White Vespa

Thirty-five



26 June





Myles tried to kick-start the Vespa one last time and again it wouldn’t start. He swore quietly but thoroughly. He pulled the machine up on its stand and looked at his watch. It was a long walk to Two Stories, and it was already late. He swore again, savoring the way obscenities fell so easily into strings. Then he started to walk, out the drive in the dark where the stars pressed hotly, and then onto the blacktop and the winding road down into Yialós. The road was narrow and the few cars snaking up out of town passed him at a roar and left him blind. Then the cars quit coming, and it was quiet and the blackness thickened around him. Suddenly Myles knew he was happy; how lucky he was to be alive and walking down a twisting road in the night, between the stars overhead and the horseshoe of town lights down below.





Thirty-six



26 June





Paul stopped, and Katerina stopped beside him. She’d taken his arm as soon as they’d pushed through the glazed doors of the Alíki, just like he was a gentleman. Then they strolled down the paraléia arm in arm, Alexandra behind them, looking a little put out. Paul enjoyed the way they swept along, but thought for full effect he really should have had Alexandra on his off arm, though walking three abreast on the busy paraléia would have been impractical at best. And now they had stopped. In front of a restaurant. The host was away from his station so they stood between the lectern where the menus were kept and a hot grill, where blue and yellow flames played over a bed of orange coals. Paul looked at the display of fish, both an advertisement and dinner itself. The smell of grilling mullet swirled in the street.

He smiled at Alexandra, who did not smile back. The girl looked furious, now. So he winked at her, then turned back to Katerina, who was inspecting the fish. She was not dressed for inspecting fish, but not squeamish about it either. When the host came back, she had him hold one up to the light and insisted on seeing the flesh inside, which she seemed to whiff.

“It will do,” she said. So Paul ordered the fish before they sat down.

The host led them to a table under an awning and they trailed to it single file. Katerina carried herself like no woman Paul had ever known, but perhaps the carriage derived from the clothes. Again Victorian, but not frumpy, not the Victorian look of the old, but how the young must have found themselves beautiful a hundred years before. Paul had seen something like it in the movies. He asked to have the awning scrolled back so they could see the stars. Paul admired the two strings of heavy, amber beads Katerina wore over a finely worked, ivory vest. He admired her shimmering black shawl and the tea-colored dress.

“You must have a large suitcase,” Paul said.

“Two big trunks.”

“And you?” Paul turned to Alex.

She grinned wickedly. “Oh, I have a whole valise just for lipstick.”

Paul looked at her brightly painted nails. “And for nail polish?”

“Another one.”

“So you never actually carry your luggage?” He looked back and forth between the shining youth of Alexandra’s face and the art of the other.

“Never,” they said together.

Alexandra was wearing a light white sweater, which must have looked very small on the hanger, and a long skirt so fine that when she walked it clung to her like Saran Wrap. And Paul had done fairly well in his closet: he wore tight white jeans with a wide belt, a shining black shirt very open at the neck, and black boots. He thought of it as a costume, at least.

Paul ordered a bottle of Gravès off the wine list to go with the fish, and together the three of them built a small dinner off the menu. Alexandra had noticed that even when he was teasing, Paul was cute, just impossibly cute, and she began to take an interest. The woman spoke in her. The girl had never stopped speaking in Katerina, who was as coquettish as any schoolgirl of fifteen.





Paul picked at his burnt cream. They had arrived at that difficult moment when they wanted to pay the bill. Greek waiters, whether in a cheap ouzerí or an expensive restaurant, are all shy of the check, as if delivering it is a lapse of hospitality they don’t want to commit.

Paul raised his hand to call for the bill. No response. He put down his spoon, and when the waiter passed by the table, his head locked on some other destination, Paul said, “Check, please!” Blind and deaf, the waiter raced by. “Logariasmó,” he tried out the word that seemed to trip so neatly off of Anne’s tongue, but off his it trudged out, awkward and ineffective.

He settled into his chair, smiled at his double date, and shrugged. “After dinner drinks?”

“Why not?” Katerina said.

“Me too?” Alexandra pleaded.

And the waiter was there. He took the order and prepared to leave. Before he got away, Paul added, “And the bill, please.”





“Shall we find a taxi? There are two or three. Or walk?”

They settled on a taxi and the long serpentine ascent of the hills up to Horió. They got out near the windmills, a row of which hung inconspicuously enough on the skyline to the north of town. They scrabbled up a short slope covered in rubble and sat on the fieldstone bench that ran around the base of one of them, looking down at the harbor all spangled in lights. They could see a line of yachts nosing the paraléia across the way, money rubbing up against money. Further right, the illuminated clock tower stood sentry over the inner harbor, and behind it, somewhere, the boatyards had sunk in a flood of darkness.

Paul suggested they continue the night at Two Stories and walked behind the woman and the girl through the lanes of Horió, eyeing speculatively the family resemblance in the twitch of their hips.





Thirty-seven



26 June





Váso bit at her dirty fist to keep from snorting. Yórgos heard the quiet gasp that escaped her and turned his black eyes on hers. She looked away, up at the stars, away from the couple in the shadows down below, hiding in the ruined shell of a building, but not hiding well enough. The kids were hiding out in the ruins, too, for fun, and the couple down below was the fun they’d found. They were having a go at it standing up, the woman with her skirt pulled up and the man with his pants down around his ankles. It was the pants falling and the white moons coming into view that had set Váso off, and her body was still shuddering, laughter welling up in her. Yórgos watched, seriously, hearing the woman say “oh” and “oh my” as the man poked awkwardly at her.

Then Yórgos threw a small stone and all motion stopped. He turned his head to Váso and grinned, and then they were both laughing uncontrollably as they scrambled across a pile of rubble for the nearest stairs. In a second, they were on the Kalí Stráta, howling to hear their voices ring. They ran by Myles without even recognizing him, but he saw them, and amusement flickered across his lips. “Kids,” he murmured, but he didn’t give them much thought. Still, it seemed late for Yórgos, not to mention Váso, to be out and running wild, but it was common, too. Greeks are not a people who sleep early.

Myles thought he heard an owl and looked up, but it was Yórgos again, standing with a bright light behind him, on a wall higher up, hooting. He did recognize Myles now and waved and shouted something down or maybe just shouted, and then he was gone, the beat of children’s feet on stone, softly, and then nothing.





The upstairs bar at Two Stories was so jammed with the summer crowd that Myles had to thread his way to the top of the stairs. He had imagined something quieter. He put his hand on the banister and started down, looking for Anne as he descended the stairs. He spotted her through the door, serving drinks on the terrace to a woman in an outrageous get-up. He smiled; he had a soft spot for pretenders.

Jim sat at the bar chatting away but when he saw Myles he waved him over to introduce his new friend Michael.

“Did you see Paul outside?”

“Paul? No, where?”

Following Jim’s pointing finger he recognized Paul sitting with the woman in the get-up and a flushed girl. Anne was talking to them, familiarly, he noticed.

“I was just telling Michael about Paul’s getting his condom back at To Stenáki.”

“Sounds like a real character,” Michael said, not amused.

“Quite a guy,” Myles agreed.

“An a*shole?” Michael asked.

“Yes, but a handsome a*shole,” Myles said.

“Very handsome,” Jim put in.

“Paul the handsome a*shole,” Michael said, as if he was bestowing a title.

“But,” Myles added, “Anne’s brother,” as he watched her coming now toward the bar, her face lighting up when she saw him.

“Anne?” Michael said.

Then she was there, leaning in close to Myles for a kiss.





“She’s your sister?” Alexandra sounded querulous.

“Don’t you think I should have one?”

“Not really. She doesn’t act like your sister. Are you sure?”

“Alexandra!” Katerina scolded.

“All right. But it’s not fair.”

Paul laughed, “She doesn’t think it’s fair, either, if you want to know.”





“On me,” Anne said, putting half a glass of Wild Turkey down close to Myles’ hand.

“I missed you,” Myles whispered.

“A lot?”

“Enough. And here you are, dressed up like someone in a photograph.”

“Someone?” Anne teased.

“You. You.”

“They look like queens on parade, all of them, except the girl; she looks like she’s hoping to make it as a hooker.” Michael turned back to Jim, then glanced over his shoulder one more time. “But maybe I’m being unfair to queens.”

“So severe. I wouldn’t have thought you would be quite so severe,” Jim said.

“Why not? Judgment is my middle name.”





“Can you get off?” Myles asked.

“Sorry,” Anne shook her head.

“I hoped, coming so late, we’d be nearer alone.”

“Yeah?”

“Should I wait?”

“Wait,” Anne said, and she picked up her tray to make the rounds. Myles watched her go, thinking maybe she was looking light on her feet, hoping he was seeing the happiness in him in her.





Jim was telling Michael about the islands, the other islands, about what he and Myles had seen on Tílos. Myles was half listening, and only half recognizing their trip in the telling. He was drinking, into a second glass of bourbon and getting lightheaded. One time he thought he surprised Anne in a look, a look of hatred, just as she turned from talking to Paul to bring an order back to the bar. She hadn’t looked angry, but beyond that, where dispassion verges into cruelty. There was almost a smile in it. He wanted to ask her what that look meant but didn’t, preferring to enjoy the warmer face she brought back to him at the bar.





Sometime late Two Stories got quiet. Even Jim and Michael seemed to have wound down, finished with talking. They were counting their money. Paul came inside and ordered a bottle of champagne, inviting all of them out onto the terrace for a last drink to close the place down. Myles helped Anne carry out the glasses, and Paul covered the neck of the bottle with a napkin and eased the cork out. Alexandra appropriated a glass for herself and it was hers Paul filled first, but then he filled them all, beaming as he did it.

“A toast?” Jim asked.

Paul looked around, that smile, that ever ready smile and the lively eyes. “Of course. Everyone got a glass?”

Michael was looking like he wished he didn’t but he half-raised it to acknowledge it was in his hand.

“To the islands,” Paul said, “every one different, to cooling breezes and light-hearted revelry, to women,” he smiled at Katerina, and seeing Alexandra pout, added, “and girls, Sirens all.”

“And Prospero’s cell,” Jim called out for no apparent reason. Then he sat down all at once, mumbling.

Paul drank with a flourish then leaned across to kiss Katerina’s neck.

Michael set his glass down untouched, bent close to Jim’s ear, and whispered rather too loudly, “What a performance.”

The night was over. Michael and Jim went up the stairs together and were gone. Paul fished out his wallet, and Katerina pulled on her shawl, while Alexandra downed the half-full glasses left on the table one after another, a twisted grin on her lips.

Then it was just Anne and Myles and the bartender and the bartender said he’d close up and Anne came back to him from wherever she had gone.

They went out under a sickle moon, stars standing bright over the now darkened town. The stairs down shone under the occasional streetlight and were streaked with long shadows. Island cats, out on night maneuvers, shied from them, wild, running low and quickly to safety. The air, occasionally, pulsed overhead with the wing beat of a bat or a night bird. And they walked down, the great stairs swinging first left, then, near the bottom, back to the right. They were holding hands. They didn’t talk.

The grave theatricality of the massive ruins, shells of what once had been mansions, stilled their tongues. Then they were in the town, Vapori all folded up, umbrellas leaning against a wall inside, tables and chairs taken in. They walked along the harbor, the small waves rhythmically beating the stone breakwater, the anchored fishing boats groaning at their ropes as they rose and fell.

“Most nights you make this walk alone?” Myles said.

“Mmm.”

“And does it spook you?”

“No. It’s a safe place. Greece is a safe place.” After a moment, Anne said, “Do you like the smell?”

“Very much.”

“Me too. It smells like living.”

And after another pause, Myles asked, trembling, “Where are we going?”

“Home,” she said, “my place.”





Myles couldn’t see the woman in the photographs in the woman on the bed. He looked for her, but he couldn’t find her. This woman, wet from a shower, in a loose and long black nightshirt, this woman knew how she looked, knew her looks were in her favor. Myles crossed from the table and sat down quietly beside her. He wanted to talk, but Anne shook her head and said, “After,” and he knew again that he was a fool for talk. She rolled over, away from him, and her head lolled a little but her eyes—so wide set—were on him, calling him out of his sadness to follow her. He leaned across the distance between them, leaned so far to reach her that he found he was lying beside her and kissing her quietly on her cheekbone. Then he took half her wide upper lip in his mouth and shuddered.

She showed him her body, long and angular and hard at the edges, but now welcoming. And she touched him with knowing hands, without any fumble, or embarrassment, or inhibition. She was more beautiful than he had thought, and hungrier. The veiled quality in her eyes, which was the huskiness in her voice, he heard it now in her very breathing. It called to him, and in his own heart there was nothing left but the desire to answer. At the very moment he gave his heart, his heart was broken, and he knew it, submitted to it, stripped away his clothes knowing every caress would leave a scar, every kiss a scar, had to.





Thirty-eight



17 Sept.





Woke this morning in a panic, eyes up, on a ceiling I could hardly see, white, nothing to distinguish there. As if all my losses had run together. I couldn’t find my old glasses, and even my hands in front of my face looked blurred. In my distress, I actually cried out, “Again?”

I got out of bed, heart beating hard, adrenalized, and felt my way across the cool slate floors, to run my hands across the table, feeling for my glasses, then over to the stone sink where I’d washed up before bed. Finally I found them, outside, where I’d sat with a glass of wine, watching stars, on the big marble block I use for a table out there. What seemed strange then was that when I came in, late, in the dark, I must have been walking blind, without even knowing it.

With my glasses on, I settled down; a clear view of things is almost as good as actual clarity for settling anxieties. I saw it was another sunny day, the sky poured-in blue clear down to the sea. I used a Turkish coffee pot, a big one, and made myself more coffee than I ever ought to drink, and I made it sweet, glikó, something I never do. I wanted to wake up, wide awake.

I drank it outside, with a small, stale loaf of seed bread from Mandhráki and a couple of fresh figs. Better, I thought. The sun beat quietly in the garden. All night I’d been wrestling to keep the past past. Hopeless, of course. I went inside, in the shadows my cameras standing patient on their tripods. I rummaged around in my luggage until I found the sealed, small white envelope I’d brought from home, the one with a few photos of Max and Bryn. Nothing has changed there, in the photos, though the paper has begun to yellow. I am, of course, a different man looking at them. The young Max, before his hair turned dark, his features fine and a little feminine, the beautiful boy again among us. Even small, those looks were a force to reckon with. And Bryn, radiant, before she had Max, a Persephone, just a girl, and radiant after, Demeter. Perhaps that radiance fell mostly on me. I don’t know. And who took the photograph of the basketball game? A small Max shooting over his mother’s screen, ball in the air, Max himself in the air, all desire, following the ball up toward the hoop. I can tell Bryn is backing into me, the ogre waving his hands over her head, screened out, Hades in gym shorts.

They are just snaps, not thought about much at the time, but suddenly poignant after Max disappeared. Then Bryn going, not wanting to stay on in the house we’d shared, a house emptied out. So we emptied it out more, packing her battered Volvo wagon. Then she backed down the driveway, the sound of the linkage under the car as she cranked it into the street, and was gone. Even impossible moments manage to happen. It took me years and years but then I left, too. When I left I took that lost life with me. Just as they must have, only seeming to disappear around the next corner.

I reached for the other envelope. A sheet of contact prints was on top and I pulled that out, bending close over those images of Anne. I think at the time I imagined it was her past there, curled up on the divan. Now I think it was her future, ready to unspool. Now I think she was carrying it all in her, a promise she’d have to keep. So little in a photograph, really, what was and what’s to come held momentarily in abeyance. Black and white photos simplify it all a little more, ease discords, make everything agree to agree, to get along together. But that’s only in the photos; in the world we rage on. Everybody jostling, teeming with their own dark energy.

Later, I walked along the lip of the crater, gazing down into the early shadows pooling there. I tried a shout, loud, and when it came bounding back up at me I was surprised how inarticulate it sounded, sheer bellow.





Thirty-nine



27 June





Michael composed the note while Jim slept. He explained very carefully where he was staying, how to get in touch, and that he’d gone to get cleaned up before meeting his young sister’s ferry. He looked at the note a last time, set a coffee cup on it as a paperweight and slipped quietly into the coming dawn. He hadn’t been looking, he thought, but maybe a man alone never really stops looking. And looking or not, the thing now was to accept. He walked quickly, a little cold in the morning cool in only a T-shirt and jeans. But he stopped when he smelled baking bread, at an open door in a green storefront. He stood still a moment, listening to the music filtering out from somewhere deep in the shop, almost inaudible, but strange with the East. Then he went in, bought a small white loaf right off the baker’s great wooden paddle. It was too hot to hold so he had it wrapped in a sheet of paper and carried it away, hot and wholesome and satisfying, just the feel and the smell of it. He ate it as he walked, exclaiming happily, Deeply significant, smiling, remembering Jim’s phrase.