After five minutes along the road, I sense a car behind me. A white Mercedes station wagon flashes its lights before it plunges into view on my left. There’s a priest at the wheel, or a monk, in a dark robe with a black, trimmed beard. In New York, religious drivers are not a miraculous sight: a decent portion of the Manhattan-bound bridge traffic consists of Hassidic rabbis in thunderstorm-colored Toyotas holding their own among the Hindu and Muslim cabs. But this Greek priest, in gold-plated sunglasses with his free arm dangling from the open window, has all of the trappings of an agnostic playboy. He can’t even be bothered to glance over at me.
In another second, the car lurches toward me, its side mirror nearly clipping my handlebar. I yank the bike toward the shoulder, braking, wobbling, and the wheels freeze under me. I’m skidding and thrashing for balance. Images of limbs and ambulances mix with the dusty roadside weeds, a hospital helicopter lifting off of Patmos, the Holy Redeemer rebooked for a second Bledsoe funeral. I slow down enough that I manage to catch my foot on solid ground, the rubber sole of my shoe burning against my toes, and quickly throw my other leg over the seat. The bike keeps going, riderless, and slides ten feet to a defeated stop. The white station wagon continues on oblivious, disappearing around the turn.
It’s impossible to convince myself that was unintentional. I limp to the bike and lift it off the hot asphalt. The motor works. Besides a few scratches, there isn’t any damage. I take the helmet from the seat compartment and clip it under my chin. No Louise for miles, just the occasional hush of expert bikers traveling in the opposite direction. A barefoot woman in a dirty head scarf stumbles along the road, avoiding eye contact; her dark, empty hands are dipped in mud. At the bottom of a gentle slope into the port town, I see Louise rolling out of a gas station.
“What took you so long?” she asks. Her hair has dried in the breeze, and she’s wearing aviator sunglasses, reflecting me in duplicate.
I want to tell her I almost died. I want to warn her about a white Mercedes station wagon and a priest with a groomed beard. I want her reassurance that there are proper medical facilities on Patmos that can handle near-fatal collisions.
“Just stopped to look at some of the beaches from the cliffs.” I smile underneath my fiberglass hood. “I’ve never seen anything so peaceful.”
“No jellyfish this summer,” she says. “We’re lucky.”
We pass through Skala and its boarded-up taverna. Fresh yellow roses are bundled in front of it. We follow the corniche along the southern mountains. High above us looms the monastery, all wall and no windows like maximum-security devotion. The traffic slows us, blessed traffic, blessed elderly French vacationers who can’t master the rental stick. I stay with Louise, calm and in low gear, glancing at the roiling, blue water, with only a dull pain shooting from my foot. Mud-fringed cats cavort in a Dumpster. Eventually we pass the town of Grikos and after another mile we make a turn toward the coast. A concrete garage hangar sits by the dock, alongside a small aluminum-sided trailer with windows the oily chemical purple of soapsuds. Two brine-stained boats are cradled in steel scaffolding in the lot, and a crane hovers above, swaying cables and hooks.
We park our bikes. I need to lie down. After my show of indifference, the shock of near death has returned. I drop my helmet in the seat compartment and tuck the novel under my arm. Three young Greek men in greasy trousers are busy treating one of the dry boats. One rubs sandpaper along its corroded hull. The other two are stealing glances at Sonny, who stands on the dock, holding a straw satchel. Her white bikini peeks out from a short terry cloth robe. The two Greek boys hit each other in the stomach every time one of them looks at her.
Louise and I walk toward the dock, Louise clicking photos of the hangar and shore with her phone. A little girl, topless, with bikini bottoms printed in strawberries, squats next to Sonny. She slams a stick against the dirt, as if punishing the planet for some personal atrocity. Sonny extends her hand, trying to get her to stop. The girl must be Duck, chubbier than I pictured her, with a snub, round fist of a face and frizzled brown hair. Only her large blue eyes give an indication of her mother’s genes. I instantly feel sorry for her future self, the blunt, awkward teenage progeny who will always be compared unfavorably to her mother, who will never be able to shake off that cold birthright, especially in Los Angeles. She beats the stick in the dirt with vicious amusement.
Rasym and Adrian take turns chugging on a water bottle, and they share headphones from a device clipped to Rasym’s swim trunks. Adrian’s body is as efficient as a shark’s, each muscle contracting under his pale skin with mechanical purpose. His smile is the only wasteful enterprise, a porch light shining inanely in the daytime. His happiness makes me uncomfortable because I believe it. He’s so handsome the world could have been invented simply for his pleasure, every drop and ounce of it, oranges and stars, just for him. Even Louise is staring at the complex corrugation of his pelvic muscles disappearing into spandex.
A tall man, thin and angular, leans against an oil drum. His striped button-down shirt blows open in the wind, and madras shorts are rolled just above two thick hubcap knees. A riptide of premature gray runs through his brown, unruly hair, and he keeps trading the handle of a picnic basket between his palms. He’s the first to spot us.
“You must be Ian,” he says with a British accent as he bounds forward. He pivots the basket to his left hand and reaches his right hand toward me. “I’m Miles Lyon-Mosely, a friend.” He announces himself friend to all, eliding specific allegiances, and his hand is warm and long with friendship. His lips don’t close over his teeth, and his hooded eyelids don’t seem to touch either when he blinks. He has a blocky, elongated face that might appear imperial if rendered in marble. In white flesh, it sits awkwardly atop a lean neck at a crooked tilt. Miles is a few years older than we are, and age suits him.
Charlie’s black-oak sailboat rocks against the dock, longer and wider than it appeared in the photo he texted to me a few days ago. Christos is climbing around the stern, uncoiling ropes and securing tackle. He reaches for Miles’s picnic basket, grunting a clipped form of here, give it to me. Miles passes it over the gunwale and steers Duck by the shoulders toward the center of the boat. He manages to pull the stick from her while distracting her with a leap onto the deck.
“Where’s Charlie?” I ask Sonny.
She removes a jar of cream from her satchel and glides her fingernail around the edges.
“He’s just coming out,” she says, streaking the cream across her cheeks. “How was your first night?”
“A blackout,” I say. “I was exhausted.”
“I made a reservation for dinner tonight up in Chora.” Sonny braids her hand in Louise’s, which stops her from her relentless photo taking. “Charlie hates the restaurant, but if we’re not too tired, it’s delicious.”
“The waiters, though,” Louise balks.
“They forget they’re waiters,” Sonny explains. “You might sit next to one for an hour, thinking he’s another guest drinking from your carafe of wine and suddenly he whips out a pen, asking how you like your fish.”
Charlie strolls out of the hangar, carrying a cooler. He’s wearing red-tinted sunglasses and a maroon T-shirt. It’s faded by years of sun and laundry, but I recognize it instantly as our senior year Buckland shirt with its nonsensical crest of swords and interlocking rings. I had that T-shirt once too—all of our names are listed on the back—but like most old clothes, mine vanished before I built up the unsentimentality to throw it out. Charlie pinches the logo on his chest.
“Look familiar?”
“How did you keep it for so long?” I ask.
“Some things just stick around.” He turns so that I can inspect the block of names. There are fifty of them, first names in meager italics, last names in bold block letters, like species followed by GENUS in an entomology display at a museum. Bledsoe and Konstantinou drift amid the American wasps, South American hornets, rare Japanese moths, rarer Middle Eastern locusts, a
nd Jewish butterflies—all expensive specimens pinned to pilled maroon fabric. Where are these men today, their faces no longer spotted with puberty and hope? Adams, Barington, Craven, Faringer, Frisch, Frost, Herzenstein, Levy, McMarnely, Stamford, Santo Domingo, Yasuda. They’re flaking off of Charlie’s shirt faster than I can recall them.
“Want to bet most of them have just left their offices in midtown?” Charlie says to me. And then to Louise and Sonny he adds, “Buckland’s strength was never the cultivation of independent minds. Its specialty was hatching flightless birds.”
Most of those fifty names are now thirty years old and solvent. The familiar fear that I have nothing overtakes me, poor and desperate and tossing my chances behind Charlie and a day cruising around on his sailboat. If you follow the sun all you do is move in circles. I’m already seasick, or homesick, or sick for things I no longer own.
“Do you think we could talk—” I whisper to Charlie, but he doesn’t hear me. Christos is yelling to him in Greek from the boat.
“Helios can’t come out today,” Charlie answers. “He’s not feeling well.”
A young goateed man slinks from the darkness of the garage. He wears the same blue polo as his father, over a long-sleeve white T-shirt. His face is sweaty and his cheeks a jaundice yellow.
His father shouts at him angrily, and Helios raises an impassive hand, as if to bat his responsibilities away. Even here, sons disappoint fathers. Charlie intervenes to add a few calming words in Greek. It’s clear that Christos is annoyed, cursing and shaking his head, but he has a full ship today, and he claps his hands to signal us aboard.
“This is Domitian,” Charlie tells me. “My boat. The others out here are the ones I was telling you about. We fix up wrecks, make them good as new, and rent them out during tourist season. They’re basically small apartments with motors, so I don’t have to worry about sailing qualifications. We send them all over the islands, from Turkey to Athens. Already I have ten rented out at sea for August. Those boys working over there are some of my captains.”
“Does Christos help?”
“No,” Charlie says firmly. “He’s our family man. The business is mine.” The word mine induces a prideful clench of his teeth. “I keep it separate from the family on purpose.”
“Not from the whole family, I hope,” Rasym mumbles, staring at his cousin with a bitterness that might be meant as optimism.
Christos yanks me by the hand onto the boat, a rough, whiplashing motion that prevents guests from toppling with timidity into the water. White leather cushions wrap around the deck, and crystal glasses sit on a table next to a basket of folded black towels. The rest of the boat is wood, purple-brown and waxed like a violin. We each take our shoes off and place them in a wicker bin.
“Everyone,” Sonny announces, turning in circles. “If you happen to see a diamond ring, please tell me. French-set, four carat, a platinum band.”
“Is it something you’ve lost or just something else you want?” Rasym asks mockingly. The black mark on his forehead hasn’t rubbed off.
She looks at him as if silently sentencing him to death by the Old World torture of scaphism.
“Honey,” Charlie says. “I don’t think you left it here. I’m pretty sure you took it with you to Paris.”
“Stop saying that,” she yells. “I told you I didn’t. I left it here, on Domitian. I know I did. Please, if everyone could just look.”
Louise and I both dutifully glance around. Miles drops to his knees and begins sweeping his hands under the cushions, gently lifting Duck to scoop the crevices around her. “We’ll find it today,” he says hopefully. Rasym and Charlie watch his searching with appalled delight.
“Miles,” Charlie huffs. “Do you want a life jacket? In case you fall over. We sail under the assumption that all on board can swim.” Miles’s face reddens as he continues his thorough sweep.
Sonny strips out of her robe and balls the fabric against her face. Her legs are ruby-tinted like overripe fruit. It’s possible to see her entire skeleton under the thin sinew of muscle, and whatever cream she’s applied to her skin gives it the nacreous varnish of glossy paper. She steps over to Charlie and presses her forehead against his shoulder.
“Lamb, I swear it’s here. I didn’t lose it.” I feel bad for her. She’s on the verge of tears. Charlie wraps his arm around her and shoots me an incredulous look.
“We’ll get you another one someday.”
“I don’t want another one. That’s not the point.”
“Terry,” Duck screams, opening her hands. “Terry. Tchh, tchh, tchh.” A gray cat darts from the galley and onto her lap. She cradles it in a headlock, stroking its flank. I wasn’t previously aware of the existence of boat cats. Rasym climbs over the seats to help Christos untie the mooring ropes.
“Good weather today?” I ask Charlie.
“Perfect,” he replies. “Look how clear the sun is, and the wind is blowing from the south. I love it here. I love it, I love it.”
Slipping lines, we cast off. The white sails slide and launch, holding the wind. We move quickly out of the harbor, tacking back and forth in the breeze. There is a deft choreography among Christos, Charlie, and Rasym, scrambling and leaning and tugging the ropes, their feet agile and precise as they dance around the rest of us lounging inertly on the cushions. We head north, streaming one hundred feet out from the coast, where the island rises and the monastery shoots into view like a volcanic crater. Every so often I catch Miles inspecting the control panel or the corners of the pinewood floor, still searching for the ring that would win him Sonny’s everlasting appreciation. He’s a perfect babysitter for Duck, making animal shadows on the cushions out of hand gestures.
Louise grabs a bottle of sunscreen and offers me her back, gathering up her short hair at the nape. I slide my hands around her shoulders, massaging methodically.
Charlie chucks his balled Buckland T-shirt at my head and laughs. He’s not as worked-out as Adrian, who lies on the hot wood with his eyes closed like an Olympic swimmer contemplating each stroke of a future race. Charlie has a tiny O-shaped cushion of fat around his navel. Black tufts of hair chimney up his stomach, flaming out in the cleft between his chest muscles. His hairy legs are muscular and thick, perfectly engineered to hold him firmly against the mast. His back is wide and sculpted and chipped with pink, peeling skin, and finer hairs dust the base of his spine. A gold box cross hangs from his silver chain, caught by the light when he bends over. Compared to Rasym, Charlie looks like the family’s Odysseus. And there’s such a smooth, all-involved rhythm to his sailing, his whole body engaged in its labor, it’s hard to recover the friend I knew from New York, surrounded by water but never at one with it.
Louise rotates around and jabs my forearm with her finger. We both watch the point of impact redden.
“I told you,” she says. She squeezes out a dollop of lotion and wipes my arms, not unlovingly but with a cook’s basting motion.
Rasym takes a break from the jib. He kneels down and kisses Adrian on the lips. Adrian reacts by running his hand along his boyfriend’s neck. I don’t get what there is to love in Charlie’s cousin, but whatever it is, Adrian has found it. The kiss lingers for a minute, tongues rooting.
“Adrian’s lucky,” I say quietly into Louise’s ear. “He gets to come here and stay in such luxury.” I suppose I mean to claim him as one of us, the freeloaders.
“Don’t feel sorry for Adrian Kromer,” Louise replies, matching my low decibel. “Back in Poland, his father owns the power plants. Billions upon billions, apparently. Power plants and copper mines and the nation’s entire broadcasting system. Although Adrian doesn’t talk about it. I heard that from Miles. Honestly my eyes start crossing every time he brings up someone’s net worth.”
Adrian’s happiness takes on new and disturbing dimensions. His happiness comes easily, like door-to-door car service, but his love for Rasym is entirely self-determined. He’s freely at the wheel of that excursion. Why he’d choose
Rasym when he could conceivably have anyone is beyond even my supernatural conception of romance.
We tilt and glide along the water, gas-flame blue, the blue of a June sky back home with the prickling sweat of a summer starting up, the pure anxious blue around us, deep and see-through and sliced with fish. We ride the wind, doused in the chop. Hazy islands span the horizon, glitter and fade. Patmos shines hard and brittle. How can I worry when I’m surrounded by such beauty, in Charlie’s comfortable grip? As I look over the boat’s edge, I half expect to see paper money floating like seaweed on the surface.
Christos disappears into the galley and returns with a magnum of champagne along with a nectarine for Duck. He pops the cork and fills the glasses. His thick, tarry hands make a mockery of the delicate, waiter-like position in which he’s been trained to hold the bottle: by its bottom end. I sip from my glass reluctantly, knowing the alcohol could turn the boat’s rocking against me. The heat is pouring over us through the white hole of noon.
“Maybe it’s in the sea,” Sonny says faintly. She bites a sip of champagne and swallows it down. “Maybe it rolled off the boat and is somewhere on the seafloor, and a hundred years from now a snorkeler will find it and it will change their life for good.” Sonny seems to be inventing an ending so that her suffering isn’t in vain, a Hollywood through line that concludes on an upbeat fin. Miles stops making foxes with his hands and touches her knee.
The Destroyers Page 9