by Jack Ketchum
A pair of hands slipped over his eyes.
“O singrafeas! My writer!”
He knew that voice-rough, Greek and feminine.
“Xenia.”
“So turn around and give me a kiss, Robert Dodgson.”
He turned to familiar bright gray eyes and a crooked smile, the smile lines webbing her broad scarred face. He put his hand into her thick mane of jet-black hair and kissed her.
“You are back.”
“I am back.”
“Good. Okay. These are your friends?”
“Michelle Favre, Danny Hicks. This is Xenia Milioris. Best kiss on the island.” They shook hands.
“You are here for a while?”
“A week or so, yes.”
“Good. You come to the bar tonight? You better.”
“Of course.”
“Okay, good. I have to run. I got to put my boat in the water.” Predictably, she was suddenly fierce. “These assholes at the dock, they don’t know shit how to do it. I got to show them. Tomorrow we go to Delos. Eduardo, me-a bunch of us. We have a picnic. You want to come? All of you. If the weather is nice.”
“Sounds good.”
“Okay, we’ll talk about it tonight, all right? I’ll tell Eduardo, Dimitris, the rest of those bastards, you’re here. All right? I kiss you, darling!”
“I kiss you, Xenia.”
She moved quickly away. Her gait was almost a man’s. He watched her.
Sometimes Dodgson thought she was the only person in Greece who was always on the run, a single locomotive in a world full of baby strollers. At the bar where she worked she was amazing, weaving through the thick crowd of dancers with her tray held high over her head, her policeman’s whistle shrill over the pounding music, darting around with uncanny accuracy and nerve-racking speed.
Like the flower men she was essential to the place for Dodgson, part of the landscape. Six years ago they’d hit it off immediately and he figured he was lucky. You wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of Xenia. He’d seen her break a beer bottle over some witless Irish kid’s skull one night. Once she decided he had it coming she hadn’t hesitated an instant. It was more than that, though. If you got on the wrong side of Xenia you’d have missed something.
The others were looking at him.
“Just friends," he said.
“An interesting lady,” said Danny. “A bit two-fisted, I think.”
“She is. Xenia was born and raised here. She works in a bar and takes home whoever she likes in a country where most women stay in the house all night sewing and wouldn’t be caught dead in a bar-and where most of the men damn well keep them there. It’s a small island. She’s tough.”
“I get you.”
“It’s just as well she’s two-fisted. Otherwise they’d crush her.”
"Tee oreo-anthioanthopolis!”
The flower man turned the comer.
“Watch this,” he said. “God, I love this place.”
The flower man posed and smiled.
Flashbulbs popped in the gathering dusk.
LELIA
AT SEA
The Greek was a sailor with the merchant marine and he’d trotted out his limited opening gambits the moment she sat down. But it was easy to discourage him.
It was easier every day now.
Why was that?
For a moment she felt a vague uncertainty. She closed her eyes and three images skittered through her imagination. A full moon. Then dark of the moon, clouds scurrying through the sky. A woman-herself?- in childbirth. She opened them again.
The sailor sat near her a discrete distance away reading a book.
Lelia leaned against the rail and watched the sea roll by. The lower deck was crowded, mostly with Greeks bound for Tinos or Siros. They were noisy and dirty. Their children ran around like indians and there were plastic bags dripping bread and cheese and fruit everywhere. Overripe. It’s all so overripe, she thought.
The only problem with Greece was Greeks.
And one of them was staring at her.
A skinny old hag of a woman dressed in black.
Go to hell, she thought.
She looked back across the railing and watched the gulls scavenge the sides of the boat.
When she got bored with that the woman was still staring.
Her face was expressionless but her gaze was hard and steady. And now two middle-aged women were watching her too. The hag was fingering a blue bead hanging from a chain around her neck.
The sailor looked up from his book.
What the fuck is this? A show? Who do you think you’re staring at?
She stood up.
Abruptly the woman turned her head and spat.
Lelia stood rooted there. Surprise and anger boiled in her. Why you dirty old bitch.
She started forward.
The woman saw her move and turned her head away again, spread the fingers of her left hand and shoved the hand palm-outward in her direction.
“Nah!" she barked.
And suddenly the sailor was on his feet, rattling off some unintelligible Greek to the woman and at the same time stepping toward Lelia, stepping between them to hold her back. The woman answered angrily and then it was a shouting match between them, with everybody on the lower deck watching.
She didn’t understand a word of it.
She damn well didn’t like it either.
The woman was pointing at her, yelling. The sailor shouted back, red-faced, gesticulating wildly.
Finally the old hag snatched up her plastic bag and repeated the palm-outward shove. “Arpa!” she said.
She pulled the shawl up over her shoulders and walked stiffly away.
Lelia and the sailor looked at each other.
“Do you mind telling me…?”
The man looked sheepish. Forty-five, she guessed, and acting like a ten-year-old. Greeks.
“I am very sorry. I apologize for her. Very stupid old woman, very…insulting. I am sorry. She is old, you see, and these old peoples, they have stupid thoughts. She says you have the evil eye. I am sorry.”
He grinned, embarrassed.
“She gave you a moondza."
“Moondza?”
“A bad word. How you say? A curse. Yes, a curse. A swearing word. That is the spreading of the fingers, you see. ‘Aipa!’ she say. Catch! You catch the moondza. You see? Is old foolishness. I apologize for her.” Lelia sat down. So did the sailor. She could see how uncomfortable he was, how much he wanted to get back to his book.
Not yet, she thought.
Something swirled in her. Something wonderful. Just outside her conciousness.
"And the bead? What was the bead she was fingering? She wore it around her neck.”
“Ah! To preserve her from the evil eye. You understand, we are new country now but we are old country too and many people still believe in this…this evil eye. So they carry the bead. And you have blue eyes, you see. Very blue.”
“So-"
“It is the thought, the belief, that the woman with blue eyes is best to give the evil eye. Is stupid, no?”
Lelia said nothing.
“But she will not trouble you now.”
“She’d better not.”
“Don’t worry. I have told her.”
“Thank you.”
“Is nothing. Is fine.”
The man went back to his book, his face still flushed with excitement. She wondered if he was really reading.
Now and then the two middle-aged women would glance nervously in her direction.
She lit a cigarette.
“What if it were true?” she said quietly.
“Eh?”
“What if I really could cast the evil eye. You’d have been very wrong then, wouldn’t you? To have helped me.”
The man stared at her, forgetting it was impolite, forgetting himself completely for a moment. He gawked.
“But you are a tourist,” he said. “Are you not?”
“Yes.”
He spread his hands and shrugged.
“How can tourist have the evil eye?”
How indeed, thought Lelia.
DODGSON
MYKONOS
“Hey, Skippy. Look who’s here.”
He looked where Danny pointed and saw another ferry full with passengers pulling in to Paradise Beach, scraping bottom in the shallow water. Climbing off the ladder, carrying a towel and beach mat, was Billie Durant, looking tanned and fine in a black one-piece bathing suit cut high along the thighs.
He stood and brushed off the sand and was about to call her over. “No. Hold on a minute. See where she goes.”
There was a taverna up the beach and a small store next to it where they sold paperbacks and tanning lotion. They saw her head for that. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Michelle lay beside them sleeping in the sun. They didn’t wake her. They slipped on their trunks and walked up the beach. It occurred to Dodgson that they’d almost missed her. Had they gone to Delos as planned, if Xenia’s boat hadn’t developed leaks, they wouldn’t be on the beach today. The leaks were no longer disappointing.
She was paying for a pack of cigarettes. Danny slipped up behind her. He whispered in her ear.
“Before we begin. Do you have loud orgasms?”
She whirled and he saw fury in her face before she recognized them. Then she burst out laughing.
“You pair of rats! You gave me a turn!”
“So how are you, English?”
“I’m fine. Even better now you’re here.”
“Well, of course you are.”
“When did you arrive?” she asked Dodgson.
“Just yesterday.”
“Lelia and Michelle?”
“Lelia we left home,” said Danny. “Michelle’s down on the beach. Come on. We’ll surprise her.”
“Wonderful. Just let me pay for this.”
***
The man behind the counter took her thirty drachmas. She slipped the cigarettes into her bag and took Dodgson’s arm as though she belonged there. It was noon and the sun was hot but the breeze was still good and strong. The beach was crowded. They walked past naked bodies browning in the sun.
He liked her on his arm. She felt good there.
At the mats the two women greeted each other like old friends and Dodgson thought how quickly an intimacy could spring up in this place.
He thought of Xenia.
They’d known each other a mere three weeks and that had been six years ago, yet last night at the bar it was as though it were only a matter of days and they’d been friends forever.
She’d taken a break and they’d talked.
“Listen,” she said to him, “this is my home and probably it will always be, but it gets no easier, Dodgson. Too damn many peasants here. You know what I mean, peasants? Especially the women.”
“You’re strong. You can handle it.”
“I am a sonovabitch, Dodgson. But who knows if that is enough? You know?”
He understood. She was breaking all the rules and in all the Greek community of Mykonos she was alone at it. Much as he admired the old ways and worried about the new he thought she had courage and was glad of this intimacy with her.
And now he was glad to see Billie too.
He felt safer surrounded by friends, people who wished him well. Though with Billie it was already a little different.
Christ! he thought. Haven’t you had enough? After Lelia?
No.
Because that was the whole point. After Lelia, getting interested again was almost a necessity. You had to keep going or maybe you’d get to thinking that the only way it could be was bad or crazy, that it would keep on being that way with women forever, one more Lelia- or worse, one more Margot-after another. And if that happened all the friends in the world weren’t going to help any.
He watched her peel off the swimsuit. It was the first he’d seen her naked. He liked what he saw. The slightest bit soft in the belly-as he was-but barely noticeable. She had long shapely legs and her neck was lovely, her body tanned a light golden color-probably, he thought, about as dark as she got. There was no tan line.
She was not in Lelia’s class physically but few women were and the important thing was that she carried her nudity without the slightest hint of self-conciousness or immodesty, with a nice easy grace. No coy seductiveness and no parade. What you had here was a straightforward woman with all parts intact, he thought, mind and body.
And I bet her orgasms are deafening.
He realized she was talking to him.
“What happened? I mean with Lelia? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“You don’t want to know.”
She nodded. “I had a feeling that would be a bad one.”
“It was.”
“I saw you go by that night. I was sitting on my terrace. She looked…very determined about something.”
“She was determined all right.”
“She worried me. I thought at the time…”
“Goon.”
“I thought that she looked…ferocious. Honestly. That’s the word that comes to mind. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Less than you’d think. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You’re not prying.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. “In that case I’ll let you tell me. Sometime. Care for a swim?”
“Sure.”
They stood up. They used their sandals to weigh down their mats against the gusty breeze.
“Did you make any plans for dinner tonight?”
He had the sudden urge to lock her into something-into dinner, at least. She looked at him and smiled again.
“Of course. I’m eating with your lot, aren’t I?”
He laughed. “Absolutely.”
“Good. It’s settled then. Last one in!”
She bolted away.
God knows I’ve been wrong before, he thought. I may be wrong again. But I think this one’s healthy.
He glanced at Danny, who was looking at him, nodding.
LELIA
When she got off the boat the first one she saw was the Frenchman, big and crude-looking.
Good, she thought.
Very good.
Right after Dodgson.
BILLIE
She found herself wondering how his kiss would be.
And wondering that surprised her.
Now and then as they walked, the trail over the hill snaked through rough terrain and Dodgson would take her hand. It was meaningless, the gesture of a gentleman and nothing more. But the hand was smooth and warm and dry-soft, the way she supposed a writer’s hands ought to be. They pleased her. And that surprised her too.
Because the other man’s hands had been soft as well, she remembered them vividly, lying in the hospital bed in Spain half-unconscious at first with amoebic dysentery and then slowly awakening to the shameful terrible fact that the doctor’s hands had been on her frequently throughout her days of fever, stroking her, invading her cruelly, invading her everywhere and then one final nightmare day of full awareness, of seeing and feeling all he did to her with utter clarity, too weak to stop him.
The authorities’ response had amounted to a smug dismissal.
It had taken her a good long time even to think of a man again.
Precisely, it had taken her until now.
They stopped for a breather. It was four but the sun was still hot. There was no one about. The beach was far behind them. Away in the distance she heard the tin-can tinkle of a goat bell. That was all. Only that fine peace, that familiar Greek stillness.
The trail was bare and rocky. She looked around.
“Do you suppose there are snakes about?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. Too late in the day. The only poisonous snake in Greece is the viper anyway. And they’re no problem if you’re careful. Sometimes you s
ee them sunning themselves on paths like these but you’re not likely to step on one if you watch where you’re going. They’re pretty big. Why? You afraid of snakes? I thought it was cats.”
“Not me. Michelle. She says she's been staying off all the trails and rocky bits.”
He pointed to a series of low stone walls running parallel to the trail a few yards away.
“See those? They build them to catch and hold rainwater along the hillsides. That’s where you’d most likely see a snake. So if you’re climbing in there, say around midday, I’d be careful. Otherwise you’re fine. I’ll mention it to her.”
They continued walking. She was glad they’d decided to take the trail back from the beach instead of the ferry with Michelle and Danny.
It gave her time to be alone with him and time to digest all he’d told her about Lelia after their swim. It must have been gruesome for him, harrowing. No doubt he’d be shy of aggressive women for a while- maybe of the opposite sex in general.
She knew how that felt.
But he had her hand in his again and she thought she’d like that kiss-amazingly, she really did. She felt such quiet warmth from him.
The path opened up. There was room for them to walk two abreast I now and the trail was worn straight and smooth yet he kept her hand. She glanced at him and smiled and he returned it.
It was all downhill from here on in and soon the dock was in sight and the bus beyond it-the bus that would take them back to town. So that in a way she felt it was now or never.
“Could we try something?” she said. She stopped and faced him.
He looked at her, puzzled for a moment. Then he understood.
“Yes, I think we can.”
“And then if it doesn’t work particularly, we can…”
He smiled. “Just a guess, but I think it’ll work.”
She moved into his arms. His lips, his hands on her back-all the sensations were smooth and enveloping and wonderful.
“You’re so gentle!” she said, and heard the surprise in her voice.
SADLIER
Twenty minutes later Gerard Sadlier watched them get off the bus.