by Craig Holden
“Oh, don’t even bother. We both know better.”
“Where…I mean, what happened?”
“It was a mess, that’s what. We only got in here yesterday morning.”
“Why didn’t you—”
“We were watching. We each had our reasons. He was really of the mind that we didn’t need to disturb you if it wasn’t necessary. He can be surprisingly thoughtful. I, on the other hand, am not nearly so nice. I was just watching out of a kind of prurient interest—and because, as angry as I was already, I thought I could build on it a little more, you know. Really get up a head of steam. And I’ve got one.”
“Will will come back here.”
Justine shook her head. “He’s with Maurice.”
“Whatever you’re going to do—I can get you so much money.” Darcy laid the pillow aside, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and looked levelly at Justine.
“I don’t want your daddy’s money.”
“You don’t even know how much.”
“Nor do I care.”
“You did. You sure cared a lot in Rome. You couldn’t wait to get your hands on it.”
“Well, that was a long, long time ago, wasn’t it? I think we all had different priorities then. Amazing what ten days can do.”
“Shit.”
“You’re not swearing in French. Have you noticed that? It happens when you’re under stress. Funny how that works. Veneers—and how they fail. How the real person shows through sooner or later.”
Darcy shook her head and looked at the floor.
“Oh, come now. You know exactly what I mean. From the first, I felt it. This…recognition. You know how you feel that with someone sometimes? Your whole life can go to ruin because of it, but still you have to let it happen. That sort of thing—recognition, reunion, vibe, whatever—it doesn’t happen so often. It’s quite remarkable, startling, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re just not letting yourself admit it, but it drove you as much as it did me, all the way here.”
“I didn’t come here because of you.”
“Well, yes, you did.”
“I did not.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because of Will.”
“But I told him to come here. I told you both.”
“I was just going to go. To have a trip, you know. To just not be bored. And to be with him.”
“It goes back further than that—all the way to Rome. When you came with us, you knew we were never going to deliver you to your little group in Florence.”
“I did not.”
“Yes, you did. In your heart you knew it, and you prayed that you were right.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Merde is a much nicer word. You really should go back to it. Even before that, though, you knew. You knew the wine was wrong, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“It must’ve tasted funny, and it didn’t look right. Bit of a bluish cast to it, no? I know you noticed. I saw you. I was so far in your head that night, I might as well have been fucking your brain.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Well, not yet.”
“You don’t know anything about my head.”
“Oh, I do, little girl. More than you could imagine. Far more than you know about yourself.”
Justine stood, went over to the bed, and sat down. The girl pushed herself back against the wall again, into the corner, clutched the pillow, and said, “Get away!”
“Shh, pussy. Listen.”
She looked up and said, “What?”
“I’m going to hurt you.”
“What?”
“In ways you’ve never imagined. Because you see, even though you’ve been a monstrous pain in my ass and you’re an ungrateful, spoiled, nasty girl, and you stole away my boy and acted like a little whore, any one of which would be reason for me to just cut your pretty throat and have you dumped in the sea, I am going to give you what you’ve been wanting for so long you can’t even remember when it began.”
She reached up and lifted a lock of the girl’s hair and let it slide through her fingers. The girl couldn’t push herself any farther back. She turned her head from one side to the other, trying to keep the hand away. And when she reached up with her own hand to move Justine’s, Justine slapped it hard enough that the crack echoed from the plaster walls and the girl shrieked.
“You see?” Justine said.
“What the fuck—”
“It’ll be easier for us both if you relax. Really. You’re not going anywhere. You’re mine till sunrise, so you might as well make the best of it. I have a bottle of good English gin in that bag, along with my toys. Would you care for a drink?”
“Yours till sunrise for what?”
“For me to beat you.”
“Is this your sick revenge?”
“Not at all. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw you. Disciplining your lovely ass.”
“But why?”
“Well, because it’s what I do. It’s how I take my own pleasure from the world. Ask your boyfriend, if you ever see him again, about some of the scenes we put on. Mmm. He’s a natural submissive. He responds to power, surrenders to it—as did Maurice. Many do. It makes them comfortable. Makes them feel as if the world is an ordered place.”
Darcy covered her face and breathed, then said, “What happens at sunrise?”
“We deliver the package.”
“I cut it open. There’s nothing in it but newspaper.”
“Well, then, I guess that’s not the package after all, is it?”
“It’s me,” the girl said. “Isn’t it?”
Justine smiled.
With a cry, Little Bitch leaped at her. With fingers arched and claws extruded, she went for the eyes. But Justine had been waiting for it. She swung her arms and deflected the thrust so that Little Bitch fell off the bed, and then Justine was on her. The girl was stronger, there was no doubt, but these things were never about physical strength.
Justine held her against the cool floor. “Shh. Listen, pussy. Maybe I’m wrong about you, but I don’t think so. And if I’m not wrong, then you know it. You just have to let yourself accept it. Let yourself have what you’ve been looking for for so long. It’s why you steal, you know. You want to be corrected, but no one ever has—not really. And it’s left you unmoored, floating. I can take that away, but only if you’ll let me.”
The girl was crying now. Justine felt her let go, when she finally saw how it was going to be. She was not stupid. She was frighteningly bright, really. Justine had known that. But there was something else behind it now, too—a kind of peace. That did not come as a surprise.
Justine said, “That’s better, isn’t it? You know who I am. You know how happy you can be. Join the world already. It’s a wonderful place.”
The girl was quiet another moment, then she said, “I think I will have a drink.”
“Of course you will. Come.” Justine stood and helped the girl back onto the bed. “I’m afraid we’ll have to do without ice, uncivilized as that is, but I did manage to find a lime.”
“That’s fine.”
They drank in silence, quickly, with a purpose. The gin was smooth and the lime tart, and it went down well. And then Justine set the glasses aside and leaned forward until she could feel Little Bitch’s breath on her face, could smell the gin and lime, and under that the fish she’d had for dinner and the horrible Greek excuse for liqueur. Justine licked her face. And licked her face again, up one cheek to the pretty eye and across and down the other.
And then the girl, finally knowing that she was home, could only say, “Oh, God,” and their mouths were each upon the other. And then Justine took hold of the front of the little black dress with both her hands, pulled until it ripped, and tore it all away. And as her tongue searched the girl’s mouth, she took her nipples between her fingernails.
“Such tits,” she whispered, and then she pinched. The girl’s mouth opened all the way when she screamed so that Justine could now explore its very depths.
IN THE MORNING, WHEN THE first threads of light wove themselves through the darkness, Justine shook her and said, “Come. It’s time to quit this dump.”
“Mmm,” the girl said. She had fallen asleep minutes earlier, her head on Justine’s thigh.
“Come, love.”
“Where?”
“We have to deliver the package.”
“Let’s just run away.”
Justine said, “Mmm. You are just a silly little bitch, aren’t you?” And she kissed her.
“Please,” the girl said.
“Shh.”
“Please don’t. Please.”
Justine felt hot tears running down between her legs. She said, “Shh. You’ll be fine. I’ll help you.”
The girl went into the bathroom to dress and stuffed her clothing into her new red backpack. They went outside into the dim dawn to find Karl waiting in Maurice’s ancient Mercedes 600 saloon. She helped the girl into the back, sat beside her, and held her as they drove through the quiet town toward the hills and the pass that led to Matala.
Matala
Thirteen
D ARCY SETTLED INTO THE OLD cool leather and pressed herself against Justine. She did not want to be away from her, to be parted from her even by the space of a backseat. Justine lifted her arm and laid it over Darcy’s shoulders.
“Please,” Darcy said.
“Shh. Quiet, pussy.”
The road was new and wide and black, and followed the shoreline at first. When it turned into the mountains, it rose steeply, and Karl dropped into a lower gear. The engine whined, and they could feel the vibration of the strain. The breeze through the partially opened window was warm, and Darcy smelled the sea and the Greek mountain air, and imagined how old this place was, how long there had been people here. Her head grew light with the thoughts of it. Then she closed her eyes, let her head fall back against Justine, and breathed in her smell as well, and everything still seemed possible.
“Tell me something,” Justine said. “When did you open the package?”
“Yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you look sooner? I don’t understand that. I’d have looked as soon as possible to at least know what the game was.” She was quiet and then said, “I hoped you’d look. Then maybe you wouldn’t have come all the way here.”
“I probably still would have.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“When you found it was empty, why didn’t you run?”
Darcy shrugged. “What’s the difference?”
“You’re a stupid girl,” said Justine. “I wanted you to come. I wanted to have last night. I’ve dreamt of that. But I didn’t want you to. I wanted to think of you out there somewhere. Running. Stealing. Doing what you do.” She began to cry a little, for the second time in the few days that Darcy had been with her.
Darcy reached up, touched her wet cheek, and tasted the tears. “We can still go, you know.”
Justine shook her head.
After they had climbed for some time, the road turned back to cobbles and they came to a small village. They found themselves in the midst of a procession of some kind, with the men in black and white and the women and children following. Darcy thought at first it was a funeral, but there was no casket. Then she remembered it was Christmas morning. The children stared at them. The street in the town was so narrow and Karl had to pull so far over that she could have reached through the window and run her fingers along the rough façades of the whitewashed houses.
“Tell me why,” Darcy said. She touched Justine’s hair, held it, pressed it to her nose.
“Just money.”
“Stupid old money. But you said you didn’t care about it anymore.”
“No. I said I didn’t want your father’s money.”
Justine had stopped crying, but her cheeks were red with the wind and the wetness.
Darcy felt a heaviness in her belly, the near sickness of mortal fear, but she also felt a calm she had not felt in a long time. She didn’t know exactly what was planned for her, but she found that she didn’t care—at least about the details. It would be bad if it happened, and that was all she really needed to know. Even without looking in the package, she had known since Athens that something was wrong in all this, as Matthew had known. But this was not the end of the game, though it was the beginning of the end. She was excited for it to play out but was rendered nearly numb at the real possibility that it could end very badly for her. And yet she felt composed. She was as good as Justine at all this. She knew she was now, and soon Justine would know as well. Perhaps it would turn out that she would not win. But Justine would know. Perhaps, she thought, neither of them would win. In a way, that would be best.
After the village, the road immediately began to fall. Karl let it go, and Darcy felt her stomach rise as they dropped faster and faster until she knew that if he erred at all, they’d go over the edge. But she trusted completely in his sense of machines and mechanics and of controlled falling. She had never met him before, but she knew that he was very good at this.
At one point the road leveled out, and they passed along a high chain-link fence with rolled razor wire at the top and then a sign saying that it was a United States military establishment and the taking of photographs in the area was strictly prohibited.
Then they were dropping again. Justine hugged her tightly and leaned with her into the curves. Soon they were down, and the trees opened up and there was the sea again before them. Darcy felt as though they’d arrived at something she knew.
Darcy tapped Justine’s leg and pointed at the high red cliffs. Even from that distance she could make out the rows of black openings. “What is it?” she said.
“You don’t know about this place?”
“I saw it on a spoon.”
“Those are caves hewn into the sandstone. People have lived in them on and off for thousands of years. They were used as crypts, too. In the sixties, people lived there until they were forced out. That’s all outlawed now.”
“We could live there.”
“Don’t,” Justine said. “You’ll only make it harder.”
“On who? Me or you?”
Justine did not answer.
They came to a small dirt parking area in a dense copse of cypress and evergreens at one side of the great arena formed by the cliffs and the sand running away toward the ocean. Karl shut off the car. He did not move or speak. Justine helped Darcy out and went around to the trunk. As Darcy stood beside the saloon, she looked back along the dusty road they’d come down. Another Mercedes, a new white one, was moving along slowly in their direction. Darcy looked at it for a long moment and then turned as Justine handed her her things. Justine was carrying the duffel. Darcy put her pack over one shoulder and her purse over the other, and slipped her arm through Justine’s. They followed a narrow trail that led through the trees toward the hidden beach. When they came out, the caves were so close that she could see into the lower ones. There was something as ancient, as permanent looking about them as anything she had seen. Though they had clearly been made by men, they seemed as much a part of the landscape as the cliffs themselves or the mountains that formed the center of the island. She felt a strange, almost foreboding quiver when she looked into them. It was as if she could smell the smoke of the fires that had burned there or the odors of the people who had lived in them or the decay of the bodies that had been entombed.
They walked beneath the face toward the water. The small town lay to the south along the beach, and a lower outcropping rose immediately behind it, with houses climbing partway up its face. Several boats were moored just beyond the opening of the cove, and a little way beyond them lay a very large yacht. A hundred and fifty feet, Darcy guessed. Her father had a boat on Lake Erie, a forty-footer that they took to Sandusky or Put-in-
Bay or Pelee Island, but he talked often and hungrily of the big boys that went out through the seaway to the ocean. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have afforded one. It was just that he knew he’d never have the time to make those kinds of trips.
Justine looked out across the cove, then said, “We have a little time. Would you like a drink?”
“A blue one? No, thanks.”
Darcy felt dizzy at the thought that it had come to this and how it might still turn out—how a man must feel on death row, on the evening of his execution. A kind of deadness in itself. An unreality.
A walk in the Roman sun, a little respite, and now she might be gone.
“You’re strong,” Justine said. “Don’t ever let that go.”
“That’s it? I don’t want to be strong. I’ve always been strong—until you, because of you. And I’m supposed to just let that go because you need some cash? How do you think that makes me feel?”
“I don’t know,” Justine said. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“Yes, you have. You thought about it all the way here. Even when you hated me, even when I was horrible and ruining your life, I bet it was the only thing you could think of.”
“I’ve never thought you were horrible.”
“I was, though.”
Darcy hugged Justine’s arm, pressed her lips against her ear, and said, “Be selfish. One time in your life, do something just for you. Keep me.”
“Please. Stop.”
“I won’t. Would you let someone do this to you?”
“But you’re not me, not remotely.”
I am not you, Darcy thought, but I am your equal. And you know it. And if you think this is the end of it, then you’ve slipped from what you must once have been. But I don’t think you’ve slipped. I think you know.
“No,” Darcy said, “I’m not you. I’m yours. Siete la mia madre.”
“The real question,” Justine said, “is would I let someone do it to you?”
Fourteen
I WOKE EARLY, JUST AT DAWN , as I had each morning on the island. I had not felt like taking the pipe when we got to Maurice’s house the night before. It had stopped sounding good to me, especially when I saw that other partiers were already here—two couples who were apparently friendly enough with Maurice that they felt comfortable letting themselves in and digging into his stash. Maurice didn’t seem to mind. I had another beer and fell asleep in a room off the kitchen.
