White Vespa

Sixty-two



29 Aug.





Jim appeared in the doorway just as Michael finished up on free weights. Michael had meant to jog on the treadmill but he could see Jim was agitated so he grabbed his towel and they went outside into the sun and wind. The wind was off the harbor and blew cool on Michael’s sweaty skin but he ignored it.

“You okay?”

“Me?” Jim responded. “Well, yeah, I’m okay. But Myles, I’m not so sure about Myles.”

They walked down the paraleía toward Vapori, heads bent together. Jim was trying to explain, and his hands came up in front of him, gesturing, as if he’d wanted to shake Myles and had kept from doing it with some difficulty.

“He’s so resigned. Like grief is his homeland and he’s none too surprised to find himself back.”

They stopped, looking out over the breakwater. Someone had lost a box of oranges to the sea. Michael put his arm over Jim’s shoulder and pulled him close. “I love the way you care too much.”

Jim recounted, as best he could, what Myles had at last told him about Anne’s childhood with Paul, about the horse Pie. “And I’m thinking there was probably more to it than that. Whatever she told Myles, I think there was more. Childhood is long—plenty of time to think up mean shit if it’s in your nature.”





They walked on, turned left at the corner and sat down under one of Vapori’s canvas umbrellas. Michael got back up immediately, adjusting the umbrella to get the sun off Jim’s face.

“That f*cking Paul.”

“That handsome a*shole,” Michael said, remembering how Paul had first looked to him. But he’d had no idea. “I’ve been thinking about what would have happened if I’d caught him at the ferry dock. And that was before.”

“Before?”

“Before Anne took her little swim.” Michael’s voice had a bitter edge that surprised Jim. “I’ve been wondering.”

“About what?”

“About what Anne thought would happen after she was dead. If she thought about it. I mean, if Myles is right, if we’re talking about a suicide.”

“And?”

“Maybe she thought I’d go after him, or Myles.” Michael looked straight into Jim’s face. “I know I’m not showing much respect for the dead . . .”

“I doubt she was designating executioners, Michael. I mean, that sounds more like Paul than Anne.” They sat quietly and the rustling sounds of Yialós crowded in.

Michael started to speak and then stopped. Finally, he said, “She was his sister.”

“She couldn’t help that,” Jim said.

The waiter came and they hadn’t thought about it and they sent him away. Jim glanced around, a world at rest under the umbrellas, everything embalmed in honeyed light. It all looked the same, but not so pleasing.

“I miss her,” Jim said. “Mostly I miss her for Myles. They weren’t looking, but love found them. For what? For this? Does love always have death up its sleeve?” Jim gazed across the table at Michael. “I don’t want that to be so. But I think it is. If we’re lucky we’re allowed to forget. We get our good years.”





Blue came looking for them, hair wet from a shower, face scrubbed clean. She seemed as young as ever, her only make-up a swimmer’s tan. She surveyed the two of them critically as she sat down, asking before anything, “Who’s buying?”

Jim held up a weary hand. The waiter came back to the table and they ordered iced coffees, Coke for Blue. The sun beat down on the canvas umbrellas. The sound of glassware and silver spoons rustled through the alley. A small red dragonfly touched down on Jim’s sleeve, its clear wings veined black. Then it flew away again. The drinks showed up.

Blue asked after Myles, a sudden expression of concern replacing the teasing face she adopted habitually with Michael and Jim. Often they were her fun, and though Anne’s drowning had shook her she hadn’t dropped her teasing pose. She was young; she didn’t have many faces to choose from.

Jim tried to explain. How Myles seemed not to have grasped it, didn’t seem to know what he was feeling. “Funny thing is, Myles’ body does know. He looks stove up and when he moves he moves like a man who hurts.”

Blue shook herself, but said nothing, then got up to look for a magazine.

“You know, Michael, I could see the way his eyes looked for her, settled vacantly on an empty chair or the bed in the alcove, as if he hoped to see the print of her body there in the rumpled sheets. But he wasn’t seeing anything, not really.”

“He came up before,” Michael said.

“What?”

“After he lost his kid . . .”

“Oh,” Jim said, “Did he?”





Sixty-three



29 Aug.





Paul smiled, giving his body to the surge of glittering travelers flowing along Bodrum’s yacht harbor. By day, the streets had been quiet, uncrowded, but now they teemed, people in waves, expectant, as if walking toward revelry. The Turkish yachts creaked and shifted, their lights bobbing, revealing the clear varnished wood they were made of. Nothing like the bright, painted boats of Greece, Paul thought, and nothing like the antiseptic white yachts of the international rich—though the rich were here, too, on parade. Paul felt his happiness growing; a place, he thought, more anonymous than Sými, and more transient.

Anne could have Sými and all those other smelly little islands for all Paul cared. But he doubted she would want them. He thought she’d probably prefer to sit in the dark and lick her precious wounds. Fine, she could do that anywhere. He hadn’t appreciated her tracking him down, that was sure, and part of why he felt good was that he didn’t expect to see her again.

Paul stopped to lean against a light pole on Neyzen Tevfik Caddesi. It was hot, and he felt pleasantly wet under his loose, black shirt and soft, khaki shorts. Everything, everybody, himself included, seemed on display, everyone there to see and be seen. He liked it; it wasn’t a world that would ask many close questions. He started walking again, listening to the voices, the languages, looking at the summer skin. Over on the left he saw two carts, a man and his competition, selling prickly pears, each in his own bell of lantern light. He strolled over to one of them, asked for four, and watched the man’s quick hands and sharp knife peel them. Paul ate the fruit standing at the cart, the rich, orange flesh translucent in the soft, yellow light. He grinned at the vendor as he speared the last of the fruit with a toothpick, then walked on, a little irritated by the slight stickiness on his hands. He sucked at his fingers one by one. Then he lost himself again in the flow of bodies, in the flow of the crowd.

He saw the crusader castle over the water on the right, then the town square on the left. It, too, fell back as he swept forward, through the bazaar, the crowd dog-legging left down Uzunyol, a pedestrian alley, running between brightly lit storefronts on one side and a row of restaurants on the other. Here, the way was narrow, crowded, the closeness of it only broken by regular views of Bodrum’s second harbor out through the restaurants, where tables sat on decks built over the sea.

The crowd murmured as it walked, the bright voices of street vendors and touts ringing in the narrow street. Paul let himself be swept forward, by windows full of seafood and ice cream shops, by shoeshine boys and street magicians. He found himself walking behind a child, a curly-haired boy in a sailor suit, who was having a hard time keeping up. His mother looked irritated, tired of leading the reluctant child through the jostling crowd. Perhaps, because she had a son, she felt encumbered, unfit for the revels, which seemed forever about to break out. The woman looked away, forward, and the boy reached after her. Just as the child began another step, Paul swept his foot under the boy’s, cutting left. He was even with the woman when the boy crashed into the cobbles, but he heard her, as he walked by, cursing the child’s clumsiness over the boy’s low whimper.

“Whatcha doin’?” he whispered, his face showing the extraordinary liveliness that rarely failed to draw strangers to him. Then he smiled broadly. He felt good, he had the night before him.





Sixty-four



1 Sept.





Then it was the end of summer. The forgotten cities stirred and called. There were jobs to return to, friends not missed now remembered. Things to do. The excursion boats arrived in Sými harbor less full. Large piles of luggage accumulated on the paving stones for the trip to Rhodes and the big ferries caught there for Athens. Those with less and more expensive luggage would fly from Rhodes, for London or Frankfurt and on from there to the anyplace that might be home.

Suddenly, things began to look provisional. The tourist cafés sat empty even at lunch, slick young waiters with dark hair sitting together at a table or trying to talk a lone stroller into sitting down. These places were leaning already into the shuttered season. The fresh paint of summer was scuffed and chipping, witness to the quick work of salt air in a harbor town. Everything looked a little tattered, like sets at the end of a theater season. Even the small beautiful buildings with their neoclassical facades looked ready to be taken down and stored in boxes for a coming year.

But still the blue of the sky stood stiff over the island, tight as a well-staked tent. The wind was still welcome, brought a cool edge to what otherwise might have been too hot days. The sun rose and set, burnt a track across the sky, cast crisp, black shadows. Away from Sými town and the human retreat, the island shone magical as ever, everlasting. Perhaps the grasses had faded to a lighter gold, clattered rather than soughed in the wind. Perhaps the voices of the insects had grown a little thin, shrill. But Sými was still a place well worth traveling to, for all the people who were going away.

Myles sat on the curb in front of the Alíki, waiting to say his good-byes to Michael and Blue. They’d delayed their departure, after the disaster, but now they were headed back to the States, if in stages. First to Kos to catch the Pátmos ferry. Then, after a day on Pátmos, they planned to ferry on to Sámos, and from there back to Athens and a couple of days in the museums. Myles wondered why Jim wasn’t going with them, and he had his suspicions. Their going would have been difficult for Myles only a few days before, before Anne took his feelings down with her. Now he waited quietly, patient as a beach stone, for the good-byes to get said.

A Mercedes taxi appeared, coming from town, and Myles recognized Blue’s animated face through the windshield. He surprised himself with a wry smile, at the relief of not being that young any more. They emerged from the taxi in the middle of a mock argument, Blue upbraiding Michael and Jim for the coolness of their parting. But Myles thought she wasn’t looking very closely, that their constraint spoke, and he detected a catch in the usually controlled rhythms of Michael’s speech.

“Stop it,” he whispered to Blue, affectionately, “you’re terrible.”

“Me?”

Myles led her a little away, over by the Vespa where it teetered on its stand.

“Myles! Look at them! Proper as school teachers. Next they’ll be shaking hands . . .” Blue’s voice trailed away, and she cocked her head as if in disbelief.

“Yeah, yeah,” Myles said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it looks like love to me.”

Blue made as if to study them, pressing a thin fist under her chin. “If that’s it, there’s not much to miss.”

“Maybe.”

Then she hugged him hard. “Oh Myles, I’m so sorry!”

When she looked up Myles saw her eyes had flooded with tears, and though he hadn’t expected it, he was moved. “I know, Blue,” he said, but his voice broke on her name. There was a flurry of activity on the ferry. The last of the passengers were getting on. “Hey, I’m going to be fine.”

Myles turned toward Michael but Blue pulled him back, reaching her mouth up close to his ear. “I knew all along Paul was a jerk, maybe not how big a jerk, but a jerk. I just wanted . . . I don’t know what I wanted. Excitement, maybe.”

Myles pressed her hand. “It’s okay, Blue. You’re going to find way better guys.” And then Michael stepped toward him.

Michael reached out a hand but Myles hugged him. While he had him close, Myles whispered, “You got the best man.”

“I know it,” Michael choked out.

“You’re not letting him get away?”

“No, I’m not.”





Sixty-five



4 Sept.





“So you leavin’ too?” Paniyótis stood by the table with a bottle of oúzo and three glasses. “We drink together?”

“Yes, please.” Myles watched as Paniyótis filled first his glass and then Jim’s and finally his own, his figure flickering in the candlelight.

“I know you don’t take no water most times,” he said to Myles, pouring a little in his own and Jim’s, turning the oúzo fog-white. He dropped a few ice cubes in the white drinks, then said, “You toast? Parakaló?”

“Sto kaló,” Myles said, woodenly.

“May you always come back to Greece.” Paniyótis was waving his glass around, but the theater of it rang a little hollow.

“Safe journeys,” Jim added, mechanically.

When they’d drank, Myles stood to hug Paniyótis, in spite of his splattered apron. “’Phristó polí,” he added, many thanks.

He sat back down and then remembered he wanted to pay Yórgos to put his house in order. Paniyótis was retreating toward the kitchen but came back when Myles called after him. “Is it okay if I hire Yórgos to clean,” he made scrubbing motions, “after I’m gone?” Paniyótis nodded, looking proud of his son. “Then could you send him over?”

“Mr. Myles?” The boy said, suddenly standing straight and expectant by their table.

“But I’m only going as far as Níssyros!” Myles exclaimed, when he’d had time to digest the toasts.

“Taking my advice at last,” Jim said, feigning satisfaction. “But now I wish you were staying on here.”

“You’ll be gone, too, soon enough. Maybe you should go on up to Sámos, catch ’em.”

“We finished so well here I’m scared to!” Jim looked suddenly happy.

“Ah.” Myles looked up, “So that’s it.” Then he said, “Let’s walk,” and they stood, saluted the kitchen, and strolled away.

They walked on the steep hillside directly west of the harbor. The alleys there are mostly stairs and straight up; only a few run with the hillside. They sat often, looking down on the unfamiliar night views. They were at ease, as they’d so often been together, but it was as if talk had been shaken out of them.

They walked, listening to the sound of their feet in the alleys. When they had walked out the chances west of the harbor they took to the familiar stairs to the east, waiting for the words they both hoped would come. Walking across Chorió, high up, they passed by the notch between houses where Myles had once seen the leaping woman. A family was sitting there in a pool of light, a boy curled in the arms of his mother, the father smoking quietly in his chair. Myles thought he recognized the woman, no longer girlish at all, no longer leaping free of anything, but looking, he thought, content, happy to be a mother in a folding chair.





“Jim,” Myles began, as warmly as he could, “please don’t come to the dock tomorrow. I’d rather just slip away.”

They’d walked down, were leaning on a wall near Jim’s place in Yialós.

“Okay, Myles, if that’s how you want it.”

“I’m not going to lose touch with you. You’d have to have your phone changed, move to another city, more than that, to have any chance of losing me.”

“That’s good.”

“But right now, even though you’re here, I can’t reach to you, not to you or anybody else. I’m lost, deep down lost, with Anne, and Max, the dead and the missing. I can’t reach to you, you can’t reach to me. I know you want to. But I don’t want to be reached. Not yet.”

“When you do,” Jim said, putting his arm around Myles’ shoulder.

“When I do, you’ll hear from me. In the meantime, I just need to walk my thoughts out. If I walk far enough I’m hoping I’ll get somewhere, somewhere that looks like a place I can live. And I’m thinking I’ll try to write, that maybe this is a story, after all. Someday you’ll open your mailbox and there will be a big envelope in there half covered with Greek stamps.”





Sixty-six



23 Sept.





Had a visitor. I was coming back, a little heavy footed from the late morning heat, on the last pull up the spur to Emborió off the main road between Nikiá and Mandhráki. I heard a banging, and a beat-up pickup that had clattered by a moment before screeched to a stop on the road ahead of me, and there, in the bed of the pickup, riding with a goat and a half dozen caged chickens, I saw Jim. He threw his big bag onto the pavement, then clambered down awkwardly, poked his head in the cab to say his thanks, then shouted greetings to me.

When he got closer, he said, “Gimme a barhug,” and beamed. I must have been beaming, too; I was so happy to see him.

He hadn’t expected to, but had decided to layover on Níssyros on his way to Kos and the charter that would take him back to the States. He said finding me was easy, that there seemed to be quite a bit of speculation about the unhappy-looking American holed up in Emborió when he wasn’t out walking the roads at all hours. The news surprised me; Greeks leave you alone, and somehow that courtesy had left me feeling thankfully unnoticed on Níssyros. It had been the sympathy, the knowing glances, as much as anything, that I hadn’t been able to abide on Sými. I’d wanted my grief private.

We walked up to my house with his bag swinging between us, each with a hand on one grip. Jim said there was a hydrofoil for Kos the next day, so his visit would be short. “Aha,” I said, which struck him as funny, or got him laughing, anyway. And laughing with Jim, I realized how much I’d been missing just that, our flights from frightful sobriety.

Inside, he looked coolly at the hooded cameras and asked me if I’d been working. So I told him I was finished, had quit. He didn’t venture a comment. We looked at the prints from ghostly Mikró Horió on Tílos, where together we’d walked the abandoned village, speculating, then, on loss. When he admired the photos, I gave them to him. Publication enough. Those photographs have something of us, not in them, but hanging from them. They’d never mean the same way bound in a book, forgotten on some coffee table.

While I was pouring oúzo, Jim rummaged through his luggage. “I have an excuse for coming,” he said.

“As if you needed one.”

Then I saw he was holding my lost glasses in his hand. When he saw how startled I looked, he said, “Aha!”

“I guess! Where’d you get those?”

“Yórgos. He gave them to me just a few days ago. He said he’d gone up to your place one last time to clean, or to cart off some of the stuff you left, and he found these on the table, outside, under the olive tree.”

I couldn’t fathom this, not at all.

When the heat eased we went walking, and I felt light, unencumbered by the cameras it seemed I had always carried when I walked with Jim. He is a great enthusiast of the island and was delighted with the long views down to the water as we walked the road around the lip of the crater to Nikiá. I saw he was right. The volcano had left things abrupt, the feeling of riding over heights was very strong, and things down below had the bright clarity of a world viewed through lenses.

Curiously, he seemed surprised to see another island floating around out there. “Tílos,” I said, and he responded, “Really?” Just like he didn’t believe it. But every island does feel like its own world, which makes their proximity in the Dodecanese, I guess, a little incredible. But isn’t this the very thing that makes the islands so evocative, every one different in its own sea-green skirt? Telling the names itself is a kind of heartbreak: Ródhos, Kos, Sými, Lipsí, Tílos, Níssyros, Pátmos . . .

By the time we got to Nikiá the shadows were pronounced, giving the small, white buildings a blue depth. We tried a few of the cobbled paths on the seaside of town, which dropped away precipitously. All the while we were talking. Jim spoke most, a little of his natural ebullience shining through, but I talked too, my lips stiff but working.

The sun set. The stars rolled. We walked back in the dark, once or twice Jim pointed, out over the black pool of the caldera, at the bright flare of a falling star.





“Myles?”

We were side by side, up on the roof, on our backs, still stargazing. “Mmm?”

“Are you sure she’s dead?”

And I gagged on her loss all over again. Fought down the impulse to sob. I lay there, under stars too bright. Finally, I got out the question, “Why do you ask?”

“They never found her. They thought they should have.”

“And?”

“It’s the glasses. First they disappeared, then they turned up,” he paused. “Somebody had to know where to take them.”

“You think Anne put them there? She was in the water when they disappeared, Jim. It couldn’t have been her.” I lay there, heart beating hard, “I’m not sure, really not sure if I can stand thinking, what, that she ran from me? Jesus, Jesus, I don’t mean that like it sounded. I . . . I’ve been trying everyday, all day, just to accept that she is dead. If I hope, I fear. I hoped before, for Max, for years. That the phone would ring, and I’d hear that familiar voice, his voice. And the phone did ring, and it was always someone else. Not Max. I just can’t do that again. I’m all wrung out.”

And I lay there feeling maybe not as wrung out as I wanted to, frightened still.

“Jim?”

His voice came back quiet, very quiet, out of a deep hush. “It’s only a feeling, Myles, and it may be stupid of me to tell you, but I think she’s out there. I’m going to allow myself to hope she is.”





In the morning, we were glad Mandhráki was downhill, what with the two of us and Jim’s big bag on the Vespa. At the pier we watched as the hydrofoil dropped into the water and came on into the dock. A couple in plaid shorts got off, looking quizzically around at the blight you can see from the pier. Jim was the only passenger outgoing.

“I can’t tell you what I’m feeling, Myles.”

I nodded.

“Maybe it’s time,” he said, “time for you to be going home, too.”

“I just don’t feel there’s any home to go to.”

I didn’t know what else to say. That, in spite of how it looks, I’m not done here?

“Maybe it’d be there if you went,” Jim said.

But I don’t think it would. So I gave him one last barhug and he crossed over, on to the bobbing dolphin, and the crew tossed off and the dolphin turned, churning the water white, then it was running. A hundred yards out it came up out of the water onto its hydrofoils. It got small quick, but I could see Jim out on the back deck, waving, for quite awhile.