Corfu

My head is pounding and when my eyes close the world spins round making me swallow nervously to quell the rising bile from last night's overindulgence, but the breeze feels good across my fevered skin and the ocean air calms my beating heart. I have come here to these Grecian shores to recover, to gain some peace and clarity and instead I find myself drowning. I am drowning, not in the exquisite turquoise waters but in Ouzo and wine, in Greek eyes and plundering mouths soaked in olive oil and tasting of the Mediterranean. At night there is always a sun kissed body to warm myself with and I am indiscriminate- man, woman, Greek, Italian, Turk, tourist...the only thing that matters is that they don't remind me of him with his ice blue eyes and pale pale skin. I came here to heal but I have lost myself to a numbing cloud of hedonism from which I may never return. Sometimes, I'm not sure that I want to.

This morning, however, I awoke early with the rosy fingers of the dawn and despite the hammering in my head, a moment of clarity has brought me from next to yet another nameless lover to heaven, here on the bluffs above Limanaki Beach. It is early yet, which may account for the lack of others, but I have come to one of the more remote spots on the Island and I relish the tranquility. The coastline is spectacular here at this cliffside bar. They are not yet open for business but the boy who is preparing for the day allows me to sit on one of the lounge chairs contemplating the morning beauty. He is respectful of my quietude and conducts himself much as I imagine the monks of the monastery high above our heads. His one concession to breaking the stillness is to place a cup of thick coffee next to me as well as a bottle of sparkling water. I am grateful.

Movement along the side of the bluffs catch my attention and if I squint my eyes just so I can see the two figures making their way down the long seemingly unending cliffside steps towards the beach and the rocks below. He is blond and pale and she a brunette with just the hint of a tan. I start. From here they could be he and I just last year making our way down the same path, tracing the footsteps of the Venetians that had ruled here so long ago. It was our work, our studies that had brought us both together on this Island so long ago. We had made it a point over the years to always come back at least once every summer. It was on those very steps that he had paused- to ask for my hand I had thought, to tell me of his infidelity he had planned. I remember thinking that he should have waited until we reached the bottom that he had underestimated my rage and despair at his betrayal. I remember thinking that I should push him as he turned his back to continue his decent leaving me standing alone above him. I thought it, my fingers even twitched by my sides in a phantom act, but I couldn't bring myself to it. Instead, I returned home and tried to forget about Corfu, to forget about him, but the summer came and with it the urge to return to the Island. It seems I am one Pavlov's dogs.

I tell myself as I sit here overlooking the bluff- this particular bluff- that I have returned to reclaim the land that I have loved. To reclaim something that he has stolen along with my easy smile and my laughter. But I have made a grave error. This place is no longer welcome to me as I am no longer welcome to it and no amount of pleasure - be it drink or flesh- will change that. It is time for me to go home. It is time for me to start again. I leave a large tip for the boy who has so peacefully allowed me the time to come to this realization. I am leaving the Island now. I am ready to move on.

El Jefe

She could see herself in the reflection of his wedding ring. It was golden, scratched up with age but thick and strong- how she imagined his marriage. It wasn't that she stared at his ring or his hands often but today she found herself drifting from his under breath muttering as he typed an email and instead paused to ponder the neat, recently cut nails and the solidness of the ring on his finger.

He was most definitely the marrying kind. Not perfect really, but just right for loving, fighting, teasing, laughing...caring about. He was the kind of man she wanted to find for herself. She would own up to a sense of attraction to him if asked directly, but she didn't want this man, to steal him from his wife. Instead, she wanted one like him but suited for her. One with the same gleeful look in the back of his eyes hinting at a misspent youth. A sense of adventure that would have him talking her into a spur of the moment weekend rendevous hiking in the dead of winter even though neither he nor she particularly liked the snow. She wanted a man like him that knocks back a few drinks with her and gets roaringly drunk and giggly long after they are past those days yet will still be an adoring father to her children.

She wants a man like her boss.

Tulum

Tulum. The world is heavy, weighing her tongue down with possibility. It tastes salty like the sea and the salt on the tip of a margarita glass that's been hand blown and ponderous. It tastes of mosquito netting and hammocks on the sand. Tulum.

Richard hadn't been able to pronounce it, shortening the vowel like in the word dumb. It wasn't heavy when Richard said it, there was no promise only a sarcastic sneer. Richard did not lick margarita salt off of a glass, he was a whiskey man like his father and his father's father and his father's father's father before him. Real salt of the earth kind of guy. She hated whiskey.

Jimmy liked salt. Liked to lick her salty flesh after a frantic coupling in the back room when they should have been boxing books up instead. He'd suck on her pulse points until she was terrified yet hopeful he'd leave a mark. He'd been hired on only a few short months ago but he'd come up behind her reading a travel guide to the Yucatan while on her break one day and he'd leaned in close enough to stir the hairs on the back of her neck. "When are we going?" They'd been at it like bunnies in heat since.

Jimmy was light and laughter, adventure and seduction all rolled into one. He was temptation and she was tempted. Richard was staid and patient, kind but stubborn and had no desire for anything more than what he already had. And she...she was unsure. For Richard she had stayed. For Richard she had married young. And for Richard she had put her dreams on hold. For Jimmy she would do just about anything. For Jimmy she finds herself sitting on a plane watching the scenery fly by and as the tarmac falls away she mouths the word Tulum. The heaviness feels good in mouth as she feels Jimmy's hand slip into her own. Tulum. It tastes like freedom.

Treno

Her fingernails are painted a deep red. Blood red, seduction red. She is not the kind of girl who paints her nails blood red, yet here she sits aimlessly running one of her perfectly manicured red nails around the rim of a water glass while looking away from me out the window. I have a nail fetish. She knows this but she never indulged my desires, content to keep clear polish on them if anything at all and to chew them down to the nub when thinking. I take a sip of my wine and ponder the meaning behind this. On one hand, it could be a tactical maneuver. We have tired of the lawyers and moved on to solving things between the two of us. She wants certain things. I don't want to give up certain things. Hence, the red seduction. Or, option number 2- and the option I least appreciate- is that they are for someone else.

"Your nails look nice."

Her head snaps back towards mine as her wandering finger freezes over the glass. Quickly, smoothly she sits up straighter- all business now- and pulls her hands in to clasp them in front of her hiding the blood red from my sight. Not for me then. Now it's my turn to sigh and look out the window. It's one of those days that falls in March, not quite Winter anymore but definitely not yet Spring. The fog has rolled in from the beach and I can barely make out the planes winging in from parts unknown. It was my choice to come here, to this airport hotel bar. I love airports- ever since childhood- but today the sight of people coming and going, living out of their suitcases depresses me. Uncertainty is no longer the great adventure of my youth.

She's made some barely discernible movement that distracts me from my gazing. I glance over to find her intently following the descent of a 747 flying the All'Italia colors. They are being bought out by Air France but I doubt she knows or cares. We met in Italy. Standing by the baggage carousel at Fiumicino, I remember looking around desperately for a sign that said "treno" one of the few words I'd learned in Italian prior to departure. The Study Abroad coordinator had left me with the deceptively simple instructions to board the train from Fiumicino to Termini and to look for the big group of students with the sign that would be meeting there. I clung desperately to the hope of the sign.

The 747 lands, a plume of smoke and a screech of giant brakes heralding it's arrival. I wonder if she wonders if I intentionally chose an airport. If I brought her here to this airport, to finish what we started in that airport. I didn't, but it wouldn't be a bad guess. Her phone rings and I remember the ponytailed girl she was, backpack slung over one shoulder, her left hand resting on a beat up suitcase and cursing in English under her breath. Now she is quietly speaking in Italian. "Treno" is still one of the only words I know in Italian. She became fluent. As I watch her quietly speaking into the receiver, almost hunched in an attempt to make the call as private as possible, I have an idea who those red nails are for.

Pink

The tea is called passion. It's bitter. And pink. The directions on the box say that "for each lusty, hot cup of Tazo Passion, use one bag and allow to steep for five minutes." She doesn't know how "lusty" the tea is but she smirks at the bitter part. She wonders when the color pink came to represent passion...love...lust. The way she sees it when a heart bleeds it bleeds dark red. Perhaps that's where the pink comes from- a bleeding heart. Clearly the deep rich blood has been filtered with something lighter, fluffier and safer for public consumption. Something like cotton candy. Love is not cotton candy sweet to her, it is dark crimson that comes gushing out of a jagged cut that a surgeon couldn't stitch up fast enough...though one had tried.

Joshua Collins was everything a woman is supposed to want. He had graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, had his doctorate from Johns Hopkins and was a renown cardiologist by 40. He had a pretty face and a prettier body but that wasn't the sum of his parts he also spent his vacations donating his medical expertise. In short, a modern day saint and to top even that off he'd had the ideal childhood and perfect parents that are the stuff of fairy tales in this modern age. What he'd seen in her she still didn't know. What she did know was that he was perfect and for a brief moment she was perfect with him. The problem with perfect is that when it's taken away from you there is nothing left to aspire to.

She looks down at her tea again and thinks that love is not the only thing that is dark crimson. Perfection is as well, as it pours out of a terrible gash in the neck of your lover while you lay amongst the remnants of your car. It is the color of the sirens and the flashing red lights, of the flares and the firefighters, of the ambulance that speeds along but can't possibly move fast enough and finally the color of the sheets surrounding your love after the doctors and the nurses have gone and it's just you and him in the silence and your brain struggling through the fog to understand.

She pushes away her pink "lusty" tea and struggles to her feet- her ever expanding belly making it more difficult to sit and stand these days. She rests a hand on the swell of her stomach and stares out the window.

Of Bra Straps and Bare Shoulders

I've been sitting on the couch for hours reading, staring, thinking. Somewhere in the afternoon- an hour ago or a minute ago, I don't know- the straps on my tank top and my bra have slipped off my shoulders hanging loosely against my arms. This often happens during the day and I can be found at any given time pulling them back in place. But tonight I let them lie. They feel mildly sexy laying there with my hair brushing against my bare shoulders. The layers have finally grown long enough to brush my chin at their shortest and my shoulders at their longest. You would be pleased. I know you hated it when I cut my hair.

You are the reason I don't fix my straps. Sitting here like this with my dangling straps and hair in my face reminds me of that day we spent at the beach. I wore that sundress you loved so with the little yellow sunflowers. I could never get over how much you loved that dress. I don't think it was the print so much that appealed to you as it was the novelty that I was wearing a dress. Me, whose standard uniform is jeans, was wearing a yellow sunflower sundress for you. I loved you then.

We were at the beach and I was laughing at you laughing at me fighting with my hair in the wind. It was long then and the seabreeze wrapped it around face and neck like a wild thing. Every time I tried to pull it off my face and trap it behind my ears the wind would catch it again and whip it back into my face. I didn't have my customary hair tie on my wrist because you'd held my sweaty, flush body against yours that morning and begged me to leave my hair down for the day. I could no more say no to you then to stop my tap dancing heart after our rushed loving.

I remember while fighting with my hair that the straps from the dress had fallen off my shoulders. I heaved a frustrated sigh and held my hair back with one hand while reaching with the other to pull the straps back up. I froze though at your whispered "stop". The look in your eyes had me instantly wet and you sheltered me from the wind and sun as you leaned into me licking the salt from my bared shoulder. Nothing mattered after that, not the sun or wind or the people around us on that blustery April day, just you and me laying together in the sand with your head cradled in the salty groove between my neck and my shoulder and the straps of my dress hanging down my arms.

It's been a long while since that day. My hair has only recently grown long enough to dance wildly in a breeze again and the yellow sunflower dress is somewhere in my closet. It could be hanging or it could be on the floor behind a box or a suitcase. I haven't thought of it in ages. I never really was a dresses girl though you know. I was only that for you and you alone and you are long gone, but tonight, with my straps hanging down I could almost be that girl again. I could almost be yours again.

Random dribble on a Sunday night

She had good feet she decided. It wasn't that she often pondered her feet it was just that tonight while watching tv from her well worn groove in the couch with her feet up on the coffee table, the light had seemed to catch her feet just right for noticing. They were young. Younger than her hands. Her Abuelo used to tell her that she could be a hand model. It's true that she had long fingers with nails that could be kept short or grown long at her whim, but lines and wrinkles were starting to appear under her mother's and grandmother's rings. There were freckles and scars now and fingers that swelled when it was too hot and shrunk when it was too cold. The callouses had never left though. She had thought with age and years removed from shoveling horse crap they would disappear, but they remained, eternal reminders of a childhood spent around big animals and wheel barrows.

Her feet were cold and she rubbed them together in the light cast from the tv. She wiggled and squeezed her toes together this way and that admiring the tendons and popping joints in her toes. They were good feet with long toes that she used to pick things up when she was too lazy or too stiff to bend over and grab. She liked her useful monkey toes. She remembered when she had to do her chores on weekends and would walk around picking up the living room using just her toes. She much preferred using her feet to her hands, which perhaps made the seeming youth of her feet that much more surprising.

All these years and they were still smooth and pale not showing the lines that should be there from the summer she lived and studied in Hawaii when she lived in flip flops and burned the tops of her feet so badly that she thought the lines from her shoes had been tattooed in UV. The colors had eventually faded but she was left with a perfectly round, tiny brown freckle right between her second and third toes on her left foot. Aaron had liked to kiss that spot. One day while he had been tickling her there with his tongue she had scoffed at him for kissing her future cancer spot. He had smacked her lightly and resumed his attentions saying that it was his spot - that he was claiming it - and that it was perfectly adorable and not malignant in the least. He had named it Dorothy. She smiled and spread out her toes making Dorothy dance. She missed Aaron. She had never had another man claim a spot on her body. The fleeting thought that perhaps he might come to collect Dorothy someday crossed her mind. What a crazy thing to think, she thought.

With a final glance at her feet she went back to watching tv. Yes, they were good feet.

Publishers Clearing House

The TV set was on and Charli Gibbons was wearing her favorite jersey with her lucky hat. Her husband, Ben, was out back lighting the grill and their 6-year-old daughter Daisy was running around with mini pom-poms and a greasy handful of potato chips. It was the Super Bowl and Charli's mamma was in the bathroom putting on her face.

Charli's mamma didn't wear make-up. In fact, when she'd moved in with them a few months back there had only been a handful of suitcases carrying precious keepsakes and some clothes. Charli hadn't seen so much as a lip gloss while sitting on the bed watching her mom unpack. She remembered feeling like a little girl again-sitting, watching her mother go about her business.

"Mamma...what are you doing? It's only a football game for god's sake!"

"I'm putting on my face in case the cameras come", Charli's mamma hollered back from the bathroom.

Charli thought to herself that perhaps her mother had finally succumbed to some sort of mental problem. "Cameras! What are you talking about Mamma?"

"You know. The Publisher's Clearing House people. I've got a feeling about this one today!"

Charli rolled her eyes heavenward. Her mamma had been entering the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes for as long as she could remember. She'd spent many hours watching her meticulously place all those stamps on the entry form. She'd argue about what a rip-off it was and she was spending all this money on magazines for nothing. Charli's mamma would continue licking and sticking stamps while telling Charli that it didn't matter if she won or not and that she enjoyed all those magazines that she was wasting money on thank you very much and didn't Charli herself read those very same magazines when she came over to visit!

At half-time Charli found herself draining her second beer and frowning over her team's crappy showing. She found herself in a right depression but couldn't bare to turn it off- there might be hope yet. Daisy was playing with her ponies on the coffee table and her mother and Ben were discussing the half-time show. Charli laid back on the couch and closed her eyes trying to drone out the chatter for a moment. The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it!" yelled Daisy as she made a beeline for the door. Charli was off the couch in a flash. She didn't like the idea of Daisy talking to strangers and she didn't know who was at the door.

"No, baby let me get it." But it was too late the door was opening and Charli was suddenly blinded by flashbulbs from seemingly every direction. She stood dumbfounded while Daisy hid behind her peeking out from around her legs. It wasn't until she saw the giant check with Publisher's Clearing House written across it in bold letters that she snapped out of her shock and started screaming.

"Mamma! Mamma! Get out here now! Oh my gawd Mamma! Get out here right now!

Charli felt her mother and Ben crowd into the doorway behind her. The man holding the check held out his hand. "Excuse me are you Mrs. Charli Gibbons?" Charli looked at his extended hand in confusion. "Um...yes, I am but why are you asking for me?"

The man grinned at Charli. "Well, mam, because you've won the Publisher's Clearing House $10 million dollar sweepstakes!"

Daisy pulled at the bottom of Charli's shirt. Charli shook her head. "No, you must be looking for my mamma." Daisy pulled again. Charli brushed her away. "Not now baby." "No, sir, really you mean Darla Jennings- my mother." Daisy pulled at her again.

It was the man's turn to shake his head. "No, mam says right here Charli Gibbons." He made to shake her hand again as a few more flashbulbs went off.

Daisy pulled at her again. Charli looked down at her daughter, shell shocked. "Daisy, what is it?"

"I put the stamps on mamma. There were two- one for you and one for Gramma and she said I could do one like her." Daisy looked up at smiling. Charli stared back down at her not really seeing anything until she heard the thump behind her and jumped a little.

Charli's mamma had fainted.

The Calendar

Cheryl was a meticulous note taker. There was a proper place for everything in her life and she liked nothing more than to glance at her calendar and see her precise penmanship filling up the little white boxes. As a child she had practiced her letters endlessly, fascinated by the curves and straight lines, crossed T's and dotted I's. She had also enjoyed lining up her stuffed animals. The smallest would sit in the front with each row back standing taller and taller like her classmates in the group photos they took at school. She always sat in the front row. Not because she was short for her age, but because she had skipped two grades.

The calendars had become vital to organizing her life in college. As a freshman she'd taken a job in the English department as an assistant to the departmental secretary. She had a cubicle with perfectly stacked file folders, neatly aligned pens and a desktop calendar. At first, the large white spaces had mocked her, the potential uses for that space racing through her mind. Eventually the spaces became filled with due dates for work and class, appointments, dates, birthdays even for noting the time of month she was on her period. For this she used the red pen and made the tiniest of dots in the bottom right corner of the daily box. It was likely that people knew what the dots meant if they thought about it long enough- particularly other women, but Cheryl didn't mind. She liked keeping track of everything.

It was a Thursday. On Thursday, May 15th to be exact, Cheryl sat staring at her calendar, forehead crinkled in thought and worry. She hadn't used her red pen in the month of May. She should have used the pen already. She flipped the calendar back to April. Saturday, April 26th dinner at D'alessio with Tom 8:30pm. Wednesday, April 16th Italian Film Festival at McGovern Hall with Tom 6:00pm. Friday, April 4th Lunch with Sarah, Brady and Tom 12:30 at Jerry's. No little red dots anywhere in April. Cheryl flipped the page back to March tearing it accidentally in her haste.

There! In the right hand corner of Tuesday, March 4th she spotted her little red dot. It continued through the 8th and ended. Her eye dropped to Friday, March 21st Dinner and drinks with Tom from English 120B at O'Malley's Pub. Cheryl's face turned as white as the calendar as she lifted one hand to cover her mouth and lowered the other to gently sit over her stomach.

"Oh fuck."

Pay By the Hour

It was an email that started it. They'd been together for about three years now. The honeymoon stage had long passed and they had settled into the complacency of the long married. The sex had become perfunctory- a weekly appointment to be kept. Every Friday at precisely 10:30pm Harold would tilt his head back swallowing the last of his luke warm beer. He'd place the bottle carefully on the coffee table with one hand while clicking off the tv set in the other. Suzy would already be standing by the time the tv was off and headed down the hall towards the bedroom. The lights were always turned off, Suzy was always on top and Harold would stare up at her with his half lidded gaze until he'd come. Sometimes she came too but whether she did or didn't they always both went to sleep immediately after. There was a comfort in this routine, which is why Suzy was so surprised to find herself bent over a rickety desk in a sleaze bag motel at the edge of town. With every snap of Harold's hips, the creaky desk seemed to wheeze under her.

She'd received the first email at 9:30am. Suzy did the books for the local optometrist. She had worked there since everything had to be written down which really wasn't that long ago but it seemed like forever to Suzy. She still did her job efficiently and quickly but now she could at least browse the internet when the day dragged on. The email was from Harold and it said "Do you remember the last time we fucked in the back of my truck?" Suzy's pulse had quickened just a bit and she remembered glancing around to make sure no one could see what she was reading. It was pointless really seeing as no one was in the office but Dr. McAdam and Seth, Monica Potter's son who'd been wearing glasses since he was three and looked like an owl when he stared at you sometimes. They were in the examining room.

The second email from Harold came before she could even respond. "Do you remember the last time we fucked outside in the fields behind Grady Samuels farm? It was about noon and the sun was so hot on my back. Afterwards your nose was burnt red like a lobster and I laughed at you until you smacked me on the back and I jumped from the sting of my own sunburn. Later on we fucked again but it was cool from the aloe you'd just put on me."

Suzy had felt like her heart was about to jump out of her chest and she was sure her face was flush after she read the second email. She wasn't sure what was happening but once again- before she could answer him- there was another email from Harold in her box. "Do you remember the Rode Side Inn of off the 90? Meet me there on your lunch break." And she did.

The desk under her wobbled and creaked and she felt the smooth surface under her cheek. She couldn't help imagining how old it was to have such a smooth feel to it without any varnish. She found herself picturing an elderly gentleman and his wife who had presented the desk to him on his 65th birthday so that he could finally sit down and write the book he'd always wanted to. She pictured him writing away on it until one day when he just up and died. Then the desk was passed on and on until it ended up for sale and then spending the rest of it's days here in this pay-by-the-hour hotel on the side of a forgotten highway. Suzy moaned as Harold panted in her ear pushing her down onto the desk harder and harder. She closed her eyes and let go as he emptied into her with two final frantic thrusts. Suzy lay there trapped between Harold and the desk trying to still her rapidly drumming heart listening to Harold doing the same.

"Harold?"

He grunted something vaguely resembling "yeah".

"I want a divorce."