Co-Written by Phil Velasquez
Sunlight and shadow strobed through the bus windows as Scylla contemplated the ancient forest beyond the winding country road. She had to admit the southeast of France, at the foot of the Alps, was beautiful this time of year. A rich feast of greens and earthy rusts, dotted by the occasional contrasting farmhouse.
A passing sign for the town of Marquadt sported a smiling mermaid, her painted colors faded by long exposure to the sun. Her short bobbed hair topped a broad smile, a forties pin-up girl with a fish tail.
The bus rounded a broad curve and Marquadt itself hove into view, the watery blue crescent of Lac d'Antoine beyond. Small, squat, and picturesque like a thousand other unremarkable towns in the countryside, Marquadt sported numerous houses with stained alabaster stone walls and red clay roof shingles, with the occasional incongruous satellite dish jutting up here and there.
Scylla played idly with a strand of her long dark hair as the bus passed a plaster statue of the same mermaid that had been on the sign, sitting on a rock above a sea of waving spring grasses just beyond the town's first line of houses. The statue was stained and weathered and worn, three fingers from her right hand missing. Inside the town, more of the same; mermaid cafes, mermaid boulangerie, mermaid librairie, gift shop with mermaid memorabilia, and more.
Marquadt was the home of an old legend, of a half-fish girl--a sirene, a mermaid--living in their adjoining lake. It was the whole reason she was going to the town. The mayor of Marquadt had advertised in regional papers for a model to participate in a 'mermaid-related activity.' She imagined putting on a musty mermaid costume with her bosom stuffed into paper mache sea shells, titillating teen-agers and tourists at some yearly faire tourist traps like Marquadt always held.
The bus pulled to a stop in Marquadt's small excuse for a downtown. Just a single street lined with brownstones, not one more than three stories tall. She was the only one who disembarked, and the vehicle zoomed away five heartbeats after the driver retrieved her suitcase from the bus's storage compartment.
A deep but feminine voice sounded behind her. "Pardon." Scylla turned to see an immense tank of a woman dressed in a skirted, navy blue business suit. Behind her stood a tall and reedy man, his thin beard and mustache amplifying his disapproving frown. "Mademoiselle Rambeau?" The woman asked.
"Oui," Scylla said. She had been in the country for a few years now, and could speak the language fairly fluently. "Are you from Mayor Charlois?"
The immense woman sported an equally immense smile. "I am Madame Charlois, the mayor, and this is my assistant Monsieur de Lombard. Welcome to Marquadt."
Pleasantries were exchanged--or at least what passed for pleasantries with the dour de Lombard--and the mayor asked to talk as they walked the short distance to her office. The mayor beamed. "Ah, you are lovely, mademoiselle. I think she will fit the part well, Jacques."
"So you don't mind that I'm American?"
"Not at all. I spent my college years in Buffalo myself. Don't worry about your accent. We won't need you to speak that much anyway. We are much more concerned with how you will look the part. And you look perfect. Almost like the last one we had."
"Hmph," de Lombard said unhappily.
Charlois rolled her eyes. "Oh, never mind him. His sausage curls to the left, if you know what I mean. Dislikes anything feminine. He is especially unhappy that so many of the euros that roll into town depend on a feminine icon."
"A feminine icon you want me to play," Scylla observed. "What exactly is that going to entail? Am I going to put in public appearances, or pose for ads or something?"
"Oh no, mademoiselle. We want you to be the mermaid."
"So your emails said. But..."
Charlois shook her head even as she herded the three of them into a small office building. "Mademoiselle, we want you to be the Mermaid. The one that lives in the lake."
Scylla blinked at the mayor as she held the door open. "I think you better explain."
A few minutes later they were in Charlois' office, while de Lombard fetched them coffees. "You see, mademoiselle, the legends of the mermaid go back to the fourteenth century. She has been a curiosity for a long time, drawing many from around the world to seek her out. To some she is a biological curiosity, a mutation. To others she is a spiritual manifestation. To others still she is old magic, the last connection to the time of the Celts and druids and pagan gods..."
"But to us she is euros" de Lombard said as he brought in a small tray of steaming cups.
Charlois laughed. "Very true. Tourists bring in millions of euros to our town because of her. So we need a new mermaid for the lake. That's where you come in, Mademoiselle Rambeau. We want to use you to create more mermaid sightings. We'll use you in the lake, most likely at night, and stage 'encounters' from time to time to drum up good rumors and publicity."
"I--that wasn't anything like what I was expecting. In fact, it sounds very much like fraud. I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn down your generous..."
"We will pay you half a million euros," the mayor interjected. "Plus bonuses."
Scylla gaped at her open-mouthed. "I can't have heard that right."
"Oh yes, this is very serious to us. But that's over a several year period, and of course for that money we expect you to go to unusual lengths in performing your part."
Scylla swallowed. Five hundred thousand euros plus...more money that she could ever expect to see as an actress or a model in this country. She always was not skinny enough, not bitchy enough, not French enough. "What do you mean by unusual lengths?"
The mayor smirked. "Oh, I know what you are thinking, mademoiselle. Do not worry, you will not have to sell your pretty derriere on the side."
"Hmph," de Lombard said, with clear distaste.
"But we want our mermaid to be convincing. The rubes are not as easy to fool as they used to be. No silly costumes or body paints, I'm afraid. You will have to do these encounters nude, and you will have to get tattoos."
"Tattoos?" Scylla said with alarm. The nudity didn't bother her. This was France after all, and she'd already done a bunch of nude work for billboards and commercials. "I really don't know about that. I wouldn't be able to get too much other work if my skin was marked like that."
The mayor set her thick lips into a thin line. "And how much work have you gotten so far? You are not so successful that you didn't have to ride half a day in a smelly bus to apply for a job I'm sure you thought meant wearing a nylon fish tail and waving at old farts. By the time the contract ends, you will be getting close to thirty, and your modeling career would be kaput by then anyway. But this way, at least, you will have a very comfortable nest egg to retire on. And you will certainly have enough money for laser surgery to have the tattoos removed, n'est-ce pas?" Scylla had to admit she had a point. Slowly, reluctantly, she let the mayor talk her into it. They signed the contracts, and the Mayor said they'd start the tattooing early the next morning.
- - -
They put Scylla up in a quaint bed and breakfast, and during the night she went on a walking tour of the town. Marquadt proved a small but oddly charming blend of the provincial and the modern. A sign by the waterfront even advertised a Starbucks was moving into an old wineshop.
De Lombard fetched her shortly before dawn, the only illumination shades of gray smudging the horizon. The sleepy Scylla zombie-walked behind the tall man, who pretty much treated her like a smelly chien he was forced to walk as a favor.
Mayor Charlois met them at the tattoo parlor on one of the squalid country roads on the edge of the town, water from Lac d'Antoine lapping gently not twenty feet away. The building was old farmhouse with an attached rundown storefront. Faded yellow drapes were pulled over the display window.
Scylla was introduced to Gilberte de la Rue, the tattoo artist. Scylla had kind of been expecting some ancient evil-looking gypsy crone, but Gilberte was well-dressed with short dark hair and tasteful jewelry, no more than thirty five at most. Her smile was earthy and friendly.
Gilberte looked excitedly at Scylla, grabbing her chin with her fingers and twisting her face this way and that. "Ah. Good skin! Very good, as I hoped! She will indeed do very well." Gilberte ushered her into the house as the mayor and her assistant left. "Let us lose those clothes, ma coeur," she said breezily as soon as the door was closed. Scylla was a bit hesitant, as Gilberte just stood there and smiled at her, but she eventually realized she was being silly and complied. They couldn't very well tattoo most of her body clothed, could they?
Gilberte smiled at Scylla as the younger woman peeled her shirt off and wiggled out of her jeans. Scylla could swear there was almost a gleam of something predatory in her grin.
After she was nude, the older woman led her into the house's surprisingly spacious bathroom, complete with broad octagonal skylight. Scylla blinked up into reddening dawnlight as Gilberte pinned up her long hair and brought out a large bowl of greenish cream. "What's that?"
Gilberte stirred the bowl with a long, soft hair brush. "It removes hair. How you say, a depilatory cream."
"Oh! Like that australian stuff."
