Julia lurches to the side of the boat, her head dangling over the guardrail.
“Is she seasick?” I ask.
Branca shoots her foot onto my leg, wiggling her dirty toes on my thigh.
“No, she took a half-tab of acid this morning. We told her not to. But she wanted to experience the Apocalypse.”
“We got it in Mykonos,” Andres brags. “Very weak.”
Branca laughs. “Weak, yeah? Do you miss the donkey you asked to marry you?”
Andres blushes and casts his eyes on the view.
We reach Patmos’s northern point and dip south, flying down the seahorse spine of the island. The western beaches are more barren, the pebbles larger and the waves more vicious. Rambling shacks built along the sea have none of the elegance of Choran mansions. Our captain steers us into an empty turquoise cove, where the cliffs fall straight into dappled water. The sound of our motor echoes against the rocks. He drops anchor. The Italian family uses their beach towels as private dressing rooms, shimmying off their shorts and underwear and yanking on their swimsuits.
I lose my new Spanish friends in the melee of swimming preparations. I ask the captain what time it is. Eleven-thirty. Vic’s backpackers have already been escorted off the ferry, their bags stripped from their shoulders, the elastic gutted from their stomachs. They’re probably hunkered in the station’s inner courtyard, praying to god or to Vic or to the leniency of Greek trafficking laws or to the empty square of blue above them. I try to go as deep into the sea as I can, down past the moment where my ears ache with pressure and all my eyes process is cold, velvet blackness. Above me, the Eastern European grandparents bob in the nude.
I surface and paddle to the front of the boat. On the other side, Branca, Andres, and Julia tread in a fluid circle. They are speaking in Spanish.
“I find him cute,” Branca says.
“Yes, I do too,” Andres admits. “But an American.”
“We should love everyone, even Americans,” Julia offers.
Andres splashes water at her. “You said they were only good for buying drinks.”
“I like his red hair,” she replies.
Branca spots me and lifts her hand.
“Having fun?” she asks in English.
“Such nice water,” I answer in my most earnest midwestern accent.
On board, the captain slices precooked sea bream wrapped in aluminum foil. We spray lemon on their silver bodies and pick through their bones with plastic forks. I want to ask the captain if he knows the Konstantinous or the Stamatis family, who looks after them, but those questions would blow my cover. I’m enjoying the company of the Spaniards too much, eating together under the awning, listening to them bicker about which island they’ll hit next. They’re not as beautiful as Charlie’s group, no Sonnys or Adrians among them. Julia’s back is flecked with faint purple acne splotches. Branca’s shoulders and hips are rounded. Andres’s tiny rib cage doesn’t flex with playground speed bumps. Maybe that’s why I feel so at ease among them. We roar past the backside of Skala and continue south, sleepy on gas fumes and the rocking current. When Andres fetches sodas from the cooler, Branca nudges me with her hip.
“I think Andres likes you,” she says. I can tell she’s trying to assess my proclivities.
“He seems like a really sweet guy,” I reply evasively. I can’t help it. It feels limiting and unadventurous for the new Ian Bledsoe to winnow his options. Julia informs us she’s coming down, that her brain almost exploded ten minutes ago and none of us noticed.
A black oil spill looms ahead in the sea. Tadita motors toward it, and we all gather along the guardrail for a glimpse. It’s not an oil slick but a deflated rubber raft, warped and grooved like a giant record. The captain wields a long wooden pole, latching onto it and pulling it against the hull. Andres and I do our best to help him lift it from the water, but the raft is heavy and slippery, and ultimately it drifts beyond our reach.
“They could have made it!” Julia hopes aloud. Everyone turns to the coastline, searching the rocks for happy endings.
I fall asleep, secluded in the haze of Branca’s patchouli smell. When I awake, we’re near the southland tip. A ribbon of sand flattens at the edge of a harbor, real sand, Caribbean smooth, with Frisbees and volleyballs sailing across it.
“Psili Ammos Beach,” the captain proclaims. “Soon we will have one last swim before the end.” We head north, passing more populated shores. I stand watch, my fingers gripping the guardrail.
“What are you looking for?” Andres asks. He’s loitering shyly next to me with his shirt on and his arms bundled under it for warmth.
“I’m just taking it all in.”
The Charters port rockets by, the hangar and trailer vacant. Not long after is the white blast of Grikos village. I see Domitian moored in the marina. We follow the thread of pebble beach and then it comes into view: black entrails of a doused bonfire collected among the rocks. Red, green, gold—the hippie tents are punctured and flattened like jellyfish. Bibles, shoes, broken instruments, and sleeping bags are strewn along the beach. Vic’s caravan tent is just a skeleton of metal poles, the flag of crossed trumpets still snapping at its mast. The plastic bins are upturned and the pillows shredded. The large black container from her tent has been pried open and left on its side. A pregnant woman is crying on her knees by the water. The mutts are barking around her. She’s weeping into her hands, the last remaining member of Camp Revelation, left behind in the clutter of no one’s salvation.
“What was that?” Branca bellows. “Crazy party or something?”
I shrug and sit down in the shade.
On our last swim, we stick together, letting the tide ripple through us. The Italian family is too tired to go in. The grandparents are filming underwater. Branca and Julia hold hands, and when the waves bump me against Julia’s leg, she reaches out and guides me next to her. Andres grabs onto my arm, and for a few minutes we hover in a four-pointed star, our undersides syrupy cold and our backs baking like asphalt. It took so little for me to be invited. And I don’t care now if Charlie is ever found—let him stay running, let him be that figure ahead of me in a crowd, someone I think I know, who escaped before he was caught, who made terrible decisions and realized the light wasn’t going to shine forever. Louise is right. He is gone.
After the boat returns to Skala, Branca and Andres trade glances as we disembark.
“Hey, Ian, do you want to come to our hotel room?” Andres says coolly, but the sunburn on his face is intensifying from the inside out. “We have beer. We could make a party and play some music.”
“I’d love to,” I respond.
“And if you don’t have a room for the night,” Branca mumbles, “we have two beds we could push together. It’s hard to find a place here in high summer.”
“That sounds great. Thank you.” I’m so high on what’s to come and the love I feel for them at this moment, I barely recognize Therese tearing down the cobblestones on a motorbike. Her cheeks are slicked with tears, and her hair is a tangled steel sponge. I’ve only been off Patmos for six hours, but the sight of her is like a memory returning at full force from the crypts of childhood. Instinctively, I step out in the road and raise my arms. She’s like the first fallen leaf streaming through the air to signal summer’s collapse. Therese brakes and topples off the bike.
“Ian,” she wails as she falls against my chest. “Did you hear? Or have you been in your cabin all day? Or were you out on the yacht with Sonny?”
The Spaniards are idling within listening distance. Andres’s eyes have the hostile squint that economy passengers contract at the baggage carousel after a long flight, when the first-class suitcases tumble out ahead of all the others. But I can’t worry about them now.
“What’s the matter?” I hold Therese by the wrists. “What happened?”
“Rasym just told me,” she sobs. “I go now to break the news to Christos. I’m worried how he will take it. We’ve been with him so long. He w
as like a son to us. What will we do now without him?”
I don’t realize how brutally I’m squeezing her wrists until she peers down at my hands.
“Is it Charlie? Have they found him?”
She gazes up at me with lava-black eyes. “Charlie, no. It’s his father. He passed away in New York this afternoon. He died in the hospital.”
When I turn around, my new friends have gone.
THE RED DOOR is locked. I use the flaccid doll hand, banging a pulse into it. I hear Miles advancing from the sitting room, his voice a squealing fire alarm. “It’s Charles! I know it is!” The thirty seconds it takes for him to negotiate the locks gives me time to prepare for my role as the undesirable door prize—a pin popping Miles’s helium dreams of reunions. When his red face peers out of the darkness and settles upon me, he barely manages to hide his disappointment.
“Ian!” He stumbles backward. “Have you heard from Charles today?” I admire Miles’s palliative faith. He seems determined to maintain Sonny’s optimism no matter how excessive the life support. At what point will the machines be turned off, the curtain pulled, and the facts chill the body? Will Miles still stare out of his mansion window long after the summer people have fled and the first frost creeps up the Choran hillside? Maybe today, for Sonny’s sake, Charles will pass along the monastery, heading toward his home, and the world will go on like it always has, and every summer will be like the last.
Sonny is sitting in the medieval chair, her hair tied back. In a tan blouse and matching pants, her skin registers as an extension of her outfit. Adrian lies across the couch in a pair of shorts, distractedly magazine-flipping the pages of the green Bible. He sets it down on the coffee table, where the childhood photo of Charlie and Stefan lies. Rasym must have taken it from Stefan’s laptop and put it there after he deleted the note. The atlas has been returned to the shelf. Aside from Miles’s hysterical hopefulness, there is no indication of sudden distress. The bad news about Mr. K must not have reached them yet. For another few minutes, the marble statues and creaking chandelier and dusty icon paintings—all the way down to the turquoise Venini lamp and the cheap teacup ashtray dish—still safely belong to them. Next summer, if Charlie never shows, the house and all of its contents could be in unfamiliar hands. Obituary writers across the world are currently darkening their computer screens with lists of Konstantinou accomplishments. But this room is still dumb to the facts that will destroy it.
“Where’s Louise?” Sonny asks quietly as Miles hurries to retrieve his drink on the table. “She was supposed to meet me this morning on the boat. She’s not answering my texts.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Or the strength. Or even the right words to inflict it. Sonny never had many friends here. And if she doesn’t have them here, where does she?
“We had a fight,” I reply. “A bad one. She packed her bags and left.”
Sonny puffs her cheeks and offers a tight, compassionate frown. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I was hoping for you two. I know she had some guy back home who she wasn’t all that crazy about. I thought you might change her mind.”
“Me too.” And still if you asked me to meet you, and set a time and place, I might walk halfway there before turning around. And if you e-mailed me, I might write a short reply and save it in the draft folder.
“Did you see all the police activity this morning?” Adrian asks me.
“What police?” Miles interrupts. He uses the moisture of his glass to slick his bangs back. “On Patmos?”
“Some sort of raid on the hippies,” Adrian says with his immaculate smile. “Drugs, I heard. Selling or smuggling.” Sonny darts her eyes at me, the connection to Charlie’s boat company hovering. But whatever she almost grasps falls away and she sets her sights on the light in the window. “I feel bad for them. When you’re young you should be allowed to make mistakes. There should be laws protecting mistakes.”
“The dragon stood on the shore of the sea,” Miles quotes. He unleashes a squawking laugh. “Who would have imagined the Hellenic police force was actually capable of arresting anyone?”
“I guess that’s what the camp was praying for in a way,” Sonny murmurs. “An end. Some things do come to an end. Even if it’s not how they envisioned it.”
Miles catches the pain in her voice. He kneels down next to her, staring up with drunken love. “I would take it back if I could. If I could go back to that night and not have punched Charles, I would. You know that, don’t you?”
“Miles,” she warns through gritted teeth. “I told you it’s not your fault.”
He grabs the photo on the coffee table, gazing at the two Konstantinou boys he knew as a kid during summers on the island. “He’s alive,” Miles says. “Don’t give up hope. If he’s not back by tomorrow, Rasym’s search party will find him.” He’s relied on alcohol to keep his hope alive, but alcohol only fools the drinker.
Sonny balls her fingers and rises from the chair. She walks to the window. Miles remains draped across the floor like a man who has lost function of his legs. His glass of vodka could be a cup of spare change.
“Are you going to Cyprus with Rasym this weekend?” Sonny asks Adrian.
Adrian’s smile briefly stalls. “No,” he replies. “I’m not sure where I’ll go. It’s still too hot for Kraków, and there’s so much August left. I was thinking Stromboli, or Biarritz, or maybe Sharm el-Sheikh. A friend has a house in Tenerife.” Adrian lists places like flowers he’s cultivated in his garden, as if they bloom in summer simply for him. I may temporarily be a millionaire, but Adrian has the whole world in his pocket. He has all of the days that his looks endure not to settle down.
“I’d kill to go with you,” Sonny says. “I’d do anything to get off this island for a week. I’d take a boat tomorrow.”
“You can’t leave,” Miles pleads from the floor. “You and Duck will stay, won’t you? Sonny, I swear to you, he’s going to come back, he’s—” Sonny tightens her fists, and Miles finally realizes he’s overplayed his optimism. He tucks the snapshot into the Bible, as if to hide any trace of Charlie from her. “Once Rasym’s gone, you’ll have the house to yourself. And I can watch Duck if you need time alone. It can be however you want.”
But it can’t. Because what isn’t here is yelling right into her eyes. She steps toward the balcony to escape the claustrophobia of the room. But as she reaches for the handle, Rasym’s voice erupts from the doorway. None of us heard him enter, and Sonny and Miles both briefly convulse in fright. Rasym’s beard is surprisingly thick for two days of growth.
“Charlie’s father died this afternoon,” he announces flatly. For a second, the room goes silent, and the faint bleeps of a video game ping from downstairs.
“What?” Miles yells, climbing to his feet. “His father? You can’t be serious?”
Adrian rises from the couch and heads toward Rasym. Once he nears his boyfriend, he seems uncertain how to navigate a consoling gesture. I wonder if they’ve had an argument, but eventually Adrian finds his way in and pulls him close. Sonny squints at Rasym, her mouth moving underneath closed lips. She has no one to comfort but herself.
“Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?” Miles groans with such anguish you’d have thought it was his own father. He latches his arm around his stomach.
“Of course I’m sure,” Rasym responds. “There had been positive signs this morning of a recovery. He was even awake for a few minutes. But it didn’t last.”
“He was awake?” Sonny asks delicately. She must realize what little grief is allotted to her in front of Charlie’s cousin. “Did he say anything? Anything about what’s happened to Charlie or Stefan?”
Rasym shakes his head. “He was told they were on their way to see him.”
Miles is careening around the room, wiping his mouth, gripping the edges of the sofa and chairs. Sonny extends her hand to stop the constant circling, but he pushes by her, quickening his speed.
“It can’t end like tha
t,” he rattles. “Without a word from his sons? What’s the point then, if they weren’t even there? Alone in a hospital! All by himself!” Of everyone in the room, Miles has the least reason to mourn Mr. K. But his intoxication seems to have invested this death with particular tragedy. He isn’t wrong. There will be two funerals now for the Konstantinous in Nicosia. How much longer until it’s three? “All for nothing!” he cries. “Without ever hearing the truth!” The rest of us stand in the eye of Miles’s hurricane.
“They decided it was best not to tell him about Stefan.” Rasym’s voice takes on a defensive edge. “They thought he might fight harder to live if he knew his sons were on their way. He even managed to write Charlie a note. All it said was that he loved him and hoped he’d see him again. Exactly that: I hope I see you again, son.” Rasym chokes on the last words.
“But the search party is still coming tomorrow, isn’t it?” Sonny asks. “That hasn’t changed, has it? They will still look for Charlie?”
For the first time a flicker of sympathy for Sonny passes over Rasym’s face.
“Yes. And you and Duck are still welcome in Nicosia. Have you told her she’s not going back to California? There’s an English school a few blocks from the house. My father has already spoken to them. It will be a good place for her. I promise.”
The room is eerily peaceful. Miles is no longer circling. A puncture of daylight brightens the foyer as he steps out the front door without saying good-bye.
Sonny drifts onto the balcony and takes a seat at the metal table.
Adrian’s blue eyes glisten like windshield cleaner. “I’ll go with you to Nicosia,” he tells Rasym. “I’ll help.”
“My family is there,” he demurs, trying to harness Stefan’s aloof, professional tone. After all, Rasym is primed to inherit a thriving business. He didn’t get my job with Charlie, but he might have gotten Stefan’s at the firm. Now isn’t the time for him to show the weakness of a human being. “It will be too hectic. It’s better if you stay behind.”
The Destroyers Page 50
