Love on the Road 2015 (14 page)

‘Take something … anything,’ he said to this woman from Lashar.

‘Make me something new, Kaveh Mirzaee, and I will take it,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. And then he thought,
Yes,
of course.

She was like a desert wind that had not been barred outside, whose fine sands he would now forever find in the depths of his being. His eyes followed her through the open door. She left with the snake and her grocery bag and headed to the apartment at the end of the hallway.

Kaveh Mirzaee cleaned up the mess of crushed tomatoes with a roll of tissue and then stood at his still wide-open door thinking that he should go buy some bread now that the snake had been taken care of. He picked up his wallet from the night stand and turned the key in the lock. Walking towards the elevator again, he found himself thinking about the possibility of attending the Eid progressive dinner, as the woman from Lashar was going to be there.

Her heels were getting crusty from the Athens dust. Walking the steep rubble of the Acropolis, the sun baking the tops of their heads, Charlotte thought about her feet again and reflexively flipped her leg at the knee and looked back: yes, her foot was uglier than it had been when she’d observed it late yesterday, her feet in the air above Neil, who had been grunting over her. He’d hate that what she was thinking of was her feet.

‘A stone?’ he asked. He reached to steady her.

Her skin was bare and hot and wet with sweat. They surveyed the jagged hill they’d traversed, the squares of white below, the hundreds of people like themselves swarming over the hillside. Neil pivoted them to see the Parthenon above.

‘Not that far,’ he said. He shook his shirt tails to let in a little air.

She squinted at the sun gleaming and flashing through the distant pillars and told him how thrilled she was with the sight. She knew he wanted her to be thrilled. And, mostly, she was. But she felt she was losing the capacity to thrill him.

It was not good to feel tested thousands of miles from home.

Three days before – when they first arrived in Athens – they’d been greeted by a tour guide, a lively woman with thick dark hair and thick round breasts that undulated as she gestured at the front of the bus. When she paused for breath she grasped the seats on either side of her, leaning forward, and invited the entire bus’s inspection of the canyon of her cleavage. Even Charlotte was mesmerised by such a display, and Neil had mentioned it twice already.

She couldn’t compete in any way with the tour guide’s lusty glamour: she, Charlotte, the English teacher, the one who wanted to go to Greece because of
Oedipus
and
The Oresteia.

The guide’s name was Athena – Charlotte laughed when she heard it – and she’d bid farewell to their group to board another bus. Her aura, however, remained. Today, along with spaghetti sandals that invited crusty heels, Charlotte was wearing a strapless stretch jersey so her own bosom was loosened. Her shoulders were becoming burned.

After three years of dating, Neil admitted he had not been faithful. His confession to her of a dalliance had been tearful and dramatic and he’d begged her forgiveness. He said he loved only her, and Charlotte said she forgave him. The scene, occurring just six months ago, had been perhaps too dramatic, alarming her with a fear that she could lose Neil and also causing her to wonder why he was telling her such a thing. And why then. Had it happened before? She couldn’t shake the suspicion that he’d shown a false contrition and would easily stray again.

‘Let’s rest a bit.’ Neil sank onto a rock and nudged her down beside him. ‘You have to do this sort of thing when you’re young,’ he said. They were thirty-seven and forty-three.
Young-ish. ‘This heat. How do old people manage? They’d never see the Parthenon.’

Charlotte looked about. ‘Tour buses? But they can’t possibly reach the top.’

‘She was something, wasn’t she?’

Oh how stupid of her to mention tours, how rude of him.

‘Athena,’ he said, as though she’d forgotten.

Charlotte tugged at her stretch top and stood up. ‘Shall we continue?’

Neil reached out both hands, interlocking them the way they did when they took hikes and assisted each other up steep terrains, and she pulled him upright. He pressed against her and smiled. The Parthenon itself was a way to go, the slag hillside pitching relentlessly uphill in the heat as they trudged to Charlotte’s revered destination – ironically, the temple of Athena. There among the ruins shade was scant. Neil was excited at the friezes of the horses and warriors. Charlotte admired the maidens holding up the weight of the porch with their heads.

‘I think they’re not the real ones, though,’ she said.

The descent was easier, but they were weary as they approached something like an ice cream stand.

‘My brains feel fried,’ Charlotte said. ‘And it’s all so foreign. What do you think that sign says?’

‘Nitea,’ Neil read. ‘Maybe an orange drink. Like Fanta? Want one?’

He indicated to the vendor – the only way they communicated with the Greeks – two orange bottles in the cooler. In a tavern last night they’d pointed to a meat dish on another table, unable to discern anything familiar on the menu, and never did recognise it. Lamb? Beef? Goat?

The Plaka was stifling with its cacophonous piped music, jostling of crowds, leathers and incense stalls, and they were eager to return to their hotel room. But later, after showers, after lovemaking and another shower, they went back into the streets. They’d try a new
taverna,
they decided, strengthened enough by their familiar bodies to explore the foreign once again – and ventured into an alley strung with coloured lights. At the far end of the terrace of wooden tables, a folk band was playing – flutes and dulcimers – and they ordered beer and salads and bread. Charlotte grinned at Neil, swivelling on the bench to applaud the musicians, and, when she turned back, Neil’s arms were extended in welcome to a woman who stood in the abstract circle of his embrace.

‘Honey, it’s Athena! She remembered us from the tour bus. You know – the first day?’ He moved over and patted the space next to him.

What else could she say but, ‘Of course. Join us, please.’ Neil was happily flustered and ordered a round of
ouzo.
Athena looked freshly laundered in a blouse that resembled the aprons in the Agora, almost transparent. She loved Americans, she said, and was so happy to practice English. Her skin crinkled into smile wrinkles at the corners of her round eyes. Athena was probably her age, Charlotte realised. She sucked in her own stomach and sat higher

‘Maybe Athena could show us around other parts of Athens?’ Neil suggested. He laughed at the coincidence of the names, a stupid and conspicuous observation, Charlotte thought. Show them around? She and Neil and Athena together for a day? She kicked him under the table, but he was watching Athena.

‘We were going to rent a car,’ Neil said, pantomiming a steering wheel, ‘and go to Delphi. Charlotte wants to see the theatre there. We’d pay you of course.’

Athena clasped her hands together and said she loved visiting Delphi. ‘I feel so – what you say – with spirit,’ she said. Her earrings, dangles of silver disks, reflected the tavern lights like little sparklers.

All Charlotte could picture was Neil behind the wheel he had just been faking, Athena gushing from the passenger side, and her crushed into a small back seat. And that was the way it happened.

The next day Athena was at the hotel desk at 6
AM
, as Neil instructed, leaving Charlotte only the hours in between to protest.

‘Relax, Char,’ Neil had said, cuddling her in bed. He spoke with the expansiveness and generosity of a man about to date two women. ‘It’ll be fun; it’ll be different. You liked her, too.’

‘I did?’

But Neil had already dozed off and was soon snoring. Charlotte tossed fitfully and at some point poured herself whiskey from the flask Neil travelled with and stared at the moon over the Acropolis. The tiny balcony she stood on seemed symbolic of her life: she was in a place she longed to be, but merely hovering there, angry and helpless. She couldn’t even read the letters of the language. She took another sip and turned to look at Neil, a man she loved, had loved. How could she get him to value her more? The curtains lifted in the filmy night breeze – it was all so romantic! She wanted to punish Neil for his thoughtlessness in inviting another woman – no matter whether she was a tour
guide or not – into Athens, her dream destination. She felt like
stranding
him here. And suppose she did? Just for a little while, just for long enough for him to see that, without her, Charlotte, other women didn’t mean much. She mulled over how she could do this.

Athena had shown up in a yellow sundress, her abundant hair piled on her head. Charlotte, in her T-shirt and shorts, felt relegated to the back seat on the basis of costume alone, the foster child of an exuberant couple. And, of course, Neil offered Athena the front seat – ‘She needs to see where we’re going, and Charlotte doesn’t mind, do you, hon?’

‘How much are you paying her?’ Charlotte had asked at the car rental as Athena sat in the waiting room, her tanned legs crossed, her canvas sandals laced seductively around her ankles. Even her toes gleamed.

‘Why would you concern yourself with that?’ Neil had said. ‘I’ve paid for everything, haven’t I?’

Yes, of course he had. She knew that. Beholden was not a good position to be in. But what was? He’d reached for her in the dawn light and half asleep (finally), she’d succumbed to the familiar lovemaking, wondering only later whether he’d been fantasising about the buxom Athena.

Now, as the car rode precariously along the narrow mountain road so sparse of traffic that goats wandered by, Charlotte hugged her legs in the back seat, studying Neil’s trim hair and Athena’s coiled
mane
, and, as she took deep breaths of fear, reviewed what she could do. If necessary, if he continued to flirt, she could get the keys and drive back to the hotel. Or maybe just pretend to go on an errand – and what? – and disappear for a while.

Neil was addressing all his comments to Athena, as
though they were on a date. ‘Do you have family here?’ ‘What sorts of things do you like to do when you’re not tour guiding?’ And, the one that made Charlotte laugh aloud, ‘Do you go to Delphi often?’ In all fairness, Athena sat at an angle in her front seat and talked over her shoulder to Charlotte as much as she could. A daughter. Grow plants – in pots. Dance. She’d been to Delphi four times before. It was beautiful. Top of the world. Charlotte, in her pique, fought against asking more, not wanting to give Neil the more rounded picture of this rounded female.

At a roadside stand (one could hardly even call it a cafe), where they stopped for a restroom (peeing in a hole in the ground) and Nescafé and cheese sandwiches at an outdoor table, Athena set them straight about the ‘Nitea’ sign.

‘Pizza,’ she said. ‘Is saying ‘pizza.’ Here is frozen, put in oven, not made.’

Neil was delighted. ‘That’s great! Oh, I see. The “N” is really the “Pi” sign! Charlotte, look. Not an “E” but an “S”, sigma. That’s really funny.’ He grasped Athena’s knee through the sundress and shook it. ‘Do you know what we thought?’

It was the first time he’d said ‘we’. But he seemed to have forgotten who the ‘we’ was supposed to be. His hand lingered. Athena looked at his hand on her leg and then met his eyes. Charlotte felt a rush of anger. That anger – his causing her to consider a dramatic act – carried her through the hike to the top of the mountain. She carefully memorised the road they traversed, where they turned. But it was a monumental thing to do – to drive away!

On the top of Delphi the air and view filled her lungs and her head and, for a time, seemed to dissolve all else. The
associations were magical: Parnassus, oracle, Apollo. She could be a believer in gods up here at Delphi. She gazed through the crumbling majestic pillars and altars to vast horizons of forests and mountain crags, to all of Greece, it seemed. Life seemed boundless in its opportunities for a moment, and the altitude dwarfed her petty jealousies. For a grand moment, she inhaled it all – blue sky, ruins – until she spotted Neil and Athena walking leisurely in the other direction, Athena pointing and Neil nodding and reaching around to steady her over uneven terrain. Charlotte started and gasped as she watched them growing smaller and smaller. She might have reached Delphi, but she stood here alone. Here, in the home of the gods, she was just a lowly mortal, a jealous one, one with keys in her pocket.

‘Can I have the keys?’ she’d asked Neil when they’d parked, hoping her voice hadn’t quavered. ‘In case I want to come get my extra shirt.’

She stumbled back down the grade they’d climbed as a threesome, skidding and slipping in the dust, her eyes blurred with tears of frustration and anger. She’d given Neil a little book about Delphi and he’d been enchanted – or so he’d said – saying that they’d experience its air – maybe he said ‘spiritual air’– together.
Together.
She found the parking lot. The car was sitting on the tarmac, the sun’s reflection against its metal blinding her even more. Could she drive it? The interior exhaled a thick heat.

Her breath came in gasps as she turned the key.

She exited the town of Delphi, a touristy place, entered the old road Athena had guided them to, and started the car winding down the mountain. She’d rehearsed the possibilities of today’s bizarre actions in her head: she could drive
the route back to Athens, park in the street, run up for her suitcase, get her passport, have the desk call a cab to the airport. On one level, it seemed like a plan; on another level, it seemed absolute folly.

She pictured Neil and Athena stranded on the mountaintop. Had he by now hidden behind one of Apollo’s pillars to kiss her? Had he fondled her breasts? Who knew how many women he’d been with. She imagined Neil turning around, blushing from the sun and his actions, to search for her, Athena in tow. He would return to the car to find only an empty space. He and Athena would be stuck together – nowhere. And she, Charlotte, would be gone.

The road was narrow and she concentrated on clinging to her side of it, but, when she glanced across, the sky seemed alarmingly within reach. A bus approaching her caused her to almost drive up the rocks, and then a convertible beeped insistently behind her. A man in it stood up to scream at her in Greek. She’d crossed the middle line, forcing them near the edge. It was so treacherous! She steered into a dirt turnoff, grinding the tires against the gravel and turned off the engine and leaned against the wheel.

Neil had once asked, ‘Where would you like to travel to, Char? Above all else?’ And she’d answered the land of myths and stories, of Zeus, of Sophocles – all those ruins. Neil had brought them to Greece because of her yearnings. She had been longing to sit on stone benches in a Greek theatre, imagining distant masks and grandiose sufferings. She’d wanted to sense the old prophecies, conjure the faith of the ancients, find solace in the temple of Apollo. But now he’d ruined everything. Romance in ruins among the ruins.