“I’m not supposed to do this,” she said.
The music was loud but her voice cut through it easily. Chase practically had to shout.
“Do what?”
She tilted her drink.
“Liquor. Cigarettes. Have you got one?”
He fished one out of his pack, lit it for her. Her eyes held on his while she drew up the flame. Her eyes were an amazing color.
There was something familiar about her.
“Have we met?”
She exhaled deeply. “You don’t think you’d remember?”
He laughed. “Sorry. Yes, I think I’d remember. But something…”
“I don't think so. Unless you go to Paris.”
He did. but not often. Then he realized. “You’re a model.”
“How’d you guess.”
“Psychic,” he said.
“Sure you are.” She coughed. “Damn things.”
“You’re not supposed to smoke?”
“Or drink. Lungs are shot, heart’s shot. My doctor says they’ll kill me.”
“At your age?”
“I’m afraid so. Had my first heart attack a year ago. I think it was a year ago.”
“Tough life, being a model.”
“Tougher than you think.”
“But you’re not from Paris.”
“Sure I am. Oh, you mean originally. No.”
“Where? I can’t place the accent.”
“You’re not supposed to.” Her voice had gone bored and expressionless. She tossed her long red hair.
“Look,” she said, “this place is too loud. I know another place. It’s just opening tonight. Want to go and try to find it with me?”
‘Try to?”
“I know the general area. But not where it is exactly. The streets are pretty confusing.”
He hesitated. He looked around for the barmaid. She was outside hustling drinks. It didn’t look like there’d be much let-up for a while. He’d come back later. The woman intrigued him.
He examined his motives. Yes, that was all it was. That was as far as it went.
He still couldn’t read her.
“Let’s go.”
They moved out the door, down through the crowd in front of the terrace, into the streets.
“They built this to confuse pirates, you know that? This maze.” Chase said he didn’t.
“Sure. The idea was that the locals would know exactly where they were going but nobody else would. Gave them a head start against invaders. They’re still the only ones who know where they’re going as far as I can see.”
“Are we lost yet?”
“Not yet.”
“You in a hurry?”
“No.”
“Slow down, then, will you?”
She had a good ten years on him and they were going uphill into town. The going wasn’t hard but his cold had cut his wind down.
She eased the pace a little but still stayed three or four steps ahead of him. He didn’t want to complain again. But he wondered if this had been a good idea.
She kept turning corners. As though she knew exactly where she was going. He’d turn a comer after her and there would be another one. He didn’t know if she was lost but he was.
Hell, it’s a small town, he thought. They’d come out someplace he knew eventually.
She kept talking. This looks familiar. No, that's not right. Maybe here. He heard a note of steadily increasing anxiety in her voice but it was strange-he couldn’t read anxiety.
He knew by now that she wasn’t drunk. Usually, if he tried, he could penetrate to some level and anxiety-any strong emotional state-only made it that much easier.
But she was utterly closed off to him.
He had blind spots, sure. And never knew why or when he’d have them. But almost always there was something.
And where had he seen her before?
Somewhere.
Those eyes. Nearly the same color as…
“Here we go.”
She moved confidently out ahead of him.
The Greeks turned in early. Some of the streets were brightly lit and others completely dark. This one was dark.
He narrowly avoided hitting his head on the projected rail of a balcony. In the distance he heard the bass thump of rock ‘n’ roll. So there was definitely a bar nearby. But it was hard to tell in which direction. He was tiring. *
The whitewashed walls all began to look the same to him as did the closed shuttered stores and markets. Vines and flowers brushed his hair. His shoes sounded loud on the fieldstone walk. The night was warm. He was perspiring.
The music came and went, chimerical. She turned another comer.
It occurred to him that he didn’t even know her name.
“Of course you do, Mr. Chase.”
Startled, he turned the comer.
The street was empty.
Yet he felt her there, nearby and all around him. He read her.
The full weight and force of her. Alien and frightful.
All she’d concealed from him.
BILLIE
She was getting very close to Dodgson. Very quickly.
It was always somewhat dangerous with a man but with this one it was probably more so than usual. A writer who said he’d never write again. Suppose they stayed together. What in the world would they live on? She had to laugh.
Why was she so happy?
Because she was happy-listening to him in the shower singing tunelessly, wanting to make love to him again. She lay across his bed and closed her eyes and let the fantasy come. He’d walk out of the shower and see her there. He’d drop the towel and lean over. She knew exactly how he’d smell, of plain soap and Aussie shampoo, the stuff with papaya. She imaged his hands on her, very firm and gentle.
There came a time when you simply had to close your eyes and jump, didn’t you? When you had to have a certain courage.
She recalled her mother dying, riddled with cancer. She had always been very close to her mother. And on this day, the day before she died, Billie had been taking it badly. The end was so close now. Her mother had awakened and looked at her and then reached over and patted her arm.
I’m doing this alone, she said. You can’t go with me.
Her mother had known about courage.
And she wondered how her mother would have felt about her involvement with Robert. She’d known about the hospital in Spain and the rape. And she’d looked on, saddened, Billie thought, as she cut herself off from men-saddened but understanding.
She thought she knew what her mother would say.
He’s a nice man, isn’t he? Well, you’re your mother’s daughter, dear. And you need a man.
She closed her eyes and saw them making love and felt her nipples tighten. Her eyes snapped open.
I know what, she thought.
She got off the bed. She unbuttoned the checkered blouse and pulled off the jeans.
Underneath she wore a filmy beige bra and matching bikini panties. Thus far Robert had seen neither of them. She looked into the mirror. With the tan, there was almost the illusion of nakedness. I’m never going to look any better, she thought. Dodgson, I’ve got a little treat for you. And you’d better appreciate this because my ego’s showing.
She hopped back into bed.
Cover or no cover?
She felt like a cinema director laying out the properties.
No covers. And a little stretch position to tighten up the tummy. She laughed aloud. Really. Billie.
I’m not certain Mum would approve of this at all.
She heard the shower go off and Dodgson humming, drying himself. Any moment now.
She wondered if she was blushing.
“Billie?”
He opened the bathroom door and stood there. She couldn’t help laughing. The expression on his face-perfect! Then he laughed too.
“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
He dropped the towel, sat on the edge of the bed and kissed h
er. His hair was still very wet when she put her hands into it.
“You look lovely,” he said. “I almost hate to take them off.”
“Don’t, then, for a little while.”
“Okay.” He kissed her again. “For a little while.”
She pulled him down to her mouth, to her neck, while his hands moved lightly over her breasts and down to her belly and over the side of her panties to the fine down of her inner thigh, teasing her, then back over her hips and butt and up to pluck and roll the nipple under the thin material. His hands were smooth and felt wonderful to her, urgent and masculine yet thoughtful, considerate of all the textures of her body, the sleek tight surfaces of muscle here, the tender softness there, of all the weights and hollows.
She felt herself flush, heat rising quickly and steadily. She pulled her panties off and was open to him. He moved down over her, his mouth tracing a tingling line of fire from her breastbone over her ribs and belly down inside her until his tongue found its target and she began to sweat in earnest, shuddering, until the small pitchfork jabs of fire became one long burning that seemed to go on and on so that when he rose over her grinning his cheeks and chin were slick with her and as he entered her she was half again her normal size…
***
…and when it was over, inexplicably, she was crying.
The look on his face questioned her-what? why? but she could scarcely tell him, she scarcely knew herself. It had just happened, out of control, automatic, timed to her release. Let go, she thought. If you have to, babble.
“You see this?” she said. “You see what a wreck you’ve made of me. You know what you’re doing to me? Because I don’t, dammit!” And she was laughing now as well.
“I see it. And whatever it is, you’re doing it to me too, Billie.”
“Am I?"
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Really. And you’ll keep on doing it too, I think.”
“Dodgson, don’t leave me, okay? I didn’t want to say that. I promised myself I wouldn’t say that. But don’t”
“I won’t.”
“You didn’t count on this, did you?”
“No.”
“Neither did I. I thought it was years and years away.”
“It was. We just grew up fast together. That’s all.”
He hugged her tightly.
“And what if you leave me?” he said.
“Fat chance. Dodgson, you should live so long.”
***
Later his voice was drowsy.
“You’ve still got the bra on,” he said.
“I know. You can take it…if you want, you can take it…”
And smiling, she fell asleep.
***
In her sleep she felt a sudden cold.
It awakened her.
Dodgson lay asleep beside her and his body was warm.
But the cold surrounded her. Like a damp mist.
She felt it everywhere-on her breasts, her thighs, her face. She touched her stomach. She wasn’t sweating. She wasn’t sick. It wasn’t a cold sweat. She looked at the window.
It was open.
Perhaps that’s it, she thought. Though she felt no breeze.
She got up and went to the window and closed the shutters.
The cold seemed to follow her.
Wake him up, she thought.
And then urgently thought, No, don't.
She climbed back into bed. Trembling, she pulled up the covers. She moved closer to him.
A few minutes later the feeling passed.
Is it fever after all?
It took a while but again she fell asleep.
SADLIER
He crested the hill where their camp lay and saw them in the glow of the fire, Dulac on one side and Ruth on the other. Ruth strummed the battered old guitar and they passed a bottle of wine. From the way Dulac thrust the wine at him Sadlier knew he was drunk.
“Finish it,” he said. The voice was slurred. “We have another.”
Sadlier accepted the bottle, tilted it back, drained it and tossed it away. He stood behind Dulac and watched him uncork the bottle of red.
Ruth continued strumming. She was a horrible guitar player. Sadlier rolled up his sleeves.
There was little point in waiting.
“Adieu mes amis,” he said.
His hands moved down to the sides of Dulac’s head. His knees bent forward to brace the body. His powerful arms and shoulders flexed and twisted, snapping the head around to the side with a sound like green wood breaking. He released the body and Dulac fell toward the fire.
Ruth’s guitar chord hung in the air. She opened her mouth to scream. He reached through the fire and pulled her toward him facedown into it and held her there until her legs stopped twitching and he could no longer stand the billowing smoke. He pushed her aside.
Her hair was almost gone. The eyes boiled in their sockets. A small twig poked through the blackened upper lip.
His hands were badly burned. In his excitement he barely felt them.
Dulac was bleeding from the eyes, nose and mouth. Sadlier hoisted him up on his shoulder. He dropped to one knee and threw Ruth’s body over the other shoulder. They weren’t particularly heavy. Like starved children. Unmindful that someone might see him from another campsite he walked down the hill.
For Sadlier their bodies were sacks of gold, jewels, precious metals.
His purchase into eternity.
BILLIE
When she woke this time she was frightened.
Something had touched her.
Something had touched her there and it rocketed her out of her pit of dreams as though doused with ice-cold water-and perhaps it was a dream, it had to be a dream, she was sure of it, but the touch was so cold and so private and foul that she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think of sleeping. She sat with him in bed and waited for the sunrise. It felt safe to do that. It did not feel safe to dream.
Because dream or not she’d felt it slip inside her, and its touch was cruel.
SADLIER
Her gown was black and made of illusion. Sadlier knew that now. It didn’t matter.
He dumped them down in front of her near the black and crawling thing on the floor and near the other two, the teenage boy and girl and did not wonder how they came to be there, knew only that she had gathered them and saw that the crabs had begun to find them too as they would now find Ruth and Dulac. He didn’t care. She was everything to him now.
She motioned him outside ahead of her.
She pushed him back and down. Behind her the night surf thundered.
She stepped up to him and straddled his face and parted the gown still further. She pressed herself against him. He gripped her buttocks. Her flesh was cold to his hands but inside of her his tongue found a blazing scorching heat.
Again he tasted blood. Old blood, dead blood. Raw and ripe.
Suddenly it poured over him.
He lapped it like a dog. She pushed him away.
She tore away his shirt and smiling, leaned over him, pressed her body to his, her smile broadening as she felt him already wet inside his trousers.
“Close your eyes if you want,” she said, her voice like a silk glove.
He kept them open.
So that it was like watching a snake or perhaps a wolf or bird of prey because she drew back slowly, he could feel the hard muscles coil and then when it came it was sudden, faster than he could possibly have imagined it would be.
For a moment the wide blue eyes seemed to float before him, blotting out the sun.
Then the mouth flew open and the head struck down as she tore at his neck and shoulder, blood pulsing out over both of them as she ripped at him and bolted his flesh, head darting forward and then jerking back as she swallowed and the last thing he saw as a living man was the look of ecstasy on her face and knew that it matched his own.
DODGSON
THE SECOND DAY
“What is this, Malibu?”
They stood on the hilltop over Paradise Beach. They’d had to walk there. In the harbor at Plati Yialos the waves were choppy and none of the ferries were running. Yet here it was more than choppy. This was surf. Where normally it was placid as a lake.
The weather had gone strange again.
“You ready?”
Dodgson grinned. “Guess so.”
“You tell anybody you went bodysurfing in Greece, they’ll never believe you.”
Danny led the way down. It was the first time since Lelia’s death that he seemed himself again. Dodgson knew Michelle had been working on him. Breakfast this morning was nearly the same kind of boisterous affair they’d known in Crete. And now they had this weird magical beach day-high waves and a clear cloudless sky. You could hope it would complete the recovery.
He touched Billie’s hand.
“Want me to cany that now?” He pointed to the small portable easel and shoulder bag containing her sketch pad, books and materials.
“I’m fine.”
She’s quiet today, he thought-subdued, introspective. He wondered if anything was bothering her. He knew she was basically happy. With him, with the two of them together. He supposed that if and when she wanted to tell him about it, she would.
They spread out their mats and anchored them against the wind with clothes and books and sandals, stripped down and ran to the water.
There were half a dozen people out there already beyond the sandbar. The waves were six-foot curls, some of them. They were breaking far from shore and that was good because the sandbar was infested with sea urchins. But you wouldn’t get near that now.
He’d never heard Michelle whoop before.
But she was whooping now, running out ahead of them, leaping into the whitecaps. The undertow tugged at his ankles. It drifted to the left, but without the power the waves would suggest. It wouldn’t be bad.
He grabbed Billie’s hand and ran. Ahead of them Danny tackled Michelle and they disappeared into the foam, came up laughing and sputtering.