White Vespa (10 page)

“Maybe I had. Dad thought so.”

“And then, in your sweetest voice . . .”

“Which was never that sweet.”

“You said,
Bye, bye-bye,
waved and just took off, left me there. I shouted myself hoarse, and the boat just kept getting smaller and smaller, and then it disappeared behind the point.” Paul pretended to pout.

“It must have been fifty yards to shore.”

“I couldn't swim.”

“You didn't have to,” Anne said, trying to sound exasperated.

“Thanks to Tea Rose, or whatever her name was, telling her mother.”

Anne had tears in her eyes from silent laughter. “That traitor. I never spoke to her again.”

“See!”

“It's the happiest memory of my life, really.” Anne was laughing hysterically.

“You caught hell,” Paul said. “Your lie was so lame.”

“Yeah, yeah. But it was worth it, believe me. The look on your face when
I said
bye-bye
was really too much. I laughed so hard I peed my pants.”

“There
were
jellyfish, those big ones that look like a raw egg, yellow yolk, and tentacles six feet long.”

“Poor Paul! Big bad tentacles.”

“Well, poor Paul has gotta go.” He was suddenly standing. “On me,” he added, leaving money enough and more tucked under his glass. “You'll be seeing me around, Sis, can't be helped.”

Anne looked at her hands, folded quietly in her lap. “We all remember a different story,” Paul had said, his manner just totally disarming, as if he was granting the differences to excuse her, because in his story,
he
was the victim. She shook her head. She hadn't even challenged that. “Bullshit,” she said, and the waitress came over to her table, having heard something, and Anne ordered another gin.

 

Myles fed the taverna cats the remains of the kalamária and a few chips while Jim finished the mezédhes
.
The food wasn't wonderful, but the great plane trees over the tables in front of the taverna made it a pleasant place for lunch, easily the best in Livádhia, Tílos' port town. Jim had said the town was nondescript and it was, nondescript but not objectionable either. A few small hotels and pensions suggested the island enjoyed a very modest tourist trade. The harbor opened wide and clear and clean, with a long expanse of sandy beach populated only by small boats, some pulled up on the sand, some riding at anchor. Livádhia had all the elements that made Greek island towns so pleasant, but here the mix felt flat. Myles hadn't touched his cameras yet.

Jim gestured across the bay to a red track that ran along the hillside well above the water.

“That trail,” he said, “is worth walking. Goes to hell and gone and you can pick your way down to some absolutely private beaches, just small half moons of golden sand. How about it? A walk and a swim?”

 

The track ran wide as a road at first. Myles picked a carob pod from a tree and broke it, remembering, when he smelled it, how Anne had put her face into his hands to smell the carob that first night at Two Stories.

Soon enough the trail got narrow, and they went single file, Jim in front. The shrubs, it seemed, were beautiful but thorny, and Myles had many occasions to regret he'd worn sandals. But he was carrying his camera now, stopping often to take pictures of the shrubs and small trees, which, curiously, did not crowd one another, but kept their distance. Because of this they seemed somehow fully expressed, as if what was in the seed had had its say. Elegant organic forms.

Further on they stopped to look down on a small cove where two men floated in the water, face up.

“Some folks should wear suits,” Myles observed. The women, he saw,
had pulled out like seals on the beach and looked to have been toasted more or less the same color as the sand.

“Well, maybe not
that
private.” Jim laughed. “Germans, most likely. Anyway, some folks ain't happy missing any chance for a cancer.”

“Now, don't go getting dyspeptic on me, Jim. Or prudish. That would be too American. Besides, that's
my
job.”

“I hadn't noticed.”

“I hide it well,” Myles said.

 

They were walking again. At the next cove there was something black rolling in the light surf. Sitting on a high rock, Myles snapped on his longest lens and brought it into focus. It was a body, a goat, its four legs splayed wide.

“Want to see?”

Jim took the camera. “You think it was a fall? Or death by drowning?”

A wave washed in and the legs, which had been pointing out to sea, turned as the body rolled in the surf. For a moment they pointed up the hill, then the wave ebbed away and the body rolled back.

“Well, I'd think a fall,” Myles said. “Nature isn't quite as sure-footed as these crazy-ass goats seem to think. Surprised they're not all dead. Have you watched them? They jump
and then
look for a place to land.”

They walked on, the path following the contours of the hillsides, a lazy meander through rough country. Far out from town the trail turned sharply left and standing on the turn they gazed down on a thin peninsula that ran on out into the Aegean. Down below it narrowed to a scant few yards before widening out and going on. At the neck, two sandy beaches were situated back to back, only a low bushy ridge between them. Waves were breaking on both beaches, rolling in from right and left. Myles got out his camera and maneuvered a particularly well-expressed bush into the left of frame.

“For
The Lesser Dodecanese,
” he said shyly, “just the kind of postcard shot my publisher's going to want lots of. And look, the sands are trackless,
wave-swept
!” He laughed, but he took the picture.

“When you're done,” Jim asked archly, “will I be allowed to swim there? Make tracks and all?”

“If you're good. God, it does look like a wonderful place to swim. A beach apiece.”

Myles started down the faint path, but Jim was soon ahead of him.
Cairns marked the path down, some quite large, others just a few small stacked stones. Myles took close-ups of several. Through the camera they looked monumental, and though the stones had probably been put up haphazardly, like all standing stones they now had an inevitable look. Jim watched Myles indulgently, liked to see the sure way he moved when he was immersed in his work.

“Not,” Jim said coyly, “for
The Lesser Dodecanese
?”

“Ah, no, probably not.”

 

“Been hiding, love?” Pru said, smiling to see Paul start at her voice.

He turned in the door to his rooms, which he'd just pushed open. He peered at her, at her face a little blue where she stood in the shadow across the alley. Then he made a show of looking around. “What, no Mary?” He whispered, smiling. “
You
,” he said, “can come in.”

“What makes you think I want to?” Pru asked.

“Not want a little more?” Paul stepped into the dark of his doorway, then put his hand out into the alley where it caught the light and waved Pru through the door, whispering still, “Shh . . . shh . . . what if Mary should hear you?”

Pru wobbled walking in, saying, “She won't. She's out cold.”

“Put her down, did you?” Paul laughed. He ran his fingers up her thin dress between her legs and she jumped a little. “Easy,” he said, guiding her hand to his loose slacks. “Paul has what you want.”

She leaned into him, humming, lifted her hands to tug at his belt.

“Think about Mary,” Paul said. “Fat Mary. Squirming on her bed, all alone.”

“What?” Pru looked up.

“Doesn't it make you hot, betraying her?” Paul licked his lips. “I think it does.”

“You're mean,” Pru said, a little put off, a little amused.

“I think fat Mary's been getting her kicks knowing she's been keeping you from getting yours.” Paul leaned back in, his tongue rippling over Pru's ear, one hand brushing across her taut breasts while the other again glided up between her thighs. “Don't you?”

“Maybe,” Pru gasped, as Paul pressed her back against the door. “Oh,” she said, “oh, oh, oh.”

“My sister was a Mary. Always clopping in on her horse just when I got a girl's pants down. She had a genius for turning up at the wrong time.” Paul spoke quietly in Pru's ear, conversationally, his hands slippery now.

Pru panted, “What?”

“I called her Annie-interrupt-us. She liked butting in. Like Mary likes it.”

“But they're not here now,” Pru said, pulling Paul toward the bed that shone white in the unlit room.

“Let's pretend they are,” Paul said, “Let's pretend we're forcing them to watch.”

 

Pru stared at the dark ceiling, a little embarrassed now that she had sobered up. She considered getting dressed. Paul was sitting at the table, peeling an orange. He'd turned a lamp on. She had a feeling that if she didn't get dressed soon he would ask her to, and she didn't want that, but she didn't feel quite ready to stand up yet.

“I saw you with your sister yesterday,” Pru said. “Looked like you were chatting her up.”

“Oh, I
was
. She
is
my sister.”

“I know, Annie-interrupt-us. Very funny.”

“But true. My bitch of a mom wouldn't hire a babysitter. She said I should do it, that I would do it. And my parents, they were never home. So I was stuck there while little Annie did whatever she damn well pleased. And
if
I could talk a girl into dropping by, Anne just followed us around like a puppy.
Whatcha doin?
Or she'd be gone for hours and then bingo,
Whatcha doin?”

Pru thought she could hear the boy Paul in his voice now, petulant, a whiner, which surprised her. She pulled a sheet around her and started looking for her clothes.

Paul lifted a segment of orange to his mouth, watching Pru. “I guess it's never too late for modesty,” he said. Pru glanced up, suddenly scared what Paul might say next. “Don't forget to wake Mary up. Accidentally, you know,” Paul had noticed Pru's sudden haste. “Just let her get a whiff of you. You won't have to say a word,” Paul added, as if what he was saying was sage advice.

 

Paul gave Pru his best friendly wave when she let herself out, but he didn't get up, not even when she said she'd be leaving Sými in the morning. He peeled a second orange, thinking. Not about Pru, but about Anne. He
didn't think she was here to make his life on Sými better. She hadn't made his life on Bainbridge better, that was sure. His mother. Her face pasty with anger. Red-faced anger was for people with blood in their veins. And Anne was always telling tales. Sometimes they were true, but why tell them? And they weren't always true. Anne'd had a way of getting even, by getting Paul switched.

One time she'd called their mother to his door in the middle of the night by acting scared,
Something's wrong with Paul, come quick
, when the thing that was wrong with him was that he was frustrated. Their mother had sent Anne back to bed but marched Paul into the kitchen, where, when he denied what he'd been doing, she'd slashed at his ass with a thin, metal spatula. For lying. What had she expected him to say? But their parents were crazy on the subject of lying. And his mother wasn't the kind to delegate a paddling to their father. Paul still remembered the white flashes of pain, and his mother's spiteful determination to make it hurt. Anne, he thought, had no doubt heard his screaming.

 

“Guidebook says it was abandoned in the 1950s.”

“Just like that, agreed and left?” Myles asked.

They had stopped in the shade on the road up to Mikró Horió. Myles was setting up for a long shot. The town was across from them, impressive and empty. One building, plastered and whitewashed and trimmed out in green, had been restored as a taverna or ouzerí and recalled what the town must have been. Another small building above it was under renovation and the church had been maintained, but except for that the town was coming down, slowly turning to rubble. Nothing moved.

“Still life,” Jim observed wryly, when he heard the shutter click.

“People are always leaving,” Myles said somberly. “But we don't remark their absence. They get replaced. The bustle distracts us.”

Myles fell silent, thinking about Max. He twisted off the long lens and snapped the wide angle into place.

“And?” Jim asked.

“And we know it anyway and want it acknowledged,” Myles said. “So we like places like this, beautiful abandoned places. Doesn't have to be our abandoned place to stand for the lost homeland or just the lost home.”

“
Nóstos.
Nostalgia.”

“Old photographs get us to the same place.” Myles glanced at Jim, nodding. “The world in the photograph is always a lost world. The place might be the same but the people are always gone or changed. Doesn't have to be a very old photograph if the people in it are people we knew. But if it
is
an old photograph, a very old photograph, it doesn't matter who the people are, because we know they're all dead.”

They walked on up the dirt track, talking. The ghost town, which had looked small on the hillside, seemed to get bigger as they walked into it. By the time they got to the swept terrace of the padlocked white taverna, what had
been Mikró Horió was all around them. A few of the alleys were clear but most were deep in rubble, in plaster and stone that had fallen from the walls. As they walked they occasionally heard a clatter; the town was not uninhabited, after all, but home to a herd of ravening goats, there to help the elements in bringing the place down.