Burning the Map (20 page)

I
remember vividly the night that John first told me he loved me. It came at a time when I never expected it. We'd been out to dinner, a long dinner like we used to have. We split a bottle of champagne and lingered over glasses of dessert wine and a plate of flourless chocolate cake. Four months had gone by since we started dating, and everything had a shiny, rosy tinge to it. I could just think of John and get a rush of happiness. We decided to walk home, hoping to shed some of the thousands of calories we'd ingested, and we walked along Clark Street, swinging our hands, feeling warm despite the bitter cold.

We saw him at the same time, a man stumbling toward us, mumbling under his breath. He wore layers and layers of clothes, as if he was ready to be outside all night. Both John and I got quiet as the man moved closer. John gripped my hand tight. The man passed by us without incident, though, and John loosened his grip. I was about to say something, something about dinner or the cake or something inane, when I felt a great shove against my back.

“What?” I yelled, starting to turn around, and then I felt a pull on the purse strap I held in my other hand. It took me a moment to realize that the man had come back. He and I yanked at opposite ends of my purse like two kids in a tug-of-war, me screaming obscenities. John just stood there for a second, as if his body hadn't caught up to what his mind was seeing, but then he charged. I mean literally
charged
into the guy like a bull, his head down, his arms back, and the man flew away from me, landing on the pavement with a thud.

“Oh my God,” I said. “We have to get the police.”

Police
was apparently the magic word, because the man scrambled to his feet and took off in a sprint.

John grabbed me, hugging me so tight to his chest that I couldn't get any air in my lungs.

“I love you,” he said, each word a definitive statement. “I love you so much.”

“Me, too,” I said, although my words were garbled by his coat.

That was the first time I realized that John didn't wait for the typical moment to say something profound or make a meaningful gesture. For all the strictness and daily consistency he applied to his life, he had a way of surprising me. It was something I liked about him, something that I'd missed lately. But he'd gotten me again this time.

 

John struggles to stand from his seat on his tan leather suitcase. It was one of the first things that impressed me about him—he had a full set of matching leather luggage, something I found incredibly adult, and therefore alluring, since I had been chasing adulthood down a long, endless street. He looks completely out of place now in this laid-back Grecian village full of sun. He's pasty-white in his navy-blue pants—the good ones he saves for casual Fridays when he's going out after work—and his white, button-down shirt. Little spots of red dot his cheeks, which I know from experience
could either mean that he's very worked up about something or just very hot.

“Hi, babe,” John says, his voice full of an uncertainty that I'm not used to. I realize that the spots might mean a third thing—that he's nervous. “Surprised?”

“Yes! My God.” I rush toward him, then stop a few feet away, unable to find any other words, unclear what my body is supposed to do now.

He looks me up and down. “Wow…you look different…beautiful.”

I ignore the backhanded compliment, unable to get past the shock of seeing him in the midst of this cozy vacation existence I'd created for myself, one that doesn't include him. He represents reality, the outside world, and the sight of him splinters my carefully crafted enclave. I struggle to rearrange the pieces, even as I take a step back and collect the shards of glass from the wine bottle. But it doesn't work.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, dumping the glass in a nearby trash can.

As John leans over to help me with the last few pieces of glass, I see him flinch at my question, his expression pained. “You sounded strange on the phone. I thought something might be wrong, and you're always telling me I'm not spontaneous anymore.” He stands and brushes off his hands. “I bought a ticket for three thousand dollars and got on the next plane, and here I am.” He shrugs, his face full of hope that I'll be happy to see him.

I know how hard it is for John to do something so expensive. While he was growing up, the Tanner family never had money for the crazy or the unnecessary, and despite his current six-figure salary, John has never lost that spendthrift outlook, subscribing to a rainy-day theory of finance. To my mind it's much more likely that you'll get hit by a bus before ever reaching that stormy afternoon when you decide
to pull your money out of the bank, but that's me. And maybe that's John now, too. Maybe people can change.

“I'm sorry,” I say, taking a few steps forward, crossing to him. I put my lips to his, but it feels foreign, unlike the kisses I shared with Francesco and Billy. He envelops me in a hug, which I return tentatively at first, then fiercely. I do think the world of John. I
love
him. How could I have betrayed him so casually? I squeeze him harder, pushing my face into the cotton of his shirt. He smells of aftershave, something he normally doesn't wear. Another change? I wonder. Or something he splashed on to cover the airplane smell?

John pulls back finally, gazing at me, his expression filled with relief. “I've missed you, babe,” he says.

I nod and hug him again.

“Holy shit,” I hear, and John releases me.

Kat and Sin are back from the beach, looking sun-kissed and as shocked to see John as I am.

“Hey, guys,” John says, nodding casually in their direction, as if we were back in Chicago, standing at a local pub.

“He came to surprise me,” I explain, trying not to notice their looks that say
Are you fucking kidding me?

“Well,” Kat says, shifting her see-through beach bag that's chock-f of crap to the other shoulder. “Welcome to Greece.” Her tone isn't exactly open arms, and she seems to realize this. “When did you get here?” she adds.

“I got to Athens early this morning, and then I caught another flight here a couple of hours ago.” Light banter, easy words, as if he didn't just surprise attack me on my vacation. My mood swings to and fro between surprise and irritation and flattery and hope.

“How did you find the hotel?” Lindsey asks cooly, as if trying to decide how to handle John's arrival.

John has never said anything bad about Sin, or about any of my friends or family for that matter, but I've always gotten the feeling that he isn't that thrilled with her. It's the way
he clams up when she's around, his eyes watching her, studying her as if trying to make some sense of her often harsh words, her inability to stand around and make bullshit chatter.

But now he says in a pleasant voice, “Casey told me the name of the hotel when she called, so when I got off the plane, I went from one taxi to another until I found a driver who could understand me.” He smiles and throws his arms up, and I can't help but smile with him. Good old boring John doesn't seem quite so boring anymore.

“Hmm,” Sin says, like,
Isn't that interesting.
Then she turns to me. “We're meeting the group for dinner in an hour. You are going.” It's more of a directive than a question.

“Of course,” I say, because I'm not willing to give up my vacation the way I planned it. More importantly, the thought of being alone with John suddenly terrifies me. Would he see that I'd been unfaithful? If not, would I—should I—tell him?

I turn to John. “We've been running around with these people here. You'll like them.”

“Okay,” he says, running his hand through his fine brown hair. He'd probably envisioned dinner with just the two of us, because he'd just flown thousands of miles to see me. I can't blame him, but I can't change our plans, either. A dinner alone could lead to time alone in the room, which could lead to sex. On one hand, the possibility excites me. I've been feeling so saucy since my Francesco encounter, but if I fooled around with John because another man had made me horny, wouldn't I be cheating all over again? This sexual riddle only adds more confusion to the churning emotions in my head.

“Do you need help carrying your stuff to the room?” I ask John, wanting something to say. It'll be a cozy fit with the four of us in one room, John and I sharing a twin bed, but the island is full.

“No,” John says, “but…” He pauses for a second. “I thought we could get our own room.”

“We're going up,” Sin says, probably sensing an issue.

“Right,” Kat says. “We'll see you soon…or later…or whatever.” John's arrival seems to have left everyone a little stunned.

I nod at them.

“Our own room, huh?” I say to John.

“Yeah.” He sidles toward me, his hands on my hips, pulling me to him. He leans down and nibbles my neck. “We're a little overdue, don't you think?”

“Um-hmm,” I say, in a noncommittal tone. It's been a while since he's been so hot and bothered for me. I wonder if it's because I've lost weight, or maybe it's the absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder theory. Still, I don't think I'm ready, for some reason. If we have sex, I might lose myself in it the way I used to, and then I might wake up in the same place I was before this trip, in the same emotional rut. I don't want to lose myself anymore. I want to be here for every minute, and yet I don't know if I can make love to John like that. It's been so long.

I'm about to explain the overcrowding on the island, when I remember that yesterday I'd heard Mr. Gianopolous turn down some backpackers, telling them he was full.

“Sure,” I say to John, secure in the knowledge that Hotel Carbonaki is booked. “Let's go ask for a room.”

We knock on the door that leads from the lobby into the Gianopolous's accommodations.

“Mr. Gianopolous,” I say, when he comes to the door, wearing a tank top, wiping his mouth with a red cloth. “This is my boyfriend.” I almost stall on “boyfriend.” It seems awkward. “He just came from Chicago.” He and John shake hands. “You wouldn't happen to have any rooms to let, would you?”

“Oh yes!” says the old man, clearly pleased to be helpful. “One lady just leave. Room 9.”

He steps into the lobby, and reaching behind the desk, he hands us the key.

“Great,” I say, trying to infuse my voice with something resembling enthusiasm. “Perfect.”

“W
hat is he doing here?” Lindsey says after I drop John in the new room and go to retrieve some clothes. Kat is in the shower.

“I don't know.” I gather my makeup, scooping up a black cotton dress to throw on.

“You're moving into his room?” Her voice is incredulous. She sinks onto the bed, her face flashing with anger before it skids into disappointment. Her shoulders slump, and she shakes her head. Somehow this resignation I see in her is worse than the bitchy attitude she wore like a hood earlier in the trip.

I stop searching for my other black sandal and face her. “I don't know what's going on right now, so please, please, please cut me some slack. I have to stay with him, Sin. He's my boyfriend.” There, I've said it again, and it feels a little more natural. “He just dropped a couple thousand dollars and flew to Greece to see me. I didn't tell him to come, but he's here.”

Lindsey sighs. “I'm sorry, but this is supposed to be a girls vacation, after all.”

“I know that. It's not exactly what we planned.”

“Not exactly.”

I shoot her a look, and she has the decency to appear sheepish.

“Sorry,” she says.

I return to my search for the missing sandal, peering under the beds and Kat's pile of clothes. “I just can't believe he did this. It's so unlike him.”

“Why did he say he came?” Kat asks, exiting the bathroom, naked and looking for a towel.

I find my tan sandals under a beach towel, but not the missing black one. “He said I sounded different on the phone. He wanted to make sure I was okay.”

“Ooh, he sensed something,” Kat says, toweling her hair.

“Ah!” I find my sandal wedged between a bed and the wall, but then Kat's words sink in. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Sin says, giving Kat an exasperated stare.

“Well, he did, didn't he?” Kat says. “He knew something was wrong. He might have a feeling that you've been with someone else.”

“Kat!” Sin tosses a pillow at her.

“Oh God, I hope not,” I say. “I don't know if I can have that talk with him right now.” Now I'm pissed off that John is here. This is
my
vacation, my escape.

“Don't focus on that now,” Sin says. “It may not come up, or you may want to tell him, or something different might happen altogether. But I have to ask you—is he with us for the rest of the trip? Will he go to Athens with us?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well—”

I cut Sin off. “Look, I need you guys to give me some time to sort this out.”

“There's less than a week left,” Sin points out. “Only a few days, really. How much time do you need?”

“I can't say. I just have to see what happens, what his plans are. Can you guys be patient with me?” I stand in the doorway with my makeup bag, sandals and clothes gathered in my arms.

“Sure,” says Kat.

Sin waits a second before she finally nods.

 

“How's everything at home?” I ask John as we get ready for dinner. I take the towel off my head and as I do, my arm hits his shoulder. “Sorry,” I mumble.

We used to be able to maneuver around each other effortlessly in the bathroom. I'd lean into the mirror, applying my mascara, while he brushed his teeth behind me. He'd shave while I sat on the toilet, rubbing lotion into my legs. But now we seem to have lost our rhythm, our sense of direction. We keep banging into each other, and each time I'm startled all over again to see him here.

“Work is crazy as usual,” John says as he shaves his jaw, leaving a strip of skin in the white cream. “No one could believe I was going to Greece.”

“I bet. I can hardly believe it myself.”

God, why did he have to choose
now
to be spontaneous and crazy? I would have been ready to go home and face him at the end of this week, to try and improve things significantly between us, but here? I can't wrap my head around the fact that he's suddenly in Mykonos, in the middle of my girls trip.

John finishes shaving and turns away from the mirror to face me. “Do we have time for a little R and R?” He flicks the towel away from his waist. His nakedness embarrasses me somehow, and I nearly jump away in surprise.

“Oh! No. I mean, we've got to meet Kat and Sin downstairs in a few minutes.”

He growls and pats me on the rear. “Then distract me. Tell me more about what you've done so far.” He picks through his bag and extracts a tightly rolled pair of boxer briefs.

“Geez, there's been so much.” I launch into a generic list of all the sights we'd seen in Rome.

“Have you met many people?” His question alarms me. It's unlike him to be interested in the small details. Is he searching for information? Has he discerned my infidelity, like Kat said?

“Well, let's see.” I turn on the hair dryer so I have to shout above it. “There's Trent and David and Jenny.” Conveniently, I skip over the description of any
acquaintances
made in Rome or Ios. I yell above the dryer's buzz, going on and on about the people we've encountered here in Mykonos. When I'm done, I dash into the room and pull my black dress over my head, stepping into my sandals as if I'm in a race, when what I want to do is close off John's people-you've-met line of questioning.

“Ready?” I ask, grabbing my purse and opening the door.

He nods, but I'm not so sure I am.

 

Dinner is a study in contrasts. The Kennedy boys, as well as Jenny and her friends, are friendly, rambunctious. They have the wait staff eating out of the palms of their hands and the manager buying ouzo shots for the table within the first hour. John, meanwhile, sits stiffly at my side, looking distinctly uncomfortable with all the boozing and yelling.

“Are you all right?” I whisper to him.

“Culture shock,” he says. “Or something like that. I've spent too much time in the office lately, I guess.”

But I know what's really going on. Every once in a while, when John gets in a social situation where he senses he's being judged or scrutinized, he gets flustered, the Iowa boy in him deciding he's not good enough, doesn't know enough.

Normally at these times, I'll talk a lot to cover up for his
sudden lack of conversational skills. The first time my parents met him we were at an exclusive restaurant in the Loop.

In the bathroom, my mother said to me, “He's not a mute is he, honey?” When I said no, of course not, she replied, “So why not let him talk?”

I'd tried, but at such times, the gaps of silence screamed at me. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him, this high-powered lawyer, all tongue-tied and shy.

Yet now I see that my aiding John that way doesn't help either of us, just as his brief assurances that I'll be fine as a lawyer, without discussing the issue, doesn't help me. So I refuse my inclination to engage in mini conversations with him that would exclude the others, and I refuse to answer for him as I so often had. And there he sits, seeming more and more miserable by the minute.

“How long are you going to be here, John?” Jenny asks, refusing to give up.

“Not sure,” he says with a bland smile, before he returns his gaze to the stuffed grape leaves he's rotating in a clockwise fashion around his plate.

Jenny plows on. “How do you like Mykonos so far?”

“Great. Really great.” His eyes shift back to the stray piece of meat he's trying to return to the constellation on his plate.

Sin catches my eye and cocks her head in John's direction, mouthing, “Nice manners.” She's right, but I still want to cuff her in his defense.

John and I are sitting at the end of the table, and I keep noticing a canvas that hangs on the wall above his head. It's a large oil painting of a man and a woman sitting in two chairs by the sea. The man has his arm around the woman's back, a cigarette in the hand that dangles from her chair. Smoke pours out of the man's mouth as he leans toward the woman, forming a screen between them. I keep staring at it, my eyes lifting past the white collar of John's shirt, past his concerned green eyes and thinning hair, until he becomes irritated.

“What are you looking at?” he says, twisting his neck around in a quick awkward movement.

“It's that painting….” I say, letting my words fall away. I can't stop staring at it.

“What about it?”

“Nothing,” I say, making myself lower my eyes, forcing myself to focus on his mouth, which has kissed me a million times. What I don't say is that the painting strikes me as a metaphor of sorts, representing two people with something vague and intangible between them—two people like us.

When the manager returns to the table an hour later with another round of ouzo and the bill, John tugs my sleeve.

“Can we get out of here?” he whispers.

Kat hears him and raises an eyebrow at me.

I feel like barking, “No! This is my vacation. We're doing it my way,” but I hold my tongue and take a deep breath, thinking that John has made an effort—a gargantuan, if misguided, one—by hauling himself all the way across the Atlantic to find me. I need to make an effort here, too.

I nod at him, and he throws a pile of drachmas on the table that would easily cover the entire check as well as the tab of the table next to us. I retrieve a few of the drachmas. “We'll see you guys later,” I say. “Where will you be?”

“Scandinavian Bar as usual,” Jenny says cheerfully.

“Will we
really
see you?” Lindsey asks, pushing her full ouzo glass away.

“Yes.” I look at her as if to say
please.
I flash a fake smile at the rest of the crew.

“Where do you want to go?” I ask John as we leave the restaurant, turning a corner onto one of Mykonos's many snaking streets. I look around, trying to figure out if we're heading toward the docks or the heart of the village.

“Let's go someplace where we can talk.”

That stops me dead. I've been craving those words for the
last six months. Lately, I'd have given
anything
—my apartment, my beat-up Mercury Tracer, my favorite Michigan sweatshirt—if he'd told me he wanted to talk. Instead, I was forever chasing him to give me anything resembling a conversation, while he just wanted to get back to the files he'd brought home, back to work. And he wants to talk now, in Greece. Murphy's Law.

“You want to talk?” I try to sound nonchalant. “Uh…about what?”

“Us. You and me.” His words are confident and definitive now.

“You and me,” I repeat stupidly, trying to give my brain some time to catch up with my mouth. I wish I could postpone this conversation until I could sort through the slush of feelings in my head. I nod for a second or two and finally look up to meet John's eyes. He flashes me his crooked smile, the one I can't resist.

“Let's go down to the dock,” I say.