“We should get some sleep,” Lena said. “That’s the smartest thing to do. That way we can get up early and get to work.”
They did get to work in the morning. And yet, preoccupied as they were by their loss and their mission, they couldn’t help being awed by what the sun showed them.
“This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. A thousand times more beautiful than the next most beautiful place,” Carmen said.
Lena thought that too. She felt a great giddiness along with a deep satisfaction at getting to share it with them. Another unexpected gift, courtesy of the Pants, she thought.
She told them about the formation of the Caldera, really a giant crater left by what was possibly the hugest volcanic explosion in the history of the world. It sank the whole middle of the island, leaving sheared cliffs around a center of water.
“And what about those islands?” Bee asked, squinting over the water to three masses of land floating in the Caldera.
“Patches of lava left over,” Lena explained.
Lena led them along the sloped paths where they thought the wind could have carried the Pants from Valia’s patio. The whitewashed houses and crumbling churches, the dazzling blue of the domes and doors, the blinding pink of the climbing bougainvillea, all of it was so intoxicating to the eyes it was hard to stay focused on the job at hand. After a few hours in the sun, they took a break in the shade and tried to strategize.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone found them,” Tibby said.
“That’s a good point,” Lena said.
They went to town. Luckily, most of the shopkeepers spoke at least a little English. Lena went armed with a picture.
“We’re looking for something,” she explained to a man in a clothing shop. She pulled out the picture of the Pants as worn by Tibby last summer at the beach. She pointed to the Pants. “We lost these.”
The shopkeeper looked alarmed. “You lost this girl?” He put on his glasses and held the photograph up close.
“No, she’s right here,” Bridget explained. “We lost those Pants.”
They found a copy shop in town. Using the photograph, they blew up the image of the Pants, beheaded Tibby, and circled the Pants with a thick black marker. LOST PANTS, Lena wrote in English and Greek. The copy lady helped with the translation. Lena put down her grandmother’s address and number. REWARD!, she wrote in Greek.
While they waited for fifty copies to be made, Lena gave them a little tour.
“This is the forge that belonged to Kostos’s grandfather. I think he sold it in the last year or two. That’s where Kostos used to work,” she explained. “That’s where we kissed the first time,” she added as an aside.
She took them down to the little harbor. “Did you ever see the picture I drew of this? It was one of the first ones I ever liked. Kostos and I went swimming here.”
“There’s a certain theme to this tour, I think,” Tibby said.
“Ha ha,” Lena said. As they stood on the dock she pretended to push Tibby into the water.
“How could you not fall in love here?” Bee asked.
Inspired by her thoughts of love and of beauty, of ancient places and dirt floors, Bee lifted her arms to the sky and did an arcing dive off the dock into the sea. It was thrillingly cold. She popped her head through the surface and screamed with joy.
Because they were her friends, and perfect friends in nearly all ways, the three of them screamed back and dove in after her.
They all shouted about how cold it was. They swam around screaming in their wet, billowing clothes. Bee hauled herself out first and helped the others, who were laughing and shivering so hard she was afraid they might drown from elation and harebrained stupidity.
They all lay side by side on the dock so the sun could dry them. The sky was the most perfect and cloudless blue.
Bee loved the sun. She loved her heavy, dripping clothes. She loved the water lapping against the pilings beneath her. She protested aloud at the encroachment of Tibby’s cold toes against her shin, but she loved that, too.
She belonged to her friends and they to her. That much she knew, even if the Pants were temporarily mislaid.
“I think our copies are probably ready,” Carmen pointed out dreamily.
They posted their signs all over the place. Throughout Oia and its environs.
“I think we should cover Fira, too,” Lena suggested.
So they went to Fira that evening with fifty more. They were fanning out, posting them around the crowded tourist spots, when Bee came running.
“Lena! I think I just saw Kostos.”
Lena felt the zzzzt of electrical current up her back.
“You never even met Kostos,” Tibby said, appearing next to her.
“Well, I know, but I saw his picture,” Bee insisted.
Lena looked around, trying to feel calm. She did a slow, calm survey. “My grandmother said he’s not here. He hasn’t been around all summer. Where do you think you saw him?”
Bee pointed to a corner with a café and a bike shop.
“What are the chances? You probably imagined it,” Carmen said. She stood protectively by Lena.
“Carma, he does live here,” Bee pointed out. “It’s not like I’m claiming to have seen him in Milwaukee or something.”
“Whether he was or wasn’t, he does kind of haunt this place,” Lena said diplomatically. “I am the first to admit that. Anyway, let’s keep going.”
They posted their signs until it was dark, Lena distractedly imagining she saw Kostos everywhere.
“Now we’ll go home and wait for people to call us,” Lena said.
At home Lena stepped into the kitchen, where Valia had cooked up a huge feast. “Grandma, Kostos isn’t on the island, is he?”
“I heard he’s traveling all this summer. I don’t see him vunce. I talk to Rena, but I don’t know vhere he goes.” Valia was pretending to be dismissive of Kostos. Like Lena, she’d spent too much time hoping.
They had a long, cozy night at home. Valia went to bed early but left them a bottle of red wine. They sat on the floor drinking and talking and talking and talking.
It was magical, but by the time they dragged themselves up to bed they realized that in spite of one hundred signs, not one person had called.
Lena was the only early riser of the group, and her body seemed to adjust most quickly to Greek time. At sunrise, she decided to take a walk.
She took a long, slow walk. First she thought about Effie and then about Bapi, and after that she let herself think about Kostos.
It was fitting, in a way, to walk and see all these ruins. Here, on this island, the place where she’d both given away her heart and seen it broken, there were ruins all around, though not all of them ancient.
Ruins stood for what was lost, and yet they were beautiful—peaceful, historic, intellectual. Not tragic or regrettable. Lena tried to keep hers that way too, and she succeeded to some extent. Why not celebrate what you had had rather than spend your time mourning its passing? There could be joy in things that ended.
Still, it surprised her how much she was thinking of him here, how often she thought she saw him. Around the corner, looking out a window, sitting at a table in a café. Not a ghost or a memory of Kostos, but Kostos as he was now.
“It’s weird. Now I keep thinking I see him,” she confided to Bee later that day when they were canvassing people around the Paradise and Pori beaches.
“What do you think when you do?” Bee asked.
Lena considered this question as she showered before dinner.
After the scene in the motel in Providence, Lena knew she had changed. She knew she had destroyed whatever remained of her and Kostos. God, what must he think of her now?
She wasn’t who he thought she was. She wasn’t who she thought she was. She had displayed an ugliness he hadn’t imagined was there. But it was a relief, in a way. If that was part of who she was, he should know it. He shouldn’t be tricked. And there was
a perverse, childlike part of her that wanted to get to be ugly sometimes.
She wondered about him. Had he ever really been able to love her? Did she really love him? There was undoubtedly something beautiful in longing and wishing. Their love story stayed perfect because they couldn’t have it.
But could he love her imperfection? Would he accept the fact that she wasn’t always beautiful? Could he allow imperfection in himself? Would he give up being lovable for her sake?
They had their imagined love. It had been wrenching and beautiful. But she wondered now whether either of them had ever had the stomach for the real thing.
The following day they tried the port of Athinios, where the ferries came in. They posted signs and they went shop to shop and restaurant to restaurant. Valia had by now trained them how to ask “Have you seen these Pants?” in Greek. They even learned to say it in French and German.
There was one moment of excitement when an ice cream scooper said, “Oh, I saw those.” But after all four of them closed in on him, they realized he meant he’d seen the signs.
“We aren’t getting hopeless, are we?” Tibby asked. She couldn’t hide her worry.
“No,” Bee reassured her.
“We’ll find them. They want us to find them,” Carmen said.
Tibby sensed that none of them was willing to think about it any other way. Or at least, they weren’t yet willing to say so.
When they got home from Athinios, Lena’s grandmother was waiting inside her door. She practically tackled Lena as soon as she saw her.
“Kostos is here!” she said. Her fingers were pressing a little too hard into Lena’s shoulders.
“What?”
“He’s here. He’s looking for you.”
Her friends clustered around her.
“He’s looking for me?” she echoed.
“Oh, boy,” Tibby said.
“See, he is here,” Bee said.
“He said he’s leaving the island and he vanted to find you before he left.”
Lena’s heart started to rampage in its old familiar way. “Where did he go?”
“He said he vould look for you at the grove.” She shrugged. “I don’t know vhat, but he valked up.” She pointed.
Lena knew what. “Thanks, Grandma.” She paused, trying to gather her feelings around her.
“Are you going?” Valia looked like she was going to go for her if Lena didn’t hurry up.
“Yes, I’m going.”
With words of caution and encouragement from her friends, Lena walked slowly up the hill. It was strange. She thought she’d found some place of calm regarding Kostos. Why was her heart racing?
Why did he want to see her? What more was there to say? She couldn’t have been clearer than she had been. She was frankly surprised to think she hadn’t scared him off for a lifetime.
Of the things she’d said, would she take any of it back? Did she want to? Was that why her heart was racing?
She walked up and up until the cliff leveled into a sort of plateau. She was happy to see how green it was again. The rain had been good this year.
Yes, some of the things she’d said that night had been lies. Maybe she’d correct a few of those if she could, but they represented some kind of truth, and she had needed to get it out. She was glad she had, if only so she could move on with her life.
Her heart rose at the sight of his back as he stood in their grove. Some feelings you just couldn’t kill, no matter how much they deserved it. He turned and saw her as she came close.
Why did he look happy to see her? Why was she so happy to see him?
“We always come back to here, don’t we?” she said.
He nodded. He looked better. Not in handsomeness, exactly. He looked straighter, fuller, stronger. He’d worn a hangdog, hopeful look last time, in Providence, but he didn’t look that way now.
He rolled up his pants and they sat side by side at the edge of the pond. The water was so cold Lena yelped, and he laughed.
He doused his feet and then he reached in and washed his hands. She kept her hands in her lap. She looked at the foot of scrubby grass separating them.
“I’ve been unhappy,” he told her. She believed him, though he didn’t look very unhappy now.
“I was awful to you,” she said.
He plunged his hands into the water again and shook them out. “I have a story to tell you,” he said, looking at her directly.
“Okay,” she said uncertainly. She had a feeling she was going to play a role in this story.
“Remember how you asked if I thought you would rush into my arms when you saw me?”
She winced. She’d said it cruelly then. She’d wanted to hurt him.
“Well, that is what I thought,” he declared unflinchingly. “When I flew to see you, I packed clothes to last me for two months. I imagined I would call my grandmother and she would send the rest of my stuff in boxes. Because I did think you would rush into my arms and we would be together forever.”
As painful as this was to hear, she admired his honesty.
“I called the Greek consulate. I started working on a student visa. I got transfer applications to three universities near you.”
As much as she admired his honesty, she wished he would stop now.
“I brought a ring.”
Lena chewed her cheek so hard she tasted blood. How could he tell her these things? They were clearly as painful for him to say as they were for her to hear. She couldn’t think of any way to respond.
“I didn’t think we would get married. Not in the first few years. But I wanted to give you something to show you that I would never leave you again.”
She felt the boot in the head. The unexpected tears. She felt herself softening for him; she could feel her body changing.
He was tough. He was gritting his way through this confession. She could tell he wasn’t going to stop until it was done.
“I worked two different jobs, almost a hundred hours a week for the last two years, and I spent almost everything I made on the ring. It was good to be distracted and also to think I could make it up to you.”
Lena’s friends teased her for the humming sound she made when she felt their unhappiness. She heard herself make that sound now.
“Do you know what I did with it?”
He was staring at her so fixedly she realized he expected her to answer. She shook her head.
“I threw it into the Caldera.”
Her eyes were wide.
“You know what I did after that?” The recklessness with which he told his story seemed to capture the recklessness of what he had done.
She shook her head again.
“I broke into the house of my former wife and I stole the ring I had given her and I also threw that into the sea.”
Lena just stared at him.
“It didn’t mean anything compared to your ring, but it gave me a feeling of ending.”
She nodded.
“But then Mariana called the police, and so I confessed to the crime and spent a night in jail in Fira.” He told it very matter-of-factly.
“No,” said Lena.
He nodded. He actually looked pleased with himself.
“I have a mug shot,” he said, almost cheerfully.
She thought of it. Lovable Kostos in a mug shot. It was insane. It was funny. But she couldn’t help being impressed by him. She’d credited herself with the capacity for destruction. She had underestimated his.
“My grandfather picked me up. Thankfully, I was released without fines.”
“What did he say?” It was hard to picture.
“Well.” Kostos’s face returned to solemnity. “He pretended it hadn’t happened. We never talked about it.”
Lena made the humming sound again. She realized this confession was part of Kostos’s penance. It was her penance too.
The sun was beginning to set. The pink light on the silvery olive leaves was as lovely as anything she could remember. She knew Valia
would be putting dinner out soon.
“You are leaving for somewhere,” she said.
“I take the first morning ferry. I’m flying to London tomorrow.”
“To London?”
“Back to the School of Economics. They held a place.”
“Oh. Of course.” That was the difference about him now, she realized. He was undaunted. He was sturdier than he had been before. His anger at her had burned away the guilt. He had forced himself to get over her.
How powerful it was to give up your desires. It was like bargaining for a rug. Your only leverage was being able to walk away.
“I can start where I left off. I even got a room in my old flat.”
Her throat ached. “God. It’s like the clock turned back. It’s just like we’re back to the summer we met. It’s late August and you’re going off to London and I’m going back home for school.”
He nodded.
“You can almost imagine away all the things that happened in between,” she said.
He was thoughtful as he looked at her. “But you can’t, can you?”
“No, you can’t.” She saw the fair orange circle of sun in the still water. She put her hands in to fur the edges. She brought cold, watery hands to her warm cheeks.
He stood up and so did she. He put out his hand to shake. Hers was still wet. “I guess we should say good-bye,” he said.
It was easier to be together, to talk, now that they had both given up.
“Yes. I guess it is.”
“Good luck with everything, Lena. I hope you will be happy.”
“Thanks. I hope you’ll be happy too.”
“Well, then.”
“Good-bye.”
He cleared his throat a little bit as she walked away. She turned around.
“There’s a full moon tonight,” he said before he walked a separate way.
As soon as he was out of sight, Lena felt that old feeling of missing him. It didn’t cut like a raw wound. It was the ache of a flu coming on.
Had they really gotten over each other? she wondered. It seemed more like they had gotten over themselves.
Lena was quiet through dinner, watching the tanned, beloved faces of her friends, enjoying their banter. She loved how Valia laughed when Carmen teased her.
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood Page 24
