“Who was the woman?” asked Eleni.
Himena shrugged. “I think she’s local, but I couldn’t place her.”
“Was she pretty?” I asked.
“Not in the way you mean. She said she’d been expecting a friend that morning and thought he might have asked for directions. She showed us a picture.”
“Did she seem angry?” I asked as we reached Nikos’ Café.
“She seemed puzzled, as if the man were lost somehow.”
I shuffled my feet. “He told me he had a business meeting. He expected to be met at the port, but we got in ahead of time.”
“Maybe she just missed him.”
“I found this package, and—”
“My god!” cried Eleni. “Eleven p.m. already. Rachel expected us an hour ago. Himena, why don’t you meet us over at O Kapetánios if you close early?”
“In August? No chance. Maybe next month.” She shook my hand. “Nice meeting you.”
I waited until Himena had started back towards her own café. “I thought Rachel said midnight.”
Eleni herded me back to our regular table and sat me down. “I could not think of anything else off the top of my head.”
“You didn’t want Himena to know about the ring.”
“You had a feeling when you met the man, something you cannot quite explain. I had a feeling about mentioning the package. I guess I wanted more time to think about what we would say. I have known Himena all my life, and she is a nice person, but whatever you tell her today, the whole town knows by tomorrow.”
“You don’t trust her.”
“I trust her not to mind her own business! This is not her fault. She is only bored. She dreams of having a different life, but she feels she must always be at the café to help her father. Still, what she told to us is valuable. Perhaps your friend is seeing an older woman.”
“Maybe the woman is his business partner.”
“Perhaps. But Amiros is an island of fierce passions. Perhaps the woman is the business partner’s wife.”
“Perhaps. In my experience, they usually are.”
Chapter Four
At O Kapetánios I sat listening to a music group similar to the one I’d had in Squid Bay. Back home we played with violins, trumpets, and two sizes of guitars. Here the main feature was the bouzouki, a mandolin-like instrument with a giraffe neck and a round base. Two guitars and an accordion completed the sound.
I’d never heard live bouzouki music before, and I was surprised by how much I liked it. Many of the tunes were instrumental, which helped me appreciate the intricate fingerings of the bouzouki player. The songs with words were often in minor keys, leaving hungry sighs in the air. I could imagine the tunes were all laments about loss. Because I kept thinking about Louloudi, they fit my mood.
The musicians weren’t outstanding, but they were competent. The older guitarist was often a quarter-second late, but the bouzouki player, a man in his early 50s, played confidently and easily led the group. Rachel was also on guitar. A young man on accordion finished the quartet. He and Rachel were the emotional focus of the group. They solicited requests from the audience, rounded out the chorus, and provided variety by singing duets, sometimes in English. The older musicians weren’t particularly focused on the music, but they didn’t need to be. The foreign tourists were delighted by every tune, and the locals were too nonchalant to be particular.
The taverna owner, Spiros, was a jovial sort who embraced any friend of a friend. As soon as I explained that I was with Rachel, he offered me a quiet table to the side and sent over a free brandy. For the rest of the evening I watched as he buzzed among tables, engaging customers in conversations that he half-finished before buzzing off somewhere else. He knew what was happening in the whole taverna at once and acted as if he were personally responsible for keeping the ball rolling. If any customers dared get bored, he’d entertain them himself until a song came along that they liked.
Back at Noche Azul, we’d put up with cramped spaces and near collisions with waiters. Spiros’ taverna was spacious enough to ensure an agreeable environment. The walls on the north and west opened out to the sky, embracing the night. Along the east wall, a bar counter provided seating to complement the twenty tables that faced a stage raised a step above the ground.
I tried to concentrate, but mostly I floated. I felt wrong holding a man’s engagement ring in my pocket even if I were doing it for exactly the right reason. I’d watched for him the whole time I’d been down at the café, and I’d stopped to ask about him at the pensiones closest to the port. There was no sign of the man anywhere, and I didn’t have any other leads for tracking him down.
“Go ahead and eat,” Rachel said. She’d briefly left the stage. “It’s no fun listening to your stomach growl when all the people around you are gorging themselves.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
She briefly rested her hand on my shoulder. “Thanks, but don’t bother.”
Rachel returned to the stage. For a few minutes, I tried to concentrate on her. Otherwise how could I expect a sex holiday? Her private apartment was damned convenient, and I wondered how much I dared take for granted. I wasn’t sure if Rachel had offered me the couch because that’s where she wanted me to stay or because she was shy or because she wanted to make it clear that she was offering me an option.
Maybe she hadn’t decided. It had probably never occurred to her that I would come to Greece any more than I’d expected to desperately need to. It was hard to say which one of us was more confused.
Whenever Rachel sang a love song, she stared right at me until I started undressing her with my eyes. I was in uncharted waters without as much as a life preserver. For half my life, I’d performed with a mariachi. In all that time, it had always been me singing to women, flirting whether or not it was part of the act. I didn’t know how to react now that the tables were turned. I didn’t know Rachel well enough to read the signs.
Mentally I pretended she was performing for me alone. She wasn’t a natural for Greek rhythms and couldn’t effectively get her small hand around bar chords on the guitar, but she was sincere. She sang with an intriguing hint of a Spanish accent and acknowledged the audience’s attention without becoming giddy. She knew her shortcomings and kept them in perspective.
She was utterly unlike Louloudi.
During a pause between songs, a group of twenty Spaniards walked in, making them a sudden majority among the sea of Italians and French and Brits. “Bésame mucho,” one of the men called out in a husky voice, Kiss Me a Lot. Rachel retreated to the back of the stage. I thought she’d been offended. Instead she opened a dusty violin case and took out a battered instrument. She checked the intonation before getting out the bow, which she tightened with three quick turns. Then, with a small upward movement, she signaled the beginning of the song.
No wonder Rachel fought with the guitar. The violin was by far her domain. She had a carefully measured vibrato and a firm bow. When her clear, confident notes cut through the air, all heads naturally turned her way. She played at least as competently as I did, probably better. I wondered what I’d have to do to keep her attention.
I studied Rachel’s playing for another set before my concentration drifted away. I chided myself and tried to settle into appreciating the unfamiliar music or analyzing the musicians, but I didn’t have the patience for it. Instead I fingered the engagement ring that was burning a hole in the pocket of my shorts and scrutinized each new customer, hoping for “H.”
***
“Last summer was rough,” Rachel admitted. We’d come home after her last set and were finally sitting on her balcony. From such a vantage point, I could appreciate the silence of the night, the dim streetlights, and the fact that, at four in the morning, the world was ours.
“I was struggling with the music and the Greek at the same time,” she continued. “I was overwhelmed. But when the challenge is too hard, you lower your expectations. Otherwise you’re bound to f
ail.”
“I know exactly what you mean. That’s why I couldn’t play in a group with my uncle,” I said. “He was quite good on the vihuela and better on the guitarrón. But imagine this: I was fifteen, and he would have been forty. He expected me to play as well as he did.”
Rachel swigged on a Coke. “I had a different problem. No one in my family was musical, so they didn’t understand why I was interested in performing or how I could let music take up so much of my time.”
“If your parents didn’t introduce you to music, who did?”
“I used to spend summers in Mexico with an army of relatives. Down there everybody sings and plays the guitar whether they’re any good or not.”
“What are the Greek songs about?”
“They’re the same as the Mexican ones. Unhappy men complain about losing women, mostly. The words are repetitive, but the tourists love us no matter what we play.”
“You don’t get tired of singing about lost love?”
“Not always lost.” She looked soft and gentle in the night sky. “And s’agapó and m’agapás have a nice ring to them.”
She’d taught me the phrases for I love you and you love me earlier in the evening, and I’d caught them in half a dozen of the songs. But at the moment, language wasn’t my preferred focus. I hadn’t tried to touch her since the pinky thing earlier. I wasn’t sure how to get back to that moment, so instead we spent an hour discussing language learning—how mariachi music had strengthened my Spanish, how she’d slowly conquered basic Greek, how she’d grown up using English for her practical side, Spanish for her emotional one.
“It’s like having different sides of your same self,” she concluded.
Even though it was awkward, I reached over and took her hand. “What does your Greek side say about me?”
Her eyes answered by pointing to the bedroom.
The bed lay in the middle of the room between a wooden nightstand and a stack of books. We sank into the soft mattress, laughing. She cooperated with my advances, creating her own by removing clothes, both mine and hers, that got in the way. We were both naked when a shiver went up my back.
Short of breath, I sat up against the wall and shook my head. “Sorry.”
She tried to read my expression in the dark.
“There are some things I didn’t tell you.”
She fished her top and underpants off the floor and put them back on.
“You said you weren’t married.” She abruptly left the room.
I wondered how immediately I’d be looking for a hotel.
She returned with a pack of smokes and a lighter and an ashtray that read Amirosian Sunset. She positioned the latter between us as a non-negotiable barrier. When she lit a cigarette, I did the same. For several minutes we focused on the orange beams.
“Rachel, I’m not married,” I finally said. “And the things I’ve told you are true.”
“I don’t care if you’re a father.”
“Believe me, I’m not that.”
“You’re on the rebound then.”
“In a way.”
“Flattering. Who dumped whom?”
“She’s dead.”
She jerked her head back. “That’s a new one.”
We waved our dying wands in silence until we crushed them out.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t want to bore you.”
“Try me.”
The story tumbled out—how I’d made dozens of wrong decisions trying to help a troubled woman only to desert her at precisely the wrong moment.
“You blame yourself for her death.” Rachel’s tone was neutral.
“I should have done more. A lot more.” I wasn’t sure I could forgive myself. I wasn’t even sure I was trying to.
A motorcycle raced by outside, and for a moment we both turned towards the window.
“She haunts me,” I finally continued. “That’s why I backed off just now. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. I know it wasn’t fair.”
Rachel placed her hands behind her hips and leaned back. “You needed to know me a little first.”
I rubbed my cheeks with my hands. “It’s stupid to be obsessed with her. She never cared about me. She found me convenient.”
Maybe that was why I was so stuck. Whenever Louloudi asked me for help, she made me feel essential. Instead she simply knew I could be manipulated. Thinking about her had become a drug, which meant that she could even manipulate me from the grave.
“I don’t think you’re on the rebound,” Rachel said softly. “I think you’re in shock. Have you talked this over with anybody?”
“My brother’s gotten the worst of it because I’ve bent his ear night after night. At work I didn’t talk about her because the others seem resigned to what happened.”
“Maybe that was their way of dealing with loss.”
“I haven’t figured out how to. The embarrassing part is that I’m mourning something I lost, but it wasn’t something I ever had in the first place.”
“You definitely needed a vacation. If you can’t cheer up on Amiros, something is seriously wrong with you.”
That was exactly how I’d thought it through myself.
My attention turned to the window. “I’ve been talking so long that it’s morning already.” Dawn hadn’t broken, but the darkness was losing way.
“I’m lucky I can’t relate, not to a personal loss like that. The closest I have is a couple of mariachi friends who were stupid enough to borrow money and think they wouldn’t have to pay it back.”
“I guess they didn’t go through the bank.”
“I guess not.”
“What happened?”
“They disappeared. That’s all anybody knows. But I wasn’t close enough to them to imagine how you feel inside.”
I sighed, pushing the air out of my lungs until I had to gasp for breath. “I’m sorry to be a nuisance. I enjoyed meeting you and genuinely wanted to see you again, but I don’t know what I was thinking by coming here. I’ll leave on tomorrow’s boat so I won’t have to bother you. I’ll leave now if you’d rather.”
She batted the air. “Don’t be so dramatic. I didn’t invite you here as a sex toy although I did consider the possibility a perk. Let’s discuss it in the morning?”
“Sure.”
She lay beside me, and, almost as if an afterthought, set her hand gently on my arm. After a few minutes, her breathing became more regular. She was sleeping easily, touching me. I was left with the sound of my own pounding heart.
Chapter Five
By the time I woke up, it was so hot I assumed I’d slept until afternoon. I couldn’t check because I didn’t remember where I’d left my watch. Vaguely I recalled that Rachel had shut the window soon after sunrise to capture the night’s relief, but by now the sultry Aegean breeze was preferable to the room’s dead air.
I opened the window onto the Greek island paradise and then ignored the view. I sprawled on the bed, remembering my quasi-confession from hours earlier. I’d told Rachel more than anyone should have known. My brother and my neighbor knew the story, but they’d gotten it in bits and pieces as it occurred and helped me think it through. Rachel had gotten a deluge.
Still I felt relieved. The worst part was that Louloudi had been imbued in every aspect of my world. Her tragedy involved my fellow musicians, my boss, my apartment, and my brother, who’d been dragged into the mess without a choice. For the past weeks my every thought had been governed by her memory. It all came back to the same fact; it was my fault she had died.
Downstairs Eleni’s young sons shouted at one another as they raced around the house. My hostess asked them to be quieter, and for a moment they obeyed. I stalled, hesitant to join my new friends. They’d invited me into their home on the gut feeling that I was at least all right, but they would see me differently now. I’d been too honest.
Slowly I descended to a crowded kitchen where Eleni and her husband Nikos sat
reading a newspaper at a wooden table while Rachel dried dishes in front of a window overlooking the house next door. As soon as they heard my footsteps, all three looked up. While I hadn’t expected a welcoming committee, neither did I expect stony faces. I was trapped, wondering what the hell Rachel had told them and why the hell she’d told them so much.
“Kaliméra,” I said quietly. Good afternoon. That was half the Greek I’d learned on the plane ride from L.A. When Rachel explained that most of the townspeople spoke some English, I’d taken her word for it.
“Coffee, Andy?” Rachel asked.
I nodded, venturing further into the room. “I’m sorry if I slept too long. I hope I haven’t held up anybody’s plans.”
The silence engulfed me.
Finally Eleni indicated the empty chair at the table. “Andy, please sit.”
I wasn’t evil. I’d merely withheld information. I wanted them to know that. Rachel had invited me to visit when we’d met in Squid Bay, a beach town south of Los Angeles, a couple of months before. She hadn’t stipulated that I was supposed to come as a potential lover. That’s merely what I’d assumed. I shouldn’t have been surprised that things didn’t work out the way I’d planned. It wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t get a dead woman out of my head; I certainly didn’t want her there. Unfortunately, most of us don’t choose our emotions. They choose us, and no matter how uninvited they may be, we have to figure out a way to deal with them.
I sat down, facing my inquisitors.
“Rachel?” Eleni shook her head, concentrating on the contents of the sink.
“I can’t do it either,” Rachel said.
The silence screamed.
“Andy, there is no good way to tell you.” Nikos slid the day’s copy of The Amirosian, the island’s tourist publication, before me.
I didn’t have to ask what to read. The headline proclaimed: “Athenian Man, 39, Pulled from Harbor.” The picture showed the lifeless body of a drowned man, the very one I’d befriended the day before. No wonder Rachel and I hadn’t found him among the harbor cafés.
Island Casualty Page 3