Mermaids of Glendale - a novel

Chapter 12

Kitt had carried Lorna to the bed and lowered her gently. He’d already been to the room before coming back for her. Instead of the counterpane, Lorna now found herself on crisp white linen. He sat down next to her and looked with fascination at the lower third of Lorna’s tail from the delicate curling ends of her caudal fin, up to where her ankles would be had they not fused and become part of…whatever this was. From there crimson and teal scales covered her tail – formerly her calves and shins, the length of her former legs not covered by the robe and, beneath it and further up, Lorna’s dress.

“I had glimpses of you,” said Kitt. “At the Aquarium, when I helped you out of the sea lion pool. A quick view of scales and color before I threw a towel around you…”

“You threw a towel around me and you held me close,” said Lorna. “And now…”

“And now I see you,” said Kitt. “I see you whole.”

“Whole?” asked Lorna.

“You’ve been thinking of this transformation as something…something else, something that isn’t you,” said Kitt. “But it is, Lorna. It is you.”

“Kitt, I –”

“May I?” he asked.

After a moment’s hesitation, Lorna nodded.

Kitt touched Lorna’s tail. Her scales, her skin, warm under his hand, radiating a gentle heat like the embers of a bonfire on a beach after last night’s revels; a memory of heat and blood and love. Beneath his fingers, Kitt felt Lorna’s pulse like the ripple of a wave through the soft scales, each no bigger than a thumbnail and each seeming to…

“Sing,” said Kitt. “Your scales, your skin, feels like it is singing.”

He pulled his hand back for a moment, then placed it on Lorna’s tail again, the sensation resuming.

“What is it?” asked Lorna.

“You said when it happens, the transformation…”

“Yes, Kitt,” said Lorna, already knowing what he was going to say – the same part of her that knew what a caudal fin was.

No, thought Lorna. Not part of me.

“You said it tingles,” said Kitt. “Like a limb waking up.”

“Yes,” said Lorna.

Not part of me. All of me.

“I can feel it, too,” said Kitt.

In a hotel room in Long Beach California, accompanied by the faint and constant hiss of ducted air-conditioning, a marine biologist was touching the tail of – in the absence of any other convenient term – a mermaid.

“I don’t know how much longer this will last,” said Lorna. “And I want you to see me.”

Kitt pulled his hand back again.

“Are you sure?”

Lorna untied the bathrobe and opened it, revealing more of her tail, the length of it where it reached up to her knees and then widened before being concealed again at mid-thigh by her floral dress.

“I want you to see me,” she said again. “Every time I’ve been…transformed, I’ve been dressed. At the mall, at Neiman Marcus, with you – I’ve only ever seen myself as you already have.”

Kitt stood up, kicked off his shoes and pulled off his jacket, the lines of his arm and chest muscles visible though the blue Kenneth Cole shirt. He walked across the room and dialed the dimmer switch down, the lighting now softer, mellow. He came back to the bed.