Matala

by Craig Holden

  Darcy reached into her bag again and placed a small Bible covered in red leather beside the watch. It was Justine’s. I’d seen her reading from it now and then but had never asked her about it.

  “You complete and utter cunt,” Justine said. “What could you possibly want with that?”

  “Nothing,” Darcy said. “I don’t want any of this caca.” She then produced, in succession, a gold and silver monogrammed money clip, an ivory hair comb, a silver class ring set with a huge faceted blue stone, two more packs of cigarettes, three Zippo lighters, a journal embossed in gold with the word Private, a Mont Blanc fountain pen, a silver egg cup, half a dozen sterling dinner utensils, a magnifying glass, a plane ticket, a transistor radio, and, most improbably, an onyx-handled stainless steel folding knife, the blade of which must have been at least four inches long.

  She said, “I have a problem. This…disease.”

  “Disease?” I said.

  “I can’t help it. I’ve been doing it since I was like ten. Shoplifting, picking pockets, even the occasional burglary, believe it or not. Usually those were just neighbors’ houses. For a while all I stole was lingerie. I’ve been to merdeloads of the best shrinks in Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and even New York, therapists, twelve-step groups. No one could ever get me to stop. I even went to jail once. Then they put me in a mental ward for a while, but I was no crazier than anyone who worked there, and they knew it. When their stethoscopes kept disappearing, they kicked me out.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Justine said and rubbed her eyes. Then she pointed at the smokes and said, “May I?”

  “They’re yours,” Darcy said. “The lighters, too.” Then, to Will, “Sorry about the watch.”

  “It’s fine,” I told her. “Can I have it back?”

  “Well, it’s yours, isn’t it?”

  “Not really.”

  “It is now. My gift to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  We then sat, the three of us, each stunned by this sudden sharing, this revelation, this laying of cards on the table.

  “Well,” Justine said at last, “I suppose if we’re hanging it all out, we might as well finish. What are your plans?”

  Darcy shrugged.

  “You really want to go back to your tour?”

  “No.”

  “You knew what was going on all along, didn’t you?”

  “Well, no. I mean not really.”

  “I mean when we offered you an escort.”

  “I had my hopes, you know? That we could hang out still. Delay things. I knew we were getting on the wrong train, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And that pleased you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why don’t you come with us?”

  I felt another shock as her words settled.

  They were silent until Darcy said, “Seriously?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Justine. “Just promise you’ll stop nicking our shit. Of course you can keep nicking other people’s.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “And, again, there’s the money issue.”

  “I’ll pay,” she said. “I’ve just come into a whole bunch of cash, see.”

  “That’s not what I meant. That’s not your effing money.”

  Darcy started to laugh then. It was a strange high-pitched squeal, incongruous with the rest of her but infectious nevertheless. I laughed, too.

  “Oh, stuff it,” Justine said, “both of you. It’s not yours. You can’t take it from Maurice.”

  “I already did. Here.” She put the empty leather file back on the table and said to me, “Take it to the men’s room and leave it on the floor by the toilet. Someone’ll find it. It’s all there but the cash.”

  “You’ve still got your cards.”

  “Yes. I can get the train tickets and whatever else we need.”

  “How much cash can you withdraw on the gold?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a thousand.”

  “That should do. Then once you’ve withdrawn, you have to get rid of them. Throw them away.”

  “Yes.”

  “What will happen? You’ll inform the tour?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You must. Otherwise, they’ll call in the authorities. We absolutely can’t have that.”

  “Okay.”

  “And your parents? I imagine they’ll be concerned.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “See that you do.”

  “What’s in the package?”

  “I really don’t know,” Justine said. “I don’t.”

  “You’re taking a huge risk then. They have narc dogs that sniff—”

  Justine replied, “I doubt Maurice would enlist our help to move a small parcel of powder from Italy to Crete. Not very cost effective, you know? And I suspect that that sort of thing generally comes in the other direction. Why would you take it there if you can sell it for at least as much here?”

  Darcy thought for a moment, then nodded. “Today,” she said, “when we were sitting in the sun, I realized that you guys were the only people who had any idea where I was. God, I loved that feeling. Do you ever think about how right at a certain moment no one else who knows you in the entire world knows exactly where you are?”

  “No,” Justine said.

  But I did. I knew exactly what she meant. It struck me just that way when Justine and I first went off together, but I confess the wonder of it had worn off. In the years since, though, I have found it again now and then, at odd moments, but never that profoundly.

  “You could just disappear if you wanted.”

  “You can always do that.”

  “Can you?”

  “You can. You’re about to, and so am I. I’m knackered. I’m going to bed.” She waited then, apparently for us to say we were going to join her. But when Darcy asked me instead if there was any place else I knew of that was open, and I said I supposed so, Justine regarded us briefly and then got up and left.

  “Or we can just walk,” said Darcy. “Do you mind walking?”

  “I like to walk.”

  “Then let’s.”

  Six

  T HEY FOUND A PAY PHONE not far from the American Café. She got through to an American operator and made it collect. If things went perfectly, Mommy and Daddy would be out and Ellie, the housekeeper-cook, would answer and take a message. But it was her father who accepted the charges.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said.

  There was a pause and then in his usual voice, low and modulated and so throaty it sounded almost vicious—it was the exact yang to Mommy’s yin—he said, “Where in Jesus’ name are you?”

  “Gosh,” she said, “it’s so good to hear your voice, too.”

  “Darcy, goddammit. Those people called here. They said you just up and took the hell off or something. They didn’t know what the hell happened.”

  He was a concrete contractor, Daddy was. He’d made millions of dollars paving over the shit that was Cleveland, as he put it. He was one of the biggest cement layers in the State of Ohio, and, he was fond of saying, there was one goddamn shitload of cement in Ohio. My eloquent dad, she’d called him to her friends.

  “Well, I guess that’s right,” she said. “I did just up and take the hell off.”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Having fun, Dad. Believe it or not.”

  “Darcy—”

  “Look, I didn’t mean to. It was a mistake. I went out with some friends and I got sick—”

  “Drunk, you mean. Stinking, I bet. You’re good at that, like your mom.”

  “Great. But no, actually I didn’t get stinking. I missed the train to Florence, so my friends were going to bring me up, and we got on the wrong train.”

  “So where are you now?”

  “Venice.”

  “What?”

  “It’s another city in Italy.”

  “Yeah, Darcy. I know that.”

  “It’s beautiful, actuall
y. I love it here.”

  “So how far is it to wherever you’re supposed to be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hadn’t you better look into it? Get a ticket and get your ass over there?”

  “Well, it’s almost midnight here, so I can’t do anything now. But I don’t know. I like it here so much.”

  Another long pause. She could hear him smoking now. He only smoked when he was really pissed off.

  “Darcy, goddammit—this was so expensive, this bullshit tour. If you were just gonna go off and wander around with some other drunks, then I coulda just got you a plane ticket.”

  “And that’s what I said I wanted, isn’t it, Dad? Do you remember that conversation? I said just get me a ticket and maybe a Eurail pass. That’s all I asked for. But Mommy had like three heart attacks, and you were all ‘You can’t do that. A girl all alone over there.’”

  “So you pull something like this.”

  “Listen,” she said. She was crying now, but she covered the phone when she sniffed so he wouldn’t pick up on it. “I was still thinking about going back to the tour. But I’ve decided now I’m not going to.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know, Daddy. I’ll send you a postcard. How’s that?”

  She hung up.

  LATER, WILL HELD HER. THEY’D found a lonely bridge somewhere in the fog and the night, as alone as they could be, and she wept, and he kept her close to him until she had it all out, and he never asked a question. He just understood. She knew he understood. Everything. When she had calmed down and dried up, she looked up at him, and they kissed for the first time since that night in Rome. But this time it went on and grew more heated until he was pressing her back against the abutment and moving against her, and neither of them wanted to stop, but they finally did.

  “Do you think AmEx is open?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We should get money while we still can. He may shut off the card.”

  “Would he do that?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Maybe we can get the tickets, too.”

  “Good,” she said. “Let’s hurry. Then we can have another drink. Someplace that’s very, very not American.”

  WHEN THEY WENT IN, THE room was so dark that Darcy had to orient herself, even to find the bed. They were drunk, and buzzed as well from walking in the Venetian night and from the making out they’d done on another dark bridge somewhere in it. They’d held on to each other for a long time and pressed themselves together again, and she told him she wished it was an empty room they were going back to.

  She listened now to Will undressing and tried to see where Justine was lying. Then she noticed, in the corner of the room, a floating orange bead, an ember. Justine was in the chair by the window, smoking. The glow brightened when she drew on it and threw an orange cast over the bedspread and Will’s boxer-clad body as he got beneath it.

  “C’mon,” he whispered. He hadn’t noticed Justine. Where, Darcy wondered, did he think she was? But he was just drunk. He wasn’t thinking about anything. Well, maybe one thing.

  She thought to say something but didn’t know what exactly. And she thought Justine might speak to them, but she did not. The room remained silent. Will snuggled in and pulled the covers up to his neck. The orange light rose again, then fell.

  It made her suddenly angry, Justine sitting there like that, silently chastising them, watching them, judging them. Darcy knew she was judging them.

  She undressed—all the way. She hoped Justine could see every inch of it. She took off her shoes, socks, jeans, and the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d been wearing, and then she undid her bra, dropped it, and slipped out of her panties. She stood in the chill dark air so that when the cigarette glowed, it would illuminate all of her. Look at this, old woman.

  Then she went around and got in the bed. The cold new sheets felt wonderful against her bare skin. Will lay in the middle, where he had slept the night before, between the women, though now it was only the two of them. Darcy turned her back to him and moved into him as she had that morning, shifting and moving it against him. He had an immediate erection or, rather, a continuation of the one he’d been pressing against her and that he’d probably had in some state since that morning. Poor man.

  She reached behind her, took his hand, and pulled it over so that it lay against her belly. She continued to move against him and felt him move against her. As silently as they could, they writhed. She shifted her legs so that they were slightly parted and reached back again, found his cock, and guided it into her. And they moved that way, quietly, subtly, but enough so that before too long she felt him begin to climax. And she felt herself going with him. She wanted terribly to feel him come inside her, his warmth, knowing that she had caused it and that Justine was sitting there, hearing if not seeing it all. Will moved his hand to her breast and gripped it. He pressed his mouth into her back, into her hair, and he came so hard, she could hear his teeth grinding, could feel his entire body spasm. She took his hand in both of hers and held it tightly until they had finished.

  He lay back, touching her still, but relaxed.

  It was then that Darcy heard, in the quiet of the darkness, a sound she had not thought it possible to hear. It came from the chair by the window in the corner of the room where the orange glow had now been extinguished. At first she thought she must be imagining it or that Justine had had too many cigarettes or that all the speed was making her nose run. But as Darcy listened, she knew that Justine was weeping. And the thought of it made her dizzy with the power she held, and a sense of excitement, of raw possibility, that she did not remember having felt for a long, long time, and she wanted to think about it some more, to contemplate it, to roll around in it. But then she slipped almost immediately into the deepest sleep she’d had in ages.

  December 15, 1987

  Locanda Apostoli

  Venice, Italy

  Dear Whoever Daddy Has Sent After Me:

  Welcome to Venice! It’s a beautiful place. You should really take a little time out from your hot pursuit and walk around a bit, watch the sunlight coming off the canals, taste the wine, ride in a gondola. We saw the Bridge of Sighs this morning, early, before we had to check out, and it made me cry. You should go. And the Paolo San Marco. And, for a hoot, the American Café. But I know you won’t. You’re surely one of Daddy’s hard-ons-for-hire, an ex-cop, a private investigator, who knows what. A bounty hunter maybe! Anyway, I hope you’re having fun, but I’m sure you’re not.

  So, to business: If you’re reading this, you’ve caught up to me this far. I stayed in this very hotel for two nights. You’re here because you traced the credit card charges I made. Easy work. But don’t get used to that.

  You are, of course, at least a day late, maybe more, but you’re smart and probably mean, and Daddy has undoubtedly rented you a private jet and pilot, so you’ll think of something. In the meantime, here’s a little hint:

  Sit by the phone. Don’t move! You might miss me.

  Your new friend,

  Darcy

  The Balkans

  Seven

  I COULD NOT SHAKE THE ODD dual emotions of trepidation and fascination that had wracked me since the scene in the diner the night before. In the Santa Lucia Station, Sunday evening, Justine sat apart from us and seemed to have collapsed into herself. She hardly spoke and did not eat or accept my offer of a cup of tea. Darcy was left in charge of finding the right train this time. It was as if Justine had abnegated all her powers to this girl and had taken to regarding me only at arm’s length, as she had when we were first together.

  In the very beginning, it had taken me a couple of days to make the decision to leave with her, although she’d allowed for that possibility the first night. During that time she stayed in a faded hotel in downtown Roanoke alone—that is, without inviting me up. She hugged me at the front door a couple of times but did not allow me so much as a peck on the cheek. After we too
k off and were sharing rooms, I guess I thought a more complete relationship would just naturally happen. How could it not? But of all things, she behaved demurely. She changed only in the bathroom. She slept either fully clothed or in a flannel neck-to-ankle nightgown that looked as old as she was. And she wouldn’t let us get drunk. After the first few days, I was coming to believe I’d taken on a den mother rather than a partner. I had no idea how to act toward her, how she wanted me to act, and whether things were to continue in this vein. Otherwise, she fascinated me. What she was teaching me was both thrilling and abhorrent, so it wasn’t like I was bored or anything. But I was attracted to her. Smitten. Crazy.

  So one night I got into her bed. I don’t know what I expected: that she’d get angry, kick me out not only of the bed but of her life, or she’d melt at my hot nearness and we’d fall into each other. But she did nothing. She just moved over to make room for me and went to sleep. And that was how we woke up. I didn’t bother the next night, but then the night after that, she got in with me. I tried to kiss her, and she just turned away without saying anything but letting me lie against her back.

  A week or so passed like this, and then a strange thing happened one morning. We woke up together in the same bed, as chaste as we had been, and as I lay looking at the ceiling, she raised herself on one arm and looked at me. And from that angle, in that thin light, I saw myself. I saw my face in her face—as if there were something physical of me in her. And it scared me so badly that I recoiled.

  “My God,” she said. “I know I look a fright in the morning, but I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “No,” I said. “You look good.”

  “Well, you’re a gentleman. Somebody raised you right.”

  “You do,” I said. “It’s not that. It’s…just weird.”

  “Well, that’s lovely then. I’ll take weird over hideous.”

  “Not you. Me. Us, I mean. It’s like we’re…alike.”

  She looked away and said, “What do you mean?”