White Vespa (21 page)

“Be awhile.” He gestured back at the grill. “Maybe we ought to go ahead and swim.”

 

And so for the last time they waded into it, together, the sea clear around their knees and the broken sun scattered in a haphazard blaze on the shifting water. Myles felt Anne's hand pressing his then letting go as she arced forward, opening a crease in the waves and slipping through.

He realized, at last, that Anne had been pressing her sunglasses into his hand, and he waded back to shore to set them, with his glasses, on a rock. When he turned back to the water he did so half-blind, the world blurred. He waded in again. Then plunged, swimming deliberately out, toward Anne, floating alone and low in the water.

 

“What of it?” Paul said aloud, although he was alone in his room. He stood in front of the tall mirror, satisfied with the harder looking man looking back at him. The embarrassing first days in the gym had been worth it. He looked ready, but thought wearily there was precious little to be ready for. For travel? He'd done so much of it it hardly required ready. He'd found if he needed it, it would be there, in the new place. Human needs being what they are, insistent everywhere.

But what he didn't need was to carry his big suitcases down to the ferry dock. He'd hire somebody, get one of the town cabs. Paul sat down at the table with a piece of paper and an envelope.
Not staying
, he wrote carefully.
It wasn't the rat
, he giggled,
which proved friendly. Just had enough of Sými and all the drama. Enclosing half a month's rent additional, to keep you happy.
“Not that I care,” he muttered, as he slipped the paper drachmas into the envelope and licked it shut.

 

Anne's sunglasses were where Myles had left them, on the flat upside of a low rock standing above the surrounding cobble, but his glasses were gone. He cursed low but at length.

Anne heard him and exclaimed, “Myles!” Still, she sounded more surprised than scandalized.

“But who would want my glasses?” Myles was looking around, out over the scattered, blurred flesh of the sunbathers. They looked innocent, as far as he could tell. “Damn!

“Hey,” he said in a loud voice, “any of you seen my glasses?” The question elicited baffled glances and some polite head-shaking. “Damn,” he said again, but wearily.

 

The charcoal had gone mostly white, and Myles spread it across the floor of the grill with a tarnished fork. He could see about three feet before things got fuzzy. Enough to cook, he thought. Then he glanced furtively at Anne, at her bruises. He shook his head, bewildered.

“What?” Anne asked.

“Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” she said. “Does the fish look okay?”

Myles peered at the swordfish steaks. “Better than okay.” He dribbled a little olive oil over the fish, then pulled open the small bags of spices and pinched, grinding them between his fingers, letting the fragrant herbs shower down. “All grown on Sými,” he said gravely. “The guy told me so.”

“And that makes it true!”

“Well, it could be true.” He set the steaks down on the grill to sear and a puff of fragrant, white smoke rose off them into the air. “Like a sage smudge,” he said quietly, “to purify us.” And he took what was left of the sage and tossed
it on the coals, where it smoldered and then flamed and then was ash.

“Are we going to be pouring libations with the wine?” Anne asked, her voice a shade mocking.

Myles poured out two glasses slowly, then said, “We are, for Dionysus.”

“That devil?”

“Ah, now, who else? And where would we be without him?”

“Where are we with him?” Anne whispered, her voice ragged as she leaned into Myles and kissed him. “But our little revelries,” she said quietly, “I wouldn't have missed them.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she whispered the word low and drawn out and ending in a growl.

So they ate, and flirted, and against all expectation they were happy again. They slivered garlic into warm olive oil and dipped chunks of bread torn from their baguettes in it. They ate the cold hórta Myles had managed to buy at To Stenáki. Myles set his baby espresso pot right in the coals and the espresso rolled out thick as syrup, and they drank it bitter with almost dry, twisted Turkish sweets, dusted green with ground pistachios.

“Myles?”

He looked up, saw she'd taken off her sunglasses, saw the plum-colored bruise, the swelling that distorted the beautiful symmetry of her face. He lifted his eyebrows, encouraging, though his heart was stiff with dread.

 

Blue sat wiping the ruined make-up off her face. She'd been sweating, had run to Pédhi and back, then run it again. She felt better, too tired to feel badly.

“Good run?” Michael was leaning against the door jam, gazing at her speculatively.

Blue sucked at her bottled water, glancing quickly in Michael's direction. “Guess so. Same as always.”

Michael looked her over. “You're not really dressed for running.”

Blue lifted up a Niké clad foot.

“Except for the shoes.”

“Got a sudden urge,” she said.

“Anything to do with a certain too-handsome man?” Michael struggled to keep his voice casual.

Blue tossed a cotton ball into the waste basket. “Yeah, something,” she
laughed uneasily. “The last thing he said, yelled actually, was,
Tell Michael I never laid a hand on you!
I was already running.” She looked around at Michael. “What a dad pose! Lighten up, it's true, he never touched me.”

“Well?”

“He did touch Anne, clobbered her.” Blue whistled nervously.

“What?”

“I'm not really sure what happened,” Blue said carefully. “When I got there—”

“Got where?”

“His place.” Michael stepped into the room. “Michael, enough. You were right, I found out.”

Michael stopped, then slumped into a chair. “I don't think I'm actually up for this,” he said at last.

“Look, they were on the bed. It looked like they might have been doing it, you know? Yórgos and Váso were running away just as I came up, and I saw them, in a mirror, Anne with her back to the mirror, on top. I think Paul saw me. He bellowed, and his fist came around and smashed her, crushed her, and she just disappeared. So I started to run, too, chasing Yórgos and Váso down the alley. Then I heard him shouting, and I turned my head, and he was standing half-naked in front of his place, yelling,
Tell Michael I never laid a hand on you!
”

“Do you think he'll mind if I lay a hand on him?” Michael asked, getting up. “Blue, you stay here; I won't be long.”

Blue opened her mouth to object but then didn't.

 

The Kos ferry was already tied up; Paul looked over his shoulder at the port as his taxi pushed its way through the crowd of walkers. So the place was beautiful, grand, and theatrical; he didn't think he'd miss it. There would be another place, another beautiful place, full of people like these, on vacation from their real life back there, or people living more like himself, people out so long there was no home back home anymore. The driver pulled up as close to the ferry as he could get then turned around for his money.

Paul left his suitcases down with the cars and went up a shiny green and white stairwell to the ferry's upper deck. The place was crowded with backpackers. It was the season of college students. He sat down, watching, listening. He was bored, but vaguely amused by the inept eagerness of the Americans. They cared too much, he thought.

He felt like leaning forward, giving them good advice, saying,
What do you want here? Say what will get you what you want. Just that. And after awhile, it'll get easy. You'll stop having the stupid impulse to show them who you are, and that'll be a good thing, because you're barely anybody. And that way you won't force them to realize that they're barely anybody, either.

Then he noticed the ferry was moving. The prow came around and the buildings on the hills above Sými harbor swung left to right, and Paul went forward, to look at the open sea coming on.

 

At Paul's, Michael forced the door when there was no answer to his insistent knocking. He hadn't really expected Paul to open the door for him. Inside, he saw at once the place was abandoned, that Paul had gone. The doors of the big island wardrobe hung open, and there was mess everywhere. A pair of semen-stained shorts hung on a bedpost like signage. Michael could smell them from where he stood. “That fuck,” he exclaimed. Then he saw the envelope on the table and opened it. And he felt suddenly hopeful: to leave Sými, you had to depart from the dock wherever you were going. So he ran.

 

The crush on the paraléia at ferry time was daunting, but Michael dodged his way through the crowds as best he could. As he got close, he could see that one ferry was already backing away from the dock, but that another was still taking on passengers. He brushed by the line for the boarding ferry and shoved his way past the ticket taker, leaping onboard. He ran up the steps to the upper deck, only half aware of the invective that rolled in his wake. A boat hand stood up from where he'd been kneeling by coiled ropes and started up the stairs after him. Michael was looking for Paul when the crew caught up with him, pining him against a rail.

“Paul!” He roared, struggling to get free. “Where are you, you shit?”

And carrying across the water came a clear reply. “Say it again, slowly, Michael, enunciate!” Paul stood at the rail of the Kos ferry, just now passing on its way out of Sými's small harbor. He had his hands up to his mouth, cupped, and his voice cut through all the hubbub. “Blue,” he sang out, “I never touched her, Mike. Maybe next time, Mike, whaddya say?”

Michael stopped struggling. He could see Paul was grinning, waving coyly.

“Bye, oh bye! You look like such a man when you're mad, Mike! Show
'em, Mike!” Paul threw a few punches into the air, then watched as the deckhands on the
Sými II
pushed Michael back down the stairs to the lower deck. It looked to Paul like they were being unnecessarily rough! He tittered, “My, my,” as he turned from the rail. He was in a forgiving mood, feeling expansive now.

 

“I tried . . .” Anne fell silent as soon as she'd begun.

“Tried?”

“I tried to strangle him,” Anne said, her voice even and pitched low.

Myles pushed himself up on an elbow to get a little closer, so he could see her face.

“I had an idea, a stupid idea, I guess. He was getting ready to leave, I . . .”

Myles started to interrupt, but Anne silenced him with an angry glance.

“I wanted to be done with him. I don't know, I . . . It seemed to me that I had the right, that somehow he'd proven finally he didn't deserve to live.”

Myles nodded.

“And I wanted the punishment to fit the crime. That's when I got this idea.” Anne shook her head, a wan expression on her face. “You remember Pru?”

“I remember her.”

“Yeah? Well, a couple days ago at Vapori . . . It was morning, I guess. Hell, I don't know, but Paul started talking about Pru. He had this ridiculous dreamy expression on his face, but it was all, somehow, so demeaning. It was as if he'd seen in her no more than a puppet, a puppet that with only a little fumbling he'd been able to make jump. When he got his fingers on her strings, he pulled them. He said he'd picked her up by asking her if she wanted to strangle him.”

“What?” Myles asked, incredulous.

“That's what he said. When he got her up to his place he let her try. You should have seen him, Myles, telling it, just telling it, the look on his face, his face just shone, joyful, lewd. I was scared to look under the table.”

Myles turned away. A couple were dressing near them, standing by their towels, but even they were fuzzy, and beyond that it was just colors. He looked back to Anne. “Why?”

She showed no sign of having heard him. “Then he picked up his cappuccino cup, ran his finger around the rim, sucked the foam off his finger,
and just moaned,
That was
so
good
.” Anne fell silent for a moment. “So I said,
I could do that
.”

Myles jerked forward and Anne came fully into focus. “You said
what?
”

“You heard me. Then I said,
What could be better? You like 'em forbidden. What could be better than a sister?
And he grinned, he said,
A daughter, maybe
.”

Myles groaned. “I can't believe he's your brother.”

Anne forced a brittle smile, though it hung a little lopsided on her bruised face. “Aren't you listening, Myles? He is. I wouldn't want you to doubt that.”

Anne pulled back a little, rested on her elbows, eerily composed. She put her sunglasses on and gazed over the beach to the water. A woman stood ankle deep in the sea, rinsing the sand from her legs, while her partner pulled on a striped swimsuit. Anne looked at her watch.

“So,” she said. “I went up to his place this morning.” Again, her voice was flat, dissociated. “I made sure I was wearing my big black belt, slung around my white sundress.” Anne let the couple pass by them before continuing. “I could hardly get up the hill. But I did. He was there, in loose, white boxers, and just totally at ease. I hated him all over again for that fucking easy way of his. Everything's so easy for him, because he doesn't care. I wanted to see his face turn blue.”

Myles sat still, as if he was watching an interview on a slightly out-of-focus TV. “And?” he finally asked, as if he'd just remembered he was there.