The motorcourt is as pink as it can be. Bill knows this place, told LuAnne about it. Rainbow Village. He stayed here when he was a kid. That was a long time ago. Twenty-five years, at least, he thinks. It was nice back then. A sign hangs on a rusted hook, says ‘Modern Efficiencies.’ Air conditioners are wedged into windows at odd angles. Dribble and wheeze.

The cottage LuAnne is staying in is named ‘Dopey.’ ‘Doc’ and ‘Sneezy’ are nearby. They all smell of bleach and mildew and the heavy heat of salt air.

"This is not your vacation," LuAnne says.

"I know that," he says.

He and his mother stayed in ‘Grumpy.’ Bill was nine. It was their little vacation. That’s what his mother said. Bill’s father wasn’t invited. The bruise on his mother’s face took nearly a month to heal that time. Bill never saw his father again.

The air conditioner is set on ‘Hi’. More like a greeting than a temperature setting. Frost wraps around its coils. Bill is sweating in an orange jumpsuit, rolled up several times at the arms and legs. From a distance he looks like a prisoner, but he’s a truck driver. Likes his comfort. Bill’s a small man, unnaturally so, with hands like soft dough, rolled and ready for the fryer. When it came time for college, his high school counselor Mrs. Robinson said, "The world has special plans for you," and handed him a brochure for The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College in Sarasota.

"You have to go with what God gives you," Mrs. Robinson said. Her teeth were small and pale as new corn.

"Yes, ‘em," Bill said, shook her hand. Cashed in his college fund for the down payment on an eighteen-wheeler, specially fitted with the brake and accelerator on the dashboard.

"You got to go with what God gives you," he told his mother. The truck is candy apple red with a curtained sleeping area right behind the front seat. Airbrushed on the back of the cab is the phrase, "Running on faith and still 1,000 miles from nowhere." The salesman suggested it. "Popular wisdom," he said, "gives a rig personality."

Outside, in the parking lot, Bill’s rig partially blocks the driveway but it doesn’t seem to matter. It’s the only vehicle out there, even though it’s November, snowbird season.

What happened? He remembers the shuffleboard court. All the kids played there at night, betting nickels and drinking Yoo-Hoo! until their tongues turned chocolate black.

Now the court is choked with weeds.

Why’d LuAnne come here?

Bill watches as she cracks ice out of the metal trays into a blender, remembers his mother doing the same thing. LuAnne stretches out like a highway, the lines broken and unbroken. Taller than Bill by nearly a foot. Her blonde hair piled on her head like a worn bath towel. High-heeled sandals that sparkle with cherry Jell-O jewels. One-piece bathing suit, metallic gold. It’s standard issue for the underwater mermaids of Weeki Wachee.

Bill suspects she stole it, right before she quit.

"Don’t get too comfortable," LuAnne says. "We’re not staying."

"Got a call from your landlord."

"He is so predictable. Set your watch by him." Her southern accent swoops and spins like a circus daredevil. Effortless, without a net. "Told you I went crazy, right?"

Bill nods. "Can you blame him?"

"No." She hesitates. Her voice is puffy.

"Bill, you need a girl who can love you back."

"Maybe I think that’s you."

"Maybe I have a better idea."

Bill doesn’t want to hear this. He’s driven two days and a night to get here. In his hand there’s a paper coffee cup from theI-75 MegaStop in Valdosta. He grips it like a security blanket. Doesn’t drink it. Coffee’s cold. It’s his gift to her. "Everybody needs a home, like on those Maxwell House commercials," she told him the first time they met.

LuAnne was living in a shelter back then. Plastic surgeons laced her face back together the best they could, but even with a heavy layer of make-up you can still see her scars, like tiny train tracks, crossing and recrossing, destinationless.

When Bill first met her, she told him ‘LuAnne’ was her new name. Had a new tattoo—a broken heart with the words, ‘no more,’ across the palm of her hand. She showed it to him, outstretched like a traffic cop. "Every now and then I need to remind myself," she said. "Can’t let your heart run wild."

Outside the motor court, tourist traffic honks and shudders its way down Gulf Boulevard. LuAnne carefully flips the pop-top of a can of Coco Loco with a butter knife. She’s careful with her nails. They’re pink as candied almonds. Real, not plastic.

Bill watches as she pours the coconut milk into the blender so gracefully it curves like a neck.

Beauty queen smooth, he thinks. LuAnne once told him that mermaids at Weeki Wachee are taught how to move with their heads and let the rest of the body follow, like the tail of a kite.

"That’s the mermaid’s secret," she said. "If you ain’t beauty queen smooth, you look like a worm on a hook."

Bill had seen a lot of women before but LuAnne just crawled under his skin and stayed there.

Sometimes, at night, they’d sit on the steps of his house. It’s tiny, two bedrooms. The color of a peach too long on the branch. Bill and LuAnne would sit there, his head in her lap. She would tell him the legends of mermaids. How in Ireland they’re called Selkies. A seal and a woman-though not both at the same time. "They’re addicted to love, you know," she said. "Sneak on shore, shed their seal skins, take on as many lovers as they can. When they’re done with ‘em, they drown ‘em."

"I’ll make a note of that," Bill laughed. When they were together, he laughed all the time. Liked to hear her voice, the calliope of its music. Watch her hair trail down her back like moonlight.

He could listen to her for hours. And did.

But not now.

Now, the heat of the cabin is wearing on him. All he wants to do is to leave this place, forget he saw it, curl into himself like a snail and sleep in the back of his truck.

LuAnne turns on the blender. A rickety tornado.

He shouts over chewing ice. "Your landlord tracked me down in Jersey, that’s how worried he was."

She turns the blender off. Bill’s ears ring. "He wanted money, right?"

"What did you expect?"

"It’s what I don’t expect I worry about."

LuAnne presses the ’crush’ button. The blender kicks into high speed, screaming. She tosses canned pineapple into its glass jar like dice.

Bill watches LuAnne pour a jigger of Blue Curacao into the blender. The drink turns the color of Tidy Bowl. The sight of it makes Bill queasy.

"Done," she says. Turns off the blender. The Coco Loco tornado stops. She takes a sip. "Too much coconut. It’s ruined."

"That’s okay," Bill says, holds out the ragged paper cup. The seams bulge. "Want some?"

"Is it Maxwell House?"

He nods. The Maxwell House logo is printed on the cup. "Good to the last drop," he says, hops off the couch. He removes the plastic lid for her so she won’t break a nail. LuAnne takes the coffee from his hand like a mechanical arm on the midway, reaching for a watch.

"Thanks," she says. Sniffs it. "That’s nice, real coffee aroma."

"It’s a little cold," Bill says.

"That’s okay," she says and takes a sip. "Good to the last drop." She drinks it greedily. Two hands around the cup.

Bill wants to be that cup.

He sits back down on the couch, feet slightly dangling.

They met two years ago this coming Christmas. Bill’s mother had just died. The revolving light turned the silver tree from red to blue to green. The paramedics didn’t seem to notice. After they took her body away Bill lay on his mother’s bed, unable to think of anything to do. The bed was scratchy pink. It smelled of her, spray starch and lilacs.

He closed his eyes and fell into a gray zone. Not asleep. Not awake. A chorus from a song raced though his head. "I know something about love." Just the chorus, over and over again. All night long.

In the morning, Bill packed away his mother’s things. He felt like a thief. A thief in a movie where the sound’s not synchronized. His hands moved on their own, his brain a half-step behind. He cleaned her hairbrushes with Ivory Liquid, just the way she used to. Wiped away the dried pink rings of lotion from the lid of her Oil of Olay.

In the back of her closet, underneath a box of unopened mothballs he found a brochure. Visit Weeki Wachee! The World’s Only Underwater Artesian Spring! His mother was always collecting them for him. For ideas, she said. Places to take women he might meet on the road.

On the cover, a pleasant family peered into the clear spring. Young boy. Mom. Dad. Inside, there were pictures of the famed mermaids, beautiful women in fish suits drinking Coca-Cola underwater.

Open 365 days a year. Even Christmas.

The place was packed. Most of the crowd were men alone or men with their kids, grinding their teeth. No noticeable wives, or women at all for that matter. Bill imagined their holiday meal, a turkey TV dinner with small cubed carrots. Just like his. Made him feel a little less alone.

The amphitheater was several stories under water. The concrete steps seemed to go straight down. Bill held the center rail, not wanting to get pushed over, not wanting to slip. Despite the unseasonable heat, he wore his best suit, the one that his mother hung in the back of his closet, wrapped in tissue paper. Light-weight wool. Pleats sewn in, double stitched for "rugged wear." Bill and his mother bought it at the boys’ department at Sears. Nobody’ll know where you got it. That's what the saleswoman said.

Rugged wear. Even the words made him sweat.

The auditorium smelled of wet concrete. Looked a lot like Bill’s high school auditorium. There were rows and rows of seats. Instead of facing a stage, they faced a huge plate-glass wall. Behind the glass was Weeki Wachee Spring.

The entire spring held back by a single sheet of glass.

Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, Bill thought. He had the last available seat. Front row center. The glass just a few feet from his face.

Over the booming loudspeaker the announcer supplied the details. "The spring presses up against the glass wall with the force of several thousand Gs," he said. At least that’s what Bill thought he said, all he could focus on was the idea of the statement.

Any moment the glass could crack.

"Enjoy the show."

The lights dimmed. The auditorium took on a bluish tint. Bill looked at his hands. They were blue, too. He turned around. All the faces of the men and their children were blue. It was like sitting at the bottom of a pool. Waiting. Bill was afraid to breathe. Didn’t want to drown.

Then, one by one, the mermaids slid into the spring.

The rush of bubbles. Their long hair straight on end. They were waving. Bill wanted to wave back.

The show was based on "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Anderson.

"Some mermaids lure sailors to their deaths," the announcer said. "But the Little Mermaid gave her life for a love she could never have. She gave her immortal mermaid soul for love."

Bill wasn’t convinced. To him, the mermaids seemed very mortal. More mortal than most. Tethered to breathing hoses, drinking bottles of Coke through a straw, they smiled and waved like den mothers.

And then she slid into the spring.

A blonde.

The Little Mermaid herself.

She swam more gracefully than the others. Never seemed to need air. Never seemed to exhale. She looked as if she was made of liquid sapphire. So blue, he thought, like love.

I know something about love.

But all he knew was the chorus.

Bill waited by the employee parking lot. "Are you gonna ask me what’s the best tuna?" she said when she saw him. "I get that one a lot."

Bill shook his head. He hadn’t planned to ask her anything. He just wanted to see her again. The parking lot was nearly empty. The sun was setting, red and dusty. He held his program to his head, like a salute. "Nice show. Thanks a lot." Turned to leave.

"Hey, I didn’t make you sore, did I?"

He shook his head and kept walking.

"You know it’s Christmas," she yelled. "Want to go get a cup of coffee? I know a place that sells Maxwell House."

The coffee shop was down the road, not far, LuAnne said. They walked in silence in the damp evening air. The khaki lace of moss hung low on the trees, rustled like a skirt against ankles. Every now and then LuAnne’s hand would brush against him. Her skin was lotion soft.

At the coffee shop, LuAnne rambled on, swirling the castanet spoon in her cup.

"You know," she said, "sometimes people ask me about the name, ‘Weeki Wachee.’ What does it mean in Indian? Did the Indians have underwater mermaids too? I tell them they did, only the air hoses weren’t made of plastic because it hadn’t been invented yet, and they never had underwater ballet, because of the same reason."

In the yellow light of the cafe, Bill could see the tiny white tracks that ran across her face. "Are you lonely?" he asked.

LuAnne didn’t answer. Didn’t look at him. He felt the air go flat. She ran her finger slowly along the chipped mug, its ragged edge. He looked around the coffee shop. They were the only customers. Silver cardboard letters wished him Merry Christmas. The waitress sat in the back booth smoking a cigarette, reading the holiday edition of The Star.

Time to pay the check.He raised his hand to get the woman’s attention. LuAnne caught it in hers. Held it for a moment.

"Why do you think I’m lonely?"

"It’s Christmas. You’re having coffee with me."

"A short guy?"

Bill nodded. "That’d be one way to put it."

"And you think I feel sorry for you?"

"Short guys think that a lot."

She leaned over and kissed him softly on the lips.

"Would it matter if it were true?"

That night, Bill took her to his tiny peach of a house, the house he and his mother had lived in until the day she died. He opened the windows. The smell of lilacs and spray starch was barely noticeable.

In the morning, she made him a cup of Maxwell House.

"You know," she said, leaning into him, "if somebody walked in right now, it’d be just like in the commercials. Good to the last drop."

Her skin smelled like summer to him. All heat and salt.

"Will you marry me?" he said.

"Can’t. I’m a mermaid."

Now her landlord tracks Bill down. Calls collect. "You signed for her. You owe me," he said.

She painted everything blue. Everything in her apartment.

The walls. The windows. The television.

"Even the damn toilet," he said.

Bill just wants to know why.

The air conditioner cycles into a flat-line hum. Bill walks over to it, puts his hands in front of it. No air. Nothing. Frozen. He turns it off. "We better open the windows," he says. "It’s overloaded."

The crank on the window is stuck. Rusted in place. "Damnit," he says. "What are we doing here, LuAnne?"

LuAnne puts down the paper coffee cup. Holds her palm out as if in offering.

"He found me," she says.

No More.

Bill reads the tattoo over and over again trying to adjust to the idea of Him. Him coming back into her life. Into his.

Bill doesn’t know His name, only knows that He was a jealous man. That’s all Bill needs to know. "So, what happens next?"

"Do you want to take a swim?"

"Shouldn’t we talk about this?"

"I’d like to swim."

"I didn’t bring trunks."

"You keep them in your suitcase, just in case."

Bill feels his face go red.

"Don’t start lying to me now," LuAnne says. Looks away. "It wasn’t so bad, you know, the apartment. I don’t know what the landlord told you but you should’ve seen it. Real soothing. I put an air conditioner in every room. One or the other kicking into different cycles. The harmony of cool makes the place sing a kind of a blue song, you know?"

A Miles Davis' kind of blue, he thinks. "What happens next?" he says again, doesn’t know what else to say. A blue apartment. The blue song. Tidy Bowl cocktails. And Him. He’s back. How did He find her? If He found her, why isn’t He here?

Logic has become a Scrabble game with too many tiles missing.

"Let’s go swimming." LuAnne opens the door of the small cottage. The heat is like a fist. "Get your suit," she says and points to his truck. "I’ll meet you."

Inside the truck, thoughts continue to collide like bumper cars. What if He finds us here? What if He hurts her again?

Bill breaks into a sweat. It’s like a oven in here. Opens a window. No improvement.

Behind the front seat of the cab, his tiny sleeping compartment is neat, not like some others he’s seen. Over the thin mattress he’s taped a picture of his mother. A program photo of LuAnne as The Little Mermaid. They look down on him with Siamese smiles.

The space is large enough for Bill to dress in. He jiggles out of his jump suit. Puts on his red swim trunks. They’re new and stiff and have never been worn. Bill has a farmer’s tan. Arms only. Belly like a snowball. He puts on a pair of plastic thongs. Stands on the mattress and looks at himself in the rearview mirror. His head hits the ceiling. All he can see is a strip of Wonder bread flesh.

It’s what’s inside that matters, he tells himself. Takes a white dress shirt from his suitcase, puts it on. It covers his body but, without cufflinks, the sleeves reach well past his fingers.

Outside the cab, heat rises from the asphalt in waves. Bill locks the truck, shoves his keys in the nylon pocket of his trunks. Burrs crosshatch the sand, stick into the sides of his pink feet as he walks towards the beach. His eyes water. Behind the rows of pink cottages, a shark lays on its belly. A rotting stingray. Catfish buzzing with flies.

Red tide, he thinks and squints.

Bill hates the water. The horseshoe crab with its razor tail. The jellyfish who bump into you and stop your heart. He hates all of it. Sharks. Rays. Red Tide makes it worse, stuffs dying down your throat. Bill can see LuAnne is far from shore, bobbing up and down on a raft. Fish floating belly-up in her wake.

She waves. He coughs. "Red Tide" he shouts, pointing to all the dead fish.

"I’ve got a raft," she says. Waves him in.

He knows he has to go.

Bill takes off his white shirt and folds it carefully. Buttons the top button. He decides to keep his plastic flip flops on. Waffle thin, they won’t provide much protection if he steps on the razor gill of a catfish, or something worse, but at least they make him feel better.

"Come on!" LuAnne calls. The gold of her suit flashes like static electricity.

A wave breaks over his feet. A dead sea turtle washes in. Belly up. Covered with barnacles.

Get this over with. Get this over with.

Bill holds his breath and runs into the water, flip flops and all. Once past the shoreline, the undercurrent of the Gulf Stream rips the limp plastic away from his feet.

Shit.

His eyes watering, he breaks into a butterfly stroke, churning the water as much as possible.

When he reaches the raft, he can see through his tears that LuAnne is smiling. "The water’s warm, isn’t it?" she says.

He hardly noticed. Now that he does, he thinks he has to pee.

"I’m going back," he says.

"The water is your friend," LuAnne says. Her voice loops and spins.

Can you pee on a friend?

LuAnne tosses a plastic tow rope over the raft. The rope is bright yellow and thick, like the kind they use on boats. "Just tie it around your waist. It’s safer."

The waves are high, slap him in the face. He finds it difficult to keep them back.

"It’s a life line," she says as if that explains everything. Bill isn’t sure but the heat from the sun, the rotting flesh, and the Red Tide, now burning his skin like acid, make him think the statement makes sense.

He takes the rope and ties it around his waist.

"There," LuAnne says. "That’s better now, isn’t it?"

The raft she is leaning across is large, large enough for two but Bill isn’t sure how to board it without unbalancing them both.

"We’re kind of far out, aren’t we?"

"We won’t drown." LuAnne kicks her feet. Pushes them out a bit farther.

Bill looks back at the motor court. The more LuAnne kicks, the smaller it gets. Soon, he thinks, it will look like a Monopoly piece. He doesn’t want to panic.

Think of something, anything. Just calm down.

He reconstructs what Rainbow Village looked like so many years ago. It was really pink back then, like a hibiscus.

A wave hits the raft. Salt sprays his face. He gags. LuAnne continues her kicking. The raft crashes into breaking waves. Bill holds on until his knuckles turn white.

The smell of baby oil and Mercurochrome comes back to him.

And cherry lip gloss.

It was here, at Rainbow Village, he’d had his first kiss. He’d told LuAnne that part of the story, too.

The girl was eight years old. Wore her hair held back with pink plastic barrettes, same color as the tiny cabins. Her parents owned the place. He and the other boys called her Snow White because her hair and skin were that white. Her eyes were bleached blue.

"Albino," his mother said.

Bill thought that was a Spanish word for ‘beautiful.’

He built her a sandcastle decorated with scallop shells.

"Are you my Prince Charming?" she asked.

He told her everything. All of his secrets.

Some of his father’s.

After Bill and his mother left Rainbow Village, he wrote her for more than a year. Told her the details of his life without her. His first bike. His first home run. When each letter was finished he carefully addressed them. Gave them to his mother to mail.

The girl never wrote. Bill kept writing.

He couldn’t help it. He’d grown accustomed to the quiet listening of it. No judgment passed. Just a weekly tally of joy and sorrow.

"Do you like football? I don’t. Not really. Not after today." Every letter ended the same question, "When can I see you again?"

The last letter Bill wrote was angry. He and his mother had been to the doctor. "Since you’ve gone I’ve grown smaller," he wrote. "Someday, I’ll disappear."

When he handed the letter to his mother to mail, she wouldn’t take it. "The girl is dead," she said. Bill never mentioned it again.

And LuAnne knows all about it-Snow White, the kiss, the castle. Everything. So why are we here?

In the water, something slick brushes against Bill’s leg. He looks down and sees a school of stingrays swimming just below the surface. There are a dozen or more, some the size of a small kite. Their tin foil skin glints. "Don’t move," Bill says. One flick of their tail.

The stingrays part around Bill and LuAnne, gliding.

LuAnne shakes her head. "They’re just rays. No big deal. They’re more afraid of you than you of them."

She reaches down gently and picks a small one up by its fin. Places it between them on the raft. "Look," she says. "It’s dying, you can tell by the skin."

The stingray is about the size of a man’s wallet. Molted gray. Billets go of the raft.

"That doesn’t mean it still can’t hurt you," he says. Dog paddles furiously.

The ray’s tail spins like radar. The raft bobs up and down in the waves, slams into Bill. "Maybe you should just put it back," he says, gulping water and air. Grabs the raft’s edge before it knocks him out.

LuAnne looks at Bill, unblinking. "It’s dying from the inside out, you know?" She makes an odd cooing sound, like something fluttering in her throat, kisses the stingray on the top of its tiny head. Its tail just misses her cheek.

For a moment, Bill and LuAnne hold onto the raft in silence. A storm in the distance gives the water energy. Waves chop like a slap. They can barely hang on.

"Did He hurt you again?" Bill says. "Is that what this is all about?"

She nods. "But no more." She slips the stingray back into the water. It hesitates, then glides away. "He won’t hurt no one, no more."

No more. The words make Bill strangely calm. He looks back at the motor court, now almost a spot in the horizon. The water has turned cold. Too deep. We’re out too deep.

"Where will you go?"

"Home."

"Take me with you."

She leans across and kisses his hand. He feels the dried salt of her lips.

"Don’t let go of the rope," she says.

And then she dives into the gray green water.

The rope yanks him down hard. Bill couldn’t let go if he tried. His lungs are pins and needles. His heart beats in his head. The ocean is a tornado sky. His hands, wild, grasp at nothing. He knows LuAnne is somewhere below him. The rope is still around his waist. It’s pulling him deeper. Can’t see her. Feels her swimming hard. This is what it’s like, he thinks. The Selkie.

Hours later, when Bill finally comes to, it’s dark. He’s back in the room, tied to a Barco lounger with the bright yellow rope. The lifeline.

"LuAnne?"

On his chest there’s a postcard. Vintage 1970s. The Rainbow Village he remembers. LuAnne’s loopy handwriting.

"Be a Prince."

And do what? He struggles with the ropes. They cut tight into his arms. What’s this all supposed to mean?

The postcard falls to the floor.

Outside, the traffic of Gulf Boulevard whispers by. The moon is pleated through the jalousie windows. It must be nearly morning, he thinks. This is the time of the day Bill usually likes the most. The gray time. The time before dawn when the gospel preachers sing sweet and low of redemption, of ecstasy. Curves come and go at ninety, ninety-five. Beauty Queen smooth.

Anything is possible.

"LuAnne?" He calls out louder, just in case she’s somewhere in the small room, sleeping on the cool of the linoleum floor. From where he sits, bound head to foot, he can see the parking lot. The vapor lights of Gulf Boulevard cast it in fluorescent green.

Through the slats of the glass door, he can see the sunrise crack the morning like an egg. Must be six o’clock, he thinks. Somebody will be here soon.

But no one comes. After a while he realizes he can no longer feel the keys in the mesh pocket of his trunks. It takes him a moment to realize that his truck is gone.

What am I gonna do?

As the sun rises higher, the heat builds in the small room, wears on him. He falls asleep and dreams he has fallen into a fire. His clothes and body burn, but it’s not a nightmare. The flame is kind. Charred bits of himself float, catch the draft.

This must be love, he thinks.

When the cabin door finally opens, it’s nearly noon.

A small woman flips on a lamp. She’s carrying cleaning supplies. The white shade is pasted with shells, a few fall away.

"Oh," she says.

Bill blinks.

Her hair and skin are as white as he remembers.

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