“I don’t understand,” said Melissa, wiping her eyes. “I was so glad to see her . . .”
Melissa was sitting in the back, Simon driving, Brad in the passenger seat. Kristen took her hand and gave her a soothing look. We were all trying to turn our shock and confusion into sympathy, but it felt odd, off balance, like we had started watching a movie halfway through and couldn’t make sense of the plot. We had also been drinking—it seemed we had been drinking constantly since we had arrived—and were feeling slow and a little buzzed.
“Did any of you catch what she was yelling about?” asked Simon as he drove.
We shook our heads, and he checked our faces in the rearview mirror, scowling.
“Shouldn’t have gone,” he muttered, flashing a fierce look—somewhat surprisingly—at Melissa. For a split second Melissa’s face hardened and her lips drew back from her teeth as if she was going to turn on him, but then Gretchen was reaching forward and patting her shoulder vaguely, and she turned back to us.
“I just said hello!” she said. “I smiled at her. I didn’t think she’d remember us, but . . . I don’t understand . . .”
She sobbed.
“It’s OK,” said Simon, conciliatory now. “A misunderstanding. It’s over.”
“We’ll go shopping,” said Gretchen. It was offered as something that would cheer her up, but a mean-spirited part of me thought she also just wanted everyone to forget the incident because it didn’t involve her. How could it? She hadn’t been here last time.
“She was so mad,” said Kristen to no one in particular. She looked stunned still, like she’d just been slapped awake. “It was . . . weird. Irrational.”
“Maybe she has mental problems,” I said.
“She didn’t use to,” said Marcus. “Not that we ever saw.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Melissa, her voice quavering, tears running down her face. “How can people be hateful?”
“We’re gone now,” said Kristen.
“But I loved that place!” Melissa blurted. “It was our place. We were there all the time. And now it’s ruined.”
“You can’t think like that,” said Kristen. “So the woman has issues. You can’t let that spoil the past.”
“Too late,” said Melissa, her grief turning sulky and resentful, as she turned to stare out the car window. The traffic was heavier as we got closer to the town proper. “She spoiled it.”
“No,” I said, trying to sound breezy. “It wasn’t the same place, anyway. Not really. We’ll keep our version of the way it was in our heads.”
“And it’s not like we would have gone back again,” said Brad. “Psycho lady or no psycho lady. The food was only . . . meh.”
I saw the flicker of irritation in Simon’s face as he half turned, looking for a place to park.
“I wonder why she—” Kristen began musingly.
“Oh, come on,” muttered Brad to himself. “Who cares? Leave it.”
Kristen turned to stare at him, but Simon was starting to reverse into a parking spot.
“Down in back, please,” he said. “Thanks.”
We were a couple of blocks from the town center.
“I don’t know if I want to do this now, Simon,” said Melissa. “Maybe I should wait in the car. Take a nap.”
“No!” said Gretchen. “Let’s get out, get some air. Clear your head. Spend some of Si’s money!”
Melissa gave her a weary half smile.
“And no one made any sense of what she said?” said Simon, putting on the hand brake. “The Diogenes woman. No one understood any of it?”
Again we muttered our nos and shook our heads.
“All Greek to me,” said Brad with his trademark grin, clambering out.
“Dude,” said Simon. “You wanna be a person for a minute?”
Brad stared him down.
“You said it yourself,” he said. “We shouldn’t have gone.”
“Yeah, but we did, and she’s upset so . . .”
“You’re making a fuss over nothing,” Brad replied. “So some crazy Greek woman throws a fit because she thinks Mel is someone else? So what? Get past it.”
“Jesus, Brad,” muttered Kristen.
“What?” he demanded, rounding on her. “This is our holiday too, Kristen. Crying over some lunatic who runs a crappy restaurant isn’t my idea of a good time.”
“I’m sorry if my wife’s distress isn’t sufficiently fun for you,” snapped Simon.
“Oh, whatever,” said Brad. “Look, if you’re gonna play support group to the Wounded Warrior there for the rest of the afternoon, count me out. I’m on vacation.”
“Then maybe you should go do something else for a while, bud,” said Simon, putting a protective arm round Melissa.
For a second, I thought Brad would climb down, nod, say he was sorry, but there was something about Melissa that needled him.
“Fine,” he said. “You know, I keep casting my mind back, and I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t how anyone partied in 1999. I’ll meet you back here in two hours.”
“Four,” said Simon. “The girls want to go shopping.”
“Four?” said Brad, incredulous.
“Four,” said Kristen quietly but firmly.
Brad stared at her, his face reddening at the betrayal.
“Fine,” he said again. “Whatever. See y’all later.”
He stalked away, not looking back. His anger gave his speed the appearance of purpose, like he knew where he was going, and for a moment the rest of us just stood there watching him in awkward silence, like he’d taken the needle of our compass with him and we were suddenly lost.
“Don’t mind him,” said Kristen. “He’s just . . . Brad.”
She shrugged and smiled in a way that was both knowing and apologetic, so I reached out and touched her shoulder sympathetically.
“Now he’s spoiling everything,” Melissa whispered to Simon. “First that woman, now him.”
She sounded like a child whose Christmas had been canceled, but when I caught a look at her face, the teary pouting contained something else entirely. Her eyes were hard and fierce, her teeth set. I thought Mel had revealed a vulnerable side I hadn’t seen before. She had, after all, always seemed so together. But now I saw that she wasn’t just upset—she was angry, indignant that her plans had been disrupted. Shocked, and just a tiny bit scared by the intensity of her look, I stepped back.
“OK,” said Gretchen. She made a series of odd, wavy gestures over Melissa’s head, like she was washing her hair. Some weird, New Age ritual thing that might or might not have been a joke. “And we’re rinsing away the past,” she said, “all negativity and cruddy experiences, and now we’re clean and ready for . . . fun!”
She beamed, eyes wide and delighted, like she was leading a toddler to her birthday party. Melissa’s returning smile was small and wan but it didn’t last, and Gretchen’s exuberance stalled. So we walked through the tangled, cobbled streets of Rethymno quietly at first, Simon with his arm around Melissa, sometimes almost pulling her along. All the light had gone out of her face, and she looked both sad and sullen. Every time he asked her if she wanted to go into such and such shop or stop for a coffee or gelato, she would shrug and look away, as if the day was already ruined and she was just marking time before going home to bed.