Reverb (14 page)

Chapter Nine

I’m in a mammoth aqua curl. Wave arcs over me and I glide on my board through the tunnel of water. Reach out and touch the curling wave, water streaming off my hand like liquid mercury. Rushing wave sounds like a symphony—highest treble to lowest bass of a tempestuous orchestral sonnet. I fly towards the light beyond the breaking wave, but it doesn’t get any closer, and I look back just as the wave engulfs me.

I’m on the sand, the sun lifting the wetness from my skin and baking me warm. Can’t remember how I got here. Just glad I survived the wipe out. Tickle of sand sprays my torso, and open my eyes as Julia, wearing her black one-piece straddles me with her long, slender legs and sits on my stomach. She has a beer in both hands and takes a swig of hers as she puts the other icy bottle on my bare chest. Gasp with the shock of the cold and she laughs, more mean-spirited than funny, and it kind of creeps me out. The laugh is familiar, but I’ve never heard it from Julia before.

Then her lips are on mine, her tongue in my mouth, she’s sucking me in. My body responds before my brain and I feel pulsing in my groin, my cock hardening. She slides her hand down my body, under my swim trunks and wraps her fingers around my shaft. And while it should feel good, it doesn’t. Her touch is aggressive, overly rough as she moves her hand up and down my length. She laughs again, that cold laugh, and I look up at her, but she’s now kissing her way down my torso. See the top of her head, her long, thick brown hair cascading across my stomach, but instead of soft, it feels stringy, damp, like an old-style mop.

But Julia cut her hair. It’s short now.

She’s running her tongue along the line of my pelvic bone, then stops at the base of my penis, and Parker looks up at me.

I’m naked. Exposed. No longer at the beach.

Her black eyes are wild. She’s speeding, per usual. She smiles, laughs coldly, holding my dick with her laced, Goth-gloved hand. Try to get her off me but can’t move my arms—they’re spread and pinned above my head by leather straps fixed to the metal bed frame of the bare mattress I’m on. Try kicking her off me, but I can’t move my legs either. They’re spread wide, pinned by leather straps around my knees and ankles.

I go berserk, writhing, fighting against the restraints. Feel her hand on my ass and every part of my body tightens as she slides her fingers between my balls to my anus. Squirm to get away from her, but the restraints cut into me, holding my legs back and forcing my body to arch upwards at the hips fully exposing all of me. I can’t move. I’m beyond prostrate, and helpless, and scared out of my mind.

“No! Stop!”
I try and yell, but something’s in my mouth, a hard leather rod, holding my tongue down and my mouth open so my words are garbled, my voice slight. Tears of frustration, rage, shame well, then stream down the sides of my face into my hair.

She runs her finger round the rim of my anus then sticks it up my ass. I groan with the painful pressure, and continue to grunt with the cramping in my stomach and groin as she rotates her finger, finally release a panting gasp when she finally pulls it out. Struggle to lift my head but the gag around the back of my neck is so tight I can only lift it an inch or so. Parker looks at me, smiles as she releases my cock, draws her fingernails across my stomach as she turns away from the bed. I hear high pitched rustling of metal. My terror mounts.

I’m trembling uncontrollably, drenched in sweat, and succumb to tears for a moment. Peeling plaster reveals ancient stone brick walls. Bare light bulbs hang on wires from the ceiling, which is also coated with peeling plaster exposing the arched Cathedral vaulting. There are no windows.

Parker returns, looming over me, brings a black plastic wand with a small metal fitting on the top between my spread legs, up against me but not touching, and turns it on, her face suddenly awash in blue light. She smiles broadly, her yellowed teeth especially bright against her black lipstick and blue skin, the scene right out of
Clockwork Orange,
but it’s happening to
me
.

“We gonna put on a good show today, baby?” Parker slurs her cockney delivery. Her breath is sour, stinks of liquor.

Then searing pain shoots through my balls, my groin, right to my brain as she touches the wand to my testicles. Scream—loud, long, then I’m choking for breath, the restraints cut into my wrists and knees like knives as I recoil from the white hot shocks.

“Ooh. Very good, puppet.” She laughs again, touches the wand to my thighs, my pelvis, my stomach, my cock.

Light worms squirm across my eyes, obscure my vision, the pain so agonizing it’s commanding all my attention, overriding even my fear. My body jerks convulsively with each shock, my hips coming off the mattress only a fraction with each electric pulse, my limbs ripping as I pull against the restraints.

Parker is all smiles as she bends over me, grasps my flaccid dick and starts sucking me, touching the wand to my ass, scrotum, inner thighs again and again, putting me into a convulsive rhythm. She holds my cock so the head stays between her lips and goes in and out of her mouth as I contort against the pain.

I’m screaming at her to stop, to let me go, begging her to stop hurting me, the sounds coming out of my gagged mouth more animal than human.

My screaming wakes me. I’m on a train, sunlight coming in through the picture window momentarily blinding me from the view beyond, but then I catch a glimpse of the flat, chaparral landscape and somehow know it’s the Sacramento Valley. The compartment is old-Europe though, with two bench seats for three, facing each other. Kate sits across from me, her enigmatic smile on her freckled face, her long red hair tumbling over and blending into her thin, burgundy camisole.

We enter a tunnel. The lights blink, then go out, then come back on, and Kate is gone.

I stand, bang my head on something above me and wake with a start. I’ve smashed my head into the elaborately carved wooden headboard of the huge king size bed I’m in. Lay back into the pile of down pillows rubbing the side of my forehead to counter the throbbing, then throw the heavy white quilt aside. Sea breeze coming in from the open balcony door sweeps over my sweaty skin and cools.

Daylight shimmers through the sheer white drapes over two thirds of the glass wall. Beyond is the sparkling Ionian. I lay in bed staring at the textured ceiling, recalling the dream integrated into the memory of Langside. I shudder picturing Parker again, shocking the shit out of me with her electric wand. I’m writhing in agony, screaming with each stinging pulse,
No! Don’t! Stop!
as my dick grows under her grasp, her warm wet mouth...

Tears of rage and shame well in my eyes and I get out of bed to stop mentally cycling. I go out onto the patio overlooking a sweeping view of Govino Bay, the rocky shoreline and rolling hills of the island of Corfu. Turquoise Ionian Sea glitters with the early morning sun. Greece lies beyond the horizon.

I stand at the short, marble-columned railing bordering the balcony of my private villa surveying the scene of what money buys. Below the bedroom and sitting room is the living room and kitchen which open out to a patio complete with dining area and jacuzzi the size of a lap pool. A small path leads down to a private dock which sports two chaise lounges. No beach to speak of, mostly rocky and shrouded with low trees and ground foliage that hides the villa next door.

Haven’t left this bungalow in two weeks. Haven’t seen nor heard any neighbors, and haven’t spoken to anyone in as long. Gonna have to go shopping if I want to keep eating, or call in room service. Food I brought in with me has been gone for a week now. Been subsisting on the nuts and candy set in bowls around the villa they keep refilling when they come in to clean. Doesn’t bother me. Not really hungry. More like exhausted all the time. Don’t sleep much though. Scared of dreaming.

Gonna have to stop hiding in this bedroom if I want any semblance of a life. I get that. Just don’t know how to convince fear to let me walk out the front door.

BOOK TWO

Recovery

Chapter One

Elisabeth wakes to Cameron crying and brings him out on the roof garden to suckle her breast. She strokes his silky fine golden hair and cradles his face, seeing Jack there, feeling every fiber of her being extending to her son with love. And then the tears come, as they always do lately, and she sits on the lounge chair, perusing Google Maps on her tablet for where to go from here, and cries. Cameron doesn’t seem to notice, engaged in his Lego blocks and Thomas trains, which sometimes gets to her, though she’s probably expecting way too much of an eleven month old.

Her mother says to come home. Insists it would be best, for whom, Elisabeth isn’t quite sure. Without a doubt, it won’t be for her. Her parent’s house is not good grieving ground. The endless judgments of her parenting, the constant little digs she’d have to endure for ‘following’ Jack to Israel, and then having a child here, and
staying
. Gust of wind comes off the Med and whips the U.S. and Israeli flags fluttering half-staff on separate poles in front of the Hilton several block from her flat. Four soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing yesterday. Just another day in Israel.

Going home might be better for Cameron. Having grandma and grandpa fuss over him could compensate, even minimally, for not having his father anymore. But grandma is sure to make her life Hellish, however unwittingly, and that won’t be good for mommy. If she’s sad now, she can’t imagine how miserable she’d be within a few short days of being
there
. And ultimately that wouldn’t be good for Cameron. No. Going back to L.A., running back to her family is not an option.

She’d given thirty days notice to Helen and Clive over three weeks ago. She and Cameron have to be out because Helen arranged for Clive’s cousin to move in at the end of the month. They were all very sympathetic when Jack was killed, but seemed hardened to such events.
How is that possible?
Her mother is right. It is simply unfathomable how losing loved ones through terrorism could ever become part of the norm.

Every day for the past six weeks, Elisabeth goes up to the sundeck during Cameron’s afternoon nap, stares out across Tel Aviv, her home for the last five years, affirming it’s time to leave. She scours maps, drilling down to street level and virtually driving cities and suburbs in the States and Europe, searching for some place that
feels
right. Safe. Money’s not an issue. Between the two of them, they’d put away a couple million, and that doesn’t even include Jack’s life insurance through the AP.
The world is my oyster
, though there is no joy in this cliché. She wants to crawl inside and close the shell. What difference does it make where she goes? Every place is like every other place without Jack.

Almost dark by the time she puts on her khaki’s and the gray cashmere sweater Cameron likes the feel of, puts him in the baby carrier, and buries his head between her breasts for safety. She ties her hair back and tries to become transparent as she walks down Ben Yehuda to get a falafel, trying to ignore that they’re about a million calories and she still needs to drop twenty pounds. She avoids eye contact, but notices everyone in Muslim garb.

Elisabeth hates herself like this.

She absolutely has to get out of here. Jack haunts every street in the city. And she feels scared a lot now. Israel has always been a dangerous place, only now, since Jack was killed, she sees murderers everywhere, on the face of every Palestinian, in the eyes of every Muslim child. She really has to leave as soon as possible.

Four doors down from the sandwich shop she notices the travel agency and goes in.

“What is the first flight out of Israel in the morning?”

The agent sits in front of her flat screen monitor, dark-skinned, plump, mid-fifties. “To what destination do you wish to travel?” Arab or Israeli—it’s impossible to tell, but she’s definitely native born. Her accent is thick, and of the area.

“Anywhere. I just want to get out of here.”

She seems unfazed by my desperate need to escape this place. “How many will be flying?”

“Just me and my one year old son. Do I need a separate seat for him, or can he sit in my lap?” The thought of putting Cameron in the car seat carrier next to her leaves her cold. Elisabeth
needs
to be holding him.

“You may hold your son.” The woman looks at her with the most sympathetic expression she’s gotten since Jack was killed. The agent focuses on her monitor and taps on her keyboard. “The first flight that has available seating is to Athens, Greece. It departs Ben Gurion airport at 8:45a.m. and arrives in Athens at 9:40a.m. Will that do?”

Elisabeth has been to Greece only once before, attended an art history extension program at an international college the summer of her junior year. “That’ll do.”

She boxes her portfolios and various personal treasures back at the flat that evening then gives them to Clive to mail to her parents. She leaves everything else she can’t send or carry to Clive’s cousin. When all is packed, and Cameron is down for the night, Elisabeth goes to the roof deck, stares out at the city lights, recalling her years with Jack here, silently saying goodbye to both, then sits in the lounge chair for the last time, and grieves.

Next morning she and Cameron are on their way to Athens. Cameron clings to her, wraps his little arms tight around her neck from the moment the engines start through lift off. Elisabeth strokes his head, rubs his back slowly, assures him they’re safe. She points out the window at the puffy clouds, the blue sea below, picking out islands and ships with excitement until Cameron releases her, puts his tiny hands on the window, presses his face to the small glass and stares out. All the way across the Mediterranean he’s captivated, mesmerized, and again she sees Jack in his wide brown eyes. She has to peel him away from the window to strap him in her lap, and he throws an embarrassing fit as they descend through the thick brown sky, quelled only as they land in the ancient, smoggy city.

Being off-season, she’d been able to book a room from Israel the night before for two weeks at the Best Western in Kolonaki, the upscale neighborhood at the base of the Acropolis she lived in during her summer here. If not exactly fun, at least it’s engaging toting Cameron around Athens in the carrier. Jack isn’t in every cafe and on every street like in Israel, or so many other cities they’d traveled. Though they’d been together forever, he’d been doing an internship at the New York Times and did not join her in Greece that summer all those years back. Elisabeth tours her old school, the cafes she’d frequented, turns Cameron on to her favorite pizza place, miraculously still there, and shows her son the four story walk-up on Zenocratis Street she’d rented, what now feels like a lifetime ago.

Athens is more crowded, noisy and hectic than Elisabeth remembers. The people seem angrier too, probably since Austerity took effect. Riots in the streets every few months or so now. And while it’s still only bottle tossing and a lot of bravado, it keeps her on edge when she’s out and about, especially with Cam. Her only real peace since arriving is in the mornings, at the bakery across from the Best Western. Cameron munches on his moon cookie, and Elisabeth sips espresso and stares at the poster of the island of Corfu, taped to the cracked plaster wall. It shows a pristine white sandy beach with turquoise blending to ultra-violet water lapping a lazy,
deserted
shore. That’s where she needs to be.

Two days later she’s with Cameron on a ferry from Igoumenitsa to Kerkira, Corfu, and booked into the Hotel Omiros in Gouvia for the next two weeks. Spend the first day exploring Corfu City, and then every morning for the next week, Elisabeth and Cameron get on a bus and discover tiny old towns to resort villages nestled in the hills and along the mostly rocky beaches of the small island.

Corfu is everything the poster represented. Stunning, full of tree-covered hills rushing down to meet the crystal Ionian and Mediterranean seas. Everywhere they venture is fairly deserted. Tourists haven’t arrived yet. Even Corfu City is mostly locals who only speak Greek, of which Elisabeth doesn’t know a word. But it feels safe here, even familiar, though she’s not been to this island before. Everyone she encounters is gracious, polite, seemingly relaxed, like the Greece she remembers from her college days.

Beginning of their second week on paradise, Elisabeth discovers a real estate office that caters to Brits and Americans. Somehow, she lets the pleasant, golden skinned, mild-mannered English broker talk her into a three-month lease on a two bedroom
villa.
Photos he presents on his laptop show a charming, adobe ‘saltbox,’ with a Spanish tile roof, situated at the base of a hill bordering a sandy beach north of Agios Gordios, a small resort town on the west side of the island. Summer, he’ll get five times the seven hundred and fifty Euros he’s willing to offer her per month, which is why the lease goes only to the end of May. Still, it’s better than the five hundred and twenty-six Euros a week she’s paying the Omiros. Three months of down time should be enough space to figure out what direction to take the next phase of her life, the one with a child, and the one without Jack.

The two-bedroom could easily pass for a one-bedroom by knocking down the dividing wall between the two small rooms. But the house is clean, wood floors throughout, the living room the largest in the house with a fireplace and a big picture window framing the exquisite ocean view, the pebbled beach only a couple hundred feet down the hill. The kitchen has a vintage GE fridge and an O'Keefe & Merritt porcelain stove and oven, and enough space to put a small table and Cameron’s high chair. Formica counter tops complete the 1950’s look. Best part—the house is nestled in a small grove of pines, a mile up the beach from town, with only a few other houses behind her up the hill and to the south dotting
her
stretch of beach, most of which are empty until summer. She can finally be with her son and her memories, without feeling afraid.

She wishes Jack could have seen this place. He’d have loved it. He loved the ocean, any ocean, and they’d explored many together. He kept promising her they’d escape to Avila or Pacific Grove when they were ready to settle down. And she wanted to believe him, so she stayed with him in Israel, gave birth to their son while he was reporting in Beirut, and spent the last year arguing about going home to the safety of the States.

She should have laid it on the line, left without him. He would never have gone for pizza that night if not for her. Jack didn’t even like pizza. Funny how things work out.
Not ha ha funny.

She sits on the patio lounge chair feeding Cameron, staring out at the sea when she first sees him. It’s mid-day, the west winds blowing in the first hint of spring. The beach is deserted as usual, so it surprises her to see him walking along the water’s edge. He’s too far away to see in detail, the sea meeting the sand well over three hundred feet from the house, but she can tell he’s fairly tall and slender, and by his cadence, which is smooth and graceful, she’s pretty sure he isn’t an old man.

She leaves Cam on the patio with his Thomas trains and gets her Nikon from the kitchen counter, mounts the 500mm lens, and comes back out to the deck. She focuses on the beachcomber, turning the lens, sharpening his profile to clarity when he turns towards her.

He’s beautiful. Young, early twenties, maybe. Stunning, like he just walked off the cover of GQ.

She drops the camera to her side and moves behind the extending branches of the pine rooted just off the patio. She doubts he sees her. He doesn’t keep looking her way. He continues up the beach, and within a few minutes he’s out of sight, around the cliff that meets the sea several hundred yards to the north.

She smiles to herself as his picture replays in her head. Soft, sculpted features framed by dark, tousled hair. His image fades and Jack comes to mind. And guilt. Then comes the void and with it the tears. She sits on the pine bench that runs along part of the back of the house and cries. Cameron doesn’t notice, lost in his toys, lining them up contentedly. As it should be. He’s safe, the patio surrounded by a three foot high pine plank fence, and a locking metal gate at the step off the deck. Elisabeth sighs heavily, takes a quavering breath to stop crying and leaves Cam to his bliss as she goes inside to make them lunch. They spend the rest of the afternoon on the pebbled sand, digging for sand crabs, searching for shells, getting soaked by the waves. The entire time, Elisabeth keeps looking for Mr. Gorgeous to reappear. He doesn’t, but she can’t let go of the overwhelming sense that she and Cameron are being watched.

In the weeks that follow, she sees him every day, running at dawn down the beach while she sits on the back patio feeding her son. She assumes he knows she’s there, watching him, but he never so much as glances her way. He comes out of the north, running south along the water’s edge, fast, fluid, full force. He’s back two hours later, right after she puts Cameron down for his morning nap, and like clockwork, she sees him through the living room picture window, his pace more casual, his intensity spent. She usually wanders out to the porch in time to watch him climb the path up the cliff and disappear into the stone house up the hill behind hers.

At first, she imagines he’s some rock star on holiday from his wild and crazy life. But as the weeks turned into the next month and he’s still out there every day at dawn, she conjures many scenarios. She likes making up stories of who he is, and what he’s doing living alone in one of the few old stone houses on the hill. He may be a recluse hiding from the wicked world, like her. Elisabeth has no desire to find out the truth. The guessing game is entertaining. She isn’t interested in talking to anyone beyond Cameron, and the vendors at the Friday street market. She just isn’t ready.