Burning the Map (18 page)

I squeeze my eyes closed and run through the scenario in my head. If I call him now, it's probably around 4:00 a.m. in Chicago, which means that he's fast asleep. John always turns off his ringer when he goes to bed, so I could call and get his machine and simply leave a message without having to speak to him. I clamp my eyes shut tighter when it strikes me that I'm a complete shit. I haven't spoken to my boyfriend in eons, and yet I'm trying to devise ways to steer clear of him. Denial and avoidance at its finest.

“I'll do it now,” I announce to Lindsey, conveniently failing to remind her what time it is back home. “I saw a pay phone by the bar.”

I throw a T-shirt over my head, and before it gets any later in Chicago, I walk toward the public phones.

“Good luck!” Sin calls behind me.

A
s John's phone rings, a tinny, distant sound, I bite the arm of my sunglasses, waiting for the mechanical voice of his answering machine. I've already scripted a short but cheery message to leave him, telling him that I'm safe and sound, that I miss him and will call him later. The pay phone is bolted to the plywood side of a bar called Cortica's, which consists of three wooden walls and a twig roof, the open side facing the beach. The tables in front of the bar are mobbed. The couple sitting closest to me is leaning toward each other over uneaten plates of tuna salad, their faces menacing, spitting words at each other that I can't understand, but I can tell they're not nice.

The phone rings for the third time. One more ring until the machine picks up. I take a deep breath, readying myself for my speech.

Instead, I hear John's sleep-filled, “Yeah…hello?”

Stunned, I don't respond immediately.

“Hello?” he repeats.

“Johnny?” I manage to squeak out.

“Hey, baby, is that you?” he says, sounding much more awake now.

“It's me.” I stop then, caught wordless without my rehearsed message.

The voices of the bickering couple escalate. No one seems to notice but me. At the table next to them are four pasty-white guys who must have just gotten off the plane. They chug their beers, slapping each other on the back, making a pyramid out of the cans.

“How are you?” John says.

“Uh…great,” I stammer. “Great. How 'bout you?”

“Well, I'm glad to hear from you. I left the phone on all night for the last week. I was worried.”

“Nothing to worry about here. We're having a blast.” I chirp.

“I've missed you,” John says, sending a stab of guilt through me.

“Yeah, me, too.” I find I'm telling the truth. I haven't been pining away for him, but now that I hear his earnest voice I remember how much he loves me, how good he is to me. Like Sin and Kat, John has become a family member.

“How's your trip, babe? Having fun?”

“Rome was amazing,” I say, relieved to find a safe topic. “You know how much I love Rome. I got to go to all my favorite places—the Pantheon and the Colosseum.” But suddenly I can feel the rocks of the Colosseum floor against my back as Francesco's fingers brush my breasts. I cough.

“Sounds nice,” John says.

If only he knew.

“Then we went to Ios,” I continue. “That's in Greece.”

“Of course.” He sounds a little miffed.

“Oh, I'm sorry. Of course you know that.” If there's one thing John despises it's being condescended to, which is never my intention. “Well, anyway, Ios was wonderful. The beach
was fabulous.” As was Billy, I think, before I shut down that locomotive of a thought.

In front of me, the couple have pushed their plates aside, and it looks as if they might come to blows. The beer tower created by the pasty-white boys climbs higher on their table, the site of an imminent crash. I tell John about the Sunset, Spiros and his family, and the craziness at the bars.

“Um-hmm,” he says. I can almost see him nodding, his brow pulled down. Listening, when he decides he wants to do it, is one of John's best attributes, a skill polished from years of practicing law, focusing on his opposing counsel, preparing himself to nitpick over every word. This wavering of his, though, from complete disinterest to intense concentration, makes me crazy. It's hard to have a light conversation with the guy. And it makes me nervous when he's um-hmming in his listening mode. It means he senses something is off.

I speed up my words, telling him that we're now on the island of Mykonos, staying at a little place called Hotel Carbonaki.

“I'm glad it's going so well.” John pauses, and I know it's coming—some question about what he's picked up on his radar. “You sound strange, though. Are you sure everything is all right?”

“It's probably just the connection, because all is right with the world.” I cringe at the Shirley Temple tone of my voice.

“You're sure?” John sounds unconvinced.

“I'm positive, and I have to go because there's a huge line for the phone.” I look back at the empty stretch of sand running along the plywood wall behind me.

“Okay, hon. I love you.” His last phrase hangs there.

“I miss you, too,” I say, but I get a horrible, sick feeling in my stomach. Why didn't I say it back?

“I love you, too!” I say, trying again, but he's already hung up.

As I place the phone on the receiver I notice that the fight
ing couple is gone, and flies are buzzing around their tuna salad.

 

I pick my way back across the sand, the hot grains burning my feet, making me lift my feet high with each step. I maneuver over the sprawled, tanned limbs, careful not to stare at the occasional flash of pubic hair on the nude sunbathers. A pungent coconut aroma rises around me, reminding me of Florida vacations, notably my mother lubed up with Hawaiian Tropic.

Kat and Sin are sitting cross-legged on their towels, Kat pointing to a pair of shoes in her magazine, handing it to Sin.

They both look up with expectant faces when my body forms a shadow over them.

“How'd it go?” Sin asks, plopping the magazine on her lap.

“He knew something was off.” I sink onto my towel. It's covered with sand now from people who've walked by, and the grit sticks to the back of my thighs. “He could tell.”

“What did you say? You didn't tell him about Francesco, did you?” Kat says.

“No. Of course not.” I roll onto one hip, trying to rub off the film of sand and sunscreen from my legs. “If it meant something, I'd tell him, but it doesn't.”

I look up at Sin and Kat, both of them uncharacteristically quiet. “What?” I say. “It was just a fling. Not even a fling, really. It was a—what's the word? A mash, a make out, a roll around. It won't affect anything.”

Neither of them speaks, and their silence says volumes. I growl and flop back on my towel, an arm over my head.

 

A few hours later, the Kennedy boys stop by our towels. Trent looks even more like Barbie's boyfriend with his perfectly tanned abs, blond hair and perfectly pressed blue trunks, which I'm sure he bought special for the trip.

“Want to go with us to Super Paradise Island?” David says, looking a little more relaxed in long surfer shorts.

“And what might that be?” asks Kat as she stands to face them, dusting sand off her arms, unperturbed by the fact that she's topless. I hastily tie my bikini top around my neck. I'd finally mustered the courage to sun my breasts, lying on my back in clear view of hundreds of strangers, but now, seeing these guys whom I've actually shaken hands with, I feel the need to scramble for cover.

“Super Paradise?” Sin says. “It sounds like a Japanese game show.”

“It's just a little piece of rock about ten minutes away by boat. Everyone heads there for happy hour.”

Sin looks at me. “What do you think?”

I'm not even sure what they're talking about—a little piece of rock?—and I'd been anticipating a shower and a nap, but what the hell. I nod.

We board a dilapidated fishing boat for a few hundred drachmas and jockey for position with the other passengers. Perspiring, sun-baked bodies shove forward, clambering for a seat or a spot along the edge. Now I know what it must be like to be an illegal alien from Cuba, attempting to smuggle into American waters on a tiny boat with too many other people. I lose Kat and Sin in the push, finally lodging between the side of the boat and a huge guy with a sweating bare chest. I angle myself around until I'm facing out toward the water.

Once the craft is packed to the point where we will surely sink, it starts with a long whine and putts slowly out of the bay, turning left. We stay near the rugged coastline, a move that I'm sure is designed to allow us to swim to safety if need be. A few white villas dot the rocky shore until eventually there's nothing, just an expanse of brown craggy land, a sight my father would call breathing room.

My dad drove me to high school for three years, until my
mother convinced him that I wouldn't be a flight risk with my own car. Every morning, we'd pull out of our once-trendy neighborhood just outside Chicago, where the paint jobs were starting to show signs of flake, the paved driveways cracking and turning gray. Neither my father nor I would speak. I was an insufferable bitch in high school, and I regarded talking before nine in the morning on the same scale as nuclear war. My dad had learned early that he couldn't change this. He drank his coffee from a plastic mug with a travel lid that reminded me of a baby's sippy cup, and he kept quiet until we passed an empty field that had turned harvest-gold in the autumn or a park with snow-capped trees in the winter.

“Breathing room,” he'd say when he saw the field or the park, hitting the power controls so that, rain or shine, blizzard or tornado, the front windows would roll down, whipping my hair-spray coated bangs about my forehead.

“Take a deep breath, kid,” he'd say, his voice hearty. “Get some good clean air in those lungs.”

My part of the ritual was not to fight him on this. He wasn't making me talk, after all, so I could throw him a bone. We'd both suck in great chestfuls of air and let it out slowly, repeating the action a few times over. Then he'd close the windows, and blissful silence would reign again.

Now as the boat lists around huge rocks rising out of the sea, I grip the side wondering where my father is today. Probably at the Condom or the office. I decide to call him when we get back to town, assuming the boat is able to make the reverse journey. I've put it off long enough.

The other call I need to make is to Gordon Baker Brickton, Jr., the new master of my universe. Gordy, as he's called at the firm, is a well-known defense litigator specializing in products liability. He's defended everything from faulty axles that sent cars careening off the road to hazardous toys that broke into small parts and were swallowed by children. Gordy
had approved my request for a month off after the bar exam, but he'd asked that I call one week before I came back.

The boat hits a wave and everyone grabs everyone else, trying to stay upright. I get a queasy, headachy feeling, but I don't think it's seasickness. It's the realization that my career as a lawyer will begin in a mere eight days. It seems inconceivable given the sea air whipping my hair, the greasy, half-naked bodies surrounding me, but it's true.

The boat rounds the coastline and immediately, the thump of bass mixed with human voices rises above the sputter of the boat's engine.

Trent hadn't been kidding when he called Super Paradise a piece of rock. It's literally that, maybe a half mile in diameter, and why someone has decided to build a bar on one side of it escapes me.

I see two thatched roofs housing the actual bar areas, about five hundred yards between them. Every inch is packed with the young and the restless—beautiful patrons clothed minimally in bathing suits, dancing their asses off under the blue sky. I wish I'd worn cuter shorts. I snatch my lipstick out of my bag and apply it, hoping to jazz up my appearance.

After climbing off the boat and onto a treacherous little dock, we hike up the rock path to the action.

“Unbelievable,” Lindsey says, taking it all in.

The music is earsplitting, and people are dancing on every possible surface, including around the pool area, where they tumble in after losing their balance. I begin counting the potential liabilities for which this place could get sued—the people being allowed to dance on tables from which they will surely fall and break ankles, the slippery surface of the rock floor causing drunks to stumble, the throwing of revelers into the pool directly on top of others dancing in the water. If this place was located in the litigious confines of the United States it'd be out of business already.

“Hello, darlings!” It's Jenny, looking like a plump Daisy
Duke in a pink-and-white gingham bikini. “I'm on my way to get a pint, c'mon.”

She links an arm through mine, pulling me toward one of the bars. After securing bottles of lukewarm beer, Jenny, doing some sort of backward samba, pulls me into the crowd. The rest of the group joins us, and we begin dancing in a big, awkward circle like people do at weddings, waiting for some idiot to jump in the middle and break into a flailing version of Ricky Martin.

Kat, as unselfconscious as ever, launches right into a sexy dance with a flirtatious swirl of her hips. Immediately, guys from every country, like representatives of the United Nations, join our circle, surrounding her. She playfully faces one and then another and another, but to my surprise, she doesn't select one as her partner and drag him off behind a bush. Instead, she jumps back into place in the circle, slows the shaking of her hips, and waits for someone else to take the spotlight for once. Sin catches my eye, and we both smile.

A few minutes later, Jenny jumps in front of me, sambaing forward now, making me move back as I dance with her. She puts one arm on my shoulder, continuing to guide me in a backward dance. I'm trying to match her shaking shoulders, swinging my butt around dangerously, when I feel the arm on my shoulder give a little push, and in a flash, I find myself stumbling into space. The cool wet of the swimming pool smacks my side, and I sink to the bottom.