by Steve Berman
Oddly curious, he finds the rungs bolted to the bulkhead and climbs. Levent isn’t going anywhere. He doesn’t know what to say to Levent anyway. When his head rises above roof level, he smells the oregano, recognizes it—the pot is right there—but it’s muted, overwhelmed by the other scent. Not the geraniums by the flying bridge, definitely not geranium. New grass and something blander, and something like the tongue-shrinking tang of licorice.
It’s the basket, Roisin’s basket. On hands and knees, cautious, Luke approaches. What did Levent say? Woman’s business. Hanım’s business. I am not to know. Not to inquire. Not to touch.
Moonlight and starlight bleach the overcrowded new foliage to silver. Luke didn’t know any seeds sprouted and grew so fast—two, not quite three days. Slender blades like grass, tiny whorls of lobed leaves like fancy French lettuces, sprays of feathery stuff on swaying stems. He leans closer.
“Don’t touch!”
Startled out of his wits, heart hammering, Luke collapses, rolling onto one shoulder. Darker and denser than night, eclipsing stars and half the crescent moon, Levent looms over him.
“I told you, it’s woman’s magic, dangerous for men.”
“Magic?” Luke blurts. Then, outraged, “You like girls!”
A loud intake of breath. “I don’t dislike them.”
“You don’t like boys. Me! You sleep with girls! Altan Efendi told my dad and Dad told me.”
“In some ways, Efendi is a very stupid man.” Levent hunkers down to his haunches. “Luke Bey. Is that what it is? I have slept with women—well, not much sleeping—any man can, you could.”
“No, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“It wasn’t my choice, Luke. What I desire women don’t have.”
“What?”
Reaching before Luke can shy away, Levent strokes his cheek. “Stubble. Beard stubble on your handsome face. Sexiest thing ever. Drives me wild.” His fingers feather down over Luke’s chin, neck. “A flat, strong chest with a little hair on it. Or a lot, if you should happen to grow a lot as you get older. Muscles. Something else.”
Luke chokes the word out: “Dick.”
“In a word. In my hand, in my mouth, in— You’re not wearing any clothes, Luke Bey.”
Almost embarrassed but more thrilled, and hornier than that, Luke sits up. “Are you? Levent Bey.”
“More than I could wish.”
“Take them off.”
“Willingly. When we get down from the roof, away from…that.”
Luke’s already scrambling to his feet—keeping a safe distance from the innocuous basket of seedlings and earth—when he remembers he’s angry. With Levent. Who just called him sexy. Beautiful Levent. Who sexed up a different tourist girl every summer. “What about your anemones?” he demands. “Like trophies, one for each girl.”
“Please, Luke.” Levent’s already on the ladder, his head level with Luke’s knees. “Not now and not here.”
Unmollified but still horny and acutely ready to be convinced, Luke follows. Inexplicably, it’s when he’s hanging halfway down the ladder that it properly penetrates that he’s nude—naked as a jaybird in mating-season display. What if his dad—or, horribly worse, Perla—was struck by insomnia and felt a need to stroll up on deck?
Levent has already vanished around the deckhouse. Luke scurries after, finds him waiting with apparent calm seated on the port sunbed. The one Luke slept on last night. The folded blanket sits beside him. Levent hasn’t removed his swim trunks.
Wanting more than anything ever to sit right beside him but stubbornly determined to remain angry, Luke snatches the blanket. Flipping it half open, he wraps it around his waist and sits on the other sunbed. Without sun, with a yard between them, he can’t make out Levent’s expression as the other boy launches into speech.
“When Adonis—Dimuz goes down into death, all women mourn. They use their private magics to call him back, ensure he returns life to the world—”
“No,” says Luke, impatient with mythology. “Just tell me this. It’s boys you really like? Me?”
Rising to his feet, Levent pulls apart the drawstring of his scarlet swim trunks, pushes them down.
*
“I had a fascinating talk with Roisin Hanım yesterday,” Luke’s stepmother says.
“Oh?” says Luke, not really interested. He’s still glowing, thinks he is, though he’s tried to keep the brilliance damped. Exhausted, too. They didn’t really do anything, him and Levent on the sunbed on the Esin’s foredeck, nothing Luke hadn’t already done with Douglas—didn’t do, actually, quite a few of the things Douglas had taught him—but they were awake all night anyway. Barely remembered, when dawn began to grey the sky, that Levent needed to pull his trunks back on and pretend to have slept, Luke scuttle frustrated belowdecks to put on something himself.
“The Esin and the summer Blue Voyages aren’t what support them at all,” Perla goes on. “Roisin calls the boat Altan’s charming, expensive hobby. Roisin’s shop in Didim brings in the significant part of their income.”
“Oh?” Just a polite noise, a prompt. Luke hadn’t wanted to debark from Altan Efendi’s hobby, ride in an open Jeep up to visit the Lycian rock-cut tombs in the cliffs above the little fishing village—lose sight even for a moment of Levent. Levent sat right beside him through breakfast, nudging him now and again, throwing an arm around his shoulders, all the jokily affectionate bro-touching Turkish boys were permitted, frustrating as all hell. But also, under the table, now and then caressing or tickling him, rubbing his calf against Luke’s, knocking their ankles together, trailing his toes across the insanely sensitive tops of Luke’s feet. Even more frustrating. “What does she sell in her shop?”
“Levent hasn’t told you? Roisin’s a tattoo artist—she did his anemones.”
“Really?” Startled, Luke looks up. They’re sitting, stepson and stepmom, at the base of a grey cliff overlooking the village on its bay far below. Luke had pled tiredness and a false soreness in his scabby palm when Perla’s mother with unnatural vigor for her age wanted him to climb with her to the high, sheer tombs. Sam had been eager but Perla said she’d seen it all before and stayed with Luke. “Roisin Hanım doesn’t have any tattoos. Altan Efendi either.”
“Altan’s old-fashioned. Traditional Islam disapproves of body modification about as much as traditional Judaism.” Perla regards the inscription engraved in ancient Lycian letters around her own right wrist. She confessed once that it wasn’t entirely grammatical, something her mother still gives her grief over, but refused to translate it. “Roisin’s ink isn’t where you can see it. She didn’t do it herself, of course. Her teacher in Cork city, before she came to Turkey on holiday and fell in love.”
Luke wonders if he’s in love, on holiday in Turkey. He knows he was never in love with Douglas. In the harbor below, he can pick out the Esin moored among other Blue Voyage gulets—the fishing boats left with the tide—but not any of the people aboard. If they’re aboard. Is Levent thinking of him, doing make-work boat maintenance with Efendi or carrying packages in the market for Hanım? “Why anemones?” he asks, feeling a stab of terror as he recalls the unexplained girls the blossoms represent. “Why did she ink anemones on Levent’s arm?”
“For Adonis, of course,” Perla says, as if it were an explanation.
“What?”
“Look at the rooftops in the village, Luke.”
“What?” He can’t see that far.
“They don’t call him Adonis, probably, or Dimuz either, the women of the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, when they plant his midsummer gardens. It’s just custom, tradition, what’s always been done.”
“Gardens?” Luke’s trying to see anything on the roofs far below. “Roisin’s basket of seedlings on the deckhouse roof?”
“It’s a fertility ritual, of course. They’re all fertility rituals. Older than Turks and Islam in Turkey, older than Judaism probably. Roisin learned it from her mother-in-law, I imagine. The seasons of fer
tility, for sowing and harvest, are very different here than in Ireland. As the killing heat of midsummer approaches, the women remember Adonis under all his names and none, the god who dies every year, taking the world’s virtue with him, and then is reborn. In his memory, they plant small gardens of seeds that germinate and sprout quickly, grain and herb, wheat, barley, lettuce, fennel. They die quickly, too, young like ever young Adonis. Too hot, not the season, perhaps the gardeners forget to water them for a day or two. Then, midsummer night, in a cataclysm of grief, they hurl the withered little gardens into the street or the sea and mourn the momentary death of beauty. It’s very cathartic.”
She’s done it herself! Luke thinks, surprised. Usually he thinks of Perla as a pragmatic businesswoman, less romantic and given to fantastical gestures than Luke’s own dad. Also: She’s not telling me everything. It’s women’s business, women’s magic, not for men to know. They’re grieving, those women, the beautiful men who don’t desire them, working magic to change their natures.
*
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Sam asks.
It’s two months later and an old argument. Since Luke returned home he’s had sporadic messages from Levent, when the Esin on its Blue Voyages moored overnight in a town with an Internet café or cellular network robust enough to support his smartphone. They weren’t all the same, the messages, but they said the same thing Luke replied: I miss you, I can’t wait to see you again. Last week, from his own computer in İzmir where he was making final preparations for departure, Levent wrote: It was the blood, yours and mine, strengthening my natural inclinations. Plus Hanım’s bad luck in not reserving Efendi’s boat for a family with a daughter those two weeks. Plus my good luck it was YOU instead. Or maybe she took pity on me and arranged it all.
“I’m sure,” Luke says. He’s hyper, antsy. Levent’s already in the States—he landed in New York last night, called from the airport hotel. His voice sounded more foreign, somehow, as if being in an English-speaking country exaggerated his Turkish accent. “Absolutely positively.”
They’ve driven down from the Berkeley hills, Luke and his dad (Perla’s at work), across the Bay Bridge, through the city, south to SFO. Sam expected Luke to want to drive, but Luke didn’t trust his dad to keep safe all the way the flowers he bought this morning: six perfect out-of-season blood-red anemones with dense black hearts. He’s holding them now, Luke is, jiggling on his toes with impatience as they wait in the arrivals area.
“He’s sleeping in the guest room, you know.”
“Of course he is.” It won’t be sleeping in my room. For two weeks, until Levent moves into his residence hall on campus. Two weeks to learn everything else about each other, to explore and experiment, to fall ever more in love. “Thank you, Dad. So much.”
“Well.” Sam pats his son’s shoulder gingerly. “He does seem like a good kid, and I can only applaud the good influence that has you actively thinking about college yourself. But promise me, Lukey, promise me you’ll warn him in no uncertain terms that I love my boy very very much and will not tolerate him ever hurting you.”
“There he is!”
There he is! Luke can’t run to him because Sam’s holding his shoulder. He holds up the flowers in their crackly cellophane cone, grinning like anything, squirming like a little kid. From the crowd of other passengers, Levent beams. He hefts the overnight bag on his own shoulder, then lifts his left hand to wave. On the pale skin of his inner forearm, upside down, five pastel anemones are eclipsed by the sixth, scarlet as blood.
For Sandra McDonald, who wanted a happy ending
Contributors
’Nathan Burgoine (redroom.com/author/nathan-burgoine) lives in Ottawa, Canada, with his husband Daniel. His previous short fiction appears in Fool for Love, the 2010 Saints and Sinners: New Fiction from the Festival, and Men of the Mean Streets. In the summertime, ’Nathan enjoys watching the squirrel antics while writing outside.
A Navy veteran, Sam Cameron spent several years around the world gathering stories. She writes short fiction and novels for young adults, including Mystery of the Tempest and The Secret of Othello. Currently she lives in Florida, where it is always summertime and the beaches stretch along the ocean forever.
Marguerite Croft is a San Francisco Bay Area writer. She has a short story forthcoming in the Flushed anthology and can be stalked on Twitter as @albionidaho. She loves eating orange and vanilla frozen yogurt cones during summer lightning storms.
Alex Jeffers (sentenceandparagraph.com) lives in New England—why, he no longer knows. He has published many works of short fiction and four books: Safe as Houses, a novel; Do You Remember Tulum? and The New People, novellas; and The Abode of Bliss, a sequence of linked stories. An as yet untitled collection of unlinked stories is forthcoming in summer 2012. He was born in the middle of July and is only properly happy when the weather is hot hot hot.
L Lark (l-lark.com) is a writer and visual artist currently living in South Florida, a place with its own fair share of monster sightings. Links to her projects, publications, and blog can be found on her website. Her favorite summer activity is watching thunderstorms form over the Everglades.
Allergic to peas and Tom Cruise movies, Dia Pannes enjoys writing short fiction. Her first sale was to Speaking Out. Living in upstate New York, she does enjoy going to local fairs during the warm nights of summer.
Aimee Payne grew up in a podunk town in Ohio that she couldn’t wait to escape. She is working on an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. This is her first published story. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida, with fellow writer Will Ludwigsen and a too-large assortment of rescued dogs and cats. Because she lives in Florida, the thing she enjoys most about the summer is good air-conditioning. She misses spending the summer in her grandma’s pool with her brothers and sister, though.
Christopher Reynaga is a recipient of the Bazzanella Literary Award for Short Fiction and a graduate of Clarion West. He has had fiction appear in the American River Literary Review and has a story forthcoming from Cemetery Dance. His favorite part of summer is skinny-dipping in the great, green waters of the creek bend.
Shawn Syms has completed a short-fiction collection and is at work on a novel. His fiction has been shortlisted for the Journey Prize and has appeared on LittleFiction.com and JoylandMagazine.com. His journalism, essays, reviews, and other writing have appeared in over thirty other publications. Shawn’s favorite thing about summer is big burly bears in skimpy little tank tops.
Ann Zeddies spent the first three summers of her life on a mountain-top in Idaho, and still remembers them fondly. Unbeknownst to her, she was being irradiated by fallout from nuclear test sites. So now she has super-powers. Ghosts of summers past appear in all her works, if you examine them closely. She wrote Deathgift, Skyroad, Steel Helix, and Blood and Roses under her own name, and Typhon’s Children and Riders of Leviathan as Toni Anzetti. Her most recent story was “Waiting to Show Her” in Speaking Out. Now she lives in western Michigan, where the Lake Michigan shore is the very essence of summer. Jumping into big waves on a sunny day is one of her favorite things ever, and she will stretch summer into October just to do it one more time.
Editor Steve Berman thinks summertime is wonderful because it recharges the solar batteries in his cat, Daulton. This is his third anthology for young adults. He plans to do more, but not necessarily in June, July, or August, when he likes to read a great deal. He lives in southern New Jersey but never goes to the beach.
Soliloquy Titles From Bold Strokes Books
Boys of Summer, edited by Steve Berman. Stories of young love and adventure, when the sky’s ceiling is a bright blue marvel, when another boy’s laughter at the beach can distract from dull summer jobs. (978-1-60282-663-2)
Street Dreams by Tama Wise. Tyson Rua has more than his fair share of problems growing up in New Zealand—he’s gay, he’s falling in love, and he’s run afoul of the local hip-hop crew leader just as he
’s trying to make it as a graffiti artist. (978-1-60282-650-2)
[email protected] by K.E. Payne. Is it possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met? Imogen Summers thinks so because it’s happened to her. (978-1-60282-592-5)
Swimming to Chicago by David-Matthew Barnes. As the lives of the adults around them unravel, high school students Alex and Robby form an unbreakable bond, vowing to do anything to stay together—even if it means leaving everything behind. (978-1-60282-572-7)
Speaking Out edited by Steve Berman. Inspiring stories written for and about LGBT and Q teens of overcoming adversity (against intolerance and homophobia) and experiencing life after “coming out.” (978-1-60282-566-6)
365 Days by K.E. Payne. Life sucks when you’re seventeen years old and confused about your sexuality, and the girl of your dreams doesn’t even know you exist. Then in walks sexy new emo girl, Hannah Harrison. Clemmie Atkins has exactly 365 days to discover herself, and she’s going to have a blast doing it! (978-1- 60282-540-6)
Cursebusters! by Julie Smith. Budding psychic Reeno is the most accomplished teenage burglar in California, but one tiny screw-up and poof!—she’s sentenced to Bad Girl School. And that isn’t even her worst problem. Her sister Haley’s dying of an illness no one can diagnose, and now she can’t even help. (978-1-60282-559-8)
Who I Am by M.L. Rice. Devin Kelly’s senior year is a disaster. She’s in a new school in a new town, and the school bully is making her life miserable—but then she meets his sister Melanie and realizes her feelings for her are more than platonic. (978-1-60282-231-3)
Sleeping Angel by Greg Herren. Eric Matthews survives a terrible car accident only to find out everyone in town thinks he’s a murderer— and he has to clear his name even though he has no memories of what happened. (978-1-60282-214-6)
