Matala (11 page)

T
HEY CAME THEN ON A
bus over the mountains from Iraklion to stay in the Hotel Papigal at the edge of the village of Agia Galini where a fall of dark boulders ran from the white sea wall down to the narrow rocky beach. In the beginning Darcy could not stop remarking on the coloration of the water, how it turned in bands from blue to green to silver to rust and back to a deeper blue again out at the horizon, although perhaps that last was just the color of the sky reflected in it. How it changed with the weather, too, becoming steely and dark as clouds formed. Will could not stop remarking on how they had to deliver the package even without Justine and how he didn't know where to take it or to whom, and what would happen if they didn't get it delivered?

On the second day when, after Darcy reminded him again that Maurice had said to just wait and someone would find them, and Will seemed to settle some, she paid for them to go out in one of the fishing boats so they could look back at the island and try for a shark or a swordfish. They saw that the deeper blue was not the sky but the water itself. If you looked straight down into it, you could see that it deepened all the way to black, and that was the soul of the sea. She shuddered when she saw it and stepped back away from the railing. The captain and the deckhand laughed, but Will kept staring into it until the line was ready and they had cast it and let it dive and dive into that blackness.

L
ATE THAT AFTERNOON SHE CALLED
Matthew's hotel in Athens.

“Darcy,” he said. “What's going on?”

“Not much. How about with you?”

“Well, I talked with the police, who said they'd questioned you and that drugs were involved.”

“Oh, my.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. I called them.”

“Yes, that's what they said.”

“And didn't you believe them?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I'm not sure.”

She laughed. “I just saw a bag with a bunch of stuff in it. That's all.”

“Apparently that's not all. It belonged to someone you knew, didn't it?”

“Well, sort of.”

“So you turned over this Justine person and then left.”

“How do you know about her.”

“She has a file, as you can imagine. So does her ex-husband, Maurice Winterbottom. I found a waiter at the American Café in Venice who recognized you from a picture I showed him and remembered seeing you talking to Maurice.”

“My, you are thorough.”

“These don't seem to be very nice people, Darcy, especially not the sort I'd want to piss off by narcing on them. I'm not sure you know what you've gotten yourself into.”

“Not really. Do you?”

“Not yet. But I'm learning.”

“Me, too. And I'm peachy, so not to worry.”

“Where are you?”

“Ah, ah, ah.”

“Please, can we stop this? I've been sitting in this room for two days. It's not very pleasant just waiting.”

“Oh, come on. I bet Daddy puts you up in great hotels, doesn't he? Fabbo room service, in-room massages, and all that. But you're an all-work kind of guy, I bet, aren't you, Matthew? No playtime, at least not on a job.”

“Are you on Crete yet?”

“Now I am
really
impressed.”

“So you are.”

“How in the world did you know that? I paid cash—”

“Darcy—”

“No, no. This is part of the fun. You have to tell me.”

“I don't think you realize what sort of people these are, this Justine and Maurice.”

“You already said that. How did having their names lead you to Crete?”

“There are things you don't know.”

“Then
tell
me, Matthew. Come on.”

“I don't really know much, either. But Maurice owns real estate there.”

“Well, good for Maurice.”

“Listen, I've booked a room in Iraklion. The Hotel Anastasia. You can go there now. The room's under both our names. I'll be in tonight.”

“I won't be.”

“I didn't think you would.”

“Anastasia. Pretty name. I guess I'll talk to you after you get here—if you're lucky.”

“You mean if
you're
lucky.”

“Matthew, you worry too much.”

“And you should.”

She hung up.

T
HEIR ROOM WAS NARROW, WITH
a cracked red linoleum floor and a bathroom so tiny that to use the handheld shower you had to close the toilet and sit. The room held only two single beds, a small desk, and a bookcase. But it also opened directly onto the beach and had a window wide enough to allow them a view of the southern curve of the coastline that ran away from the town in both directions. And so the sea filled the room, and in the mornings they woke with the first pink light that came over it.

They took to walking in the early mornings. The shore to the west was broken and soon ended at the base of a rough cliff with an olive orchard at its top, but to the east they could pick their way among the rocks, find long stretches of sand, and go for more than an hour sometimes. Later they had breakfast in one of the
tavernas
or
kafenía
along the main street of the village where they took all their meals. Sometimes they had nothing more than tough bread, white butter, and a pot of the tarry, bitter skéto that they had both come to crave.

On the morning of the fourth day, after breakfast, they went into a shop that passed as one of the town's general stores. It held small selections of toiletries, stationery materials, and hardware, and larger ones of touristy trifles, Greek-subtitled videotapes, and groceries. Will was looking for something to read. He was already beginning to seem bored, which Darcy found disconcerting. They had each other to keep them amused and happy and satiated. And she certainly felt all three of those things. Will had proved to be a robust and durable lover, and Darcy did not feel disappointed in him except at the furthest edges of her desires. He was not especially inventive, she thought, or daring. But his enthusiasm made up for it, and the previous days had been a swirl of sensual satisfactions, from Will to the warm ocean to the strange, wonderful foods to the feel of the sun in the days before Christmas. She hoped he wasn't already tiring of this Eden they were in together.

As he browsed a rack of months-old magazines, she wandered down one of the store's two aisles to the rear wall where there hung a display of miniature decorative spoons with various emblems or symbols embossed on the flattened handles. It was something you'd see in an American tourist trap. These had the predictable Greek flag or Greek and American flags intertwined or Greek and British. One, though, said simply
Matala,
and beneath it was an image of what appeared to be a high cliff with pockmarks on its face.

She looked around. There was only the clerk up front behind the counter and Will at the reading rack. She had seen a man stocking shelves when they came in, but he had apparently gone into the back room. She touched one of the other spoons first, a flag one, lifted it and felt its weight, and put it back. She looked around again and then quickly lifted the Matala spoon and palmed it. Another glance, and then she slipped it down the front of her shorts and inside the band of her panties where she had meant it to stay, but it slipped down into her crotch. There was some danger, of course, that it would slip out and clatter to the floor, which would be at the least an embarrassment. But she liked the sensation of the cool metal there. She took a few experimental steps and could feel it moving against her.

The man came out of the back now and looked at her. He smiled. “You like?”

She nodded. “Just looking, though.”

He went toward the front. Will seemed to have chosen something, so she wandered up slowly so as not to jar anything and went out and waited for him at the curb of the narrow lane.

When he emerged with a brown paper bag holding several magazines, she took his hand and pulled him in the direction of the hotel.

“What?” he said.

“Just come with me.”

When she was thirteen years old, she had gone with her mother to a beauty salon. Her haircut had taken only fifteen minutes, but her mother's perm was going to be at least an hour. She sat reading for a while and then got up and wandered over to the rack of expensive shampoos, conditioners, toners, and dyes, and lifted several to read the labels. The women were farther back, either working or being worked upon, except the one behind the counter who was either terribly engrossed in the article she was reading or asleep. Darcy slipped a small spritzer bottle into her purse. It was not the first time she had stolen something, but she was still new to it.

Later, as she waited for her mother to pay so they could leave, she saw her talking to the woman at the counter, and then the two of them looking at her. Then another woman joined them, listening and nodding and watching her. And then a third woman, older than the others, the owner or manager or something, came up, too. They were all looking at her.

She felt frightened in a way, but excited, too. She remembered even years later the feel of sweat running down her sternum, though the place was overly air-conditioned. She remembered the feel in her gut of hunger and desire, and of the urge it gave her to leap up and run from the store before anyone could do anything. But she did not run. She got up and walked past the women and into one of the bathrooms. She tossed the bottle of hair spray into the trash, then pulled her pants down, sat on the edge of the toilet seat, and touched herself, and almost immediately she came. She couldn't believe it had happened that easily. She had touched herself before, in her bed at night, and had climaxed, but never this easily or this intensely. She felt dizzy and sat breathing for several minutes before washing her hands and going out. Her mother waited at the door. She did not look at the other women as she passed them.

Outside in the sun and heat of a June parking lot afternoon, her mother gripped her upper arm hard enough that Darcy knew she would have a bruise.

“Ow!”

“Shush,” her mother said. “What did you do?”

“With what?”

“In that store? What did you take?”

“Nothing. God, Mother, will you let go of me?”

“I had to pay for a bottle of very expensive setting spray that they said was missing after you looked at it.”

“That's bullshit.”

“You watch your mouth. This isn't the first time, Darcy. I know what you do.”

“I don't have anything!” she said. “Just because you think I've done it before, you believe them now over me? Let's go back in there. I'll show you. I don't have any stupid thing of theirs.”

“I'll never go in there again. You've ruined that. It was my favorite place, too.”

“I don't have anything. Do you want to search me?”

“I want you to get over this,” her mother said.

Now, as soon as they entered their Galini hotel room, Darcy grabbed Will and pressed her mouth into his. She held him tightly to her and kissed his neck and chest.

“Darcy,” he said.

“Please,” she told him. “Right now. Don't talk.”

“But I—”

“Please.”

He kissed her again, or let her kiss him, and then she felt him at the snaps of her shorts. She felt them fall around her ankles and felt him at the top of her panties and his fingers creeping down in that delicious way, and then he touched the spoon and withdrew.

“What the hell?” he said.

“It's yours,” she said. “Take it out. I got it for you.”

“What is it?”

“Take it out.” She lay down on one of the beds, and he sat beside her and reached in again and pulled out the spoon.

“Did you steal it?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

“But—”

“Don't stop,” she said. She pulled his hand back to her belly and pushed it down until he bent over her again and kissed her, and soon there was no question of stopping.

T
HAT NIGHT, AFTER SHARK STEAKS
and a liter of the sweet retsina, she told Will she'd meet him back at the room in a few minutes. Then they could decide whether to go to the Korus Club again or somewhere else that night. She went to the pay phone outside the Rent-a-Vespa shop and had to wait for some stupid girl to finish giggling with her boyfriend. The holiday influx had swollen the little town to the point of making it uncomfortable. It had been theirs for a few days, but it was not anymore. When the girl finished, Darcy dialed the Anastasia in Iraklion.