The Girl Below(79)

Running for the ferry, we retraced our steps for the third time. Caleb jogged with the fish under one arm and tried to keep abreast of Harold, who was surprisingly nimble, while the best I could manage was a lopsided scuttle, held back by fatigue and wayward suitcase wheels. When I had dropped too far back behind the others, I picked up the suitcase, and the plastic handle burned painfully into my hand.

Up ahead, a grim-looking ferry called the Achilea honked its departure horn, and the gangplank swung away from the dock as we drew alongside. Harold waved frantically at the shipping steward, who was methodically fastening a small metal gate, and started shouting at him in a mishmash of English and Greek. For a tantalizing moment, the gangplank shivered while the steward decided our fate.

“Please, please!” begged Harold. “My mother is dying!”

“Your mother?” said the steward, his English perfect.

He lowered the gangplank and showered us with condolences while we filed past, silent with gratitude. The main ferry cabin was stuffed with squeamish tourists and rowdy locals whose grandmothers, children, and breakfasts were spread out on every surface. Already it smelled as though the toilets were overflowing, and we ventured outside to the aft deck and a row of wooden benches. But after so little sleep, I couldn’t stand the idea of sitting upright for six or seven hours on a plank of wood, and when I moved to a shady corner of the deck and collapsed against a funnel, Caleb followed. Harold was giving us the silent treatment and remained on the bench, inspecting his ankle where the strap of his orthopedic sandal had rubbed a blister.

The ferry chugged out into the harbor, and I closed my eyes and sank into my suitcase. A few minutes later, a warm weight fell against my shoulder, and a swatch of hair tickled my neck. Caleb had fallen asleep on me, though who knew if he had meant to. With bright sunlight burning an orange pattern on the inside of my eyelids, I tried to imagine how we’d look to strangers, or even to Harold, but I lost consciousness before I could make a decision about what if anything to do about it.

Some time later, I woke with a jolt and Caleb rolled off my shoulder and onto the deck. “Ouch,” he said, sitting up and noticing the patch of drool on the shoulder of my T-shirt. “Did I do that?”

I was surprised by how little I minded. “It’ll dry out soon enough.”

He looked around at the sun-blazed ship. “How long was I out for?”

“An hour maybe? I don’t know. I’ve been asleep too.”

The ferry swung round unexpectedly, and the change in direction threw us out of the shade. “There’s still ages to go,” said Caleb, pulling a sweater out of his knapsack. He scrunched the sweater into a ball, placed it in the crook of his neck, and leaned against my shoulder again. “I’m going back to sleep,” he said.

Where his bare arm fell against mine, my skin goose-bumped. He sighed a couple of times and relaxed into sleep. To lean on me once had been careless, but to do it twice was something else, and before I could stop it, my pulse quickened, and a warm feeling spread over me. It was followed by an ugly jolt. What was I doing? Caleb was barely sixteen—a half-formed newt who drank and smoked but didn’t yet shave. Nothing could come of this, nothing good.

I needed a bathroom, but not so badly that I was prepared to get up and look for one, and soon fell into a clenched half sleep. The ferry chugged on and on, and periodically I gazed across the railings to the edge of the sparkling sea but saw no land. The hours started to sag and lose all shape, until it seemed we had spent our entire lives at sea on this crusty ship. Next to me, Caleb’s legs were folded girlishly underneath him, and his wrists hung limply in his lap. He looked vulnerable, like a child who had fallen asleep on an adult he trusted, and I felt ashamed of the path my thoughts had taken, the way my body had reacted.

An hour or so later, it was Caleb who walked unsteadily to the railing and stared out across the frothing wake. After hours of inertia, my own legs were stiff and uncooperative, and my contact lenses were like sandpaper against my eyes. I joined him at the railing, feeling queasy and dehydrated and terminally zonked. He pointed toward the starboard side at a cluster of blue-black fins on the horizon.

“That’s Skyros,” he said. “We’re almost there.”





Chapter Seventeen


Auckland, 2001





I hadn’t seen or heard from Ludo in months when he called out of the blue inviting me to lunch. He said he was coming to Auckland on business, and maybe I’d like to meet him at one of those new al fresco places on the Viaduct Basin that were springing up to cater to the Americas Cup. Ever since securing the prestigious event, the city had gone all St. Tropez, or tried to, and in the formerly industrial quarter next to the harbor a miniature gin playground was hastily being built. To cope with the expected influx of seafaring Eurotrash, thousands of Aucklanders had upped their intake of champagne and oysters, while women, single and married, had been enthusiastically taking French lessons to better seduce any incoming Eurosailors.