White Vespa (12 page)

And the place did smell, the smell of clothes in which sweat had dried only to be worn again and sweated in again. He sat down at the triceps machine. He was embarrassed to always be changing the weight, changing it to something lighter, easier. When he'd worked his way around the room, he headed for the door. Two or three people nodded as he passed them and then he was outside, in the heat. The sun was bounding off the paving stones in waves. He walked by the fishing boats riding the green of the harbor water, by groups of milling tourists off the excursion boats, then left, up the alley to Vapori, where he slumped into a chair. When the waitress came he ordered a beer, a big Amstel.

 

Anne arrived a few minutes later. She had on a short white dress, loose, over black tights that stopped short of the knee.

“Sistah!”

“Don't start!”

“I started a long time ago,” Paul said.

“Working out?”

“No,” Paul grinned, “I've just started that.” Then he acknowledged that he'd been to the gym, again. “That makes twice.”

“Guess you're a regular, an habitué
,
no?”

Paul bent his arm as if to flex his biceps.

“Suppose you'd like me to feel it?” Anne said, ironically.

“Think we'd better wait on that.” Paul said, “I'm still modeling the before picture, you know.”

“Oh, I can see you're modeling, all right. Always on the catwalk.”

Paul beamed at her. He radiated a candor that even Anne found disarming, though she knew not to believe it.

“That's true,” he allowed genially, “and I think it's only very shallow people, like me, who ever manage to be really honest. If I'm superficial, and I am, then my surface speaks true. I am what I seem. Deep people now, like you or Myles, you can't get who you are into your face, so your faces are deceiving.” Paul winked. “People know.”

Anne shook her head slowly.

“Simple desire, for instance, right up front, is attractive. People want to be desired. Desire is desirable.”

“Maybe,” Anne allowed.

“You say
maybe,
but you're shaking your head.”

“I'm doubting you're that shallow,” Anne said.

“Oh, but I am! I work at it. Just watch me. You deep people, though, you can't help but be liars.”

“Thanks!”

“I'm not criticizing. I don't have any morals to offend,” Paul paused. “I'm interested. I look at you and I wonder what you're doing here, sitting across my table, looking so cute.”

“I don't know,” Anne admitted quietly.

 

Paul whistled under his breath.

“Look at that one,” he said in an urgent whisper.

Anne turned her head and peered under the umbrellas down toward the harbor. There could be no doubt about who he meant. She looked like she was fresh from a photo shoot for some retro line. She was coming up the alley, in a long off-white Victorian dress, all brocade in the bodice and lace in the sleeves. She wore a matching shawl and a black straw hat with a wide brim.

“She
is
theatrical!”

When the woman pulled close to the table they saw her face was heavily
made-up, that she was much older than she'd looked in the distance. Her face, Anne thought, was in a state of sad decline. It was only when she was past them that they saw the girl, fifteen maybe, trailing behind her like a dinghy behind a yacht, a daughter in pink, tie-dyed pants, a white, light shawl tied around her waist, a too-tight T-shirt, and lips painted very red.

When they were both by, Paul swiveled in his chair to watch them go. The woman all easy sway, the girl's pants hitched up tight between her legs.

Paul was laughing. “Wow! I mean, woof! Nothing reserved there.”

“That poor girl! She must feel extinguished.”

“Yeah, some get-up on her, too, though. Made up like a bad kid sister,” Paul winked at Anne. “Motherhood must be really hard on a woman like that.”

“Sort of pathetic, if you ask me,” Anne said.

“Maybe, but interesting. Think I could meet them?”

“Look out, Humbert.”

“I was thinking more about the mother,” Paul smiled, “but maybe both, now that you mention it. Possibilities there . . .”

“Get out!” Anne said, “And isn't the mother a little far gone for the exercise of your charms?”

“I'll squirt a little water on her, perk her right up.”

“Really . . .”

“Sistah, you misunderstand me. I just like them difficult, or better yet, forbidden,” Paul said.

“How forbidden?”

“Any how.”

“And how many
hows
are there?” Anne wondered aloud.

“Quite a few.”

Anne was shaking her head when the woman reappeared in the alley, heading back for the harbor.

“You're in luck. Here they come again.”

Without turning round Paul stood up, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket. He took out a bill, set it on the table, and watched as mother and child turned at the corner toward the center of Yialós.

“That's a provocation. What can I say? See ya, Sis.” And he was gone.

 

Anne rubbed at her temples with her fingertips. She was strangely lulled,
narcotized. She might as well have been sitting in the next chair, looking at herself, for all she felt.

She sighed, picked a magazine out of the basket next to her chair and flicked mechanically through the pages. When the waitress appeared out of the dark interior of Vapori
,
Anne called her over with a gesture. She ordered a gin and tonic and sipped at it absently. She looked at the photos of the models in
Elle
derisively, but she was of their tribe. Somehow, the pictures had captured her unaware; she didn't know when, years ago, before she was ready to think about them or fend them off. She flipped the magazine back into the basket and picked up another. In the travel section there was an article about Greek food, which the author didn't care for. Too much oil. A place you didn't travel to for the food, it said. She grinned; the article was written for readers at home and read oddly here. She liked the food, as far as she liked food at all. And eating outside, tables under an arbor or splashed out into the street, in the pulse of things, in sun or shadow, in the still calm or the wind, how could you separate out the food from that and say,
oily
? A cat sitting on your foot to remind you a scrap would be welcome. The looming barrels of retsina, the ceremonies of oúzo and coffee. A sweet by candlelight!

Anne grinned again and paid with the money Paul had left on the table. The crowds had cleared, and she walked around the harbor, heading for her place on the other side of Yialós. In the yellow light slanting into town, the buildings cast elongated, blue shadows. Late afternoon. The town suffering a spell. Waiters from the harbor-front restaurants standing languidly, not expecting anything but a slow hour.

Anne sat for a minute in the shade of the clock tower, looking back at the town, at the hillside crowded with small, neoclassical buildings. In the thick light they seemed, somehow, to have greater volume than at midday, more depth. In the hot light of noon the buildings seemed to lose their color, to flatten out, to become all façade.

Anne stood up, turned around the base of the clock tower and started off toward the Haráni boatyard, her feet pointed toward the stairs up to her rooms. She was hardly walking before she heard her name called and saw Paul emerging from the glazed doors of the Alíki, the dark wood of the lobby behind him.

“Sistah!”

She stopped, poking at the paving stones with the black sandal on her right foot. “Well? Did you meet her?”

“Them!” Paul exclaimed.

“Aha.”

“You said that just like Myles.”

“Oh? Them?” Anne said.

“A mother and a daughter, from Germany.”

“And?”'

“Dinner tonight.”

“Both of them?” Anne said.

“Of course. I wouldn't dream of breaking up the pair. I'm going home to look for something outrageous in my closet. Don't want to be outdone.”

“I could paint your face, real war paint.”

“Would you?” Paul said, seemingly pleased.

“Sure, but not tonight. I've got to work tonight.”

 

Anne climbed the stairs. In only a few steps she was out of the town, into what felt like a village. She was, herself, the lone foreigner in the pocket of houses where she had her room. She liked it that way, didn't mind the occasional prying eyes. She turned the key in her door and pushed it in. The room had that early evening heat, a good baked quality if there isn't too much of it. The bleached curtains at the windows belled inward as she stood in the door but dropped again when she shut it.

She felt, against all reason, relieved. She allowed herself to imagine that she was toying with Paul. She had gotten worried that he might run, leave the island before she had even formulated a plan. What was there to keep him here? There were many beautiful, cheap places in the world he could disappear into. If he only went as far as Pátmos or Sámos, she could hardly just show up
by chance
a second time. She was thankful she hadn't spooked him with her initial awkwardness. He was curious, that was good. It meant she had some time.

She opened the door to the refrigerator and a blaze of white light flooded the room. A wave of cool air spilled out around her feet. She lifted a liter of bottled water off the top shelf and pressed it to her neck, to her forehead. Then she put the bottle back in the refrigerator and shut the door. “Aha,” she thought, wryly. Myles would be back in town. Perhaps he'd show at Two Stories. She'd need to be ready to say something about the photographs.

Anne slipped them from the manila envelope and spread them out as best she could on her one rough table. She cocked her head to hear the muffled voices in the alley, a human sound, but she couldn't even tell what language was being spoken. The photos, she thought, didn't look like her, not like the Anne she knew very well from the mirror. But their otherness didn't offend her. It was as if she was meeting for the first time a sister long lost. She'd asked for the photographs more or less as a pretext, to have a reason to go on talking. But having suggested them, she'd called them into being, and here they were,
making demands. And haunting her. Her sleep had been fitful since she'd arrived on Sými, but worse since she'd brought the photos home. Somehow, the photos were related to the dreams, and the dreams to her childhood on Bainbridge Island. Or maybe the photos were merely coincidental, and it was seeing Paul that had set her dreaming of her childhood on horseback, in boats on water. She'd been free to roam, and she had roamed. You can cover a lot of ground on a horse. You can cover a lot of water in a boat, even a small boat with a small motor.

Anne stood up, unbuttoning her dress as she walked toward the old island wardrobe on the wall. She watched herself step out of the dress in the wardrobe mirror, and then she opened the door and hung the dress on a hanger. She looked at herself critically before washing off at the sink, enough for work. Then, as she was toweling herself dry, she changed her mind, decided on a proper shower.

Standing in the spray, she remembered. Pie had suddenly come up lame and she'd been afraid to ride her. It was evening and the fog had rolled in thick and darkness was in the fog. She walked her mare on the grassy shoulder of the road, not frightened but attentive. The slow cars passing in the fog, their headlights cloaked in white gauze. Pie's eyes flaring in the light. Anne had thought she'd be in trouble, arriving late with her mare hobbled. But she hadn't been; the house was dark and her parents still not home. She'd unsaddled Pie in the barn and stayed out with her, brushing her and feeding her. Finally, she'd lifted the troublesome hoof and picked a rock from under a loose shoe. She'd done it herself and then gone in. Paul had been talking on the phone in a dark room, and she'd known from his voice he was talking to some girl. When he'd seen Anne he had shot her a sullen look and waved her on into the kitchen. She'd gone. But there hadn't been any trouble. Not that night.

She stepped out of the shower and patted herself dry, wound her hair in the damp towel and let the evening air play over her body. She felt cool, and that felt good, but it wouldn't last. Even on the terrace, Two Stories would be warm, and she'd be busy, probably, and going in often for another tray of drinks; soon enough she'd be sticky. She wasn't looking forward to work. She leaned over the photographs where she'd spread them on the table. She just looked. “Yes,” she murmured, her voice low as ever. “I think I know you.” Then she straightened up, shivered as she felt herself re-entering
Anne
, and felt, suddenly and overwhelmingly, her nakedness, as if a stranger had
unexpectedly opened the door and said,
Hi there.
She checked the impulse to pull just anything on, sorting through her clothes carefully, picking out the black leotard and Levi's she'd been wearing the day Myles had taken the photographs.

When she went out it was dark, the town lights all on and brilliant in the thick darkness of the night. Walking along the harbor she cast her eyes to the long, dancing reflections of signs and bare bulbs that ended, always, at her feet. Although she was late she stopped to look, felt her mind submit, mesmerized for as long as she stood there. Then she hurried on, around the harbor, up the alley by Vapori, where she thought she saw Myles' friend Jim ordering something inside at the bar, then up the Kalí Stráta
,
by the stage-lit facades of the abandoned mansions, on up to Horió. Then the hand-painted sign for Two Stories came into view and at the open door she turned in.