“I didn’t hear you. I was listening to Stavros’s music. He plays so beautifully.”
“Did you see how everybody goes to Vassoula’s when he starts his music?” Ridi asked.
“Not everybody. Two tables.”
“Tomorrow, they go first to Vassoula and not come here. Why not make his music come here?”
“We can’t make his music come here. He plays on his boat.”
“He can move his boat, yes?”
“He always docks at that spot.”
“Then make him free dinner if he plays first.”
“First?”
“Before dinner. He brings more people who stay for dinner. I already make a name for the program.”
“The program?”
“If you name a program, more people come, and then more people stay for dinner. Maybe twenty percent more. I make the calculations. You want to know my name for it?”
“Of course!”
“Cocktail Serenade.”
“Serenade? That’s a funny word to use.”
“Funny?”
“Not everybody learns a word like serenade.”
“It is almost the same in Albanian. Serenate. It is only for the romantic songs.”
“I know what it means.”
“Cocktail Serenade. I make the name for you.”
“You are so sweet, Ridi, when I don’t deserve it.”
“Why you don’t deserve it?”
“I just don’t.”
“You don’t like my idea?”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea. You should tell my mother.”
“She won’t listen to me. I am Albanian. She stupid think I am!”
Athina laughed. “She stupid think you are?”
“Me Albanian stupid I!”
“You’re making a joke, I hope.”
“No kidding! You too stupid too!”
Then Athina was sure of his joke, and laughed so hard she had to wipe tears from her eyes. “Stop it!” she pleaded, though in fact, after a day of real tears, it felt good to be laughing again. “You always have good ideas, don’t you, Ridi? Cocktail Serenade. It’s such a great idea.”
“I have so many ideas. More than I can describe because I don’t know enough Greek words. I practice words.” He pulled from his pocket that day’s vocabulary list, only intending to display it, not expecting Athina to snatch it from his fingers.
“What words are you practicing today?”
Shameful, she read.
Aberration.
Forgiveness.
Faithful.
Forever.
If she had to choose words for that day, those would be hers, too; and she realized, Ridi had his own guilt, his own remorse, his own need for forgiveness. Their self-recrimination was equally shared. Both had done something unwonted, driven by passions stirred up by the other. “You’re not stupid at all,” she said. “Not with all your practice words.”
“Maybe stupid only about you.”
“Stupid about me?”
“Stupid in love. I am stupid in love with you.”
“Me too,” Athina said. “I’m stupid in love with you.”
Stavros’s music, every note a serenade, swelled romantically as they kissed.
◆ ◆ ◆
LYDIA FRETTED UPSTAIRS. SHE HAD been listening to the sounds coming from the restaurant’s kitchen—clanging pots, running water, a muttered conversation—but suddenly all that stopped. It made her suspicious of what was happening. She wasn’t feeling especially trustful of anyone on any account; certainly not her daughter, who had proven herself capable of poor judgment; nor Ridi, only that morning a rape suspect, now simply another lustful guy. He might not have been part of whatever took place the night before, but Lydia didn’t doubt that he shared the same culpable desires. She tread heavily across the living room floor, wanting to convey her uneasy wakefulness to her daughter, even though she knew that the headstrong girl would ignore her. Athina would do what she wanted, despite how doing what she wanted the night before had ended in an experience so disappointing that it would haunt her forever.
Lydia stopped in the middle of the room and looked around. She had new eyes for it, though nothing had changed—the same clutter on the coffee table, dishes in the drying rack, an ironing board that hadn’t been put away for weeks. Yet the last twenty-four hours had changed the lives of everyone who lived there. Her daughter had crossed a line. It was melodramatic to think that overnight Athina had become a woman because she lost her virginity. Womanhood was a lot more complicated than that. Still, Lydia couldn’t reconcile herself to the notion that her little girl had grown up, or almost—and went back down the hall to turn on her daughter’s bedside lamp.
Restless, she wandered onto the balcony. From down the wharf came Stavros’s longing notes. She wasn’t alone listening to his village serenade. His trebling fingers stoked many a woman’s desire—those who’d had him and those who wished they had—and all listened to him, pressing a clandestine ear to a window, muting a favorite soap opera, straining to hear over a husband’s snore. Lydia remembered when he had actually sung that particular song to her, its lyrics the poetry of life, and his voice, like his bronzed skin, was rough, textured, and tender, too.
Suddenly, he was singing the song—her song and her lyrics. She could hear the village grow still quieter. Every woman listening claimed that song to be hers, but Lydia needed no convincing that Stavros had sensed her tough day and played it for her. She needed that song. She needed to feel the generosity of love. For the only time that day, Lydia didn’t fight back tears, instead letting them roll down her cheeks and drip onto her blouse.
Stavros’s song ended. Across the village, shutters squeaked as they were closed. Lydia dried her eyes and went inside, glad no one was there to see that she’d been crying. On her way to bed, she stopped in Athina’s bedroom and turned off her little girl’s light.
◆ ◆ ◆
THE KISS TAKING PLACE INSIDE the kitchen reminded Nick of his own amorous notions. Next door, Takis was serving drinks to a handful of hangers-on, and he decided to try to spring him for the night. Predictably, Vassoula had perched herself at the door to lure the last stragglers inside for a nightcap.
“You have decided the party is here?” she asked as Nick came up.
“I wasn’t invited to the one next door.”
As if sensing their stares, Ridi switched off the kitchen light.
“He is a beautiful boy,” Vassoula remarked. “I think you notice such things.”
“I do.”
“Do you notice that she is beautiful, too?”
“I notice everybody.”
“Including Vassoula?”
“Definitely including Vassoula.”
He slipped past her and went inside.
The air was stale. The room, crowded all evening, still had traces of sweat and cigarette breath. The paunchy Russian, pouring from a bottle at his elbow, smacked the stubby glass on the bar for his pinballer friend, who stayed at the machine playing his game. Takis was hanging glasses over the bar by their stems when Nick slipped onto the stool in front of him. “I wondered when you were going to come over.”
“Is it still nightcap hour?”
“It sure is. What do you want?”
“You. On the rocks, or anywhere you suggest. When can you leave tonight?”
“As soon as you finish your drink.”
“Then pour it short.”
Takis did, and handed it to him. “What did my sister want?”
“Me. But she didn’t say on the rocks. I don’t think it mattered where.”
“I told you, she’s a whore.”
“And I was beginning to feel special.”
“Don’t let her bother you.”
“She doesn’t bother me. She doesn’t strike me as your sister, either.”
“We’re not brother and sister by birth. We were both adopted.”
Nick drained his glass. “I’m finished.
Let’s go find those rocks.”
“Okay, folks,” Takis addressed everyone in the room. “Drink up, pay up, and be on your merry way!”
Vassoula appeared in the doorway. Looking at Nick, she said, “I’ll stay open, if anyone wants another round.”
“That’s our cue to leave,” Takis said.
Vassoula stood sideways in the door.
They had to squeeze past her to get out. She put a hand on Nick’s chest to stop him. “You prefer my brother’s asshole to me?”
“Let him go,” Takis told her.
She dropped her hand.
Nick stepped around her.
“Pousti!” she said, and spat on the ground. Faggots!
◆ ◆ ◆
NICK POURED THE LAST OF the wine into Takis’s glass. On his terrace in patio chairs, with a hint of honeysuckle from an overhead arbor, they listened to every warbling note that Stavros plucked on his bouzouki down in the port. The moon had disappeared, leaving the Milky Way to scatter its stars across the inky sky.
“So, that’s not much detail about Afghanistan,” Takis said, continuing a conversation. “What did you do most of the time?”
“Duck.”
“Duck?”
“Not the quacking type. Duck, as in run and hide. And set fires.”
“Set fires?”
“Sometimes we set them to force the bad guys out of buildings and into the open. Eventually, it made them mix more with the civilians, so we were smoking them out, too. I saw kids get shot. I couldn’t do that again, not voluntarily, and it would have been voluntary if I reenlisted knowing that’s what I’d be doing. That’s the second reason I didn’t reenlist.”
“What was the first?”
“I wanted to live long enough to meet someone like you.” He pulled Takis into a kiss.
“For an old guy, you’re a romantic,” Takis murmured.
“Old guy? What’s old about thirty-four?”
“Twelve years on me. Don’t worry, I like older guys.”
Stavros finished his song. “That was really beautiful,” Nick said. “I’m surprised the whole village doesn’t break into applause.”
“His music is the only thing that I miss from here.”
“You don’t miss this?” Nick opened his arms to the red-tiled roofs spilling down the hill. “Most people would love to live in such a charming place.”
“Which is full of not-so-charming gossips.”
“What about the stars at night?”
“We have stars in Melbourne.”
“And the sea?”
“We have a huge bay.”
“It’s not the same as the Mediterranean. Besides, it’s in a city.”
“You don’t like cities?”
“I don’t like city beaches. I swim at them when I’m forced to, but for me, this place is special.” He pulled Takis to him, and while they kissed, Stavros started playing bouzouki again. “Do you want to go inside or have a splash more wine?” Nick asked.
“Let’s stay out a few more minutes. It’s never this romantic in Melbourne.”
“I’ll get the wine.”
Nick retrieved a bottle from the refrigerator and uncorked it. On his way back out, he looked in a mirror to check the scars concealed by his beard. The burning oil that ruined his back had splashed his face, too, and he wished he hadn’t trimmed his beard so short that morning. The scars had turned bright pink despite sunblock. His back, too, had sunburned while swimming. The scars were bad enough without the sun to exaggerating them. Not for the first time, Nick contemplated the gods’ eternal unfairness as he stepped onto the terrace.
Coming outside, he refilled their glasses and said, “Even if you hate this place, I’m glad you came back.”
They touched glasses.
“Your sister must be glad you came back, too, and to help her for a year. That’s a long time.”
“The truth is, most of the time I don’t really like her. Sometimes I even hate her. Still, what could I do after Omar disappeared?”
“I thought he committed suicide.”
“He drowned himself. His boat was found but not his body.”
“That’s tough on everybody, not to have real closure,” Nick said, thinking: a missing body is more than a little suspicious in suicide cases.
“Vassoula could have handled tough. She’d always been tough. She watched out for me in the orphanage. Here, too. Kids picked on us because we were adopted. If you can’t have kids, something is wrong with you, probably morally. Something is wrong with the kids, too, or why would they be up for adoption?”
“Why were you?”
“Why are most kids? Teenage pregnancy. My mother wasn’t allowed to keep me. It was too shameful to have a bastard.”
“At least you weren’t abandoned.”
“Vassoula was. They guessed she was two years old when someone left her outside the orphanage.”
“How old were when you were adopted?”
“I was eight. Vassoula fourteen.”
“That’s old, isn’t it? Especially fourteen.”
“We’d been farmed out on our own a couple of times, but never really adopted. Only experimented with for a few months, then brought back. ”
“Experimented with?”
“People who thought they wanted to be parents, and then realized they didn’t really like kids, or more than once having the ulterior motive of hoping to have sex with us eventually. When eventually came—and it did for both of us—we both fought it off and got sent back to the orphanage. When the staff started doing the same stuff in the orphanage, Vassoula protected me better than she managed for herself. We were already calling ourselves brother and sister when our parents showed up looking for a son and picked me. The staff convinced them to take Vassoula as well. They wanted to be rid of her and told them we were inseparable.
“It worked. Our parents took us both. We used to joke that they got two slaves for the price of one, because that’s all they wanted: workers. They were getting older and had no kids to take care of them, which is how it’s supposed to happen in a village. Our mother was injured in a car accident that made it impossible for her to have children, which made her undesirable as a wife, and our father had been caught playing around with someone on the beach. They were forced into an arranged marriage.”
Nick chuckled. “Playing around on the beach? I didn’t know good Greek girls did that.”
“It wasn’t a girl. It was a guy, and his parents married him off to stop the obvious rumors. Since Zeeta—that’s our mother—couldn’t have children, there would always be a plausible excuse for their childless marriage. Any excuse to cover up his homosexuality.”
“So your father is gay, too? Is that nice, or weird, or don’t you talk about it?”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“There was a fire at the house. Both our parents were killed.”
“A fire?” Nick was suddenly very interested.
“There was a leak from a gas bottle for cooking. My father walked in smoking a cigarette and the whole place blew up.”
“That’s terrible. When did that happen?”
“Three years ago.”
“Did you both know the other was gay?”
“He never would have used that word for himself.”
“But you knew?”
“I’d grown up hearing snide remarks about him, and more than once had to go out with girls to prove to my friends that I wasn’t like him. I always knew I was gay, even if I didn’t know the word, and doing it with girls didn’t change that. But I didn’t know what guys really did. So I followed him, four times, always on a Sunday when my mother was at church, and I’m sure they were praying for different things. It was no mystery where guys went for sex, only supposedly a secret who did. Out past Poustis Point.”
“Queer Point?” Nick translated.
“It’s what people call it. I stayed up in the hills where he wouldn’t see me, and followed him a
s he walked way down the beach. With binoculars, it was easy to watch him. Each time, he stood by the same rock, or if the waves weren’t splashing too high, he sat on it. It was his spot. I could see a couple of other guys had their spots, too, but I didn’t recognize them. They came from other villages. He waited for guys to come by, and when one stopped, they’d duck behind the rocks. They never took long to do it. Afterward, usually my father smoked a cigarette while the other guy went away, sometimes running because he was so ashamed of what they had just done. He never talked to me about it, even when he must have known that I was gay, too. He never stopped my mother from washing out my mouth with soap when, too young to know what I was saying, I came home repeating what someone said my father had been seen doing.
“That fourth Sunday, after his trick ran off, I decided to confront him. As soon as he finished his cigarette and started for home, I ran as hard as I could through the hills, and dropped into a cove just as he came around the rocks. We stood so close I smelled his cigarette breath. He noticed the binoculars hanging around my neck and knew instantly the situation. He laughed a little and asked me, ‘Isn’t it late in the season for bird watching?’ I told him I wasn’t watching birds, and he said he could imagine what I was watching. He wanted to know why. I told him he had never been honest with me, and I wanted to know why. He said he didn’t want to encourage me. He wanted me to be happier than him and hoped I’d outgrow it. He had never gotten over being gay, so I asked why he thought it would be different for me. He said no one had prayed for him, and he prayed for me every time he left the beach. He prayed I wouldn’t end up doing the same thing. Then he told me that my mother blamed him for my being gay.”
“She knew?” Nick asked. “Or had guessed?”
“I think people always know, especially parents, they just deny it. She thought my father corrupted me.”
“She thought he had sex with you?”
“She couldn’t imagine that something so unnatural could come naturally. I told him, ‘She must hate you.’ ‘Your mother never loved me,’ he admitted, and kept on walking. I watched until he disappeared around the headland. Then I went and sat on his rock.”
“That’s quite a coming out story,” Nick said.
“Yeah. Poor guy. He got stuck forever on a tiny homophobic island. At least I had the chance to escape to Melbourne.”
Fire on the Island Page 14