White Vespa (18 page)

“Why?” Blue said.

“Because he's the kind of guy nobody likes for long.”

Jim groaned. “Maybe it won't turn out that way. She seems to have him in hand. Hell, maybe she's using
him
, a summer lover.”

“And why not?” Blue put in.

Michael fiddled with his spoon. “Maybe,” he conceded, “but for all that attitude I think she's still got plenty of girl in her. She's a romantic, apparently an incurable romantic. Which makes a person stupid.”

“You're getting old again.” Blue said, pretending to be stern. “You're about the oldest thirty-six I ever heard of.”

 

“What's the story with this photograph?”

“Do you like it?” Myles asked.

“Sure,” Jim said.

“Recognize it?”

Jim looked at it again. “What do you mean? It's still the same photograph. I recognize it; I saw it last time I was here. In fact, I've seen it every time I've been here.”

“That's all?” Myles persisted.

Jim looked again. “Some guy on a white Vespa, same kind you ride.”

“You don't recognize the place?”

Jim shook his head.

“That's the little bakery up the alley from To Stenáki
,
” Myles said. “You've probably bought bread there yourself.”

“Not baguettes,” Jim said in mock self-defense.

“I took that photo last summer. And when I got back to D.C. I started thinking that guy looked like he had it pretty good. So I came back.”

“Just like that?”

“More or less,” Myles said. “Then, when I got here, I wanted a motorbike. I found the white Vespa and I bought it. It's not just the same kind of Vespa; it's the very same Vespa. I didn't know when I bought it, but it is.”

“Ha!” Jim laughed.

“The thing that really attracted me to the photo was the sense of purpose,” Myles pointed at the man in the photo, “this guy just seemed to radiate.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, here I am. Am I radiating a sense of purpose?”

Jim looked at Myles slyly, “Actually, you seem totally at sea.”

“Yeah? Well, there's a reason for that,” Myles said.

“How do you say it?
Aha!
”

“Very funny.”

Myles took a bottle of oúzo
,
from Lésvos, out of the freezer. “Lesbian,” he said.

“Can you taste it?” Jim asked.

“Well, it's reputed to be the best oúzo going,” Myles said. “It's a little acrid, maybe, got some of the smell of the body in it.”

“In that case, I'll have me a big glass.”

Myles poured out two fingers each in tall water glasses; flecks of ice rolled in the thick liquid.

Jim lifted his glass, “Sappho,” he said roundly, “the smell of her.”

They each took a long, reflective pull.

 

Myles worked at the sink, preparing a plate of food to eat with the oúzo
,
cucumber spears, quartered Italian tomatoes, chunks of cheese, wrinkled black olives.

“So Michael's doing the guide thing again with Blue?”

“Well, there is that,” Jim said, “Kos and crossing from there to Turkey, Bodrum, I think.”

“And?”

“And I think he's also getting her out of Paul's way.”

Myles glanced up, then carried the plate over and set it on the table between their chairs. “Is that necessary?” he asked, sitting back down.

“Maybe. She's showing the inclination.”

“Aha. Not good.”

“We're gonna need that bottle, don't you think?” Jim said.

They seemed to have tacitly agreed to drink too much. Myles retrieved the bottle from the freezer and poured out two more shots while standing.

“Why didn't you go along?”

“Thought I'd see how it felt not to.”

“And?” Myles asked.

“It hurts.”

“Is that bad?”

“No, not bad, but hard. I can feel my life getting complicated.” Jim paused, eyed Myles, and, looking a little abashed, asked Myles why they were drinking.

“Anne told me.”

“Oh?”

“She told me what happened,” Myles said. “Where the darkness comes from.”

“And?”

“And she asked me to keep it private.” Myles drank. “I'd rather not.” He controlled his voice with difficulty, then added huskily, “That bastard.”

“You mean Paul?”

Myles nodded.

“If you want to talk it'll stop with me.”

“I want to, but I promised,” Myles said. “I wish I hadn't. I can feel the paralysis passing from her to me.”

They sat there, not talking, looking forlorn.

“So what's she going to do,” Jim asked at last.

“That's the big question, what
is
she going to do? I don't know. She's not saying much. I'm starting to regret I ever encouraged her to talk to me. It's between us all the time now. I thought talking would bring us closer, but she's pulled back, into some bluer distance.” Myles shook his head and took a ragged breath. “It's as if she woke up only to realize she's already dead.”

They sat in silence.

“And what are
you
going to do?” Jim spoke gently. “Are you sticking with her?”

“What can I do? It happened.” Myles fell silent, then started in again. “Of course I'm sticking with her, but . . .”

“But?”

“She's wasting her time with Paul. She should let him go,” Myles grimaced.

“Just let him go?”

“What else?”

 

Myles picked at the food and emptied out the last of the oúzo, dribbling it into Jim's glass. He looked at the photo of the man on the Vespa and felt mocked. When he got up, the earth seemed to shift under his feet. So that's it, stewed, he thought. He looked out the window, and it was evening out there, a purple stain draining away in the last of the light. He poured two glasses half full of bottled water and broke some ice out of the trays in the freezer. Jim watched him, looking owlish.

“More Sappho?”

“No more Sappho.”

“No more smell of her body?” Jim said mournfully.

“No.”

“Too bad.” They seemed to consider the sad fact. “Smelled kind of good once you got used to it.”

Myles didn't answer, rummaging in a cupboard.

“What are you doing?”

“Aha!” Myles almost shouted. He carried over the two glasses of ice water, two spoons, and a suspicious container of white goo.

“What's that?”

“Dessert.”

“Have we drunk enough for reckless experimentation?” Jim asked, dolefully.

“Mastic. From Híos,” Myles rapped out.

“Not Lesbian?”

“No. From Híos. The best mastic is from Híos.” Myles was twirling a spoon in the mastic and when he had the spoon well wrapped he dropped it into Jim's glass.

“Thanks. I guess.”

While he was preparing a second spoon, Myles said, “Swirl it around in there.”

“Is this perverted in any way?” Jim said.

“It's from Híos!”

“No perverts on Híos?”

“Must be some.”

“To the perverts of Híos,” Jim said, with emphasis, raising his glass.

“Jim, settle down. I don't think you make toasts to suck on a spoon of mastic.”

 

“Where's your mother?” Paul asked, before she'd seen him. He was coming down, and Alex was looking the other way, toward town, looking for him.

“Do you have to?”

“Have to what?”

“Ask about my mother.”

“Don't get flustered,” he said, and when he saw she didn't get it, he added, “You know, embarrassed.”

“She's getting her hair done at the Alíki, getting a whole new face. She needs one, haven't you noticed?” Alex had her chin out, a picture of petulance.

“And here
you
are at my door. I'm flattered, I want you to know that.”

Alex put her shoulder on the door and pretended to push. “So let me in.”

Paul made a great show of putting the key in the lock, holding it up and then slipping it in. The door swung open and he bowed, sweeping his arm across his body as he straightened back up. “Just like a gentleman,” he said, winking. “You really ought to find one, a young one. A boy. Don't you think?” He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Miss, little miss,” he hissed, as she walked stiffly past him into the room, “really, little miss, it's not too late to run, not too late.”

“Would I be here if I wanted to run? Do you think I would?” Alex said, her hands shaking.

“You might. And you might change your mind.”

Alex looked stubborn now. “I'm
not
a virgin, you know.”

“Oh, I hear you're a tough one,” Paul said, backing her toward the bed. “You're mother told me how she worries about you. You and your dirty little ways.”

“Like she should talk!”

“But she's an adult, Alex. Adults get to be just as dirty as they want. Don't they?”

Alex knelt down on the bed, her head pressed sideways against the bedspread, looking back at Paul over her shoulder. “You tell me,” she said.

Paul took the hem of her short dress in his fingers and flipped it up, over her back. “Okay,” he said, “I will.”

 

Blue breezed by the reception desk at the Alíki. She was wearing her swimsuit with a white T-shirt pulled over it, bearing the legend, i WAS OUTTA THERE BEFORE YOU EVEN TURNED UP, silk-screened on the back—a training T-shirt from the best swimmer's pool back home, The Deep End. And she
was
the kind of girl who liked to plunge in first and not linger in the pool when she was done. She would have preferred to go to the beach with Alexandra early and to swim more and sunbathe less, but she'd accepted it wasn't going to happen that way. She hadn't liked Kos much, an island overrun with package tours, and in Bodrum she'd felt uneasy, a little frightened, at the streets teeming and the beginning of something unfamiliar, Asia. Now she wanted to share some secrets with Alex, to find out what was new with Paul.

She rapped sharply on the door and waited. She tried again, and then drifted down the hall to the reception desk. She noticed before she said anything that the man behind the counter in his comic little uniform was surveying her beach clothes disdainfully.

“Sávvas?” She asked, “Don't you recognize me?”

Sávvas raised an eyebrow quizzically, but said nothing.

“Is Alex here? Room 102?”

“The Knoops checked out yesterday, in the afternoon.”

“Checked out?” Blue sounded dismayed, and she wasn't feigning it. “Why?”

“It's not a question we ask.”

“Is there a note for me? Anything at all?” Blue stood still, as if thinking but not thinking. “Just gone?”

Paul pushed through the glass doors as Blue turned away from the counter, toward the door. He grinned at her. He liked Blue.

“They're gone,” Blue said stonily. “Alex and Kat are gone, left yesterday, left no word.”

“No kidding?”

“Aren't you surprised? You don't sound surprised . . . or upset.”

“You think I should be?” Paul said, somehow giving an insistence to the
you
that suggested Blue's tone more than any unexpected departure pained him. “Blue, listen to me, people move on. It's what they do. If you try to stop them or if you miss them when they're gone, you're letting them control you. I wouldn't. I don't.”

“You're not going to miss them?” Blue asked, bewildered.

“I hope not!”

Blue shifted uneasily on her feet. She
was
going to miss them, but Blue felt suddenly alone with Paul and glad of it and a little scared. “I'm going swimming.”

“Where?”

“Around the point, toward Nos,” Blue said.

“I could buy a cheap suit and come along, what do you say?

“Why not?”

“But over toward Nos, I guess I could skip the suit,” Paul said.

“I guess if you wanted to. A lot of people do.”

 

“Blue?”

“In a minute!”

Michael looked across the coffee table to Jim, who was reflectively stirring the ice in a glass of Rebel Yell. Jim was thinking the situation had a family feel. He was also thinking he was hungry, “And Bodrum?”

“Well, better than Kos,” Michael said. “But crowds of people in the streets in the evening. Guess I hadn't really quite credited the warnings. But I don't think a stroll is improved by so many other folks strolling, too.”

Blue was trying to get her lipstick on straight. She couldn't understand why whenever she decided to wear lipstick it always looked like she'd put it on in a bus on a bad road. She sighed and dropped the tube into the clutch purse she sometimes carried in lieu of her everyday pack. She stood up, straightened her blouse, and opened the door into the big room where Michael and Jim sat sipping at whiskies.

“Do I get one?” she asked.

“Have a Coke.”

Blue got a canned Coke out of the fridge. “Guess what?”

“
Guess what?
” Michael asked, shaking his head.