Sonny doesn’t respond. She taps her chin against her shoulder and stares out at the water where Louise and Miles are up to their waists in the ribbon of light blue, just before the seabed drops off into darkness.
“Charlie’s the child,” she murmurs. “Does it ever occur to him that it’s his safety and not mine I’m worried about? Of course not.”
I could stop here and let Sonny go on believing that Charlie is merely avoiding her while he’s dealing with business. But I’ve done enough damage under the banner of helping a friend.
“Listen,” I say. “You should be worried. I am. The man Duck saw in Skala, it wasn’t Charlie.”
“What?” I pray she doesn’t mention the hand-carved queen. I can’t admit to another deception. “If that wasn’t Charlie, and you didn’t talk to him the next day—”
“No one’s seen him since that night in Skala. And he never went to Bodrum.”
“So he is missing,” she cries. “And all this time, you let me think he was fine!” She bunches her knees to her chest. Tears begin to clot where they had been wiped. “He could be dead or injured somewhere for days and you let me think he was safe! You motherfucker! Why did you come here, Ian? Why did we ever let you into our house?” Saliva strings from her teeth. She lunges for her shoes or her phone or maybe a weapon to use against me in her straw satchel. “I even went down to the station this morning and asked that inspector if he had talked to Charlie, when I should have been filing a missing person’s report!” Her shoes and her phone aren’t in the bag. They’re on Domitian. She possesses no useful tool to get her off the beach.
I grab her arm, and she struggles to free herself.
“I think Charlie might be purposely hiding.”
“I don’t want to listen to you anymore! All you’ve done since you’ve gotten here is lie to me!”
“That man in Skala who Duck saw. It was his brother, Stefan.” The revelation stops her from fighting my grip. She does know Charlie better than anyone. I can see the pieces fitting together behind her eyes, the jigsaw starting to assemble the border of a picture. “He’s here to check on Charlie’s company. He thinks there’s something bad about it.”
“Bad?”
“Illegal. And I’m afraid he might be correct.”
She shakes her head, a coldness settling over her face. I loosen my grip, and she yanks her arm free.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she says automatically, as if that’s how she’d been instructed to respond if the subject ever arose. Or maybe, if she had her own suspicions, that pledge of total ignorance is how she dispelled those thoughts. “I told you, I’ve never been allowed to know. But if Stefan’s here, why isn’t he using his room at the house?”
“He was staying out of sight. He thought he’d discover more that way. He’s rented a hole in the wall in that housing complex behind Skala. I’m sure he’ll probably pay you a visit now that his cover is blown. But I think Charlie might be keeping his distance to avoid a confrontation with him.”
She expels air and rocks back and forth, caught without a strategy in her allegiance to Charlie. If she reports him as a missing person to the police, whatever’s bad about the charter company is likely to come under investigation.
“Are you lying now, Ian? So help me god—”
“Charlie was the one who lied. I was just the messenger. And I only found out about Stefan a few hours ago.”
“If Stefan’s here trying to catch Charlie, I wouldn’t put it past him to disappear until he’s gone. I’ve never understood the animosity between them. But if Stefan learns anything—”
“Then he’s going to report it to their father.” I don’t need to elucidate. Her eyes widen and close. For a few minutes neither of us speaks. Louise and Duck are scooping up seawater and dumping it baptismally over Miles’s head.
“The money,” Sonny finally utters. The money is the short answer to every question. I could have run onto the beach screaming money and everyone would have instantly understood. She laughs in exasperation, at the one entity that Charlie might cherish more than his commitment to her. Or, I’m guessing, she realizes that money is the one provision that will keep her safe. “He’s not going to lose his inheritance,” she snaps. “No way. I don’t care what his brother told you. His father adores him and would never abandon him like that. A parent doesn’t do that to a child.” She’s not so lost in her own head that she doesn’t recognize the inadvertent slight. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay.”
“Why weren’t you honest with me right away?” Her eyes are on Duck, who’s now swimming around Miles with her hand finned at her head like a lurking shark. “Maybe I could have done something. Do you think Charlie knew that night we had drinks? No wonder he was so pissed off. Is that why everything had suddenly gotten too crazy?”
Nothing about Charlie in the trailer on the morning we hatched the alibi suggests that he was aware of his brother’s presence on Patmos. And yet everything about his behavior that night in Skala seems to confirm that he had learned of it. I wonder if the change of plan happened then—to redirect the alibi for a different and darker advantage. I don’t have the heart to mention that Charlie might not be waiting Stefan out, that he could have disappeared altogether, leaving us to deal with the disaster in his wake. Could Charlie already be in Cyprus collecting whatever money he has stashed away, while Sonny is left waiting for him and I’m left holding the reins of a smuggling ring? He couldn’t be that callous.
“When you say illegal—”
“I don’t know,” I answer, crouched halfway between a lie and the truth. “Honestly, I don’t want to know. I’m not working for him any longer. You can trust me on that.”
“I’m almost glad Miles decked him. Only that was Charlie’s intention, wasn’t it? He started that fight to give me a reason not to want him home.” She scrapes off a line of brown polish from her toenail. “Is Stefan as awful as Charlie always said? Do you think he’d listen if I spoke to him? I could smooth things over. I could appeal to him, out of respect for his brother or for my daughter and me.”
She’s patriotic in her vanity. I get the sense that patriotism has won her a number of early wars and has led her to believe in its supreme capabilities.
“Stefan can be like talking to a corporation with a really strong backhand.”
Sonny stares dazed, moving her eyes from Domitian to the hilltop monastery in Chora and then rolling her vision back down the cliffs to her daughter in the sea. It’s as if she’s calibrating what she’s at risk of losing, itemizing it before it’s snatched from her hands.
“I didn’t mean those words I said that night. That Charlie wasn’t worth it. He is worth it. To me. It’s like I told you. I don’t care about the rest of it. All I need from it is Charlie and Duck. That’s the thing, Ian, the only value in that money is for Duck, to be a family again. And now with Rasym here and Stefan turning up, it’s their house, isn’t it? Just like Cyprus is their country, and there won’t be room for us. How is anything safe?” You can prepare for the worst, you can stab your heart a million times to harden it for the blow, but when the blow comes it still destroys you. Because it does so in ways you can’t anticipate.
“When I was a kid,” she whispers desolately, scratching at the rest of the polish, “my father worked for a rich family who had a cabin in the San Gabriel Mountains outside of L.A. We’d go up there, my mother and I, for the summers to watch over the place. We were up there every June through September, we loved it, not a day without dancing under the pines and drawing birds and my mother reciting her feminist earth poems.” I want to ask Sonny how she went from the daughter of a feminist poet to a Hollywood actress and on to the girlfriend of a billionaire’s son, but I know it’s only in fantasy that the search for a better life is always progressive. We are not so much evolving as swimming for our lives. “It was our heaven, our haven. The family only used it for one week in July. Before they came we’d have to move all of o
ur stuff from the main house into the tiny guest cottage. And for seven days, we’d watch that family use the house and break the things we cared for and trample the flowers we planted and sleep in our beds. I knew they owned the place, but I also knew it belonged to us. Those states were entirely separate in my head. And they still are. But it doesn’t matter. When my dad was fired, we lost our summers there.” She presses her forehead against her knee. “I guess I have no choice but to wait and see. Become a guest now. Tell Duck she might not be coming back with us. How do I tell Duck that? Charlie promised me!”
She exhales sharply and climbs to her feet, watching Miles back away now that the water has advanced above his navel. Louise pushes against his resistant back, as if she’s trying to force him through the emergency doors of a crashing plane.
“Thanks for telling me the truth,” she says. “For warning me. I’m sorry I screamed at you. I didn’t know that Charlie was jerking both of us around.” It’s as if some visible shift comes over her as she stands in front of me, an alteration in her shoulder and hips. “But, no, I’m not going to give up hope. I mean, Stefan might not learn anything. And really how illegal can that business be? It’s not like Charlie’s devouring children. And he’s only been gone a couple of days. Charlie wouldn’t leave me. I know he hasn’t. He’s out there figuring it out. And as long as he’s alive and okay, we’re still here.”
“It’s important to stay positive.”
She squints down at me with a barely suppressed smile, the tips of her curly hair frizzled in a soft halo against the gauzy sun.
“You don’t know everything,” she says. “I know Charlie’s fine. He sent me a message that he is.”
“You spoke to him?” For a second, I wonder if our entire exchange has been a performance. Was she aware of my deception even on that first afternoon I visited her? Has she been privy to Charlie’s movements all along? “Sonny, if you’ve talked to him—”
She shakes her head. “He left me something, a sign only I would be able to interpret. No one else would understand it. You see, we play a little game.” She kicks her satchel. “He left me something to let me know he’s with me.”
Her voice is so certain, her sun-blasted American face so sure of its own optimism, I can’t find it in me to admit her mistake. I can’t strip her of the last thing she believes in, a two-inch piece of wood that prevents her world from breaking apart.
MILES NEVER SWIMS. He gets close. Sonny and I watch from the beach, but when it comes time to dunk his head below the surface he reaches a line he can’t cross. He treads back to shore, slipping on the loose pebbles in the charging current, lunging for the safety of dry land.
“I tried,” he tells Sonny with a wounded voice. “I knew you were watching. I tried. I really did, for you.” Maybe he wants to crush censure by couching his failure in devotion. But I get the feeling by the way he stares at Sonny with probing, golden-retriever eyes that he’s being sincere.
“You should do it for yourself,” she replies but clearly enjoys the idea that her mere presence could annihilate lifelong phobias.
“It’s just that going under is like wrapping my head in plastic. I’m scared about breathing, even though I know you aren’t supposed to. It’s like being trapped in an elevator with fish.”
“It really isn’t,” Sonny promises. “You’re going to have to learn sooner or later. You’re surrounded by the stuff.”
He rubs his hair with a towel. “I’ve made it this long.”
Louise rises from the waves, lifting her thin, brown arms to indicate that she did her best. Behind her, the tender is cutting a direct path toward the beach, Christos’s silver hair blazing against low clouds. Miles begins to pack up the china, and Duck worms onto her mother’s lap. Sonny rubs cream across her shoulders.
“My little empress,” she coos. “Not a princess. Who wants to be princess when they could be an empress?”
“Emperor,” Duck amends but agrees.
Louise winks at me before putting on her aviators. “Do you want to go back on Domitian with us?”
“I have my bike,” I say. “I’ll see you at the cabins later?”
“Wait a minute. What’s going on between you two?” Sonny asks, sharing her smile first with Louise and then with me as if they are separate ceremonies. She’s doing a noble job of hiding her anxiety. “I’m sensing something. The emperor and her handmaiden demand to know.”
“Nothing,” Louise stammers.
“Uh-huh.” She turns to me. “At least you’ll come by for a late lunch tomorrow. I’ve asked Therese to make her special Patmian fish stew.”
“Bleeeh,” sounds Duck.
“I wonder if Stefan will be joining us. Do you think he’ll have moved up from his pied-à-terre behind Skala by then? Or should we send him an invitation?” When I don’t answer she smiles mechanically. “Well, it will be a nice afternoon, no matter.”
“So it wasn’t Charles that Duck saw that morning in Skala?” Miles surmises. “I’m sorry. But that doesn’t mean Charles isn’t—”
“It’s okay,” Sonny replies. “It’s the Konstantinou’s island, not mine. That much is clear. We’ll just have to put on our best fake smiles, Duckie. You can do that for me, can’t you? We’ll make a game of it.”
“Can’t Therese cook something else?” Duck begs.
Miles palms her wet head. “I’ll smuggle in a hamburger for you.”
And like that, the day returns to normal. I wonder how long it could continue, afternoons on the beach, plans for lunch, rides on the yacht, all without Charlie and yet cocooned in his money and name. Christos motors up to the shore and reaches for the supplies to place in the dinghy. He accidentally drops two plates in the water and curses as he climbs out to gather them. He purposely avoids looking at me. I want to ask if he’s found his son and daughter, but he’s clearly in no mood for outside interference, especially from the man he’s already cast as a loudmouth infiltrator. He claps his hands impatiently for everyone to hop aboard. Even with Charlie gone, he’s forced into service, meeting the relaxation needs of tangentials of the man who writes his paycheck. Better that than no man writing his paycheck, which is one imminent danger he shares with Sonny. Of everyone on this beach, I think it’s Christos who understands the gravity of the situation. What would the Stamatis family do without the last Konstantinou who relies on them?
I pull Louise aside as she’s scooping her arms through her shirt.
“Be careful on your way home. On your bike.”
She knits her brow. “Why, Dad?”
“Just wear your helmet. There’s a lunatic priest driving a white Mercedes. If you see that car, pull off the road. He nearly took me out. I’m serious.”
“Okay. First you don’t come home last night. Now you’re lecturing me on driver’s safety. Mind telling me what’s up?”
“We can talk tonight. I—” think I really might be close to loving you “want to convince you to take a trip to—” But my mind goes blank at naming a nearby island. “We’ll talk tonight.”
I wave as they blur into molecules of color and a motor’s hum. I pick up two playing cards that Miles overlooked. A tiny tear mars the top of a red ace, either by accident or a sharp’s mark.
A gang of hippies roars far down the beach. There are five of them, perhaps the youngest of their delegation. Their skin is the brown mingling of dirt and sun, accented with cowrie-shell belts, flip-flops caked in mud, bikini bottoms decorated with skulls and smiley faces, dreadlocks arrayed like the armature of brass chandeliers, pierced mouths open like flame-swallowers, two with leather headbands strapped across their foreheads. The shirtless guy with a handlebar mustache does a backflip on the pebbles, a trick he must have performed a zillion times because his friends take no notice when he sticks the landing. A giant green crucifix is tattooed on his back. Their giggling and wrestling is so pure, so joyous, it feels threatening, youths high in the altitudes of their own promised land. They look like the mutant spawn of wha
tever remained at Spahn Ranch, hovering life-thirsty on a scanned and pixilated horizon. A few mutts circle them, barking, but it’s a purebred, collared Dalmatian that they’re trying to coax into the water.
I should feel a measure of relief in admitting the alibi to Sonny. But it’s as if I proved to myself as well as to her the sham I’d been holding on to. The lie was a willingness to hope, because a part of me still believed that Charlie could reappear that easily. Wandering along the beach, I’m struck all over again by the shock of his absence, the total and traceless vanishing. Or almost traceless. He was on Domitian that night after Skala, and there’s still the chance the blood on the floor was his. I try to think of anyone who’d have a motive to do Charlie in. Not Gideon or Petros or anyone who expects to be paid. Miles comes to mind, but the very reason I suspect him seems to clear him from blame: who punches someone in public and then murders him hours later in private? Unless it wasn’t premeditated, unless, unless, unless . . . I’m grabbing at invisible bodies to blame for an invisible death. The only other source of friction I recall in the days leading up to Charlie’s disappearance is the hippies, his most despised form of island invaders. I watch them frolicking along the waterline, happy, ragtag, self-drafted soldiers of the world’s end.
If Mr. K were even semiconscious, I’d call him now and convince him to send help. Stefan isn’t an option. I search the beach for his only other relative within reach. Rasym is all I have.
Adrian stands in the sea, tossing his head back to let the water slick his hair. He climbs from the surf, the swells of his back tapering toward the small, swiveling disc of his hips. I’m surprised by his boldness, catching sight of me and lifting his arm just as he rises enough from the waves to reveal no swim trunks—only the white trace of its occasional necessity around a triangle of dark, curly blond. A thick, uncircumcised penis beats against the plum of his scrotum. His nudity is more pronounced by the two black water shoes on his feet. Seawater beads across the arch of his ass. Even the hippies stop to watch him, like he’s a new and potentially disruptive species evolving in sped-up time lapse from the deep, skipping all of the messy undextrous development of primates. I was hoping for the justice of a very small penis.
The Destroyers Page 38
