Honestly, We Meant Well

by Grant Ginder

  There’s a splash, and Will turns to see Dio disappear into the sea. He holds his breath and imagines the roar of water flooding his ears, the taste of salt on his lips. Juice from the orange drips from his wrists to his chest to the tops of his thighs. From the distant belly of the port he hears the peals of a church bell, the horn announcing a ferry’s approach. Then Dio surfaces, brushing hair from his eyes.

  * * *

  Dinner is at a restaurant called Plato—a smallish place with white tablecloths on the port’s main drag. Klaus has rented it out for the evening, and by the time Dio and Will arrive, at eight o’clock, it’s already filled with Swiss, British, and Athenian weekenders—a mostly middle-aged crowd with faces turned leathery by the sun. Klaus himself is a big man, both in size and personality, and at first Will finds him fascinating: his preternatural ability to conjure a room’s attention, the hearty Teutonic slap he gives women’s shoulders. He reminds Will, in many ways, of his father. Soon, though, the fascination fades. After Klaus sends Will his third shot of tsipouro, Will decides the posturing—the unapologetic loudness—is too much. Necking down the liquor, he now suspects Klaus is testing him, seeing if Will could roll in whatever boys’ club he’s created on the island. He thinks back to his early years at Berkeley, of the uncomfortable anticipation he’d felt whenever he walked into a fraternity party, the sudden sense of otherness. He thinks of how, like Klaus, those boys would always make sure he had a shot in his hand, or a beer, or both. Half their hospitality, he knew was well-intentioned: this was Berkeley, and they were liberals. The other half was fueled by something else, a subconscious skepticism. A wanting to see if Will could shed whatever notions he had of being gay and, at least for the night, belong.

  Receding into one of the restaurant’s corners, he finds an empty seat and watches Dio float between the guests. Dio’s wearing a blue linen button-down with the first three buttons unfastened and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. On the walk over he told Will that he hardly knew any of the people who’d be at the party, and yet here he is, doling out hugs and shaking hands. Soon, Klaus is kissing both his cheeks and introducing him to people—Look at this guy, Will imagines him crooning, look at this guy who I let sail my yacht. From his chair in the corner, Will tries to catch Dio’s eye. He’ll wink at him, he thinks, or give him a subtle nod. Something to suggest that they’re compatriots, and that they’re suffering through this charade together. Dio, though, ignores him; he keeps palling around with Klaus, and Will feels himself sinking deeper into the background. I’m an idiot, he thinks, as he picks a scab on his finger. I’m an idiot, and this was a terrible mistake.

  Freeing the scab, his finger oozes a pinprick of blood.

  “You’re new.”

  A woman his mother’s age sits at another table across from him. Her gray-blond hair has been cropped to a bob, and she wears a blue sleeveless dress, the neck of which sags slightly, revealing a thin gold chain. A glass of red wine’s in front of her, and with the first two fingers of her left hand she grips its stem, swirling the base in tight circles. Will watches as a few drops escape the glass’s lip and splatter across her stomach.

  She says, “Oops.”

  Dipping a corner of the tablecloth in a cup of water, she daps it for a moment on the stain. Then, giving up, she lets the thing go. Says, instead, “Well, shit.”

  “What do you mean I’m new?” Will asks her.

  “I mean I haven’t seen you before.” British, he realizes. A posh, tony accent. “I mean you’re new.”

  He glances down and sees blood pooling in the creases of his knuckle. Quickly, he wipes it away with his other hand.

  “I came with Dio,” he says, pointing. “Dionysus.”

  The woman surveys the crowd and takes a sip of wine.

  “Don’t know him,” she says. “But what a head of hair.”

  A half-moon of pink lipstick stains her glass.

  “He works for Klaus. Sailed his boat over this afternoon. I helped.” Will crosses his legs.

  “Ah, you work on boats.”

  He doesn’t say yes and he doesn’t say no. Instead, he looks across the restaurant, where Dio is finally glancing at him and offering him a tiny nod. It’s the sort of gesture that would be negligible, meaningless, but that given Will’s present circumstances (alone, sunburnt, caught in the irrational throes of a crush) lifts his spirits and ropes him back in. He’s fine being powerless, he figures, so long as he’s not forgotten.

  “Well, that explains why I don’t know you,” the woman says, filling the silence. “I hate boats. Get dreadfully seasick.”

  “That seems … inconvenient.”

  “It makes getting off the island a bit of a production, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I’m betting there are worse islands to be stuck on.”

  “Mmm.” She looks at him for a moment and squints, like she’s sizing him up. “You need a drink,” she says.

  She stands, disappears into the scrum, and returns a minute later, this time holding an uncorked bottle of red wine and a second glass.

  “I couldn’t find a waiter, so I took this from the back,” she tells Will, reclaiming her seat across from him. “But I know the owner, Tony. He won’t mind. And if he does, well. Then Tony will mind.”

  She fills the glass to its brim and hands it to him.

  “So, what—you, like, know everyone on the island?”

  “I’ve lived here on and off for thirty years, and there aren’t that many people to know. Less when you consider that most of the locals wouldn’t be caught dead talking to me.”

  “But aren’t you a local?”

  “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?” Will checks his pockets; he shakes his head. “That’s probably for the best—I don’t actually smoke.” She takes another sip of her wine, leaving a second arc of pink, this one only slightly fainter than the first. “I mean the Hydriots,” she says. “The lot who were born here. They’ve got a thing about fraternizing with outsiders. And that includes other Greeks. My next-door neighbor’s family has lived here for three generations, and she orders carry-away food from Tony twice a week. Each time she asks him to put it in an unmarked bag because she doesn’t want her friends seeing her spending money at a restaurant that’s owned by an Athenian.” She reaches up and adjusts her necklace. “And if you’re Albanian, forget about it.”

  “That’s nuts.”

  “Even paradise can be a drag.”

  Careful not to spill it, he drinks some of his wine. It’s warm, and the tannins leave his mouth dry.

  He says, “I’m Will, by the way.”

  “Polly.”

  Will reaches out his hand, but realizes, in the next instant, that they’re too far away from one another; that, even if she were to extend her own arm there would still be six inches of space between them.

  He asks, “Want me to move to your table? We’re sort of far apart.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. Distance lends a little enchantment.” Polly takes another swig, then tucks her hair behind her ears. Leaning forward, she says, “Will. Will. Tell me where you’re from. I detect a certain American accent—not of the neo-fascist variety, but something else. New York, maybe. Or Boston.”

  Will grins.

  “Close,” he says. “California.”

  “That’ll do, too.” Polly nods. “And you’ve come to the Aegean to work on boats.”

  “Well…” He shifts in his seat and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt—a white oxford that he had stuffed in his backpack, along with a toothbrush, when Dio told him to bring something other than T-shirts and swim trunks. “That’s only, like, marginally true. I came here—or, actually, to Aegina—on vacation with my parents. I’m only on Hydra for a night.”

  “Aegina with your parents.” Polly’s eyebrows lift. Thin wrinkles divide her forehead. “How harrowing. Thank goodness you’ve escaped.”

  At the other end of the restaurant comes a loud crash, and they both turn in time to see D
io, along with a man twice his age, help Klaus up off the floor. Next to him, a chair lies toppled. Half standing, Will sees that it’s missing one of its legs.

  “Christ, he’s such a brute,” Polly says. “A nice guy in the end, but a brute regardless. Though I suppose you can’t ask for much more than that when it comes to arms dealers from Cologne.”

  “He’s an arms dealer?”

  “Mmmh. Black market and everything. From what I understand, he really made a name for himself in Iraq during the two gulf wars.”

  Will tries to picture this buffoon, who just fell off a chair, negotiating deals with tyrants in smoke-filled rooms. He wonders if Dio knows.

  Polly passes him the bottle of wine.

  “I’m kidding,” she says. “He worked in telecommunications. Bet early on Motorola and then got out before flip phones turned into smartphones. Arms dealing is more fun, though, don’t you think? I know it’s a nasty rumor to spread, but what else is a girl supposed to do? I mean, look around—I haven’t got a lot of material to work with.”

  Will laughs and tops off his glass. “Stick with arms dealing.”

  “Smashing. It’ll be our little secret. Klaus, the Iraqis, and a few AK-47s.” She drains her glass and licks her lips. “Before when I asked for a cigarette I wanted to just look a bit affected. Now I’d actually kill for one. In any event, tell me about these parents of yours on Aegina. Are they as dashing and well-mannered and fascinating as you are? I’ve got no children of my own, and I’m enthralled by people who do.”

  A man in a navy blazer—Tony, Will assumes—delivers a platter of four red mullets to a table in the center of the restaurant. The fish have been grilled whole and lie on a bed of lettuce and quartered lemons. Their eyes are a collection of black opals, catching bits of light.

  He says, “Oh, they’re much more dashing and fascinating than I am.”

  “With those dimples? I refuse to believe it.”

  Smiling again, Will lets his eyes fall to the tablecloth. A few crumbs of bread gather near the saltshaker. He brushes them away, collecting them into the palm of his left hand.

  “My mom’s a classics professor,” he says. “That’s why we’re here. She’s giving a talk on Aegina as part of some cruise. She’s actually in Athens right now, I think. She has to go to a dinner, and she wanted to spend some time at the National Archaeological Museum.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “To the museum? Once, when I was a kid.” He lets the crumbs fall to the floor. “I don’t really remember it.”

  “It’s about as gorgeous as a bomb shelter.”

  “I read this article once about bomb shelters built by billionaires. Some of them are more gorgeous than you think.”

  Polly laughs.

  “All the same—and I certainly don’t mean to disrespect your mum; I’m sure she’s lovely—but I don’t see how studying a bunch of rocks and pottery shards is any more fascinating than sailing an arms dealer’s yacht to Hydra. And with the god of wine, no less.”

  “Theater, too.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Dionysus,” Will says. “He was the god of theater, too.”

  “Well, whoever he is, he’s a looker, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t really noticed.”

  “Oh, darling. Yes, you have. I’ve been watching you notice all night.” She winks, but it doesn’t quite work; instead of looking charming, she just looks drunk. “Don’t worry, though. I’ve always said that if I’m to die I want to come back as either a Spaniard or a homosexual. They seem to have the most fun. You’re good on wine, yes? Yes. Good. So, your mother digs around for old things, and you fall in love with men named after Greek gods. What’s your father do?”

  Will leans back and slips both his heels from his espadrilles.

  “He’s a writer. A novelist.”

  “Is he any good?”

  “He’s brilliant,” he says. “His book was translated into sixteen languages.”

  “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  At the table in the center of the restaurant, he watches as Klaus tears into one of the mullets.

  “Well, don’t be coy,” Polly says. “What’s his name?”

  “Dean Wright. The book is called The Light of Our Shadows.”

  “Don’t know it—but then, I’m not much of a reader. All those words, you know?” Polly thinks, twirling her necklace around her finger. “But Jesus Christ, that title.”

  Will curls his toes and scratches his elbow. He thinks for a moment and says, “You don’t like it?”

  “Who would?” she says. “Shadows don’t have light.”

  * * *

  Will and Dio leave the restaurant at midnight, and they’re back on Finja’s Fantasy by twelve fifteen. Klaus has a house in town—a villa overlooking the port with four spare bedrooms—but he would prefer it, Dio explains, if they slept here, on the boat.

  “I think he might be expecting guests,” he says.

  “It’s after midnight.” Will watches as he teeters up the gangplank, then he follows suit. Below him, the water’s inky-black. “Who else could possibly be showing up?”

  “I don’t know.” Dio reaches out his hand, and Will takes it, steadying himself. “I don’t know.”

  They’re quiet for a moment. Will listens as the sea, lapping against the hulls of boats, mixes with the other sounds from town. Voices chasing each other with echoes; music turned metallic and crisp in the night.

  He says, “Forget about Klaus.”

  Dio doesn’t answer. Instead, he chews on his lip. He unlocks the door leading belowdecks and pockets the key.

  “I’ll get us some ouzo,” he says.

  “Oh, I think I’ve had enough.”

  Will sits on a bench in the cockpit and slips his hands into the pockets of his khakis.

  From down below, Dio calls: “There’s no such thing as too much ouzo.”

  “That,” Will says, “is categorically untrue.”

  Still, a moment later Dio remerges, a glass of clear liquor balanced in each hand.

  “Saw you talking to Polly.”

  He hands Will a glass. The smell of the stuff’s enough to make him sick, but he takes a sip anyway.

  “You know her?”

  “I know of her.” He kicks his feet up onto the steering wheel. “She’s nuts.”

  Will thinks of Polly’s hair, the way she looped it behind her ears when she leaned forward. He thinks of how she laughed at his jokes.

  He says, “I liked her.”

  “No one’s saying you can’t. Doesn’t mean she’s not a loon, though.”

  His ears burn; he’s drunk, and he’s getting defensive. He tells himself he doesn’t know Dio, or Polly, for that matter. At the very least, he doesn’t know them well enough to fight.

  Instead, he asks, “Why do you think she’s a loon?”

  Dio shrugs and tosses back his ouzo like it’s a glass of water. “Just what people say. She showed up five years ago and said she was an artist. Turns out she’d never painted anything in her life, though, and once she started, no one wanted any of her stuff. So, six months later she became a real estate agent. Sold Klaus his house.”

  “She told me she’d lived here on and off for thirty years.”

  Dio lights a cigarette.

  He says, “She lied.”

  “But why?” Will watches smoke curl. “I mean, don’t you think that’s weird? I think that’s weird.”

  “Who knows? Like I said, she’s a loon.” He balances the cigarette between his lips and refills his glass. “She had a kid and a husband back in England. Liverpool, I think? Liverpool or Manchester. People say she left them and ran off with her brother-in-law, and then when he left her she came here, to Hydra. Wanted to disappear, or restart. Same thing, really.” Ash floats down to the water. “The kid was young. Five, I think.”

  “And you know this just from what, gossip?”

&n
bsp; “Klaus,” Dio says. “He knows what’s going on, and he told me. I guess whenever she’s drunk she tries to get in his pants.”

  Will finishes his ouzo. Dio’s pack of Karelias sits on the bench between them, and he takes one, lighting it without asking if it’s okay.

  “I think Klaus is an asshole,” Will says.

  “Really? Because I think you’re running your mouth.”

  Will doesn’t respond. To his left, there’s a faint splash—drunk teenagers, throwing rocks from the quay. On all sides of him lights bleed across the water.

  He finishes his cigarette and announces, “I’m going to bed,” then waits a moment, hoping Dio will stop him.

  But Dio doesn’t. Instead, he takes a long drag from his own cigarette and, before exhaling, says, “That’s probably a good idea.”

  “I’ll sleep on the couch in the galley.”

  Dio nods, and smoke escapes the corners of his lips. “There’s a blanket underneath the bench down there if you get cold.”

  There’s a new formality in his voice, and it causes Will to feel a sudden sting. How wrong he had been for coming here, he thinks. For believing that his affections would be returned by this improbably beautiful man, in this improbably beautiful place. For having faith that sun, and salt, and Hydra would iron out something so obviously one-sided into an equation that was balanced, reciprocal. Standing now, he stumbles, knocking his knee against the steering wheel. He’s had too much ouzo, he realizes, and now he’s drunker than he had hoped to get. As opposed to dulling his embarrassment, though, this amplifies it. He feels like a teenager again, mixing bad margaritas in the back of François’s jeep. It’s been over six years since then, and in that time he thought he had been doing the messy work of growing up. But then, there was the disaster with Rajiv, and now there’s this humiliation with Dio—two instances in which he thought he knew someone, only to be proven wrong. Reaching down, he rubs the sore spot on his knee. Just when he thought he was on the verge of becoming an adult, it turns out he’s only a kid.

  From behind him, he hears Dio say something—a sentence in Greek that Will suspects is hardly complimentary.