Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Athens - July 2001
T he Athens airport was sweltering. A woman’s high-pitched English voice complained behind Stella, saying, “It really is a catastrophe. They can’t pack us in like sardines and expect us not to die of heatstroke.” Stella adjusted her backpack on her shoulder and shifted her weight from foot to foot. It was eight thirty p.m., and in the schedule she’d written for herself in her notebook, she was supposed to be in the hostel by now, chatting with other travelers or taking a nap after the long flight. But the airline had lost her suitcase, and the female employee behind the desk spoke in rapid Greek to a colleague she couldn’t see behind the wall and ignored Stella. Stella held the ticket for her suitcase with both hands, feeling like a child on the first day of kindergarten. She’d left her bank card in the suitcase and had very little cash with her. What am I going to do?
Suddenly, a man stood beside her at the desk. He had wild hair past his ears and dressed like a rock star with torn jeans, a black T-shirt, and a guitar slung over his shoulder. He rapped his knuckles against the counter to get the attention of the airline clerk. “Excuse me,” he demanded in a British accent. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen the massive queue forming behind me?”
The woman cocked her head at him. Stella fixed her posture. Was he trying to cut her in line?
But then he turned to look at her and winked.
Stella’s heart raced. She thought, They don’t make guys like this in Nantucket.
“We ain’t got time to waste,” the man continued to the airline clerk. “My friend here”—he wagged his eyebrows at Stella—“has an issue that needs to be solved.”
The airline clerk puffed out her cheeks. She was accustomed to people having difficult times at the airport. That was kind of the airport’s whole deal.
“My suitcase didn’t show up,” Stella said. She handed her ticket across the counter.
“That’s right,” the British man shot. “She needs her suitcase. Don’t you see? She’s an actress here for a major motion picture. Her costumes were in that suitcase.”
Stella pursed her lips to keep from bursting into laughter.
The woman checked through the computer system, then sent her colleague away with Stella’s suitcase ticket.
“Wait here,” the woman said to Stella. “My colleague is checking for you.” She then turned her attention to the stranger. “And you? You have also lost your suitcase?”
“Not me, mate,” the man said. He then ducked away from Stella and the desk, striding out toward the darkness.
Stella had the sensation of sand falling through her fingers.
“Wait!” Stella hurried after him to thank him. She wanted to look into his eyes again. She chased him to the bus stop outside the airport’s double-wide doors and touched his shoulder.
He turned and gave her a crooked smile. “Where’s your suitcase?”
Stella wanted to say she didn’t care about her suitcase. They could throw it into the Aegean for all she cared.
What’s gotten into me? I’m not a romantic person!
“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “I’ve never felt more ignored.”
“I imagine people don’t ignore a pretty girl like you so often,” the man said. “Not like they do the rest of us.” He winked.
Stella’s cheeks were hot. She gestured toward his guitar. “You’re a musician.”
“I try to be.”
“And you’re from?”
“London,” he said. “And you?”
“America.”
“Well, I can hear that, darling. But from which of the fifty colonies do you hail?” he asked.
Stella found it difficult to breathe. She laughed a little too long. “Right. I’m from Nantucket Island. Massachusetts.”
“An island. Well, you’re a long way from home,” he said.
“Aren’t we both?”
Suddenly, the airline clerk burst through the doors to announce, “Your suitcase is not here. Come back tomorrow to check.” She handed Stella her ticket back and disappeared again.
Stella looked dumbly at the ticket and thought about what she’d packed in that suitcase. She couldn’t remember a thing save for the lotion her mother had given her for her birthday. It all felt deep in the past.
The bus pulled up with a gasp. “You going to the city?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Stella said. She prepared to tell him about the hostel she’d booked and her plans to see the Acropolis tomorrow but then stopped herself.
She had a hunch that “plans” were inherently uncool.
“Follow me, ma cherie,” he said with a wink.
Stella got onto the crowded bus and grabbed a seat next to her handsome acquaintance. He carried the guitar on his lap with the neck striding along his neck. Behind them was a couple who couldn’t stop kissing. Already, Stella wondered what it would be like to kiss this stranger.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“James Atkinson,” he said, cutting his hand across his body to take hers.
He didn’t ask her name, though. Did that mean he didn’t care?
Stella decided to give it to him anyway.
“I’m Stella Sutton,” she said. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Silence fell on the bus ride. James wrote something in a leather-bound notebook, a sight Stella found to be entirely romantic. She didn’t have anything to write about. Her head was clogged with thoughts about her trip—the first she’d ever taken across the ocean, her first all by herself. But she’d left her notebook and pens in her suitcase. Wasn’t she supposed to be some kind of writer? Maybe James was a more natural writer than she was.
Maybe he had a girlfriend back in London who was a better writer than Stella was.
Or maybe he had a Greek girlfriend he was meeting in Athens now.
When James put his notebook away, Stella pondered what to ask him. She ached for his attention.
But before she could, he turned to look at her. “What do you say, Stella Sutton? You want to grab a drink when we get to town?”
Stella agreed.
“But I don’t have much money,” she admitted, explaining the thing about the bank card.
“We don’t need much cash in Athens,” James said. “It’s cheap as all get-out. We’re gonna have the night of our lives.”
Stella hoped she was ready.
They got off the bus and paraded through the streets of Athens. It was nine thirty and dark, but the city sizzled with life, and restaurants were full and bursting with people. Musicians played guitars on the streets, and people were dancing. It was an entirely different culture than the one Stella had left behind on the East Coast. She couldn’t get enough.
“You hungry?” James asked although they hadn’t gotten a drink yet. “I’m starving!”
Stella admitted she was. She followed him into a little taverna filled with Greek people and zero tourists. James explained, “That’s how you know it’s good.”
“It’s the same in Nantucket,” Stella said. “We keep some things for ourselves and don’t share them with the tourists.”
James ordered them wine and what felt like half the menu. There weren’t prices listed, and Stella was terrified that she couldn’t afford it, but James kept insisting that it was fine and would be a steal compared to Nantucket. He turned out to be right. Although they ate feta and beans and lamb and spinach pies and stuffed grape leaves and had glass after glass of wine, their bill was no more than fifteen US dollars. Stella couldn’t believe it.
“Tell me, Stella Sutton,” James said over a shot of ouzo. “Why did you pick Athens for your solo trip? Most people pick Paris or Rome.”
“I suppose I wanted an adventure,” Stella admitted. “And my uncle Victor once told me Athens is one of the last places on earth where they really know how to celebrate.”
James’s eyes sparkled. “What are we celebrating?”
Stella considered this. “I just graduated from college, I guess.”
James raised his glass. “Wonderful! Yamas!”
“Yamas?”
“It means cheers in Greek,” James said with a wink.
“What are you celebrating?” Stella asked.
“What’s not to celebrate? We’re alive, aren’t we?” James got his wallet from his pocket and pulled out enough money to pay for everything.
Stella protested and reached for her bag. “I have a little bit of money.”
“You can get me later,” James said. “Let’s go to the next place.”
Stella and James raced off into the night. They bobbed from bar to bar, chatting with locals and drinking Mythos, a light Greek beer. The temperature was hot—maybe ninety degrees despite the late hour—and Stella felt as though she was floating.
At the third bar, a Greek man grabbed both Stella and James by the shoulders, looked them in the eye, and said, “You will be married soon.”
Stella burst into laughter. James wore a funny grin.
“I am an oracle,” the man explained. “I see it, and I know. You will be married soon, and you will be very happy.”
James turned to look Stella in the eye. “You hear that, darling?”
Stella couldn’t stop laughing. She’d begun to imagine her life with James. Maybe they’d stay here in Greece. Perhaps they’d get married next to an ancient, crumbling building. Maybe they’d take shots of the ouzo and have their own goat, and their children would speak Greek as their first language.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Whatever happens, my life cannot be sad like Uncle Victor’s and Aunt Esme’s. It has to be wild with possibilities. It has to be an adventure.
Stella knew that her internal clock was out of whack. That was the nature of traveling to Europe. But when she looked at her watch to learn it was nearly six in the morning Athens time, she could hardly believe it. To her, it was only eleven p.m. Nantucket time.
James seemed to take it in stride.
They were walking near the port as the sun came up pinkly on the horizon. James whistled and strummed his guitar, having just serenaded a group of bar-dwellers who’d given him a ton of tips, throwing money drunkenly. They all told James that his girlfriend was “beautiful,” and Stella had blushed.
“Where did you come to Athens from?” Stella asked when the silence had gone too long. “I mean, where did you fly from last night?”
“I told you, darling. I’m from London.” He sounded subdued.
“So this is the beginning of your trip?”
“Just like you.”
Stella smiled although she was suddenly frightened that he would leave her in Athens and go somewhere else to meet another woman and have a similar night. Maybe she was just another story to him. It seemed like he was good at creating them.
At the docks, they discovered a young man tying up a sailboat. James stopped strumming and walked out to meet the man, throwing his guitar over his shoulder again to tie up the ropes. Stella hung back. A wave of fatigue went through her. And then, she watched as James pulled out his wallet and paid the young man a hunk of cash. What was it for? Suddenly, James waved for Stella to come over to him.
“Stella, this is Kostos,” James explained. “He’s rented us his boat for the entire day.” He looked excited and very pleased. “What do you think?”
Stella had the sense that she could never say no to James. This was the adventure she’d always dreamed of.
“I think it sounds wonderful.”
Kostos left, counting his wad of cash and leaving James and Stella with his boat.
“How does he know you won’t steal it?” Stella asked.
“I gave him a prized possession of mine,” James said. “I told him I’ll need it back.”
Stella cocked her head, wondering what it was. But James didn’t say, and Stella decided not to ask.
It was clear James had secrets.
Stella just prayed those secrets didn’t involve another girl.