Nightjack (21 page)

He became lost in the soccer game, unsure of who was playing whom or when the game was taped. Last night, a week ago? The footage looked a little grainy, it could’ve been from the Seventies for all he knew.

He heard three men at another table speaking animatedly in French, mentioning Apollonaire, Sendak, Rimbaud, Guy de Maupassant. Inside, Pacella began to twist in pain, the names of the poets reminding him of papers he had graded. Pacella’s mouth was dry and he was thinking of cocoa, hungry for the little marshmallows.

It didn’t take long for everything to go straight to hell.

Amazing how quickly you could bring out the worst in somebody. You just show your face and somebody wants to murder you. Sometimes you didn’t even have to show your face.

Pace got a sense of it about a minute before the action started, when he noticed Pia wasn’t at the table anymore. He scanned the bar and there were twice as many people clustered in the place now than when they’d first walked in. The pressure of history smashed these people to pieces and drove them into the shadows reaching for their bottles. The land where art and myth was born. It even crushed the tourists.

He saw a kind of ripple going around one section of the taverna. Men trying to keep hushed but unable to keep it down. Pace immediately knew it had something to do with Pia. Maybe she was fighting with her father, maybe she was trying to tackle five guys at once.

Faust saw it too. “She’s in anguish but hasn’t learned any wisdom from her hardships yet. Perhaps she’ll accomplish her suicide before she ever does. What do we do, Will?”

“You two stay here.”

Hayden wrote: Momma, I’m dead, I’ve been dead forever.

A glass shattered and Pace slipped through the patrons, got himself wedged right into the middle of things. Pia was on her knees, writhing, her arm bent too far behind her back. A handsome Greek youth with turbulent eyes sat drinking beside her, gripping her wrist and pulling harder. The agony made her coil across the floor but she didn’t let out a squeak.

“Take your hands off her,” Pace said.

Sometimes you couldn’t help but sound like a puffy, second-rate action star in a straight-to-DVD release.

The kid sipped his drink, taking it slow. “Do you know what she said to me?” His voice was charged but almost amiable, as if asking the question of a new friend.

“I can guess. She’s a sick girl. She’s cursed. You’re better off not touching her.”

“You take me for a stupid, superstitious Greek, hah?”

“No, I’m just telling the truth.”

The kid, showing his perfect white teeth that must’ve driven all the middle-aged lady travelers out of their girdles. “You Americans, you are all the same.”

“Believe me, buddy,” Pace said. “We are definitely not all the same.”

“You know what this one did? This lovely tiny one? You know the promises she made in whispers?”

“She’s ill. Please forgive her.”

“You think it is funny to do these things to the ignorant locals?”

“No,” Pace told him. “It’s just been a mistake.”

“There was no mistake.”

The crowd wafted, waiting for blood.

Crumble ran over, the small, curled pug tail wagging just a bit. “Arf!”

Jack was snickering, thankful that Pia was helping him out here. He wanted all the fishermen to draw their long, thin fishing blades, watch them twirl in the morning sun. A glorious dance waiting to be consummated, fulfilled.

The kid had a blade tucked into his belt. Mediterranean fishermen are noted knife fighters, and Greek fishermen some of the best in the world. Pace didn’t even know if he had the Trident tucked into the small of his back anymore. He reached and drew it and held it up before his eyes, realizing, Yeah, there it is, I still have it, and then sticking it back in its sheath hidden away, all in about a second. The youth’s eyes widened and he started to go for his own blade, then realized Pace had sheathed his so very quickly and now had no weapon. The kid didn’t quite know what to do, and he still had Pia on her knees.

Pace drew the knife again in a blur, reached down and gently tapped the point of it on the back of the kid’s hand. The act itself so delicate that not even a bead of blood welled up. The sting of the knife perhaps feeling no different from a spider bite, but still enough to make the kid let Pia go.

She got to her feet, rubbing her shoulder. She glared at Pace and said, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“I mean, you shouldn’t have.”

“I know what you meant.”

The kid rubbed the back of his hand, plucking at the skin so he could see what bit him, what touched him, what happened.

Pace asked, “What’s your name?”

“Stavros.”

“Listen, Stavros, I—”

Stavros shot to his feet. He was tall, six-three, with a long reach. “I do not wish to dialogue!”

“Arf!”

Stavros worked his tongue over his teeth, bobbing on his toes, ready to lunge. He looked from Pia to Crumble to Pace and back again. He didn’t want to ask the question but couldn’t help himself. “Why is that man barking like a dog?”

“He’s insane,” Pace said. “We all are. You should go away now.”

“This man thinks he is a dog?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

Crumble rushed over, licked the back of Stavros’s hand, and immediately started humping his leg. The crowd thought it was hilarious.

“This man seeks sexual congress with my knee!” Stavros shrieked.

He was too shocked to even think about drawing his blade. Pace didn’t have much choice but to grab Crumble by the collar and rap him lightly across the nose. The pug let out a sneeze and sat there panting.

That got to the kid and the rest of the patrons. Stavros tried to hold on to his anger but it was already lifting from him as the others began to laugh. He tried to clench his jaws shut but the laughter started in his chest and eventually broke free. He held his sides and really whooped it up, the spittle flying. The laugh caught on and the rest of the place began to join in. Soon they were all howling. Crumble howled too. Another round of drinks was ordered. Someone began singing. Pia looked at Pace like she wanted to fuck him to death. Jack wanted to kill everybody.

twenty

Maybe you just needed to get back to New York and rent a cheap apartment on the upper west side, try to play catch-up on all the time you’ve already lost. Check in at the fish cannery. Find a friend you could go out with, take in a ball game, hit the margarita bars. You sit there on a stool eyeing the girls across the way. Robbie starts going through all the best pickup lines he’s downloaded into his memory banks. Hey baby, what’s your sign? You remind me of someone, haven’t we met before? You tell him, I don’t know, Robbie, I get the feeling those might not work anymore. A little bullhorn pops out of Robbie’s chest and starts doing wolf whistles at the pretty chicks. You think somebody’s going to come over and start some shit, but the girls are all tittering. You give Robbie a look and all his lights are lit up, he’s beeping like a son of a bitch. His chest opens again and a little catapult fires stuff at the girls. Candy hearts, plastic flowers, tabs of X, packs of purple condoms. The girls come over and circle Robbie, start rubbing his shiny metal parts going oooh and aaah. You ask him what the hell’s going on. He tells you, I shut down the Cognitive-Analytic Progression Matrix in my positronic phalanx module, I’m just letting the ride happen now, sport. A slot opens up between his eyes and a girl pops a quarter in. Robbie blasts out techno-pop dance tunes. The girls are grinding and bucking, Robbie gets up and starts clanking and gyrating along with them, his metal claws groping nubile breasts, the girls tee-heeing. His chest opens again and out comes a leash, a bridle, fur-lined handcuffs, a loofa sponge, an eggbeater, a rotor-rooter. They all leave together in a hushed, eager air of sharpened expectation.

~ * ~

Pace tried to get everybody together in time to meet the noon ferry to Voros. But Pia was dancing with men other than her father, Faust was actually laughing with the soccer enthusiasts, and Hayden had managed to put down his pen after writing only five pages to his mother. The world turned by these small miracles.

You could almost believe in the possibility of joy. Pace thought, Okay, one night, we’ll try to relax for a night. We need that much.

They drank and ate and talked with people for hours. The conversations ranged from the informative to the delightful. Faust was almost enchanting, and Hayden told stories about how he and seven mongoloids from the group home would steal the school bus and sneak into Madison Square Garden to watch the Playoffs. Two of the mongoloids had even gotten basketballs signed by most of the players on the Knicks. Hayden had once been shoved by a ref for straying onto the court. The Knicks got so pissed at the ref that the guy had to be escorted out under armed guard.
What the matter wit you? This boy retarded!

At some point a
bouzouki
band came in and began playing their
bouzoukis
,
baglamas
, guitars, and violins. The Greeks started teaching the tourists folk songs and traditional dances.

Stavros had grown enamored of Pia and mooned over her from across the table, smiling dreamily while she pranced around the room. Pace kept taking the money Vindi had given him and paying for round after round. He wanted to find out information about Kaltzas and Pythos, but didn’t know what kind of a reaction it might get from the locals, if any. He subtly tried to weave the name into the various conversations. No one had anything to say. Maybe if you threw a stick around here you could hit fifty shipping magnates with their own private islands.

The French men had left, but the names of the writers continued on and on, rocking Pacella where he lay hidden. Baudelaire, Mauriac, Proust. His eyes twitched, opened for an instant, rolled up into his head, and then he continued dreaming in the dark.

The dead will follow
.

The afternoon waned. A third of the money had been spent. Pia had received five marriage proposals, two from Stavros.

Pace had been drinking steadily but wasn’t drunk. Sam Smith, though, was having a ball. Jimmy Boyd was singing “Kathleen.”

It took a while, but finally Pace managed to gather everybody and get them out of the
taverna
. He had to carry Pia along while she swooned and laughed against his neck. Hayden and Faust were dancing and singing
To Vouno
—“The Mountain”—a slow song that several of the Greeks had performed.

Hayden sang, “I'll climb the highest mountain—”

Moving heavily, Faust turned and turned again. “—and I'll sing, in the wilderness—”

“—with the playing of my
bouzouki
—”

“—my sorrow will be heard...”

“They sure are a fun people.”

“But it’s quite understandable why their economy’s so deflated. How many of them drank all day and never went to work? Never left at all?”

“There are drunks everywhere. At least they don’t get mean. Well, most of them, anyway.”

“It got a little uncomfortable when you were aspiring to have carnal knowledge with Stavros’s leg.”

“I trust in the power of forgiveness.”

“It's so different now,” Pia said, looking about the streets. “This morning I hated it.”

Pace knew what she meant. The city was still too congested and choked with people and traffic. But the beauty beneath had made itself known.

“I want to visit the Acropolis! Syntagma square and the Plaka. The Archeological Museum, the Cathedral, the town hall. The Temple of Zeus!”

Hayden finished up the dance and joined in. “The Parthenon. The Theater of Dionysus.”

“On the return trip,” Pace said, “we'll stay a week and see the sights, all right?"

“We won't be able to then. We'll be dead.”

“No one’s going to die.”

Breathing lustily, her voice growing more and more smoky, Pia said, “You're an idiot, Will.”

“Don’t be mean.”

“I’m not, I’m a very loving young woman.”

Ten minutes later they passed a hotel. “How about we stay at this place for the night?”

"It's not accommodating enough,” Faust told him. “I would very much like to stay in a five-star hotel. Four at the very least. We should keep our standards high.”

“Why?”

“Because we are cultured and civilized.”

“You pick it then.”

They continued on through Piraeus, the open air market, heading toward the Plaka District near the Acropolis. The area was made up of pedestrian streets that coiled and diverged wildly.

“Here,” Faust said in front of a luxury hotel, the
Athenian Palace
, close to the port where the ferry would take them out to Voros in the morning. Bellboys circled them, unsure of what to do. They’d never seen tourists checking in with so little baggage. “This appeals to me greatly. I haven’t had room service in years.”