Read Sleeping with the Fishes for Free Online Page A

sliding into the seat beside Fred, forcing her to move over or be squashed.
    "Hi, I'm Jonas, like the lady said. So, what's up with you, dude?"
    "Bipeds are poisoning our waters."
    Jonas arched a blond brow and turned to Fred. "So you were saying the other day. What's going on?"
    Fred shrugged. "Nothing new."
    "Nothing new? Have you
seen
this guy?" he cried as if Artur wasn't sitting three feet away. "Is he like you? He's a mer -dude, ism' he?"
    "Yeah," she sighed. "A mer -dude."
    The waiter stopped by the table, set a tray of sushi in front of Artur and a bowl of miso soup in front of Fred, took Jonas's order, and glided away.
    "So again with this biped thing?" Jonas demanded. "What are you talking about?"
    Artur quietly ate his sushi (with his fingers, she noticed; probably didn't get much practice with chopsticks at the bottom of the ocean) and said nothing. Fred assumed it was up to her to explain.
    "Jonas, I
know
the bipeds are wrecking the planet. You—they—can't help it. As far as they're concerned, they don't feel the sea; it's just something else to claim and fish and gut and leave dead."
    "Uh," Jonas said. He paused, then, again: "Uh."
    "Quite right," Artur agreed with his mouth full.
    "Come on," he protested. "We're not that bad."
    Both Fred and Artur stared at him stonily.
    Jonas, the chemical engineer, couldn't keep up the facade. "Okay, we're pretty bad. We wreck the planet and we're not potty trained. But I don't think anybody's dumping bad stuff in the water to—I mean, on pur —uh…" He trailed off, no doubt hearing the absurdity of his words.
    Fred sucked down half her miso soup, waited to see if her tongue would blister, then said, "I still don't know why you want my help. I'll be frank—"
    "Not Fred?" Artur teased, tossing a chunk of tuna sushi into his mouth.
    "—and tell you I'm not real interested in solving your little mystery. I just wanna feed the fish and stay out of my mom's living room for the rest of my life. Like I said to Dr, Pearson—tried to say—it's not really my field."
    "The sea belongs to you as well."
    "Oh, sure. All the mer -guys would welcome me with open arms."
    "They would." In went some halibut. "And if they did not, they would answer to me. Would you like some? It's very fresh."
    Fred shuddered and slurped more miso . "No."
    "Fred's allergic to seafood," Jonas explained.
    "You—you are?" Artur's jaw was sagging, which annoyed her to no end. "But—but what do you
eat
?"
    "Everything else."
    "So, your plan is… what?" Jonas was tapping his fingers on the table in an irritating rhythm. "You're gonna be the Dr. Watson to his Sherlock?"
    Fred shuddered; she couldn't help it.
    "You don't want to?"
    "I don't care."
    "So give him the old heave-ho."
    "Apparently," she said dryly, "I'm one of his subjects and have to do whatever he wants."
    "Since when has
authority
stopped you from being you?"
    "Well. How weird is it that in forty-eight hours two guys show up both bitching about the same thing?"
    "You're gonna team him up with the water fellow?"
    "That's the plan."
    "What is a water fellow?"
    "Eat your dead fish," she told Artur . To Jonas: "Let them team up and solve the mystery. Let me get back to work. Everybody's happy."
    Jonas was holding his head in his hands. Fred ignored it. Artur looked slightly alarmed. "Good sir, what ails you?"
    " Artur , could you give us a minute, please?"
    Without a word, Artur rose, crossed the room in four big strides, and started talking to their waitress, who was staring at him the way diabetics stared at sundaes.
    "What?"
    "Fred, what the hell is wrong with you?"
    "What?"
    "You've met two new guys and instead of, I dunno , trying to build a meaningful relationship or at least get laid by either or both of them, you're gonna match them up together and head back to the aquarium?"
    "Yeah."
    "Fred. You are dumber than an octopus."
    "Octopi," she told him with raised eyebrows, "are among the smartest animals on earth."
    "Why don't you guys work