False Mermaid

As she preened and strutted for the camera, her friend backed away, doubled over and breathless with laughter. A few other people stopped to watch the show. It was almost impossible not to get caught up in their high spirits. But when the images changed again, the girls moved on, jostling one another and laughing, embarrassed now at the stir they’d caused. Nora turned back to the window and saw her own image through the glass. She moved one hand slowly up and down, and her oversized likeness followed suit. The main screen suddenly switched to a street-level shot of a crowd in slow motion, perspective oddly flattened by the camera’s stationary single eye.

Nora felt her breath stop as a face in the crowd emerged, then disappeared for a long second, only to emerge again from behind a blurry figure in the foreground. The long, loose hair lifted and seemed to float for an instant in the slow-motion breeze. She had not been mistaken.

The face was Tríona’s.

Nora watched her sister’s graceful approach, caught in a web of memory. There was so much she had forgotten, and she felt the need to drink it all in, every detail. Even in slow motion, it was far too fast. Tríona overtook the camera and disappeared into the edge of the frame. Nora spun around and scanned the faces around her. It was impossible, she knew, yet the image had been so clear. She turned back and studied the picture, trying to fix the camera’s location. The shot had come from in front of the building where she stood, that much was certain. But the image also caught the edge of a distinctive stone arch half a block down. Tríona had been walking past that arch. Nora began to run, excusing herself to the passersby she jostled in her haste. She thought of the photo she’d shoved hastily into her bag and dug it out on the fly. She was on the verge of holding it up, saying to the passersby: You must have seen her—she was just here! But all at once she saw herself reflected in the blank stares all around her. They already saw her as a crazy person. The hand holding Tríona’s picture dropped slowly to her side, and in a few seconds, the foot traffic closed around her once more.

She had gone away three years ago, angry and frustrated, and thinking every possible avenue had already been explored, but it was clear from the few brief, chance encounters that had begun piling up today that she had been wrong. She walked back to watch the projection in the window again, and finally realized that not all of the pictures were live. Herself and the two girls, yes, but most of the footage was a video collage that could have been shot at any time—five years ago or more. She stood at the window long enough to see that the whole thing ran on a continuous loop. There was her sister’s face again, exactly the same as before. Standing in front of the glass, Nora knew what she had seen was a shadow, an image captured and reassembled in a stream of ones and zeros. A digital specter.

But what it meant was that Tríona had been here, on this street, at least once, perhaps many times. Where was she going? Nora scanned the buildings ahead for a sign, anything that might have drawn her sister inside. A half block down, the dark silhouette of an animal caught her eye.

The Blue Coyote Café was in the corner space of the Sturgis Building, one of the few old warehouses in the neighborhood that had resisted gentrification, and still gloried in its original cast-iron and raw timber framework. When Nora pushed open the coffee-shop door, not one of the half-dozen people sitting at brightly painted, mismatched tables even raised a glance. As she approached the counter, the glum barista set down her half-eaten apple and her paperback copy of Anna Karenina and stood up, eyeing her prospective customer without a hint of curiosity or interest. The girl was about eighteen, with impossibly jet-black hair, dark green lips, and a heavily studded dog collar.

“I’m not here for coffee,” Nora said. “I’m looking for anyone who might have been working here five years ago.”

“You’re not looking for me, then,” the girl said. “I was only twelve. But I think Val was around. Just a sec—” The girl ducked into the back room and returned a few seconds later in the company of a woman with spiky gray hair who sported a bright white chef’s apron over street clothes.

“I’m Valerie Marchant,” the woman said, wiping soapy hands on her apron front. “What can I do for you?”

Nora handed over Tríona’s photo. “I was wondering if you recognize her.”

The reaction was immediate. “Tríona Gavin. She used to come in here a lot. Sorry, what did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t say—Nora Gavin. Tríona was my sister.”

Valerie Marchant’s demeanor changed. “I’m so sorry. We were all shocked to hear what happened. And doubly shocked when that husband of hers was never charged, when he was so obviously guilty—”

Nora interrupted: “I’m sorry, you said Tríona used to come in here?”