by Andrew Hart
He let the book slip from his fingers and fall into the lap of a startled Marcus, its apparent owner, like he was dropping the mic. Everyone laughed with just a bit more verve than the moment deserved.
“I’d better change,” I said, still avoiding Marcus’s eyes.
“That’s right, missy,” said Melissa. “Time to get some sun on that pasty skin!”
I turned to the stairs and she slapped my ass—not hard but somehow managing to get a resounding thwack that echoed round the room.
“Yes!” said Melissa. “Beach! I can’t wait.”
I fled, jogging upstairs and barely breathing till I had the bedroom door closed behind me. It was going to take an act of will to get me to open it again.
But I did. I changed into my swimsuit, slipped a cheery orange sundress over the top (purchased at employee discount but not, I thought, obviously so), and considered Gretchen. She was, I thought, like me in her diffidence, her slightly awkward, hesitant way of carrying herself, even if she did look more like Melissa’s brand of bombshell. It was an odd combination and I wondered how it evolved, how someone with such obvious good looks grew up so mousy.
I still didn’t know who she was or why she was there, nor did I have any idea about whether she was involved with Marcus, or if Melissa had brought her there to become so. It seemed an odd thing to do with me here. I mean, we were just friends, me and Marcus, but Melissa couldn’t know that romance was absolutely off the table for us, not unless Marcus confided way more to Simon than he let on. I felt mildly affronted, then reminded myself that I had no right to be.
And what if Gretchen did get involved with Marcus? What was that to me? He wasn’t why I was here.
I considered myself in the mirror over the sink, staring myself down for a long minute, then snatched up my purse and went downstairs, where the others were waiting.
We piled into the huge Mercedes with our beach bags, chattering happily and smelling of suntan lotion and, in the case of everyone but me, rum. The car was warm, the sky blue, and Melissa’s enthusiasm for the excursion infectious.
“Oh my God, this is so great!” she said. “This place! The weather! All of us together again. And with Kristen and Brad on their way!”
“I can’t wait to meet her,” said Gretchen, starry-eyed. “I love her show.”
“We are going to have the best time ever!” said Melissa, barely listening.
Gretchen gave a shrill whoop and shouted “Yeah!” so unselfconsciously that I was quite impressed, though it also struck me as strange since she didn’t actually know the all of us who were getting back together. Then Melissa was turning up the radio and we were rocking out to the Black Eyed Peas, which, anywhere else, at any other time, would have been absurd but here was perfect, so even Marcus sang along. I felt ten years younger and forgot my annoyance with Gretchen. Melissa was right. This was going to be great after all.
That feeling flagged a little after an hour and a half but perked up again as we pulled into the Minos. We were still singing, bobbing in our seats like kids.
“We are so white!” Gretchen exclaimed to Marcus. “Aren’t we just so white?”
Marcus’s eyes widened slightly and he smiled that puzzled, disbelieving smile I knew so well.
“Pretty white,” he agreed, indulgently.
“Right?” said Gretchen. She shrieked with laughter at her own outrageousness.
“You are so random,” said Simon consideringly. He was smiling, but it wasn’t quite a compliment.
“I know, right?” said Gretchen, delighted. “Seriously random.”
Melissa had booked lounge chairs on the beach behind the hotel in the exact spot where we had sat five years ago, and we took our places without thinking. The sand was warm underfoot, rather than the searing heat we had so bitched about last time, a heat that had actually burned your feet if you didn’t get to the water fast enough. The beach was quieter too. In my memory it had been crowded with Germans and Russians, the latter mainly bullish men and sculpted, hard-eyed women who might have been TV news anchors or models. The relative quiet calmed me, and for a moment I just sat in my beach chair, staring happily at the water, the years falling away like curls of old skin. When I turned to see that Marcus had, on some old instinct, taken the chair next to mine, we smiled at each other unselfconsciously, amazed at how easy it all was.
I looked at Gretchen, slathering oil onto her trim belly, apparently unaware of her status as interloper. I had not seen so much as a glance or gesture between her and Marcus suggesting they were a couple, but I couldn’t think of a way to find out for sure. She caught my eyes on her and said, apparently unsarcastically, “Makes a change from Great Deal, I bet.”
“It does,” I said.
“Do you still have that pink top that you got on employee discount?” she asked. “The one with the seashell pattern around the neck?”
I blinked. I knew exactly which top she meant, but I’d spilled wine on it at Christmas and had had to throw it out.
“How did you know about that top?” I asked.
“You were wearing it in a picture, right, Mel?”
“Oh my God!” said Melissa, wriggling out of her top to reveal a stunning black bikini that made her look like a Bond girl. “Do you remember when we went to that cheesy disco and had to get a cab back, and we told the driver the hotel was Midas instead of Minos, and he drove us, like, halfway across the island?”
“When you told him it was Midas,” said Simon, smirking.
“And then he wouldn’t bring us back when we realized the mistake!” Marcus chimed in.
“You say Midas!” Melissa mimicked, hunching her shoulders and flapping with her hands. “Now you not want Midas. What is wrong with you?”
“And then he wanted double the money!” Simon added. Gretchen, I noticed, was laughing with the rest of us as if she’d been there, the Great Deal pink top forgotten.
“I took down his name and cab number,” said Melissa, delighted, “and when I spoke to the concierge at our hotel—finally, after driving around for hours—the guy just shrugged and threw it away! I was like, excuse me? And he was like, meh. You know, whatever. I was furious. And I still hadn’t realized we’d been saying the name of the wrong hotel, and the concierge was like, ‘If you want to get back to this hotel’”—she said, making her voice slow and serious—“‘you might try saying the right name.’ I felt so stupid that I told him they should rename the hotel Midas because that was someone everyone had heard of.”
She laughed at herself.
“I’m sure he was like, yeah, lady, we’ll get right on that,” she added. “What an idiot. I still get it wrong. It’s Minos, right?”
“As in minotaur,” said Marcus. “Mythical king of Knossos down the road. Heart of the Minoan civilization.”
“Thank you, professor,” said Melissa, sticking her tongue out at him, then grinning. “God, look at this place. Is this awesome or what?”
We considered the beach stretching around a rocky headland toward the town of Rethymno in one direction and the long golden stretch back to Heraklion in the other, the view of the blue Aegean so vast and unbroken that you could see the curvature of the earth itself.
“Pretty awesome,” said Simon.
“Totally awesome,” said Gretchen. She shaded her eyes to look at Marcus, who, feeling everyone’s gaze on him, chuckled, shrugged, and played along.
“Awesome,” he said. “Jan?”
“Awesome,” I agreed.
There was a reverential silence while we considered the general awesomeness, and then something occurred to me.
“Why was the minotaur named after the king?” I asked.
“What?” said Simon.
“Minos. Minotaur,” I said. “What’s the connection?”
“Minos. Taurus,” said Melissa. “Well, Taurus means bull, right? Like the star sign.”
“Right,” I said. “So why Minos?”
“The monster was actually the offspring o
f King Minos’s wife,” said Marcus. “That’s why it wasn’t killed at birth. It lived in the complex of passages under the palace.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” said Melissa. “You are so smart. Isn’t he smart, Gretchen?”
“Super smart,” said Gretchen. “I mean, I know you made the dean’s list every year, but still.”
“It’s a weird monster, don’t you think?” I said, cutting across Marcus’s baffled surprise. “I mean, yes, it’s sort of creepy, and I guess the horns would be dangerous, but it’s a male cow! Cows are cute, kind of. If you were trying to tell a story about a monster who lived in a complex of underground passages to scare the living crap out of people, half man, half bull seems like an odd choice. You’d think the head of a lion or something would be more frightening.”
“The minotaur was carnivorous,” said Marcus. “Being an unnatural creature, it had no suitable food and could only eat people. Tributes to King Minos were sent by surrounding countries every year from the neighboring regions.”
“People,” I said.
“Right,” Marcus replied.
“To be fed to the monster.”
“That was the only way they could control it once it had reached full maturity.”
“OK, that’s less cute,” I conceded.
“Hold on,” said Melissa. “You said the monster was the child of King Midas or Minos’s wife?”
“Yep,” said Marcus.
“And . . . how’d that work exactly?”
“Well, I guess Jan isn’t the only one who thinks cows are cute,” said Marcus.
“Hey!” I protested.
“Minos’s queen, Pasiphaë, fell in love with the sacred bull of Poseidon and had a famous craftsman, Daedalus, build a life-size wooden cow that she could climb into . . .”
“No!” said Gretchen.
“Yep,” said Marcus again. “It was also Daedalus who built the labyrinth where the monster lived.”
“But wait,” said Melissa, grinning, “so the queen climbs into the wooden cow, and the sacred bull or whatever just . . .”
“Exactly.”
“OK, professor,” said Simon, his eyes down on the Sports Illustrated he had brought with him. “I think that’s enough of that.”
“It’s interesting!” I said.
“It’s gross,” said Gretchen.
“It’s not real,” said Simon. “Bunch of old made-up crap. I don’t know why you waste your time with it.”
I frowned at him but didn’t get the chance to argue, and I wasn’t sure what I would have said anyway. Melissa had turned her lighthouse smile on us again.
“OK,” she said. “So swim, then drink; or drink, then swim?”
“Swim,” said Simon, leaping to his feet.
“Swim,” agreed Melissa, continuing the game.
Gretchen predictably followed suit, and Marcus gave me a look.
“Swim?” he said.
I didn’t want to. I doubted the water would be as warm as Simon claimed, and I felt uncomfortable stripping down to my one-piece in front of all these near-perfect bodies, but it was impossible to say no.
“Swim,” I said.
I wore my glasses in the sea, partly because I wanted to be able to see what was going on, and partly for the same reason I had kept my hand luggage in my lap as we drove in from the airport. They made me feel a little less naked, which, after the towel incident with Marcus, felt important. It was choppy but the water was indeed warmer than I had believed possible, especially a few inches under the surface, so I waded out till I was chest deep and then half squatted, half floated between the waves, my chin just under the surface, my feet touching down on the rippled sandy bottom to push myself up and over each new surge.
I had an OK body. Paler than I would like, a little heavier and less toned than I had been, but I wasn’t neurotic about it. I ate reasonably well unless money was very tight, and I did enough walking at work that I didn’t feel bad about letting the gym membership slide. I had some cute dumbbells and a Pilates ball that I dragged out from time to time, but I didn’t obsess about my body—though I’d be lying if I claimed not to have noticed the very slight spread and sag around my boobs and butt. When I was working reasonable hours and pulling down a healthier salary, I’d take them on, I told myself, and the occasional pizza wasn’t going to kill me, was it?
That’s what I had thought a few days ago as I modeled my bathing suit in front of the mirror in my apartment.
Not bad, I had thought. Not as bad as I had feared, anyway.
But that was then, and now I was here with Melissa and Gretchen, who had basically the same body as each other, lithe and toned, everything still tight and perky like nymphs, goddesses. It was impossible not to stare. I stayed under the water, even as the waves swelled in the wake of a passing speedboat, watching Melissa and Simon swimming like Olympians and play wrestling, kissing each other wetly, and doing God knew what with their hands under the water. I turned away quickly and found Marcus looking at me.
“Water feels good,” he observed.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m sorry about before, when we bumped into each other. When I was coming out of the shower—”
“No, that was my fault,” he cut in. “I guess we weren’t expecting each other.”
“Not in that moment, no,” I agreed, smiling. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, a rarity that made his face strangely open and young. It reminded me of waking up next to him.
“And then there was the Introduction to Gretchen debacle,” added Marcus, still pained.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just didn’t know how to . . .”
“And Melissa said . . .”
“Right,” he agreed before I could say any more, not needing me to. We nodded at each other, smiling, finding an odd kind of familiar ease in discussing our previous awkwardness.
“You doing OK, Jan?” he said. “You look good.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You too.”
“I mean, outside e-mail and Facebook we haven’t spoken for . . .”
“It’s been a while,” I agreed, still smiling, glad we were having the conversation and that Gretchen had taken herself after Melissa and Simon, splashing less expertly in a ponderous crawl.
“Oh, and how about that promotion?” he asked, his eyes wide and encouraging. “The executive team leader thing.”
I should have been ready for the question, but I had been thinking about other things, other times, so home—work—was the last thing on my mind. I looked down. Just that. A momentary, reflexive gesture that would have meant nothing to anyone else. But it was Marcus, and I just couldn’t get my face to do what it needed to do fast enough.
“Oh, I wouldn’t have been right for it,” I said in a low voice, my eyes flashing to Melissa, who was screaming with delight as she straddled Simon’s broad shoulders.
“What? Jan! I thought you were really excited about it.”
“The salary wasn’t that much of a step up, and there was a lot more responsibility,” I said breezily. “I’m better off on the hourly plan. The benefits are still good and—”
“Jan?”
“What?” I said, my smile fixed.
He was giving me that look, the one that made my heart race and my skin break into pink blotches. He lowered his head slightly, and when he spoke his voice was little more than a whisper.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He looked sad and embarrassed.
“Why?” I said with manic brightness. “It’s fine.”
But Marcus always knew when it wasn’t fine. When I was fibbing. In my head I saw it all as it had happened two days before I got on the plane for Greece.
“I’m sorry, Jan,” Camille had said, offering me her slim dark hand and smiling apologetically. “We just didn’t feel you were ready for this much responsibility.”
I shook her hand, blinking, feeling the color rise in my face.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I unders
tand.”
I reminded myself to let go of her hand. My own had started to sweat.
“Maybe you should take a few days off,” she suggested. “Just till you feel ready to . . .”
“Actually,” I said, “I plan to. I’m going on a trip.”
“Good for you! Anywhere nice?”
“Greece,” I said. “Well, Crete, actually.”
“Wow,” said Camille, looking more impressed by this than she had by my interview. “That’s fantastic. Just don’t forget us. I hope you have a great time.”
“I will,” I said, grinning and hoping she couldn’t see the tears in my eyes.
OK, yes. That’s how it actually happened. I prefer the first version, and I’d worry less about my bank account had it been true, but yes, I made that up. I do that sometimes. My application to move into the executive team for one of Charlotte’s best-known megastores had been unsuccessful. Again. Which meant that I would still be going into work at three in the morning, making sure the backroom kept the store stocked and that the previous day’s sales were steadily, constantly replaced, a new item slotted into the shelves as its counterpart left the building in Great Deal’s ubiquitous and horrible yellow shopping carts. That was my life. Another cog in the great yellow machine, working my eight or nine hours till I crawled back to my apartment at lunchtime, to the roommate I needed to share my rent but never saw because I was in bed by six every night. That was my life. Nine dollars an hour with a degree in biology and a minor in English, subjects almost comically irrelevant to what I did for a living, a job I had taken on as a way of building up cash while I was a student with the vague idea that it would help me prepare for med school. But I hadn’t gone to med school. Hadn’t even applied, though sometimes I pretended I had.
Once last week, I told a new employee in hardlines—cute in his way, but far too young for me—that I had been accepted at Chapel Hill and would start next fall. It was a stupid and unnecessary lie, and I knew it would bite me in the ass even as I was saying it, though even I was surprised at how quickly he started avoiding me. No biggie. I am used to being alone.