The rage in the man’s voice: This is the kind of bullshit vacation I’d’ve gone on if I’d stayed in Saluda and had kids with Erin. He stood next to his sports car yelling at a girl leaning against the car with her head down. A gold rope chain at his neck shone dully in the sun. The girl murmured, acquiesced. She looked no more than old enough to drink.

Carrie gathered a picnic basket from her Audi’s trunk two spaces over. She followed a path toward Natural Bridge, the B&B’s charcuterie picnic-to-go and a green glass bottle of Italian sparkling water in hand. The basket bumped against her hip as she walked. Natural Bridge was a tourist trap, but she mocked him softly to herself anyway: I’m on a bullshit vacation, too. The man’s voice faded into wind in the boughs and birdsong as the path angled into the forest.

Stopping at Natural Bridge eeked a few more hours out of a long weekend at the indulgent Blue Ridge Inn & Spa. Carrie ate on the gingham blanket from the picnic basket and snapped photos on her phone: towering arched rock (hardly a show stopper), forest, more rocks, a mostly-dry stream bordered by mossy pavers. The man from Saluda had found it disappointing. So had she. However, he hadn’t eaten cave-aged cheddar, or grapes, or prosciutto at the base of it.

 

Carrie returned the empty picnic basket to her trunk. The afternoon sun flattered the mostly-empty lot. She glanced at the lost-looking girl on the bench: mascara-smudged eyes, butterfly tattoo, flip-flops. A slouchy bag sat at her side.

She’s not my problem. Whose problem was she? Did I look like that back then? “Do you have a ride?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s coming back,” the girl said.

“Where do you live?” Carrie regretted asking. Gangs and human traffickers snatched single women this way. They sent out their prettiest, most vulnerable-looking, who got into a woman’s car for a ride home: a trap, not a home at all. Carrie heard you’re supposed to drive them to a police station, same with the “lost” children planted on jogging trails.

“Richmond,” said the girl, undangerously. She might be stranded and at the culmination of a string of bad decisions. Carrie would pass through Richmond on the way home.

So many bad decisions at her age… more a visceral memory than a thought. “I’m going that way. Do you need a ride?” she asked the girl, who was not, she decided, likely to entrap her. The man from Saluda hadn’t looked savvy enough to work in organized crime.

 

Carrie pointed out an aging roadside billboard a few miles into the drive: Come See The Virginia Animal Menagerie Open Year Round. It would further delay going home, both to tomorrow’s client meeting and to Saluda men who are more mistake than partner.

Inside the menagerie, a well-fed zebra extended its head and neck through the passenger’s window. It licked dry crumbs from a now-empty plastic food bucket, four for twelve dollars at the entrance gate. “There’s no more for you, baby.” The girl stroked its forehead with her other hand until it withdrew. A line of cars had formed at their back. None honked. Herbivores ambled toward the vehicles, all open windows and children’s waving arms. Come here… want some… I’ve got food for you… The zebra’s musky scent lingered. They coasted in silence past a mother elk and her knock-kneed calf, past an antelope. A small deer with a deformed leg stood near a bush. And then, the chain link exit gate appeared.

A pimply teen in a safari outfit shook an empty food bucket at them. The girl passed the stack of empties through the open window. A low brick building sat outside the gate. Letters reading Don’t Mi s Vir inia’s Only Mermaids sat sadly on an unlit marquee. Both women turned toward the building, decidedly landlocked, undecorated by starfish or seashells. A tabby slinked past a sign in the scrub grass: Mermaids Wanted. Carrie steered toward the road.

“Go back,” the girl said.

“Do you want to see the mermaids?” Carrie considered watching the mermaids together: a murky tank, ill-fittting fish tails, a vision of beauty and poverty. Later, she’d buy dinner at a cafe and tuck two twenty-dollar bills into the girl’s palm when she dropped her off at a Richmond police station. Just to be safe.

“They have a Mermaids Wanted sign,” the girl said.

“Don’t you live in Richmond?”

“My boyfriend left. I don’t think I still live there.” Carrie pulled into a parking space. “Thanks for the animal thing.” The girl opened her door.

“Wait,” Carrie said. Could someone get a mermaid job by walking in and asking for it? Two lawn chairs near the entrance flanked a coffee can overflowing with cigarette butts. Weeds grew from cracks in the asphalt. Yes, she would probably get the job. But did she have a bathing suit in her slouchy bag? Carrie did, packed for the trip in case there had been an occasion to lie in a cabana by a pool.

The girl stood next to the Audi. Carrie hefted her mock-crock weekend bag out of the trunk. “Do you have a change of clothes?” The girl shook her head. Carrie held the bag toward her. “Take it. There’s T-shirts, yoga pants, a bathing suit. I overpacked. And there’s shampoo and stuff–”  She did not mention her favorite cashmere pajamas.

“Are you sure?” The girl took the bag before Carrie answered.

The girl stepped over a patch of glittering broken glass and opened the entrance door. Bells jingled. Carrie watched her disappear inside; first, the girl whose name she had forgotten to ask, and last, her own overnight bag slung over the girl’s shoulder.