"Doctor Dalton? There's a caller for you on line one."
"Cindy, as I've been telling you for the last week and a half, call me Jesse. Just think how you would feel if I called you Ms. Maynard." Jesse hesitated before picking up the phone. "This isn't another reporter, is it?" It seemed that all calls he took were reporters. He was glad the MRC was popular, but having to devote so much time to administrative tasks seemed silly. Cindy was a brilliant secretary, but she took convention too seriously.
"It's Mrs. Dunes," Cindy called primly. Obviously, she thought that a friend, especially a female and married one, should not call at such a time. According to the schedule she had drawn up so industriously, personal calls could be taken in the evening hours.
"She wouldn't order your resignation for saying Candy. She'd probably recommend a raise. And Mako will respond to nothing that he terms too proper." He picked up the phone, cautiously pressing a series of buttons. The phone made a shrieking sound. He winced, hurriedly tapping in the correct code. He still was not used to a secure line.
"Jesse, you are harder to get in touch with than my father. The security wouldn't let me in the gate, as you are apparently busy today. Maddie had the same luck two days ago." Candy was typing as she talked, from the death rattle of keys that could only be her faithful Macintosh. "If you're in the lab, sleeping, or brooding by the shore, they won't let anyone onto the MRC's grounds."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that security on you is so protective that a college freshman wouldn't let Mako in. A ninety-seven pound weakling that could beat himself up with his pocket protector kept Mako out, and your secretary wouldn't let you take our page." Candy sounded irritated, but not that she and Mako had been denied access.
"I'll get a list of people to have unrestricted access out. I hadn't even thought of that. The new recruits are taking turns, and they don't know you yet. It will be in the gatehouses by tonight." He signed a requisition application with a small flourish, multi-tasking. It was the only way to leave time for research.
"That is not my point. I've been in Reykjavik for the last two weeks. How long has this new security been in place?"
"There was an assassination attempt two days after you left. It was necessary."
"Jesse, have you given this new set of hurdles any thought at all?"
"Yes, and Ricard was two feet away from getting a bullet in his head. There are crazy people out there." He couldn't understand why she was so exasperated. He had made the decision to keep everyone safe.
"You have recurring problems with Plastic Wrap, I know, but even known friends can't get into the MRC without all kinds of loopholes and identity checks."
"Yes, but-"
"No, Jesse, you don't understand. Even if she tried, Aquiline would not be able to find you. She'd be written off as some desperate fan, and you can't look through all of them. Someone tried to get into the last gala, and she knew enough to not just be some bit of Plastic Wrap. For tonight, put Mako or me at the gate."
"No one told me-"
"Save the wounded act, Jesse. For the last few months you've been acting more like your old self. I don't want you to be the person you were before Lille again. For tonight, Mako or I will help out." She knew he would think about what she was saying, but it was annoying that it took so long to make him see her point. For a smart man, he could be incredibly dense.
"Think about it, Einstein. I'll see you tonight." She refrained from slamming down the receiver. He already had the message, and doing that would only make him less likely to really consider what she had said. That would have to do. She did miss Aquiline, but wanted her to return for more reasons than one.
"No. Never. Not in a million years," Jesse said firmly. He was dressed for the gala in a black tuxedo and a white dress shirt, looking distrustfully at an offered tie. He was convinced that it was some kind of prank. He turned away, showing his refusal.
"Come on," Sophia said, waving the brilliant pink tie in front of his eyes. She was a fourth-year college student, but that didn't stop her from having her fun whenever circumstances allowed it. "It's the latest fashion. Manly men wear pink."
"Like Schwarzenegger?" he asked dubiously, naming the current governor of California. Only in California could such an actor be elected to that office. Schwarzenegger was known most widely for his role in, of all things, The Terminator. That did not seem to Jesse like qualifications to be the governor, but Reagan had done well for himself after switching to politics.
"Well, he doesn't wear pink," Sophia admitted, ever truthful. "But it really does look nice on a guy, and if this girlfriend of yours ever shows up. . ." Sophia let the thought trail away, but he did not look at all swayed. "You could wear a boring blue tie if you really want, but at least go with the pretty one." She dropped a blue tie into his hand, snatching away the drab blue-gray tie. Her choice was a cerulean blue, too pretty for his tastes. "Trust me. It's a woman's intuition, and any girl would rather see that."
He decided to accept the compromise, knowing he was lucky to be given something blue. Sophia had appointed herself wardrobe consultant, and was the girl most likely to be found braiding students' hair in elaborate styles that came naturally to her fingers. She was at least as stubborn as he was, though he had yet to outlast her on a fashion-related decision. Her mother was in Hollywood, and Sophia had been raised around such vital pieces of knowledge as which socks made the right impression. Those were socks with a discreet but interesting pattern, such as a muted plaid or faint stripes. Wild patterns were too loud, and plain colors were just boring, but the socks she had chosen were, as she assured him, just perfect. He didn't see how it would matter, but she insisted.
He made his way down the stairs, ignoring an elevator crammed with students doing last-minute errands. There were still scattered marks of brown, remnants of footprints that would be erased by nothing but retiling the many stairs, something he never got around to doing. The students never paid much attention, except for the few that had been in the van the night they had found a woman when looking for a dolphin. They thought she had cut her feet on sea urchins, and he was not about to dispute their guesses. His explanation of bandages falling off barely took care of a bloodless bed and then bloody stairs, but they didn't suspect anything from the stretched excuse. Mermaids with bleeding feet were hardly thought of as a common cause.
"The decorations are fine, Danielle. Ricard, I'm sure that your date will find the gate without you glancing out the window every two seconds. She is in rocket science. Michelle, the music selections are fine, and I'm sure the disc jockey will be excellent. Adam! If you and Sarah could stop fighting with the baguettes now, Maddie is less likely to chase you around the kitchen cursing at you in some language of her own invention as she waves whatever dessert is closest to hand." Slowly, he calmed the mob of nervous college students, just in time for the latest crisis as someone misplaced their copy of the guest list.
Jesse left them to their madness. He would simply find something more immersing to do. He made his token round at the gala, where several repeat guests, indignant Hollywood stars, political figures, and a few regular college students were anxious to get into the gala. Withdrawing to the side, he found himself in the sights of a direct frontal assault. There was nothing he could do to avoid the onslaught. He braced himself as his father approached, Stacy mercifully busy discussing a new form of x-rays that a visiting doctor advocated without reserve with Candy waiting to save Jesse from a dual attack. She liked the doctor, so it was hardly a sacrifice to have an excuse to speak to Dr. Grey.
"Jesse." His father looked uncomfortable for the briefest of moments at this rarely played role of father, but his actor's face smoothed into place after a look from Stacy. She had demanded to know why Jesse had sent away the last nice girl with some story about a woman, one that had not been introduced to either of his parents. "You can't just bury your head in your work, son. I don't quite know why you jilted that woman thirteen years ago, but it's time to move on."
"I'm waiting on someone else, and Sirene was just looking for fame." He glanced at the crowd. Mako was at the gate, Candy was still keeping Stacy occupied in a conversation, and Maddie had finally decided that she would grant her husband a dance, but only after stern instructions to the catering crew, from the forced serious looks on their faces. They were worse actors than she was. He would simply have to face his father without backup, facing questions that would be extremely hard to answer.
"No child of mine should have to wait so long. You're what- thirty-one?" He barely waited for a confirming nod. "Stacy waited the engagement out a few months, but you don't even have a ring. Why wait to propose? You'll be thirty-two in four weeks," he continued, ignoring Jesse's correction of "five." Derek never had been good with birthdays. "Can you at least give me a first name?"
"Aquiline." Jesse thought for a minute, trying to find an explanation. "You've met her before, about fourteen and a half years ago."
"Really? I don't recall any Aquiline's. There were a few names I forget, but they were all Betties and Sarahs and Ashleys, not something as odd as that." Derek's act faded. "Is there something you're not telling me? The media's much more open about this sort of thing, you know. The vice president's daughter was quite open about-"
"He's hardly homosexual," a familiar voice added to the conversation. Aquiline smiled at the open shock on Jesse's face, and wrapped an arm around his waist. The gesture felt right, and no one could object to such a basic form of public contact. Hollywood was not a place for Puritans. "At least, he hasn't told me." She laughed at the indignant expression on his face, and guessed correctly that he wasn't about to respond in the next few seconds.
"Good evening, Mr. Dalton," she said, easily filling in Jesse's silence as he tried to remember what a sentence was. "I'm Aquiline Eriksson." Her voice was light, what it would have been just before she met Jesse. Her eyes were a bright blue, like the ridiculously bright peacock's-tail-blue tie Jesse had refused to consider.
To his credit, Derek Dalton stared only for a few seconds. He could hardly be expected to recognize that voice as belonging to a mute girl. Her outfit didn't encourage the belief that she had been a maid. It was a gauzy creation, rippling white layered skirts lined with a single bit of periwinkle satin edging that matched Jesse's tie exactly. Sophia would later grin proudly at the appropriate look of her selection, and when she had her degree in cosmetic surgery specializing in babies born with cleft palates, she would choose just the right baby dress to compliment the sparse tufts of hair and wide eyes of a babe.
"Lille," he said finally.
Aquiline beamed. "That's a nickname, really, but I am glad you remember me. I hope we can talk again soon, but I really do need to catch up with Jesse. Come on, Bassanio, time to dance." She steered him away easily, leaving behind a suave actor who, for once, had nothing to say in response.
"Bassanio?" Jesse asked. That hardly seemed a compliment.
"To my Portia, yes," she responded, unperturbed. "The Merchant of Venice is one of his more interesting playsI just saved you from the rather unpleasant arrangement of answering your father's question, all through just a bit of quick thinking. I'm not quite the Portia in Julius Caesar, though, as I really would not cherish jabbing a dagger into my thigh to prove devotion, or committing suicide by eating fire. I hate fire."
"Huh?" he replied intelligently.
"You really need to brush up on your Shakespeare." The comment drew no obvious response. "Your musicals need some work as well, apparently. Don't they teach you anything?"
"Since when do mermaids know Shakespeare?" No one in the crowd noticed their approach yet, even if they would take anything serious from his remark.
"Why not?" she asked, spinning without warning. The light skirt billowed around her, falling back to rest against her legs regretfully as the blue ribbon only made the pattern her skirt took through the air clearer. She saw no reason to not read works by that playwright.
"Where would you get a book?"
"I was in a Filipino hospital for a few months- no telephones, don't look so offended, and cell phones do not work on remote islands. They had a small library of texts in English, mostly Shakespeare or medical journals. The small hospital was much nicer. No questions, no medical insurance, no annoying nurses. They just saw that I had a few medical concerns, and that was the end of it." She felt the first of glares target her from a few groups of girls that had an instant grudge against her. She had just walked in and taken the attention of the man rated "Hottest Bachelor of the Year" by four separate magazines, after all.
"What kind of medical concerns?" Something about her flippant mark wasn't quite convincing. She was a very good actress, but he had grown up knowing the acts of his father.
"A few stab wounds, a few interesting marks from the tentacles of a giant squid, half-amputated left arm, severe blood loss, and a concussion," she listed from memory, not about to dwell on that period. That knife was very sharp, as both she and Sirene knew. The sea witch was dead, for all her spells and curses. That blade had been made to undo bindings, and all traces that would ever be found of Sirene were a few shriveled pieces of flotsam and scars she had already left. The sea witch would never again haunt legend, though the tale of her last fight may one day be an epic of its own.
"You call those medical concerns?"
"That's enough on the topic. Come on, Jesse. Dance with me, already." She sighed melodramatically as the reporters, men holding video cameras and their microphone-on-a-stick assistants, and paparazzi surrounded them.
"Can you make a statement for us, Dr. Dalton?" one reporter asked, her pen poised over a notepad. She took a second look at his companion. "Miss Havfrue?"
Aquiline nodded. "I am known legally as Aquiline Eriksson, and I hope one joint statement would be sufficient?" She looked around the crowd with an air of regality, waiting for them to prepare themselves. "Jesse?" He was the famous one with experience. He could make a statement to the crowd, and the world. She could wait, however boring it was.
"Well, I really would rather dance with her. I've seen her once in the last thirteen years. We'll have a press conference tomorrow, at ten o'clock a.m. If that's all right with your schedule," he added hastily to Aquiline, before even noticing Candy's warning look from the crowd.
"We will both be there," she promised, dismissing them. "If there are no other interruptions, I think it's about time I danced with you." She was tired of reporters. She knew that life would him would involve many more, but tonight was not about everyone else. For that night, at least, she could be selfish and let the rest of the world just be jealous.
The dance floor didn't clear. People did leave space for the couple, as Aquiline was unpredictable in where she led. He had tried to lead, as all dance classes taught, but she couldn't follow the universal steps of a formal ballroom. Instead, she moved the way she felt like doing, encouraging him to do the same. She whirled happily, skirts fanning in multiple layers of white clouds edged in blue.
He followed her lead, embarrassed. After all, people were watching. He couldn't just make a fool out of himself. She would not leave the matter alone, but instead danced all the more wildly. He could see where the Greeks had found their descriptions of naiads, the spirits and nymphs of the water, from his own observance of motions. She was steam and ice and water all at once, never exactly one definable quantity. The wild dances described so carefully in mythology could not begin to do the entire picture justice, but he would say that it was the very picture of freedom.
When he finally joined in unrestrained dance, nothing felt awkward. Unlike the careful measured steps of the ballroom, he could do as he wished. For quite possibly the first time in his life, he didn't worry what impact this would have, on his father, his fans, or the center that he had founded and watched over like an overly zealous parent. Instead, he followed a music that only he and Aquiline seemed to hear.
He could not begin to guess how long they remained in that indefinite place of motion that was its own kind of music. When they stopped, his feet were sore. Dress shoes were not made for that type of movement. Belatedly, he realized his mistake. She would be hurting much worse.
"Your feet must be killing you."
"They've already murdered my calves, but my knees are giving them a bit of a fight," she quipped. "I'll be fine." Aquiline took an experimental step, wobbling only the normal amount in low-heeled blue shoes that matched her dress exactly. She had paid someone to airbrush them, but that was beside the point. She liked the shoes, even if she did have to wear nylons of some new medical polymer to keep them from becoming unattractively bloody. Leaking blood all over the dance floor was unusual.
"The party's just about over. Mako, Candy, and Maddie all said they wanted to see you."
"They can wait. Now, can't we leave this party and do a bit of real conversing?" She tapped a foot, mock-impatiently. She extended an arm delicately, waiting for him to take it. If they were to leave the gala together, there would be no doubt that she was with him.
"I would like nothing more." Arm in arm, the very image of a reserved couple, they left the gala with nods to important personages. Stacy and Candy smiled in varying degrees of triumph. Mako, a late-comer to the party, gave a smile that was more feral than anything else. Aquiline returned it. They understood each other, and neither would mourn the sea-witch who once had been innocent, before the Greeks called Helen the most beautiful woman alive. The door to the MRC closed behind them softly, but was an irrefutable sign that they were not to be disturbed. They had waited long enough.
