White Vespa (2 page)

Anne shook herself, then poured a little water from a plastic bottle onto her fingers and slapped it on her cheeks. “Wake up!” A few heads turned toward her and she walked stiffly over to the rail. She'd been sitting alone on a bench on the shady side of the boat for an hour, but no one had approached her, and no one approached her as she stood shading her eyes, looking down at the glassy water. She didn't mind. She preferred to be left alone. Anne was striking, very, without being attractive. People noticed her trim figure at the rail, men especially noticed her, the long legs in blue jeans, the wide black belt and the tight, ribbed sweater, but they didn't talk to her. She had lines, an almost exaggerated angularity, thick dark hair blunt cut at the shoulders, eyes set wide, light blue, but she had that distant quality.

At the rail, she was thinking about the hissing boy, about Paul, her brother. She'd run from him, as soon as she'd been able. She hadn't seen him again, but she hadn't gotten away from him, either. Wherever she went, he was already there, because she was carrying him with her. And if she'd run, he'd run farther, though he hadn't run from her. But distance didn't seem to matter, oceans between them didn't matter. He was there, intruding on her reveries, turning up in her dreams. In nightmares.

She'd never gotten free of Paul. And one day she woke up wondering if chasing might not be better than running. By nightfall she'd decided to go after him. She wanted to jerk the energy out of him, unplug him in her own head, somehow. She looked down at her hands on the rail, water rushing behind them, and she wondered
how?

The ferry pressed ahead, the Aegean rolling out in a white wave on either side. Turkey would be close by, but the islands were Greek, the Dodecanese. Arid and beautiful. Rhodes, Kos, even Patmos, famous places, but Anne had never heard of Sými. Somehow Paul had found it out, and Anne had found it, too, tracking him down. On deck, the passengers, mostly Greeks, began to stir, to prepare for the docking on Sými. Anne didn't budge; Paul, she thought, was there, right in front of her, somewhere on this island.

The girl who had failed the pronunciation test appeared at Anne's shoulder. She had tied a red bandanna into her black hair but the wind and salt had made a mess of it. She grinned at Anne uneasily, gesturing ahead toward the narrow passage between Sými on the right and a low, barren islet to the left. The gap between them didn't look wide enough for the ferry. “Are we going through there?” She asked.

“I'd say,” Anne answered.

“But is it wide enough?” She whispered, and Anne realized the girl was very young, perhaps not yet twenty.

“It must be. They'd know.”

As the ferry closed on the gap, the opening seemed to widen out, and the girl relaxed. Anne looked away, but the girl didn't seem to notice. “My boyfriend wants to sunbathe on the private beaches. You know?”

Anne shifted her weight uneasily. “Not really,” she said finally.

“How about you? What are you doing here?”

“Me?” Anne said. “I'm looking for somebody. Somebody who won't be glad to see me.”

 

Soon after the girl had returned to her boyfriend, the ferry slipped out of the narrows and swung right, toward Yialós, the harbor town. And there it was, the town scrolling into view as the ferry rounded the point, a clock tower shifting from left to right across the face of the town. Anne hadn't meant to care that Yialós was beautiful, the buildings small but dignified, and somehow mournful. A lot of them looked neglected. Anne thought if it weren't for the people she could see walking in front of the buildings that opened on the water, the place would have had the look of an old photograph. A hand-tinted photograph of a town from which all the people had long since gone.

 

Paul folded the newspaper he'd been reading and tossed it into a basket of magazines and books that served as a lending library for regulars at Vapori. He was a regular. He swirled the ice in his coffee and smiled at the waitress, but he was just flirting for service. He wouldn't ruin his regular café by taking up with a waitress.

He was sitting across the alley from the café proper; there were tables on both sides of the narrow street, under raw canvas umbrellas. The light in the street bounced in sheets off the foot-worn slates, but under the umbrellas it was soft, yellow. It made a good light for reading, and the waitresses were friendly. He'd made a point of charming them. Charm made the world more agreeable, more amenable to his desires.

A minivan inched down the alley toward the waterfront, turning the umbrellas on their poles as it brushed them on both sides. The tour boats were in from Rhodes and the gawkers were thick. Soon the tavernas and ouzerís would be doing a big business; there was always a big business at lunch. So lunch time was a good time to find a girl and picnic at the beach, swim a little, get brown. Paul was already very brown. But it wasn't quite time for that yet. He ordered another frappé.

While he was waiting for the coffee, Myles Twomey sauntered into the alley. He looked hot and had probably just come down from Chorió on the city steps. He had a Nikon around his neck and wore a black leather backpack that Paul knew was heavy with lenses. Paul thought Myles a bit of a character, and sometimes he found it amusing to draw him out.

“Eh, Myles, what's up?”

Myles turned his head toward Paul, blinking.

“Sit down. Want a
Tribbie
?” Paul asked, fishing the newspaper back out of the basket.

After Myles had ordered, he glanced at the headlines, then dropped the paper back where it had come from.

“No?”

“I've had enough of news. Another day of suffering. I don't need reminding. It takes a sadist to really enjoy the news.”

“But I love the news!”

“Well?”

“It makes the world seem so dramatic. Something big always happening.”

“But not here?” Myles said.

“Not anywhere I've ever been. How many things have I seen with my own eyes that would make the
International Herald Tribune?
”

“That might be a lucky thing,” Myles said, “considering.”

“But you've got to admit life mostly happens on the small side.” Paul gave Myles an encouraging look.

“Maybe life mostly happens life-size. Maybe it's the outsize world of the news that makes real life seem small.”

“Well, maybe,” Paul said, genially. “But the news is kind of like the movies, isn't it? People like their actors on the big screen. People like their news big.”

“They do,” Myles said.

“And?”

“And I'm not sure we should take that as a recommendation.”

Paul's frappé arrived. And soon after a bottle of water for Myles. The waitress struck a pose when she saw his Nikon on the table, but Myles was pretty sure she was hamming it up for Paul. Which seemed only right, because Myles thought there was something of a pose in Paul's easy ways, too.

“I'm walking,” Paul said, standing up as soon as the waitress left.

Myles lifted his eyebrows in a question.

“And I'm buying.”

“Perfectly acceptable,” Myles said, smiling.

“It'll be yours next time!”

“Aha, that would be the catch.”

 

Myles watched Paul stroll down the alley toward the harbor, weaving his way through the milling pedestrians, angling close to the fruit-and-vegetable vendor at the corner before swinging left. There was a visible ripple as he passed, people stared after him. Myles shook his head, then turned his attention to
the photo log he kept whenever he was working. He'd had a good morning, so there were entries to work up. He jotted down the basics while he was shooting, but he liked to elaborate on them before he developed the film, then again, after. It was as much a daybook as a log. Today's pages were full of notations about the light, which had been very thick and yellow early in the day, almost oily:
A wildfire is burning on the Turkish mainland, near Mar-maris,
he wrote,
and a high, thin sheet of smoke has stained the sky.
The shots he'd taken that morning would brood, he was sure of it.
It's surprising how an open doorway seen at a distance here makes even a kept-up house look absolutely abandoned. The interior so black. You just can't imagine anyone walking out of a door like that. Then a girl suddenly shows in the doorway, limbs flashing. Not walking, she's running. But the photo I took with the long lens, before the girl appeared, it won't know a thing about her. In the photo, she won't be about to dash out, not ever.
Myles capped his pen and stowed it in his pack. Then he looked at his watch, which said it was time for lunch.

 

To Stenáki was packed. The tables, set in the street in front of the taverna, looked full, and Myles was ready to consider second choices when Panyiótis called to him from the door, insisting that a chair would be found, and one was, at a table already occupied. Myles tried to beg off but the other fellow looked glad for company so Myles sat down. Another American.

“Jim,” he said, reaching across the table.

Myles introduced himself and accepted a glass of retsina from the large tin pitcher on the table. It tasted a little harsh, piney, like cheap retsina from the barrel, which is exactly what it was, but Myles had a taste for it, and cold it collaborated well with taverna food. As always, the second swallow tasted a little less harsh and after that it was good.

Jim eyed him curiously.

“So you just sold everything?”

“Why not? It no longer felt like it was mine. Just a bunch of stuff, a weight, so I put it down.”

Myles had ordered mezédhes, which were good. The melitzanosaláta had his attention; the aubergines had been seared on the grill and had that strong, smoky flavor he loved. He didn't mind the blunt questions; he didn't care. He tipped his chair back.

“And you, in the States, what do you do?” Myles asked.

“English professor.”

“Aha.”

“Sými is thick with professors in summer. Most from the States, Greek Americans, most of them in the sciences. They own places here, can afford it. I come every summer, but I just take a small room. It's enough. Here you live outside.”

“Sounds good, except for the going back part,” Myles observed, teasing a little.

“This summer I'm staying on longer than usual. My sabbatical year has come round again, at last. But Sými is dead out of season.”

“Some like it dead.”

Jim laughed at this, thinking it a witticism. Myles laughed, too, cleaning up the last of the tzatzíki with a rough slice of bread. He admired the big red pepper bathed in olive oil on another saucer and felt good.

“Well,” he explained, “I'm masquerading as a photographer.”

“You've got the props.”

Myles fingered the long lens on the Nikon on the table in front of him. “I have a contract, actually,” he smiled shyly, “for a coffee-table book:
The Lesser Dodecanese.
But I'm just faking it. It makes a good cover, and it's a hell of an excuse for long walks. Who knows, maybe someday there will be a book, but it doesn't much matter one way or the other.”

A girl came to the table to collect the plates. Her name was Váso, she said, and she was eight. Panyiótis was her father. Myles had seen her playing in the alleys up in Chorió, near the square; he remembered her clearly, wilder then than now.

“See you around,” he said, standing up abruptly.

Jim stretched out his hand, said, “Wait,” scribbled the phone number of his pension on a piece of paper he tore from the tablecloth and handed it over. Myles found the white Vespa in the shade of a yellow building, where he'd left it, and kicked the engine to life. He eased his way around the harbor and then took the back road out of town, up a dry gulch, to his house in the hills. Standing out back, he could see the harbor framed by dry cliffs, and from out front, the road winding between olive trees, going overland. Not that it went far, but he liked a house that looked two ways.

 

Anne came awake all at once, breathless. The darkness pulsed around her. A dream, frightening. She couldn't remember it, and she didn't try. She took deep, controlled breaths, calming herself. There was starlight in the window, no sign of dawn, but she got up anyway, dressing in the dark. She'd been lucky with the room; she knew that already. It had quieted down early and stayed quiet, though it was only three houses above the paraléia where it turned from the island's best hotels to a rougher neighborhood where the boatworks had once been big business. She'd been told a few boats were still built there every year.

Anne liked the location, close to the bustle of Yialós but out of it. She'd rented the place for the summer, though she had, really, only money enough for half of that. She'd get a job, manage. And maybe she wouldn't stay. Hard to tell what would happen, once she found Paul. Finding him won't be hard, she thought, he'll be wherever the loafers congregate.

A little cold, she wrapped herself in a blanket off her mussed bed and sat in front of a window in a straight chair. She put her feet up on the sill and tilted back, easing into the darkness. In the quiet, sounds carried, and she listened to footsteps on the stairs, going down. She wondered if she was hearing the sound of a fisherman, or a man, maybe a woman, up early to bake the day's bread. She didn't know; she imagined. She imagined anyone up this early would be walking with a purpose, headed for a boat or a bakery and knowing what they meant to do when they got there. She envied them their purpose, their small certainties. She had no idea what she was going to do, but something. She felt she had to do something, anything.