In a jam, it's customary to take two choruses, then shut up and let the next guy go. Maybe if you're all having a good time, you go around again. But I wouldn't stop. I did all my tricks: between the legs, behind the back, playing with my teeth (you don't actually get your teeth on the strings, but it looks that way). From "Fire," I segued into "The Star-Spangled Banner." Mostly, I was just making noise. There were maybe a hundred people watching, hundreds more moving past along the waterfront behind them, enjoying the cool evening, happy to be out and about where people were alive and mingling, and where there were tall ships.
By the time I was done the Strat was out of tune and I was sweating profusely. I stepped back and avoided Dennis's icy stare. Wendy was clearly mortified, but I didn't care. I unstomped my pedal and tried to strum along, but it sounded so bad that I just turned down the volume and stood there, watching as Jens took center stage again, sending busy, silvery ladders of notes up into the night sky.
"You are a jerk," she told me, when we took a break.
"I knew what was going on as soon as I saw that scarf."
"You're crazy."
"It's like a signal or something."
"Was that one of your visions? It's a scarf. I thought it would look nice."
Jens was signing autographs. The other Gnats were popping open bottles of Grolsch, with those cute little porcelain stoppers.
"I'm not dying," I said. She just stared at me. "The cancer thing is a dog I know, Ralph. I just borrowed it." The perspiration at my collar was getting chilly with the breeze coming in off the water. "So, I'm a jerk. Proven. It was a stupid lie, but I didn't think it mattered because we'd never see each other again anyway, and now I see that it does matter and I can't do anything about it." I hoisted my gig bag over my shoulder and picked up the amp. "I'm going back to Bill's," I said. "Have fun with your new friends." After a few steps, I stopped and turned. "Aren't you going to say anything?"
"Like what? That I'm disappointed?"
"You didn't say I was wrong."
"Maybe I knew all along," she said. "Did you ever think of that?"
She came in very late that night, smelling of beer, climbed into bed, and turned her back to me. I listened to her sleep and thought this must be what a marriage feels like after it's gone past the point of repair.
In the morning, Bill's houseboy brought us coffee and a cinnamon muffin as he always did. "They're invited to three festivals in the States next summer," said Wendy, brushing crumbs off her napkin and writing her address and phone number down for me. "I'm playing with them tomorrow at the Leidseplein. Then, in a week, I'm going home."
I did the same for her with mine. It seemed we were done talking about it, which was probably best anyway. "Just remember," I pointed out, "now you're looking at a five-way split."
I went to Germany. For eight humid days, I traveled and busked with a harp player I met in Heidelberg, a short Austrian named Ernst, but he smelled bad and sang even worse, and one night I woke up in the park where we were sleeping to find him attempting to make off with Satin Lives. I tackled him, but he surprised me with a head-butt, grabbed the guitar and ran off into the night. I figured it was a sign.
The number Wendy had given me turned out to be for a bar at a driving range outside of Bel Air, Maryland. "Nineteenth Hole," the guy said, when I called from the Brussels airport. Our connection had a bad echo. Three days since my fight with Ernst and my head still hurt. I couldn't believe I'd finally gotten the phone trick to work.
I asked anyway.
"Windy?" he shouted. "I don't know—I'm inside. They were talking rain for later on. You sound long distance. Are you long distance?"
I let my thumb up and broke the connection. I was across from the duty-free shop, the window of which displayed a new brand of vodka, cobalt-blue bottles lined up at attention and shimmering in the terminal light. About thirty yards further along toward the gates, in a waiting area, a skinny guy with dreadlocks and a bad complexion was juggling beanbags. I went over and watched him for a while. He was good with three and with four, but with five he kept dropping bags. Before I left, I unloaded the rest of my change into his hat.
Santorini
The Australian girl and Harrison were standing about two feet apart in the center of the hotel pool, discussing the respective merits of the American and Australian versions of MTV. Rivulets of water ran down the pronounced V of Harrison's chest, the result of his last submersion. Every now and then, he dunked himself down into the water, then popped back up and shook his long hair like a dog. The girl was blonde, generically pretty, with a ponytail, on vacation with her family, and in the noon sun her white bikini top was blindingly bright—a special effect above her prominent ribcage and below her strong swimmer's shoulders.
Flo poked Laura's foot.
"I see," said Laura, who had been imagining the girl in a sunny freefall over the cliff edge, two hundred yards down to the shimmering Aegean.
"It's so cute."
The girl got out of the pool and dried herself with a towel, wrapped a see-through white skirt around her waist, and climbed up the steep whitewashed steps that led to the pool area. Above, the apartments of Sunshine Villas spilled down off the rim of the caldera, clinging to the steep sides. A few moments later, Harrison came over and settled himself into a chair next to his mother's. Laura watched the moisture on his tanned skin as it evaporated. She thought she could feel him counting, trying to decide how long was long enough not to seem obvious. Then he reached over and tapped Flo's shoulder.
"I'm going for a walk."
"Pick up a bottle of water for the room, would you, honey?"
He stood, retrieved the novel he'd been reading from the arm of his chair and closed it, then looked over at Laura. "Going for a walk."
"Of course you are," she said.
He hesitated, then turned and headed up the steps.
"I didn't know bodies like that existed in the real world," Flo said. "I was always told they had something to do with airbrushes."
"She's got a nice butt, I'll give her that. Did you hear her accent? Every sentence ends in a question mark."
"I heard her say something about a 'life of bread.' What do you suppose that is?"
"Not life. Loaf. A loaf of bread. I think she might have been talking about lunch."
Flo burst out laughing. "I was lying here thinking she must work in a bakery. I'm so dumb. Do you think he's meeting her?"
"What do you think?"
"She seems a little old. But you have to admire him for trying. 'A life of bread.' Wow. What would that even be?"
"Sounds kind of nice to me," Laura said. "Warm. Comfy. You want to split a salad? Since it's just us girls?"
Flo sat up and retied her yellow bikini top around her neck. She looked good, Laura thought, in spite of her bouts of sadness. They both did. At home, Laura ran five miles every other day, went to the gym the days in between. In Athens, the desk clerk at their hotel had assumed they were part of the college tour.
"Here's to a life of bread," Flo said, when their salad came. They'd ordered a cold bottle of the local retsina, too, and each held a glass.
Laura's shoulders were starting to ache from the sun. She hated how she felt right now. She thought about the Australian girl's breasts. They weren't her fault—she was a teenager. She was supposed to look like that. Laura checked her watch.
"Don't worry," said Flo cheerfully. "Harry's a big boy. He can take care of himself." She speared an olive with her fork and popped it in her mouth.
On their third night in Athens, Harrison had come up to the hotel's rooftop garden where Laura was drinking bourbon and staring out at the Acropolis. She was forty, the veteran of long-term relationships with three perfectly decent men, as well as shorter ones with a couple of jerks. The last long one—a guy named Franz—had ended two weeks before, when he'd announced he was in love with his ex-wife, and tonight a sense of squandered time had crept inside her and made her weepy. She knew it would go a
way—it always did—but since she'd allowed it to come in, she didn't mind serving it a few drinks. When Harrison sat down next to her in the dark, she didn't even realize who it was at first.
"The Turks ruined the view," he said. "But the lights are nice."
"What do you know about Turks?" she asked.
"They wear those funny little hats. Sidney Greenstreet in Casablanca."
Flo had gone to bed two hours earlier. Unripe grapes hung down from the trellis above their heads. Harrison put a hand on her arm, then took it away. From the pocket of his cargo shorts he produced a plastic bottle of Old Crow and poured some carefully into his glass, then gestured toward hers. She pushed the glass forward.
"I'm allowed to drink, so long as I don't do anything stupid," he said.
"Define stupid."
"Puking your guts out and going to the hospital, I suppose. Stealing. Getting arrested, for whatever. Doing drugs, or getting caught doing drugs. My dad's a big common sense man. 'Just use your common sense,' he likes to say."
"How is your dad?"
"OK. He's taken up calligraphy. Tensho, reisho, kaisho, gyosho, and sosho. Those are your five major styles."
They sat in silence for a while, then he put his hand on hers. Their table was in the farthest corner of the garden. At the opposite end, some kids from the college program were having beers. She thought there was probably some obvious course of action she was supposed to take here, some profoundly adult way of defusing the situation.
"I've had a big crush on you since I was five," he said.
"That's ridiculous. You know that, right?"
"I used to look through my mom's photo albums with her. I thought you were what a Beatles song would look like if it could walk around."
"And that doesn't even make sense," she said.
He stroked her arm and she closed her eyes. This went on for quite a while. When she opened them, his face was next to hers, huge, like something projected on a drive-in movie screen. When he kissed her, she felt nerve endings snapping to attention as far down as her toes. She looked around, afraid of making a scene.
"I've got cheese in my room," she said. "Crackers, too."
At 5:30, he went into the bathroom and washed himself with the handheld shower, then toweled off, waved, and slipped back up to his mother's room. His story, if she asked, was that he'd gone over to one of the twenty-four-hour tavernas at the nearby meat market to have a bowl of patsas—a tripe soup he'd read about in their guidebook.
Alone, Laura lay staring up at the ceiling. She imagined herself two years from now flying back East, renting a car, and driving up to some New England college, getting a room at the nearest Holiday Inn so that she could spend time with him between classes. She planned her wardrobe: white Capri pants, oversized Gucci sunglasses, maybe a big platinum wig. She was a fool, an idiot, a cliché, probably in need of psychological help. And yet she felt as giddy and bad as she had back in tenth grade, when Malcolm Muri had introduced her to bong hits, and she'd gone to seventh period English and pretended her pencil was a rocket ship.
Around two, Flo disappeared, then came back and announced she'd rented them wheels.
"Who's driving?" asked Laura. She had put the umbrella up, and had been staring at the same page of her book for nearly an hour. "Not you?"
"Peter and I had one in Bermuda. They're easy. I want to go up to that town at the top of the island. Come on, I got you a helmet and everything."
"What about Harrison?"
"He's fine. We'll leave him a note."
They went upstairs and changed into jeans. The bike was parked out in the road, and Laura was impressed with how expertly Flo maneuvered it around to her. She got on behind and put her arms around Flo's waist.
"Don't be scared," said Flo.
"Don't scare me."
After a few minutes, when it became apparent that they weren't going over the edge of any cliffs, she began to relax. Flo drove carefully, slowing for the extreme, tight turns. There were views down to the ocean, and strange volcanic rock formations. The wind flew in their faces and whistled inside their helmets. When they arrived in Oia, they walked through its narrow streets, then found a taverna with a view and ordered wine and bread. Laura felt slightly dizzy.
Flo's brown hair was broken up in places by gray streaks, but that just made her prettier. Her eyes were a luminous gray-green. Laura had always envied her looks. "Steve Zablatnik," she said. "From Cleveland, Ohio."
"Who?"
"Your guy, from Pelekas."
"Why would you bring him up?" Twenty years earlier, they'd camped for five days on a Corfu beach that was a popular destination for foreigners, many of whom sunbathed in the nude. Laura remembered Steve. He'd had long hair, worn a big straw hat with a colorful band around it, sold hashish or something.
"Can I tell you something?" Flo looked away, out toward where the sun hung over the top of a ruined Venetian fortification.
"You can tell me anything. You know that."
"It's just this thing I've had all these years, and it's always bothered me."
"About Steve Zablatnik?"
"Yeah."
"Wait—are you saying what I think you're saying?"
Flo's face turned a blotchy crimson. Laura reached out for her hand. "It's okay. I barely remember his name. That was a lifetime ago. I'm just amazed."
"I was jealous because there you were having a hot summer romance, the kind people dream of having, and then he started coming on to me one night and we just sort of sneaked off. I don't even think you noticed we were gone."
"It's nothing."
"It's not. It's horrible. I worry sometimes about myself, that I could have done something like that. It's not me."
"Listen," said Laura, "forget it. Don't give it another thought."
"But maybe Steve Zablatnik was the guy you were destined to fall in love with and marry, and I got in the way."
"Could you be a little more dramatic, please? He isn't even a blip on my radar screen. I'm fine about it. He's probably in jail, or bald."
"Still, it would mean a lot if you'd say you forgive me."
Laura picked at a rough nail on her index finger. Since her divorce, Flo had been highly emotional, sometimes calling Laura at 3:00 A.M. for reassurance that she was, indeed, a good person. Laura hadn't said anything about Franz, just hinted that they were having problems, hints Flo never addressed. "There's nothing to forgive. I barely remember his face."
"Maybe you could say it anyway?"
"You're forgiven. There, feel better?" She handed her a napkin. "Go on and blow your nose. That always helps. I don't know why, but it does."
Harrison rejoined them for dinner at a taverna in town. He had on a new dark brown T-shirt with a dolphin on it, but didn't have anything to say about his afternoon. Laura drank too much during the meal, and insisted that they all stick around and listen to the bouzouki musicians. She could feel herself getting overly loud and cheerful. They had four more days here. Then it was back to Athens for another day before returning to the states. To what? Last month she'd taken an apartment at a development on the edge of Colorado Springs called Falcon Landing. Franz had helped her move, then made his announcement. She had money—that wasn't a problem. She just didn't know where she was supposed to be. On the second night in her new place, coyotes had eaten her cat.
The change in Harrison, the way he was avoiding her eyes and seemed so impatient to get back to the hotel, made her angry. Worse, it made her feel stupid.
"Karpoozi," she told the waiter, "and ouzo all around." She had learned a few Greek words, determined not to feel like a complete moron this time around, surrounded by sounds she could not interpret and signs she couldn't read. Mele. Nero. Ne, oki. Kalimera, kalinikta. In their hotel in Athens, she'd watched the better part of a dubbed Sesame Street, an episode brought to her by the number decapende, which she was pleased to have figured out meant fifteen.
When the melon came, she picked up a slice and bit i
nto it open mouthed, letting the juice wander down the sides of her mouth before she picked up her napkin. The waiter returned with three half glasses of liquor.
"You're going to corrupt him," said Flo. "Imagine if either of our parents had come along with us last time."
"Let's not."
Harrison sipped his drink and made a face. "You were a couple of wild women back then, huh?"
"The amazing thing, Harrison," said Laura, "is that when I look at your mother, she doesn't seem any different."
"I'm a castoff. A used-up tube of toothpaste," said Flo.
Harrison checked his watch.
"No one here is a tube of anything," said Laura. "Come on."
"You're right. I am so lucky," said Flo, holding her hands out. "I have the best son anyone could ask for, and the best friend, too."
In the morning, Harrison was only interested in staying around the hotel. "You guys take the bike to the beach," he said. "You don't need me getting in the way."
"What are you going to do?" Laura asked. She'd put on shorts and a tight T-shirt that read "Cycladic Museum."
"Chill by the pool, finish my book. See if any of the women take off their tops."
"We could rent a second bike," said Flo. "Just for you. My license, you get to drive. Just make sure you don't get stopped by the cops."
"It's OK," he said. "I'm fine."
"You must be fine to turn down an offer like that," said Flo. "Take the boy to Greece and he discovers Australia."
Harrison blushed.
"It's OK, honey. We're rooting for you." She put on her sunglasses and opened the door onto their balcony. White light exploded into the room. "I'm going to pick up some things at the market for lunch."
Alone, Laura and Harrison stared at each other. "Well?" she said, finally.
"Know what this country needs? A really good hamburger."
Black Elvis Page 13
