“They’ll turn on each other in an instant,” I said. “Don’t think they won’t. If you want to end their affair, just put that kind of pressure on it for a few hours.”
The two lovers would tear each other apart, each suspecting the other. And the moment each accused the other of murder, Lana could reveal herself. She would emerge from the shadows, having returned from death. She’d stand before them, gloriously alive—giving them the fright of their life. And leaving them in no doubt how they truly felt about each other—how shallow and tawdry, how easily polluted their feelings really were.
“It will be the end of them, forever,” I said.
This is, no doubt, what appealed to Lana about my idea—the prospect of ending Jason and Kate’s affair. Perhaps Lana was hoping to win Jason back. But she also had another reason for agreeing—a secret reason—which, as you will see, brought her little joy.
The idea had a lovely poetic symmetry to it, I said. It provided the perfect revenge for Lana; and the superlative artistic challenge for me. Of course, Lana didn’t know quite how far I intended to take the performance.
I didn’t lie to her. All I did—you might say—was not burden her with a lot of unnecessary exposition.
Instead, I concentrated on the practicalities of staging our drama.
As we talked, we discovered the story together.
Drowning? I said.
No, shooting, said Lana, with a smile—that would be much better; we could use the guns in the house—then easily incriminate Jason in Kate’s eyes.
Yes, I said, that’s it. Good idea.
What about the others? Should we involve them or not?
I knew we had to, to a certain extent. Lana and I couldn’t pull this off on our own. For the illusion to work, Jason and Kate must never be allowed to get too close to Lana’s body. I couldn’t manage that by myself. I needed help.
And Leo—hysterical, screaming—demanding they keep away from Lana … would do the trick nicely.
I worried about how little acting experience Leo had—what if he wasn’t up to the challenge? What if he corpsed—no pun intended—and gave the game away?
Lana promised she’d rehearse him diligently until he was perfect. It seemed a matter of parental pride for her that he be given the part. Ironic, considering how much she disapproved of his becoming an actor.
I agreed to her demands, even though I had my doubts about Leo. As I did about keeping Agathi in the dark. But Lana overruled me on both counts.
What about Nikos? she said. Should we tell him or not?
Let’s keep him out of it, I said. Too many cooks, and all that.
Lana nodded. Okay. You’re probably right.
And so it was agreed.
* * *
Four days later, on the island, a few minutes before midnight, I went to meet Lana at the ruin. I was armed with a shotgun.
Lana was waiting for me, sitting on one of the broken columns. I smiled as I approached. She didn’t smile back.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be here,” I said.
“Neither was I.”
“Well?”
Lana nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Okay.” I raised the gun and pointed it at the sky.
I fired three times.
I watched as Lana applied the fake blood and the stage makeup to herself. The bullet wounds were latex, gory and effective—at night, anyway. I wasn’t sure how well they’d play in daylight.
The special effects were the model’s own, procured for her by a makeup artist she had worked with on several movies. She said she needed them for a private performance—an apt description of our little production, I thought.
Lana lay on the ground, in the pool of fake blood. Then I pulled Kate’s red shawl out of my back pocket and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“What’s that for?” Lana asked.
“Just a final touch. Now try not to move. Lie completely still. Let your limbs go limp.”
“I know how to play dead, Elliot. I’ve done it before.”
Hearing the others approach, I went and hid behind the column. I stuffed the shotgun into a rosemary bush.
Then I emerged, a couple of minutes later—acting as if I had just arrived; breathless and confused.
From then on, I followed my dramatic instinct. Seeing Lana lying there, in a pool of blood, with Leo, hysterical at her side, I found it easy to get caught up in the drama. It felt surprisingly real, in fact.
I see now that’s exactly where I took a wrong turn in my thinking. I didn’t anticipate how real it would feel. I got so caught up with the twists and turns of the plot, I didn’t think of how it would affect everyone emotionally—and that, therefore, people might react in highly unpredictable ways.
You might say I forgot my most fundamental rule: character is plot.
And I paid the price for it.
2
Lana hurried through the olive grove, in search of Agathi.
She needed to find her. Lana had to calm her down before she ruined everything.
It had been a mistake not to tell Agathi, to keep the plan a secret from her. But Lana felt she had no choice. Agathi would certainly have refused to take part, and she would have done her best to talk Lana out of it. Now Lana rather wished she had.
A small figure was in the distance, through the trees, at the end of the path.… It was Agathi, hurrying into the house.
Lana quickly followed. At the back door, she took off her shoes, leaving them outside. She crept in, barefoot, silently, stealthily. She looked around.
There was no sign of Agathi in the passage. Had she gone to her room? Or the kitchen?
Lana deliberated which direction to go in—when heavy footsteps heading down the corridor made up her mind for her.
Lana turned and quickly climbed the stairs.
A few seconds later, Jason appeared at the foot of the staircase. He nearly collided with Kate, who walked in through the back door.
They had no idea Lana was there, at the top of the stairs, watching them.
“They’re gone,” Jason said.
Kate stared at him. “What?”
“The guns. They’re not there.”
Outside the back door—from the wings—I nudged Leo onstage. “Go on,” I whispered. “Now’s your cue.”
Leo ran inside and told Kate and Jason he had hidden the guns.
That the guns weren’t in the chest where Leo had hidden them was a surprise to him. I had decided not to tell Leo that I had moved them; I thought it would aid his performance if he was ignorant of that.
As it was, I could see that Leo required no acting aid. The kid’s a natural, I thought. A chip off the old block. His performance was frighteningly real in its hysteria and grief. A tour de force.
“She’s dead!” Leo screamed. “Don’t you even care?”
Lana, watching from the gallery, craned her neck, trying to see Jason’s reaction.
This was what she had been waiting for. This was Lana’s real reason for agreeing to my plan. She wanted to observe Jason’s reaction to her death—to test his love. She wanted to see if Jason’s heart would break; or at least glimpse some proof that he possessed one. She wanted to see him cry; see him weep for his beloved Lana.
Well, she saw. Jason didn’t shed a single tear. As Lana watched him from the top of the stairs, she saw he was angry, and afraid, trying to not lose control. But he wasn’t heartbroken, or grief-stricken. He was entirely unmoved.
He doesn’t care, she thought. He doesn’t give a damn.
And in that moment, Lana felt herself die a second time.
Tears filled her eyes; but not her tears—no, they belonged to a little girl from long ago, who had once felt so unloved. A girl who used to crouch in this exact same position, at the top of the stairs, clutching the banister, watching her mother entertain her “men friends” down below—feeling unwanted and ignored. That is, until her mother’s friends began noticing her precocious beauty; and her troubles really began.
Lana had gone through so much since then—since those bleak, frightening days—to ensure that she became safe, respected, unassailable—and loved. But, now, watching Jason from the top of the stairs, all that Cinderella magic vanished. Lana found herself right back where she had started: a suffering little girl, alone in the dark.