he took his phone out of his pocket and checked to see if she had answered his ninety-nine previous messages.
Julio repeated Vinnie’s invitation and the chief laughed outright, a short sharp bark. He said a few words to Julio and got into the truck. On the passenger’s side.
“Was that a yes?” Vinnie wondered.
“Climb in,” Julio said. “There’s a tarp back there you can hide under when you get to the river.” He began to walk away.
“You’re not coming?” John asked, straddling the side of the truck bed.
“Someone’s got to dress that buck.”
“But - who’s going to drive?” For answer, the pickup truck shuddered, coughed, and sputtered to life. “Uh, not to be a total ingrate or anything, but in town they told us they impounded the truck because he was caught driving while blind,” John lowered his voice, not wanting to offend the chief.
“Yeah, they took his license a while back,” Julio conceded carelessly. “But he doesn’t let that stop him. Besides, he’s going straight across the river so you don’t have to worry about him driving off the bridge or anything.”
“And then there were two,” Vinnie grumbled. “I don’t think you can have a bachelor party for two. It’s against the rules.”
“Tell that to Hugh Hefner,” John said.
“I’ll be there,” Julio insisted. “A couple hours behind, riding drag, just to make sure the coast is clear. And the chief is coming. He said he wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“He said that?” With a hellish grinding of gears the truck lurched forward. Stalled out. Lurched again. Julio walked beside them as the vehicle struggled to gather momentum. In answer to Vinnie’s question, he grinned and gave a half shrug.
“I think his exact words were: ‘Remember when the white man used to get us drunk and take our money?’ You might want to brace yourselves against those hay bales. ‘Cause he may be blind -” Almost before the words were out of Julio’s mouth, the truck spat gravel, fishtailed, and seemed to make the jump to light speed, John and Vinnie bouncing in the back like popcorn. Julio watched as the taillights disappeared in a white spume of dust and remarked to no one in particular, “But he does like to drive fast.”
3 You Are a Tourist
Tens of thousands of Greeks were rioting outside the parliament building, but a mile away all was calm and quiet in Exarchia.
The tattoo parlors, bookstores, second-hand emporiums, and coffee shops were shuttered in solidarity with the general strike. A few Japanese tourists wandered the narrow avenues examining the graffiti scrawled across every wall and many first floor windows. All around, the balconies of the funny apartment buildings, tiered like ziggurats and shaded by threadbare awnings, were practically deserted. Jane had the place pretty much to herself.
The cold and the damp had followed her from the cottage in Evia. Fortunately, when Exarchia rolled up the sidewalks, it did not remove all the tables and chairs essential to its 24/7 street life. Jane found a seat outside a bar called Kypos Tis Kalashnikof [Garden of the Kalashnikov] where she could nurse the cup of coffee she had purchased in a nearby park. Under a palm tree, the shivering Nigerian had a traditional Greek pot, a briki, set up on a hot plate that drew electrical current through a series of extension cords snaking many yards away and up the side of a building papered with about a hundred years of protest posters. As she watched him measure out the coffee and the sugar as if he were measuring her fate, Jane reflected that she could have made coffee in her hotel room up on the Strefi Hill, with its view of the Acropolis. There was a compact machine along with the requisite filters and foil packets of Nescafe. But that had seemed just too fucking depressing for words. So when her morning nausea and general lack of appetite gave way to a craving for some form of creature comfort, she had goaded herself out of bed and into the wider world. Which was how she found herself listlessly wandering the seediest neighborhood in Athens, subject of US State Department warnings, dear to the hearts of anarchists everywhere, with no agenda other than living through however many minutes, hours, days it took for the jagged incessant pain to go away.
Because it would go away, she thought, taking a sip of the boiling hot coffee. Too soon. She could feel her tongue blistering. It was worth it though, to dispel the Nigerian’s anxiety and to give herself something real to cry about.
“Όχι πραγματικά. είναι καλό, σας ευχαριστώ,” she assured him, with difficulty, her eyes filling. [“No, really, it’s good, thank you.”]
Because nobody could feel like this forever, she assured herself as she walked away, sucking air between her teeth.
Not that she had an extensive basis for comparison. Men had always come and gone, plentiful as air; but from the time she first understood what men want - in the orphanage, the foster homes, reform school - the rule was: keep it light. Do not freak out. Do not become attached. Do what you must. Get what you can. Then move on. As the Andover lady had advised. The poised and perfect mystery lady who got Jane’s files expunged, and got her into Andover, and was never heard from again. But the most important thing, the thing that Jane remembered, was the way the Andover lady said those things out loud, coolly and matter-of-factly, distilling into a few not unsympathetic words what Jane already knew from harsh experience. And after Yale, after a brief stint in the Corps, after SAD training, the rule simplified, sharpened, clarified. Boiled down to this: do not fall in ‘love.’ Like a clueless, uninitiated civilian. Like a First-World bubble-wrapped teenybopper.
Because there was no such thing. Outside of sloppy songs, silly novels, and sentimental movies. Love? Pffttt…
And then along came John.
She swallowed more scalding coffee. Dropped into the chair outside the bar. Glanced at the books on the window-ledge. One of the many free libraries scattered throughout the neighborhood, in this case a line of paperbacks. A muddle of graphic novels and political philosophy. The citizens of Exarchia were a literate bunch. She made a selection. Laid it aside after the first page.
All she could think about was John. Which made her crazy. What the fuck? Let it go already, she berated herself. It was doomed from the start. Boy meets girl, boy marries girl, government tries to annihilate boy and girl - what were they thinking? How could that scenario ever turn out well? It wasn’t possible. Nine years all together, the last two spent on the run. The past was irretrievably gone, the present intolerable, and they could not agree on a viable future. When he left Evia last week, he was drinking like a fish and anger was her new favorite color. No, if she were honest, she would admit that ‘The Jane and John Show’ was done for. She didn’t need to find him kissing a village idiot to know the score. She was surprised, alarmed even, when he didn’t call or text immediately after the little episode with the kitchen wench. At first. Not so much now. She looked at her phone for perhaps the millionth time.
Nope, nothing. Oh well. Everything had an expiration date. After all, she told herself with grim irony, the standard marital contract did stipulate ‘until death us do part.’ And both technically and officially, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, they were dead, the two of them. So there was a certain cock-eyed logic to finding themselves in this last of all forsaken places - absolute Splitsville.
On a balcony across the street a radio or iPod was playing:
You made me love you,
I didn’t want to do it,
But you made me do it.
A half-dressed couple, a slim boy and wraith of a girl who looked too young and tattooed to know how, were ballroom dancing in the tiny space. Jane closed her eyes and groaned silently.
The Kid sat down without asking.
Slouched in her chair, hoodie up, hands thrust into the pockets of her leather jacket, her pale face dominated by dark glasses, Jane’s beauty was carelessly but effectively shrouded. There was absolutely nothing that said ‘come hithe
r’ in either her attitude or her combat boots. Her demeanor was the opposite of welcoming. And when the Kid sat down, the sociability meter swung into the ‘10-seconds to whoop-ass’ zone. He seemed to sense and dismiss his imminent danger.
“We don’t have much time.” He was clean-cut handsome, his short hair dyed peroxide blonde, piercings in both ears. A kind of punk Clark Kent, complete with 50’s-style horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He wore an odd grey sweater with a leather strap over one shoulder, which for some reason made Jane think of an old Star Trek episode. His sneakers were bright red and the scarf around his neck was a black and white keffiyeh. He set a small green coke bottle tied with a rag on the table and pulled an envelope out of his messenger bag. He was thirty, possibly, something like six to eight years her junior, but he seemed far younger. His aura of hope maybe. He came complete with dog.
“What you mean we, Paleface?” Her tone fell somewhere between a rasp and a growl. She hadn’t been doing much talking lately. The dog, a large sandy-colored mutt, cocked his head.
“Here’s your ticket to Detroit. And the ID to go with it. Plus,” he held out the envelope, “a fully loaded debit card.”
Jane did not move. The dog sat down and scratched a flea.
“Apparently somebody didn’t get the memo,”