Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
I have PTSD just at the thought of getting on another plane.
I try – without drama – to make it known that I booked an aisle seat, not a middle. The freshly minted grown-up with the pink shellac talons pecks away at the keyboard then looks up from under her thatch of black bangs. ‘I’m afraid there’s no seat selection attached to the reservation, Ma’am,’ she says.
‘But I only booked last night. I can categorically remember choosing 12C.’ At the prospect of having to sit for fourteen hours stuffed into a middle seat, a river of sweat makes its way down my back. I ask her to check again. So as not to sound like a Karen, I compliment her on her impeccable fingernails and hair. She continues clacking away. I wait. And wait. I’m not sure what she’s doing. Redesigning the cabin with 3D software?
‘I’m sorry.’ She looks up, like she’s just enjoyed the minor status thrill of keeping me in suspense. ‘Middle seats are all we have left. But we can get you one not too near the back, I think.’ She smiles. ‘Two rows from the toilets. Unless you’d like to upgrade to Business. I can check availability.’
‘Do that, please.’
She pecks away at the keyboard again. ‘We do have a few available seats. Would you like to do the upgrade for an additional $4,300 one way?’
I pull a taut smile. ‘I’ll take my assigned seat in economy, thank you.’
She hands me my boarding pass.
I’m trying to balance my weekend bag that’s bursting with make-up, hair tools, sunscreens, anti-ageing potions – I didn’t have time to think what to bring, so I essentially just brought everything – on top of my carry-on case, and loop the strap over the handle, when I look up and see someone staring at me from the business class line.
He has ‘cleaned up’ in an expensively cut, but lived-in, tan suede jacket, a white shirt with a firm collar, and blue jeans. My jaw drops open three inches. He waves.
The cute girl at his counter gushes, ‘Welcome back, Mr Lewis! So happy to have you fly with us again.’
Frank reads the name tag on her breast. ‘Well, April…’ He flirts. ‘It’s a pleasure to be back with you again.’
Athens. Are we really here? I am practically punch drunk with exhaustion. Not so much as a wink of sleep. But that’s what happens when you travel stink-class and end up sandwiched between world’s biggest talker and world’s tallest man who didn’t care for me asking him to put his running shoes back on so I didn’t have to spend the entire flight wondering if I could smell his feet. For my punishment, he made me ‘climb’ him every time I needed to get up to go to the loo.
After I dart into the nearest toilet because I’ve been holding my pee for an inhumanly long time, I stare at my haggard face in the mirror. Baggy, bloodshot green eyes, a brown bird’s nest for hair, and the pallor of the recently dead. I contemplate brushing my teeth but decide I can handle my rank breath a while longer. I drag myself back out of there and attempt to get my bearings. The only positive thing is I don’t have checked luggage to wait for.
After clearing customs, I’m crossing the concourse towards the exit when I become aware of someone briskly falling into step alongside me. He’s walking tall and confidently with his suede jacket slung over one shoulder. Barely a crease in his white linen shirt. ‘Oh wow,’ I say. ‘You look so fresh and well-rested. You even smell good. Like you just stepped out of a Bangkok massage parlour.’
He laughs. ‘Well, let me tell you how you look, Moira Fitzgerald.’ He scans me up and down. ‘You look like shit. If you don’t mind me saying so.’
I throw my chin in the air. ‘Have a good rest of your day. Safe travels to Santorini!’
A few minutes later, he’s still walking beside me.
‘As there are no flights leaving for the island before morning, I assume you’re staying in Athens tonight, too,’ he says. He is so busy looking at me that he’s going to trip and bust his lip if he doesn’t watch out. I tell him this. He ignores me. ‘My hotel’s in the Plaka, in downtown Athens,’ he says. He digs in his pocket, pulls out his phone, reads the name of a five-star hotel chain.
‘Downtown Athens. How very American of you.’ We reach the doors and step into a blast of sunshine, and a warm breeze that makes the big blue and white Greek flag in front of us do a happy dance. There’s a line of parked cars and taxis on the other side of a road. I start to cross.
‘I can give you a ride.’
Something about that phrase makes my stomach do a strange swish-swash. I tell him, ‘I’m good.’
‘I guess I’ll see you around then,’ he says.
‘But not if I see you first.’
He follows me across the road. There’s a confusing line of cabs. Old cars with old drivers, all of them standing outside their vehicles and smoking. Then a couple of suspicious vehicles with younger, extremely attractive drivers who seem overly keen to get our attention.
‘I thought ahead and booked a private car,’ he says when a shiny limo rolls up.
I nod to an old guy at the front of the line in a flat cap with a roll-your-own cigarette dangling from his mouth. ‘Looks like I’ve got Anthony Quinn.’
‘Mr Lewis?’ Frank’s driver gets out and relieves him of his bag.
I frown. ‘How does he know it’s you?’
‘Because I just texted him and told him I’m walking out of the terminal with a sexy Emily Blunt lookalike in white jeans and a creased trench coat.’
I look around then realise he’s talking about me.
He cocks his head. ‘Last offer of a ride?’
Can he not keep saying that? ‘Last reply. No, thanks.’
My cab driver blows his nose into his hand then reaches for my bag.
‘Please…’ I shudder, re-routing to Frank’s limo. ‘Just no conversation, if you can manage it.’ I instruct the driver: ‘The House of the Rising Sun hotel.’
Frank slides in beside me, his leg brushing mine which detonates a little firework, but it must be my sciatic nerve from all that sitting. ‘It’s not seriously called the House of the Rising Sun, is it?’ He leans in just enough so there’s about an inch of distance between our shoulders, looks at me a little rascally, starts singing the famous song in his best mobster voice.
‘I do believe that qualifies as talking.’
He just laughs.
While some people might mock it, The House of the Rising Sun turns out to be quite a pleasant little guest house down a sliver of cobbled street in the Plaka, the oldest and most charming area of Athens. The room is furnished for pilgrims, but it’s clean and bright. The first thing I do is brush my teeth, then throw myself on top of the bed and make a starfish, letting the small of my back unfurl into the mattress. It feels very strange to be back on this side of the Atlantic. Like the universe is trying to decide something for me. England just a hop and a skip away. My life. My home. My husband. Me here; him there. It’s surreal. Yet I feel so many poles apart from him. Like we are two distant planets orbiting the same sun.
The window is open and Greek street life filters in. The sizzle of lamb from a kitchen. The clatter of pans. Something being dropped on a stone floor. A group of men are talking at a café; there’s the occasional well-timed burst of laughter. A woman is shouting at her children. All of this to the low and distant pitch of a bouzouki, and a bird somehow making itself heard over the top of it all. Despite it being noisy both outside and inside my head, I fall into a deep sleep. So much so that when I hear a phone ringing, it takes a while for me to realise it’s mine.
‘Feel like going for a walk, check out some ancient ruins?’ he says.
‘If I want to see ancient ruins, I only have to look in the mirror.’
He titters. ‘We could explore Athens until we drop.’
‘Great idea. Will get right on that. In my next life.’
‘If you sleep now, you won’t sleep tonight and then you’re screwed tomorrow for our early flight.’ He adds, ‘Just saying!’
‘How do you know we’re both on the same flight?’ I get up and stare at my pale face in the mirror, run my fingers through my hair, trying to coax it back into its flat-ironed waves. I still look like a wreck.
‘There’s only one. Must be my superior powers of deduction.’
My head feels heavy, like my forehead has been cast in cement. The sounds outside the window are different sounds now. A conversation from a kitchen, a man and a woman having a tiff. I don’t understand a word he’s saying, but you almost don’t have to; it sounds like every marriage. The scraping of chairs on a pavement, a restaurant preparing to open, someone skipping through a playlist searching for a particular tune. I go over to the window and stare out. A giant tree with white blossom is making a rather resplendent archway across the alley. Two older men are sitting on white plastic chairs smoking cigarettes. There is an ATM sort of in the middle of nowhere, and an enormous white cat sleeping in a small, cracked, terracotta plant pot.
‘What time is it?’ I ask, letting the curtain fall away from my hand. My voice is almost swallowed by the vroom-vroom of a nearby motorbike, a dog barking, and its owner yelling at it to shut up.
‘Time you washed up and came downstairs. I can meet you at a place called Bar Olympia.’ He names a street off Monastiraki Square and explains it’s nestled beside the ruins of Hadrian’s Library in the shadow of the Acropolis. ‘It’s equidistant between your hotel and mine.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been out there with a measuring stick.’
‘Don’t want to have to walk a quarter mile farther than you under the circumstances of our mutual jet lag.’
‘You’re such a fair soul.’
‘Meet you there in thirty.’
As I go searching for Bar Olympia, more random thoughts about my marriage flood in. How Rupert would always recruit other couples for us to hang out with on a weekend; we never really just popped out for a pizza by ourselves, or for a drink down the pub. Getaways were the same. Why would I want to go fossil-hunting with a group of strangers in Boggle Hole just because he read about it in Science Live ? Or spend a weekend with his tricky best friend and his wife in a futuristic space capsule in the Scottish Highlands? It always felt like he was drumming up unique things for us to do in the company of others, because he secretly knew that if you put both of us together without meaningful distraction, we’d have nothing to say to one another. I think all this with a dull wash of sadness as I round the corner and find myself searching for Frank’s face in the crowd.
It’s a charming square, really. Pedestrianised, with a giant eucalyptus tree sitting in the centre, its gnarly branches appearing frozen in a bizarre act of gyration, its ancient roots creating treacherous cracks in the cobblestones, like it’s grown itself there deliberately to disrupt. There’s a grubby white church on one corner, but other than that, the place is teeming with tavernas. Their densely packed patios spill and merge, so you’re barely able to tell where one establishment ends and the other begins, if it weren’t for the subtle differences in chair colours or table decorations. I spot Bar Olympia almost without looking – and him, sitting on a blue wooden chair at a small table near the taverna’s door. He has changed into a sea-foam-green shirt. His head is lowered and he’s reading from his phone. As I approach, I get a sudden attack of the butterflies. This is a man I’ve had sex with. Hot sex with. And we are here, together, in Athens. And I feel like I’m going on a date.
I press my hand to my queasy stomach.
Then I text him. I’m here. I’m close enough to hear his phone ping. I watch him reach for it, note the little flex of his lips as he responds.
My phone pings now.
That’s a shame. Was having fun without you.
I tap-tap my index finger on the top of his warm head. He startles, smirks, stands.
‘You don’t have to be a gentleman. We already know you’re not one.’
As he pulls my seat out for me, the queasy feeling intensifies. It feels like we’ve skipped forward in time, decisions are behind me, and I’m living my own future. This is what it would be like to be a free agent. To be – hypothetically – going on a date with a man that my mature adult heart and mind might have chosen. Just to compound this weird feeling, I catch a draught of my own perfume as I sit down. Why did I even put it on?
And then of all the things, he has to go and say, ‘You smell good.’ He narrows his eyes like he’s thinking. ‘Kind of like?—’
‘It’s just soap.’ I make a grab for the menu, pretend to read it. I’m as a-twitter as the birds up in that tree. Don’t fidget. I put the menu down again. Force a smile.
He frisks me with his gaze, taps his cheek. ‘There’s some sleep in the corner of your left eye. It’s crusty and a little greenish. Did you forget to wash your face?’
My hand flies to my burning hot cheek. ‘If you don’t stop giving me the ten-point inspection I might have to sit somewhere else.’
‘Violets,’ he says, like he’s pleased with himself. ‘I knew I knew what it was.’ When I stare at him blankly, he says, ‘Your perfume. It’s charming.’ He’s still giving me his best diagnostic stare.
The young waiter arrives in the nick of time. ‘And what are you two lovebirds up for tonight?’ he asks, in a ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ tone.
Frank says, ‘Hopefully it’s wide open. But I think we’ll kick it off with a couple of ouzos.’
‘That’s it! See ya!’ My chair scrapes along the ground. I stride to the farthest point on the patio where there just happens to be a free table. I sit and pretend to immerse myself in a tourist map I took from the hotel, but I realise I’ve gone into a full-body jitter.
Ping!
Your perfume was razing the sensitive lining of my nostrils. I can finally breathe again. Thanks.
Ugh!
Perhaps the smell is… nose too near own bottom?
If you’re going to talk dirty, I need another drink first.
Weak signal. Shame intellectually stimulating conversation must come to an end.
Just when it was getting interesting.
I pointedly hold my phone at arm’s length and click off. The cheeky young waiter approaches with two small glasses wedged in the fingers of one hand, and a bottle of ouzo in the other. He sets one of the glasses down, does a dramatic high pour, then gives me a saucy wink. Then he walks over to Frank’s table and does the same thing, minus any indication that he fancies him.
I decide to order some mezze and calamari, or this alcohol is going to go straight to my head.
Ping!
This stuff is shit. Why does it look like dirty bathwater?
He’s holding up the glass in front of his face and trying to peer through it.
Maybe YOUR bathwater but nobody else’s!
I shoot him a sly glance and see he’s smiling.
Ouzo is made from anise and fennel oil, I type after a quick google. When U add water, the oils have a hydrophobic chemical reaction. It’s called The Louche Effect. Watch this…
I demonstrate, like I’m on the shopping network, then watch as the liquid changes from clear to cloudy.
Fascinating. You make a very sexy lab teacher. Got another question for you.
I raise my middle finger, then hear a burst of a belly laugh.
The waiter comes back, and I put my order in. Another ouzo. Food arrives. So does the booze-o. The alcohol quickly hits the spot. I finally manage to release my shoulders from up around my ears.
Who cares if it feels like you’re on a date? If the waiter thinks you’re here on a dirty weekend? Who cares that you had sex with him for all the wrong reasons when you’re married to – er… a cheat – and now you can’t take that back? Okay. You care. You care about that last part. But why do you care, specifically? Because it was a wanton act of betrayal that you now regret – because you don’t really believe in an eye for an eye, or in coming down to anyone else’s shitty level? Or because it was good, and you want it to happen again?
Someone cranks up the music from across the square; there are cheers and squeals; a birthday. I tuck into my melitzanosalata and pitta bread, my saganaki with lemon and honey that glistens in the spotlight of the sun… while he has what looks like cocktail-sized meatballs (how very appropriate) and a long, skinny skewer of some sort of meat studded with cubes of peppers. Then he orders five other items and I watch while he devours fifty per cent of everything.
Ping!
How was dinner?
I wipe my fingers on a napkin.
Until you interrupted it? Fantastic.
Want to go somewhere for a proper drink?
Nope.
Possible you’ll change your mind on this?
Never.
A long silence, then…
Be fun to tell Aiden and Harriet we’re here right now, don’t you think?
When I frown, he raises a playful eyebrow. Then he starts fiddling with his phone.
OMG, no! I rush over there, snatch his phone clean from his hand. ‘You’re not being the one to tell them we’re here! This was my idea. I’m the one who’s going to break the news, not you!’
‘Of course.’ He studies me like one of us has come to the zoo to watch the other perform tricks. ‘That’s exactly how a grown adult would want to go about it. Makes perfect sense.’
I gawk at him, my panic level coming down a notch. ‘You had no intention of texting him, did you?’
‘Wouldn’t say no intention. More like very minimal intention.’
He stands, tells me the bill is already paid, and says the sort of blunt, ‘Let’s go, sparky,’ that leaves me with no choice but to follow.