Marty had met Jacky at a scientific ichthyology conference not long after he’d arrived in Sri Lanka. After the final panel of the afternoon concluded, he was making a quiet exit from the hotel’s packed conference room when she approached him. He was surprised and alarmed when she called him by his name. He hadn’t told anyone from his old life that he had moved to Sri Lanka. Even so, he kept his cool, making polite chitchat. When she excused herself to use the restroom, he ducked outside and had been in the process of flagging down a taxi in the helter-skelter traffic when she found him again and convinced him to join her for a drink at a nearby bar. They ended up having a good time, and he invited her back to the Oannes, where they had an even better time. Marty was looking forward to their next date—until Jacky sent him a link to a feature article she’d written about him in the Daily Mirror. It was generous and well-researched…and made him tremble with rage. To be fair, he’d never told her not to write anything about him, yet he thought he’d made it clear he’d come to the country seeking anonymity.

As he expected and feared, the story was picked up by major newspapers around the world, including London’s The Telegraph and The Guardian, with one headline blaring “THE MERDOC FOUND WASHED UP IN SRI LANKA” and the other “DISGRACED MERDOC LOOKING FOR MERMAIDS IN INDIAN OCEAN.” (“Merdoc” was a pejorative play on his name that the media had gleefully applied to him after the Netflix documentary was exposed as a fraud…and one they had apparently not tired of.)

Marty cut off all communication with Jacky, ignoring her calls and texts until she stopped trying to get in touch with him altogether.

And that had been that.

Nothing for nearly three years.

He’d all but forgotten about her.

So why is she calling me now?

∆∆∆

Marty was considering ringing Jacky back when his phone rang first. It wasn’t Jacky though; it was Radhika Fernandez, the woman Marty was currently pseudo seeing. He’d met her about a year after the Jacky fiasco. He’d been at his preferred local pub, an unpretentious place popular with all rungs of society, including a good number of expats. He’d been minding his own business in a corner booth when Radhika slid into it across from him and began complimenting him on one thing or another. She was clearly drunk. He was too, which was probably why he couldn’t remember what they talked about. But it must have been interesting because they remained at the pub until closing. After that night, they began getting together every week or two. She didn’t recognize him as The Merdoc, and he didn’t tell her anything about himself that might give away his identity. However, the more time they spent together, the more aggressive her inquiries became, until he bluntly explained that his past was off limits. She wasn’t happy with this declaration, but she accepted it.