by Craig Holden
“Now I am really impressed.”
“So you are.”
“How in the world did you know that? I paid cash—”
“Darcy—”
“No, no. This is part of the fun. You have to tell me.”
“I don’t think you realize what sort of people these are, this Justine and Maurice.”
“You already said that. How did having their names lead you to Crete?”
“There are things you don’t know.”
“Then tell me, Matthew. Come on.”
“I don’t really know much, either. But Maurice owns real estate there.”
“Well, good for Maurice.”
“Listen, I’ve booked a room in Iraklion. The Hotel Anastasia. You can go there now. The room’s under both our names. I’ll be in tonight.”
“I won’t be.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
“Anastasia. Pretty name. I guess I’ll talk to you after you get here—if you’re lucky.”
“You mean if you’re lucky.”
“Matthew, you worry too much.”
“And you should.”
She hung up.
THEIR ROOM WAS NARROW, WITH a cracked red linoleum floor and a bathroom so tiny that to use the handheld shower you had to close the toilet and sit. The room held only two single beds, a small desk, and a bookcase. But it also opened directly onto the beach and had a window wide enough to allow them a view of the southern curve of the coastline that ran away from the town in both directions. And so the sea filled the room, and in the mornings they woke with the first pink light that came over it.
They took to walking in the early mornings. The shore to the west was broken and soon ended at the base of a rough cliff with an olive orchard at its top, but to the east they could pick their way among the rocks, find long stretches of sand, and go for more than an hour sometimes. Later they had breakfast in one of the tavernas or kafenía along the main street of the village where they took all their meals. Sometimes they had nothing more than tough bread, white butter, and a pot of the tarry, bitter skéto that they had both come to crave.
On the morning of the fourth day, after breakfast, they went into a shop that passed as one of the town’s general stores. It held small selections of toiletries, stationery materials, and hardware, and larger ones of touristy trifles, Greek-subtitled videotapes, and groceries. Will was looking for something to read. He was already beginning to seem bored, which Darcy found disconcerting. They had each other to keep them amused and happy and satiated. And she certainly felt all three of those things. Will had proved to be a robust and durable lover, and Darcy did not feel disappointed in him except at the furthest edges of her desires. He was not especially inventive, she thought, or daring. But his enthusiasm made up for it, and the previous days had been a swirl of sensual satisfactions, from Will to the warm ocean to the strange, wonderful foods to the feel of the sun in the days before Christmas. She hoped he wasn’t already tiring of this Eden they were in together.
As he browsed a rack of months-old magazines, she wandered down one of the store’s two aisles to the rear wall where there hung a display of miniature decorative spoons with various emblems or symbols embossed on the flattened handles. It was something you’d see in an American tourist trap. These had the predictable Greek flag or Greek and American flags intertwined or Greek and British. One, though, said simply Matala, and beneath it was an image of what appeared to be a high cliff with pockmarks on its face.
She looked around. There was only the clerk up front behind the counter and Will at the reading rack. She had seen a man stocking shelves when they came in, but he had apparently gone into the back room. She touched one of the other spoons first, a flag one, lifted it and felt its weight, and put it back. She looked around again and then quickly lifted the Matala spoon and palmed it. Another glance, and then she slipped it down the front of her shorts and inside the band of her panties where she had meant it to stay, but it slipped down into her crotch. There was some danger, of course, that it would slip out and clatter to the floor, which would be at the least an embarrassment. But she liked the sensation of the cool metal there. She took a few experimental steps and could feel it moving against her.
The man came out of the back now and looked at her. He smiled. “You like?”
She nodded. “Just looking, though.”
He went toward the front. Will seemed to have chosen something, so she wandered up slowly so as not to jar anything and went out and waited for him at the curb of the narrow lane.
When he emerged with a brown paper bag holding several magazines, she took his hand and pulled him in the direction of the hotel.
“What?” he said.
“Just come with me.”
When she was thirteen years old, she had gone with her mother to a beauty salon. Her haircut had taken only fifteen minutes, but her mother’s perm was going to be at least an hour. She sat reading for a while and then got up and wandered over to the rack of expensive shampoos, conditioners, toners, and dyes, and lifted several to read the labels. The women were farther back, either working or being worked upon, except the one behind the counter who was either terribly engrossed in the article she was reading or asleep. Darcy slipped a small spritzer bottle into her purse. It was not the first time she had stolen something, but she was still new to it.
Later, as she waited for her mother to pay so they could leave, she saw her talking to the woman at the counter, and then the two of them looking at her. Then another woman joined them, listening and nodding and watching her. And then a third woman, older than the others, the owner or manager or something, came up, too. They were all looking at her.
She felt frightened in a way, but excited, too. She remembered even years later the feel of sweat running down her sternum, though the place was overly air-conditioned. She remembered the feel in her gut of hunger and desire, and of the urge it gave her to leap up and run from the store before anyone could do anything. But she did not run. She got up and walked past the women and into one of the bathrooms. She tossed the bottle of hair spray into the trash, then pulled her pants down, sat on the edge of the toilet seat, and touched herself, and almost immediately she came. She couldn’t believe it had happened that easily. She had touched herself before, in her bed at night, and had climaxed, but never this easily or this intensely. She felt dizzy and sat breathing for several minutes before washing her hands and going out. Her mother waited at the door. She did not look at the other women as she passed them.
Outside in the sun and heat of a June parking lot afternoon, her mother gripped her upper arm hard enough that Darcy knew she would have a bruise.
“Ow!”
“Shush,” her mother said. “What did you do?”
“With what?”
“In that store? What did you take?”
“Nothing. God, Mother, will you let go of me?”
“I had to pay for a bottle of very expensive setting spray that they said was missing after you looked at it.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“You watch your mouth. This isn’t the first time, Darcy. I know what you do.”
“I don’t have anything!” she said. “Just because you think I’ve done it before, you believe them now over me? Let’s go back in there. I’ll show you. I don’t have any stupid thing of theirs.”
“I’ll never go in there again. You’ve ruined that. It was my favorite place, too.”
“I don’t have anything. Do you want to search me?”
“I want you to get over this,” her mother said.
Now, as soon as they entered their Galini hotel room, Darcy grabbed Will and pressed her mouth into his. She held him tightly to her and kissed his neck and chest.
“Darcy,” he said.
“Please,” she told him. “Right now. Don’t talk.”
“But I—”
“Please.”
He kissed her again, or let her kiss him, and then she felt him at the snaps of h
er shorts. She felt them fall around her ankles and felt him at the top of her panties and his fingers creeping down in that delicious way, and then he touched the spoon and withdrew.
“What the hell?” he said.
“It’s yours,” she said. “Take it out. I got it for you.”
“What is it?”
“Take it out.” She lay down on one of the beds, and he sat beside her and reached in again and pulled out the spoon.
“Did you steal it?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
“But—”
“Don’t stop,” she said. She pulled his hand back to her belly and pushed it down until he bent over her again and kissed her, and soon there was no question of stopping.
THAT NIGHT, AFTER SHARK STEAKS and a liter of the sweet retsina, she told Will she’d meet him back at the room in a few minutes. Then they could decide whether to go to the Korus Club again or somewhere else that night. She went to the pay phone outside the Rent-a-Vespa shop and had to wait for some stupid girl to finish giggling with her boyfriend. The holiday influx had swollen the little town to the point of making it uncomfortable. It had been theirs for a few days, but it was not anymore. When the girl finished, Darcy dialed the Anastasia in Iraklion.
“Darcy,” Matthew said, “I’m so glad you called.”
“And I’m so glad that you’re so glad.”
“Listen. It’s time to stop screwing around. You may be in trouble.”
“Well, there’s a news flash.”
“I don’t mean with your father. I mean danger.”
“What kind of danger?”
“Justine and Maurice. We’re starting to get some information on them, what they may be involved with.”
“Which is?”
“Why did they tell you you were going to Crete?”
“To deliver a package.”
“And where is it? The package.”
“I have it hidden.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t looked?”
“No.”
“God, Darcy.”
“It’s not drugs. She told me that.”
“It could be anything.”
“Such as?”
“Or worse. It could be nothing. Have you thought of that?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Darcy, look at it. Open it.”
“They’ll know.”
“Fuck them!”
She waited. He was angry now. Not angry—he was frightened. She could hear that. “Matthew,” she said, “tell me what you know.”
“I don’t know anything. I’m just getting bits and pieces of things that don’t make sense, but they make me think you may be in great jeopardy.”
“Will is with me, you know. He wouldn’t let them do anything—”
“Will is involved in it, too, somehow.”
“Will? He’s clueless.”
“He may be clueless, but he’s involved. With them. With her—Justine.”
“They’ve been traveling together. They were lovers.”
“Before that.”
“Before?”
“Long before.”
“What—He would’ve said something.”
“If I’m correct, he doesn’t know.”
“Matthew, I’m really confused.”
“Tell me where you are?”
“I’m not ready yet.”
“Darcy—”
“I’m in the south. I’ll tell you that. I’m not in Iraklion.”
“And you’re with Will.”
“Yes.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“But they know where you are?”
“This is where she said to come, to this town.”
“Where?”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. How about that?”
“Are you in Matala?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Are you?”
“No, but I saw it on a spoon today.”
“Is this another clue?”
“Tomorrow,” she said and hung up.
Eleven
O N THE FIFTH MORNING IT was still dark when I opened my eyes. The sun had begun to rise, but the sky was heavily overcast and the air felt heavy and dead. It had turned chilly, too. I rested against the cool plaster wall and watched Darcy sleeping in the other bed, one arm flung above her head. Her hair had lightened with the ocean and the sun so that it could be called blond now, a careless sort of blond. She wore nothing because we had made love again after we came in from drinking and then slept together for the first hours of the night, as we had each night, until she woke at some point and went to the other bed. The sheet was pushed down to her waist so that I could make out the hardened nipples, each nestled in the pendentious convexity of its great mother ship, and even some of the definition of the muscles in her arms. She worked out, she told me—aerobics and running and weight lifting. She had a private trainer in Cleveland. She was, it turned out, a rather violently healthy girl.
I thought about what they felt like, those biceps, deltoids, and pectorals, not only their strength and heat but the quality of the darkening skin. It was like a kind of hide. Justine’s skin was pale and soft and so tender it burned even in moderate sun.
As I watched, Darcy shifted and made a sound in her throat, then pushed with her legs so that the sheet rode down further, exposing the tangled top of her pubic nest. She turned her head and made another sound, and now I could see her hips moving, just perceptibly, thrusting upward. I wondered if she was dreaming of me or if, maybe, it was the man she had danced with in the bar last night or some other man altogether.
She had a remarkable clitoris, so large and turgid that I had taken to calling it her little penis, which only made her laugh. Justine’s thin blade of a one lay in such a deep valley that I had to move the folds of her mons to even glimpse it, like some exposed little treasure. She had liked for me to do that.
I had an erection now, which I regretted. It ached because we had made hard love not too many hours before. Darcy, it seemed, always wanted it that way—simply hard and often. I had tried to be subtle, tried to use some of the small maneuvers, the tiny touches I’d learned from Justine that she loved for me to do, commanded me to do, sometimes for an hour or more before she would let me move on. But they were lost on this girl even when she was sober. “Just fuck me,” she would say and grasp her ankles, straighten her legs, and tell me, “Harder” or “Faster” or “Deeper.” Sometimes, for variety, she said things in French—“Plus profond!” or “Baisezmoi!”—and once, I believe, something in Italian, though I couldn’t really make it out.
Even when I gave up and just tried to pulverize her with my thrusting (thinking that at some point it would be too much), she only cried out for more, and the longer I lasted (it was taking longer and longer the more we did it), the harder and more wetly and more loudly she came. She had surprised me yet again with this newest manifestation of her true nature—and, frankly, shocked me a little, as did the fact that for the first time in the short history of my sex life, I felt weary of it.
I looked away, toward the wide window and the weak light over the southern sea, and thought of what I had done, how I had come to be in this place with this endlessly horny woman, and how we had lost Justine somehow, and of what I might say to her if she ever found me again.
No one had contacted us. Maurice did not seem to be here or any of his people or Justine, and so we just did what we wanted or, anyway, what Darcy wanted, which was to eat and drink and fuck and walk and fuck and maybe swim a little and then fuck.
As the light struggled to rise, I looked at her again and drew in my breath when I saw that she was looking back. She’d pushed the sheet down further so that she was entirely uncovered, and she lay with her legs parted.
“Merry Christmas,” she said. “Would you li
ke your present?”
“It’s not till tomorrow.”
“Oh. Then you still have time to shop.”
“As long as it’s for a dead fish. Do you want a fish?”
“Mmm. What kind of fish?”
“What kind do you want?”
“One that’s shaped like your cock and that tastes like it.”
“A cock fish,” I said.
“But not just any cock fish. A big old Will-shaped cock fish. Then when you’re gone, it can keep me company.”
“Where will I be going?”
“I don’t know, but we can’t stay in this tiny room forever no matter how cheap it is. You’ll have to get a job or something someday.”
“You’re not going to support me?”
“It’d be bad for your self-esteem. Plus, if you never go away, you’ll never miss me. You might even get tired of me.”
“Will you miss me?”
“Oh, yes. But I’ll have your cock fish to help me get by.”
“But I might only be gone for a little while.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t be without it. I’m obsessed with it. The taste of it. The shape. Having it in me. I could have some right now.”
“But you just had some.”
“That was hours ago. I told you—I really am insatiable.”
“I believe you.”
“You like it, don’t you?”
“What?”
“My insatiability.”
“I’m not complaining.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I’ve just never known a girl quite like you.”
“How many girls have you known?”
“Not all that many.”
“Well, however many you meet, none will be like me.”
“I believe that, too.”
“So do you want to?” She spread her legs further and combed the nest with her fingers.
“We could, or we could be good and then reward ourselves later.”
“Hmm,” she said. “That sounds awfully ascetic and spartan.”
I rubbed my face, stretched, sat up, lifted my jeans from the floor, and pulled them on. “Come on,” I said. “We can get in a nice walk before it gets warm.”
ON THIS MORNING THERE WERE fresh eggs, which there had not been for several days. Darcy ordered them cooked for four minutes, and when the white crockery cups arrived, they came not only with a plate of toast but a thickly oiled slice of feta as well, courtesy of the proprietor. Darcy spread the cheese on the bread and spooned the runny yolk and albumen onto it. She purred at the complex mingling of the flavors.