Nightjack

by Tom Piccirilli

  Daedalus had designed the labyrinth for King Minos, built to imprison the man-bull Minotaur. The dungeon was so skillfully built that no one who entered could escape the great beast. But Daedalus revealed the secret of the maze to Ariadne, daughter of Minos, so she could aid her lover, Theseus. She unrolled a length of string that she and Theseus could follow back to safety. In a fury, the mad king imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in the labyrinth.

  As if that could stop the man who’d created it. Daedalus made two pairs of mighty wings so that they could both fly out.

  But sons never listen to their fathers. It’s a rule, a dictum. A formula meant to be pursued even to death and beyond. You don’t wash out the tuna cans. The brash boy flew too near the sun even as his father called for him to return, the way he was calling now, thrashing in the garbage. Icarus had merely laughed, spurning his father’s orders, drifting toward Sicily where he’d always wanted to join the army. With his eyes full of sunshine and adolescent lust for peasant farmer women, his wings melted, and he plummeted to the sea shrieking for his old man.

  Daedalus heard it still.

  So did Pace.

  The kid crying across the sky.

  Pace’s father telling him that the flat rock he used on top of the garbage can wasn’t heavy enough to keep out the raccoons. They got in and ripped through the plastic bags, and there was trash strewn all over. Always with the trash.

  With his artist’s hands thrust down to the street, gripping Athenian stone, Daedalus was home again. He stood and looked in the direction of the sea, his view blocked by ugly buildings and angry-eyed strangers. Seeing nothing of his drowned son, he took three running steps preparing to fly. He stumbled, fell on his face, and lay there panting.

  Hayden tried to get Faust back onto his feet, but he’d gone completely slack. “We’re going to set tourism back a few years if he doesn’t get up soon. Maybe cause an international incident, you know? Somebody’s gonna call the cops. Will that be a good thing for us? I mean, maybe it would be.”

  Stooping, Pace said in Daedalus’s ear, “Fathers must let go of their children. Even if they drop into the sea. It’s been the way of life throughout the ages. The father feasts on guilt but cannot take blame. You’re no different than the rest.”

  Still hearing his old man asking him, Did you separate the paper, bottles, and cans?

  Daedalus turned his face aside and wept. The throng continued to swarm around them. Pace let his lips curl into a humorless grin, thinking how it would look to die five minutes off the plane, flattened by old Greek ladies heading off to their bakeries to make the morning bread.

  “Faust,” Pia said. “Faust, you need to get up!”

  The scar on Faust’s forehead was covered with dirt. Pace brushed it off and felt the ridge of tissue hot beneath his hand. An almost electrical buzz worked through his fingertips. Faust opened his eyes and said, “I’m thirsty. I would very much like a drink.”

  “We could all use one,” Hayden said. “There’s a taverna right across the street. Some local color, but it kind of looks real touristy too. Christ they start early in this town.”

  “Tavernas are open twenty-four hours,” Pace told them. “Let’s go.”

  “We’re a long way from Zorba’s little hut with all the dancing and singing, let me tell you. How much money do we have?”

  “About fifteen grand,” Pace said.

  “What!” Hayden gripped Pace by the shoulders, grinning but angry, his sharp teeth coming out to catch the bottom lip. It looked painful. “You’ve been holding onto that much? What’re you going to do, retire with the cash? At the very least we could’ve had something better than Double Cheesy Bacony Burgers in the last forty-eight hours of our lives. Jesus Christ, man! Let’s go have some fun! I could use it. So could Mister Misery over there.”

  The crowd kept coming, lumbering like the dead, and Pace had to work faster to keep them off him. There was no laughter, hardly any talking. He thought, It’s a good thing Pacella never got to take Jane to Greece on the honeymoon, she wouldn’t have liked it. Not here anyway.

  “I just want a glass of water,” Faust said. “This land...I feel very uncomfortable here. Distracted.”

  “Let’s have a hell of a morning.” Hayden peered into the mob. “I’d have to guess that an Athens prostitute is of equal net worth per engagement as a New York pro.”

  “By what standards do you make the assumption?” Pia asked.

  “The generally accepted standards.”

  “But where do they fit in where Thai hookers are concerned?”

  “Probably not even in the same league. But I’m willing to put it to the test.”

  “Our father who art in dilecto flagrante.”

  “Let’s go have a good time! We’re on vacation until we get killed!”

  “No,” Pace said.

  Pia started to laugh. “How’d I know you’d say that? We can’t have fun because that’s what Kaltzas wants us to do, right?”

  “Right.”

  “In the future,” Hayden said, “I have really got to get some less insane acquaintances to travel with to evil homicidal tycoons’ island paradises.”

  No one argued.

  nineteen

  Tourists sat with Greeks watching the repeat of a soccer game on the TV set over the bar. They appeared to have been up all night long. They were drunk but nobody seemed tired.

  The waitress had already sized Pace’s group up as Americans and asked them their order in perfect English. Hayden wanted something strong and she brought them each a glass of metaxa, an amber-colored alcohol. Six in the morning and they were already into the hard stuff.

  Deep in the guts, Pacella withdrew another layer, revolted.

  Pace took a sip and it was hot and smooth. A lot of the ones inside him liked it, a lot of them hated it. Sam Smith was indifferent, he’d had better in Saigon. Some of the children spit it out and began to cry. Pace kind of enjoyed it.

  “When’s the ferry to Voros again?” Hayden asked, taking out his pad and getting back to work on his letter to his mother.

  “Noon.”

  “I have pages missing. Who’s been taking my paper?”

  Faust threw the metaxa back, frowning as if he might hate the taste, but then nodding. He waved for another. “What do we do in the meantime? Shall we take advantage of Kaltzas’s guidebooks and visit the hot tourist spots in the area? Do we trek to the temples and commune with the ancient ones?”

  “Fall in love,” Pia’s father said. He was looking around at all the Greek girls going by. Pia got up and stood beside him, fuming, her back teeth grinding. The jealousy written so plainly in her face that women at nearby tables started doing double-takes.

  Pace wondered why they were all coming so unglued here, the edges to each one of them peeled back to expose more of the mess beneath. Maybe it was lack of sleep, or the true onset of fear. The desire to go home, hide on the ward, get back with the program. If Dr. Brandt hadn’t set him up, he could have happily stayed at Garden Falls with the other lunatics, maybe forever. Wearing his blue bathrobe and shuffling along past the grimy locked windows.

  He became lost in the soccer game, unsure of who was playing whom or when the game was taped. Last night, a week ago? The footage looked a little grainy, it could’ve been from the Seventies for all he knew.

  He heard three men at another table speaking animatedly in French, mentioning Apollonaire, Sendak, Rimbaud, Guy de Maupassant. Inside, Pacella began to twist in pain, the names of the poets reminding him of papers he had graded. Pacella’s mouth was dry and he was thinking of cocoa, hungry for the little marshmallows.

  It didn’t take long for everything to go straight to hell.

  Amazing how quickly you could bring out the worst in somebody. You just show your face and somebody wants to murder you. Sometimes you didn’t even have to show your face.

  Pace got a sense of it about a minute before the action started, when he noticed Pia wasn’t at the t
able anymore. He scanned the bar and there were twice as many people clustered in the place now than when they’d first walked in. The pressure of history smashed these people to pieces and drove them into the shadows reaching for their bottles. The land where art and myth was born. It even crushed the tourists.

  He saw a kind of ripple going around one section of the taverna. Men trying to keep hushed but unable to keep it down. Pace immediately knew it had something to do with Pia. Maybe she was fighting with her father, maybe she was trying to tackle five guys at once.

  Faust saw it too. “She’s in anguish but hasn’t learned any wisdom from her hardships yet. Perhaps she’ll accomplish her suicide before she ever does. What do we do, Will?”

  “You two stay here.”

  Hayden wrote: Momma, I’m dead, I’ve been dead forever.

  A glass shattered and Pace slipped through the patrons, got himself wedged right into the middle of things. Pia was on her knees, writhing, her arm bent too far behind her back. A handsome Greek youth with turbulent eyes sat drinking beside her, gripping her wrist and pulling harder. The agony made her coil across the floor but she didn’t let out a squeak.

  “Take your hands off her,” Pace said.

  Sometimes you couldn’t help but sound like a puffy, second-rate action star in a straight-to-DVD release.

  The kid sipped his drink, taking it slow. “Do you know what she said to me?” His voice was charged but almost amiable, as if asking the question of a new friend.

  “I can guess. She’s a sick girl. She’s cursed. You’re better off not touching her.”

  “You take me for a stupid, superstitious Greek, hah?”

  “No, I’m just telling the truth.”

  The kid, showing his perfect white teeth that must’ve driven all the middle-aged lady travelers out of their girdles. “You Americans, you are all the same.”

  “Believe me, buddy,” Pace said. “We are definitely not all the same.”

  “You know what this one did? This lovely tiny one? You know the promises she made in whispers?”

  “She’s ill. Please forgive her.”

  “You think it is funny to do these things to the ignorant locals?”

  “No,” Pace told him. “It’s just been a mistake.”

  “There was no mistake.”

  The crowd wafted, waiting for blood.

  Crumble ran over, the small, curled pug tail wagging just a bit. “Arf!”

  Jack was snickering, thankful that Pia was helping him out here. He wanted all the fishermen to draw their long, thin fishing blades, watch them twirl in the morning sun. A glorious dance waiting to be consummated, fulfilled.

  The kid had a blade tucked into his belt. Mediterranean fishermen are noted knife fighters, and Greek fishermen some of the best in the world. Pace didn’t even know if he had the Trident tucked into the small of his back anymore. He reached and drew it and held it up before his eyes, realizing, Yeah, there it is, I still have it, and then sticking it back in its sheath hidden away, all in about a second. The youth’s eyes widened and he started to go for his own blade, then realized Pace had sheathed his so very quickly and now had no weapon. The kid didn’t quite know what to do, and he still had Pia on her knees.

  Pace drew the knife again in a blur, reached down and gently tapped the point of it on the back of the kid’s hand. The act itself so delicate that not even a bead of blood welled up. The sting of the knife perhaps feeling no different from a spider bite, but still enough to make the kid let Pia go.

  She got to her feet, rubbing her shoulder. She glared at Pace and said, “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, you shouldn’t have.”

  “I know what you meant.”

  The kid rubbed the back of his hand, plucking at the skin so he could see what bit him, what touched him, what happened.

  Pace asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Stavros.”

  “Listen, Stavros, I—”

  Stavros shot to his feet. He was tall, six-three, with a long reach. “I do not wish to dialogue!”

  “Arf!”

  Stavros worked his tongue over his teeth, bobbing on his toes, ready to lunge. He looked from Pia to Crumble to Pace and back again. He didn’t want to ask the question but couldn’t help himself. “Why is that man barking like a dog?”

  “He’s insane,” Pace said. “We all are. You should go away now.”

  “This man thinks he is a dog?”

  “Yes, sometimes.”

  Crumble rushed over, licked the back of Stavros’s hand, and immediately started humping his leg. The crowd thought it was hilarious.

  “This man seeks sexual congress with my knee!” Stavros shrieked.

  He was too shocked to even think about drawing his blade. Pace didn’t have much choice but to grab Crumble by the collar and rap him lightly across the nose. The pug let out a sneeze and sat there panting.

  That got to the kid and the rest of the patrons. Stavros tried to hold on to his anger but it was already lifting from him as the others began to laugh. He tried to clench his jaws shut but the laughter started in his chest and eventually broke free. He held his sides and really whooped it up, the spittle flying. The laugh caught on and the rest of the place began to join in. Soon they were all howling. Crumble howled too. Another round of drinks was ordered. Someone began singing. Pia looked at Pace like she wanted to fuck him to death. Jack wanted to kill everybody.

  twenty

  Maybe you just needed to get back to New York and rent a cheap apartment on the upper west side, try to play catch-up on all the time you’ve already lost. Check in at the fish cannery. Find a friend you could go out with, take in a ball game, hit the margarita bars. You sit there on a stool eyeing the girls across the way. Robbie starts going through all the best pickup lines he’s downloaded into his memory banks. Hey baby, what’s your sign? You remind me of someone, haven’t we met before? You tell him, I don’t know, Robbie, I get the feeling those might not work anymore. A little bullhorn pops out of Robbie’s chest and starts doing wolf whistles at the pretty chicks. You think somebody’s going to come over and start some shit, but the girls are all tittering. You give Robbie a look and all his lights are lit up, he’s beeping like a son of a bitch. His chest opens again and a little catapult fires stuff at the girls. Candy hearts, plastic flowers, tabs of X, packs of purple condoms. The girls come over and circle Robbie, start rubbing his shiny metal parts going oooh and aaah. You ask him what the hell’s going on. He tells you, I shut down the Cognitive-Analytic Progression Matrix in my positronic phalanx module, I’m just letting the ride happen now, sport. A slot opens up between his eyes and a girl pops a quarter in. Robbie blasts out techno-pop dance tunes. The girls are grinding and bucking, Robbie gets up and starts clanking and gyrating along with them, his metal claws groping nubile breasts, the girls tee-heeing. His chest opens again and out comes a leash, a bridle, fur-lined handcuffs, a loofa sponge, an eggbeater, a rotor-rooter. They all leave together in a hushed, eager air of sharpened expectation.

  ~ * ~

  Pace tried to get everybody together in time to meet the noon ferry to Voros. But Pia was dancing with men other than her father, Faust was actually laughing with the soccer enthusiasts, and Hayden had managed to put down his pen after writing only five pages to his mother. The world turned by these small miracles.

  You could almost believe in the possibility of joy. Pace thought, Okay, one night, we’ll try to relax for a night. We need that much.

  They drank and ate and talked with people for hours. The conversations ranged from the informative to the delightful. Faust was almost enchanting, and Hayden told stories about how he and seven mongoloids from the group home would steal the school bus and sneak into Madison Square Garden to watch the Playoffs. Two of the mongoloids had even gotten basketballs signed by most of the players on the Knicks. Hayden had once been shoved by a ref for straying onto the court. The Knicks got so pissed a
t the ref that the guy had to be escorted out under armed guard. What the matter wit you? This boy retarded!

  At some point a bouzouki band came in and began playing their bouzoukis, baglamas, guitars, and violins. The Greeks started teaching the tourists folk songs and traditional dances.

  Stavros had grown enamored of Pia and mooned over her from across the table, smiling dreamily while she pranced around the room. Pace kept taking the money Vindi had given him and paying for round after round. He wanted to find out information about Kaltzas and Pythos, but didn’t know what kind of a reaction it might get from the locals, if any. He subtly tried to weave the name into the various conversations. No one had anything to say. Maybe if you threw a stick around here you could hit fifty shipping magnates with their own private islands.

  The French men had left, but the names of the writers continued on and on, rocking Pacella where he lay hidden. Baudelaire, Mauriac, Proust. His eyes twitched, opened for an instant, rolled up into his head, and then he continued dreaming in the dark.

  The dead will follow.

  The afternoon waned. A third of the money had been spent. Pia had received five marriage proposals, two from Stavros.

  Pace had been drinking steadily but wasn’t drunk. Sam Smith, though, was having a ball. Jimmy Boyd was singing “Kathleen.”

  It took a while, but finally Pace managed to gather everybody and get them out of the taverna. He had to carry Pia along while she swooned and laughed against his neck. Hayden and Faust were dancing and singing To Vouno—“The Mountain”—a slow song that several of the Greeks had performed.

  Hayden sang, “I'll climb the highest mountain—”

  Moving heavily, Faust turned and turned again. “—and I'll sing, in the wilderness—”

  “—with the playing of my bouzouki—”

  “—my sorrow will be heard...”

  “They sure are a fun people.”

  “But it’s quite understandable why their economy’s so deflated. How many of them drank all day and never went to work? Never left at all?”