The Destroyers

by Christopher Bollen

  The fact that Rasym isn’t sounding alarms over his favorite cousin’s disappearance convinces me he knows more than he’s letting on. I take a gamble.

  “You spoke to Stefan, didn’t you? You told him that Charlie’s charter company might not be so clean.”

  He sways, as if the truth is upsetting his balance. He shoots a scowl at me before jamming his feet in the rocks.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Rasym, I’m not stupid. Not completely anyway.”

  “If only you hadn’t come,” he snipes. “Then I’d have your job. Then at least I’d have been able to learn the truth and could have done something to help him. I asked Charlie if I could be his manager that morning before he offered you the job. I had every right to it. I’m family. But he refused. He said you were a better match. You, who have zero experience with sailing, who sat there sick and bleeding on your first trip out on a boat. Why you over me? Honestly, why?”

  The answer is clear to me. Charlie figured my desperation would ensure a more agreeable party to his smuggling venture. After all, my résumé involves wrangling with Panamanian gangs. Or maybe the explanation is even simpler: he could afford to put me at risk more than he could a member of his family. Rasym’s fingers are more precious than mine.

  “Yeah, I was angry,” he admits. “And after I left Charlie’s office I did talk to Stefan. You don’t understand. It’s not your family. You have nothing at stake. We are relying on Stefan. We need his support when he takes over. I had to be honest with him! And it’s clear tourists aren’t lining up at that dock to be taken on vacations.” His skinny arms knife through the air as he begins to walk away. When he doesn’t hear me following behind him, he turns around. “I don’t regret it. If Charlie’s doing something illegal, Stefan should put a stop to it. There is already too much wrong in these waters to take advantage of the chaos.” Where is the fiction writer who had no qualms about downing a passenger plane? Rasym gathers the neck of his shirt at his throat. “What I regret is feeling guilty about it afterward. I went back to the port that afternoon and told Charlie that Stefan was nosing around. I guess I wanted confirmation that his boat business wasn’t all that he claimed it was. He went ballistic, full panic mode. I didn’t tell him I said anything, but it’s my last name on those boats too! What choice did I have? Why do I have to choose between Charlie and the rest of my family?”

  His anger is his only comfort, and he stands shaking in the golden heat, his eyes searching the infinite recesses of the stony shore. I have never wanted to hug Rasym before and I don’t dare to now. Instead I offer him my hand, palm-side up. From a distance it must look like I’m asking him for something. When he turns and kicks the advancing tide, it feels as if I am.

  “I’m the reason he’s gone,” he murmurs. “I shouldn’t have warned him. I should have just let Stefan confront him. It’s my fault he’s disappeared.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s Charlie’s. I didn’t know about his business either. I still don’t.” Just as I’m about to drop my hand, he rushes forward and grabs it. His teeth are gritted like he’s intent on bearing the electric shock of physical contact.

  “Do you think he might have left the island?”

  Rasym shrugs.

  “But he’ll come back, right?”

  “You know what I think?” he asks. “Remember when that crass Hungarian Bence came to the table that night and swore that Charlie had called him? I think that was Charlie trying to sell his stake as fast as he could. Dump the business. Transfer the title. Paint a K into a B. Get out and move on. He could be anywhere now. Athens. Cyprus. Polynesia.”

  “I hope not. For Sonny’s sake.”

  At the mention of her name, he lets go of my hand. “That woman,” he hisses. “Did she wear her burka for you yet? She finds it very funny. If she’s so wonderful, why didn’t he take her with him?”

  Rasym stumbles forward, and we head back down the beach. For a moment he leans against me for stability. I’m strangely moved by the warmth of his body and the earth-metal scent of his skin, the whole bony being that is Rasym, where religion does battle with desire.

  “Can I ask why you think the hippies planted the bomb last month?”

  “Uh, have you read the last chapter of the Bible? Are you familiar with the Apocalypse?” He clops his feet to indicate horses.

  “But you don’t think they have anything to do with Charlie’s disappearance. What I’m saying is, he couldn’t have been a victim of foul play?”

  “Foul play? Why would the hippies want Charlie dead? Sure they hate each other, but I don’t see how offing Charlie would advance their cause. It’s good to have enemies. An enemy is more honest than a friend. You know exactly where you stand.” I wonder if that explains his open hatred of Sonny. In Rasym’s moral universe, tolerating her would give her a false sense of trust. He’s erected his own Green Line, and there will be no crossing, no confusion as to who belongs where. He shakes his head. “Hippies murdering him. Now you sound like Charlie.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s been paranoid. Maybe it’s because of whatever he got up to with his boats. Maybe it’s due to that guy he fired. What’s his name?” He snaps his finger. “You saw that cat on Domitian.”

  It hasn’t occurred to Rasym that Charlie might be dead. He’s never even considered the possibility that his disappearance is in any way involuntary.

  “So what? He has a cat.”

  Rasym snorts. “You don’t know anything about boats, do you? God, you would have made a terrible manager. The gas lines on yachts are notoriously easy to cut. A silent killer. There’s only one reason you leave an animal on a boat. To make sure it’s still breathing when you climb on board.”

  He observes the shock on my face, and it seems to me he takes a certain pleasure in delivering it.

  “Charlie won’t be gone forever,” he assures me. “You’re forgetting something he left behind. In the meantime, we’re just going to have to wait until Stefan gives up and goes back to Dubai.”

  He pats me on the back, and we approach Adrian sprawled on his towel. He’s staring up at the dome of blue, his eyes glassy.

  “You detach yourself from it, and then you submit to it,” he warbles, his voice distorted, as if it’s issuing from an old apartment intercom. “Can’t you feel it? Time pressing its thumb on us. We’re deep in its ridges. What does it want?”

  He’s as high as a human lying on his back can go.

  Rasym sits cross-legged at Adrian’s feet and flings a shirt over them to prevent their burning. It might be more prudent to cover Adrian’s genitals. The beginning of an erection is rearranging the hard geometry of his body. Rasym looks up at me.

  “His inheritance,” he says. “That’s what you’re forgetting. You don’t stand to gain a few hundred million in a year or two and run off with nothing but the clothes on your back.”

  LOUISE AND I sit at the patio table. The candles between us burn low on their wicks. Earlier, Louise opened a bottle of vodka and poured out three fingers for both of us. I’m now on my fourth three fingers. It’s almost midnight but the heat of the day is beating around us like a bass drummer who lost his marching band. Sheep are moving in the fields, scurrying and swarming with anxious bleating. Why are they so restless tonight? I’m alert to every set of headlights skirting up the valley, fearful of a priest at the wheel. I follow their incline through the darkness, spinning and twisting like children holding flashlights, along the winding road, before they overshoot our turnoff and disappear.

  There’s a rattle in a bush close to the driveway.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Louise asks.

  I lift from my chair; it could be my imagination but I see a figure dissolving into the black shrubbery. I wait for a minute, but the darkness remains total and unyielding.

  “I thought I just saw someone on the driveway.”

  “It could be a neighbor. Or I noticed one of those girls from
the hippie camp walking through the fields earlier.”

  “But not a priest or any beefy Greek men?”

  Louise shakes her head, and I sit down.

  “You’re acting funny,” she says with concern.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been a bit stressed.”

  “Will you tell me what’s going on?” It’s more a demand than a question; the harshness has returned to her voice.

  “Everything’s falling apart without Charlie,” I answer vaguely. I wrap my hand around the vodka bottle, not to pour more but to collect its coldness. “He owes money to the monastery, and since he’s not here, they’re bothering me about it. What would you say about a few days on another island? We could leave tomorrow and try Folegandros? I hear they have spectacular cliffs. Okay, that might be too far. But what about—”

  Louise’s face creases. “We can’t. I can’t, anyway. I don’t have the funds. Europe’s wiped me out. And Sonny asked us to lunch tomorrow. I can’t abandon her.” She holds her drink to her mouth but doesn’t take a sip. It’s just as well. If Stefan paid the debt, Louise is safe.

  “What’s going on with Konstantinou Charters?” she asks.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  She reaches her hand across the table and touches my elbow.

  “I feel like you’re not telling me everything.”

  Who is the bearded guy in the cowboy shirt? Why didn’t you post the pictures of me and Charlie? Did you remove them before the bearded guy could see them and ask you about other men? I don’t ask these questions because I don’t want to know their answers, because Louise is here for only five more days.

  “But you’re still working for him?”

  “I suppose,” I answer with a nod.

  “And there’s nothing strange going on with its operations?”

  I gaze at her over my nearly empty glass.

  “Strange how?”

  She picks up one of the candles and waves it in front of her like a beacon.

  “Earth to Ian, Earth to Ian,” she says laughing. “It’s high season for boat rentals. Charlie’s missing. You’re not exactly keeping office hours. I wondered if anything is wrong.” She pulls the bottle from my grip and fills my glass. My fifth three fingers. I put my hand over the rim to discourage myself from drinking it. “Talk to me. You can tell me. Maybe I can help.”

  “You can’t help.”

  “Try me.”

  The e-mail tonight from my sister:

  YOU MOTHERFUCKER, CALL ME! I COULD GO TO THE POLICE AND THEY WOULD ARREST YOU FOR LARCENY. THAT’S A FELONY, IN CASE YOU DON’T HAVE THE BRAINCELLS TO FIGURE IT OUT. SO HERE’S MY FINAL OFFER. IF YOU RETURN THE MONEY AND ANSWER ALL MY QUESTIONS ABOUT DAD, THEN ROSS AND I WILL RECONSIDER FILING CHARGES.

  On the bright side, Lex did supply her mailing address.

  “Are you looking forward to going home?” I ask.

  Louise rests her forehead in her hands.

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “I wish we had run into each other again a year ago. Six months ago. Hell, next year. Just not now. I’m at my lowest.” I remove my hand from the rim and take a drink.

  To have always had money: the burn for things that can’t be named; a crowded room with no lights on; the dependability of automatic doors, the whooshing sound when they open and the cold air on shivering skin.

  To have never had money: the work and the work and the work and barely a time for prayer; a jacket not made for seasons; grass growing around a shrinking house.

  To have once had money and lost it: a hole in the shoe and to never get accustomed to it, to feel the hole with each advancing step until the hole is bigger than your body.

  “Please, Ian. Just tell me what’s going on!” Louise reaches over again, but I move my elbow away.

  There’s no reason to burden her with the truth. Let her have her five days of vacation. Let me not be a lesson in her traveling story. Let her think of me later, somewhere in D.C. or Lexington, as a man not broken, as someone clean.

  “Even if it’s something bad, I’d like to hear it. You can tell me the worst.”

  “Will you visit your brother before classes start?” I ask. “What did you say he looks like?”

  Louise gets up from the table and perches on the wall. Then she’s up again, walking around the table, and she puts her arms around my shoulders.

  “I’m really happy I’m here with you,” she whispers. “Whatever happens. For as long as it lasts. You know that, right?”

  “Do me a favor,” I say, pushing the drink away. I look up at her, gravity forming a kiss on her lips, this person embedded with the mystery of wanting to be with me for reasons I can’t explain. Dig it up later, excavate it from the dirt, hold the bones up to the sun and try to figure out what kind of creature it was. It had some life, it moved, it breathed. It mattered for as long as it lasted.

  She cocks her head to the side. “What?”

  “Sleep in my room tonight. Don’t go back to your bed.”

  We have reached the stage where we are asking each other for easy, impossible things.

  CHAPTER 14

  Her name is Vic and she has a nagging cough. This much I know of their leader.

  I walk north from the beach at Grikos on the first day of dark skies. Low storm clouds streak like the dirty fur of huskies. The lack of sun turns the town’s whitewashed walls a drab cream, exposing plaster gouges and chalky patch jobs. Fresh spray paint mars a few of them: “Smash Troika,” “Tote Me Tanks, Tope Me Banks,” “Eat the Rich.” Tattered taverna awnings droop from their frames. Paradise is a trick of light.

  I veer along the rocky shoreline. The harbor is mostly clear of yachts, and only a few dilapidated fishing boats trawl the deeper channels. As the cliffs rise and the beach narrows, I hear and smell the camp, a microclimate of sweetened smoke and gusts of blasting music, a hip-hop song dissolving into the amphetamine heartbeat of trance. Their dogs must hear and smell me first too, because three mutts, two with severe underbites, scamper toward me and sniff at my shoes. The tiniest one lifts its brawny leg, and I have to sidestep into the water to prevent it from marking me. But I’m accepted into their pack; they scuttle around me like fawning ambassadors as I approach the cluster of tents.

  Gold. Red. Hunter green. Each tent is emblazoned with a cross on its side. A bonfire flares midbeach; a man in a felt hat is dancing around the flames, touching the heads of those who are feeding the fire with twigs, oregano leaves, and squeezes of lighter fluid. Two young women with long matted hair, not so unlike their dead friend Dalia, clip T-shirts to a line tied between olive trees; one of the shirts flapping in the wind is the rainbow I ♥ ATHENS shirt that I saw on their latest arrival. A short, gaunt kid, each bone cripplingly visible in his back, his hair a knot of fuchsia dreads, raps in Portuguese as he spins a baton stick in the air. He’s so focused on his rhythm, he nearly steps into the bonfire, and the girls feeding it yell at him with croupy fits of laughter.

  “Gibby, you have chores,” one of the T-shirt clippers screams. She wears a cheap plastic tiara.

  “No, not on Wed nees dee,” he answers, fracturing the word until it loses its reference to a weekday. His lip is so distended a word tattooed across its pink underside hangs exposed. Count? Cunt? Comet?

  A group of men, nude and hairy, dive-bombs into the water, their legs and asses an accumulation of bruises and welts. Empty sardine tins, cigarette packs, bent spoons, and dented cans lie scattered close to the advancing tide. A topless girl in cherry velour track pants, one nipple punctured with a brass rod, scrubs the gristle off a grill; her tits jostle from the effort, and when she stands erect to wipe her forehead, I see she’s several months pregnant. Two Spanish-speaking guys, strangely collegiate in their close-cropped hair and soiled button-downs, wrestle violently along the rocks; their giggling fails to disguise the intensity of their fight. A forearm pins the smaller one by the throat. Tattooed bluebirds on the arm fatten and vein.

 
It’s not accurate to call them hippies. They’re more like cultural scavengers, picking promiscuously at the scrap heap of history and novelty shops and romantic teenage tokens rotted for years in suburban closets before taken up again as badges of burned innocence. Their armor is in their expressions, the sharp eyes and crooked mouths of a starved vitality, a pent-up momentum, hysteria on a tightened leash. And yet they are beautiful, most of them, because they are young, a state they haven’t figured out how to demolish, and their attempts to do so—tattoos, greasepaint, ear plugs the size of silver dollars, cocaine lines of white razor blade scars on their arms—only prove how young they are. I imagine when it’s sunny and hot, a light madness greases the bare bodies of the camp and turns the sea hallucinogenic, and God does feel very close to a zombie super returning to pick the recyclables from the trash. Amid the soundtrack of barking dogs, manic laughter, and unctuous speed-music, I’m struck most but what is lacking: not a single cell phone in sight. They are humans stripped of the gleaming remora of upload and transmit.

  I track my eyes farther down the beach, where a circle forms around the morose Dalmatian. Girls hum as they braid grass wreaths around its neck. The muscular guy with the handlebar mustache squats on an upturned bucket. He’s eating sardines out of a peeled-back tin. Two silver loops pierce his lower lip, and a knife is strapped to his army shorts. But it’s the person next to him who captures my attention. Helios sits with a beach towel shrouding half of his head, like a child’s idea of a veil. His face looks both happier and more lost than it did the last time I saw him; an expired joint is lodged between his fingers. He grope-rubs the Dalmatian distractedly, his eyes tuned to the humming contest of the girls, one of whom is dancing topless, arms swaying like branches, waving her ANTI-BETHLEHEM shirt like a banner.

  A Latin boy with long, surfer-permed hair and orange fingernails, wearing a nylon sports bra, passes by, speaking into a walkie-talkie. “You arrive at three-ten,” he barks into the device. He struts up the beach and enters a large caravan tent constructed out of blue tarpaulin and green-brown camo netting. Its front metal pole quivers as a white flag snaps at the tip; on the flag two gold horns crisscross. Next to the tent is a plastic outdoor bin, where a girl is sorting through heaps of backpacks.