Forth into Light (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (8 page)

Everybody was apparently glad to forget the money. Mike’s name was picked up and passed around the table to the accompaniment of generally irreverent comments. Peter turned to Martha. “You remember? He was married to Charlie’s actress wife for a little while.” Peter’s eyes strayed and he threw his head back and uttered his infectious laughter. “Oh, my God.”

Martha and others saw what he had seen and laughed with him. A small figure under a straw hat had adopted an unmistakable stance down on the edge of the
quai
and was aiming a glistening arc of water into the port. Peter rose and crossed the
quai
just as the jet ended. Little Petey looked up as his father joined him and his face broke into a beam of guilty joy.

“You caught me with my pee-pee out,” he announced.

Peter laughed. “I sure did.” He squatted down to the child’s level and began to help him get his buttons into the right holes. He was constantly amazed and delighted that paternal love could arouse him sexually. The toy materialized briefly in the uncomfortable confines of his shorts as he breathed the sweet smell of the little boy. “There’s nothing wrong with your pee-pee,” he said. “I mean, it’s no big secret. It’s just considered sort of private. That’s why we wear pants. Anyway, you’re not supposed to pee in the port, so don’t.”

“It was fun, Daddy,” Petey chortled.

“Good. You’ve had your fun. Not again, right? What if everybody used the port to pee in?” He hugged his son and kissed him on the cheek.

Petey looked at him, performing solemnity. “All right, Daddy. I won’t. Ever, ever again.”

Peter laughed at the little fraud and stood and led him to the table with his hand on the back of his neck. He heard George arranging to meet Joe that evening in front of the police station. Joe was looking solemn and self-important, obviously pleased with his central role in the drama.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” George asked Peter. “Don’t. I want Mike to meet you.”

Peter glanced at Martha. “Not now, George. Bring him up to the house. If he’s staying, we’ll have a dinner for him. We’ll arrange something when you know.”

“I’d better get cracking myself. I have to round up Sarah and do something about lunch. Anybody seen her?”

The latest arrival, Dorothy, Sid Coleman’s American painter girlfriend, turned to him. “Sarah? She’s down on the rocks swimming.”

“Christ. I do have to run. Be seeing you, everybody.” George sprang up with a wave of his hand and hurried off toward the western promontory and the road leading out to the swimming rocks. Peter and Martha exchanged another glance.

Sid reached across the table and clutched Peter’s wrist. “Hey, listen, man. Why is Costa talking about Dimitri? What’s the connection? Is something going on between Dimitri and Jeff?”

“I don’t know. I’m seeing Jeff after lunch. I’ll try to find out.” Peter signaled to Martha that he was ready to go. Petey, who had been making the rounds of the table tasting everybody’s drinks, moved to their sides as they rose. He gave them each a hand and they smiled and nodded their farewells to the assembled company as they circled the table and went to the door of the shop, where Peter called out a message for Costa to the Lambraikis family. They set off with Petey between them for the other side of the port.

“What a lot of excitement,” Martha said. “What do you make of it?”

“Sid’s worried about his supply of pot. Everybody knows he gets it from Dimitri. That silly little bastard. I wouldn’t mind seeing him get arrested. What it has to do with George’s money and Costa, I haven’t the faintest idea. Maybe Costa was really trying to warn him about something and George took it as a threat. We shall see.” He kept his eyes out for Costa at every small grouping of tavern tables they passed. As they approached one that was frequented almost exclusively by locals, his eye was caught by an extraordinarily beautiful girl sitting at a table. He did a little double take as he focused on her. Dark hair swept back from an exquisite profile, her nose tilted deliciously, her mouth looked as if it were about to open in a kiss. Peter quickened his pace in his eagerness to see her full-face. He saw her straighten and then lean forward with her head cocked slightly in an attitude of intense, generous absorption. The muscles of his stomach contracted as if he had been struck. His arms and legs tingled with it. He felt that if she looked at him like that, he would faint dead away at her feet.

“What?” Martha said. “Did you say something?”

“Daddy, you
stepped
on me,” Petey protested.

Peter laughed as he tore his eyes away from the girl. “Sorry. A slight distraction. Did you see that incredibly beautiful girl?”

“So that’s what it was.” Martha laughed with him. “You men.”

They were past her before Peter realized that his eyes had been so fixed on the girl that he hadn’t seen who had been the recipient of her electrifying look.

Shaved and sweating, George Leighton stood under the awning of the café at the boat landing. In only a matter of minutes, Mike would actually be here. George had found Sarah sitting down on the rocks with Pavlo, the new body boy. He had swept her off to shop. Briefly they had captured their old high spirits as they discussed lunch and ran up bills for a fish and a few bottles of good wine and negotiated with the butcher for an edible piece of beef for dinner. They hurried home, as excited and responsive to each other as they had been in the old days when some unexpected treat turned up. He had left her there to dress and deal with Chloë, who was not a maid so much as a friend they paid to help around the house, and had hurried back to be sure to be here for the boat. He hoped she would make it in time. He wanted everything to look right for Mike.

This reunion was acquiring a significance for him that went beyond the renewal of an old friendship. Their lives could serve as illustrations of conflicting philosophies. It was almost too pat. They had started off together, they had both achieved success, George earlier than Mike. Mike had courted it, acquiring wealth and celebrity and numerous wives. George had sought a more enduring reality, careless of money and fame. He had even managed to be broke for Mike’s arrival.

Yet there was no basis for real confrontation. George Leighton’s reputation was secure and distinguished, quite independent of popular or material success, although he had had that too for a while. Mike, whose youthful ambition had been so great, would be the last to claim any high literary merit for his bright Broadway comedies. No conflict there. It had been said that George Leighton was losing touch, but losing touch with what? Certainly not, God knows, with the suffering which lay at the core of human experience. With his country? There was a respectable literary tradition for expatriation. No, there was no need for apologies, nothing to hide. Except the impending ruin of his life.

He wondered what price Mike had paid. He wondered, too, why Mike was coming. If business had brought him to Athens, it would seem natural to look up a friend so near at hand, except that there had been other occasions when they could have arranged for their paths to cross. Had the President appointed him to confer on George Leighton an exalted honor? Or, prompted by some residue of the competitive spirit of their youth, was he coming to assure himself that George Leighton was a wreck and a has-been? George lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. He was confident that nothing showed.

A band of ragged longshoremen was moving down to the edge of the landing area. This was a recent improvement; small boats no longer rowed passengers ashore. The white-uniformed harbor patrol had already taken its stations within the railed enclosure. The idlers who daily constituted themselves a welcoming committee were spreading out along it. He noted again the dead gray look of the sea. The heat was more than oppressive—it felt dangerous, as if its pressure would shatter the atmosphere.

He had almost given up hoping for Sarah when he caught sight of her and waved.

“You look almost cool,” he remarked admiringly as she joined him.

“The sea helped.”

“Mike’ll probably want to go later.”

“Yes, you should take him down after lunch. You can sit in the sea and talk your heads off. It’s too hot for naps anyway.”

“I hope to God we all recognize each other,” he said with a chuckle. “Twelve years is a long time, except that suddenly it doesn’t seem like anything at all.”

She looked up at him in quick scrutiny and smiled. “You haven’t changed much. More distinguished. Of course, we’re both black as niggers which may confuse him.”

He took her arm and led her out into the crushing sun and over to a place at the barricade. A dark hungry-eyed boy darted up to them, roughly shoving a smaller boy out of his way as he came.

“Will you need me?” he demanded, looking as if he would attack anybody who refused his aid.

“Yes, my child,” George said with a slight smile. “You have your animal? Wait for us. There will probably be baggage.”

This was the way he hoped Mike’s visit would go—people springing eagerly to serve them, everything working smoothly, all the flaws and fissures with which they had to contend in daily living neatly covered over for this occasion. “I told Chloë to plan for lunch at one-thirty. Does that check with you? I didn’t think we’d want to prolong the drinking hour.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “That means I’ll—I mean, that means you’ll probably be ready to take Mike for a swim by about three.”

“Yes,” he agreed. She was really determined to get him into the water. Did she think he was going to need sobering up? He wiped sweat from his forehead and out of his eyes. He felt as if the sun were beating him into the ground.

“Here she comes,” Sarah announced to the empty sea in what appeared to be a moment of claivoyance. She had scarcely spoken before there was a blast of ship’s whistle and the boat came surging around the steep rocky promontory, pushing its way through the lifeless sea, stirring it to a heavy leaden swell. There was the rumble of reversed engines, lines were thrown, whistles piped, the ship’s telegraph clanged urgent messages below. The boat bumped broadside against the
quai
and came to rest in a swirl of slapping water. Everybody began to shout. The longshoremen jockeyed the gangplank into position and there was an explosion of humanity. In an instant, the enclosure was packed with pushing, shouting people, baggage, parcels, packing cases, baskets, odd lengths of pipe, toilet bowls, and a baby carriage.

There was no sign of Mike. People were streaming down the gangplank, but the first flood spent itself quickly. Leighton turned to Sarah. Her eyes were scanning the open upper deck, the wide windows of the first-class lounge.

“Do you see him?”

She shook her head and he turned back to the scene of confusion around the gangplank. A final trickle of passengers emerged from somewhere in the depths, an ungainly crate was trundled ashore, there was a flurry of white jackets in the shade of the covered deck and two stewards teetered down the gangplank under a load of handsome matched suitcases. Leighton’s attention quickened. These were worthy of Michael Cochran. Why so many? Was he planning to stay a month?

Then he was there, framed in the gangway, like the star entrance in a musical comedy, shaking hands with the captain. George burst into laughter of recognition and welcome. He looked so exactly like old Mike, except that he had a completely unfamiliar elegance now and the lock of hair had been suppressed by expert barbering. He was apparently in no hurry although it was obvious that the boat was being held for him. All his movements were deliberate and looked rehearsed, the mark of celebrity. The captain bowed before him profusely and then he turned and strolled down the gangplank. He was expensively dressed in a crisp summer suit. It won’t stay crisp long, George thought with malicious satisfaction. The two stewards were waiting by the baggage and Mike distributed tips with experienced graciousness.

George leaned over the barrier and shouted, “Mike, you son of a bitch, aren’t you going to greet the natives?”

Cochran turned and smiled. “I’ll sign autographs in the lobby of the hotel in an hour,” he called back. Then he laughed and the self-consciousness dropped from him as he hurried to them. He clapped Leighton on both shoulders and shook him affectionately. He took Sarah in his arms across the railing and kissed her on both cheeks. There was a slight hook in his nose and the skin was stretched taut over wide cheekbones, as if he might have Indian blood. He had always had great success with women.

“God, this is wonderful,” he exclaimed. “Let me look at you. You look divine. How did you find this incredible place? I don’t believe it for a moment. It’s all painted on a backdrop. The very Cosmo, himself. Why aren’t you wearing your beachcomber costume? I was particularly looking forward to it. Oh, lord, how
are
you both? You look superb.”

They laughed a lot and exchanged rather incoherent and repetitive pleasantries.

“Well, let’s get organized and get out of this sun,” George suggested finally. “I take it you haven’t brought any of your wives.”

“I’ve run out of wives at the moment. A wife in this heat. What a hideous thought. Sorry, Sarah, old dear.”

The ragged child approached George and he pointed out the baggage, astonished once more at its quantity. “Listen, you bastard,” he said. “You haven’t brought all that stuff just for the day. How long are you staying?”

“Till tomorrow. But not to worry. I’m not going to be a nuisance. I understand the hotel here is fairly civilized.”

“So is our house. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re going to stay with us.”

“No, I’ll be better at the hotel. Not that I’d have the slightest hesitation about turning your house upside down. I just like having my own hole to crawl into. Somebody was supposed to arrange it.”

George threw his arm around his friend’s shoulder and gave him a hug. George was the bigger of the two which bolstered his confidence. “It’s too hot to argue. This kid will take care of your things. I’ll see that the manager gives you the best room.”

“You’re joking,” Mike exclaimed as he caught sight of the small boy struggling to attach the luggage to his donkey. “Don’t you have child labor laws here?”