by Cara Hoffman
People in line took no time at all to recognize what wasn’t their business.
“You’ll have to get that set,” Declan said, rubbing his head, then licking the man’s blood from his fingers.
“You’ll have to get that set,” we said for weeks after.
No one was unhappy when Declan decided to find a more respectable hotel to live in. He said the highway noise on Diligianni was ruining his beauty sleep. Plus it was always a good idea to move around, just in case.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he told us. “I could always kill youse now to have peace of mind. But dumping three bodies is not a thing I’m bound to undertake at the present moment. Y’can thank me.”
Jasper raised his bottle to that. I looked up from my book and nodded. Milo said “Thank you” and stood to help him pack.
* * *
The last place I’d seen Declan was Athens Inn. I was hoping he would still be there, sitting with Milo down in the vine-covered courtyard, sipping ouzo and passing the time between trains.
The granite sidewalk was worn and slick, looked like melting ice, and the neighborhood seemed older and more lively. I hurried along, thinking of Milo’s face, of how he must be feeling if things the boy at Drinks Time told me were true. A sudden shock of loneliness flooded my body and I couldn’t walk. I stood, refusing a sob that must have started in Milo’s chest and now somehow burned in mine. It was a mistake to have left the bar one round behind.
In the lobby of Athens Inn, Declan was drinking water, sitting alone at a café table. His face beaten elegant; high, uneven cheekbones, flattened nose. His body, even in repose, was a warning, built by fast and brutal acts.
A Greek soap opera played on a television atop the reception desk, and a dull gray ceiling fan whirred and clicked but brought no relief. Declan was wearing a jean jacket despite the heat and a pair of army boots like mine.
He’d no doubt seen me but waited until I was sitting across from him to shut his book. A smile revealed the chip in his left incisor, then he leaned in to kiss me, held my hand.
“To what do I owe this lovely surprise?” he asked, then looked into my eyes to see if I knew about Jasper, nodded. “Let’s get some air,” he said.
Out in the vicious glittering sun we sat on the steps surrounded by the bleak white buildings of the neighborhood, their striped and slanted awnings pulled down against the glare and heat and emptiness of day.
He put his hair back in a ponytail, revealing a black tattoo star.
“Who told you?” he asked.
“About five different cocksuckers sitting around Drinks Time,” I said. “Stopped over when I got in, thinking he might be there.” I pulled out a cigarette and lit it and he took it from my lips, threw it into the street.
“Milo been by to see you?” I asked.
“Y’know, it’s puzzling,” Declan said. “I’ve not seen Milo for days. And he didn’t say good-bye. No farewell a tall. Last time someone left so rudely, she didn’t turn up until”—he looked at his watch—“eight minutes ago.”
“He say where he was headed?”
Declan smirked. “Nah. Figgered he’d gone to meet you, didn’t I? Figgered the two of youse had a neat little plan.”
“My only plan’s to keep sleeping indoors; you know how it is.”
“I don’t,” he said, and whatever he said next I was constitutionally incapable of hearing. I shaded my eyes and gazed across the street to where a man in a faded polo shirt and soccer sandals was trying to start his moped. Another man leaned over an upstairs balcony that was thick with climbing vines and potted flowers, and threw something metal that clanged against the curb. Declan was still talking, so I looked up and tested how long I could stare into the sun without blinking.
Declan believed in things only ruined people could: borders and nations and pride; family and loyalty; retribution. He was everything Jasper and Milo and I had left behind; a cipher from the straight world spouting the gospel that had wrecked his own life. I could tell by his tone there was a summation coming, so I made myself pay attention to specific words.
“Some people just don’t know how to stick together,” he said. “But it could be worse. Some people don’t know how to survive at all. Like your li’l mate Murat Christensen, am I right? You’re not asking me about him, though, are you? You’re not asking where he is.”
I shut my eyes and flicked the lighter inside my pocket. I wanted another drink badly. Sweat was running down my back. A woman wearing a veil and a long burgundy dress walked by holding a pudgy baby with dark eyes. Few people passed at this hour in the afternoon. The heat was stupefying and there was no breeze, no noise, no motion at all.
Declan turned toward me and held my face, gently brushed the hair out of my eyes.
“When did you last eat?” he asked.
That day we’d met on the train, Jasper brought me back to Drinks Time and we sat in a haze of cigarette smoke which hung head level above the sticky wooden tables. The TV over the bar was blaring an American movie dubbed into Greek. A strong smell of bleach and beer and sour licorice permeated the place. People I’d seen on the train, runners, sat at tables near the front window, ragged and tan, jackal jawed, tipping back in their chairs, holding pints.
Three meticulously groomed middle-aged men and a younger, thinner man wearing a green silk shirt unbuttoned to the chest played dominoes and drank from little white cups at the back of the bar. Jasper watched them. When the younger man looked up, he smiled with a calculated shyness I could feel in my gut. Jasper held the man’s gaze as he sipped the head of his pint, then looked away.
“They’re always so nicely dressed,” Jasper said. His strong delicate hands drummed beside his glass, nails bit short. He was thin, not grown into his skin; a regal jutting of wrist bones, collarbones. Dimples making what might have been a gaunt face childlike.
“I like these lads,” he said. “I do. They have quite a lot of visitors here in the afternoon. I wonder where they eat supper. I’d like to go where they go.” He finished his pint and put it on the table. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he went on. “Do you know how to drive? We should get a car. I’d like to drive, but it gets in the way of . . .” He gestured vaguely around. “Too hard to concentrate on it. Have you been to the Temple of Hephaestus?”
“I just got here half an hour ago,” I told him.
“Right,” he said. “Well. People are in awe of these things, you know. In absolute awe. But it’s the damage they love, really; they say it’s the history, but it’s the damage. No one would care in the least if these things were new—covered with gaudy, bright primary colors like it was back then. They love the ruin and they love the cocks. I mean, how many penises can you look at? Honestly, how many?”
“Is there a limit?”
“Like, every last painting or sculpture of these mythical beings has someone with a hard-on, riding a horse with a hard-on, or fighting a centaur with a hard-on. Or roving through the countryside with some goat-footed satyr who’s got a cock as big as your arm. You get—I’m quite serious, now; please try to hold it together, because I’m serious, I’m not joking—you get penis fatigue looking at these things. You ever see those herms?”
I shook my head.
“You know what I’m talking about? It’s just a rectangular block of granite with a guy’s head on top and—no other features, nothing—and then his johnson about halfway down. That’s it. Head and cock. Nothing more. Bloody hilarious. Like the whole thing was dreamt up by ten-year-old boys. I saw this plate in the museum—you know, simple domestic plate; like, a plate, from which to eat food—and on it there’s a soldier with an erection carrying a rabbit by the ears. The rabbit has an erection. It’s sort of gloriously appalling.” He sipped his beer, lit another cigarette with one he’d just finished.
The collar of Jasper’s T-shirt was torn at the seam and dark marks like
the shadows of fingers were visible beneath. I played with my lighter while I watched him exhale a cloud of smoke, his tongue resting at the edge of his teeth. The beer was fixing my hunger but I would need a real meal soon. Jasper’s voice was smooth—each sentence held the edge of a joke or playful astonishment.
“It’s nice the way you speak,” I said, sipping from my pint.
“Can’t be helped,” he said. “I went to Eton.”
“Where’s that?” I asked. “I’ve never been.”
We watched the rippling heat outside the window while cultivating a languid thrumming numbness. The boys by the window were louder now, except for one who had fallen asleep, his hand cradling his glass. The men in their nice clothes snapped dominoes against the table, clinked cups back onto their saucers. It wasn’t until we stood that the whole room reeled.
Jasper put his hand on my shoulder to steady one of us and we walked back into the oven of the streets, moving fast to keep upright. Hot air rushed into my lungs and I squinted along beside him in the blinding light. Figures at the dark periphery of buildings made themselves out, two middle-aged men in tight button-down shirts open wide at the neck; they exchanged glances as we passed, their gaze sliding over us, calculating. The narrow streets curved one into another, a tangle of nameless places. Bare bulbs hung outside buildings above empty folding chairs, as if an interrogation were soon to take place. The flat slap of our shoes on pavement echoed as we walked past the smoke- and soot-stained remains of a building that had recently burned, and we emerged onto the wide, loud thoroughfare of Diligianni Street.
Olympos was like an architectural ghost, something that had once been regal and was now only missing police tape or plywood over the windows and door. “Home sweet home,” Jasper said. We stood on the corner burst out laughing beneath the building’s molting façade, doubled over, wiping tears from our cheeks, but really I was very glad to have arrived, and relieved to have a place to stay.
In the lobby an old man in horn-rimmed glasses sat eating an ear of roasted corn. We slipped past him and up the spiral stairs.
Inside Jasper’s room, on a low metal-framed bed, a shirtless boy leaned against the wall reading. His skin was brown and his eyes were a dark, metallic hazel. He was using a pile of books as a bedside coffee table, and there was another pile spilled out across the floor in the center of the room. After sleeping outside on benches or inside on floors with crowds milling about, the place felt enormous and private and extravagant.
“You’re a wee bit late, yeah?” the boy said. “Thought maybe it was some shite with drivers.”
Jasper shook his head, leaned down, and kissed him on the mouth, then walked briskly past and opened the balcony door, kicked some bottles over to the side, and tossed my pack against the rail.
“Right, my love,” Jasper said, exhaling a cloud of blue gray smoke and gesturing with his cast. “This is where you’ll be staying. You must behave yourself or you’ll upset my brother Milo. You may have heard of Milo Rollock. He’s won several awards for hitting other men hard in the face at a small but exclusive gymnasium in Manchester. That’s a place in England, Bridey. Manchester, England, it’s called.”
Milo unscrewed the cap on a bottle of ouzo, handed it to me, and I drank a few sips. I’d now spent every minute of the afternoon drinking a few sips. Jasper took the bottle next and poured the thin, translucent spirit down his throat.
Jasper said, “He’s a poet as well, obviously. Just look at the man . . .”
Milo gave us a close-lipped smile, held out his hand. He had strong shoulders, had calm eyes. “Milo Rollock,” he said formally, as if Jasper and I weren’t staggering. A copy of the Athens Times was spread out in front of him, a pencil tucked behind his ear. I tried to see what books were on the stack by the bed, but looking down made the room spin.
“Bridey,” I said taking his hand. He reached beneath the bed and pulled up a bottle of Amstel, uncapped it with a lighter, and handed it to me, then made room for me beside him. Patted the bed. I sat and drank.
“Where’ve y’come from?” Milo’s accent was so thick, it sounded like he was speaking half in another language or had a speech impediment.
“The States,” I said, sitting down. “By way of some other places.”
Jasper appeared to be falling asleep standing up.
“Com’ed, handsome,” Milo said to him. “Better sit down.”
“I’ll sit down, then,” Jasper said. He reclined on the floor in front of us, leaned his head back against the bed, and Milo ran his hands through his hair, brushed the sweat from his forehead. I tipped the bottle of Amstel to Jasper’s lips so he could drink. He shut his eyes and it was as if I could suddenly see him. I looked at his beautiful throat, the line of his lips, the bones in his jaw, the lovely hollow of his cheeks. His ribs were visible beneath his T-shirt. He had the palest skin, like something that had lived a life submerged. I wanted to put my mouth on his. I wanted to put my mouth all over him.
Milo watched me. Smiled, then turned to light a cigarette. “Must be tired from bein’ with this joker all afternoon, yeah?”
“It was no trouble,” I said.
“Evenin’s lovely here once the temperature drops. He won’t be sober till morning.” He casually pointed his chin at Jasper, who’d slumped down and was now lying flat on the floor. “But we’ll go out for a wander, yeah? Go walk up round Monastiraki Square. Get you something to eat. You look hungry. Good ta get out. See the lights shinin’ on the Acropolis in the dark.”
“What’re you reading?” I asked Milo.
“This? Just looking in the adverts for a better place for meself and this charmer. Tryna find a house-sit, yeah? On the islands, with any luck. And this”—he said, holding up a small hardback with a red cover—“is some poetry. You fancy it? Jasper got sent The Holy Sonnets, in a package.”
A white moth fluttered around the lamp and then over Jasper’s face. He reached up and caught it, put it quickly in his mouth, one white wing protruding from his lips, still fluttering, struggling, until he spit it out, dead and wet against his chest.
Milo laughed tensely through his teeth, brushed the moth to the floor, then took a long sip from the bottle and handed it to me. I drank and stretched out next to him.
“Listen to this,” he said, turning a page of the book. “You’ll like this.”
* * *
We lived that way for months. The past was a physical feeling that sometimes washed over me; an unrealized ache in my bones, like after sleeping on hard floors, or drifting for weeks with little to eat. It was not a series of images, or memories; it was nothing that could be spoken.
Milo’s story was as silent as mine but present on his face: a wide, flat nose, a strange ear, compassionate eyes filled with the abiding patience of one who has gotten by on little and tolerated much.
Jasper talked for all of us, in a fascinating and repulsive monologue I had first thought was a joke: Jasper playing piano for gatherings his parents had; going to the West End with his mother to the bakery he loved, to the club with his father during breaks from school; horse riding and punting and cricket. Summer by the sea. Christmases with thirty-foot trees. His father reading Dylan Thomas out loud; presents and more presents; he and his sister entertaining guests by acting out scenes from Fawlty Towers. And then at school: contraband cigarettes and Viz comics and house music, and poppers and beautiful boys in the showers. At school there was always something to take from someone who wouldn’t miss it, someone who got what they deserved for being a fascist as well as a philistine.
These scenes of domestic life were all the more believable for being told in a sweltering room above the din of traffic by a drunken skeleton in a dingy, sweat-stained T-shirt.
It was Jasper he saw with his eyes closed. It was Bridey he saw everywhere else.
Walking through the East Village in the morning, early fall and the
leaves turning gold, cutting through Tompkins Square and passing the queer cast-off kids sleeping out on the center lawn atop cardboard pallets beneath the trees, wearing everything they owned; or sitting groggy and pissed outside Ray’s Candy Store with last night’s bottle and a small hot coffee steaming into the cool air between their faces. It was impossible for Milo not to think of her.
When Jasper’d dragged her back from Larissis, she’d no money and looked rougher than they did: black hair, the kind of tan that comes from sleeping out. A feral thing with ice-blue eyes like an Eskimo dog’s. She moved lightly, weighed nothing, had a delicate Celtic face, wide mouth, and pointed, slightly crooked eyeteeth. He’d many occasions to look at her.
Dressed always in Levi’s and combat boots, her body was like a boy’s: small breasts, might well have been pectoral muscles, her shoulders well-defined, veins visible in her strong arms. Bridey was an American survivor, the kind that made you think of the Donner Party. She had a rangy quick stride even when she was drunk; carried lighter fluid and matches and electrical tape in her bag. She smiled when she thought no one was looking and beneath her clothes the skin was soft and pale.
It had been twenty-five years since their last word, but when Milo moved to the United States he believed he would find her again. Stranger things had happened in the time they had known each other. Coincidences disguised as fate. She could be out on the street right now, could be sitting beneath the elms in Tompkins Square. The appointment at the New School had seemed like a sign. Another unlikely place she might know where to find him.
The job he’d had before this one was on a loading dock in Salford, not far from his mother’s flat. Now he worked in a pretty building with wide corridors and tall windows. The hallway leading to his office was a gauntlet of closed wooden doors self-consciously decorated with worn, grubby New Yorker cartoons. He was obligated to be on campus every day to talk to students, to write his third collection, and to teach one class. The apartment he lived in was paid for by the school. It was, without doubt, the most luxurious situation he could tolerate.