Night of the Furies

by David Angsten

  In the middle of this fool’s paradise, I came to a sudden stop. I was standing before a beautiful woman in an emerald dress and pearls—the panther from the beach! She was dancing with the Greek girls with whom I’d seen her walking.

  For a moment I just stood there, gaping. Her dancing displayed the same catlike grace that had guided her limbs through the water. Sensuous, yet self-contained; aware, yet focused inward. She danced as if the music were only played for her, as if everyone around her was imagined. In that moment she appeared to be the center of the world.

  My body began to respond to her in the same way it responded to the music: it felt compelled to move. I turned to find a place to leave the bottle I was holding. A tall, handsome, gray-haired man reached out to take it from my hand. The man appeared oddly out of place. I smiled in thanks, then turned away and danced toward the woman. My eyes were drawn down to her thighs, which glowed in the flash of the strobe lights. The straps of her sandals were laced tight around her calves. Her hair, neatly pinned in back, was falling loose in errant strands, softly caressing her neck. Her white pearls seemed to burn in the dark, and the glistening skin over her delicate clavicles gleamed with a tactile vividness. The square cut of her emerald dress revealed the tops of her breasts, which jostled and shifted with the movement of her arms as her hands traced the flow of the music.

  Gradually, my presence seemed to draw her out; I could see her awareness emerging. More than once, her amber eyes drifted up to mine. The slightest hint of a smile flit across her face.

  I moved closer.

  Soon we were dancing face-to-face, her eyes gazing openly at mine. This gaze of hers was not a woman’s knowing look of lust, nor did it betray any timidity or fear; it had a kind of innocence about it. For a woman who so readily provoked a man’s desire, she seemed remarkably unaware of her power, as if she had never made use of it before, as if it were something new.

  We stopped dancing.

  I leaned in and shouted, “What’s your name?”

  She moved her face very close to mine. “Damiana,” she said.

  Did I hear her correctly—Damiana? I was about to ask her to repeat it when Basri suddenly appeared behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her boldly on the neck. She turned to him and smiled. He was with Dan and another group of girls, including Irene and Marina. Damiana and her friends seemed to know them all, but she hadn’t realized I was with them. Altogether now there were nearly twenty girls clustered around us. I decided they must have all been part of the organization, the Pan-Hellenic Women’s Chorus. With their simple elegance and classical beauty, they seemed a notch above the other women in the room, as if they had just stepped off some European cruise that had drifted in from a previous century.

  Basri commandeered a bartender’s tray arrayed with shots of ouzo. The glasses were quickly dispersed, and although we couldn’t hear the jolly yachtsman make his toast, we all downed our drinks in unison. Then a track kicked in with a hammering beat, and we fell to dancing again.

  I noticed the women wore similar sandals to the ones I had seen on Damiana. All of them danced with her same lack of self-consciousness, a primitive yet graceful abandon. They were not mimicking the latest street craze, or the dancing of the tourists around them. Their gyrations seemed to bode forth from deep inside themselves, from some primal but cultivated core, as if from a tradition all their own.

  There was something very beautiful about it, and something a little bit frightening. An uncontrolled fervor, the body expressing impulses that completely escaped the mind. I found it fascinating, and could not take my eyes away from whoever was dancing before me.

  We must have gone on for an hour or two. At some point we found ourselves out in the night, walking in a loose procession down a crowded street. Basri led us like a drunken Pied Piper. Other women from the chorus joined in our walk as we made our way down to the harbor. Men we passed studied the women like a parade of exotic animals.

  Somewhere along the way, I introduced Dan to Damiana.

  “Damiana?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Can you believe it?” I explained to her that we had just been talking about a Central American plant named Damiana when we saw her pass by on the street.

  “It’s another synchronicity,” Dan said. “A meaningful coincidence.”

  “In Greece, it is not an unusual name,” she said.

  “Does the name have any meaning?” Dan asked.

  Damiana fingered the pearls at her throat. “It means…tame. And…friend. A true friend. “

  “It’s definitely synchronicity,” Dan said. “It may portend something significant.”

  Damiana grew quiet, as if disturbed by the thought. “It is only a name,” she said. She moved away and joined the rest of the women.

  Dan and I glanced at each other and shrugged.

  At the harbor, we split off to pick up our packs, and then met the group back at the dock.

  Basri had bribed the harbor officials to allow him to tie up his yacht at the jetty. I saw him now pressing bills into the palms of various dockhands and guards as we passed through the gate and walked out to his boat. They seemed both amused and envious at the sight of us: three young men and a gorgeous troupe of women traipsing tipsily down the quay to climb aboard the largest power yacht in the harbor. Most of the men knew Basri by name and didn’t seem surprised by the company he kept.

  “Mr. Pasha, you need my help tonight, yes?”

  “Mr. Pasha, too many women, they going to sink your boat!”

  “Mr. Pasha, take me with you—please!”

  Dan and I, in a boozy haze of lust, watched as Basri helped each woman climb aboard his boat.

  “Aphrodite leads the way to Dionysus,” Dan said groggily.

  “You can say that again.” The future—at least for tonight and perhaps the next few days—looked positively scrumptious. A ten-to-one ratio of females to males. The possibilities boggled the mind.

  “You must not come with us,” a voice whispered.

  We turned to find Damiana standing behind us. “The two of you should leave, quickly,” she said.

  “Why?” Dan asked.

  She glanced up anxiously toward Basri. He was offering his hand to a red-haired woman, guiding her onto the boat. “It is not safe,” she said.

  Dan scoffed, “What do you mean, not safe?”

  Her gaze was unsteady, and her lower lip trembled slightly. She was clearly inebriated, but her fear seemed sober and genuine. “I am afraid for your lives.”

  Her eyes moved back and forth between us. Then she pushed past us and hurried aboard the boat, slipping by the others in line.

  For a moment I flashed on Phoebe, screaming in the pit of the adyton.

  “Dan?”

  “What?”

  “You still think this is a good idea?”

  His eyes were glued to the line of women still filing onto the yacht. “You think we have any choice in the matter?” He continued staring at the women. “We’re in the hands of the Fates,” he said.

  I started to disagree with him, to repeat what Phoebe had once said to me, but somehow the words never came. Dan’s wish has come true, I thought, recalling his plastic Aphrodite in the niche.

  I turned to watch the last girl climb aboard the yacht. It would be no exaggeration to say the woman looked divine. As she took hold of Basri’s outstretched hand, she glanced back at us and smiled.

  I don’t know why, but we followed her.

  9

  BASRI’S MOTOR yacht was enormous, but I was too drunk to be properly impressed. I could barely see the end of the thing as we staggered aboard in the dark. The glossy black aluminum hull reflected the lights of the harbor, while the sleek upper floors were a ghostly white, their windows darkly tinted, with the muted glow of the interior lights silhouetting the women inside.

  Basri immediately put on some music and told us to help ourselves to the bar. Then he went into the pilothouse to take the yach
t to a mooring in the harbor.

  At the granite-top bar in the expansive living room, Dan and I concocted martinis. Women flitted past, chattering in Greek. Although we offered, we couldn’t seem to entice them to join us for a drink. They appeared to be preparing for something as they scurried off with bags and clothes to particular rooms on the yacht.

  Dockhands shouted, and the boat cast off. It barely felt like we were moving.

  Drinks in hand, Dan and I entered the pilothouse. Basri was there, working the wheel, maneuvering the yacht through the harbor. Although intently focused on the task at hand, he appeared to be entirely relaxed. I wondered aloud how he could handle the colossal boat after all the drinking we’d done; I’d have had trouble navigating to the bathroom.

  Basri laughed. “It’s only a problem if you’re stoned,” he said, glancing pointedly at Dan.

  “I told you that wasn’t my fault,” Dan said.

  “You’ve piloted this boat?” I asked.

  “Once,” Dan said. Apparently he’d had a little accident. Dan stepped to the window and peered down at the forward deck. “Where’s your crew?” he asked.

  “On leave. I pick them up Thursday in Cyprus. There I do battle with the European Commission. “Til then, I am on my own. The way I like it. Total freedom.”

  We watched him as he studied monitors, pulled levers, searched the water, spun the wheel. Talking all the while. “Make yourself at home, my friends. Tonight we party like sultans.” He turned conspiratorial. “These women—you see them? They are like Greek women used to be. Not like your blonde with her statues. I promise you, we are having a fantastic night. Know what I am saying? Like nothing you ever seen.”

  “Where are they from?” Dan asked.

  “An island very near to here. Ogygia.”

  It sounded like “geisha” with an O.

  “Never heard of it,” Dan said.

  “Greece has thousands of islands. No one knows them all.”

  Dan and I stepped outside onto the tapered bow, passing between a small Zodiac dinghy and a Kawasaki jet ski tied down to the deck. As the bow spun out over the bay, the view of the sparkling harbor made me dizzy. “Too much ouzo,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Dan said. “Thank God for the martinis.”

  The boat cruised away from the lights of the harbor. In seconds, the water looked black and foreboding. I fought off a tremor of fear.

  We went back inside. On the deck below Dan showed me the vast and plushy hookah room, where Basri claimed his “business” was conducted. Opening the door to his luxurious master suite, we stumbled upon a dozen women in various states of undress.

  We stood in the doorway, gaping. Discarded clothes lay scattered on the floor. Apparently, the ladies were changing into more suitable party attire. No one took any notice of us; they continued undressing as if we were housemaids come to turn down their beds.

  I silently closed the door.

  We climbed the spiral staircase to the highest deck on the yacht—the “flying bridge,” Dan called it. Town lights glistened in the distance, and stars shone bright overhead. The piped-in Middle Eastern music rose like a cobra through the air. The deck held a slew of empty lounge chairs, another full bar, and a steaming, bubbling hot tub.

  “Fantastic,” I whispered. “This I cannot believe.”

  Dan said, “You’re starting to talk like Basri.”

  “No,” I said. “Look.”

  Three women were emerging from behind the mists of the tub. Shimmering light from the bubbling water played against their faces. They were dressed in diaphanous nightgowns—sheer, fluted, ivory sheets fastened with a clasp at the shoulder. The women reminded me of a painting I had seen, a Botticelli, I think, in Florence. As we walked forward to meet them, I was trying to remember the name of the painting, or what the three women in the picture were called, so I could say something clever to these three women now. But when we finally came close enough to speak, I saw that beneath their gauzy gowns, these women were very, very naked.

  It stunned me into silence.

  Dan’s eyes roved up the tallest of the three. “Is that a chiton you’re wearing?”

  I choked off a laugh. It was the lamest pickup line I’d ever heard him use.

  The woman merely nodded in response. She was slender and shapely, with long, straight, rust-colored hair. The hair helped cover her breasts in the see-through gown, but it didn’t reach as far as the patch between her legs. Even drunk I felt embarrassed, but couldn’t seem to resist taking a bit too long of a peek.

  She grinned at me. Her dark eyes glimmered. I sensed something vaguely unsettling about her.

  “Ancient Greek tunic,” Dan explained. “Looks like the classic design.” He seemed to be genuinely fascinated.

  Despite the fact she was nearly naked, the woman seemed completely unabashed. “They are made of the finest Greek cotton,” she said, “on the island where I was born.”

  “Ogygia?” Dan asked.

  Again she nodded.

  I looked to the other two girls. “Is that where you’re from, too?”

  They stared at me blankly.

  “They don’t speak English,” the tall woman said.

  “Oh. Well—I’m Jack. This is Dan. What are your names?”

  “I am afraid you will not remember our names,” she said.

  “Try me,” I said.

  “I am Thalia,” she said. She nodded toward the girl beside her. “This is Aglaia. And she is Euphrosyne.”

  She was probably right about the names, but the girls themselves would be hard to forget. Both were gorgeous. Aglaia had rosy cheeks and curly black hair. She looked considerably younger than Thalia, maybe twenty-two or-three, but she had a more voluptuous body. The other young girl, who giggled when her name was spoken, had a flawless complexion, and dark-lined eyes with a mischievous flare.

  “Looks like we’re going to have a toga party,” I said. “And I thought they only had sororities in America.”

  “A gift of the Greeks,” Thalia said.

  “Like the Trojan horse?” I asked.

  She grinned her thin-lipped grin. “We are women, not warriors.”

  “You won’t get any argument about that,” I said.

  “What will you wear?” Thalia asked.

  I wasn’t sure I heard her right. “What will we wear?”

  “Tonight. The orgy.”

  Dan and I exchanged a look. I gulped.

  Dan said, “We’ll wear whatever you tell us to wear.”

  She looked to see if I were in agreement.

  “Whatever,” I said with a shrug. “When in Greece…”

  “Do what the Greeks do,” she said.

  She moved closer to me and reached out her hand to take my martini. I gave it to her. She took a sip and swallowed. Then, with her long, painted fingernails, she picked the olive out of the glass. She held it up before my mouth. “Open,” she said.

  I did. She pressed the olive into my mouth. I chewed.

  “Kiss,” she said, leaning in.

  I stopped chewing. She kissed me. I could taste the martini on her lips. She pulled away, then handed back the glass.

  I stared at her, dumbly, the masticated olive in my open mouth.

  “Kiss,” she said to Dan. She was standing before him, waiting.

  Dan glanced at me with a look that betrayed nothing. He stepped forward and took her in his arms. Bending her back, he kissed her like there was no tomorrow.

  I glanced at the other girls. They were watching the kiss, entranced.

  Dan and Thalia finally came up for air. She staggered back, staring at him. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Her eyes fastened on his with a kind of animal intensity.

  She moved back toward him. I wondered if she was going to kiss him again.

  She slapped him hard across the face.

  The blow threw his head to the side. Dan was stunned. He turned back, angry, glaring at her.

  Thalia stared at him de
fiantly. Then she reached up gently to caress his reddened cheek. Dan was breathing rapidly. Their eyes were locked on each other. She dragged her fingers down his throat and laid her palm on his chest. This seemed to have a calming effect.

  She took his hand in hers, then turned and led him away.

  We watched as they headed down the spiral staircase. I turned to the girls in confusion. “What the hell was that about?”

  They looked at me, uncomprehending.

  I gulped down the rest of my martini. “I think I need another drink,” I said.

  The black-haired girl took the glass from my hand and carefully set it down on the bar. Then she took hold of my empty hand, and the mischievous girl took the other. They led me off to the staircase. I was trying to remember their names.

  THE BEDROOMS were three floors down. As the girls led me into one of them, I noticed Thalia closing the door to the one across the hall. The look on her face gave me a chill. Behind her I saw a dim figure standing alone in the dark.

  “Dan?”

  Thalia grinned as the door swung shut.

  The girls gently towed me into the room and sat me on the edge of the bed. I tried to calm my pounding heart. Why was I so anxious? Certainly Dan could handle himself. And so can I, I thought. What danger could these women be?

  “I’m from Chicago,” I said. “I’ve never been to an orgy before. How does it work exactly?”

  The girls didn’t respond. The one with the mischievous eyes dimmed the lights and turned up the Middle Eastern music. A brassy, pipsqueak horn was weaving a weird, snaky tune.

  The other, voluptuous girl approached and stood directly before me. I peered through the milky gown at her breasts, squeezed together in the vice of her arms as she reached to unbutton my shirt. Her softly molded shoulders gleamed with the luster of moonlit marble. The woman’s wavy black hair, loosely but artfully arranged, dangled in delicate coils to her cheeks. As she focused on the task at hand, her mouth opened in concentration, revealing behind her cherry lips the brilliant white of her teeth.