I went outside. Though the power was still out, the storm had not come back, and the night was cool and crisp. Besides, I needed some air, and not only because the villa, with its locked-up windows, was stuffy, the air developing an old, recycled quality. I couldn’t wait to get out and clear my head, which frequently and inexplicably felt thick and slow when we were in the house.
I stood on the patio where Kristen and I had seen the pile of leaves swept, it seemed, to form the nonsense word Manos. I looked at the spot now, but there was no trace of it nor any sign of the telltale leaves. I scowled and looked around for more signs of cleaning up, wondering vaguely if the villa had a janitor or gardener who had never been mentioned. Ever since we had arrived and Simon mentioned that someone had left the front gate open, I had been fighting the sensation that there had been someone moving around the grounds just out of my line of sight. I kept stopping to look out, without any clear sense as to why, beyond the size of those floor-to-ceiling windows that made us feel so conspicuous when the lights were on and the world outside was dark. I didn’t feel watched exactly, just exposed, and Gretchen’s tales of nightmare inquisitors, combined with my own confused sense of people moving around the house at night, added to my unease.
“Jan.”
I turned, startled, spilling my wine. It was Marcus.
“Oh God,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”
“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s white.”
“I thought you didn’t like white.”
“I don’t,” I said. “Brad poured it for me and I just took it because . . . who the hell knows. I swear to God, Marcus, I find myself looking around all the time and thinking, Am I having a good time?”
He laughed at that.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know the feeling.”
“Right? I mean, is this something I would have chosen to do if I’d known what it was? Are these people I would have chosen to be friends with if we hadn’t bumped into each other on a beach five years ago?”
“I was wondering the same thing.”
“I don’t mean I dislike them or anything—though, I’ll tell you that Brad is getting on my last nerve—but I’m not sure we have anything in common except a kind of historical accident, you know? We met, and now we’re friends. Kind of. I don’t know how they vote or what they believe in. I don’t know if they have interests, hobbies. Not really. But then, maybe friendship is always like that: coincidence that becomes history. You’re friends because you’re friends.”
“I’m almost scared to ask,” he said, “how they vote, what they believe. When they reveal anything at all that isn’t about their jobs or their damn health clubs, I kind of want to run or cover my ears like a kid, you know?”
“La-la-la, I can’t hear you?”
“Exactly,” said Marcus. “I feel like I’m tiptoeing around, always one false step away from the kind of fight you don’t recover from. I don’t really know why. And we should be able to talk, shouldn’t we? These are smart, successful people. So why do they seem so deliberately, willfully ignorant? I mean, we’re in Crete, for Christ’s sake. The place is stuffed with art and history from every period, philosophy, religion, mythology . . . and no one cares.”
“I do.”
“I know.”
He nodded, the darkness and my terrible eyes conspiring to make him little more than a brown face with glasses.
“Come closer,” I said. “I’m not being weird. I just can’t see you properly.”
“No contact lenses, I take it,” he said, smiling ruefully.
“Of course not,” I said, glad to finally say it. “I lost my fucking glasses in the fucking sea on the first day. I’ve been blind as a bat ever since.”
He tried to look sympathetic, but then he was laughing, doubling up, tears streaming down his face at the absurdity of it. I couldn’t blame him, and if it wasn’t so fucking infuriating to be almost blind all the time, I’d have been laughing too.
“Sorry,” he said at last. “Why didn’t you say? We could have found an optician’s in Rethymno . . .”
I waved the thought away.
“I’m not spending my vacation at the goddamned eye doctor being tested for a prescription that will arrive—if I’m lucky—on the last day. I have things to do. Lampposts to walk into.”
“I have a spare set you could borrow,” he said.
“Those huge Harry Caray things? No thanks.”
“Might help you get around. Jesus, Jan, we went sightseeing! Knossos. The fort! Did you see any of it?”
“Lots of stone, right?” I said very dryly. “Looks like the Colosseum? I haven’t seen that either.”
He gave that familiar laugh of his, something between a snort and a sharp exhale.
“God,” he mused, gazing up at the night sky. “What a strange little trip this is. Still, we’re seeing more than the beach—those of us who can see, at least.”
“Oh, you’re hilarious,” I said. “But, yes. Last time we saw almost nothing.” The opening presented itself in my head, though I hesitated to explore it. There was, I felt, a risk, though I wasn’t sure what it was. “Marcus?”
“What?”
“What happened in the cave?”
“The cave?”
“Last time. On the last day, we went to see . . .”
“Oh, the Dikteon cave where Zeus was born,” he said. His voice was flat, the words coming out slow and thoughtful.
“Yes.”
“When you say ‘what happened’ . . . ?”
“Something happened,” I said. “I don’t know what it was, but I sense it, and I think you know. It changed things. Not just between us, but in the group. What was it?”
He hesitated and looked down, then shook his head.
“I don’t know—” he began, but I cut him off.
“Marcus? Come on. Lying isn’t your thing.”
“I wasn’t going to lie,” he said, meeting my eyes. “I was going to say that I don’t know if we should talk about it. It’s all water under the bridge, and I don’t think it’s my place to share other people’s secrets.”
I considered him closely.
“Whose?” I said.
“Jan,” he warned.
“Who am I going to tell?” I said. “Everyone knows but me. I feel left out.”
“Not everyone.”
“Kristen,” I said. He gave me a quick look. “Kristen doesn’t know.”
“You know that for sure?” he said. It was a real question, one that came from surprise.
“She says she doesn’t.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“In this case,” I said, “I think it is.”
“Well, that makes telling you even more awkward,” he said.
“Because it’s about her?” I said.
He looked away.
“Or it’s about Brad,” I said, knowing that was it. “What did he do?”
Marcus looked back to the house. You could see every detail of the brightly lit living room, the people inside moving soundlessly around, laughing and drinking, like characters in a movie.
“There’s a bench at the end of the garden,” he said. “Let’s sit down.”
There was something ominous about his manner, as there was about walking out of the pool of light on the flagged patio and into the deep shade of the garden, the edge of which was lined with tall black cedars. They loomed, and in their deep shade the temperature dropped a few degrees. I stayed close to him, my shoulder brushing his so that I would have to rely less on my dreadful vision, and as we walked, he started to speak.
“I don’t know what you remember,” he said. “We all went in pretty much one at a time. It was a long and tough hike up the hillside, and it was already late by the time we got there. The crowds had gone. I remember feeling weary and thirsty before we even went inside. You and I were . . . well, we weren’t getting on very well. I don’t recall what we were fighting about, or even if we were really fighting, but we went into the cave separately. Melissa had come up on the donkey and was complaining, so Simon left her. I don’t know what was going on with Brad and Kristen, but I think he was walking faster than her on purpose . . .”
“On purpose?”