“Sonny wasn’t too pleased when we phoned her with the news,” Miles says. “But she was, at least, reassured. I think she was beginning to wonder if you might have been hiding something from her. Last night I did everything I could to keep her from calling the police.”
They’re already looking for him, I stop myself from replying. The memory of the dead hippies returns, along with the inspector’s suspicions. Now that the worst scenario has been ruled out, I worry that Charlie’s unwillingness to be located might have something to do with the threat he made. Could he be hiding out because he’s somehow responsible? But I won’t let paranoia puncture my happiness. It’s Charlie’s mess to clean up now. I’m no longer the last person to have seen him. And he can’t hide on Patmos forever. Maybe Christos’s irritation with me was simply annoyance at having to lie for him. The idea so strong in my mind two minutes ago—that Charlie could have been murdered, that the blood on the boat was his—now seems so ludicrous I can barely recognize the Ian Bledsoe who stood quaking at the front door. How can I expect to understand what’s going on in Charlie’s head? Miles is right, I haven’t really known him in eight years. It took less time for Duck to join planet Earth and grow into a chubby Californian girl lounging in a ramshackle mansion in the Aegean.
“I think I’ll have that drink,” I say. “No grapefruit.”
Miles gets to his feet, snapping his fingers. “Duck, you’re late for your nap. Ian and I have some adult talking to do. You can sleep in my bedroom.”
“Do I have to?”
“Mother’s orders. She won’t want you crabby when she’s back from her swim.”
Duck grudgingly picks up her sketchbook, extending it in front of us. She’s drawn gastric brown scribbles for stomachs and tiny yellow crosses on their foreheads. She wants what every artist wants: a second of recognition.
“Excellent,” I say. “The next El Greco. Or who was that woman artist who painted the French royalty?”
“I’d give it to you, but Mom will want to keep it. Or maybe she won’t now?” She gazes at Miles for guidance in the unpredictable jungle of adulthood. “Will she still want my drawings now that I’m going to be living with her in Cyprus? Or will I have to send them to Dad?”
“Of course she’ll want them,” he says. “And if she doesn’t, I’ll keep it. Now naptime.”
As Duck teeters into the adjoining room, Miles pours me a drink and refreshes his own. His hands quiver as he passes me the glass. Released from his role as doting uncle, Miles devolves into a more nervous creature, gulping even when he isn’t sipping vodka. He pushes his unwashed hair back with chalky nails.
“I appreciate your stopping in,” he whispers. “I’m glad we have this chance to talk. I feel like my reputation has taken a hit. Charles’s attack was enough of an insult. But there’s the further insult of having to explain myself to everyone who heard him.”
“I’m just relieved that Charlie’s been spotted. I don’t want to tell you what was going through my head. The worst. The very worst.” The first gulp of vodka travels straight to the drought.
Miles watches me curiously, as if he’d like to ask the specifics of what the worst might be. The bruises on his knuckles have faded to the color of sunlight on snow. I’m glad he doesn’t ask because I might tell him that the only person I could imagine wishing Charlie harm is Miles.
“Unless I shouldn’t believe Duck? You don’t think she’s lying, do you?”
Miles shakes his head. “Duck doesn’t tell lies. Charles, on the other hand . . .” He sighs bitterly, again slashing at invisible crumbs on his chest. “Well, as I said, he can be irresponsible when it comes to others. I suppose if you have enough money you can afford to be irresponsible. I wouldn’t take his silence personally. There are two kinds of rich—those who solve their own problems, and those who throw money at them until they go away. Which camp do you figure Charles is a member of?”
Miles sets his glass on the mirrored coffee table and pushes it toward the center to make reaching for it only slightly less easy. If I still believed that Charlie was a victim of foul play, would Miles’s honesty make him more or less likely a suspect? Few talk badly about those they’ve already taken care of. And it also stands to reason that, had Miles done something to Charlie, his jealousy would have vanished. Jealousy dies along with its target—it mutates into respect. No one is jealous of the dead.
“Sorry. He’s your oldest friend,” Miles says. “Perhaps you see more in him than I do.”
“I’m not defending him.”
“The truth is I actually like Charles half the time. Don’t forget he and I have known each other since we were kids spending summers on this island. Not that we were particularly close then, but we did often get thrown together to play. I’m looking forward to clearing the air once he’s home. I know we can patch this up. That fistfight in Skala, I’m ashamed of it.” I don’t comment on the fact that technically it wasn’t a fistfight; it was one man clocking another. A fistfight requires two punchers. “He already had one black eye before I gave him another. It’s as if he were collecting them. Well, I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, and something broke in me that night, and unfortunately I resorted to violence. I’m human. What can I say?”
“Miles, you don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“But I want to explain,” he drones. “Because you live here now and we’ll see each other and I hope that you and I can be friends. Just as Charles and I will be again. I don’t like this resentment hanging over us.”
Miles doesn’t seem to realize that the purpose of Charlie’s attack that night was not a lapse in friendship but a refutation of it. There is no Charlie and Miles. But I get the sense that Miles might be the sort who procures friends by wearing them down into white-flagged submission. Some are terrorists in their friendship.
“Why does it matter what Charlie thinks about you anyway?” I ask.
A blush floods his face, more blue than red in the dimness. “He’s Sonny’s boyfriend. And I care about her. She’s a very close friend. She means a lot to me.” He stares at me defensively, teeth jammed together, as if daring me to state the obvious. But what good would it do to pressure him into admitting his obsession with her? Charlie’s absence has probably been a boon to his prospects. “And there’s no getting around Charles on this island. The fact is, I may be staying on in Patmos indefinitely. I was thinking I’d try out the winter here. People say it’s beautiful in December if you don’t mind monasticism and cooking at home. It’s just you and about eight other souls giving the fireplaces a workout.” He inspects the tall room, as if evaluating its ability to keep out the cold.
“You wouldn’t go back to London?” Sonny trusts Miles with her daughter, and yet Charlie warned me about leaving my wallet out around him. I take a chance on a touchy subject, almost touching the soft spot to test it for a reaction. “Does it have anything to do with money you owe back there?”
Miles shuts his eyes as he sinks into the cushions. He reaches blindly and unsuccessfully for his drink. His eyes open mechanically one at a time. Miles is the kind of talker who actually stares at the person he’s addressing, the surreal way actors stare at each other in movies, eyes never flicking away, never caught distractedly among word formation, other private worries, and mindless fascination with nearby objects.
“I was stupid to expect Charles to have enough tact not to bring that up in front of everyone. But, yes, I did get saddled with some trouble in London. From what I’ve heard, you and I aren’t in such different circumstances.” He smiles tactfully, tapping his fingers along his hairless arm. “I’ll just say it, so you don’t imagine the worst. I’ve fallen into a bit of debt. Gambling. Poker, mostly. It was small change at first. A friend, the son of a very prominent art dealer, set up a little ring on Wednesday nights in the backroom of his mother’s gallery. That gallery was always loaded with millions upon millions in contemporary art. Awful work. How they made their fortune in it, I’ll never
understand. The biggest detriment to the cultural value of contemporary art is actually looking at the stuff.” Miles shakes his head to jettison his tirade on art. “Anyway, I really did take it as all light fun. My mistake wasn’t losing; it was to whom I was losing. I didn’t realize a few of the other players at the table were professionals, some well-dressed Russians with bags of cash. I figured they were just friends I hadn’t met yet, like the actors and footballers who sometimes appeared on Wednesdays, dropping or winning a few thousand and waving off my losses. It was more of a social night. Or so I thought.”
“You should always be careful when people show up with bags of cash.”
He nods. “Thanks, but you’re ten months too late with helpful advice. At some point the Wednesday nights took a dark turn, and my former friend didn’t have the decency to warn me that the game had gotten real. I think I was marked as easy prey, although how was I to know? I trusted this friend. Before I knew it, I was in the red. Red up to my neck. And these new players were no longer happily waving off my debts.” Miles crosses his legs and jerks his shoulders forward. “The problem with gambling is you’re convinced the next hand will save you from the last one. But, I swear, cards sense desperation. I owe some money. I’ve drained a few accounts, and that still hasn’t been enough. How can you be held responsible when you don’t know who you’re playing against?”
“You can’t ask your family for help?”
Miles’s face holds the manic expression of someone who traced his descendants back to royalty only to be told that they were actually murderers and barmaids. It’s a purely English face.
“We’re a prominent family,” he says, “but we’re not particularly flush these days. My father wasn’t exactly sympathetic, even when I told him that these gangsters were threatening to borrow parts of my body and send them back to me a few days later. To be honest, old Albrecht’s gone a bit lost in the head. He’s the cousin to the seventeenth Earl of Winchelsea, a real seat, not like these Mediterranean princes. Ne pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes. Not that it matters to my father anymore. In his retirement he’s devoted himself to his rock band. He plays the bass. They specialize in Queen covers. You can rent him out for weddings. So much for dignity even if you do have a passion.” Miles reaches out to capture his drink and takes two gulps to make up for lost time. “It’s my fault, entirely my fault, and I’ll fix the mess I’ve gotten in. I’m not looking for sympathy. I’d have preferred not to bore you with any of this, and I hope you’ll keep it to yourself. But it did get scary for me, Ian. I gave what I could to keep them at bay.”
“Will you ever be able to go back?”
Miles laughs, as if I’ve misunderstood the gravity of his confession.
“Oh, god, yes. I’m not in hiding. It’s not that serious. That’s why I’m explaining, in case you took Charles’s insinuations to mean that I was some kind of petty crook. I have a small property I inherited in Covent Garden that’s on the market. If that goes through, I should be more than all right. But in the meantime, I decided it was best to disappear for a while. I was sick of London anyway. I’ve always felt so much more at home here. La graziosa isola. Die hubsche Insel.” He swings his leg, free in his last zone of safety as his exhausted aristocracy dissolves into meaninglessness behind him. What did Charlie say about the weight of millionaire tears? Tears of nobility are even lighter. “So, there you have it. Thank you, Charles, for broadcasting that embarrassment to all of Skala. Really, it will all work out. The whole world is driving off the rails. It’s getting scarier out there each day. Don’t you feel it? Like there’s a hole blown through the netting? Like the fear is starting to win? But I’m going to hang on.”
Miles laughs blithely, although I suspect he’s dug himself even deeper than he’s letting on. Maybe Charlie knew the extent of it. I wonder if Miles tried asking him for a loan.
“You don’t play chess, do you?” I ask.
He eyes me cautiously, as if he senses a motive behind the question.
“No. I never much cared for chess. I don’t like games where your opponent has unlimited time to strategize. It’s a fascinating game though. If you’re black, you start with an immediate disadvantage. White is always one step ahead, so all black can do is disrupt the order. Lay traps in the system. As I told you, I’m no good at traps. I think losers tend to be the better humans, don’t you? Who wants a face so cold it never shows its pain?” As if to test out his theory, he offers me two wounded eyes over oblong, woodcut cheekbones. It’s a vision of Miles twenty years older, tapped out, still referencing some earl he’s indirectly related to like it might make sense of him being a tall white man with impeccable posture riding on a London bus through neighborhoods of fear and Georgian architecture. “Wait a minute. Why did you ask about chess?”
“When I visited Charlie’s yacht today, I noticed his chess board set up. I thought maybe you visited him after your fight. To try to patch things up.”
Miles downs the remainder of his drink. He glances at his wrist and is visibly disappointed to find no watch on it. “No, I didn’t visit him. Maybe I should have. But I was certainly in no mood for a game that night. And I’ve learned my lesson on who not to play with. Charles would cheat before he lost. He cheats, doesn’t he, your best friend? He probably always did, am I right?” Miles smiles at me as if it’s now my turn to make a confession.
“I don’t know, does he?”
“I didn’t have to punch him. I could have inflicted far worse damage if I’d just opened my mouth. But I’m not the type to spill secrets vindictively. And it would have hurt someone I care about.”
“Something that would have hurt Sonny? What, that Charlie cheats on her?” Even though Charlie declared himself a new man, there is no statute of limitations on past failings. I imagine Miles has witnessed plenty over the years.
He waves his hands, his face sour, as if his tact has finally failed him.
“Forget I mentioned it,” he snaps. “For her sake, forget it. Honestly, maybe one day she’ll realize she deserves more. But I’m not going to plant that splinter. All I can do is be there for her. I think she’s lonely. She likes ideas more than the reality behind them. You can get stuck on a good idea. It’s the good ideas that have their way with you.” He stares at his empty glass, as if to blame the alcohol for the direction his mind has taken. It was another good idea. “If Sonny decides to open her eyes, she’ll see what he’s like. Maybe she’s seeing now, with him gone like this.”
Miles would love nothing more than if Charlie never returned. He’d be free to spend his days with her, adopting Duck as a seasonal daughter, waiting onshore with their towels as they swim in the sea. But, of course, Charlie is what keeps Sonny on Patmos. His enemy is his provider. I’ve finished my drink and set it on the table.
“I should be going.”
“One final shot,” Miles exclaims. “A toast.” He gathers our glasses and jumps up, his feet less steady, tripping over an invisible rug.
“I really shouldn’t.” I’m already feeling the vaporizing lift that the first drink provides, the brain buzzing like an alien spaceship over prudent farm fields.
“Oh, come on,” he says, pouring. No one likes to drink alone; alcohol is an informant you should never meet without backup. That was my mistake last night. “You can’t start working for Charles if he isn’t here. One for the road. Let’s have a toast, one last shot at redemption.”
He hands me my glass.
“Redemption for what?”
Miles considers his tightly laced boat shoes. “How about for all things I could have done? I always thought I’d get my act together, that one of my interests would bear some fruit or purpose. All the knowledge I trapped in my mind. And now that I’m nearly middle age, I’m still waiting. The person who messes up your life most is you, isn’t it? You get out of bed like it’s the same every day, the same two arms and then . . .” He doesn’t finish the thought, maybe because it would lose its poetry if released from
his head. It’s a risk he can’t afford to take.
“You’re still young, Miles. How old are you? Thirty-seven?”
“I’m thirty-five.”
“That’s young.”
“So says a guy in his twenties. Well.” He clinks my glass, and we drink. “I’m still young enough to see the good in people. That goes away too, doesn’t it?”
As I step into the daylight, I’m struck, childlike, by a profound appreciation for the beauty of simple objects. I shut the door to Miles’s house and leave his sadness trapped in there with him. Forget the wheel. The door is the most brilliant human invention: portal-stoppering, the suture on a bleeding cut. At the top of the hillside, the island is warm with explosions of sun beating down in scattered patches through the shaggy firs. I make a list of all the things I’ll do tomorrow: wake early and go to the beach, maybe not even bother with a swimsuit; brew coffee with Louise, guide her to my bed; if Charlie’s back, I’ll ask him for a loan and return the money by FedEx to Lex and Ross; I’ll be easier on myself; I’ll live.
Descending the cobblestones, I feel a jab on my thigh and pull the turquoise earring from my pocket. A garbage can sits by the taxi stand, and I consider tossing it. But it’s got to match a second earring, and Sonny might want it back. I sing along to a pop song I heard blaring from the top floor of Miles’s house, a song whose lyrics I didn’t even realize I had memorized. It must have been playing undetected around me all summer, the contagious auto-tuned pollen blowing from the industrial culture farms of America. Tomorrow I’ll download the song and play it over and over until its joy has beaten me into submission. There must be a few islands left in the world that have yet to be touched by the noise of invaders. Dense islands, tiny as freckles, with lackluster beaches and of no mineral import. I wonder if their inhabitants are told that the world outside is the stuff of dreams, or if upon waking, they stop a moment to imagine the rest of us and the sounds we make. Or am I the last one dreaming, and everyone, everywhere, has already heard us?
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