Matala

by Craig Holden

  After she paid, we sat sipping the coffee and watching out the front window over the cobbled street.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Mmm.”

  “You’re not talking much.”

  “Just full,” I said. “And tired. All that partying. And that other thing we do.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you mean.”

  “You seemed interested in that guy at the Korus last night.”

  “I didn’t see you for a while. Where did you go?”

  “I picked up some chick and screwed her on the beach.”

  “Not really.”

  “I smoked part of a doob with some people.”

  “And you didn’t invite me?”

  “Well, you were busy with that guy.”

  “Because you wouldn’t dance. I’d rather have been dancing with you.”

  I watched her eyes follow someone past the window.

  “Did you want to do him?”

  She shrugged. “Not especially. I have this guy, see.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. He’s a pretty great guy.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, lots of ways. Except that he teases me about how he picks up strange girls and fucks them on the beach.”

  “I bet he just says that to make you jealous.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “Because he’s insecure, I suppose.”

  “Insecure? But why? He’s got a big old fish, that boy. And he’s beautiful. He’s got nothing to be insecure about.”

  “Maybe those aren’t the things he’s insecure about.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t know.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Are we ready for our reward?”

  “We just ate. Shouldn’t we digest first?”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Then we should go take a nap.”

  “It’s barely past nine.”

  “We don’t have to just sleep.”

  “Do you really want to?”

  “Of course I want to. I always want to.”

  I nodded. “Are you happy?”

  “I love it here,” she said. “But do you?”

  “I’m just waiting.”

  “Maybe that’s what’s wrong. Stop thinking about it. It’ll find you when it’s ready for you. Until then, just take it in. Just love it.”

  “I have been. Really, I have.”

  “Maybe if you don’t look for it, it won’t come.”

  “It’ll come. Anyway, shall we go take a nap?”

  “Only if you’ll fuck me.”

  “I said I was tired.”

  “You’ve been up for only three hours. You must have one good fuck in you, no?”

  “Maybe when we wake up.” I looked at her.

  “Are you getting bored with me?”

  “I was just thinking how this makes you look. The sun and the ocean work for you. You’re darker and your hair’s lighter. And you’ve got those little lines by your eyes when you smile now.”

  “God, don’t tell me that.”

  “I like them.”

  “I’m never going outside again.”

  “Well, maybe they have a cot for you in the back here. You’ll probably have to start doing dishes, though.”

  “Maybe, but I bet I could get a good fuck here.”

  “Probably quite a few.”

  When we got up, the waiter smiled and asked if we’d be in for dinner that night. “We have maybe the koliós, yes?”

  “Mackerel,” said Darcy.

  “Ah,” I said. “How?”

  “We do the…slice.” The waiter drew his hand, palm up, through the air in front of him.

  “Filleted.”

  “Néh, yes, on the grill, with haricot beans and vegetables.” He said the last word as if it were three.

  “Mmm, yes,” I said, stroking my chin. “Nice.” I nodded, and she laughed and said, “The Galloping Gourmet.”

  “Or the gutter eater.”

  She said, “Come on. Let’s hurry. I’m ready for dessert.”

  “You don’t have dessert after breakfast.”

  “You do here.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Nap time.”

  “Just come on,” she said, taking my hand and dragging me out into the light.

  THAT EVENING, AFTER IT HAD been dark for some time and we had eaten the mackerel and sat after dinner over shots of ouzo and unshelled peanuts, we again walked back to the room. Only the bathroom light was on. Darcy undressed in silence, pulling harshly at her sweater and jeans and throwing them in a ball on the floor.

  “I can’t believe you’re this pissed off,” I said. She’d been angry since our mid-morning nap when I did not make love to her either before or after.

  Still, she did not speak but unsnapped her bra, threw it on the bed, and pulled her panties off, too. The room was chilly and her nipples puckered, and even in the dim light I could see goose bumps along her arms and legs.

  “Do you think I don’t want you anymore? Do you think I don’t find you attractive? I’m just tired. All I said was can’t we give it a rest for a day?”

  She looked at me, letting me take in her nakedness, then took a shortish black dress from a hanger. It was chilly outside now. It was December, after all, and even here in the Mediterranean the winds came at night and dropped the temperature down sometimes into the forties. But where we were going wasn’t more than fifty yards from the room, and it would be very warm there.

  “Okay,” I said. “Fine. Let’s do it. But can we try something different, maybe? A different position?”

  “I told you, I can’t come that way.”

  “What way? We haven’t tried it yet.”

  “I’ve tried other ways. It’s not like you’re my first guy.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And they never work.”

  “Well, maybe there are some ways you haven’t tried. Or the guys you tried them with weren’t any good.”

  “Flatter yourself.”

  “No, I’m just saying.”

  “I don’t like it other ways.”

  “Whatever,” I said and began to undress.

  She pulled the dress on over her head.

  “So why are you getting dressed?”

  She looked at me and said, “I’m not giving you anything. From now on if you want it, you’ll have to take it.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll have to take it. No more easy street.”

  “Easy street? Who the fuck says that?”

  She pretended to ignore me. She said, “Hmm-mm-mm, here I am, just a single girl getting dressed for Christmas Eve. All alone in her room. No men anywhere.” Then she looked at me and widened her eyes. “Oh, my God! Who are you? How did you get in here?”

  “Darcy,” I said. “Hello?”

  “Were you watching me get dressed? You pervert. You sicko.”

  She had her arms crossed in an X over her breasts, as if the dress weren’t enough to shield them.

  “What are we doing?” I asked.

  “I’m going to call the police,” she said, “if you don’t get out of here. Don’t you touch me.” She stepped toward me.

  “Darcy.” When I put a hand on her arm, she acted as if I’d pushed her and fell back onto the bed.

  “You son of a—I know what you’re here for. Don’t you dare try it.” The dress had ridden up or she’d pulled it up so that she was exposed now from the belly down.

  “Is this the something different?”

  “Freak,” she said.

  “Listen—” I recognized the game.

  “Monster,” she said.

  I sat beside her. “Do you like it like this?” I put my hands on her shoulders and held her, and she made a show of trying to push me away.

  “Don’t…you…dare.”

  “Is this really what you like?
Will you just tell me?” It was in a way a version of Justine’s game, only the converse of it.

  “Asshole.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Freak.”

  “Weirdo.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you.” How strange that in a sense I had two women, and both had this need of control—one to exercise it and one to be subjected to it.

  “Try it.”

  I kissed her then, pushing my face to hers even though she pretended to try to turn away, and when I touched her legs, she pressed them together.

  “No!” she said when I got a knee between her knees. “No!” She was getting loud now, and I worried that someone might hear and actually call the police.

  “Darcy,” I said.

  “Get off me!”

  And in spite of myself, I felt it turn me on, felt myself harden as I forced her legs apart and pinned her arms and reached down to undo my jeans. And for a moment, I believe, I felt what Justine felt, what beguiled her so. This power over someone, sexual power, this act of quasi-raping plucked some chord that was so deep, so ancient and primal that one could hardly sense it, let alone name it. But it was there.

  But that feeling, which I was suspicious of anyway, evaporated when Darcy hit me. I thought later that she’d just meant it as a movie slap, a loud crack on the cheek, but I’d somehow moved so that the heel of her hand split my lower lip badly enough that I was immediately bleeding onto her.

  “Ah,” I said and sat back and held it.

  “Serves you right.”

  “Darcy! For Christ’s sake.”

  “I can feel your big animal cock,” she said and thrust up against me.

  “Fuck it,” I said and got off her. This wasn’t Justine binding me for pleasure. This just hurt. “Fuck the whole thing. You’re nuts.”

  “Sissy,” she said. “Chicken shit. Big man afraid of a little girl slap. Can’t get it up?”

  “Shut up,” I said, leaning into her face. I held one of my T-shirts against my mouth. “Just shut…the fuck…up.”

  She looked at me and said, “Big baby.”

  That was when I left.

  THE KORUS CLUB WAS LITTLE more than a glassed-in beach room with a bar, some garden tables, and a mediocre sound system. It had a sour, moldy odor that tended to fade as the night went on. In addition to beer and ouzo, it had some better liquors that still weren’t very expensive. And as the holiday had neared, the town began to fill up with travelers, students from Continental or English universities on their winter breaks, and Americans, Australians, and Canadians on longer journeys, come for the relative warmth and sun. On a good bright day, if you had a bit of a constitution, you could swim for a while in the ocean and enjoy it. It wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t winter, either. These newcomers rented rooms, ate the cheap food, and got drunk every night, and the Korus Club was really the only place to be, so now, on this eve of Christmas, it was wall-to-wall already by nine o’clock.

  I didn’t care. I tried to ignore it. I sat at the bar, sipping on a Czech Bud and nursing a neat Dewars that I dipped my lip into every now and then. I hadn’t been there twenty minutes when someone sat down beside me. I was afraid it was Darcy, so I didn’t look.

  “Hey, mate. Bitch problems?”

  Now I looked and gave a start. I looked around. “Where—”

  “I mean, look at that,” Maurice said and held out his hand to show the ugly half-healed burn on his palm. “Bleedin’ wenches, all of ’em.”

  “When did you get here?”

  “Relax, son,” Maurice said. “You’re all right.” On the next stool over sat a large ugly man I had not seen before.

  “That’s Karl,” said Maurice.

  Karl did not look up from his drink.

  “Where’s Justine? Have you seen her?”

  “Shhh,” Maurice said. “Just listen to me. Do you know what happened to her?”

  “No.”

  “No idea?”

  “These cops were asking about her, where she was, how I knew her, all that. They’d torn all her stuff apart. I just kind of bullshitted ’em.”

  Maurice nodded, lit a cigarette, and offered me one.

  “No, thanks. They’d brought my pack down and gone through it, too, but didn’t find anything. We had that stuff, you know—”

  “Right—”

  “But the girl, Darcy? Remember her?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “She’d taken it. She was holding it, so I was clean.”

  “Good thing. They didn’t rifle her bag?”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t find anything. Not the package, either.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And Justine was out there, across the street. I signaled so she’d know.”

  “Good lad,” Maurice said. “Very smart.”

  “What happened?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “This girl, the one you been shagging the shit out of all week—”

  “How do you—”

  “Shh. She set her up, mate. She planted the shit in Justine’s pack and called the narcs. Claimed Justine was trying to sell them to her.”

  “Oh,” I said. I felt dizzy for a moment. “I haven’t seen the package. She had it—”

  Maurice nodded. “Not especially worried about it. Where she goes, it goes, you know?”

  “Yeah. I hope. What is it?”

  “You don’t know that, either?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know much, do you?”

  I shook my head and said, “I’d rather not, really.”

  Maurice laughed, and I felt a little better. Maybe they wouldn’t kill me or even beat the shit out of me. I’d never felt comfortable around Maurice even when we were smoking the O. Something about the way he looked at you, like he was just waiting for you to make a slip so that then he could own you. And, of course, Justine had told me stories of what Maurice and his men had done to those who’d crossed him.

  “Funny, funny boy,” Maurice said. “I can see what she sees in you. Don’t know what you see in her. Well, that’s not true. But that’s not for now.”

  “So what is it?”

  “Oh, you might say it’s an icon.”

  “A what?”

  “Icon. A figurine. You know, the female form and all that.”

  “You mean like a statue? A sculpture?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That valuable, huh?”

  “A steamin’ fortune.”

  “You stole it?”

  “I didn’t. Someone did, in a manner of speaking. I just make the connections, such as they are.”

  “And you get a fee.”

  “Now you’re gettin’ it.”

  “I looked in her pack when she was sleeping a few days ago, and I didn’t see it there. I don’t know where it is. I really don’t. I wish I did, Maurice. I’d tell you. I’d rather you had it than her.”

  “I believe that,” Maurice said. “Not to worry, as I said. But I am gonna have to take you with me, you know.”

  “Take me?”

  “Just think of it as a party, lad. We’ll go on up to my house.”

  “What house?”

  “She never told you I had a house here?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, yeah. Nice one. Over in Matala.” He leaned in, lowered his voice, and said, “Got a pipe and a couple balls of O up there, too. Interested? How long since you’ve done that?”

  “A while.”

  “All right then.” He straightened up and said, “Yeah, I’ve had this place for years. She lived there, too, once. Can’t believe she never mentioned it.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “Well, yes, I can—believe it, I mean. You got a lot to learn, son, starting with don’t ever get involved with two women at the same time when one of them is named Justine.”

  Karl laughed, the first sound he’d made, a single harrgh down into his drink.

&nbs
p; “Right, then,” said Maurice. “Let’s take a ride.”

  Twelve

  W HEN JUSTINE OPENED THE DOOR of the little hotel room and stepped inside, Little Bitch was lying on the bed, presumably where Will had left her, staring at the ceiling. She had on a black dress, and it was hiked up to her waist so that little cunny was hanging out.

  “Came back for more?” the girl said. “You need it as much as I do, don’t you, lover?”

  “I do,” said Justine.

  “Oh!” The girl scrambled up and covered herself. “Shit.” She grabbed a pillow and held it over her chest as if it would protect her. “What the fuck!” she said. “What are you doing? You just walk in?”

  “I do, yes, dear. I just walk in.” Justine set down the nylon bag she was carrying, locked the door behind her, turned around the desk chair, and sat down.

  “Get out of here.” Darcy sat curled into herself, against the wall.

  “Or what?”

  “I’ll scream.”

  “Oh, you may well scream, but I’m not leaving.”

  “Someone will come.”

  “Only me. This is a small town. The people who enforce the laws and the people who run the hotels are friendly and open to persuasion, especially when you’ve been around for a while. I used to live here. Maurice still does, some of the time. He has a house not too far away, at Matala. And he’s very generous. They love him. So when he asks a favor—like, oh, say, ‘If you hear some screaming coming from a certain room down by the beach, ignore it, will you?’—they’re only too happy to go along. Besides, it’s not as if there haven’t been some pretty provocative sounds coming out of here the past few days. People are used to it by now. You and the boyfriend have developed a bit of a reputation, in case you didn’t know. And you might think about closing the drapes now and then.”

  “Maurice is here?”

  “He brought me here. I had to call him from Athens. Collect. All I had were the clothes I was wearing. But you know that.”

  The girl lowered the pillow and sat up a little straighter on the bed. “I’m sorry—”