Burning the Map

by Laura Caldwell

  An hour flies by, with various members of our group leaving to get beers or make bathroom runs, then pushing their way back in, their faces flushed, their arms filled with bottles for everyone. At one point, I let myself get jostled to the edge of the group. I take a deep breath and look up at the star-filled sky, thinking how lucky I am to be here, far away from home. Home. The thought of it brings in the image of my father’s packed suitcases lining the hallway, and my stomach falls. The feeling is like the one I had at my grandfather’s funeral a year ago. I’d been talking with my cousin Trish, and we began to laugh about the monstrous Halloween costumes we’d designed when we were eight years old. Suddenly, in the middle of throwing my head back with laughter, I remembered why we were together—my grandfather’s death—and I felt as if I’d been socked in the gut. It seemed that my mind would let me forget the awful realities for a sweet, short time, before they slammed back, lest I think they were gone.

  “What’s up, Case?” Kat asks, as she reaches me by squeezing past two of the English guys who are tossing back vile-looking shots. “Bad beer?”

  I give a slight smile at her attempt of humor. “Sorry. I was thinking about my parents.”

  “Don’t,” Kat says. “Don’t apologize for feeling shitty that they’re splitting up.”

  She pauses for a second, as if thinking about something then asks, “Do you want to get out of here? We could go some place more laid back, some place where we can chat.”

  “Oh no,” I say, so surprised by her kind gesture, that I immediately reject it. “I’ll get over it. It’s no big deal.” I’m sure that Sin and Kat would rather stay here and party than listen to me mope, and I like this place, too. I’ll shake off the thoughts of my parents. Princess Denial to the rescue.

  “It is a big deal, and hey—we’ve got a whole week here. I’m sure we’ll be able to follow the trail of beer bottles and find this place again.” Kat gulps the rest of her Tuborg and signals for Lindsey.

  “We’re thinking of going,” Kat tells Sin once she’s picked her way over to us. “Some place a little quieter where we can talk.”

  “Fine with me,” Lindsey says. She nods, her face open, and I realize that she means it.

  “We don’t have to go,” I protest one more time, but I’m secretly thrilled.

  “No arguments,” Kat says. “We’re out of here.”

  20

  We find a half-filled taverna by the waterfront with a good view of the cruise ships and their strings of white lights, the sound of jazz music tinkling across the water. It’s the type of magical setting I dreamt of during the tedium of my bar exam classes.

  Lindsey orders another bottle of cabernet for us.

  I’ve taken only two sips before it happens.

  “Look,” she says, talking fast, rearranging her wineglass, the napkins on the table. “I want to tell you something.”

  I’m not sure if she’s talking to Kat or me, so I take another swallow of my wine.

  “I want to say that I’m sorry.” She puts down her wineglass as she says this, and the glass makes a knock on the table that gives her statement a sense of finality.

  I blink a few times, still unsure what we’re talking about, who we’re talking to, when she looks me square in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again.

  I put down my own glass, blinking furiously as if this might help me process her words. I don’t think she’s ever apologized to me, and it sounds so foreign coming from her mouth. I skid my eyes over to Kat, who looks as surprised as I do.

  “I was way too harsh on you,” Sin says. “I had reasons to be mad at you, don’t get me wrong, but I let my envy take over. I hated myself for feeling that way, and that made me act even more like a bitch.”

  Kat reaches over and squeezes my hand, which I recognize as her way of apologizing.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I say. “I’m sorry I came in late that night….”

  “It wasn’t even during the night. You came home in the morning,” Sin says, but then she claps a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she manages to say through her fingers. “That just slipped out. Keep going. If you want to, I mean.”

  The rebuke takes away a little of my desire to flagellate myself, but I do keep going. I have to.

  “I’m sorry about Billy, too,” I say. “Hearing that my parents were officially over just threw me. I needed someone to talk to, and he was there, and then all of a sudden he was kissing me. You saw everything that happened between us. I shouldn’t have let it get that far, but nothing else happened. I promise.”

  “I believe you,” Sin says. “What can I say? The main thing is that I’ve been jealous of you, of you and John and what you have together.”

  I shake my head. “There hasn’t been much to be envious of lately. He’s never around anymore. We hardly spend any time together.”

  “But you just took the bar exam,” Kat says. “Now that you’re done, it should free up some time.”

  I scoff. “My new job will probably keep me busier than the damn bar. Plus John works like crazy, and I can’t see that changing anytime soon.” I give Sin a little smile. “So you see, there’s nothing much to be jealous of. Besides, you could have a serious relationship if you want.”

  “Yeah, Sin,” Kat says. “You could have had it with Pete, but you dumped him.”

  Sin ducks her head, her hands playing with the napkin, pulling on its edges. “I need to tell you guys something.” Her voice is grave.

  There’s a horrible pause at the table. A million possibilities float through my head—she has cancer, she’s converted to Scientology, she’s a lesbian.

  “Pete dumped me,” Sin says.

  This is almost more shocking than the others.

  “He dumped you?” Kat says.

  Sin nods, her face miserable.

  “Why?” I say.

  “He said I was too uptight, too controlling. I realized that it’s a pattern. I do it to every guy I date. I get regimented, wanting everything my way, refusing to take no for an answer. I tried to change, but it was too late. I’d already made him crazy.” For the second time this trip, Sin starts to cry. Kat and I coo over her, rubbing her shoulders, pushing her wineglass in front of her.

  After getting the entire story, we hash out the Pete scenario, going over and over what she could have done differently, whether she can change her ways, whether there’s still a chance with him.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Sin says, her brown eyes red-rimmed now. “I don’t know if I still want Pete. He could be married by now, he could have a kid. For all I know he’s living in Alaska.”

  “Give yourself some time,” I say. “Bat it around for a while.”

  “You know,” Kat says, “you two wouldn’t have these problems if you were like me. All fun, no attachments.”

  She says this in a funny tone, like she expects us to crack up, but neither Sin nor I say anything. Lately, Kat’s man-eating just isn’t as amusing as it used to be.

  “What?” Kat says, laughing at her own comment, even if we won’t join her. “What is it?”

  Sin turns to me, and she gives me that look, that look that says Take over, please! That look I’ve been waiting for this whole trip.

  “Why do you think you’re like that?” I ask Kat. “You know, the whole relationship ban?”

  “I don’t know.” She sounds annoyed. “I’ve always been like this.”

  True, but she hasn’t always been so compulsive. “What about lately, like this summer?” I say.

  She shrugs. “What do you mean?”

  “Has it changed at all? Have you changed?”

  “No.” She snorts.

  “What about after the Hatter incident?” There, I’ve said it.

  Kat’s jaw tenses. “One has nothing to do with the other.”

  We’re all quiet. “Look,” Kat says, “the Hatter attack only told me what I knew all along.”

  “And what’s that?” Sin says.


  “That men just want me for sex.” Sin and I don’t say anything, and Kat rolls her eyes. “Oh, don’t think ‘poor Kat,’ because that’s fine with me. I love sex.”

  “Hey, who doesn’t?” I say.

  “Well, exactly.” Kat throws her hair over her shoulder. “And that’s all I want from them. That’s it. I like the attention, and it makes me feel good.”

  “Does it?” I say. “Does it make you feel good all the time?”

  Another silence, a very long silence that I make myself stay out of completely. “Well, maybe not so much lately,” Kat says at last. “Lately it’s more like a habit. Something I just do.”

  “Why?” Sin asks.

  “Because…” Kat throws a hand in the air. “Because it proves something to me.”

  “What?” Sin says.

  “That—that…” Kat bites her thumbnail, gazing toward the table. “I guess it makes me feel special.”

  And there it is. Kat has stumbled on her own pattern, her own reasons for it.

  We keep talking, taking turns pouring the wine for each other, and while it may be true that my family as I know it is disintegrating, I feel the wheels of the family I have with Sin and Kat clicking back into place.

  The next day, Kat, Sin and I walk to the village center, a little square overrun by strolling vacationers, scooter rental stands and shops selling postcards and sarongs. This village “center” is actually on the fringes of town, and it’s nowhere as picturesque as the rest. The only reason it flourishes is because the buses that run to Paradise Beach, the main beach, line up here, and, therefore, so does everyone else on the island.

  The buses, it seems, were built roughly around 1920 and last cleaned about five years after that. They’re decrepit, filled with sand and old beer bottles, and even the smell is like a not-quite-empty keg left out overnight in hot weather.

  Sin, who has overly sensitive olfactory powers, almost swoons as she steps inside.

  “Sit by the window,” I tell her.

  She does, hanging her head out like a dog looking for air as the bus chugs into action and crawls out of the village. Soon, though, she’s forced to pull her head inside because the vehicle clearly has no shocks, and it bumps and lurches down the dirt road. The driver steps on the gas, clouds of dust rising around us, and as we race over a hill, it seems like we’re airborne.

  Sin lets out a little yelp and covers her mouth, while Kat gives a holler, raising her arms like she’s on a roller coaster.

  With a crash, the driver lands the bus and shifts into a higher gear, shooting down the steep decline past lonely little houses that look as if they’re made of clay. We swerve around a corner, veering into the opposite lane, and the sea comes into view—icy blue with glittering diamonds of reflected sunlight.

  Sin gasps. “Christ, it’s beautiful,” she says.

  The driver screeches to a halt once he’s reached the edge of the beach. We see tawny sand strewn with thatched-umbrella-covered tables and thousands of seminaked or, in some cases, downright naked sunbathers. Just like everywhere else in Mykonos, the crowd is gorgeous. Whippet-thin, topless women lay frozen in mute rows, their faces turned up toward the sun. A pack of guys plays volleyball, flexing their bronze muscles with each thump of the ball.

  We walk toward the far end of the beach because Sin says the clanging house music pouring from the bars is too loud for this time of the day. I agree and lead them farther and farther down the sand because I’m ready to try the topless thing, and I want as few people around me as possible. The problem is, there’s no secluded corner of this beach, so when I finally spot a small, vacant plot of sand, I grab it.

  As I arrange my towel next to a woman I’m sure is a supermodel I saw on E!, I thank the gods that I’ve lost weight during this trip. I slather SPF 30 on every reachable surface of my body, and when I can’t put it off any longer, I sneak an arm around my back, ready to unhook my top and flop over on my stomach. But my damned bikini won’t unclasp. I wrestle with it, feeling like an eighth-grade boy in the back of a movie theater working on his girlfriend’s bra. I hunch over, stretching my other hand around like an octopus, my fingers scrabbling at the hook.

  “Need some help?” I freeze, then turn my head. Kat and Sin, both already topless, are standing with their hands on their hips, amused expressions on their faces, watching me struggle.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  Neither comments on my choice to bare my breasts today. Kat just walks over and, with one flick of a hand, unhooks me.

  I straighten up and look down at myself. “Jesus, they’re white, huh?”

  Kat and Sin try not to laugh, but I don’t need confirmation on this one. While the rest of my body has achieved a mellow, golden sort of tan, my boobs were hibernating. Now they look like headlights on a black car.

  “You better get some sunscreen on those girls,” Sin says.

  I glance down at myself again. “I have to put it on my boobs?”

  “Well, I’m not going to do it for you,” she says.

  “It’s a little like public masturbation, but you’ll get used to it.” Kat says as she applies sunscreen to her own “girls.” When she’s done, she twists her hair up into a knot and promptly plops back on her towel and into a deep slumber.

  “Damn, that girl can sleep.” Sin pulls a book from her bag. “That’s something else I’m jealous about. I could never crash in this heat.”

  I put a big dollop of sunscreen in my hand, rub both of my hands together and take a deep breath. Now or never, I say to myself. And then I commence public breast rubbing, massaging the lotion into my even whiter breasts. As I do this, I notice that the supermodel’s boobs are small and nutbrown, natural looking, while mine seem obscene, especially in my own hands in front of thousands of people. When I’m sure the “girls” are properly protected, I turn over on my stomach. They’ve gotten enough exposure for today.

  I gaze absently at a ridiculous article in my magazine called “Top 10 Stipulations for Better Oral Manipulations.” “Number Ten,” it says. “No teeth.” Hard-hitting journalism there.

  “You know what time it is?” Sin says about an hour later. She puts her book down and drops her head, peeking at me over her sunglasses.

  Her words thrill and terrify me at the same time.

  You know what time it is? This is the phrase Sin uses on Kat and me whenever she wants to call us out on something. “You know what time it is?” she’d said to Kat during our senior year. “Time for you to get serious about poor Jimmy Tate or let him down easy.” And the same year, she’d told me, “It’s time for you to get your applications in. Law school isn’t just going to come to you.”

  The thrilling part of hearing the question is the fact that it’s been over a year since the last time, and it means that she still cares about me, that we’re still tight, still best friends. The scary part, though, is that Sin is rarely wrong about these things. I’m not sure I want to hear what time it is.

  I put my head down on my arms. “What?” I say, my voice muffled.

  “Time to call John,” she says. When I don’t respond, she says, “You know I’m right.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed and run through the scenario in my head. If I call him now, it’s probably around 4:00 a.m. in Chicago, which means that he’s fast asleep. John always turns off his ringer when he goes to bed, so I could call and get his machine and simply leave a message without having to speak to him. I clamp my eyes shut tighter when it strikes me that I’m a complete shit. I haven’t spoken to my boyfriend in eons, and yet I’m trying to devise ways to steer clear of him. Denial and avoidance at its finest.

  “I’ll do it now,” I announce to Lindsey, conveniently failing to remind her what time it is back home. “I saw a pay phone by the bar.”

  I throw a T-shirt over my head, and before it gets any later in Chicago, I walk toward the public phones.

  “Good luck!” Sin calls behind me.

  21

  As John’s phone rin
gs, a tinny, distant sound, I bite the arm of my sunglasses, waiting for the mechanical voice of his answering machine. I’ve already scripted a short but cheery message to leave him, telling him that I’m safe and sound, that I miss him and will call him later. The pay phone is bolted to the plywood side of a bar called Cortica’s, which consists of three wooden walls and a twig roof, the open side facing the beach. The tables in front of the bar are mobbed. The couple sitting closest to me is leaning toward each other over uneaten plates of tuna salad, their faces menacing, spitting words at each other that I can’t understand, but I can tell they’re not nice.

  The phone rings for the third time. One more ring until the machine picks up. I take a deep breath, readying myself for my speech.

  Instead, I hear John’s sleep-filled, “Yeah…hello?”

  Stunned, I don’t respond immediately.

  “Hello?” he repeats.

  “Johnny?” I manage to squeak out.

  “Hey, baby, is that you?” he says, sounding much more awake now.

  “It’s me.” I stop then, caught wordless without my rehearsed message.

  The voices of the bickering couple escalate. No one seems to notice but me. At the table next to them are four pasty-white guys who must have just gotten off the plane. They chug their beers, slapping each other on the back, making a pyramid out of the cans.

  “How are you?” John says.

  “Uh…great,” I stammer. “Great. How ’bout you?”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear from you. I left the phone on all night for the last week. I was worried.”

  “Nothing to worry about here. We’re having a blast.” I chirp.

  “I’ve missed you,” John says, sending a stab of guilt through me.

  “Yeah, me, too.” I find I’m telling the truth. I haven’t been pining away for him, but now that I hear his earnest voice I remember how much he loves me, how good he is to me. Like Sin and Kat, John has become a family member.