Married to the Sea (Patreon)

Married to the Sea

by Joey Comeau

 I turned the dial to the far left and found our station. With the car windows rolled up to keep out the real world, I could hear everything through the radio clearly. A dog barked twice. Heels scuffed on pavement. A doorbell chimed quietly, and under her breath, my lady love whispered "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret."

 The night classes in electronics saved us, though we never told our relationship counselor exactly how. Doctor patient confidentiality doesn't hold up when they learn a crime has been committed.

 I put my feet up on the dash and looked out the window to where she was standing. She gave me a little wave from the front step. Less than 10 meters from the car, so the sound came through clearly. We can get pretty far before the transmitter garbles the sound. We keep trying new designs, and we're getting better and better. We smell like solder when we climb into bed at night.

 I heard the door open before I saw.

 "Margaret!" Harold said. "We're just cleaning up in the kitchen. Did you forget something?"

 They went inside.

 "It was a new recipe," Harold said. I could hear the clatter of dishes in the sink.

 "Hey Margaret," Laura said.

 "I just forgot something upstairs,"

 "Oh, go right ahead," Harold said, and the sound of our friends' talking faded away. I imagined Margaret climbing the carpeted stairs with a smile on her face, her eyes bright in the dark. After a couple seconds I heard the quiet click of the bedroom door, then the indecipherable noises which could only be her planting the listening device.

 Two minutes later, Margaret opened the driver's side door and climbed into the car. A block away, we both leaned back in our seats and listened. It was a half hour before they went to bed. We heard the murmur of their voices first, too quiet to make out, then the click of their door.

 "We ought to go see a movie," Harold said, on the radio. "When was the last time we went?"

 There was no answer, but I could imagine Laura shrugging her shoulders.

 "A big thing of popcorn and one of those overpriced cups of pop. I think we should," Harold said. "It doesn't even matter what we go see. We could see a kid's movie. Something silly."

 Laura coughed, and it was quiet for a long time. The bed squeaked.

 "Where are you going?" Laura said.

 "I'm just going to check my email,"

 "Right," Laura said. "When I was talking to Margaret tonight, she said that not living up to your conjugal duties is grounds for divorce. Do you think that's true? Maybe you could look it up on the internet while you're checking your email."

 Harold sighed and the door clicked shut.

 "Oh man," Margaret said.

 The radio was quiet for a long time, and Margaret slid her hand into mine. Every time Laura coughed, or shifted in her bed sheets, Margaret squeezed my hand and we smiled at each other.

 "Five dollars on a big fight and then loud make-up sex," I said. Margaret laughed.

 "You've been watching too much porn on that computer of yours," she said.

 "You've been going through my computer?"

 "I don't have to go through your computer," Margaret said. "I can hear the whimpering from the hall."

 "And you're a saint?" I said. I tried to keep from smiling.

 "No." On the radio Laura coughed, and then coughed again, louder. "What are you grinning about?" Margaret said.

 "I know about you and the Russian," I said.

 "The what?"

 "Russian, or German or whatever. I put a bug in your jacket. In the cell phone pocket." I imitated her voice. "Who in their right minds would put anything in this pocket? The bulge would ruin the line."

 Margaret turned around quicker than I expected, and grabbed for her jacket in the back seat. On the radio Laura was blowing her nose. Margaret found the cell phone pocket and pulled the zipper open. She pulled out the bug. It was on a smaller board than usual, and I'd managed to keep it thin enough to prevent a bulge.

 "Tell me the battery is dead,"

 "So, you can see why I think it's a little funny that you're accusing me of being porny-eyed for thinking they might have loud make-up sex. I've been listening to my lady love have loud, honking sex with some insane sounding Russian all week."

 "Is the battery dead?" Margaret said. She was being very quiet, and she was saying each word too carefully. I stopped smiling and turned to look at her. Her eyes were wet, but she wasn't crying.

 "No, I've been replacing it regularly."

 "These transmit in the open," she said. She pulled the car door open and got out of the car. I pushed my door open too. "Damnit, I liked you." Margaret said. "We were good together. We could have made this work."

 She kicked off her shoes and ran toward the nearest yard. Then the whole lawn was lit from above. The light was intense and white, and it came from the sky. All of the yards around me lit up, not all at once, but close enough, like grocery store fluorescents. I could feel the wind change, but I couldn't see up past the lights. Everything was still quiet.

 On the lawn Margaret turned to look at me.

 "It could still work. I'm not angry," I said, loud enough for her to hear. "You sounded like you were losing control, like you were having weirder sex than I've ever had." I looked around at all of the yards, lit up. The lights still weren't registering. "I know that's different. What we have is love, and there are things you can't do in a long term relationship. I understand that."

 Her face had gone cold. There was no talking to her when she looked like this. I kept trying anyway.

 "Some types of sex are too intense to sustain. They're meant to be explosions that last a week, or a month, and then you hold onto them in your memory. I'm not jealous. I'm not afraid you'll leave me."

 The counselor had said this was her version of putting up a wall. Only, when we usually fought, Margaret's legs didn't sprout into giant tentacles with a stretching sound that I had taken to be the springs of an old bed when I first heard it over the radio.

 When we'd fought before, my lady love's body didn't rag doll back into the mouth of an upside-down enormous squid that had begun screaming in what sounded like passionate Russian. I watched, my hand still on my car door while the squid laid itself out on the lawn. It was a wet, awkward thing to watch. This was a creature that was not meant for sod and pesticide.

 The squid snaked one of its long legs up into the sky, only to come down with a helicopter. The helicopters were the source of the lights. Now I could hear them. The air was suddenly a roar of hollering and gunfire and wind and the screeching noise from the monster on the lawn.

 I watched as the squid pulled weird high tech looking soldiers out of the helicopter with its tentacles and flung them in all directions. I watched, calmly, as the last of these soldiers grew bigger and bigger. I thought "No. It isn't getting bigger, it's getting closer."

 Then I was lying on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. There were soldiers sitting beside me, one with a bandage wrapped around his head, and one with a smile on his face.

 "We're just gonna drop you off at the hospital," he said to me. "You might have a concussion, but other than that you'll be fine. That was some show, eh? She didn't even try to fool us. As soon as she saw the helicopters, yuck with the tentacles and ink!"

 "Are you," I fought for the words. "Are you?" I said, and he grinned wider. "Where's Margaret?" I said. "Did that thing get her?" I tried to sit up. "Was that a giant squid?"

 "A colossal squid," he said. "Giant squid are child's play." The guy with the bandage on his head laughed, and the smiling soldier elbowed him. "Margaret's gone," he said. "She's not what you thought. She was an enemy agent, spying on how we live, here on land."

 "Right," I said. "My girlfriend was some kind of secret agent from the deep. Okay."

 "You can be as sarcastic as you want. She just turned into a giant squid, so I'd say the evidence is on my side."

 "Colossal," the other soldier corrected him.

 "We started noticing a pattern of strange radio transmissions in your neighborhood three months ago. It was pretty easy to find the common element. You and your girlfriend were friends with everyone who was being monitored. So we put cameras all over your apartment, but we got nothing. You just looked like a young, perverted couple. Eavesdropping on your friends. We kept watching, because our background checks on her only went back a few years. All coastal cities. It wasn't until you bugged her yourself that we got a break. So thank you for that."

 "We have that on film too," the bandaged guy said, and he got another elbow in the ribs. I could feel my face going red. If they had cameras on me when I listened to the radio transmissions of Margaret with the Russian, then oh good lord. But I hadn't known that... How are you supposed to react when you hear your girlfriend making love? That was a big turn on. She'd never sounded more passionate.

 "I... I thought it was Margaret," I said.

 "It was Margaret," he said. "Hey, don't worry about it. You couldn't have known. It totally sounded like your girlfriend having filthy sex. I mean, you aren't exactly familiar with the sound a woman makes when she turns back into a sea monster."

 "A sea monster," I said.

 "After we drop you off, you can try and sell your story to the papers or whatever," the other guy said. "Lady friend transforms into giant sea monster on lawn, eats helicopter, breaks heart." He patted my arm. "Go nuts," he said. "Because that's how you'll look anyway."

 "Where is she?" I said.

 "She got away. Probably back in the ocean, by now. Slippery," he said.

 I closed my eyes and turned my head away.

 After I got out of the hospital, I caught a taxi home. My head was fine. If it was a concussion it was mild, the doctor said. I locked the door behind myself and kicked my shoes onto the pile. In bed, it was easy to stretch out like this was an afternoon nap, like Margaret was still at work.

 I fell asleep and dreamt of waves and seaweed and long thin arms, and I woke expecting the room to smell like the ocean. I felt seasick, like the room should have been swaying, but wasn't.

 Were those soldiers still watching? I picked up my alarm clock and examined it. Maybe there was a little camera behind the black glass of the display. Maybe there was a camera in the light fixture. After you're caught in an act of self gratification while listening to your girlfriend transform into a colossal squid, though, it doesn't seem like such a big deal that there might be cameras all over your house. I replaced the clock on the night table. Let them watch.

 Out on the couch, I still couldn't sleep. So I pulled on my shoes. I got in the car and I drove until I found myself across the street from where Margaret had changed.

 The radio was still set to Harold and Laura on the dial.

 The sound from the speakers was slow and rumbling and broken by chunks of empty space that could have been static. I put my seat back and closed my eyes. I couldn't tell if Harold had a strange feminine snore, or if Laura's was deeper than you would expect. I fell asleep curled up in the front seat of the car, the doors all locked, the radio tuned to a bedroom three blocks away.

 In the morning Margaret and I were scheduled for a meeting with our counselor. I woke up at eight exactly, which was plenty of time. Then I realized that I was asleep in the front seat of the car and that reminded me that Margaret was a colossal squid now.

 I ate quietly in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, and then drove home for a change of clothes and a shower. I sat on the couch for a long time before I figured out what to do. I couldn't go to the counselor alone. I couldn't go to work. The idea of staying in the apartment without her was unbearable. I looked up a travel agency on the computer and printed out the directions.

 There was a map in the travel agent's office. California was gross. Hawaii was too hot. Did Squids like heat? What kind of water did they even live in? Nova Scotia looked good. It jutted out into the ocean. It stuck out from Canada into the blue, right next to the word 'Atlantic', almost completely surrounded by water. And it wasn't too far. It was above New York, and over just a bit.

 "Do they have squid in the Atlantic ocean?" I said. I put my finger on the map.

 The travel agent smiled warmly.

 "You know, I'm not sure," he said. He stood beside me and looked at the map. "But Nova Scotia is beautiful," he said. "We book a lot of vacations there. It's nice to spend time with the sea sometimes." I followed him to the computer. "How many are traveling?" he said.

 "Just one," I said. He hit a few keys.

 "And when will you be traveling?"

 "Today, if I can," I said. "Or tomorrow. Can you book me a hotel, too?"

 "Of course."

 "Something right on the water," I said.

 At home, I packed a bag. Nothing big. Change of underwear. Change of pants. I looked around for something of Margaret's to bring with me. She had a bookshelf filled with young adult novels that she'd loved. Other than that there wasn't very much.

 I parked the car in the long term parking lot. The girl behind the counter was cold the way Margaret could be cold sometimes. But I figured she probably wasn't a squid. Probably she just got that expression working in an airport parking lot.

 Inside the airport they asked me to empty my pockets into the tray and step through the metal detector. I lifted my arms for the guy with the wand. A voice came over the loud speakers saying that some flight was now boarding at gate 21 instead of gate 22.

 I waited for my bag and tray to come through the x-ray machine. A minute passed. The security guard called another guard over to the screen. They talked quietly, and then they called another guard over. He motioned for me to follow him.

 "Come with me," he said.

 In the small room, they sat me down with the listening devices laid out on the table in front of me. The man who sat across from me looked angrier than he really had any right to look. Was it illegal to make your own transmitting microphones? Maybe it was illegal to plant them in people's houses, but just making them wasn't a crime. I didn't think so, anyway.

 "These aren't even mine," I told him. "I haven't broken any laws here."

 He asked me the same questions a dozen different ways, always angrily, always like he knew I was lying. They get paid to make you nervous, so you'll slip up. I repeated my answers again and again. Why do you have these devices? My girlfriend and I are electronics hobbyists. Where is your girlfriend? Waiting for me in Nova Scotia. Waiting for me by the sea.