Upstairs in the sitting room, Sonny is already sprawled on her stomach, her bare, oiled back flickering in the candlelight. Andrea is applying her thumbs, digging deeply into the lumbar region, telling her how and when to breathe. Sonny’s blond hair spills over the edge, her face hidden, inhaling and exhaling, her lubricated ribs moving against the puncturing fingers, her polished nails digging into the vinyl.
“Easy,” Andrea warns. “Too tight here. Bad tight. Hold. Now breathe.”
I step into the alley and decide to attempt an untried path back to my bike. At the end of the long corridor, a young Greek guy exits from a crevice door, his greasy hand balled around a red wad of euros. I recognize him from Charlie’s hangar as one of the teenagers running a blowtorch along the hull. He disappears through an alley before I can call to him to ask if he’s seen Charlie. But in the small, screened window next to the door, I find the gauzy gray face of the Chicago pedophile peeking out. He draws a red curtain like a priest cutting off a confession.
It must be a holy day. A throng of monks chants a hymn as they carry a golden box on inlaid silver poles through Chora, either from or to or simply around the monastery, taking God for a stroll. I press against the white concrete as they march by in their black robes and hornet-like hats, mere indents of mouths singing through their beards. A gift shop ahead with a sprinkling of souvenir goat bells suggests I’m near the main road with its northern view of Skala. But as I ascend a sharp stone passage, vine-veined with the occasional burst capillaries of hibiscus buds, I realize I’m turned around. The view drops into the hazy green southlands, with its mammoth tan-hide haunches sloping into the sea.
A tiny cemetery is nestled in the hillcrest ten feet from me, not a relic but a functioning burial ground—all burial grounds are functioning, but this one accepts new customers. A few Patmians stand as still as storks amid clean granite headstones lined with pots of carnations and geraniums. On the mounds, photographs of smiling faces lean amid gaudy plastic flowers, stuffed teddy bears, and spinning homemade ornaments—all crayon-bright the way a child might color over death. I try not to wonder where the bodies of the two dead hippies are right now, in the island hospital, preparing to be shipped back in containers to their home countries. Perhaps somewhere in the air around me are the voices of their parents, crying into their receivers, bouncing from satellites down onto the warm Aegean that can’t supply a comforting answer. I stare out at the coppery shine of the sea. Far along the coast, I make out one of Charlie’s chartered yachts casting off from his dock toward the east.
CHAPTER 9
For a few minutes after sunset, the sky goes eerily white. Darkness waits in the mountains, camps in the trees, and covers the horseshoe of sand at the beach in Kampos where Louise and I are eating. The first stars are visible, solid silver against the white, like dense metal globes that the Air Aegean jets dodge as they descend toward the larger islands of the Dodecanese. It is Louise’s opinion that Patmos has been spared the leviathan of mass tourism due to the lack of an airport. Louise, whose syrupy Coca-Cola–colored hair matches the darkness, dips bread in olive oil and chews with an open mouth. She tells me that every so often a billionaire prospector arrives on Patmos with plans to buy a huge chunk of land and convert it into a five-star resort—infinity pools and minimalist beach bars, five hundred rooms with sliding-door sea views, light jazz twinkling from speakers buried in shorn Bermuda green. Full service, sterling service, service like a pistol, military-issued fun. The billionaire is usually an American, a scion of a hotel chain, and the plans inevitably include the gratis construction of an inland airport.
“Only the monks in the monastery won’t approve an airport,” she says, prodding a zucchini blossom onto her fork. “Because as soon as there’s a transportation hub, they’d lose all of their influence. They couldn’t control what gets built. So God says no direct flights from Athens. Just as well. It would be a shame if all the raw beauty were destroyed.” She bites into the blossom, and oil drips onto the paper tablecloth that’s sutured to the edges by rusty clips. Below the table I’m rubbing Louise’s leg. “They distrust Americans over here, don’t you think? My great-grandfather served in World War II. He finally took a European vacation in the 1980s, a sort of budget Grand Tour with those matching vinyl shoulder bags. It was his first time out of the country since the war. And everywhere he went he said, ‘you’re welcome.’ You know, for saving them. That might have been the last time an American could travel through Europe and say ‘you’re welcome.’ Now it’s like we just want to eat the place.”
“You’ve done a lot of thinking about the tourism industry,” I say, pinching her knee.
“Well, before you came, I was here for two weeks. I had a lot of free time. There are only so many days you can go to the beach alone. That Hungarian, Bence, had this awful idea to turn all of the Syrian refugees into construction workers. Put them to use by building cheap vacation condos in cash-strapped Greece, and then that solves two problems. You know what sucks about greedy capitalists? Sometimes their ideas actually make a degree of sense.”
A group of guitarists in flossy linen shirts have been sitting at a table across the road, shooting dice until their time to play. Suddenly, they begin to strum. And when I look up, the white is gone. The sky is black, and along the water, two sets of fluorescent-green bikinis float like ghosts on holiday.
“Anyway, I thought you’d be interested,” Louise says with a wink. “Since you’re working in the tourism sector now. By the way, I texted Sonny your cell number. Charlie hasn’t come home yet.”
“Oh, I imagine he’ll be back tomorrow.” I feel I’ve done my part in mortaring their relationship. Charlie can take over when he returns from Bodrum. I’m appreciating a night alone with Louise, off-time from our jobs as houseguests.
“Sonny’s anxious,” Louise says.
“When I left her she was getting a massage.” I try to reach my hand farther up Louise’s thigh. My attempts at tenderizing her for romance don’t appear to be effective. She’s all one appetite, dumping another helping of tomatoes and feta on her plate.
“Did she tell you about wanting to bring Duck back to Cyprus?”
“Charlie told me.”
“That’s why she’s anxious. Duck’s father is broke.”
“The director in L.A.?”
“Yeah.” She hums. “It’s horrible. He’s using that child as a poker chip. If Sonny wants full custody, she’s going to have to pay. So she needs Charlie to write him a check. Otherwise, no daughter. I really think that’s all Sonny wants, now that she’s gotten back on her feet and found a place she feels settled. And it’s pretty horrible of Charlie too, not to give her an answer. It’s not like he can’t afford it.”
“Maybe Charlie doesn’t want to be a father,” I say in defense. This afternoon, Sonny put on a convincing performance about her indifference to wealth—all of it could be stripped away—but the facts snag against the memory.
Louise scoffs. “People come with attachments. We aren’t sold separately.”
“Let’s not talk about them tonight,” I whisper. “I’d rather just be with you.”
Our pompadoured waiter hides for most of his shift in the restaurant. When he does stroll out onto the sand, so many customers are waving for his attention that he briefly becomes a celebrity. I want to ask him for another Mythos beer, but I’ve already promised Louise I’d slow my drinking. Yet the self-imposed denial only makes me thirstier. Nervousness was my excuse when Charlie raised it, but it seems as if I’m chronically nervous the moment the sun goes down. Maybe I’m anxious about Charlie’s failure to respond to my texts, or maybe it’s due to being alone with the person I want. Around us, at beachfront tables, couples sit across from each other, staring out at the sea or deep diving into the wine list or holding limp, sunburned hands. Their long spells of silence, as if they’ve traveled all this way to run out of conversation, accentuates our stilted stabs at talking. We’re amateurs at sharing a meal.
I try to engage her with a tale of my first Grand Tour of Europe, as a kid with my father and stepmom—“you better enjoy every second of this vacation, Ian”—and how my only vivid memory of that trip amid all the churches and leaning towers and iridescent mirrored hallways of Versailles was the tits on public television, the copious topless women jiggling in the greens and yellows of the hotel sets. “That to me was Europe,” I say. “A continent of free boobs. But when I finally went to the hotel swimming pool with my father, I was so terrified by actually seeing—”
“Are you okay about your father?” she asks, like she’s missed the point of my story. Louise is an emotional storm chaser; she drives right toward the eye. “You haven’t talked much about his death.”
“I’m fine,” I say abruptly.
“Have you spoken to your family?”
“No.” But since we’re on the subject of losses, I decide to ask her about her return to the States. “When exactly are you planning on leaving?” I drop my hand from her leg. I want to keep exploring, but the table leg is in the way. And the mention of my father has killed my hard-on.
Louise smiles. She wears a black Hard Rock Café Paris T-shirt; I can’t decide whether it’s an ironostalgic flourish, a tourist souvenir, or simple indifference to whatever advertisement ends up emblazoned across her chest.
“My ticket back to D.C. is booked for next Wednesday.” That’s five days, and the sorrow of the timetable hits me like a slap. “I could always push it back a bit if I swallow the fee.”
“Why don’t you? I could pay the difference.” My hand scrunches the blue map of Patmos printed on the tablecloth.
“Ian.” She breathes. “I’ve already been on vacation for so long. I’m forgetting what home looks like.”
“Keep forgetting,” I say. “Forget it entirely. Come on.”
“Some of us aren’t allowed to forget.”
“Aren’t you having a good time here?” And un-artfully I add, “With me?”
“One swallow doesn’t make a summer. Or one swallow is enough for a summer. Either way . . .”
“Louise,” I stammer. I’m about to confess my feelings. But she squeezes my hand, and I don’t have to speak.
We wear our helmets on the ride home, astronautic lovers tapping fiberglass to fiberglass. On the stone porch, in the hot, mountain air, we grapple with our clothing, which, in the darkness, becomes as complicated as mountaineering gear. Her black shirt around her neck, mine unbuttoned, our shorts and underwear slid to our ankles, we seem to be moving at avalanche speed and also, unfortunately, with avalanche precision. I feel the tight clench and beyond it the soft release, and with every thrust, as my forearm pillows her skull from the stone, I want to cry a small bleat of “stay.” Stay with me, Louise, right here, in the confusion of this summer, in this lost perfect dot on the globe that no planes can reach, just stay, and I will be whatever you want from me, the volunteer, the provider, the man behind the unlocked door. I inspect her eyes, searching for that shudder in the lids, the whorl like a fingerprint so specific to each person, to know I’m making an impact, moving the furniture around in her head, leaving even a temporary trace. But Louise’s eyes don’t flinch. They stay on me, not coldly but methodically, no Adrian-like convulsion racking her face. The meat of her eyes is light blue from the moonlight, the irises as forebodingly black as inner-city parks at night. I come, and my lips scoop for her collarbone, caught in the folds of her Hard Rock Café shirt. I roll off of her, and for several minutes we remain that way, lying on our backs, unspeaking. Every so often, after sex, you realize that you might not be any good at it and all it amounted to was a childish tantrum on top of another body.
I’m grateful when Louise takes my hand. “I want to say I’m sorry for giving you such a hard time about working for Charlie. Sorry for the soapbox treatment. It’s just that part of me is envious of all those years after college when you tried to help people. I wish I had done that.”
“Don’t be. It’s not a talent. Anyone could have.”
“But so few do. I have a theory that most humans don’t actually like each other. It must have been rewarding. Didn’t it, even for a little while, feel good?”
“Maybe. But no matter how much I did, I never felt like it was enough. The suffering, it doesn’t have a limit. It just goes on and on.”
“I wasted the last decade trying to figure myself out. And that doesn’t have a limit, either. It also goes on and on. At least you fed people and gave them a bed.”
“I was let go from that job. Fired.”
“Still, you tried. Most people just keeping walking.” She tightens her hand. “Thank god I don’t believe in reincarnation. I can’t imagine what I’ve doomed myself to come back as.”
“For two nonbelievers, we talk about religion a lot.”
“It’s this island. I am going to miss it. What are you hoping for now that you’re here?”
Everything.
When I don’t answer, Louise pulls my hand to her lips and kisses it.
“I’m curious to hear how it goes at Charlie’s company,” she says. “Maybe I will push my ticket back.”
That promise seems to be all I need to take with me into sleep, because I wake an hour later, alone on the porch. I expect to find Louise in my bed, but the sheets are still made and the door to her room is shut.
NIGHTMARES—A KILLER ON a boat; asking for directions while burning up in the sun. The phantasmal merry-go-round is only halted in the late morning by the sound of a key turning in the cabin door.
“Forgive me,” Therese says as she steps inside wearing a flowery plastic apron, black socks, and slippers. She stalls in the doorway as I climb out of bed. “I come early today because I have to watch Duck.”
“No problem,” I reply, grabbing a pair of pants and hurrying toward the bathroom. “What time is it?”
“After eleven.”
I stop briefly at the presence of a much younger woman behind Therese, with a matching apron tied around her waist.
“My daughter, Vesna,” Therese says. “She helps clean.”
Vesna issues a brief, curt smile. She looks as grungy as her brother, but unlike Helios, there’s a sharp owl-like intelligence to her face, with large wayward eyes that settle like flowers on a murky pond. Streams of bright dyed blue snake through her hair, and a collection of charms and beads engulf her fingers and wrists. Maybe it’s the hair dye or the troubled teenager lurking in her expression, but she reminds me of Marisela. For that reason alone, I decide it’s best to avoid her and scurry faster into the bathroom. When I reemerge, Therese is on the porch, scouring the stove, and Vesna is disdainfully pushing a rag across the window ledge. She turns when she spots me, bundling the rag in her ringed fingers.
“You’re a friend of Charlie’s from America?”
“Yes.” I grab a clean shirt and quickly pull it on.
She nods coolly. “I don’t . . . I mean, I’m not only a cleaning lady.” Her English is fluid but leveed with distrust. “I study at the university in Athens. I come back only in the summer to help my parents.”
“What do you study?”
Her eyes narrow. “Communications.” And as if it almost pains her to elaborate, as if it’s required of her major and nothing more, she says unwillingly, “My parents expect me here for summers. I wouldn’t come otherwise.”
“Your brother lives here year-round, right? Helios isn’t in school?”
“Helios,” she rasps dismissively.
“You two don’t get along?” She glares at me, although I’m not sure if that isn’t just her resting expression. “I don’t get along with my siblings, either,” I say to defuse the accusation.
“I’m not like my brother. I want to make my own life, a future. My home is Athens now. Helios is a lost cause.” She measures our distance from her mother. “It’s our parents’ fault. They want Helios to take over for them. But take over what? They have nothing, and they don’t even realize it. So Helios i
s stuck here, doing nothing, and now he’s dead in the head. But my parents are blind islanders, as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist, like problems beyond the sea don’t touch them. Only their precious son learning to be the errand boy for the Konstantinous. That isn’t a future. It’s the past. Have you met my father?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s very hard on Helios. Always disappointed. He’s hard on me too, but I don’t put up with it. Maybe they let me leave because I’m only a daughter. But I’m the one who’s going to do something with my life.”
I should have expected a motive behind Vesna’s unsolicited information dump. But I’m still taken off guard when she steps toward me, barking a gruff, conspiratorial “hey.”
I stand still. “Hey, what?”
She attempts a smile. “Could I ask a favor? A little one?”
“What?”
Her lips tremble toward their mission, like a horse gathering speed to jump a fence. “Could I borrow some money?” By reflex I’m about to claim poverty, simulating a search of the pockets and coming up with waving hands in the manner of a magician who has failed to conjure a rabbit. But it occurs to me that Vesna has been regularly cleaning my room and might have noticed the plastic bag of cash in the nightstand drawer. “I usually ask Charlie,” she says. “He always gives me a little extra without my parents knowing. But he isn’t around.”
“You’ve looked for him?”
She nods. “Everywhere. He’s not at home, not at his dock. I thought he might be on Domitian. But when I went to clean, there was only an awful mess. No Charlie.”
“I thought your father cleaned Domitian.”
“I do the insides, the galley. He does the rest. Charlie leaves me extra in one of his trophies, my secret tip, but he must have forgot. I tried calling him. No answer.”
Charlie said he’d likely be back today. I was hoping he’d already returned, saving me from continuing the lie.
“Helios is looking for him too,” Vesna says. “He gives us both extra. Maybe you should try calling him if you don’t believe me. He’s very generous.”
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