The Destroyers

by Christopher Bollen

  “There you are,” Sonny calls, waving her copper-painted fingernails. She has the preternatural ability to blend in even among the 10:00 P.M. chaos of a port town. The lurid greens and yellows of the night reflect against the sharp edges of her cheekbones, and her hair is braided in a ring around her head. She pushes one of the empty chairs closer to her, signaling that she wants Louise by her side. Adrian, whose happiness hasn’t taken a single hit since I last saw him, grins as he pulls a bag off another chair. I won’t be sitting next to Louise. Adrian wears a tank top with the sides cut open at the armpits. Every muscle of his rib cage is on display.

  “Glad you could make it,” Charlie drones stoically. “You’re late.” I can’t tell if his somberness is part of his strategy to get himself evicted from his own house for a few days, but there’s very little warmth in his voice. The aura of the table is one of nervous quiet, a morgue’s hush between corpse deliveries.

  “Yes,” Miles chirps. He eyes us gratefully. “We had to guard these last two seats with our lives. Drinks, drinks, waiter, glasses please.”

  “Oh, I’m fine.” Louise collapses into her chair. “That’s quite a shiner,” she says to Charlie, who doesn’t bother to acknowledge her. Sonny places both hands on Louise’s knee, as if she’s claiming allies.

  “You’ll need a drink to be here,” Sonny advises. “After two, Skala blurs just enough that it becomes fun. This isn’t our usual spot. Charlie never likes it down here in the evening, but I guess he was feeling caged in by the Chora crowd.” She tries for direct eye contact, but Charlie’s staring out at the black water with his elbow on the armrest and his mouth resting in his palm. Smaller yachts are moored near the shore just beyond the yellow haze of the cruise ship. Jar-shaped lamps shine along the harbor, and bugs flutter around them like satellite debris. “I don’t mind Skala,” Sonny promises. “Good for people watching, right, Lamb?” She glances at me and scrunches her shoulders, as if to convey, I can’t get Charlie to engage, perhaps you can give it a try.

  Charlie responds but his hand is strapped against his mouth.

  “What did you say?” I tap his shoulder. He flinches like I’ve poked a sunburn, and when he looks over at me I swear for a second I see the tussle of tears in his eyes. It could just be the way the village lights trouble any liquid surface. He turns his hand into a fist and coughs into it.

  “I said, I picked Skala for Miles. I thought he might feel more comfortable down here.”

  Miles balks, not sure whether he’s part of the joke or its punch line. The waiter places two clean glasses on the table and, with ceremonial attention, coaxes ice cube by cube from a bucket with his special tongs. Each ice cube is given emergency United Nations–summit level concentration. I resist the urge to grab the bucket and dump the ice in the glasses.

  “Actually, the island has always been sequestered like this,” Miles explains in a wise ethnographer’s timbre. “All the way back to the Middle Ages. The monastery is the crown, and the rich built their homes around it for protection and prime views. The farther down the hillside, the poorer you were. And here—” Miles lifts his long hands from his lap to gesture around us; his shirt is buttoned at the wrists. “Here, Skala was for the workers and transients. And it’s still that way. The more money you have, the closer you are to God. In fact, during the 1532 invasion of—”

  Charlie crosses his legs impatiently and jerks his body forward.

  “Can you please shut up with the history lessons? Honestly, how much will it cost for you to keep quiet?” He pulls his wallet from his pocket and slams it on the table. “Fifty euros? A hundred? Two hundred euros and you have to promise to sit there silent all night.” I rescue my drink, disliking Charlie a bit. The target must be harder than Miles or it’s really just cruelty out for a little exercise. I can’t tell what’s changed him in the hours since I left him at the dock.

  Miles’s face whitens like a pencil cleaned by a shaver. Sonny stretches her arm in front of his chest the way a mother does to a child in a fast-breaking car. I’ve finished my drink and pour another, caught among allegiances—to Charlie, to the new friends at the table, to what is becoming a menacing drinking habit. Damp, dark bodies pass through the night, and each one carries an electric current of desperation and restlessness. The heat of the day is rising off the ground, and the blaring music at competing tavernas is like its own form of torrential weather.

  “What the hell’s gotten into you?” Sonny wheezes. Her eyes freeze on her turquoise earring pinned to Charlie’s shirt, as if this accessory might be the root of the trouble. “Take that stupid thing off and give it to me.”

  “No,” he says, clutching it. “You put it in my bag. And, anyway, your jewelry is safer with me.” The allusion to her lost ring is an ugly punch. Sonny’s mouth shuts and her eyes widen; Louise leans forward, as if to create a human barricade.

  “I was thinking I’d visit the cave tomorrow,” Louise announces, trying to steer the conversation onto steadier shores. “The one John wrote Revelation in. Ian, do you want to join me?”

  “Yeah. Sonny, does the cave get crowded?”

  “What?” She stares at me in clenched confusion. “Um, yes. No. No, it’s not crowded. Actually, I don’t know.” She barks an offended laugh and returns her gaze to Charlie. A curl of tarnished hair falls across her forehead.

  “Are you sure you can come?” Louise asks me. “I don’t want to take up one of your last free days before you start your job.”

  “By the way, congratulations,” Miles says sheepishly, holding up his drink. “I knew you two were up to something.” I tap his glass with mine. He seems to want to say more, about the rigors of yacht rentals or visitor statistics of the cave, but he worms his lips together, fearful of censure.

  “I’ve been to the cave,” Adrian offers, his smile wide and innocent. “Go early. There’s a monk inside who watches over the candles. Sometimes on my morning swim, I see the monks bathing in the sea. They go in naked, two at a time. I saw that one from the cave, all hair up here”—he scoops an imaginary beard at his jawline—“and totally hairless everywhere else. Almost like he’s not Greek. I heard they all have boys on the island that they meet on the beaches, but I haven’t seen any. They’re actually excellent swimmers.” Adrian continues describing his morning swims, providing the buffer of harmless conversation. Sonny begins to relax in the miles of his story, enough to leave Charlie’s nastiness behind her in the rearview mirror. She pours a round of refills and surveys the couples that shuffle like tired, unnumbered marathoners along the cobblestones. Older gay men, a few in beaded sarongs and others with the skin damage of too many summers, scan our group and settle hungrily on Adrian. Young, soccer-shirted straight guys do the same and land on Sonny. It’s an odd feeling to be picked through and not chosen, left in the discard bin of sexual appetites. But on vacation, lust sticks to the standard archetypes.

  “In the sea so early it’s only monks and delivery ships,” Adrian explains. “Couches, air conditioners, washing machines, supplies from Athens or Turkey for the houses in Chora. Sometimes even tiny boats of workers. Rasym thinks they’re boat people, fleeing their home countries. Syrians or Afghanis sneaking onto shore at dawn. They’re all over the islands this summer because of the wars.”

  Miles whimpers, indicating he has relevant information on the matter of migrants, if only someone would ask for his opinion.

  “Why isn’t the Greek coast guard stopping them?” Sonny asks.

  “Because then they’d have to deal with them,” Charlie grumbles.

  An Italian teenager, too adolescent even to threaten Charlie in his current mood, points at Sonny from the sidewalk. He bunches his fingers together while his eyes roll back in simulated orgasm, and he unleashes a screeching mating call. Louise laughs, but the recipient of this hormonal call, to my surprise, is unappreciative. Sonny raises a middle finger, too late for him to catch. He skips on, pulling down his friend’s shorts, nearly toppling into two girls carrying plasti
c cups of gelato, and glides into the darkness beyond the boarded storefront.

  The former site of Nikos Taverna, thirty feet from our table, is the only square along the waterfront veiled in blackness. The rest of Skala is a fluorescent factory of consumption and noise. But this unlit void, drowned in its own absence, feels almost soothing by contrast. I try to imagine the chairs and tables set in the sun that morning, in the exact spot where stale clumps of flowers now lie, the food and the coffee cups and the ankles crossed, the milliseconds of normalcy before the event, with one table left empty where Charlie would usually sit. But every time I picture the blast, my brain pulls back and I watch it from a distance. I can’t enter the white of the explosion, the deep thrash, the melt. By some failure of imagination, I’m ten feet away, twenty, now scanning the view from one of the yachts anchored in the water.

  “I hope you won’t be gone before August fifteenth,” Sonny says to Louise. “They do a huge, all-night party on the beach by your cabins for the Assumption of Mary. It’s really wonderful. I want to take Duck and dress her in little shells.”

  “What was Mary assuming?” Adrian asks. I can’t tell if he’s joking or just oblivious to Christianity.

  “Hopefully the worst,” Louise replies. “I always wondered if she even had a choice when God approached her. Like, could she have politely declined? Sorry, I’d love to help, but virgin birth, public shaming, and exile is not exactly how I pictured my teens. Better to be a distant observer. Keep the tragedies far away.” She smiles weakly like she’s confessed a shortcoming.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Sonny sighs as she chews on a stirrer, flattening it between her teeth. “What is that Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times. I mean, it must have been thrilling. She was probably one of those sad girls staring out windows, always listening to her iPod and waiting for the right car to come along.”

  “Rasym doesn’t like Mary,” Adrian says casually, as if she’d performed some personal slight against him.

  Sonny laughs. “Why am I not surprised?”

  I keep waiting for Louise to answer Sonny’s question about staying. Lurching through the intoxication of my first two drinks, I’m dreading her departure.

  “We could go to the party together,” I suggest, as if my mere enthusiasm is reason enough for her to extend her vacation. “You won’t leave before then, will you?” But my question is lost to the phone she has pointed at me.

  “Ian, get closer to Charlie.” I make an awkward incline toward Charlie’s shoulder, but he keeps his face turned away. Louise presses the button and examines the shot. “Let’s see, what should the caption be?”

  A horn blows from the sea. A small commuter ferry enters the harbor, and the cruise ship blasts its horn, a playground bully with a louder, deafening baritone. Yachts begin to clear from its path, and several tourists scurry toward the dock with their luggage. Their hustling movement has the sense of rapid escape. My eye travels back to Nikos Taverna, and by reflex, I quickly examine the ground around our table for unattended bags or alarm clocks wired to suspicious packages. Only red straws and napkins litter the stones.

  “You okay?” Louise asks.

  “I’m fine,” I reply. I pour more vodka into my glass. I need to slow down my intake. The back of my skull is threatening to blow open, as if by a slow-motion gunshot blast, and I’ll be the one tomorrow picking brain matter off my pillow. I didn’t drink like this back home.

  Bodies move in the darkness of the boarded storefront. Flip-flops crunch the dead flowers. It’s not entirely vacant. Teenagers have settled into its shadows as a temporary freedom zone, a parentless corner for the passing of a small metal pipe, oblivious of the carnage that has afforded their secret hideout. The commuter ferry releases a small congestion of arrivals. Old Greek women fly from door fronts like feeding starlings. They cross the street to proffer pictures of rooms for rent. A congregation of hippies with bloated backpacks and creased guidebooks ignores the signs and is greeted with hugs and fist bumps by friends. A few hippies are passing out yellow flyers by the taxi stand under the shiny green beards of eucalyptus trees.

  “I’ve seen that girl before,” Sonny says, gesturing to a young woman exiting the ferry with hair that runs to her waist. It shimmers gasoline pink in the lamplight and frames a delicate face with long eyes and a pronounced chin. “I swear I have. On this island.”

  “If it were the same one, she wouldn’t be arriving on the ferry right now,” Adrian notes.

  “I guess they all start to look alike. Look how pretty she is,” Sonny says magnanimously and then revises it. “Well, more cute than pretty. I kind of envy them. Just let everything grow and wash your clothes in the sea. When you’re that young you don’t need hygiene.” Sonny slumps against Louise. “Should we try it?”

  Louise rolls her eyes. “I once took a cross-country bus on three days of no showering. When we passed into Kentucky, the man behind me said, ‘Kentucky is the lunatic capital of America!’ I turned around and said, ‘I’m from Kentucky,’ which pretty much confirmed his impression.”

  The pretty, long-haired woman’s T-shirt is screen-printed with NEW YORK in every conceivable font, running in every direction, a classic traffic jam of its own hysterical surplus.

  “New York,” Charlie whispers. Then he repeats it mockingly. “New York. That won’t be the place.”

  “Won’t be the place for what?” I ask. I keep hoping every time I look at him that his kindness has magically returned.

  He eyes me darkly. “Can you believe we grew up there? Right in the lion’s mouth.” The water is still in his eyes, and red veins are invading the brown. “But he’s a circus lion. The teeth are gone.” Charlie’s rambling like he’s drunk, pulled by the riptides of the thinnest thoughts. Sonny watches him pained, as if on the shore, anxious to swim out to save him but knowing she’ll likely be wrenched along. “Want to bet that girl’s never even been to New York? It’s better that she hasn’t. Gives her something to dream about. Amnesia and insomnia. You can only go for so long under those conditions before it creates dead souls. You like New York, Miles?”

  Miles’s mouth jags tentatively. Like a timid cat tempted with a plate of food, he hangs back uncertain of the safety of the offering. He rubs his fingers around the side of his glass. Sonny signals with an encouraging nod for him to answer.

  “Of course I do. It’s not London, not home. But it’s a damn fine city. Some of my best friends live there.”

  “So many best friends,” Charlie sneers. Even if I ignored his angry smile, it’s clear he doesn’t mean it. “Damn fine.”

  “That’s right.” Miles sniggers skittishly.

  “Jesus.” Sonny moans, catching Charlie’s intention.

  “New York won’t be the place for what?” Louise asks. She’s not the sort of listener to be thwarted by rhetorical observations.

  Charlie turns his attention on her as if he’s only just realized she’s here.

  “It won’t be the place to go if Greece finally folds under its own debt, gets evicted from its own currency, and this paper”—he taps his wallet on the table—“will be all the cash that’s left to our names.”

  Adrian nods as he takes a swallow of his drink. “Greece got bailed out by Europe last time, but they might not be so lucky again. Tick tock, paradise on a timer. It’s not their fault. What else do they produce besides getaways? I feel bad for them.”

  “The whole country is running on fumes, and the gears are stripped,” Charlie shouts, his voice a raised hammer. “Don’t you read the papers, Louise? There’s no money left. They’re completely bankrupt. Soon they’ll be trading their children for food.” He paints the destruction of Greece like it’s a personal test of Louise’s fortitude. “I hope you brought some extra U.S. dollars on your trip. Those will probably still be accepted.”

  I think of my plastic bag of cash tucked in the drawer of the nightstand. What had seemed the pit of desperation is possibly a prudent safety measure if Charlie’s
prediction of disaster proves true.

  “None of the rich have their money in Greece anyway,” Adrian says. “That’s the problem. All the shipping magnates parked their fortunes in Zurich a long time ago. How there’s even cash in those ATMs in Athens is a miracle.” He leans back in his seat. “Want to bet the ink on those bills is still wet?”

  “Stop, both of you,” Sonny shrieks. “Nothing’s going to happen. Charlie, just because you’re in a bad mood doesn’t mean the world is ending?” California sneaks into her voice, turning her attempt at assurance into a high-pitched question.

  Miles throttles the arms of his chair, frantic to add his opinion, but he keeps his jaw locked, knowing that whatever he says will only win him Charlie’s wrath.

  “Countries, countries like this one,” Sonny clarifies, “European countries, they don’t devolve into bedlam. The world wouldn’t allow it. America wouldn’t.” She reaches for her drink. Charlie must have realized he’s overplayed his hand. He’s making Sonny jumpy. He gently grabs her wrist across the table, as if he were handling a small nocturnal mammal.

  “You’re right. Nothing’s going to happen,” he says apologetically and nods at his own words. “Remember, I love you. I’ll always make sure you’re safe.” Sonny retracts her arm. His spontaneous declaration of love seems so genuine I can tell she’s questioning whether it’s about to be turned against her. If it had sounded less sincere, she might have been able to trust it.

  “Why?” she whispers. “Why are you acting like this tonight?”

  A joint is tossed onto the table in front of Adrian. Rasym squats down next to his boyfriend’s chair. He uncrumples a yellow flyer and flashes it at Charlie. It’s an invitation to a barbecue at the hippie beach with the drawing of a cross rising from a bonfire. “All are welcome, some are called #RevelationParadise.” Adrian rolls the joint between his fingers and lights it. For a second, until he starts coughing with amateur convulsions, I feel as if I have discovered the source of his happiness.