Matala

by Craig Holden

  Karl, in his dopey confusion, lumbered along the pathway toward the trees.

  Justine slid behind the wheel and started the engine as the large man emerged from the trees and ran into Karl. Then the two Arabs and Will arrived, and Karl somehow seemed to run into them, too, and there was much shouting and threatening and pointing of handguns. At least that’s how Justine imagined it. She couldn’t really hear because she was busy putting the car into reverse and spinning it around. She heard no reports, so she assumed they hadn’t actually tried to kill one another.

  “Wait,” the girl said. “Give me the knife.” She leaped out, ran to the white Mercedes, and plunged the blade into the left front tire. Justine looked over her shoulder and saw the men still arguing, and then one of them pointing at her. The girl punctured the left rear tire as well and got back in.

  In her haste, Justine sped through a group of young travelers, two men and a woman, Americans or Canadians, riding Rent-a-Vespas. One of them, a tall boy with curly hair, had to cut it into the sand to avoid her hitting him, and he pitched forward. She was glad to see in the mirror that he got up and gave her the finger.

  As they drove toward the hills, it was Little Bitch’s turn to cry. She sat silently, with her head down, and Justine could see her shoulders moving. She reached across as she drove and put her hand on the girl’s neck. They were not tears of sorrow or of joy, really, but of relief, Justine imagined. And of the realization just now of how truly close to being gone forever she had come. It was a startling, sickening thing to realize after the fact how narrowly you’ve escaped an especially black chasm. Justine had felt it before: the heat of a bullet after it passed your ear, the smell of the inside of a Marrakesh police car after being rescued from a converging group of drunken men. And she knew that something had been broken in the girl, or at least shifted. That she would be different in some small way. She couldn’t help it. No one could.

  After a few minutes, the girl stopped, wiped her face, looked up, and smiled.

  AS THE OLD MERCEDES CLIMBED back into the mountains, headed this time for Iraklion and the quickest possible way they could find off the island, neither of them spoke. Darcy was watching out the side window, wiping at her eyes every now and again. It wasn’t until they passed the American military installation they’d seen on the way over that Justine said, “Who was that man?”

  “That, I’m very nearly positive, was Matthew Raines, my rescuer, my pursuer.”

  “The seersucker savior.”

  “Did you just love the suit or what?”

  “I did.” Justine drove a little farther and then said, “However did he find you, do you suppose? And just at the right moment.”

  “I called him last night before Will and I went back to the room. I had this feeling it was time. He was in Iraklion. I said I’d tell him where I was if he agreed just to watch me.”

  “Or?”

  “Or I’d run away again.”

  “Ah.” Justine smiled.

  “He’ll probably keep coming, you know.”

  “As will Maurice and those Arabs whose sixty thousand quid we just nicked. Are you happy?”

  “That I’m not being sold into white slavery? Duh.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “You believed that crap back there? ‘Oh, Mother. I’m yours. We’ll be so happy.’”

  Justine looked sharply at her, and now Darcy started to laugh. She said, “You’re pretty damned sentimental underneath it all. You know it?”

  “I am,” said Justine. “Always have been. Can’t help it.”

  “Well, I forgive you.” Justine’s right hand rested on the gear shift. Darcy placed hers over it and said, “Silly old bitch.”

  A MONTH OR SO LATER an envelope arrived in the box at my apartment building in Charlottesville, where I’d returned to finish my degree. It was sent by my mother and contained another envelope, this one pale airmail-blue, postmarked Ankara, Turkey. Inside was a snapshot of Darcy and Justine with their arms around each other in front of a huge mosque. Across the bottom in black marker was written Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. Along with the photograph were two notes.

  One said: “Will—I hope you loved most of it. I think you did, or you will, one day. I love you. You know that. I don’t know how. It’s confusing. Confused. But it was time for you to go, my sweet boy, and find your life. Godspeed. Justine.”

  The other said: “Hey, lover. Having a wild time. I’m sure we’re under the threat of imminent death from either Maurice or the Arabs, or both. But Matthew’s still following me, if you can believe that, so I don’t feel scared. Kind of turns me on, actually, thinking about it. XXXOOO D.”

  It was the last I was ever to hear from either of them.

  In Matala, I had waited with Matthew Raines for an auto service to come and replace his damaged tires, and so we had a chance to speak. He was a nice guy, if a little miffed that Darcy had duped him and extended his tour of duty, who knew for how long. I gave him an overview of the whole thing from my perspective, and he filled in some details for me. He gave me his card and offered me a ride to Iraklion, but I said no thanks. I needed to just think, not to talk anymore or be around anyone I knew.

  I never went back to Maurice’s to reclaim my things. I didn’t need them anymore. I kept the Matala spoon Darcy had lifted in my pocket for some reason, some kind of good luck charm or something, and that was all I wanted. I still have it.

  I hitched a ride back over to Galini and caught a bus north that afternoon.

  I like to imagine that what those two women saw and felt when they were leaving was much the same as me. But I don’t think it was. I was a looker back.

  As the bus groaned up and away from the sea, it passed through a clearing from which I could just make out, to the east, the red cliffs of Matala. I sensed even then that I would probably never see the place again, this ancient coast, this land where stories began. And so I bid it good-bye—but only good-bye in real time, which I had finally begun to recognize as the illusion it was. In other, more important sorts of time I would see this place often again, and I would come to know it in ways I had barely touched upon while actually there. I would know it, and it would come to know me, so that we would meld, finally, into a single being that was not either one of us in life. And then we could begin, each of us, to invent the other.