by Cara Hoffman
In the silent carpeted corridor I stood next to a cart loaded with towels and soaps while she strolled to her room. After waiting ten minutes I knocked and said the word housekeeping, and she opened the door even though I made no attempt to disguise my voice with an accent. She was already wearing a different dress.
I shut and locked the door and then walked past her into the room, and still it took her a minute to understand that I wasn’t there to clean it; she was used to people who looked like me doing things for her.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I need your clothing and some money and your passport.”
She went quickly for the phone but I grabbed it, unplugged it, and threw it across the room. She looked stronger than I was but she was frightened of the unexpected and had learned to do nothing when she was afraid.
“I’m not robbing you,” I told her.
“What are you doing, then?” she asked quickly, her breath tight in her chest.
I looked at the shirt lying on the bed, figured she had more dresses in the closet or her suitcase I could wear.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice trembling and filled with either compassion or guile. “Do you need to see a doctor?”
“I’m fine,” I told her. I sat down on the bed. “Please give me your passport and your purse and I’d like to wear the clothes you were wearing when you walked from the Acropolis.”
I reached into my bag and she started to cry a little.
“Okay,” I said. “I do need your help.”
But I didn’t know what to say after that.
I watched her eyes studying my clothing, my face, my belly.
“I’d be happy to give you money for food or whatever you need,” she said, wiping her eyes quickly, impatiently. “You don’t have to demand it.”
“No, thank you.”
“What are you doing?” she asked. “What is it you’re doing?”
She was nice, but she wasn’t the kind of person who would have offered me anything if I wasn’t capable of hurting her.
“I’m sorry to have to do this,” I told her.
I wasn’t. I was happy to do it, to correct at least one small part of an error. And she’d be fine, go home and have a story to tell. I wasn’t sorry in the least.
“What are you doing in Athens?” she asked quickly, trying to start a conversation. She flinched when I laughed and I could see she thought I was crazy and then I did feel sorry for her and took out my knife.
“Not much,” I told her. “Reading, mostly. I think I may have misinterpreted some myths I read as a kid. I’m trying to understand them better.”
“Do you need help?” she asked again. But really she was saying “I need help” and had no one to say it to. I watched her struggling to place me, to know anything about me. “Maybe we can work something out,” she said, meaning “Maybe I can get you arrested” or “Maybe I can bribe you to leave and then get you arrested.”
I said, “You can give me your passport and clothing and purse and not tell anyone about it for a few hours.”
“I can just give you some money or buy you a plane ticket, maybe a ferry ticket. Please,” she said, “let me help you.”
If I was who she thought I was, this is when I’d have hurt her, not agreed to leave. “I don’t need a plane ticket,” I said.
“Where are you from?”
“Washington State,” I told her, and at this she looked even more startled.
“You’re American,” she said.
I didn’t bother to answer. I could no longer admit to anything as criminally stupid as having a nationality.
“Do you need money?” she asked. “For . . .” She gestured at my body.
“I’m sorry,” I said, standing up and holding the knife to her throat. “But I really got to get going.” She made a sound in her mouth but no attempt to struggle. When she started crying I wiped the tears from her cheeks with my thumb. And then I really was sad that she was so adept at agreeing to things she didn’t want. Her skin felt hot and she was trembling. “It’s okay,” I told her, trying to calm her, brushing her hair back from her forehead. “It’s okay,” I said. “After this, you’ll be stronger and things won’t seem that bad.”
The whites of her eyes grew large as she held herself still. She was weak and filled with abeyant terror. And I was happy to separate her from some of the little objects that’d held her down for so long.
* * *
The name on her passport was Sutton Rowe. She lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was eight years older than me. Her clothes fit fine. I put the skirt and Milo’s shirt into my book bag. Looked at myself in the mirror waiting for the elevator. I couldn’t pass for her but I could pass for a frightened pregnant tourist who’d just been robbed and who had nice clothes and enough money to be paid attention to.
The rain had let up. I got a cab to Athens Inn and walked through the lobby as if I were staying there. The linen closet was easy to break into by slipping the knife between the door and the wall. Inside, the air was stale and smelled of him, an acrid undertone of leather and blood. His cot was unmade, a pile of clothes on top. Multiple versions of the same outfit. Levi’s and white T-shirts folded and neatly stacked, and a pair of running shoes. He was in Athens. Wouldn’t have left the place in this state otherwise; with any luck he was running a train and would be back within an hour or two. There was a large tin of Barry’s tea on the side table; an electric kettle, a beaten copy of The Haw Lantern lying open and facedown to keep a page. And there was an envelope of photographs: places and people in Athens as well as his usual trophy shots. I went through them to make sure there weren’t any of me or Milo. There were two of Jasper; one of him grinning, with a bottle in his hand in the bar of the train, and another of him standing out on the street, smirking, about to say something. I jammed them into my pack before they could do their terrible work on me; I did not need to be reduced to begging a silent empty space for the return of someone I had half imagined.
I took a pair of jeans off the top of the pile and slipped Sutton’s passport and two of the three Milo’d given me into the back pocket, laid them out as if he’d just been wearing them. Put Murat’s papers on the table with his maps. Then I set Sutton’s purse on the floor by his bed, took out her Social Security card, memorized the number, looked at her license, and memorized her address. She was a good three inches taller than me but there was nothing to be done about it.
* * *
The district station was in a large municipal building with columns and marble stairs, a Stalinesque construction that had been transformed on the inside into a perfect replica of a dingy booking office in a cop movie: drop ceilings, bright flickering fluorescent lighting. A man in a uniform with a black moustache and light eyes sat at a desk near the door eating an ear of roasted corn on a stick.
“I’ve been robbed,” I said, trying to sound indignant and frightened. “My passport has been stolen! And my purse . . . I saw the man; he ran into a hotel. Athens Inn, it’s just down the street! I saw him! He’s there now, I’m sure. He threatened me with a knife.” I tried to cry but couldn’t do it. I gave a detailed description of Declan. “Maybe he’s still there now!”
The man listened to me, squinting. He put his hands up, pushed at the air, some kind of sign to make me slow down, got on the phone, and spoke in Greek while I stood there trying to behave like Sutton had when I took her things.
Eventually two uniformed men came out front to stand by the desk and spoke with me in broken English until a gray-haired man in a jacket and tie came over and asked me questions. He had an officious halting accent that sounded like he’d learned English from watching British sitcoms. I told them I was sure the criminal was there now, said I’d be able to identify him, and gave them Sutton’s hotel address where they could reach me if they found him.
> “What are you doing here in this neighborhood?”
“Why are you asking what I’m doing here?” I put my hand on my belly and leaned against the counter and the men exchanged glances. Got me a chair.
I gave them the rest of Sutton’s information. Told them I’d be available to make statements, then pretended I had to meet my husband. It didn’t matter if Sutton was out there somewhere telling the whole story about me. Soon I’d be gone. And if they went to Athens Inn, if they started looking through his things, I’d be the least of their concerns.
Once I’d done all I could and left the station, I headed to Drinks Time.
The American passport belonged to a flat-faced thirty-year-old man with a receding hairline named Jared Misnick.
I ordered a Turkish coffee and sat at the bar waiting for Boulous to show up. Finally I asked the bartender if he’d seen him. He pointed to a corner where a group of men had been sitting the whole time. I hadn’t noticed them, so silent and still before the television. They were leaning back in their chairs looking up at the screen, transfixed by an image of Dustin Hoffman in terrible broken Coke bottle glasses and a filthy-looking Steve McQueen. They were standing on a windy cliffside talking, but it was dubbed into Greek.
I sat down beside the men. “How’s it going?” I asked.
One of them shushed me. Boulous looked closely at my eyes. Recognized me, looked surprised, then went back to watching TV.
Sentimental music played and Steve McQueen tottered forward, hugged Dustin Hoffman, who cried and kissed him on the neck.
“Hey,” I said. They all turned sharply around and glared at me, gestured toward the movie.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” I pulled the passport out of my pocket and held it up, then tossed it out in front of them. Boulous pressed my hand down on the table, covering it with his, then actually nodded once more to the screen, where Steve McQueen was hurling himself and a homemade raft off the cliff into the ocean. The music swelled; ragged, bespectacled Dustin Hoffman stared out into the sea, acting. One of the men at the table wiped tears from his eyes.
When the credits began rolling, Boulous turned to me.
“There’s something you found?” he asked.
“I found this and thought you might want it,” I told him quick and blank.
“Where is your friends?” Boulous asked. And it seemed more of a warning than a question. He handed the passport to an older man with a stubbly pockmarked face and long eyelashes. The man said something I didn’t understand and Boulous spoke with him for several minutes.
“I need to get going,” I interrupted them, starting to get up. “Do you want it or not?”
The older man looked up, amused, and Boulous grabbed my wrist and held me there.
“Yes or no?” I said.
Their faces shined with indignant surprise. Finally Boulous said, “This is already ours.”
“Then I guess you’ll give me a finder’s fee.”
The third man, the one who’d got misty watching Steve McQueen, started to stand but the older man put a hand on his arm and he sat back down.
“Where did you get it?” the older man asked. His English was perfect.
I said nothing. He put four bills on the table.
“From Declan Joyce,” I said. “He lives at Athens Inn.”
Milo read about Murat’s release not long before Zenaida came back to reclaim her house on the island. It was the last thing he learned about Bridey. Passports from the original sale and the papers of Murat Christensen were found at Athens Inn; a longtime IRA fugitive had been extradited, charged with trafficking.
The picture of Murat after months in jail was something he shouldn’t have looked at.
It was easy to imagine different versions of what she’d done. She’d informed, turned herself in, made a deal, been deported back to the States. Or she’d been caught with the documents and it led to everyone being caught. He imagined her having the baby, or the baby being born dead. The baby, if it lived, would be as old as Navas.
These stories in the paper were the last things she communicated to him about their lives together and the kind of man he was.
When Zenaida came back from her semester in England she read what he’d been writing. He’d nowhere to go, no plan. North Africa, he’d told her. He’d live at a port until he found work. Zenaida said no.
Three years wandering drunk, working odd jobs, sleeping out, ruined, running, ended with a placement exam and classes and within a year a book of poems. He returned to the city where he was born; such a reversal of luck, it was like his life in Athens had never happened. Like he had never trembled with the terror of loving someone.
Milo had planned to make dinner, to write her letter, but the afternoon had gotten away from him and now it was dark. The sounds of a garbage truck and men talking and the hollow clunking of plastic containers and trash being crushed came up from the street. Navas startled him coming in. His drink had tipped over onto the floor and it smelled like candy or cough syrup or disinfectant. He picked it up.
“Where’s what’s-his-name?” Milo asked. She stood in the doorway and the cool from the corridor wafted toward him. He wondered if it was snowing outside.
“His name’s Shaunjaye. You gonna get outta bed?”
“I think you should date a boy with a better name. What’s he do besides beat up your brother? What’s he do?”
“He’s got finals for the Golden Gloves coming up.”
“What’s he do?” Milo asked again. “For money.”
“He’s working at Foot Locker,” she said. “He’s there now.”
“What’s that, like some kind of fetish club?”
She sucked her teeth. “No. It’s a shoe store. You gonna get up?”
“I’ve no problem with you and Juan.”
“Shaunjaye,” she said, then: “Doesn’t matter. No one knows what the fuck you’re saying with that speech impediment.”
“Accent,” he said.
She eyed his mattress, looked around the room, and it was then he realized the can he was holding was half-full.
“I don’t mind you and Shaun being here,” he said, taking a sip.
“Shaunjaye.”
“You always say his last name? That’s so oddly formal.”
She took the can out of his hand and walked into the kitchen. He could hear her pouring what was left of it down the sink.
“Why’d they ever take that stuff off market?” he called to her.
She appeared in the doorway, looking down at him, her arms folded.
“Come here,” he said.
Navas sat on the edge of the mattress.
“Come here,” he said again. He put his arms out to her and she laid her head on his chest.
“How was school?” he asked. He closed his eyes and placed his palm against her cheek, felt her breathe.
“Fine,” she said. “It was fine.”
Outside our room we can hear the sea, the slow roll of waves, people calling to one another in the distance.
Her soft black hair curls at the base of her neck. She has small hands, milk breath, the darkest, brightest eyes. The smell of her skin is a drug and her voice carries the sounds of where we’ve been; strong and strange, the language before language.
A ferry’s ride away, people gaze in awe at a reconstructed ruin.
And at night I wake to hear her, laughing in her sleep.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Jin Auh, Ira Silverberg, and Kimberly Burns.
Thanks to Rebecca Friedman, Alexis Gargagliano, and Millicent Bennett.
Thanks to Julianna Haubner and Loretta Denner.
Read more from Cara Hoffman
So Much Pretty
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Be Safe I Love You
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About the Author
(c) Constance Faulk
Cara Hoffman is the author of the critically acclaimed novels So Much Pretty and Be Safe I Love You. She has written for the New York Times, Marie Claire, Salon, and National Public Radio. Her work has received numerous awards and accolades, including a Folio Prize nomination and a Sundance Institute Global Filmmaking Award. She has been a visiting writer at Columbia, St. John’s, and the University of Oxford. She lives in Manhattan and is currently at work on her fourth novel.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.