Page 22 of The Rusalka and Mr. Right

“What? Oh! Oh, my gosh! Did you meet someone?” Calder gushes like a gossipy fishwife. I blame it on Janet. Nail salons are notorious for gossip.

“You know me. I meet someone three nights a week. Five, if people are horny. Halloween weekend is practically an orgy.” I rummage in the built-in cabinet that sits unevenly on hinges made shortly before World War I.

“First the clumsy change of subject, now the evasive answers. Good God. He’s married, isn’t he?”

“No! He’s single!”

“Ah ha!” Calder’s tentacles flail and slap the floor in triumph, a happy victory dance that threatens to capsize this floating liability.

“Damn it,” I hiss. I almost decide not to share the lemonade I purchased, but at the last minute, I relent and pour him half the small bottle, pushing the old green-bubble glass into his hand. “?? ????????!”

“Cheers. Tell me everything, or Janet will kill me.”

“Nothing to tell. I met him. I enjoyed him. Several times.” I drink with a shrug.

“That’s new.”

“No. Just rare.”

“What makes him different?”

Curse his pretty blue abs. “He’s... Ugh! Nothing! Nothing is different. I’m on my way to the picnic at White Pines. Half the town will be there, and I’ll take home a fresh meal, okay?”

“What? No! No, that’s not what I... I was trying to be supportive!”

“Supportive is just letting me live like I always have,” I snap.

Calder purses his lips. For a moment, he says nothing as he looks around my home. Words drag from him slowly. “Um. Maybe it’s okay for things to change.”

“I’m not able to play house with a human like you are!” It’s easy to read between the lines when he has such a sweet, expressive face. “I would kill them!”

“I know, I know, but... Never? In the entire history of your kind, a rusalka has never been with a human long-term? Even for a year or two?”

Words break in my throat. “The human died.”

Calder is silent for a long moment. “She killed him?”

Did I kill him?

Did my sisters?

I don’t know. I will never know, and it haunts me. A demon, beset by ghosts.

“I blame her,” I whisper, and that’s the truth.

“Well, that was her! Not you! Is this a guy you want? Because... because maybe there’s a way. People get sperm from sperm banks to make babies, why not to keep you alive, if that's the stuff you need?” He makes a face. “I’m sorry. Is this gross? Janet’s going to tell me this is gross.”

“Do you have to tell that woman everything?” I hiss, slamming the empty bottle into the little bin by my camping sink.

“No, but I want to. Sheismy everything.”

I still. The belly of the boat is dark without a single porthole at this level, only in the little square box above the water level. In the dark, maybe he won’t notice my shaking shoulders. I had someone who was my everything. I didn’t need another source of food if he was there, nor a source of comfort or joy. He was my home and my peace.

And when I met Kevin, when I spent the night in his bed... It felt so eerily similar. I woke up, and instead of feeling the urge to flee, I wished with all my heart that I could simply stay.

“Sweetie?” Calder’s tone is brotherly, and so is the tentacle around my waist, the arm around my shoulder. “What’s really wrong?”

“I would like to love someone, Calder. But it wouldn’t be safe. That’s all there is to it. Are you going to the picnic?”

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