White Vespa

Thirty-one



26 June





Myles unlocked the door and stepped in. He saw immediately that a couple of the photos of Anne he’d left taped to the wall had dropped to the floor. He picked them up, took the others off the wall, and set the short stack on the mantle. He didn’t look at them. He didn’t need to. He’d been seeing them clearly enough while he’d been away, pinned on the inside of his eyelids when he put the lights out and lay waiting for sleep. Most nights he’d waited a long time.

He stood looking at the man in white on the white Vespa. It occurred to him that if he tried he might be able to find out something about the man in the picture. He must have lived on Sými last summer. He’d owned the Vespa; it hadn’t been a rental. The island was very small, someone would recognize him, someone would know him; he, too, could be found out and captured in a story. He must have ridden off somewhere to eat those two baguettes, with somebody, maybe, and sometime after that he must have gotten on a ferry or a flying dolphin and left. Gone back somewhere or on, forward. Myles turned away and started to unpack. He knew he would ask no questions, knew he wanted no answers, which made him uneasy. What did it say about him that he preferred the certainties of the stilled image to the waywardness of actual living? Nothing had stopped when he took the photo but the light on the film.

The photos of Anne were another matter. Even as illusions they had the feel of beginnings.





It was afternoon and hot, the air overheated and dry, full of electricity. In the yard, the insects were tuning up. Myles washed his laundry at the sink, then took it outside. He’d run a makeshift clothesline, and he hung the clothes there to dry, a line of somber clothes beginning already to look a little shabby, the colors dulled, his socks getting longer, every wash, from having their necks wrung. Myles carried a cushion from the house for his head and lay down in the swept sand under a large olive tree. He listened, the insects, the muffled bird calls, the light clacking of the olive leaves. Far off, he could hear the muted city noise of Yialós and the drum of a large engine, a ferry, perhaps. The Aegean, all around him, he could not hear, so he imagined it, the groan of it on Sými’s shingled beaches, the deep pull of its ebb tide.

He did not notice the light going. But when he opened his eyes it was to darkness. He looked at his watch, but it was too dark in the night shade of the olive to read the dial. He rolled onto his back and sat up. He was stiff from the hard, sandy ground and his head hurt. A sallow light still shone in the west.

Myles got up slowly, feeling old and crooked. He picked the dry, stiff clothes off the line and crossed to the house. It felt unoccupied, as if it had sat empty for far more than the few days he’d been gone. He thought again about the fallen houses in Mikró Horió on Tílos, about how much his house here was like one of them. Dropping the clothes on the narrow bed where he slept, he sat down next to them. He checked the impulse to make some noise; he let the house be quiet. He tried to decide if he should go over to Two Stories tonight or wait until tomorrow to see Anne. Then he tried to ignore the should in that, to sift through what he was feeling, to find if at bottom he wanted to go. He thought, ruefully, that it shouldn’t be so hard to tell, but he was going, he realized, that much was certain.





Getting the salt off, standing under the showerhead in a corner of the bathroom, Myles came back to life. He realized he’d been dulled by the hours of heavy thudding of the big engine onboard the ferry, that his nap hadn’t helped. Sleeping in the shade like a dog or an old goat, he thought sardonically. More like an old goat, he decided.





Thirty-two



26 June

These guys, Paul thought, must live here. He’d been at it, working the abdominal machine for all he was worth, which wasn’t much. The torsos on the serious lifters seemed impossible to him, even repellent, and at the same time a kind of rebuke for the poor shape he found himself in. It wasn’t that he looked bad, he didn’t; he was as sleek as a man of thirty-five could reasonably hope to be, but he was weak, and he knew it, and it had begun to bother him. Sooner or later, he could see it coming, it would begin to affect how he looked. So he’d bought a summer membership at the gym on the paraléia, and there he was, looking at the pumped boys with a mixture of envy and malice.

And the place did smell, the smell of clothes in which sweat had dried only to be worn again and sweated in again. He sat down at the triceps machine. He was embarrassed to always be changing the weight, changing it to something lighter, easier. When he’d worked his way around the room, he headed for the door. Two or three people nodded as he passed them and then he was outside, in the heat. The sun was bounding off the paving stones in waves. He walked by the fishing boats riding the green of the harbor water, by groups of milling tourists off the excursion boats, then left, up the alley to Vapori, where he slumped into a chair. When the waitress came he ordered a beer, a big Amstel.





Anne arrived a few minutes later. She had on a short white dress, loose, over black tights that stopped short of the knee.

“Sistah!”

“Don’t start!”

“I started a long time ago,” Paul said.

“Working out?”

“No,” Paul grinned, “I’ve just started that.” Then he acknowledged that he’d been to the gym, again. “That makes twice.”

“Guess you’re a regular, an habitué, no?”

Paul bent his arm as if to flex his biceps.

“Suppose you’d like me to feel it?” Anne said, ironically.

“Think we’d better wait on that.” Paul said, “I’m still modeling the before picture, you know.”

“Oh, I can see you’re modeling, all right. Always on the catwalk.”

Paul beamed at her. He radiated a candor that even Anne found disarming, though she knew not to believe it.

“That’s true,” he allowed genially, “and I think it’s only very shallow people, like me, who ever manage to be really honest. If I’m superficial, and I am, then my surface speaks true. I am what I seem. Deep people now, like you or Myles, you can’t get who you are into your face, so your faces are deceiving.” Paul winked. “People know.”

Anne shook her head slowly.

“Simple desire, for instance, right up front, is attractive. People want to be desired. Desire is desirable.”

“Maybe,” Anne allowed.

“You say maybe, but you’re shaking your head.”

“I’m doubting you’re that shallow,” Anne said.

“Oh, but I am! I work at it. Just watch me. You deep people, though, you can’t help but be liars.”

“Thanks!”

“I’m not criticizing. I don’t have any morals to offend,” Paul paused. “I’m interested. I look at you and I wonder what you’re doing here, sitting across my table, looking so cute.”

“I don’t know,” Anne admitted quietly.





Paul whistled under his breath.

“Look at that one,” he said in an urgent whisper.

Anne turned her head and peered under the umbrellas down toward the harbor. There could be no doubt about who he meant. She looked like she was fresh from a photo shoot for some retro line. She was coming up the alley, in a long off-white Victorian dress, all brocade in the bodice and lace in the sleeves. She wore a matching shawl and a black straw hat with a wide brim.

“She is theatrical!”

When the woman pulled close to the table they saw her face was heavily made-up, that she was much older than she’d looked in the distance. Her face, Anne thought, was in a state of sad decline. It was only when she was past them that they saw the girl, fifteen maybe, trailing behind her like a dinghy behind a yacht, a daughter in pink, tie-dyed pants, a white, light shawl tied around her waist, a too-tight T-shirt, and lips painted very red.

When they were both by, Paul swiveled in his chair to watch them go. The woman all easy sway, the girl’s pants hitched up tight between her legs.

Paul was laughing. “Wow! I mean, woof! Nothing reserved there.”

“That poor girl! She must feel extinguished.”

“Yeah, some get-up on her, too, though. Made up like a bad kid sister,” Paul winked at Anne. “Motherhood must be really hard on a woman like that.”

“Sort of pathetic, if you ask me,” Anne said.

“Maybe, but interesting. Think I could meet them?”

“Look out, Humbert.”

“I was thinking more about the mother,” Paul smiled, “but maybe both, now that you mention it. Possibilities there . . .”

“Get out!” Anne said, “And isn’t the mother a little far gone for the exercise of your charms?”

“I’ll squirt a little water on her, perk her right up.”

“Really . . .”

“Sistah, you misunderstand me. I just like them difficult, or better yet, forbidden,” Paul said.

“How forbidden?”

“Any how.”

“And how many hows are there?” Anne wondered aloud.

“Quite a few.”

Anne was shaking her head when the woman reappeared in the alley, heading back for the harbor.

“You’re in luck. Here they come again.”

Without turning round Paul stood up, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket. He took out a bill, set it on the table, and watched as mother and child turned at the corner toward the center of Yialós.

“That’s a provocation. What can I say? See ya, Sis.” And he was gone.





Anne rubbed at her temples with her fingertips. She was strangely lulled, narcotized. She might as well have been sitting in the next chair, looking at herself, for all she felt.

She sighed, picked a magazine out of the basket next to her chair and flicked mechanically through the pages. When the waitress appeared out of the dark interior of Vapori, Anne called her over with a gesture. She ordered a gin and tonic and sipped at it absently. She looked at the photos of the models in Elle derisively, but she was of their tribe. Somehow, the pictures had captured her unaware; she didn’t know when, years ago, before she was ready to think about them or fend them off. She flipped the magazine back into the basket and picked up another. In the travel section there was an article about Greek food, which the author didn’t care for. Too much oil. A place you didn’t travel to for the food, it said. She grinned; the article was written for readers at home and read oddly here. She liked the food, as far as she liked food at all. And eating outside, tables under an arbor or splashed out into the street, in the pulse of things, in sun or shadow, in the still calm or the wind, how could you separate out the food from that and say, oily? A cat sitting on your foot to remind you a scrap would be welcome. The looming barrels of retsina, the ceremonies of oúzo and coffee. A sweet by candlelight!

Anne grinned again and paid with the money Paul had left on the table. The crowds had cleared, and she walked around the harbor, heading for her place on the other side of Yialós. In the yellow light slanting into town, the buildings cast elongated, blue shadows. Late afternoon. The town suffering a spell. Waiters from the harbor-front restaurants standing languidly, not expecting anything but a slow hour.

Anne sat for a minute in the shade of the clock tower, looking back at the town, at the hillside crowded with small, neoclassical buildings. In the thick light they seemed, somehow, to have greater volume than at midday, more depth. In the hot light of noon the buildings seemed to lose their color, to flatten out, to become all façade.

Anne stood up, turned around the base of the clock tower and started off toward the Haráni boatyard, her feet pointed toward the stairs up to her rooms. She was hardly walking before she heard her name called and saw Paul emerging from the glazed doors of the Alíki, the dark wood of the lobby behind him.

“Sistah!”

She stopped, poking at the paving stones with the black sandal on her right foot. “Well? Did you meet her?”

“Them!” Paul exclaimed.

“Aha.”

“You said that just like Myles.”

“Oh? Them?” Anne said.

“A mother and a daughter, from Germany.”

“And?”’

“Dinner tonight.”

“Both of them?” Anne said.

“Of course. I wouldn’t dream of breaking up the pair. I’m going home to look for something outrageous in my closet. Don’t want to be outdone.”

“I could paint your face, real war paint.”

“Would you?” Paul said, seemingly pleased.

“Sure, but not tonight. I’ve got to work tonight.”





Thirty-three



26 June





Anne climbed the stairs. In only a few steps she was out of the town, into what felt like a village. She was, herself, the lone foreigner in the pocket of houses where she had her room. She liked it that way, didn’t mind the occasional prying eyes. She turned the key in her door and pushed it in. The room had that early evening heat, a good baked quality if there isn’t too much of it. The bleached curtains at the windows belled inward as she stood in the door but dropped again when she shut it.

She felt, against all reason, relieved. She allowed herself to imagine that she was toying with Paul. She had gotten worried that he might run, leave the island before she had even formulated a plan. What was there to keep him here? There were many beautiful, cheap places in the world he could disappear into. If he only went as far as Pátmos or Sámos, she could hardly just show up by chance a second time. She was thankful she hadn’t spooked him with her initial awkwardness. He was curious, that was good. It meant she had some time.

She opened the door to the refrigerator and a blaze of white light flooded the room. A wave of cool air spilled out around her feet. She lifted a liter of bottled water off the top shelf and pressed it to her neck, to her forehead. Then she put the bottle back in the refrigerator and shut the door. “Aha,” she thought, wryly. Myles would be back in town. Perhaps he’d show at Two Stories. She’d need to be ready to say something about the photographs.

Anne slipped them from the manila envelope and spread them out as best she could on her one rough table. She cocked her head to hear the muffled voices in the alley, a human sound, but she couldn’t even tell what language was being spoken. The photos, she thought, didn’t look like her, not like the Anne she knew very well from the mirror. But their otherness didn’t offend her. It was as if she was meeting for the first time a sister long lost. She’d asked for the photographs more or less as a pretext, to have a reason to go on talking. But having suggested them, she’d called them into being, and here they were, making demands. And haunting her. Her sleep had been fitful since she’d arrived on Sými, but worse since she’d brought the photos home. Somehow, the photos were related to the dreams, and the dreams to her childhood on Bainbridge Island. Or maybe the photos were merely coincidental, and it was seeing Paul that had set her dreaming of her childhood on horseback, in boats on water. She’d been free to roam, and she had roamed. You can cover a lot of ground on a horse. You can cover a lot of water in a boat, even a small boat with a small motor.

Anne stood up, unbuttoning her dress as she walked toward the old island wardrobe on the wall. She watched herself step out of the dress in the wardrobe mirror, and then she opened the door and hung the dress on a hanger. She looked at herself critically before washing off at the sink, enough for work. Then, as she was toweling herself dry, she changed her mind, decided on a proper shower.

Standing in the spray, she remembered. Pie had suddenly come up lame and she’d been afraid to ride her. It was evening and the fog had rolled in thick and darkness was in the fog. She walked her mare on the grassy shoulder of the road, not frightened but attentive. The slow cars passing in the fog, their headlights cloaked in white gauze. Pie’s eyes flaring in the light. Anne had thought she’d be in trouble, arriving late with her mare hobbled. But she hadn’t been; the house was dark and her parents still not home. She’d unsaddled Pie in the barn and stayed out with her, brushing her and feeding her. Finally, she’d lifted the troublesome hoof and picked a rock from under a loose shoe. She’d done it herself and then gone in. Paul had been talking on the phone in a dark room, and she’d known from his voice he was talking to some girl. When he’d seen Anne he had shot her a sullen look and waved her on into the kitchen. She’d gone. But there hadn’t been any trouble. Not that night.

She stepped out of the shower and patted herself dry, wound her hair in the damp towel and let the evening air play over her body. She felt cool, and that felt good, but it wouldn’t last. Even on the terrace, Two Stories would be warm, and she’d be busy, probably, and going in often for another tray of drinks; soon enough she’d be sticky. She wasn’t looking forward to work. She leaned over the photographs where she’d spread them on the table. She just looked. “Yes,” she murmured, her voice low as ever. “I think I know you.” Then she straightened up, shivered as she felt herself re-entering Anne, and felt, suddenly and overwhelmingly, her nakedness, as if a stranger had unexpectedly opened the door and said, Hi there. She checked the impulse to pull just anything on, sorting through her clothes carefully, picking out the black leotard and Levi’s she’d been wearing the day Myles had taken the photographs.

When she went out it was dark, the town lights all on and brilliant in the thick darkness of the night. Walking along the harbor she cast her eyes to the long, dancing reflections of signs and bare bulbs that ended, always, at her feet. Although she was late she stopped to look, felt her mind submit, mesmerized for as long as she stood there. Then she hurried on, around the harbor, up the alley by Vapori, where she thought she saw Myles’ friend Jim ordering something inside at the bar, then up the Kalí Stráta, by the stage-lit facades of the abandoned mansions, on up to Horió. Then the hand-painted sign for Two Stories came into view and at the open door she turned in.





Thirty-four



26 June





It was still dusk when Jim locked the door of the room he kept in a house behind the old town in Yialós, a small grid of narrow lanes and tiny shops. He enjoyed the short walk down to the harbor and had explored every alley more than once. It was evening. He walked slowly, turning right into a churchyard paved with smooth beach stones, something like a carpet design made from small black and white stones. He wasn’t in a hurry, had no one to meet and planned to eat alone, so he took time to enjoy the courtyard, sitting down on the bench that ran all along the whitewashed wall across from the church. The churchyard felt deeply still, and yet he noticed, sitting there, that there was far more traffic than he’d at first thought. Lovers standing in the shade, heads pressed together. An old woman in a headscarf come to light a candle. Tourists exclaiming quietly about the pebble courtyard. A teenager taking the short way, heading for a rendezvous. In summer, he thought, it’s always Saturday night.

He stood up and walked on. He found his way into the lit alleys of the old town and arrived at To Stenáki just as a table was being cleared, by Yórgos, as it turned out. It was early for dinner, at least for Greeks, and the taverna, though full, was mostly full of foreigners. He ordered retsina from the barrel and mezédhes. Paniyótis, Yórgos’s father, brought them to the table. He seemed harried, as always, but he greeted Jim warmly, if gruffly. While he was considering the menu another lone diner turned up, and Jim asked the newcomer if he’d like to join him rather than wait for a free table. He thought he recognized one of his own kind.

His name was Michael. Another American. When the mezédhes came, skordhaliá and melitzanosaláta, Jim insisted that Michael share them.

“It’s just done,” he said, and broke off a slice of rough bread and passed it across the table. “Enjoy it. And try the retsina.”

They fell to talking. When Paniyótis next swept by the table, Jim ordered a couple more appetizers, tarmosaláta, a salty pink dip whipped out of fish eggs, and a plate of flaming red peppers.

“God, what food,” Jim sighed, “the melitzanosaláta is so fine, that burnt taste, I can’t get enough of it. Deeply significant,” he concluded.

Michael laughed. “What appetites you have,” he said, smiling.

Later, Jim bought them drinks at Vapori, and they sat outside, the light flaring around them off the shining flagstones. Michael had arrived recently but meant to stay a long vacation. He wore a tight white T-shirt and jeans and was tanned and looked strong. A gym type. Later yet they wandered up into the alleys and stairs on the hillside above Yialós, into Horió, stopping here and there to look down at the harbor through the quick apertures between buildings, looking at the boats rocking at anchor and at the play of lights.

Michael did advertising for a small firm in Atlanta, and when he talked about it, it was interesting. He liked the work and that made it sound worth doing. Probably, otherwise Jim wouldn’t have listened, and dimly he knew that, but he was free, and he found that the subject held him as it was told.

“It’s the pace of the work that’s best, the way no matter how well scheduled things look when the project begins, in the end there is a great rush, everybody on the team hyped and irritable and warm and open at the same time, and out of that the work gets done. Out of actually working together. The together part is what finally gets the work done. That’s where the ideas come from, and the execution, too.”

“Sounds nothing at all like what I do,” Jim said. “A lot of work alone and then hours in front of classes that try as you might you can’t join. The students insist you be the teacher, not one of them, and there is a distance in that . . .”

“But summers on Sými!” Michael interjected.

“Yes, but to exercise the option you’ve got to give up on the idea of doing much in the way of writing. And it’s scholarship that gets rewarded.”

“And?”

“And I decided I didn’t care! Found I didn’t care to write another article or another book hardly anybody would ever read.”

“And here you are,” Michael said with an approving nod.

“So it seems.”