So Shelly (23 page)

“What happened then?”

“After a brief period of full martial law, the Regime of Colonels collapsed under the combined weight of the blood it had spilled at Polytechnic, its own infighting, the resistance of patriotic military officers, and the contrary will of the people.”

“If the dictatorship was ended and, I assume, democratic reforms enacted, why 17N?”

“That night changed my father forever. He rose the next day a Marxist. Together with his brothers—both of whom had been arrested and tortured by the military police for just having Communist acquaintances—and a small group of others, they formed and operated as 17N until they were arrested.”

“So, what do you and Rony call yourselves?”

Zoe leaned across the table, a move that exposed the tops
of her breasts and more than ample cleavage over the top of the white peasant blouse, which she wore off her bare shoulders. “We are ‘the Struggle,’ ” she whispered.

“Sounds more like an alternative rock band than a terr—” He corrected himself. “Freedom fighting organization.”

To Gordon’s surprise, not only did she not take offense at his near slip of the tongue and haul off and slap him again, but she actually smiled, exposing perfectly straight and perfectly white teeth.

Abruptly, she straightened, rose to her feet, and said, “We’ll talk again.”

Before he could inquire why, where, or when, she was gone, having disappeared into the Athens night, leaving him to pay for her coffees.

I despised the way Gordon had of one-upping Shelly and of denying her even the smallest amount of happiness that didn’t flow from his own doing or his mere presence.

When they were kids, his Civil War games pulverized Shelly’s Ottawa peace councils. When Shelly began a friendship with Hogg, Gordon destroyed it. When Shelly’s Gothic tale of murder should have been her moment, Gordon contributed his little vampire story and stole the spotlight. When Shelly joined the Ottawa on North Bass, Gordon suddenly discovered his sociopolitical conscience and joined a revolutionary cell of Greek Communists. I hate it that so much of what should be Shelly’s story is about Gordon. But then, so much of her life was too.

Now, you know Gordon. How genuine a conversion could his have been? And could it all have been purely coincidental? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

As Shelly told it, Gordon awoke the next morning to a knock on his hotel room door. Spying only an empty hallway through the peephole, he opened his door to the full length of the chain lock, and still saw no one. At his feet, however, was a shoe box wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. After unlocking the chain, he held the box to his ear and listened for ticking. His conversation the previous evening had stoked his imagination.

Back inside the room, he sat on the floor at the foot of his bed and undid the string and paper. When he removed the lid of the shoe box, he discovered a book with one red and yellow word across the bottom: “Che.” This was the title of John Lee Anderson’s biography of Che Guevara, the handsome son of Argentinean aristocracy turned guerilla fighter, Marxist rebel, and trusted intimate of Fidel Castro, the leader of the guerilla revolutionary forces during the overthrow of Batista’s Cuba. Guevara’s portrait filled the remainder of the cover. Gordon stared, mesmerized by Che’s handsome, swarthy bearded face and longish tousled black hair beneath a single-gold-starred-in-the-center black beret. For the next three days and nights, Gordon left Hobhouse to his own devices. He didn’t leave the room, didn’t shower or shave. Occasionally, he ordered room service and, when exhausted, slept, but for most of that time, he read from the eight-hundred-plus-page tome. Whenever his eyes grew weary or his brain
teemed with new ideas and impressions, he paused in his reading and studied the black-and-white photographs of Guevara at the varying stages of his life.

On the fourth morning, he received a phone call from Zoe. “We’ll pick you up at the main entrance at noon” was all she said before hanging up without waiting for a confirmation or to answer any of his million questions.

Gordon dragged himself into the bathroom and, this time, actually flipped on the light. Bracing himself with a one-handed stiff arm against the wall, he took a nearly orgasmic piss. When he turned his head and, for the first time in more than three days, studied himself in the mirror, he nearly had a stroke. For a brief sleep-deprived moment, with his brain besotted by revolutionary zeal, he could have sworn it was Che himself staring back at him in the mirror. He showered but kept the beard.

At exactly noon, Rony and Zoe arrived in a beat-up, most likely stolen, silver Toyota Corolla with rental plates. Rony, behind the wheel, reached across and threw open the front passenger-side door. Zoe sat in back in a hooded white terry-cloth beach cover-up.

“What’s up?” Gordon said.

Eyeing the beard, Rony and Zoe exchanged glances over the front seat and laughed. Remembering Gordon’s sarcasm on the day at the beach, she said, “What? No beret, comrade?”

Embarrassed by his overzealousness, Gordon blushed but felt relieved by his decision to leave in his room the beret that he had bought that morning.

Rony pulled onto the busy Syngrou Avenue and turned up the radio that pumped what Gordon would soon learn was rebetiko, a bluesy form of folk music, heavy on stringed and simple percussion instruments, that gives expression to the complaints of the poor and the oppressed and to the universal bullshit of living.

Gordon tried to initiate conversation over the too loud music. “We going to the beach? If we are, I didn’t bring a suit.”

Nothing.

“It’s hotter than balls,” he said.

Nothing.

“I read the book.”

Nothing.

“I hear Socrates fucked little boys.”

Nothing but a roll of Zoe’s eyes. He quit trying.

Eventually, the Corolla rolled up to the outskirts of the Plaka, Athens’s oldest neighborhood. It rests directly beneath the Acropolis. The Plaka has pretty much been abdicated by the indigenous people of Athens to those in the business of fleecing tourists. Quaint in the way nothing authentic really can be, it is filled with museums, cafés, shops, restaurants, street vendors, and street performers. The tourists flock to the Plaka, naïvely unsuspecting of the sharp-toothed smiling, scamming, and pocket-picking wolves among whom they mingle.

The preponderance of pedestrian tourists had caused the closing of most streets in the village, so Rony parked near Syntagma Square in the center of Athens. They walked up Nikis Street to where it ran into Kydathaneon, which they followed into the Plaka. Upon reaching the central square,
Rony and Zoe consulted their watches and, as far as Gordon could tell, made plans to rendezvous; then Rony took off and disappeared into the crowded streets.

“Hold this,” Zoe told Gordon as she handed him the same overstuffed black beach bag she’d carried on the day they’d first met.

He held her bag while she undid her cover-up to reveal the spangled black bikini top and a pair of tiny khaki-colored shorts that failed to contain the whale-tail of her black thong panties. After stuffing the cover-up into the bag, she removed from it and put on the oversized sunglasses and a pair of high-heeled sandals, which she exchanged for the tennis shoes she had worn for the walk from the car.

“Come,” Zoe said, and led him toward a small grocery advertising Greek wines and foods, and containing a variety of items resembling those of any convenience store in America. She checked her watch as they walked, before coming to a stop outside the store. “He’s late,” she said.

“Who’s late? Where are we?” Gordon asked.

No sooner had the words passed his lips than a clerk emerged from the entrance of the store, untying a full apron from around his neck. He walked toward them and handed Zoe the apron and a tiny slip of paper. She quickly scanned the paper scrap, handed it and the apron to Gordon, and said, “Let’s go.”

“Go? Where?”

Zoe was already entering the cavelike darkness of the store when he grabbed her by the elbow. “What’s this?” Gordon held the slip of paper before her eyes.

She pulled his arm down, like the lever of a slot machine,
while nudging him backward until his back was against the doorjamb. She pressed herself hard against him, rose onto her tiptoes, looked up into his confused eyes through her sunglasses, and put on a smile, as if they were a pair of lovers engaged in a moment of playful intimacy, and in a sweet voice incongruous to the words’ meaning, said, “Are you stupid?”

Sliding seamlessly into her improvisational routine, Gordon slipped his arms around her waist, placed his hands against the smooth skin of the small of her back, leaned forward, and turned his ear toward her.

“It’s the code for the cash register,” she said, before taking her leave with a dismissive two-handed shove against his chest, accompanied by canned laughter.

Still processing the purpose of his holding the entry code for the store’s cash register, Gordon watched as Zoe worked the aisles of the shop like they were a Parisian catwalk, before finally approaching the pated middle-aged man behind the counter, who had been ogling her since they’d entered the store. Because the clerk—who, it suddenly became clear to Gordon, was obviously Zoe’s compatriot—had gone on break, the owner was manning the store single-handedly. Zoe strutted her way to the counter, where she placed her elbows on the surface of the glass top, shoved her breasts within several inches of the owner’s nose, then stood upright with her shoulders thrown back, all the while engaging him in some kind of coquettish conversation. She twisted her torso and her head (giving the older gentleman total freedom to gape unchecked at her breasts in profile) and pointed questioningly toward the glass-doored stand-up cooler containing a variety of beverages in the back of the store.

Eventually, the storekeeper came around the counter and accompanied Zoe to the cold drinks. In a single glance, she communicated to Gordon, “Now’s the time. Do something that matters. Join the revolution. Be one of us.” He didn’t hesitate. It was a dare he couldn’t pass up. It was like sex in public: the accelerated heart rate, the hyperawareness of surroundings, the slightly metallic taste of fear, the sheer joy of perversion. He slung the borrowed apron over his head, walked behind the counter as if he owned the place, punched in the code from the scrap of paper he palmed, and pressed enter. The drawer slid silently open. Eschewing the coins, he calmly removed the multicolored stacks of euro bills: yellow two hundreds, green one hundreds, orange fifties, blue twenties, reddish tens, and gray fives. The currency, which he folded over and stuffed into the front pocket of his cargo shorts, impressed him as no more than Monopoly money. After gently closing the drawer, he strode from behind the counter directly toward the door.

Returning to the early afternoon light and heat, he removed the apron from around his neck, balled it up inside his fist as much as possible, and waited for Zoe across the street from the grocery.

When she exited, Zoe spotted him standing conspicuously still among the to-and-fro of the pedestrian traffic. Instead of crossing, she turned and reversed their route of ascent. Gordon mirrored her movement. With one eye on the onrushing pilgrims to the Plaka and Acropolis and one eye on her, he watched as, with her bag swinging from her shoulder, she deftly converted her hair into a ponytail and took a floral print summer dress from the bag. Then, with quick-change
artistry worthy of a Vegas show, she pulled it over herself to cover the bikini top and short shorts.

She walked past the abandoned Corolla and reunited with Rony in Syntagma Square. The clerk from the grocery stood next to him, smoking a cigarette. Gordon joined them and returned the apron to the clerk, who, clearly suspicious of Gordon’s motives, dropped the half-extinguished cigarette to the ground and smeared it against the concrete with the heel of his motorcycle boot.

Zoe pressed herself against Gordon as she had done in the store. Rising to her tiptoes, she whispered, “The money,” as he turned his head to listen.

Zoe’s warm breath, brushing zephyrlike past his ear, caused every one of Gordon’s nerve endings to quiver. He felt Zoe’s upturned palm pressing against his stomach. As discreetly as he could, he reached into his front pocket and passed the bills to her.

For an added touch of realism, Zoe planted a fleeting kiss on Gordon’s lips, leaving them whetted and wanting more, while Rony studied the ground at his feet.

The vignette completed, she turned to the others. “It’s not much,” she said, referencing the cash, “but it’ll help. And it won’t get the attention of the
batsos,
” which is the Greek equivalent of Americans calling the police pigs.

Wordlessly, Rony removed his backpack, partially unzipped the top, and set it at Zoe’s feet. Inside was a collection of men’s and women’s wallets pilfered from the pockets and purses of the Plaka’s visitors. His abundant haul earned for him a genuine look of appreciation and affection from Zoe, which left Gordon stung with jealousy.

“What now?” the clerk, who had had enough of the “feel good,” asked. “I can’t go back. The old man is a lecher, not an idiot.”

“Obviously, George,” Zoe answered. “There’s plenty more to be done.”

“Good.” He walked to a nearby trash can and deposited the apron. “I hated that job.”

The three Athenians began to converse in their native language. Frustrated by his lingual exclusion, Gordon interrupted their conversation. “Hold on. No more Greek. Either speak English or I’m out.”

“We’re sorry, but Rony’s English is not so good,” Zoe explained. “Let’s get out of here and we’ll talk.”

They hopped a city bus in Syntagma Square; the scrolling green digitized sign in the front window momentarily flashed “Pireas,” an area Gordon had already mentally bookmarked as a must-see destination during his time in Greece. He didn’t know much about Pireas other than its status as the largest port in all of Europe and its serving as the jumping-off point to the Greek islands. These two attributes—although on a much larger scale—made Pireas somewhat reminiscent of Ogontz, and even while sitting inside the inadequately air-conditioned and crowded city bus as it made its way southwest from central Athens, Gordon could feel the atmosphere outside becoming familiar as they neared the coast.