White Vespa (22 page)

“I touched my belt and said,
I'm ready
. He just laughed at me, said,
Are you?
and sat down on the bed.
I like a girl ready, Sistah.
Then he laughed some more, kind of hysterically. So I took the belt off, running it through the buckle as I walked toward him. When I got right up to him, he said,
How about a sisterly kiss?
So I bent to kiss his cheek, but his mouth came round on mine and his hands ran up under my dress. He grabbed hold of my panties and pulled his mouth away with a pop.
Sistah,
he said,
I don't call this ready
, and he jerked them down around my ankles. The whole scene just seemed surreal: there was laughter in the alley, giggling, an innocent world right outside the window, but not for me. I kept on. I looped my belt around his neck and pushed him back; he was grinning boyishly, I swear. I wanted to take his breath away.”

Myles wasn't looking at Anne anymore; he sat with his head buried in his knees in front of him, barely listening, but he heard her, as he sank away.

“Then . . .”

Myles broke in, “You thought something good was going to come of this?”

“Before he could get his shorts off I crawled on him. I cinched the belt up tight, and he started to writhe under me.” Myles had begun to quake. “He still looked happy, so I put my foot on the buckle and pulled as hard as I could. That dreamy look went out of him; his face sharpened, got attentive looking, as if he were concentrating on a high-pitched whine. He was still writhing under me, and I could feel that he'd grown hard.
Sis-tah
. . .
Sis-tah
. . . He croaked out, a crazy grin stretched across his lips.”

Anne paused, but Myles said nothing.

“I thought he was weakening, that on the edge of blackout I might be able to overpower him. I thought,
This is it
. Then I heard a screech at the window, and before I could turn my head Paul's fist came around, here,” she raised her hand to her eye. “The next thing I remember is Paul yanking me up off the floor from behind the bed. He had a red welt on his neck but my belt was gone. His shorts were a slimy mess. Then I felt a stickiness between my legs.

“
I hope
, he hissed,
that was as good for you as it was for me, Sis-tah. But I just bet you're not much good at having fun, are you? Now get your sorry ass out of here.

“I did.”

 

“Myles?”

“Don't we ever get to let go of anything?” Myles said.

“Some things are big enough they hold us. We're held, we can't let go.” Anne stood up. She reached across her body and pulled a strap off her shoulder, then with her off hand pulled the other strap free. She looked at Myles, and he nodded. She pulled the black suit the rest of the way down, off her body, and for the first time stood naked in the open air.

“It's done,” she said, and started down the beach toward the sea. Myles watched her go, how she picked her way over the pebbled beach. He glanced down at his trembling hands, and when he looked back she was just a blurred line in the water, wading away.

 

She dove, and it seemed to her as she broke through the surface that she was getting free at last, that the old Anne must still be standing there above the waves, paralyzed, unable to move ahead or to stop looking back. She opened her eyes and pulled herself forward under the water, swimming powerfully, opening the way in front of her with her arms, kicking through with her legs.

She concentrated on the feel of the water, even in August still cool. It wasn't like anything except water. It accepted her, accepted her passing. It made way and closed behind her. She relaxed, swimming. She felt she too was made of water, that she had begun to dissolve and phosphoresce. The bruise on her face, that had stung when she dove, felt like it was melting away. She imagined a purple stain along her cheek, a ribbon of color twirling past her ear, diluting to nothing in her wake. Her very face felt smoothed, as if the features that made her Anne might be washed away. She saw her hands dart out in front of her, her arms spreading, then gone. She felt like a pulse in the water, a wave.

She swam on over the dark sea bed, against the tightening of the held breath in her chest, under shards of sun, a shattered mirror scattered on the ruffled surface. She remembered how that looked from above, but already the memory seemed old, difficult. There were no years, perhaps there never had been, only this and this.

 

They were drinking Rebel Yell.

The wind in the olives was the same as before, turning the dense green of the leaves silver by blowing them sideways. The midday heat still baked the landscape, until everything looked as if it had been put down on the first day and just stayed there. Jim sipped at his drink, let himself go in the drone of insects. The shadows shifted around the feet of the trees. A colony of ants was repairing a scuff in their constructions. Some swallows were working the air off the phone lines over by the road, swooping up after wild dives, turning left, or back, as if it was only a thought, to turn, and it happened.

“Going to get a plate,” Jim said, standing, and he walked across the yard, past the pots of jasmine, and through the open door into the house. Inside it was all disarray. Jim found a platter, scrawled over in the old island style, and carried it back out to the table under the olive tree.

He tipped the bourbon bottle a little to check their progress, then stood it back up. “Myles,” Jim said gently. “You really ought to eat.” He reached into the black plastic sack he'd arrived with and starting setting things out. “Paniyótis sent some stuff up, octopus salad, melitzanosaláta, tzatzíki
,
and look, real wheat bread.”

“I think I'll stick with the Rebel Yell.” Myles shook his head slowly, back and forth, eyes closed under the bill of his Black Top cap. “Thoughtful of Paniyótis, though.” Myles pulled himself up. “Okay, a little food,” he added, picking up a chunk of bread, dabbing at the puddle of tzatzíki Jim had shaken out on the platter. But after a single bite he set the bread back down. “You eat, Jim. And don't look so worried.”

“Haven't I got reason to be worried for my friend?”

“Maybe,” Myles looked up cockeyed, his old glasses sitting on his nose a little crookedly, “but I'm not going to hang myself if that's what you're thinking. If you're worried I'm going to be sad, well, that would be pointless. I am sad. I'm gonna be. And if you want to know the truth, I was sad before, too.
Hell, I was sad before I had a good reason.”

“A real joker right to the end,” Jim said affectionately.

“Is this the end?”

“I hope not.”

“It's not, Jim, not for us. If we're still talking about it, it's not the end,” Myles started to quake. “It's just that I loved her, I,” he stuttered, “I knew I shouldn't, but I fell anyway. I dove. I believed in love.” Myles took his glasses off and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. He glanced up at Jim. Then he said, “Again.”

“Don't . . .”

But Myles had raised his hand. “I know,” he whispered. “But not now, no good advice now, please.”

 

“So what happened?” Jim asked at last. Then, when Myles didn't respond, he said, “If you think you can talk about it. I guess you know the island is buzzing with rumors.”

Myles sighed. “About what?”

“About what happened.”

“She drowned. I think she meant to.” Myles leaned forward in his chair, put his head in his hands. “When she stood up to go back into the water, she nodded to me, and I think that was good-bye, and I nodded back. I don't know how she read that. I just nodded, that's all, I didn't mean anything by it. But I couldn't call her back. She'd been telling me how she'd tried to kill Paul, to strangle him. And I guess I failed her. I just couldn't help judging her.” Myles lifted his red eyes and met Jim's. “What she did, it was crazy, hideous.”

“I heard about what happened at Paul's place,” Jim said.

“What Blue saw?”

Jim nodded. “And Yórgos. Paul must have had the whole thing planned. He gave Yórgos and Váso a hundred drachmae each to tell Blue he had a little surprise for her. All she had to do was show up at twelve sharp. He must have been pretty damn confident she'd come. Told Yórgos and Váso the surprise was for them, too, same time, same deal. And everybody showed. A bunch of innocents.” Jim gave his head two quick shakes. “Everybody in attendance for Paul's little farce.”

Jim fiddled with the food in the ensuing silence. He didn't want to look up.

“That fucking Paul,” Myles muttered. “So goddamn clever. Anne didn't know . . . She didn't understand the whole thing was staged. But that's not quite right. I guess what she didn't understand was that it was Paul's show. She thought
she
was the one staging things.” Myles sighed heavily, pulling on the brim of his cap. “Or maybe she was just desperate. God. She should have known to run.”

“Paul did.”

“So I heard.”

 

Myles sat remembering. Anne walking away, down, the way she walked into the fog of his myopia. She was there, going away, and then just an upright blur in the water, a skin-colored smudge. Then not.

He said, “I didn't understand anything had happened. I was doing what, cleaning up, picking up the mess of lunch. I could hardly tell. My hands didn't seem to be mine; I was watching them. They did the work.” Myles dipped his chin, thinking. “!t was as if I'd been in a car wreck, got out to wander around in the wreckage.”

“I know. Shock.”

“Then some guy, just another guy on another towel, he said,
That girlfriend of yours never came up.
” Myles remembered the odd way his neck had felt as his head had swiveled around. He'd said,
What?
Then people started getting up, looking out over the water.
What?
He'd said again, his voice pitched near shouting.

“Then,” Myles resumed, “then suddenly everybody seemed to know something terrible had happened. A whole wave of sunbathers swept together into the water. I got up, too. I went after them, but I was so shook I could hardly keep myself upright. An immense clumsiness. When I hit the water I just pitched forward. I might have drowned too if someone hadn't hauled me out.”

Myles slumped further into his chair, deflated, even in the telling of it. No one had asked him if he wanted to be saved. They'd dragged him back to the beach, sat him on a rock.

“As long as it seemed she might be alive everyone wanted to help find her, but as soon as it began to seem it might be a body they were looking for they started to leave, to drift off like smoke.”

Jim shook his head.

“Can't blame them,” Myles said, then added in a whisper, “not their tragedy, really, Anne's tragedy, my tragedy.” Myles coughed, then wiped at his eyes.

“Jesus, now what?” Myles' body had begun to jump. “Hiccups!”

“Are you okay?” Jim asked.

“No!” Myles exclaimed then he hiccupped again. “Is there no end to it?”

Jim tore off a chunk of rough bread and handed it across the table to Myles, who was quaking.

“And then,” Myles croaked it out. “Then things got official. Guys in blue shirts and funny hats blowing whistles. People running up and running away. But I couldn't follow what was going on. I couldn't see. Everybody was speaking in Greek. It was about then that Michael,” Myles' body jumped again, “showed up.”

“Yes.”

“He told me what was going on, how the fishing boats appeared out of nowhere, the old sponge divers, or sons of sponge divers, stripped off their shirts and dove. I guess on an island they know something about drownings. They didn't find her, her body, but they looked for a long time. When they gave up, Michael was still there. I don't know what I would have done without him.”

“I know.”

“He brought me back here on the Vespa. It was getting dark by then. The sky looked like a great bruise. I couldn't help noticing. And I thought,
I am a lost man
. I keep having that thought, hearing those words. There's no scream in them, nothing like real lamentation. Just a cool observation, a judgment.
I am lost
.”

 

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.”