A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

  WHEN KATARINA RETURNS she takes the chair next to Jacqueline so that they both have the same view.

  “He is coming,” she says, and Jacqueline doesn’t ask who. They’re both quiet as the sky turns purple.

  A small brown dog trots down the steps and around the edge of the pool. It sniffs at Jacqueline’s knees. She leans forward and takes its head between her hands and scratches its ears.

  “I love them,” Katarina says. “I would like to keep them all.”

  “Me too,” Jacqueline says.

  “Yes? That’s good. There are many people who don’t feel the same as us. Many of the people hate them.”

  “My sister,” Jacqueline says, “always preferred cats.”

  Katarina glances at her and nods.

  “But I have always loved dogs.”

  I should shut my mouth, Jacqueline thinks.

  Relax, her mother says. Be easy, my heart. Be easy.

  The dog swings its head over to Katarina, nuzzles her hand, and then heads toward the entrance of the hotel.

  “These people think that dogs are dangerous for the tourists.”

  Jacqueline nods.

  “They feed them glass,” Katarina says and tightens her mouth.

  “They what?”

  “Yes. They put little pieces in the food and feed it to the dogs so they go to die very, very slow. Yes. They do that, these people.”

  Jacqueline turns away and looks back at the sky, which has become nearly all its night-blue.

  A man comes out of the building carrying a tray. He’s barefoot, dressed in white pants and a black T-shirt.

  “Kalispera,” he says to Jacqueline. He has short-cropped gray hair and tired blue eyes.

  Jacqueline nods. “Kalispera,” she says.

  He begins to unload the contents of the tray and says something to Katarina in Greek.

  “This is Petros. My father’s friend. He is the owner here.”

  “Kalispera,” Jacqueline says again.

  The man smiles, bows his head, and leaves them.

  “You should learn the other two words,” Katarina says.

  “Kalispera,” Jacqueline says and Katarina laughs.

  On the table there is a white bowl piled with ice cubes. There are two small white plates. One full of almonds, the other full of fat green olives. There is a bottle of water and two empty glasses, and a bottle of clear alcohol.

  “Like this,” Katarina says. She uncorks the alcohol and pours them each two fingers. She spoons ice cubes into each of their glasses. Then she adds water, which turns the mixture from clear to clouded yellow.

  “Ouzo,” she says.

  “Ouzo,” Jacqueline says and raises her glass.

  Katarina laughs. “No, it is ouzo.”

  “Ah,” Jacqueline says.

  “Yiamas,” Katarina says.

  “Yiamas,” Jacqueline repeats.

  They touch glasses and drink.

  She loves the cool sweetness, the licorice on her tongue, the burn of the alcohol in her throat, the ice against her lips. She swallows and returns her glass to the table.

  “Delicious,” she says. “Ouzo.”

  “Ouzo,” Katarina repeats, picks up the bowl of olives, and offers Jacqueline one. “Be careful,” she says. “They have rocks.”

  “Stones,” Jacqueline says.

  “Stones,” Katarina repeats.

  Thank you for bringing me here, Jacqueline wants to say. Thank you for taking care of me, but while she feels the words on her tongue, she can’t push them out.

  Instead she says, “Or pits.”

  The wind has come up again and snaps at the white tablecloths. Katarina unfolds her scarf and wraps it around her shoulders.

  “Often cold nights here. You have nothing?”

  Jacqueline shrugs. “I’m fine.”

  Katarina nods, but when she sees Petros cross the terrace she calls something to him and a minute later he is striding toward them, unfolding a thin gray blanket, which he silently wraps around Jacqueline’s shoulders.

  “Efkharistó, Petros,” Katarina says.

  And Jacqueline repeats the sentence. “Efkharistó, Petros,” she calls after him as he walks away.

  Katarina smiles. “Now you have all four words.”

  Jacqueline laughs. “It means thank you?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Efkharistó, Katarina,” Jacqueline says and meets her eyes.

  “It is you who is buying me the drink tonight.”

  Jacqueline laughs. “Yes. True.”

  “So. You are better now?”

  Jacqueline pulls the soft blanket around her shoulders. “Yes,” she says. “Much better.”

  “No, I mean better than this morning. You are better than this morning.”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes,” Jacqueline says. “Yes.”

  “It was your sister?”

  Jacqueline glances at Katarina and then out at the water. This is not what she wants, this conversation. What she wants is to drink and be still and watch the sky change and the boats come and go.

  Go on, her mother says. Go on, my heart.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “And she is gone?”

  Jacqueline gives her a quick slashing look.

  Katarina opens her mouth. She looks as if she’s been slapped. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  Easy, my heart.

  “No,” Jacqueline says to the moon, which is just drawing up over the far cliffs of Imerovigli. “Don’t be sorry.”

  She glances back at Katarina and then at once sees how young she is, how easy she would be to damage.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Jacqueline says again. “It’s just. I am,” she begins, but doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, although they both have plenty, she pours more of the ouzo, adds ice, adds water. She raises her glass and by way of apology says, “Ouzo.”

  Katarina looks over and opens her mouth to correct Jacqueline, but when she sees Jacqueline smiling, Katarina laughs and they clink glasses. “Ouzo,” she repeats and they both drink.

  “My sister is dead,” Jacqueline says after she returns her glass to the white cloth.

  She feels the violence of that statement. It is a weapon. She’s struck the girl with it. That’s not what she meant, she thinks. But it is what she meant. She wanted to crush this pretty idiot girl with it. My sister is dead and that’s not all. That’s just the start, so shut your mouth. But she can hear her mother clicking her tongue in disapproval and Jacqueline knows she’s right so she says it again, this time without malice.

  “My sister is dead,” she says gently. And now she has said it twice. Twice in her life. She feels light-headed for a moment. She takes some almonds from the bowl and chews them. They are tasteless in her mouth.

  Katarina nods and, thank God, doesn’t say she’s sorry, doesn’t touch Jacqueline, doesn’t give her a look of contrived sympathy. Katarina only nods, and raises her glass to her lips and the two women sit together watching the moon, which has lost its color as it’s risen, fading from orange, to yellow, to this iridescent white tinged with blue.

  Jacqueline lowers her eyes and watches the terrace wall’s sharp-edged shadow.

  She watches Saifa turn and face the house, Saifa walk across the lawn, her hands on her belly, long fingers interlaced. She tries to walk with confidence, but it’s no good, and from where Jacqueline sits in the living room, she can see her sister’s posture weakening. She’s folding forward, inch by inch, over her own belly. Like a set of jaws closing down on a fat plum. For a moment, Jacqueline thinks it’s to do with the baby. Maybe it’s now, she thinks and stands up quickly from the couch, upsetting the stack of magazines on her lap and dropping them to the floor. But then she stops herself. She can hear voices coming up the hill. She can hear a metal sound. Someone’s shaking the fence, rattling the chain link against its posts.

  Saifa turns her head and looks in the direction of the noise.

  Jacqueline watches her sister’s face.

/>   The laughter is louder and louder.

  Jacqueline watches Saifa faint and fall to the grass, her head bouncing off the soft ground and still Jacqueline doesn’t move. She stands in the living room gaping through the open doors, glossy magazines at her feet, throat dry. She sees them there on the floor. Those vacant glittering eyes. Vogue. Elle. Then she recovers and begins to move. She crosses the living room, goes through the sliding doors, and steps out onto the concrete deck. From here she can see across the yard to her left, to the fence, where there is now a mass of soldiers. They are boys and they are grinning and when Jacqueline steps into their line of view, their faces light up, and then they brighten again. Like one of those three-step bulbs. Bright, brighter, brightest.

  Jacqueline looks back. She turns her body in their direction, as if she alone might ward them off. And meanwhile her sister, a few steps away, is coming to, is sitting up.

  “Go inside, Saifa,” Jacqueline says, watching the grinning boys, who’ve become still and quiet at the fence. She knows it won’t be long. Despite the razor wire. The guards are gone.

  They’re all that’s left now. The four of them.

  And then the man with the beard rises.

  He comes up the hill.

  Now she can only see him. He’s looking at her, his lips slightly parted. She can only see him. His straight white teeth. He raises a pistol and levels it.

  “Inside,” he says. “Back inside.” He flicks the pistol to his right.

  And Jacqueline obeys him. She obeys him immediately. She walks backward into the house until he vanishes.

  KATARINA SAYS, “I’m sorry for your sister.”

  Jacqueline nods. “Thank you.”

  “Was she older?”

  “Older?”

  “More than you,” Katarina says, gently rattling the ice in her glass.

  “No,” Jacqueline says.

  “Younger?”

  “Younger.”

  Katarina nods.

  Jacqueline swallows and feels the light burn of the alcohol in her throat.

  “She was sick? My mother was sick.”

  Jacqueline looks over at the girl. She looks back. She seems so young, so frightened. Jacqueline is drunk. She could crush Katarina. And she wants to. She wants to beat her with what she knows. She wants to scream at her. What I have to say, little girl. The things I have to say. She wants to deliver them with violence. But she waits for it to pass. She waits because she does not want to hurt this girl, her waitress, her nurse.

  “No,” Jacqueline says. “She wasn’t sick.”

  “Wasn’t sick,” Katarina repeats quietly.

  Jacqueline laughs and Katarina looks at her, incredulous.

  “You laugh? Why?”

  Jacqueline shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “The ouzo,” Jacqueline says. “Maybe it’s the ouzo.”

  She’ll think you’re crazy, her mother says.

  She’ll be right, Jacqueline says, spooning more ice into her glass and stirring it.

  “Yes, I feel it also,” Katarina says and forces a weak smile.

  “Ouzo,” Jacqueline says, raising her glass.

  “Ouzo,” Katarina repeats.

  They touch glasses, but the joke is worn.

  Jacqueline has disappointed the girl. Katarina too must have had expectations, must have imagined their evening together, their friendship even. Perhaps.

  She has rendered her caretaker impotent.

  “Do you want to know?” Jacqueline asks, without thinking first.

  She asks to fill the silence.

  The girl looks over at Jacqueline. “If you will tell me. If you want only,” she says, brightening.

  “What happened to your mother?” Jacqueline asks.

  “Cancer,” the girl says without hesitation, as if she’s eager to say it, as if she’s been waiting for the question, impatient.

  Jacqueline nods and sees Katarina at her mother’s bedside, pressing a cool washcloth to the woman’s forehead. Day after day she’s there. Loyal, loving daughter.

  The image makes Jacqueline angry. She feels no sympathy and looks away from the girl and out to the water.

  Why, my heart? her mother asks. Why would you be angry?

  She says nothing and waits for it to pass.

  And when it does, she says, “I’m sorry, Katarina,” although she is not.

  Now they are both quiet.

  Then Jacqueline can feel Katarina looking at her and reluctantly she meets the girl’s eyes. She’s surprised to find them angry.

  The girl expected more, of course. More information. More intimacy. More compassion.

  “How old are you, Katarina?” She’s careful not to be condescending, careful to avoid a tone of superiority, but she’s not sure if she succeeds.

  “I am twenty-one,” she says and raises her chin, looking at Jacqueline as if to say, So what? So what?

  “And you?” the girl asks in return. Insolent.

  Jacqueline laughs and looks away. She feels as if they’re becoming children. If we go on like this we’ll be teenagers before too long. Then our feet won’t reach the floor. She smiles at the idea. The two of them, little girls dressed up like women, getting drunk on ouzo.

  A tea party with white candles.

  “Why do you laugh?” Katarina asks, scratching at her cheek.

  “Oh,” Jacqueline says, “I just imagined us as little girls.” She tells the truth. Just speaks.

  “Little girls?” Katarina raises her eyes.

  She shakes her head. “It was just a flash. Just. I should probably stop the ouzo.”

  “Why little girls?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

  Katarina raises her eyebrows.

  “I don’t know. I just imagined it. Our legs sticking out. Little girls dressed up like women.”

  Katarina looks away. “You are strange,” she says.

  Jacqueline nods.

  “You are strange and you are sad.”

  After a moment Jacqueline says, “Perhaps. Perhaps those things are both true.”

  Perhaps, her father says.

  “And you? You are how old?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “So. Not so much older than me.”

  “No.”

  “Are you married?” Katarina asks.

  “No.”

  “No, neither am I.”

  Petros crosses the terrace. He addresses them both in Greek.

  Katarina turns to Jacqueline. “Would you like to eat something?”

  Jacqueline nods. “Yes,” she says. Again not thinking.

  Katarina and Petros talk and then he’s gone.

  Jacqueline has forgotten herself. Forgotten about money. Then for a long moment she cannot recall where she sleeps at night, where she leaves her things. She closes her eyes and does her best not to summon that memory, but in spite of the ouzo it comes.

  There’s the shell of a hotel.

  There are her rocks for shelves.

  There are her peaches lined up in the larder.

  “How did your mother die?” Jacqueline asks.

  “I have told you,” Katarina says, exasperated.

  “I mean,” Jacqueline says. “I mean what was the kind of cancer?” She sounds like Katarina now, shuffling words, replacing adjectives with verbs, nouns with adjectives.

  “Breast.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The girl looks at Jacqueline, gauges her eyes, and then looks away.

  “When did she die?”

  “Fevrouários.”

  Somewhere music begins to play. Distorted and thin in the wind. Strings. Something with strings, Jacqueline thinks. The sound rises and fades and rises again.

  “What was she like?”

  The girl shakes her head. “It is strange,” she says. “I don’t know. I don’t know what was she like.”

  Jacqueline looks over at her.

  “I have b
een thinking that all the time since she died. I don’t know what was she like.” She shakes her head again and says nothing more.

  The wind dies down and the rushing is replaced by the strings.

  “Music,” Jacqueline says.

  They’re both still. Listening.

  “A bouzouki,” Katarina says.

  “Pretty.”

  “My father plays. He is very good.”

  Jacqueline glances over at the girl and wants to hold her. She looks so proud. Jacqueline wants to take her in her arms. You’ll be fine, she wants to say. You’re safe now. You’re safe.

  “Mana mou,” Jacqueline says.

  Katarina looks at her and smiles. “You know this?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I can’t remember.” Jacqueline shakes her head. She can’t remember where the phrase comes from. How has it come to be in her memory? Where did she learn it? Still, she wants to comfort the girl.

  “My mother too, Katarina. My mother too is dead.”

  Katarina turns in her chair. “Your mother?”

  Jacqueline nods.

  “Your mother and your sister. Both.”

  “Yes.”

  “And both were not sick.”

  “No.”

  Jacqueline turns away from the moon and meets Katarina’s eyes. “They were not sick.”

  You have said it, her mother whispers. Tender. You have said it, her mother says, this time louder.

  You have killed me.

  Katarina moves and Jacqueline is afraid that she’ll touch her, but she only uncrosses and crosses her legs so that she has shifted her body entirely in Jacqueline’s direction.

  “They were together?”

  Jacqueline nods. She wishes the food would come. She’s too drunk. She’s ravenous. She wonders what Petros will bring on his tray. She hopes it is meat. Suddenly she wants meat more than anything.

  “Jacqueline,” Katarina says.

  “What?” She has faded from the table, but here is this girl jerking her back.

  “They were together?” Katarina asks again.

  Jacqueline is irritated. She’s hot. She can’t stand the table or its flickering candle, or the olives. She wants a plate of meat. She wants to throw her chair over the cliff edge. She can feel it in her hands. She can see it spinning in the dark. She’d like to throw all the tables into the pool. Smash all the delicate glass lanterns against the concrete deck.

  She gets out of her chair and walks to the edge and looks down to the rocks and water far below.