“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Gretchen remarked, “but I’d go diving again tomorrow if I had the chance.”
“We have the gear all week,” said Simon, tearing his gaze from Melissa and Brad. “Totally could. At the other end of the island, there’s a submerged city. Ruins of temples and stuff. Roman or whatever. Greek, I guess. We’d need to get started pretty early but . . .”
“Let’s play it by ear,” said Melissa. “Gotta get some shopping in, right, ladies?”
Kristen said, “Oh, I think so,” and reached over the table for a high five. Gretchen hastily added an “Absolutely!” and half reached for the high five, but slid her hand under the table when she realized she had been a moment too late. Again I looked quickly away.
“Maybe another day,” said Marcus, whose curiosity was obviously piqued.
“Yeah,” said Simon. “I thought you’d like that, professor.”
“Not a professor,” said Marcus, smiling, humble. “Just a lowly high school history teacher.”
“Public school too,” said Brad. “How’s that for dedication?”
I saw Marcus’s eyes harden a little, but he made the best of it.
“Lots of great kids,” he said. “Smart. Capable. Just because they can’t afford—”
“You have, like, metal detectors and stuff?” said Brad. “Keep the gangs under control.”
“No,” said Marcus.
“Maybe they build them in shop class,” said Simon, grinning. “They still have shop? Woodworking? Car mechanics? Cooking classes?”
“Bojangles has to get its staff somewhere, right?” said Brad.
“I teach history,” said Marcus, his jaw tight. “AP and IB courses. We get some of the best college placement in the state . . .”
“Oh, no doubt,” said Melissa. “They didn’t mean anything by it, did you Simon? Brad?”
“Just kidding around, man,” said Simon.
“Yeah,” said Brad. “Don’t tell me you grew out of your sense of humor, professor.”
“My sense of humor is well intact,” said Marcus, putting his knife and fork down and meeting Brad’s skeletal grin with something like defiance.
“That’s so cool,” said Gretchen, apparently missing the shift in the tone of the conversation. “You guys have such cool jobs.”
I tore my eyes from Marcus, who was still staring Brad down, and tried to use what she had said to redirect the group, but it wasn’t easy. My job was far from cool.
“Not really,” I said. “I mean, they have cool jobs,” I added, nodding expansively to the others, including Marcus. “I’m one notch up from your basic salesclerk.”
“That’s not true,” said Marcus loyally. “You’re a team manager for a major retail chain.”
Just not an executive team leader . . .
“See?” said Gretchen guilelessly. “That is cool. Might not be doing CGI trolls or dinosaurs or whatever, but it’s still better than answering phones for lawyers.”
I felt my heart leap into my throat and forced myself to look at my plate, where the remains of fish skin and bones were congealing in a little stream of olive oil.
“I’m sure there’s more to being a legal secretary than just answering phones,” said Marcus, smiling. The kindness of his tone struck me as familiar, and I couldn’t help but look up just as Kristen said,
“Who does CGI dinosaurs?”
“Jan’s sister,” said Gretchen. “Right, Jan?”
Marcus didn’t look at me but he went very still, his blank gaze locked onto the table, fork suspended in the air, as if he’d forgotten about it.
“Oh, right,” I said quickly. “Yes. So what are you guys hoping to shop for?”
I kept my eyes fixed on Melissa as she started to talk, but I didn’t hear a word of it. All I could hear was the blood singing in my ears. All I could feel was the force of Marcus not looking at me.
We got to Knossos late. The upside of that was we had the place largely to ourselves, the tour buses at the entrance loading up and pulling out as we were buying our entry tickets. The downside, of course, was that we only had forty-five minutes to do the entire site.
“I’m just going to sit here,” said Melissa.
“Really?” said Marcus. “It’s an amazing site. There’s so much to see.”
She shrugged and flipped her shades down over her eyes.
“I can see it from here,” she said. “I don’t need to really look. I’ll just . . . absorb it from where I am. If you see anything really cool, take pictures. You guys can tell me about it later.”
Marcus gave her a look of true perplexity, then shrugged and smiled. He hadn’t spoken to me since our late lunch, and I felt his silence like a cloud. I had gotten into the car, deliberately leaving a seat open for him, but he went to the bathroom as we were leaving the restaurant, so Gretchen got in next to me. I tried to pretend he hadn’t done it on purpose, but the way he stared quietly out of his side window, never engaging the rest of the group or turning in my direction, suggested otherwise.
The archaeological site of Knossos was a baffling mixture of fragmented walls and exposed foundations made from pale sand-colored stone on the one hand and, on the other, monumental reconstructions complete with bright-red painted columns. There were information boards displaying two-headed axes and bulls engaged in some kind of sport in which people ran from or vaulted over the massive horned animals—practices supposedly connected to the legend of the Minotaur which had, in myth, roamed the labyrinth below the palace itself on this very spot. This was the monster killed by Theseus, who then found his way out of the labyrinth using the thread given to him by . . . Arachne? No, that’s the spider lady who challenged Athena to a weaving contest or something. Ariadne? Maybe. Anyway, Theseus slew the Minotaur, then retraced his steps by following the thread he had spooled out when he first went in. The information boards had precious little to say about the mythology connected to the site, however, as if the place’s more fanciful associations were a bit of an embarrassment, despite their domination of the souvenir shops. In other circumstances I would have been disappointed.
But I had other things on my mind.
I kept a watchful eye on Marcus, but he did not look at me, so I drifted around the ruins, not sure what I was looking at, further disappointed when I saw that the spectacular frescoes of dolphins and women with distinctively braided ringlets were all reproductions, the originals having been moved for safety to a museum in Heraklion. The sign said so. I wouldn’t have known otherwise, and I found myself resenting the little information I was being given for somehow deflating my sense of the place.
Gretchen, looking prematurely drunk, wandered equally aimlessly, while Brad, Simon, and Kristen stayed together in a group, chatting about work and food and exercise and cars, as they always seemed to. They could have been anywhere. I felt uninformed and ashamed to be so. They didn’t seem to feel anything at all, and within minutes I could hear Gretchen complaining that her feet ached and there was nothing to see, as if it was the place’s fault that they were bored.
Only Marcus treated the site with the kind of scrutiny it deserved, but he kept his distance from me, and after a while I started wishing I was more like the others for whom the place and its ancient historical significance was, at best, irrelevant to them, their lives, and the things they valued. The idea depressed me and made me seek out Marcus, whether he wanted to talk to me or not.
“Pretty cool, huh?” I said.
He gave me a sidelong glance, then returned to what he was looking at—a stone-flagged chamber labeled as the Throne Room, with red painted walls, stone benches, and an impressive chair facing a pale basin, both carved from single pieces of rock.
“Yeah,” he said. “Too bad we’ve been given, like, ten minutes to go through one of the most important sites in the ancient world.”
“It’s pretty confusing,” I said, trying to give him an opening. Marcus loved to explain things. He was a natural teacher.
“It’s a controversial site,” he said, not looking at me.