Forever in Blue (29 page)

“Maybe that’s it.”

“So what should we do?”

Lena waited for twenty-two more hours and made another uncharacteristically rash decision.

“I’m going to go,” she said to Carmen on the phone.

“What?”

“I’m going to Greece. I’m online as we speak. I’m buying a ticket.”

“No.”

“Yes.” She had made up her mind. It was her fault, really. The Pants had been in her possession. It was her lunatic sister who had taken them. She was the one with the crabby grandma in Oia. Who could find them but her?

“When?”

“Thursday is the soonest I could get.”

“Whoa.”

“I just pressed the button, Carma. I bought it.”

“You are fearsome. With what?”

“A credit card.”

“Whose?”

“My mother’s.”

“Does she know?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh, Lenny.”

“You can’t put a price on the Traveling Pants.”

“Yeah, but maybe your mom can.”

Lena started to get suspicious when Bee called on Tuesday and asked her for her flight number for the third time. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Bee said.

When Lena arrived at the gate at Kennedy Airport in New York for her flight to Athens on Thursday, she was surprised to see Bee standing there with her duffel bag over her shoulder, but she was not stunned. She was stunned to see Tibby and Carmen standing beside Bee.

She laughed out loud. The first time in days. It was cathartic. “Did you come to say good-bye?” she asked, full of happy suspicions.

“No, baby, we came to say hello,” Carmen said.

Bee said she’d borrowed the money for her ticket from her dad. According to Carmen, David had about a billion frequent flyer miles, so he gave her some when she pleaded. Tibby’s parents had given her an open ticket voucher for her graduation present last June. They’d also loaned her a hundred bucks to get an expedited passport, which was going to be hard to repay since she’d given notice of exactly one hour at her job.

“Call us Beg, Borrow, Steal and…?” Bee looked at Tibby.

“Use,” Tibby said.

“I wish I was Steal,” Carmen said.

“I wish I was Borrow,” Lena said.

“Nobody wants to be Beg,” Bee pointed out.

They had to argue at the ticket desk to get their seats together, but when the plane took off for Greece, all four of them were sitting side by side.

Lena looked right and looked left and laughed again. How much it sucked to be traveling under these circumstances. But how exquisitely great it was to be doing it together.

“Are you worried they’re going to kick you off the team?” Tibby asked.

As the plane soared through space, as their reckless energy dissipated and the hours stretched, they began to calculate the number of things they had blown off and people they had upset by doing this.

“Not unless they can do without a center forward.” Bee explained that the coach would be furious and threaten her a lot, but then he would forgive her in time to start her in the first league game.

Tibby realized they could not talk about the length of this trip. They couldn’t cast their minds forward to an outcome other than finding the Pants and bringing them home, and who could say how long that would take? But they were heading into the third week in August. It was hard not to recognize the fact that most schools started in a week and a half.

“I’m going to take an incomplete in my screenwriting class,” Tibby said. In the three days she’d spent in New York since her reunion with Brian, she’d made gigantic strides on her love story, but she hadn’t quite gotten to the end of it.

“I was supposed to pack up my room this week. My mom and David are moving into the new house the day after Labor Day. I’ll just have to do it later.”

“Eric said he’d forgive me for leaving if I wore a burka and promised not to flirt with any Greek boys,” Bee said.

“Greeks do like blondes,” Lena said.

“Brian offered to come and help us search,” Tibby said.

“How about Leo?” Carmen asked.

“He called last night,” Lena said. “I think he’s going to Rome for most of next semester.”

“That’s sad,” Carmen said.

Lena shrugged. “It’s not, really. It’s all right. I kind of knew it wasn’t going to turn into a long-term thing.”

Tibby noticed how different Lena looked from the old days of Kostos, when every time she proclaimed equanimity, she looked as if she had stolen a car.

“It’s for the best,” Carmen consoled her. “Lena. Leo. Your names don’t sound good together anyway.”

Tibby laughed and hugged Carmen’s arm. “Well, thanks, Carma. That about settles it.”

Lena laughed too.

“Have a thorny relationship problem? Just ask Carma,” Bee said.

“You should get a column.”

“Start a blog.”

“I think I should,” Carmen agreed. “Hey, did I tell you who came to the final performance last night?”

“Who?”

“Well, my mom and David…”

“Right,” Lena said.

“And my dad and Lydia.”

“Really?” Bee said. “All four of ’em.”

“Yep. They were surprised to see each other at first, but they all had such a great time together I told them they should get a room.”

Tibby laughed and listened to her friends laugh and then just sat back and listened to the flow of their familiar voices. As unhappy as she was about the Pants, she was joyful that the four of them were finally together. She felt a little guilty about it, like she was laughing at a funeral. And then she realized that the Pants wouldn’t want her to feel that way.

“Do you guys realize this is the first time we’ve really been together since the beach at the end of last summer?” Tibby said, unable to keep her appreciation to herself.

“Yes, I thought of that too,” Lena said a little sadly.

“How could we go so long?” Carmen asked.

“You’re one to ask,” Tibby said, but even as she said it she was filled with gratitude to have their regular Carmen restored to them.

“You know what?” Bee said.

“What?”

“I don’t think it’s just that the Pants are scared of Effie.”

“Then what?” Lena asked.

Bridget looked at each of her friends in turn. “Look at us. I think the Pants are smarter than we even know.”

It was late when they got to Valia’s house, and the four of them were so tired and punchy, so confused as to their whereabouts in time and space, they felt like they’d been inhaling from a whipped cream can.

Lena was earnestly happy to see her grandmother and surprised not to see Effie. She had been girding herself for an uneasy reunion.

“Effie left for Athens today,” Valia told them impassively, but a few minutes later she pulled Lena aside. “She tried her hardest, you know. She tried to find those pants all day and night.”

“I know, Grandma,” Lena said.

Tired as they were, they knew their purpose. Lena found two flashlights and they set out with them on the narrow cobblestone roads and paths beneath the perch of Valia’s terrace.

“It’s all up and down here,” Tibby pointed out, waving her hand down the cliff to the dark water below. “No flat.”

That made it harder to find things, Lena acknowledged to herself. Gravity always played its advantage here.

Valia shook her head at them, making no secret of her doubts, and after a while even Lena realized the futility of their method. Why struggle to light up tiny patches of the world when the sun would do the job so effectively in a few hours?

“We should get some sleep,” Lena said. “That’s the smartest thing to do. That way we can get up early and get to work.”

They did get to work in the morning. And yet, preoccupied as they were by their loss and their mission, they couldn’t help being awed by what the sun showed them.

“This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. A thousand times more beautiful than the next most beautiful place,” Carmen said.

Lena thought that too. She felt a great giddiness along with a deep satisfaction at getting to share it with them. Another unexpected gift, courtesy of the Pants, she thought.

She told them about the formation of the Caldera, really a giant crater left by what was possibly the hugest volcanic explosion in the history of the world. It sank the whole middle of the island, leaving sheared cliffs around a center of water.

“And what about those islands?” Bee asked, squinting over the water to three masses of land floating in the Caldera.

“Patches of lava left over,” Lena explained.

Lena led them along the sloped paths where they thought the wind could have carried the Pants from Valia’s patio. The whitewashed houses and crumbling churches, the dazzling blue of the domes and doors, the blinding pink of the climbing bougainvillea, all of it was so intoxicating to the eyes it was hard to stay focused on the job at hand. After a few hours in the sun, they took a break in the shade and tried to strategize.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone found them,” Tibby said.

“That’s a good point,” Lena said.

They went to town. Luckily, most of the shopkeepers spoke at least a little English. Lena went armed with a picture.

“We’re looking for something,” she explained to a man in a clothing shop. She pulled out the picture of the Pants as worn by Tibby last summer at the beach. She pointed to the Pants. “We lost these.”

The shopkeeper looked alarmed. “You lost this girl?” He put on his glasses and held the photograph up close.

“No, she’s right here,” Bridget explained. “We lost those Pants.”

They found a copy shop in town. Using the photograph, they blew up the image of the Pants, beheaded Tibby, and circled the Pants with a thick black marker. LOST PANTS, Lena wrote in English and Greek. The copy lady helped with the translation. Lena put down her grandmother’s address and number. REWARD!, she wrote in Greek.

While they waited for fifty copies to be made, Lena gave them a little tour.

“This is the forge that belonged to Kostos’s grandfather. I think he sold it in the last year or two. That’s where Kostos used to work,” she explained. “That’s where we kissed the first time,” she added as an aside.

She took them down to the little harbor. “Did you ever see the picture I drew of this? It was one of the first ones I ever liked. Kostos and I went swimming here.”

“There’s a certain theme to this tour, I think,” Tibby said.

“Ha ha,” Lena said. As they stood on the dock she pretended to push Tibby into the water.

“How could you not fall in love here?” Bee asked.

Inspired by her thoughts of love and of beauty, of ancient places and dirt floors, Bee lifted her arms to the sky and did an arcing dive off the dock into the sea. It was thrillingly cold. She popped her head through the surface and screamed with joy.

Because they were her friends, and perfect friends in nearly all ways, the three of them screamed back and dove in after her.

They all shouted about how cold it was. They swam around screaming in their wet, billowing clothes. Bee hauled herself out first and helped the others, who were laughing and shivering so hard she was afraid they might drown from elation and harebrained stupidity.

They all lay side by side on the dock so the sun could dry them. The sky was the most perfect and cloudless blue.

Bee loved the sun. She loved her heavy, dripping clothes. She loved the water lapping against the pilings beneath her. She protested aloud at the encroachment of Tibby’s cold toes against her shin, but she loved that, too.

She belonged to her friends and they to her. That much she knew, even if the Pants were temporarily mislaid.

“I think our copies are probably ready,” Carmen pointed out dreamily.

They posted their signs all over the place. Throughout Oia and its environs.

“I think we should cover Fira, too,” Lena suggested.

So they went to Fira that evening with fifty more. They were fanning out, posting them around the crowded tourist spots, when Bee came running.

“Lena! I think I just saw Kostos.”

Lena felt the zzzzt of electrical current up her back.

“You never even met Kostos,” Tibby said, appearing next to her.

“Well, I know, but I saw his picture,” Bee insisted.

Lena looked around, trying to feel calm. She did a slow, calm survey. “My grandmother said he’s not here. He hasn’t been around all summer. Where do you think you saw him?”

Bee pointed to a corner with a café and a bike shop.

“What are the chances? You probably imagined it,” Carmen said. She stood protectively by Lena.

“Carma, he does live here,” Bee pointed out. “It’s not like I’m claiming to have seen him in Milwaukee or something.”

“Whether he was or wasn’t, he does kind of haunt this place,” Lena said diplomatically. “I am the first to admit that. Anyway, let’s keep going.”

They posted their signs until it was dark, Lena distractedly imagining she saw Kostos everywhere.

“Now we’ll go home and wait for people to call us,” Lena said.

At home Lena stepped into the kitchen, where Valia had cooked up a huge feast. “Grandma, Kostos isn’t on the island, is he?”

“I heard he’s traveling all this summer. I don’t see him vunce. I talk to Rena, but I don’t know vhere he goes.” Valia was pretending to be dismissive of Kostos. Like Lena, she’d spent too much time hoping.

They had a long, cozy night at home. Valia went to bed early but left them a bottle of red wine. They sat on the floor drinking and talking and talking and talking.

It was magical, but by the time they dragged themselves up to bed they realized that in spite of one hundred signs, not one person had called.

Lena was the only early riser of the group, and her body seemed to adjust most quickly to Greek time. At sunrise, she decided to take a walk.

She took a long, slow walk. First she thought about Effie and then about Bapi, and after that she let herself think about Kostos.

It was fitting, in a way, to walk and see all these ruins. Here, on this island, the place where she’d both given away her heart and seen it broken, there were ruins all around, though not all of them ancient.

Ruins stood for what was lost, and yet they were beautiful—peaceful, historic, intellectual. Not tragic or regrettable. Lena tried to keep hers that way too, and she succeeded to some extent. Why not celebrate what you had had rather than spend your time mourning its passing? There could be joy in things that ended.