White Vespa (7 page)

 

Paul wasn't drunk, at least not as drunk as most of the other people in the place. The bar was called The Erroneous Zone and ranked, he thought, as the island's sleaziest. It boasted very few regulars, and Paul only trolled through about once a week. Still, it did a good trade. Hard drinkers always nosed it out; he wasn't sure how.

The music was loud, rock oldies, and drowned absolutely the television that flickered over the barman's head. Still, here people talked; they shouted. Paul was trying to chat up two women from England, wondering if it would be worth the effort to pry the cute one away from her friend. Working girls, what else would they be here for if not to get fucked?

He thought it probably wasn't worth it, but he didn't feel like going back to his room alone, either. He bought another round of gin and tonics.

“I knew this kid when I was growing up . . .”

“You don't say,” the uncute one put in.

“Yeah, funny kid.” Paul said. “His claim to fame was that he could hold his breath until he passed out.”

“Uh huh.”

“He did it, often. Got a kick out of it,” Paul said.

“I don't think anybody could do that,” again, the uncute one.

“Well, he could. I saw him do it several times. But you're right,” and here Paul flashed one of his practiced smiles, “it's hard. I tried, but I could never do it.”

“What was this kid's name?” the cute one said, speaking at last.

“Loren,” Paul said.

“How old was he?”

“Twelve or thirteen.” To which there was no further response. Paul continued. “Still, I admired that kid. He was able to overcome the revolt of his own body. Lot of good things happen right on the edge of revulsion. Know what
I mean?” Nods. “Eating octopus tentacles or stuffed cuttlefish, for instance. You know?” Paul took a drink, “He got this little smile on his face just when he passed out. The queerest little smile, a kind of blissful grimace.”

The cute one had swiveled on her stool and was looking into Paul's face.

“Kinda like this.” Paul rolled his eyes up and made the face as best he could.

“Huh,” observed the uncute one, letting the smoke from her last drag curl out of her mouth.

“Where are you from?” The other one asked.

“Anyway, I always thought there was something sexual about that smile,” Paul said.

“Mmm.”

“Yeah, I thought it was probably the same look he got on his face when he . . . You know?”

“Wanked?”

“Yeah. I even thought maybe he performed his little trick at the same time sometimes.” Paul paused. “Just guessing,” he said, his voice trailing away.

“I hope so!” The cute girl said.

“You hope he did?”

“Real funny. I hope you're just guessing,” she said.

Paul grinned, a slightly wicked grin.

“So what's your name?” she asked.

“Paul.”

“Pru.” She held out her hand for a shake. “Pleased to meet you, I guess.”

Paul giggled, a boyish smile suffusing his face.

“I'll be back in a minute,” Pru's friend said, “goin' to the loo.”

And when she had, Paul said, “So,” turning slowly toward Pru, “wanna strangle me?”

 

It was early for Anne, eight. Two Stories had been busy the night before and she'd worked late. It'd been a good night, no obnoxious drunks, a lot of money. Everything simple. She wasn't sure how long it would take to walk to Myles' place but it wasn't far to anywhere around Yialós. She took time to straighten up the room; she always took time to straighten up. In a room like hers, it didn't take long. She tidied the bed and pushed the smoky clothes she'd worn the night before into a laundry sack. She organized the dressing table that doubled as a desk, cosmetics on one side, two books and a journal on the other. Finally, she shook the dust out of the peacock feathers she'd bought in the market and stuck them back into a carafe she'd appropriated from the bar. They were the room's sole decoration; she'd stuffed the pictures and knickknacks the room had come with into the bottom of the wardrobe. When she finished she stood for a minute in the middle of the room, in the order she'd made.

Outside it was still cool. She took the steps down to the paraléia and turned right when she got there, angling close to the hotels as she passed the clock tower. The water was on her left. Later, it was here that the ferries would tie up, and here that the tourists would spill out in their numbers. There were tables and chairs on the sidewalks all the way to the old stone bridge where the harbor ended, but she walked looking at the water and at the neoclassical facades of the old houses on the other side that overlooked it. Yialós, she thought, felt a little like a stadium, everything turned toward the harbor. Not built for games, however, and maybe not for beauty, but the beauty was there. She hadn't come for it, hadn't known it was here, but she found she didn't tire of it. The houses were all similar, but they were all different, too, different within the confines of a shared aesthetic. Something about that, the variations, but the variations all within the strictures of a limited style, made the beauty of the place seem inexhaustible. Not that she wanted to exhaust it; she liked how it felt to succumb again and again to its charms.

Then she was walking alongside a row of sleek yachts. Their tall masts ticked back and forth as the harbor waves ran through their crowded hulls. They moaned and creaked: Anne thought of it as the sound of money breeding. A few of the yachties were eating breakfast, facing one another over a table, backs to the beauty of Sými town. Anne knew the kind, the deck shoes and designer clothes, carefully casual clothes, the too tan faces and too tan bodies. They were from all over, and it didn't matter where they were from.

Then it was working boats, old, but all but a few of them painted bright again this year. Most of the fisherman were out, but some were still getting ready or working on their nets on the quay. Yellow nets, purple nets, green nets, the floats orange or white where the color had rubbed off. The fishermen were dour until she greeted them, trying out her Greek,
kaliméra,
and then they smiled and wished her good-morning. However dour they looked before she spoke to them, they always responded.

She kept on at the back of the harbor, not crossing the old or the new bridge, but taking the street along the dry creek bed that Myles had said led to his cottage above town. The road went up in lovely swings.

From the drive Anne could see Myles through the open door, standing at the sink, washing dishes. He'd found a long apron somewhere that ended just above his bare knees in a ruffle. They were hairy knees. Anne stood silently in the doorway, watching. Suddenly he was aware of her and glanced over his shoulder, looking a little caught out.

“Fetching!” Anne smiled.

“Like it, huh?”

“Oh yeah, puts some poetry in those legs that might otherwise be just, like, hairy!”

“I've got some pantyhose around here somewhere if you think that'd help,” Myles said.

“Maybe it wouldn't,” Anne said, crossing over to the sink and kissing Myles lightly on the cheek. His wire rims were a little fogged but she could see he was looking, looking away. She smiled, a shy guy.

While Anne watched, Myles made two little cups of Greek coffee, made them the Greek way. He measured out a heaping spoon of powder-fine coffee and a heaping spoon of coarse sugar for each of the two demitasses of cold water he'd poured into the copper pot. He stirred it a long time before setting
the pot to the flame, keeping the heat low, to avoid a too quick or too heavy boil. When the coffee rose in the chimney of the pot, he lifted it just high enough off the flame that the coffee held over the lip, caramelizing. Then he tapped the pot lightly with a wooden spoon, poured the thick coffee into the cups, the froth going first. He poured it carefully, to keep the slug of spent grounds mostly in the pot.

“If,
if
you like Greek coffee, this should be good,” he said.

“I may require instruction.”

“To drink it?”

“To know what to like,” Anne said.

“That is the hard part, but the best I can do is put a good cup in front of you. That's good.”

“But you haven't tasted it,” Anne observed.

“I don't need to taste it.”

“Well, I'll want to taste it.”

“I want to, too. I just don't need to,” Myles said.

“You're pretty confident.”

“About coffee.”

At that, they started laughing. Myles wasn't sure if he was wading or already in over his head. They still hadn't tried the coffee.

 

Anne had taken off the sweater she'd worn out and paced the room in a black leotard and tight jeans, her bare feet skimming the uneven planks of the old floor. Myles was screwing his battered Nikon to a tripod he had only extended to about three feet. He'd hung a white sheet over an old lamp to diffuse the light.

“Where's good?” Anne sounded nervous.

“Sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. But . . .”

“But?” Myles asked.

“No
buts
. I want to see the pictures you'll make,” she said.

“To see yourself?”

“To see myself.”

“Anne?”

“Yes?”

“Low expectations are good. I wasn't kidding when I told you I don't
take pictures of people, well, not portraits.”

“Just for me?”

“Just for you.”

Anne grinned, someone young peeping out from behind her habitually hooded eyes.

“So where's good?”

Myles pointed to one of the built-in low couches, the shorter of the two, a confined space, white walls, unpainted and hand-carved woodwork. He perched on a chair behind the tripod, looking through the viewfinder, setting up. He had attached a cable to the shutter release and when he was ready moved his chair off to the side.

“Well,” he said, “show me.”

When he looked up, he flinched. It wasn't the same face. All her extreme angularity was still there, but it no longer looked natural; it looked to have been made, forged, held in tongs and hammered into shape. Myles began to make pictures. He encouraged her to arrange herself, to push her angles into the angles of the confined frame of the divan. And to dream. To imagine the worst, and the best, love and falling. And a hard history seemed to flicker over her face, to contort her limbs.

“That's enough.” He said finally. He'd shot three rolls, a hundred and eight frames. He had no idea what was on the negatives. But Anne looked drained.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I must be. I feel like I'm just waking up, a little foggy.” She paused, “That was very strange. Everything was normal and then I looked up at you looking expectant sitting next to your camera and whoosh, I was gone. Like a trance, I guess.”

“Huh.”

Then one of those awkward silences started. Finally, Myles forced himself to stand up, suggesting a ride on the Vespa, lunch at the point, beyond the clock tower and the boatyards, at the last taverna before the road turned to gravel and away from Yialós.

Anne stopped in front of the saw-edged mantle, looking at the photo of the man in white.

“I thought you didn't take pictures of people,” she said.

“That photo was an accident,” he said abruptly, not wanting to explain
how a photo of someone else could turn out to be a self-portrait.

“Besides,” he added, “it's just a street scene. It's portraits I don't take.”

“Except for me.”

“Except for you.”

 

They sat face to face over a small table, a half-eaten lunch between them. Myles had eaten his half; Anne had watched him eat it. They were drinking red wine, a dark red wine called
mávro,
“black,” by the Greeks. Myles kept remembering Anne on the divan, and even with the live woman sitting at the table across from him, he was distracted by the image of the woman he expected to appear in the developing tray. He wanted to be alone, to study that woman alone. When they'd finished with the camera they'd almost run from it, uneasy, as if they'd found themselves suddenly standing too close together. The ride down on the Vespa, Anne with her arms around his waist, her head turned sideways and pressed to his back, hadn't helped any.

So they sat quietly under the arbor at the point, Myles looking out toward Nímos, Anne toward Sými town. The light dappled the green table top, but the light on the water was all glare. There was too much of it. Myles was fighting down the impulse to confess, to disclose too much too soon. He wanted to see those photographs. Anne's eyes were down; she was toying with the food on her plate.

“When do I get to see the photos?”

“Soon,” Myles said. “Whenever you want; I'll develop them tonight or maybe tomorrow morning.”

Paul came into view, strolling, gesturing elegantly as he talked. He was talking to a woman Myles didn't think he'd seen around town. They were both in swimsuits and must have come from one of the inlets beyond the point favored by those who liked to sunbathe nude. Myles raised one hand, and Paul saw him and smiled broadly, heading for their table, but he could hardly have avoided them, as the track ran right under the taverna's shady arbor.

“Eh, Paul, working on that tan?”