Shipwreck Bay Read online

  “You don’t need to worry,” he told me. “You are just perfect.”

  It was obviously not true so I didn’t respond. I sipped my drink and listened, smiling at the right places. I longed for him to stop trying so hard. I wanted to scream, Leave me alone, let me grieve.

  But I didn’t. I looked around the crowded bar and realized we could be in the First Class lounge, but neither of us knew where to find it.

  By the time we figured it out, the flight was ready to board.

  The moment we took off at one forty-five, we each took an Ambien, but only Marek got any sleep. I shook my head. I tried listening to the music channels and the first song I got was Baby Come Back.

  Another idiot guy apologizing for letting his cock do the Macarena with somebody else. I switched to heavy metal. I almost laughed. AC/DC was singing, ‘ You can throw me lefts, you can throw me rights, but where was you last night…?’

  Being a former boxer, my dad would have loved those lyrics, if he could have stomached head-banging music.

  I glanced at Marek. He looked peaceful in his sleep. The bastard. I remembered watching an episode of The First 48 where the homicide detectives put two men in separate rooms. I’ll never forget that one of them said, “The guilty guy will fall asleep. Always. The innocent guy is too wound up, freaked out at the possibility of being charged with a crime he didn’t commit.”

  Marek was out cold. I’d only briefly considered my father’s offer of having him beaten to within an inch of his life.

  I ordered a gin and tonic and a cheese sandwich and watched half of two very bad movies and several TV shows. One of them was an old episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, in which Ray and his brother discuss ‘the guy code’, where men always know their pals are cheating and cover for them.

  Marek told me only his two closest friends knew about Steve. One of them had been his cover. I hadn’t spoken to the guy since and I felt bad considering that we were godparents to his children.

  I couldn’t escape the unfunny subject of infidelity even in a comedy special with a salute to an old Rodney Dangerfield routine that actually might have made me laugh. Maybe I just needed another drink.

  “I told my wife the truth,” he said. “I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.”

  Marek swore Steve was his first fling. The only fling. Had he been honest with me?

  I finally fell into a fitful, strange sleep as the flight wore on and day turned to night and the cabin darkened. I dreamed that I was watering the tiny backyard of our Mission District terrace house, when a snake reared its head from the hose. Marek came running. He insisted at first that there was no snake, then when he saw it, he took it out of the hose. The snake was long and thick and colored pink and purple.

  In the dream I wanted to get rid of it, but he became obsessed with the snake, and for some reason we were forced to move from our home into an apartment, which didn’t allow dogs. Marek took our golden retriever, Avalon, to the animal shelter but clung to the snake. He went everywhere with it.

  I awoke from this ghastly dream half an hour before we landed and told Marek.

  “Are you crazy?” Marek asked me. “I would never dump our dog!”

  I was so freaked out that I wanted to call my mom from the phone on the seat in front of me.

  “Do you know how expensive this call will be?” he asked. He didn’t say much more once I had reached her. My mother, who considered Avalon the only grandchild she was ever going to have, told me he was alive and well and sleeping in front of the fire.

  “He snores louder than your father,” she said.

  I had an idea that the pink and purple snake might have been Steve Lewis. The man had invaded every aspect of my psyche. I’d have to check out a dream manual and find out what a snake signified.

  Then I remembered my husband had apparently allowed himself to be photographed on his knees sucking Steve’s cock.

  That was the snake right there. Poisoning my personal Garden of Eden.

  * * * *

  My second cousin Nia, whose mother was my mom’s first cousin, met us at Athens Airport. She’d come to San Francisco to spend a year with my family when she’d enrolled in a law school program. Now, nine years later, we were still close and I was thrilled to see her.

  I held her long and hard, loving her gracious warmth.

  It pissed me off just a little that she was also adorable with Marek.

  It was six p.m. local time, but neither Marek nor I were in much shape to do more than sleep off the grogginess of the pill, plus seventeen hours of travel time. Nia’s happiness at our fleeting visit, however, made us both feel better.

  “I just Googled snake dreams,” Marek told me, wielding his cellphone in one hand, both our suitcases in the other as we left the terminal. “They represent the dreamer’s desire for wisdom. On the whole, I should have been dreaming about that snake, not you.”

  He actually made me smile. “I want some wisdom too,” I said. I’m going to need it if I stay with you. It was hard keeping these mean thoughts to myself, but I’d promised. Now I resented it a little.

  Nia threaded her arm through mine as her husband, Thakis, rolled up in their Volvo.

  “He cheated on me once too,” she said as we stood there watching our men try to fit the luggage into their trunk.

  “How did you find out?” I asked.

  She let out a ragged sigh. “Her lipstick was on his collar.”

  “And you forgave him.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  I felt wounded for her. Thakis was an ass. I watched him yucking it up with Marek. Europeans, real Europeans, were far more forgiving of marital infidelities than we Americans were.

  I suddenly wanted to cry and curl in a ball and swallow every last pill I could find. Not that we had any. The Greek immigrations and customs inspector had confiscated my bottle of Motrin.

  She squeezed my arm. “You need to find some hot hunk in Zakynthos and screw his brains out. You’ll feel better.” She grinned at me, her white teeth dazzling me between her perfectly painted red lips. “It made me feel wonderful.”

  I gaped at her. “Really?”

  “Definitely.” She winked as Thakis beckoned us over to the car.

  Greeks dine late, and Thakis and Nia, who’d visited us the previous summer, had kept late hours so out of sync with ours. But still, we adored them.

  “I’d cook,” she said, turning around to look at us while her husband drove like a lunatic, scaring the pants off me, “but there is a wonderful taverna near us. I think you’ll like it.”

  They gave us the sofa bed in the living room for us to share for the night. We’d be taking off for Zakynthos by ferry in the morning.

  I was thrilled since I had no intention of having sex with Marek, but he looked dismayed.

  “Not too late to book a hotel,” he hissed dramatically. I opened our suitcases, stunned to see that he’d packed Butch and Sundance, the stuffed elephants that had been our ‘kids’ since a week after we’d met.

  “I can’t believe you put these in here,” I said. It felt so wrong, even though we always took them on trips. We had photos of them taken all over the world.

  “How can you say that? The kids might be listening!” He took out the big, fluffy gray elephant and the little one. After fluffing them up a bit, he positioned them on the sofa, snapping a photo.

  They looked as happy as ever, the little traitors.

  “I’m posting it to Facebook,” he said.

  Whatever. I pawed through our bags for clean clothes and went off to shower alone.

  It was a hollow victory because I missed him.

  I wondered how we’d cope once we were alone on the island, without distractions, without TV, Internet, family, streetcars…

  Just us.

  Would I ever really grow another heart?

  And could I ever truly cheat on him?

  No.
I didn’t think so. It wasn’t in my nature.

  * * * *

  Over dinner at Zorba’s, a wonderful taverna nestled in the shadow of the Acropolis, Thakis made jokes about infidelity, but only he found them funny.

  “Women,” he said to Marek at one point. “You know what they say about women.”

  “Don’t,” Nia warned.

  “I’m having a conversation with Marek.” Thakis stuffed his mouth with a piece of pita bread smothered with tzaziki, a yogurt, cucumber and crushed garlic dip.

  “There are five rules men should know about women. I see no reason why they shouldn’t apply to gay men since you are in touch with your feminine side.”

  “Oh, my God.” Nia dropped her head to the table.

  Marek and I exchanged wry glances.

  “Anyway, these are the rules.” Thakis began ticking them off on his fingers. “It’s important to have a woman who helps at home, who can cook and clean, but who also has a job.”

  Marek grinned. “You don’t ask for much.”

  “I’m just getting started. It’s also necessary to have a woman who makes you laugh.”

  “Ha ha,” Nia said, rolling her eyes.

  Thakis ignored her, holding up a third finger. “Also, you should have a woman you can trust and who doesn’t lie to you.”

  Marek’s face seemed to turn pale in the moonlight.

  “But,” Thakis rumbled on, “you must have a woman who is good in bed and who likes sex. And finally, it is extremely important that these four women never meet.”

  Marek and I looked at each other and actually laughed.

  I wasn’t sure why it was funny. But the only thing that stopped me hating Thakis from that moment on was that he ordered extra food and paid for it, feeding some of the starving street dogs that were apparently a huge and devastating problem in Athens. I wanted to take them all home with me.

  Closing my eyes, I thought about Avalon and how, more than anything, I just wished I could be home with him and Marek, safe in my pre-Steve world thinking I was all those things Thakis had on his stupid list. All those things and a bag of chips.

  * * * *

  Later, much later, Marek and I sat together in the dark on the edge of the squeaky sofa bed. He turned to me, his voice soft. “Babe, if I gave you a free pass—”

  “I don’t want a free pass. I want my life back.”

  Butch and Sundance sat atop our suitcases, watching. They still looked happy, damn it.

  He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter. “But let’s just say, if you could, who would you choose?”

  I scoffed at the idea.

  “Come on, babe, you have fantasy men.”

  “Sure I do.” I just don’t book them into hotel rooms when I’m supposed to be working.

  “Let’s just say…if you had the opportunity who would it be?”

  I shrugged. The idea appealed to me just thinking about a fantasy man, but my spirit was crushed, my morale sunk to a low I’d never known before. “I can’t,” I said. “You’ve made me feel like I’m ugly.”

  “Oh, baby.” He tried to put his arms around me, but I moved, getting up and scooting under the covers. I could feel a metal bar going right through the middle of the bed. I lay there, shivering.

  He climbed in beside me.

  “Wow, you’re cold. Oh, no. This is terrible,” he said. “Babe. We can’t sleep here.”

  “We have to.” I closed my eyes.

  “Are you thinking about your fantasy man?” he asked.

  “Damn you, I am.”

  Actually, I could picture a threesome—me, the gay porn star and Marek. For me, it wouldn’t be fun without him.

  He slid an arm around me, spooning me. I could feel the start of something hard poking at my tail bone. I moved away again, just out of reach.

  “Who is it?” he asked. “Come on, tell me.”

  “Well, I like that guy. You know, the porn star.”

  “The Spanish one?”

  “Yeah.” Oh, boy. I wouldn’t mind sorting out my insecurities on his massive cock.

  I realized I’d said those words aloud.

  “Marek, I’m sorry.”

  He hugged me. “Don’t be. I did ask. Who else?”

  I laughed then. “I don’t know. After him would I need anyone else?” Juan Juarez was the sexiest man alive as far as I was concerned. I tried to shake the image of his sensuous face from my mind. We had all of his DVDs. He’d had a prolific career in gay porn for three years, then vanished from the industry. We still enjoyed his movies and often concocted stories for where he was right now.

  And yes, I did have fantasies about him. Huge fantasies.

  “Go on,” he said. “This is a free pass, Dragan.”

  “Oh, so I get more than one?” I grinned in the safety of darkness. “Well, okay. Since you asked, I’d have a hard time choosing between Jason and—”

  “Jason and who?” he asked, seizing on the name of our personal trainer. He was a big, black, handsome man who was sexy as hell. But so was his lover, Renford. The funny thing about Marek was that he was the most jealous guy I knew, and since Renford was my frequent workout partner I was afraid he’d take him away from me.

  “Who?” Marek prompted.

  “Renford.”

  “Yeah, he’s hot.”

  I turned to glance at him. “He’s not my type,” he assured me. “I like skinny Greek guys.” He kissed my ear. I didn’t respond. I just let it go.

  “Anyone else?” he asked.

  “You,” I said. “I still want you.”

  “Then, God, please —”

  “Not yet,” I said, trying not to think about my husband on his knees begging Steve Lewis to let him suck his cock.

  Marek sighed but didn’t push. He turned over and we slept bottom to bottom. I stopped trembling. If I were to be honest, I’d have to say it was nice to be in bed with him again, even a torturous one.

  Chapter Two

  Around noon, the blazing sun awoke me from my nap, bathing my face with sea-breeze kisses. My whole body thanked me for the early start we’d had getting to the island. After an excruciating night on the sofa bed, we had packed our things at dawn, leaving a note for Nia and Thakis. We were planning to visit them again on our return to Athens in a few weeks, but we’d get a hotel room for sure.

  I yawned and stretched, listening to the bouzouki music coming from somewhere on the island. I felt the hard jab of Marek’s cock against my ass crack. Normally, it sent my own into full-blown readiness for some hot, man-on-man morning action.

  But not today. Not now. I crept out of the bed and outside to our rustic white-stone balcony overlooking the Ionian Sea.

  There were moments when it felt right to be here, then moments when I wanted to jump the first plane back home. Butch and Sundance, who were hanging out by one of the windows, thought it was all fine and dandy.

  Now we were here on the island and the world, time, everything had stopped. There were no windows in our little castle room built of stone, perched high above Zakynthos, the best-kept secret in Greek tourism.

  We’d arrived very early by the first ferry from Piraeus, with a brief stopover on the island of Kyllini. We’d been half asleep so we hadn’t been able to see much.

  A few on-board locals had teased us that Zakynthos was filled with churches and brothels. I’d thought Marek would adore the latter, but I hadn’t said this aloud. I was trying to be nice—I was trying not to spoil his efforts to make this a romantic vacation for us to remember. I saw the island now in all its azure glory. I could feel its unforced rhythm of grace, and silently thanked my parents for suggesting this magical place.

  A peaceful, sleepy slice of dazzling color and light, this place took my breath away. I was certain I could smell the sun as strongly as I could the olive trees, rosemary and, from somewhere, a whiff of orange blossom. As I turned to look at Marek, his dark head still buried under the sheet, I wished I could feel as happy as I shoul
d.

  I gazed back out to the sea and counted the crosses on top of the churches. My, there were a lot of them.

  “You think that guy’s ever gonna learn to play that thing?” Marek’s voice surprised me. Guess he was awake after all. I paused to listen, loving the sound of the bouzouki. It was in my blood, that instrument, so it didn’t appear to me like the player was learning the scales, but now I realized he was.

  “Maybe a star is being born right now.” I came back inside, putting on some long white cotton pants. I saw the desolation flood Marek’s face.

  He hadn’t got lucky in Athens or last night. He wouldn’t this morning either. I knew he wanted to hit the jackpot and thought he would when I’d got into bed naked with him as soon as we arrived. I told him it was because of the heat and high humidity, not because I was ready for sex.

  “Why are you putting those on?” he asked.

  It was a rare moment of fury for him. He’d been treading very carefully.

  I’d threatened to return home while we were at the seaport in Athens when Steve Lewis had somehow managed to post something on my Facebook wall although he was supposed to be in police custody.

  It turned out he’d been released on bail, but he still faced a host of charges that Paul had told us would guarantee an actual jail term.

  “Kiria Marazeries, Mrs Marazeries, our landlady, is coming up the mountain with our breakfast,” I told him and darted out to meet her.

  “Kali mera! Embros, good morning, welcome!” The old lady beamed.

  Dressed in widow’s weeds she’d been wearing for several decades, according to my dad, she presented me with a tray filled with tiny cups of Greek coffee, a pot bubbling with refills, and a plate of warm bougatsa, pastries filled with custard and cheese.

  “I made the coffee metrio, medium sweet,” she said in rapid-fire Greek.

  Being a first generation American of Greek descent, I knew the language well. I sipped at the hot, thick liquid and commented on the coffee’s top layer of skin. It was, I knew, a matter of pride to any Greek woman. The old lady gave me a confident wink.

  “I never let the coffee boil. No… karmakia, no skin that way. A woman who lets her coffee boil over is like a woman leaving the house with no underpants on.”