White Vespa (6 page)

“Watch it, Myles, you're starting to sound like one of my kind, a regular explainer.”

They passed the clock tower. Yórgos waved to a friend and shouted something. The water was glassy, an unstill mirror for the morning sky. The only breeze was the artificial breeze of the boat passing through quiet air, the only sound the low thud of the inboard.

“Funny,” Myles said, “but seriously, life feels marginal here. You're always looking out over water, away.”

“Something like the empty center in those Japanese brush paintings?”

“Maybe, maybe that's it,” Myles said, not sounding convinced.

“Or in Auden's poem about Brueghel's
Fall of Icarus
, do you know it? He says even great events, the crucifixion for instance, happen, ‘Anyhow in a corner.'”

“Maybe that's part of it, too. Or maybe the houses just conform to the shape of the land. Maybe it's economic, money here literally came from the sea. Sponges built these houses, of all things.”

“Maybe,” Jim agreed.

“But it doesn't matter how or why. It's just so. The center feels like it's in the harbor, that we walk around it.”

Jim nodded.

“But the curious thing
,
” Myles said, “is that we feel the center distinctly. It's got a sensible pull. I don't know. I just feel oriented here in a way I don't most places.”

Myles put his camera away and grinned, shaking his head. He hadn't taken a single picture. His wide-angle lens wasn't wide enough. To get much of the town he'd have to wait until they were no longer centered. The staginess of the town seen from the water wasn't something he could photograph. He thought he'd need a Cirkut camera just to begin.

 

When they got to the straits between Sými and the bare island of Nímos
the captain looked back, hunching his shoulders in a question, pointing first through the narrow straits and then out to sea, along the shore of Nímos. Myles pointed through the slot. The water was peacock blue in the channel, bright green over the submerged shoals on either side, and clear in the shallows. They skirted the rocks, holding close to the shore of Nímos, following it on around and away from Sými. When a small cove came into view Myles pointed at it and the captain ran in close. In the shallows, Yórgos leapt into the water and held the boat while Myles and Jim clambered out with the supplies, their packs, the food, and a small grill. As soon as they had their footing, the boat backed away and headed for Yialós. Yórgos waded ashore last, carrying a small bucket with his hand line and some bait.

While Yórgos fished what he thought the likely places, Jim and Myles picked their way over the rocky outcrops, stopping occasionally to crush the island vegetation in their hands. Spices. It was surprising, very surprising, just how many of the island plants were aromatic. There were spice markets, for tourists, in town, but Myles had assumed the spices were shipped in, like the sponges now, from somewhere else, but perhaps not.

When they got back to the one small tree where they'd left their packs in the shade, they found Yórgos already had started the charcoal for the grill. There where nine little fish in Yórgos's bucket, three each. Smiling, he said, “Mr. Myles, these are tasty ones.”

Jim pulled a snorkel and mask out of his day pack and offered it to Myles. He had his Swiss Army knife out and was poking around in Yórgos's bucket.

“I want to be sure these things get cleaned,” Jim said.

Myles laughed. “Okay then, I'll swim. When's lunch?”

“Don't push your luck.”

Myles looked at the charcoal, thinking lunch would be awhile. “I'll be over there,” he gestured. “Just give a shout.”

Myles found a rock he could dive from; he wanted to get in quick: the water would be cold. He plunged through the surface and it
was
cold so he swam a few strokes underwater, to be moving while his body got used to it. When he surfaced he spit in the mask, rinsed it, and adjusted the snorkel. Then he put his head down and floated out over the submerged rocks. He was still cold, but his attention was elsewhere. His dive had carried him away from the shallows, and he paddled to where the bottom fell away quickly; he
felt suspended between nothing and nothing. The warmer he got the less he moved, until he was just adrift, weightless, hanging over the peacock blue of the deep water.

He felt bemused, as he often did when he swam with a snorkel. Then he realized he was thinking about the new waitress at Two Stories, about Anne, her saying she wanted her picture taken so she could see what she looked like. He doubted he could help her with that; some things we want we don't get. And how we look is just too mixed up with how we think about ourselves to ever come into clear focus. He glanced up. A needlefish rode just under the surface, a silver streak under the brightness of the surface itself. The surface, he thought, was very like a mirror, had that mercury shine, but unlike a mirror in that you couldn't see yourself in it. Maybe, he thought, that made it a better mirror: no illusions. Anne, anyway, hadn't been fooled by her mirror into thinking she knew what she looked like. That said something in her favor.

He swam down, deep, to where the water was cold and his ears hurt, then came up fast, watching the unruffled shine of the surface as it got close, pushing his head, at last, right through it.

He pulled the mask up on his forehead and looked back toward the low profile of Nímos. Squinting against his myopia, he saw Jim materialize out of the rock of the island as he strode up the rise from the other side. Then he was walking down, gesturing to Myles to let him know lunch was ready. He waited while Myles swam ashore, and they walked together back over the rise and down to where Yórgos knelt over the grill, tending the fish.

 

Anne stood by the bar. The terrace was quiet, only two tables out there with anybody at them and the folks at those two tables slow drinkers. She counted her tips, passing the piles of coins to the bartender in exchange for bills. Easy money, overall, and the clientele relatively well-behaved. She'd done a lot of this kind of work and no longer thought much about it. Things evened out. She was beyond worrying about the size of any particular tip. The tips she got were for service; she gave good service. But she didn't flirt, as a rule. She didn't want the money that much, and about the customers she felt indifferent. Except for Myles. She had been flirting with Myles.

She asked the bartender for a gin, and he gave it to her in a coffee cup. On the house, all of them were on the house. Maybe the bartender liked her, maybe he didn't care for the management all that much. Either way, the gin was free.

The bartender was cleaning up, cleaning the bar with a wet towel, restocking. He was very efficient. A John, Anne thought, vaguely amused. From Australia, working his way around the world. He'd been gone three years, half the time in London, half on the road. He had some good stories, Anne thought, but he wasn't any good at telling them. She'd listened to him trot them out for the real stewheads, the ones who sat at the bar because the bartender had to listen. She thought the suffering must have been about evenly distributed.

Occasionally, when she thought about Paul, she found herself wanting a gun.
That,
she thought, would simplify things. But she knew she'd never use a gun, not even to threaten with. What she really wanted was simplicity, and a gun would be simple. She ought to have a plan, she knew it. Soon she'd be bumping into Paul, and she'd need something to say. She'd seen him several times already. He liked nothing better than to strut in public places.

She sipped at the gin. On the terrace, the last table was standing up, two
couples, tourists, staying over for a single night; they'd told her. Anne went over to say
goodbye
and by the time they were at the stairs she had cleared the table and pocketed the two shiny, hundred drachmae coins they'd left as a tip. She ran her thumb over Alexander's face on one of the coins, another pretty boy.

Anne took off her apron and leaned against the bar; she picked up her coffee cup and sniffed the gin, trying to decide whether to finish it or not. John nodded toward the stairs, at Myles coming down, looking sheepish. Anne liked how he looked, loose limbed and relaxed, a little sleepy.

“Here for a drink?”

“Sure.”

“It's whiskey straight up?”

Myles nodded.

“Mind if I join you? I've cashed out. John's got the bar until closing time.” So they went out on the terrace and sat on the wall.

“You look burnt,” Anne observed.

“Hope not, but clearly I got some sun, and wind. I went for a picnic to Nímos, out there,” Myles pointed. “Not much shade.”

“Take some pictures?”

“Not many. Ate a good lunch and swam myself tired,” Myles said.

“But not too tired for the walk up to Two Stories.”

“I felt restless and . . .” He glanced at her and left it at that.

They decided to walk down to Yialós together. The great steps were deserted; the old slates looked wet in the streetlights but were just polished slick from use. They walked, peering between buildings where they could see down to the harbor, a black pool ringed by the town lights and carrying the pulsing reflections of those lights. Again, Myles was struck by the staginess of the old mansions along the lower stairs.

They sat down on an abandoned stoop, across from a stoned-up doorway. The walls were a deep weathered ocher and the elaborate stone surrounds off-white and hanging ghostly in the low light. Myles asked about Anne's childhood, and she told him.

“Maybe I was too much alone. Bainbridge Island wasn't so built up then and not so fancy. In summer there were quite a few people, people with cabins along the shore, but most of the year it was very quiet. A girl alone didn't have to be afraid.”

“As it should be.”

“I was given a horse of my own when I was seven, a little white mare. I loved that horse, and if I wasn't out riding I was usually in the barn, feeding her or working her coat with a curry comb, or mucking out. I didn't have to, I wanted to.”

“All those earthy smells!” Myles joked.

“I liked them! I still like them. And the riding could hardly have been better. I loved to ride in the fog, and there was fog a lot. I loved the way things would suddenly appear, a tree or a house. Just a tree or a house, floating in the fog. Know what I mean?”

“I think so.” Myles said, “Everything isolated in a soft white frame, what it is without all the usual distractions.”

“Yeah. And there were these trees, madroñas,” Anne said, “They had this amazing red bark, smooth, and in the fog, wet, their limbs looked liked arms or legs.”

“That'd had too much sun?”

Anne laughed. “More like flayed. But at seven or eight, those trees just seemed human to me.”

“I've seen them,” Myles said, “intense green leaves.”

“And the smell. You could smell the Puget Sound everywhere. When the tide was out, the smell could be overpowering. I loved that smell. I think of the Sound whenever I get a whiff of the sea, so whenever I walk around Sými harbor!”

“Do you go back?” Myles asked.

“No.” Anne shifted uneasily. “You know how it is. You keep going.”

“I've known a lot of people to go back.”

“I'm not going back.” She paused. “To the Puget Sound, maybe, but not to Bainbridge.”

Myles glanced at Anne, at the set look that had suddenly appeared on her face. He knew all at once that Anne was unhappy, probably always had been.

“So are you going to take my picture?”

“Maybe,” Myles said.

“When?”

“Ha! I said
maybe
!” But they both knew he had agreed.

 

Anne watched the taillight of the Vespa until it blinked out of sight. “Why
now?” She wondered aloud, then turned around, away from Myles, toward the clock tower at her end of the paraléia. She walked to the click of her own heels, past shuttered shops, empty fishing boats, and the sleeping yachts. She liked the world like this, seemingly abandoned, a world of things. She might have taken a long walk but she was tired, her legs achy and her feet slow. She thought she would need to drink to sleep. She let herself into her room, leaving the light off. The darkness suited her. She poured by feel, a juice glass half full of gin. She smelled it, a familiar smell, comforting and clean.

She wondered about Paul, about why she was avoiding him, hadn't approached him. She wanted to; it was what she'd come to Sými to do. But she hadn't, hadn't felt she could.

She remembered a toy she'd played with as a little kid. Two magnets, each with a small plastic terrier mounted on it, one white, one black. When she'd tried to press the little terriers together the one had pushed the other away, or they'd leapt together. She couldn't remember now, not for sure, if they sprang together face to face, as if to kiss, or face to tail, and what would that have been? She shook her head ruefully.

Anne sat down. She remembered vividly the feel of those dogs in her hands, the feel of the magnetic fields they moved in, violent attraction, powerful repulsion. What she felt now was something like that, but both at once.

The little dogs, she remembered, were subject to sudden emotional swings. If she held the black terrier in her hand, carefully, and pressed his face to the face of the white dog, then the white terrier backed away, but might, faster than she could see, turn, and the black dog would be on her, would have pulled her in. That's how she remembered it.