Mermaids in Paradise - Lydia Millet (phonics story books txt) š
- Author: Lydia Millet
Book online Ā«Mermaids in Paradise - Lydia Millet (phonics story books txt) šĀ». Author Lydia Millet
Chipās coworker buddies, well, in terms of other men thereās Sandy, which sounds like an easygoing blond woman but is actually a man and not a blond at all, and thereās Tariq. Sandy is delicate, a germaphobe who buys his antibacterial hand gel in bulkāprobably not the type for derring-do. Tariq is married to a woman his family sent to him. Heād never met her before the day of their wedding but the two of them are stuck like glue. He doesnāt go on trips, or even out to restaurants. Heās more of a homebody. Youāll see him at office functions, but only because theyāre mandatory. Heāll be the one over beside the water cooler, holding a nonalcoholic beverage and smiling nervously. The unasked question in his mind is, Can I go? You see it when you look at him.
Chip likes Tariq a lot, he admires him; he always mentions Tariq when the talk turns to Arabs and terrorists. Then itās āTariq tells me,ā and āaccording to my man Tariq.ā If anyone has a negative word for an Arab, a Muslim or that situation there, Chip rises to their defense. He trots out Tariq to show that not all Arabs are religious hysterics. We have them too, is what he likes to say, each country has its own hysterics, doesnāt it, its own growing majority of straight-up insane people? Letās throw them all together on an island, a big one like Australia or they wouldnāt fit, and then take bets.
Chipās usually hamming it up at that point, admittedly. He likes to play the fool, sometimes, likes to act less intelligent than he is. It makes other people feel more intelligent than they are, and then they find themselves liking him. Liking him quite a bit.
Look at the fundamentalists we have, says Chip, they may not put incendiary devices in their body cavities but they get up to their own shenanigans. They try to gaslight the whole culture, claiming the dinosaurs were here last week, going around to the museumsāwhen they come into the citiesāand scoffing at a T. rex skeleton.
Chip says he talked to a guy once who insisted T. rexes hung around in pilgrim times, hiding behind the trees so Founding Fathers didnāt see them, probablyāslapping their tails at Pocahontas, stepping on teepees and roaring.
Not all Muslims even believe women should live in sacks, says Chip: sure, we all know that in some sandy, oily countries women walk around wearing baglike garments over their whole bodies, including their faces, with just a slit over the eye region, because without that slit youād have these women bumping into things and breaking their noses. In those countries the women look like boulders, walking around like that. Long boulders, Stonehenge style. Crowds of these women in their dark sacks are like a field of oblong rocks.
Of course, itās not a bad look, those dark robes, says Chip. Although the face covering, he could do without that. Chipās confused about why the women agree to the face-covering part. Seems punitive, says Chip, pretty hard to rub your nose, if you needed to for an itch, though on the upside, it wouldnāt matter at all to have a piece of food stuck in your teeth. Those women donāt need to worry about that ever.
Heās an open guy, but heās been reluctant to bring up the face-covering issue with Tariq, rightly fearing it might offend. Heāll ask Tariq about the politics, but not so much the face-covering.
Tariqās a paragon of virtue, he does the prayers, he kneels on a small rug, and his wife doesnāt dress in sacks or look out of an eye slit; she wears regular U.S. clothingāthough, since Iām being honest here, she could use some fashion tips. I know because I met her one time at an office party; it was St. Paddyās Day, and people were lurching and weaving around vats of green punch and beer, floating shamrocks and leering cardboard leprechauns. Thereās no one Irish who works at Chipās company, the closest they ever got to Ireland was making fun of Riverdance, but Chipās boss says itās a U.S. holiday now and the point of it is License to Drink. But Tariq doesnāt drink and neither does his wife, so at the St. Paddyās Day party she stood beside him at the watercooler, wearing that same trembling smile. It begged us all to release her. Just let us go now, please, that smile said. Please and thank you. I do not wish to be at this āparty.ā
It was a bittersweet situation, I guess, because I looked at her and even as I knew exactly what she was thinking, I also knew she wouldnāt be releasedāno, she would hover painfully for at least another ninety minutes before she was set free. Everyone has to stick around, at these office parties, until Chipās boss, drunk as a lord, blearily notices their presence and marks it on his list of reasons not to arbitrarily fire them. She would hover there politely, her eyes as dark and wide as a deerās, trying to fathom the vulgar customs of her adopted country.
If Chip could, Iāve thought sometimes, heād carry Tariq around with him for showing off when the talk turns to terrorists, since Tariqās a guy whoās attractive and very warm. He smiles a lot; with Tariq you almost wish heād hang out more, he seems like such a sweetheart. But Tariq has other fish to fry and by the time Chipās bragging about him, heās off being his usual homebody.
Then for Chipās college friends, youāve mainly got Rocket, Eight-ball and BB3 (short for Beer Bong Three, as I recall). In their day those guys liked to tie one on and get into
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