rolled her eyes, tapped out the usual response and hit send. That's when the fire sprinkler overhead burst. The starburst-metal shape of the sprinkler head shot down into the potted plant like a bullet, cracking the side of the planter and causing the stored-up reservoir of water and soil to gush forth. Lorna slipped in the resulting wave of mud and fallen palm fronds. Her first thought was that her lush brushed-velour handbag was now ruined, followed almost immediately after by the certainty that within moments her image would be captured by cell phone cameras and blasted across the Internet faster than a whale ingests a school of plankton.