Her cigarettes always smelled worse than other ones. I couldn’t say why, exactly, since I didn’t smoke. My friends did occasionally. Or what they said was occasionally. I never had an interest. Still I tolerated the sting in my eyes, their tainted breath. The woman hated all of us, I could tell, while she sat smoking on the stone bench overlooking the beach. There was no sand.
When we’d arrive in the morning to swim she would already be there, her body in the half-shade of a balding olive tree. Leather limbs were held together by a one-piece. Its fabric stretched across her stomach and dug into the loose skin cushioning her hips. She had cigarettes for breakfast, I thought. We would nod or say hello out of courtesy and sometimes she’d nod back, or she’d say something in Greek even though I knew she knew that none of us spoke it. I’d stare at her sunken eyes, at the jaundiced snaggletooth parting her lips. Then down we walked along the rocky path to the sea.
Even far out in the blue I could still make out her dark shape. It may not have been us she watched. Likely it was only the bay, or the anchored sailboats swaying. We would exhaust ourselves racing to bobbing citrus buoys or urchin-encrusted rocks jutting out from the water and if I’d squint at the beach she would be there, now splayed out on a slanting slab of stone, her skin crisping amber.
◆
Two weeks there and each day the sea was a frigid shock. It was the kind of cold we had to jump into or else we’d never get past our knees. Once submerged, we’d flip onto our backs and let the salt support us. Tops baking, bottoms numbing. Eyes closed. Water filled my ears to quiet. I opened my eyes only to recoil from the brightness and close them again. Then I opened them to the sound of splashing, and Miles was swimming backstroke toward the yellow sailboat. Its name was painted green near the bow. We couldn’t read the word, all hollow letters that resembled ones we knew but weren’t. I had once tried sounding out the word with letters I did know and it sounded wrong.
Teresa and Peter didn’t move from their comatose poses in the sea. I followed Miles. I was swimming with my eyes closed, but when I bumped into his kicking feet underwater my eyes flung open and the burn hit all the same. We both stopped swimming.
Shit, I said. Are my eyes bloodshot?
Miles laughed. I don’t know why you keep refusing a snorkel mask, he said.
Because I’d look like a child, I said.
Well, now you just look stoned.
He took a breath and dove down. He surfaced further away with his back to me, water frothing as his arms lifted like wings, up and then down again with a forceful grace. Sun fell across his shoulders while he swam the last few feet to the boat. I paddled after him like a dog. There was a tiny constellation of moles at the nape of his neck that I hadn’t noticed before: it greeted me each time his head came up for air. I found the flecks precious in their smallness. How the sun had changed him, I thought. No longer just the funny one, the secretly compassionate one. This place had given him a body.
Teresa called out and made a motion with her arm toward shore. Miles gave a thumbs up but I wasn’t ready to go. Teresa started swimming back, Peter tailing her. Better to follow them, I thought, than draw attention to the two of us. That wasn’t how it was meant to be. It would have soiled the unspoken pact we all shared, sealed platonic from the beginning. It hadn’t ever been amended. I wouldn’t have ever minded, though.
On our way up the path and past the bench she didn’t look at us. She puffed away, frowning. Doubtful she turned around as we walked through the garden – her garden – but still I felt watched. It was hers, the beach. The house, too, overlooking it all. Private beaches didn’t technically exist on the island if they were publicly accessible. Despite her looming presence we liked this beach best. Most tourists didn’t know to venture to this area. Peter had cousins here, which was how we knew. They had rented us their holiday house a short drive away.
We were trespassers although we tried not to be a bother. Always parked the car outside the rusty gate before tiptoeing between bloated cacti. Every now and then a cat would spring from under a shrub, startle us, and disappear to somewhere. I figured they were strays. Perhaps they were hers.
◆
We’d be there all morning, into the afternoon, sometimes until sundown if we had a late start, and she never swam in front of us. Just stayed there smoking and sunning.
Maybe she doesn’t know how to swim, Peter said. He was always saying things like that, moderately dumb things. Nobody else minded. Peter could get away with it because he was fun and breezy and popular. These things heaped together outweighed his feeble blips.
Don’t be an idiot, Teresa replied. She was the blunt one and we liked her for it. Miles laughed then. I mean, the woman lives on an island for fuck’s sake, Teresa continued.
I nodded my head in agreement. Maybe she didn’t swim because she’d simply grown tired of it, was used to the water’s feel against her skin.
I asked them what they thought her name was.
Who cares, Peter replied.
She looks like a Helga to me, Miles said, and I was grateful to him for playing along.
Maybe more like an Olga, Teresa offered.
Oh for sure, said Miles.
I didn’t have another name to suggest.
After our last plunge we’d lug our bags up the path, feet sliding out of our sandals on wobbly stones. One time I huddled behind plants and waited to see if she would go into the sea. She stayed seated.
What are you doing? Teresa laughed.
I hadn’t heard her sneak up on me. Miles and Peter were probably already waiting in the car.
You trying to bum a cig off Olga there? Teresa asked, laughing again. I rolled my eyes, walking away quickly so she wouldn’t see my cheeks flush.
◆
Back at the villa we took turns bathing. There was one bathroom upstairs and one outdoor shower enclosed by a curved stone wall. We all preferred the outdoor one, with its bougainvillea-shrouded romanticism and better water pressure. We took turns. Those of us who waited sat around the edge of the swimming pool, listening to the shower running. Did we all pretend not to think about the nakedness right near us? It was just a body, I thought. We were adults now. Was it more adult to think about the body or ignore it? I had ignored mine. Kept it mine. Everyone seemed to assume that everyone had shared theirs already.
One late afternoon, Teresa showered first while Peter was telling us about his new coworkers who had just added him online. Most of them seemed decently normal, judging by their profiles. One had even taken pains to plan a drinks outing for later that month. That was it, then. They were already adults before they had officially started work. I wanted to get started on it, real adulthood. Mine was delayed further than theirs. They’d be in offices and I’d be picking up children from school, pouring crackers into bowls, solving simple math problems that I needed to re-learn how to solve. Peter’s phone rang. It’s my dad, he said, and went inside to take the call.
Miles and I stayed by the pool. No sounds except the shower. Maybe a bird or two. He looked up at the cantaloupe sky.
I love the light here, he said. Salt dusted his eyelashes, stained his skin in uneven patches. I must have been staring because he said, You’re thinking about something.
I said I wasn’t. Then he looked at me with something like curiosity.
What? I said.
You’ve gotten nice color, he replied.
His comment didn’t seem to match his thoughts. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted his thoughts to say.
The shower water halted, and with it, Miles’s focus on me, my color, whatever he meant. He turned his head in the direction of the bougainvillea and then corrected himself by looking down into the pool. Possibly he was nervous I’d think he wanted to look at Teresa. She stepped out in her towel. Free, she said. I went next. As I walked over I heard Teresa and Miles’s voices. No doubt chatting about something trivial. I strained to listen anyway and caught nothing.
◆
Each evening we attempted to do something new. It didn’t have to be a big thing and usually wasn’t. We started off trying to visit a new place every night until we discovered what felt like all the places, so we’d just rotate them, trying new drinks or dishes each time. Some nights we stayed in and cooked. We’d eat on the veranda with crickets as orchestral accompaniment, Peter or Miles blasting their music on speakers to drown out our invisible neighbors. I liked the crickets on their own.
It really didn’t matter what we did. It was occasion enough to be together after three summers of internships in different cities or continents. Both beautiful and cruel, wasn’t it, to be together just before life would pull us apart.
◆
Sometimes when we arrived at the beach she’d be on the phone, a clunky black thing, making guttural noises that sounded nothing like the melody spoken by the baker or the fishermen in the marina. Her mouth made ugly shapes, revealing her stained teeth. I couldn’t guess whom she spoke to. At least she had someone.
One morning a flock of geese came to rest on the water. Not even a tide that day. There were probably ten birds in total, all white, drifting like a cloud – the only kind we’d seen in this place. They blared their song and I was sure the woman would shoo them away or throw a rock to get them to scatter. To my surprise she snuffed out her cigarette, hung up her phone, and walked into the sun in tattered slippers. She was holding a lumpy canvas bag.
She paused at the edge of the water and began taking out scraps of bread from the bag, breaking them up into smaller pieces and tossing them into the shallows. The geese went mad. Their bodies clustered into a feathered bulb like a premature peony. We couldn’t see her face. She kept tearing bread and feeding it to the birds until there was nothing left. The folds of her arms and back spilled from her swimsuit as she bent down and stood up again, over and over, a stern nobility to her. We all watched in silence. She ignored us when she walked back up and settled herself under the olive tree.
But I watched her even as my friends jumped into the sea. I wanted to ask her how often she expected the birds, if she’d known them long. She wouldn’t have understood my questions. She picked at her cuticles. Scratched absentmindedly at her inner thigh. Someone called for me, so I went into the water.
◆
The sun was setting on our rental car as Miles drove us through winding mountain roads toward the main town. A stretch of the journey took us past some farms. We couldn’t so much see them as smell them wafting through the open car windows. We gagged and rolled the windows up.
Jesus, Peter said. You think that was goat or horse shit?
Maybe geese shit, Teresa answered. What a freak, that woman. Like the geese whisperer.
Peter and Teresa laughed, but Miles and I were quiet. I was surprised for a moment, almost expecting him to join in.
I thought it was sort of sweet, he said. Like, they’re her children, in a way.
I smiled, but his eyes didn’t meet mine in the rearview. They were on the road.
We picked a taverna by the port. A ferry had just docked and the boardwalk was bustling. Cars honked and swerved at the only intersection on the island. We watched the activity from our table on the water, eating mezze and pouring glasses of house white from a jug.
You’re a mess, Teresa said to Miles, wiping a smear of tzatziki from his upper lip. Her elbow rested on the back of his chair. It came easy to her, I realized. Resting her elbow there like it was where it should have been, even though he could have pushed her away if he wanted to. He didn’t. He looked at her. I couldn’t tell if it was the same look he had given me when he said, You’ve gotten nice color.
Peter flagged the waiter and ordered us more food. When it arrived we all clinked our glasses and reminisced on our first night ever getting sloshed together. We felt so adult didn’t we, Teresa said, when really we were children. What were we now? I thought. Now we drank wine.
Peter said we had been at Victoria’s place that night. I didn’t know who Victoria was. It was definitely that little pub near campus, Miles interrupted, the one that closed down last spring. Teresa said we had Jägerbombs, but I swore it was tequila shots because that night was the reason I couldn’t stomach them for a year afterward – wasn’t it? The discrepancies in our memories sat strangely in me, along with the wine. Maybe the nights they remembered most were ones I wasn’t a part of. Miles left the waiter a pile of change on the table and I recalled Peter telling us that nobody tipped here.
Walking the town’s cobblestone streets back to the car, our unit fractured almost imperceptibly: I was walking next to Peter, Teresa and Miles ahead of us by a few feet. Their shoulders nearly touched while they walked. A streetlamp highlighted Teresa’s profile when she turned her face to look up at him. Her tiny sloped nose. She laughed at something he said.
Guys, wait! Peter called. I want to buy cigarettes.
Teresa and Miles instinctually stepped back a few paces from each other. Simple and quick. We waited for Peter outside a corner shop. It was the three of us again, like nothing, like normal.
We kept walking. Teresa and Miles whispered to each other, laughing once more. I did and didn’t want to know what about. Miles touched Teresa’s arm, then grazed her hand like he would have intertwined his fingers in hers if we weren’t walking behind them. Peter lit his cigarette and said, You two want a smoke?
We’re good, man, Miles answered.
Peter nudged me and cocked his head at them. It was only a matter of time, he said, smiling as if at his children.
Yeah, I said, nodding. I wondered when he had first noticed. I didn’t ask.
◆
Let’s try Delfini today, Miles said during breakfast.
Delfini was another beach about a twenty-minute drive from our place. We had gone one time at sunset for drinks. It had been pretty and calm, but that was in the evening, and I knew it would be different in the day. A wide swath of sand with plenty of chairs. Plenty of room for plenty of people. I didn’t want to go but I feigned interest to match Teresa and Peter. I wasn’t going to be the problem.
They enjoyed the powdery sand, cushioned lounge chairs, made-to-order cocktails. I tried somewhat. The crystal waters were the same no matter what beach we went to, but anyone could have this beach. Ours was on the other side of the island. Even if the smoker was there it was different. Not ordinary, not easy. It almost felt like we had earned it. No, she never expressed any sort of approval toward us, but still. Maybe she had said something about us through the phone to her unseen friend. She could have been secretly happy to have company, even if it was that of strangers. She could have been the most content of all of us. She’d live out her days in this place.
Peter swam freestyle further and further out while the rest of us lay on the sand. Do you want to play paddle ball? Miles asked me.
He hadn’t even glanced at Teresa. She was reading a book and didn’t pay us any mind. Sure, I said. I tried to say it in a different way, elevated above the friendliness of always. He smiled handing me the second paddle. It seemed to be his usual smile and not one that particularly registered my tonal shift. His smile always had some sensuality to it. Was he unaware? Or did he purposefully dole out his warmth with abandon?
On my third or fourth volley I sent Miles running into the water after the ball. He still missed. Damn, have some mercy, he laughed. My movements were exaggeratedly graceful, lots of leaping and leg stretching so he could take me in. At every opportunity he had to look at my body, I watched him returning the ball. His nimble movements. Wrist flicking the paddle firmly, decisively.
I questioned how well he knew me. He likely didn’t know which interactions I assigned emotional weight. This could have been mundane to him. All of it. But he must have felt something. It was possible he always had and didn’t know how to tell me. It could have been easier with Teresa. She was simpler. Prettier, some might have said. I thought so, too.
When we got home everyone traded off both showers. We were exhausted. Teresa and Peter went to bed without eating dinner. Rummaging in the fridge for some semblance of a meal, I saw Miles smoking alone on the veranda. I put away the little food I had found, went outside, and sat down in the chair next to him.
Can I have one?
He raised an eyebrow. Seriously? he said.
Why not, I said.
He smiled and passed me a cigarette. I held it in my mouth as he lit it for me. This was probably the closest our faces had ever been. I looked at him and didn’t look away, the cocktails from earlier giving me a newfound resolve, and he looked back and also didn’t look away, even as we reclined into our chairs, even as I suppressed the cough creeping up my throat. This could be the pre-moment, I thought. This would lead to both of us inside, in the same room. I would give him what I had kept to myself. He would lean in soon.
I’m pretty wiped, he said.
Same, I said.
My stomach woke me in the early morning, wrung out from alcohol. Maybe also from tobacco. I went upstairs to the bathroom. On my way I passed Teresa’s door and heard a duet of muffled breathing. Some words punctuated it but I didn’t listen closely. I vomited and went back to my room. Sleep eluded me for hours.
◆
On our last day she was not there to survey us. We didn’t talk about her being missing. It would have been the day to say thank you, say anything. She wouldn’t have wanted that anyway. We swam and swam and then lay out in the sun.
While we tanned on towels on stones, I watched. Not the sky or the sea but the two of them. I waited to catch something – a gesture, a stolen glance. Nothing. They weren’t even lying next to each other. Miles sat up after a while and fixed his gaze on the flat water. One last swim? he asked.
Peter agreed, then looked at us and said, Ladies?
I’m kind of tired, I said.
Me, too, said Teresa. We’ll just wait here for you guys.
Miles and Peter dove off the little dock. Their bodies sliced cleanly into the sea and rose in tandem, growing smaller from our vantage point. I waited for Teresa to speak. She didn’t seem inclined to and covered her face with an open book, resuming her tanning.
Careful, I said. The ink might smudge all over you.
She closed the book. Yeah, good call, she said. She bunched up Miles’s towel and positioned it over her eyes.
I tried to think of what else to say. I sighed, then said, I wonder where each of us will be next summer.
Nowhere as nice as this, Teresa said.
I wanted her to say Alone or Together but she didn’t.
Cicadas chirped loudly on our walk to the car. The dense foliage made the sea feel more distant than it was. A cat scurried past us, lazy sunlight catching its fur. It distracted me; I tripped on a stone, my left sandal flying off in the process. The others were already loading into the car while I went to fetch the shoe. As I slipped it on my foot again, I noticed an outdoor shower was running, ensconced inside a circle of dried palm fronds. Then it stopped.
The smoker emerged clutching a threadbare towel. She looked down to place her feet in her slippers, and when she sensed me there, she looked up. Her face was frozen in its permanent scowl but her eyes were fear, embarrassment. I almost apologized. For what I didn’t know. I didn’t get the chance. She quickly turned away and stalked off toward her house, drawing the towel tighter. Water trickled from her skin onto the stone and left dark splotches in her path.