Matala (10 page)

“Don't, please.”

“Well, aren't you?”

“Where would we have? We've been on a stinking train for two days, and you can't do much there.”

“I wouldn't put it past you two.”

“Look, I don't know what I'm doing—with her, with you, with whatever.”

“Who do you want?”

“It's not that simple.”

“Of course it is.”

“If you're not going to do anything, if you're just going to be a meth-crazed depressive, then I don't know if I want to be around you.”

“But you still love me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you shagging her?”

“No, Justine. For Christ's sake.”

“Well, that night in Venice you sounded awfully fucking friendly.”

“I didn't know you were there. I was pretty plastered.”

“All right,” she said. “Don't get excited.” She sat beside him and put her hand on his arm, and when he didn't pull away, she took that as a promising sign.

H
E HAD NEVER GLOMMED ON
to the fact that their connection predated his meeting her in Virginia, though she knew that at times he had glimpsed the deeper linkage, recognized it—their physical similarity—but had no form to put it into, and so was unable to name it. There had been from the first a palpable vibe between them, and it had made things awkward as well as easy in the beginning, especially regarding their physical relationship. She'd never told him the story, in any case. She just showed up in his life one day, a happenstance meeting of strangers at a bar he frequented. He had no idea she'd been watching him for weeks, that she had managed with nothing more than his father's last name, the fact of his government service, and the help of a very expensive private investigative service out of Arlington to track him to this small, pretty town on the suburban edge of northern Roanoke. He knew only that she was a woman who bought him a drink and with whom he'd felt an instant bond—and that he was looking for something the likes of which he hadn't figured out until she offered him the chance to go on the road with her to see some of his country and who knew what else.

Now, across from the Merry Trumpet in Athens, he stood up. What a lad he was, so strong and so tall.

“All right,” he said.

“Yes? Is it?”

He nodded. “Now can we sleep?”

“Do you still have that little bottle of candy I gave you?”

“She's got it.”

“What the hell for?”

“I told her about it on the train. I was just going to leave it there. I didn't want to worry about having it on me anymore. But she said she'd carry it.” He paused. “You don't need one anyway. You should sleep while you can.”

“I slept on the bloody train for two days, didn't I? I didn't take anything, so I think I deserve one now.”

“You deserve one?”

“Why would you give them to her? What is it with you two? It doesn't even make sense.”

“I told you: She's carrying the package, and she said she might as well carry that, too. I think it turns her on or something. The risk.”

“She's so whacked, that girl. And you, you go right along. You do everything she says. She's got you right by the curlies, doesn't she?”

He closed his eyes, exhaled loudly through his nose, and looked all put upon. He said, “I'm going to sleep.”

“I'm going to have a smoke.”

“We should probably be out of here by, what, six?”

“A little after. We'll meet you in the lobby then.”

He walked across the street and into the building.

As Justine finished her cigarette, she watched the traffic. She felt more tired now than ever, and the cars looked nice moving the way they did. She was close enough to the curb that she could feel the breeze they generated, and for some reason that made her feel more tired than she had. He was right. She did need to sleep. She had lied. She had catnapped in that half-awake and unsatisfying manner that was worse than not sleeping at all, that you woke up exhausted from. More sweat than dreams.

When she looked across at the guesthouse, she was surprised to see Will still standing in the lobby, just inside the open doorway. He was talking to two men. They wore sport coats and dress shirts with open collars. As she watched, she gathered that they were keeping him there, pressed against the front desk. Then Will did a strange thing. He looked at her. It seemed deliberate, that he meant for her to see it. It was too far to make out his expression, and of course the traffic precluded her hearing anything. One of the men followed his gaze and looked at her, too.

And then Justine looked up. Perhaps some movement had caught her eye. There, in a small round window on the second floor landing where she and the girl had walked up to the women's dorm to drop their bags, Justine saw her face. The girl's. Darcy's. Looking out. Looking at her. She was watching Justine. She was waiting for something. You could see that about her. Otherwise she'd be sleeping.

Justine looked at Will and the two men again. She stood up. As she did, Will reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a red bandana, and wiped his face. It was not a gesture he ever made. He carried it for the same reason she carried a red scarf that she never wore. It was a sign, a warning. They had worked this out early in their partnership after an incident in a bar in Denver where Justine was working the place for donations to the Red Cross collection box they had nicked from outside the chapel in Denver Memorial Hospital. She was doing well, too, having a good day. They had cleared maybe $50 when Will, who was sitting at the end of the bar, saw a man coming down a back staircase and knew it was trouble. He tried to signal her, tried with his hands to warn her without being obvious, but she hardly glanced at him. And so the man, the owner, got her by the collar and dragged her, choking, to the rear door and pushed her out into the snow. Will eased himself out the front door and went around and found her there, swearing and trying to pick up the change that had scattered when the box broke.

Red for danger. It was a simple thing. If you flash it, it means get out. Go.

But she had a hard time accepting that this was that. That here of all places, in Athens, with a package that meant a fortune to them in the end if they delivered it or an abyss of grief if they didn't, Will should show red.

She looked up at the girl again. It was her. She'd done something. Justine could smell it.

The men were coming outside now, pulling Will along with them. Pointing at her. Waving up the street. A waiting car began to move.

She looked at Will one last time and then did what she had to, what she had no choice but to do.

Justine ran.

A
FTER SHE PLANTED THE BOTTLE
of pills in Justine's bag and told the clerk at the Merry Trumpet that this woman had been trying to sell her drugs, and after the clerk called the police and they interviewed her and buttonholed Will and questioned him, and after Justine had somehow figured it out and took off, Darcy checked them out and led Will to a small café across the street and a little ways down the block from the Merry Trumpet. She bought them a pot of tea and some pastries, and then left him to find a pay phone. Armed with an entire roll of ten-drachma coins, she reached an operator who understood enough English and Italian to put her through to Venice and the Locanda Apostoli. Darcy loved languages and absorbed them. She was fluent in French, passable in Italian and Spanish, and could order a meal in German, Dutch, Japanese, and Mandarin. Aside from numerous childhood trips to the Continent and Asia, mostly with her mother (her father couldn't stand those “faggot Frenchies and the like” or the “oily zipperheads”), she'd gone, on and off, to a very good, very exclusive boarding school in Pennsylvania and also belonged to the Alliance Française and the Istituto Italiano of Greater Cleveland. So when the clerk she reached at the Locanda spoke very little English, she managed to communicate her name and the fact that it was she who had left the note when she checked out. She asked whether anyone had shown up asking about her.

“Ah,”
the young female clerk said.
“Sì. Sì. Era qui.”
He was here.

“Non è ora là?
” Darcy asked.

“No.”

He'd checked in but only stayed a few hours, the girl said, after they gave him Darcy's letter. But he had left a forwarding number—in Athens, Greece.

Darcy felt a slight chill when the girl said that, a chill of shock that the man had not only gotten on to her this quickly but that he was already so close—in the same city, maybe only blocks away.

But it was a chill of thrill, too, that this was a real chase, that this man knew exactly what he was doing and, apparently, what she was doing, too.

She dialed the local number and spoke in English with the clerk. A moment later the room phone was ringing, and a moment after that a man said, “Hello.”

“Did you like my note?”

“Darcy?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said, “I did like it. Thank you. I liked it very much.”

“Seriously?”

“I am. And I took your advice. Before I left, I went and saw that bridge.”

“And did you cry?”

“I'll never admit it.”

She liked his voice, and this fact surprised her, too. She had expected some gruff midwesterner, some hard guy in the same league as her father, but this man didn't sound like that at all. He sounded smart—or, rather, educated. Erudite. Like someone who, say, taught English Renaissance Lit. He had an accent, not Ohio but a sort of East Coast drawl or slant that almost had a certain English shading to it. He bent his
a
's and spoke without quite opening his mouth.

“I have to tell you,” she said, “that I'm impressed.”

“That I saw the bridge?”

“Well, yes. But that you're already in Athens, too. That's a pretty neat trick.”

“Not really. You put the train tickets on AmEx.”

“Ah,” she said. She'd anticipated that he'd get here, just not this quickly.

She said, “What's your name?”

“Matthew.”

“Matthew what?”

“Raines.”

“You're not what I expected.”

“No?”

“You're not a cop, are you?”

“Much worse than that. I'm a lawyer.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“What's a lawyer doing chasing after a spoiled runaway?”

“Well, getting paid for it, of course.”

“Of course. Is this what you do?”

“Mmm, I do all kinds of things. A funny thing happened after law school. I realized that practicing law bored the life out of me.”

She laughed.

“Contracts. Trials. I wanted to be out doing something.”

“So you chase people.”

“Well, not all the time. You'd be amazed at the weird circumstances that can benefit from the subtle touch of a legal hand.”

“Hmm. And I'm a weird circumstance?”

“Well, I had done some work for your father before, and so he called me about this. It's not your usual missing person sort of thing. You're not really missing, for one thing. And this is Europe, so there are all kinds of issues that could come up, you know, diplomatic, criminal, psychological, physical.”

“You sound very smart. Where did you go to law school?”

“Ohio State.”

“Very good. Undergrad?”

“Duke.”

“Wow. Impressive. Are you from the South?”

“Well, south Jersey.”

“You and Bruce.”

“I grew up just outside Philly, the great suburbs. So what are we doing, Darcy Arlen? Can you tell me?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “We're having a trip.”

“Mmm, yes. And are we enjoying it?”

“Very much.”

“Good. But your father's really worried. You know that.”

“No, I don't. Daddy's really something, but I'm not sure worried is it. Pissed off. Embarrassed. Humiliated.”

“He's worried, Darcy. Believe me. I saw him. It's a nasty world out there.”

“And a beautiful one.”

“To be sure. Why don't you let me catch up to you just to keep an eye? I won't interfere, and I won't tattle.”

“That would defeat the whole point, wouldn't it?”

“What is the point?”

“Exactly,” she said. “I like you, Matthew the lawyer. So here's a clue: Do you play the trumpet?”

“What?”

She laughed. “Be merry, Matthew. See you soon. Maybe.” She hung up.

A
FTERWARD, SHE DUCKED INTO A
tourist shop, bought an overpriced pair of cheap binoculars, and then rejoined poor Will, who seemed numb. She was curious as to how long it would take Matthew to find the Merry Trumpet. Her obvious hint was probably enough, but then she realized that all the police activity would leave a hot trail. It was very possible he'd find a way onto that as well.

And sure enough, it wasn't twenty minutes later that she saw a cab pull up at the Merry Trumpet and a largish Americanish-looking man get out and go in. He was inside about fifteen minutes, and when he came out, he stood for several seconds on the sidewalk, looking around—enough time for her to get the glasses on him.

He certainly stood out in that city. Pale pinkish, blond, khaki-suited, bespectacled. Blue-eyed, undoubtedly. It wouldn't be hard to see him coming. He wasn't particularly handsome. He was a bit doughy, but he looked as smart as he sounded. She had just decided she liked his face when he ducked his head and got into the waiting car.

Well, she thought. One day the two of them would sit down over drinks—something southern; juleps, maybe, or special minty vodka martinis—and have a good talk and a laugh about all this. But for now she needed to leave him behind again. She was paying cash, so he wouldn't have such an easy time of it, but she'd help him along when the time came.

She watched until he got back into the cab and left. Then she told Will it was time for them to go.

T
HE
M
EDITERRANEAN
. I
N ALL HER
travels she'd never so much as glimpsed it. And now she was riding on it, crossing it to the oldest Western civilization of them all, far older than Rome, much older than Greece, the true cradle of the West: Iraklion, Crete, port of the ancient city of Knossos. The highest flowerings of the culture she'd come here to study, the most glorious achievements of Western man, the Raphaels and Michelangelos, the Shakespeares and Mozarts, the Renoirs and Rodins, had their deepest roots here in the kingdom of Minos with its Labyrinth and Minotaur, in the soil from which Icarus and Daedalus launched their ill-starred flight, in the world of Dionysus and the oracle at Delphi and Oedipus and Medea. The place where even the adjectives were born.

She stood with Will at the railing and watched the last of the sunset, and now she saw that it was true what they said about sea water in the night—that it fluoresced. Tiny bits of something glowed faintly green as the water churned from beneath the ship. She touched his arm. Will. He was hers now. She had won him. She had done battle and emerged victorious, as always. But the question remained: What would she do with him? Did she really even want him? Or was it just the game, the thrill of the conquest, that torqued her? He was a pretty man. And from what she'd heard, he was not a lowlife, either, not a bum, really, not a grifter, except by choice and by chance, and that was finished now. He had no reason to do those things anymore. He was actually from quite a good family, from some money of his own. He had nearly finished his degree at UVA and could easily go back. Economics, he'd said, to keep his parents happy. And English for him.

It was, of course, far, far, too early to make any decisions, to even be thinking about decisions. Now was a time for simply being, for soaking in, for sensations and sights and, soon, for touches. But still, the question whispered itself: What will you do? Will you take him home with you? The ultimate souvenir? Will you play with him for a time and then dump him alongside the road where you found him? Will you see that he gets back to his own home? Do you even really like him? Could you love him? Does it matter?

She took his hand. He was still terribly upset about Justine's abrupt departure. He didn't know, not really, what had happened to cause that. It was just that detectives came asking questions about her. That they had confiscated her pack but would not say why. That they had searched his pack, too, and asked a lot of things about drugs and crossing borders. That they had searched Darcy's as well and somehow found neither drugs nor the package, which she produced again after they'd left.

Still, it was his decision in the end to leave without Justine. Darcy said she'd stay with him in Athens, but he said he knew that Justine would want him to make the delivery. That was paramount.

He was a little distant, although he let her hold his hand. Maybe he was angry or at least confused. Frightened? Curious? Titillated? Time would tell, and, more important, time would ameliorate. It mattered to get where they were headed and then to hunker down. To begin the real work—on him. To convert him entirely from his worship at the shrine of Justine to sating himself at the pagan feast of Darcy. Then the adventure would really begin.