Breathing hurt. Susannah Fontaine-Williams quickly peeled off her suddenly blood-stained dress. She poured what was left of her bottled water on her hands and wiped clean the blood with the unstained parts of the dress. She tossed the dress and the bottle down the cistern into which the tall Greek man had staggered and fallen with the knife buried hilt-deep in his gut.
For a moment she stood naked in the shadows, save for the sunhat that had remained firmly on her head. She strained to listen for sounds, anything, approaching voices, footsteps, a dying man struggling in the sickly green water. But all was quiet. She pushed the gravel with her feet to make sure her hearing still worked. Except for a lizard standing atop an ancient wall, there wasn’t another creature in sight.
From her bag, she pulled the cute blue and white striped dress she had shoplifted in Santorini a few days earlier. Though she hadn’t tried it on first, it fit perfectly. She sat on the edge of the cistern, closed her eyes, and caught a vivid glimpse of an alternate life. She sat by a swimming pool dangling her feet in the cool water watching Bob Williams playing with their triplets. He picked up their daughter, tossing her gently and she splashed down, holding her nose to keep the water out. “Me next, daddy!” the boys screamed.
“Perhaps, Susannah Fontaine-Williams, you are not cautious.” That’s not very insightful now, is it, she thought. “Perhaps it is unwise to follow a man you don’t know into a hidden place.” He eased the pressure on her throat enough to allow the carbon dioxide to escape her lungs and fresh air to enter. She wanted to cough but he had tightened the grip once more.
She looked into the one brown eye and one blue eye of her tormentor and swore that the brown used to be on the left, not the right as it now was. He smiled. “Is that better?” he said. “Does it hurt…your throat?” She couldn’t speak and she couldn’t nod her head so she just stared back at his eyes.
“The world,” Tassos continued, ‘is a corrupt place. He sighed, “I was not always this way. Like anyone, I would think of killing from time to time. It is natural to want to kill someone, is’t it?” She could only look into his unblinking eyes. SFW, fortunately, an accomplished swimmer (bronze medal, freestyle, 2006 Olympics) and everyday miler at the pool, had great wind. She could hold her breath for several minutes at a time.
She hadn’t noticed that her right hand was in her handbag now feebly fumbling over the many objects in storage. He hadn’t paid it any mind either. He paused to weigh the import of his own words, as if she would continue her TV show on an afterlife cable network and might have a life – or death – lesson to convey to her audience from her experience dying today.
“Do you want to know where I got the inspiration to kill?” She couldn’t speak and the lack of oxygen again made her woozy. “Of course you do! From watching your CSI. Very inspiring!” He let up on the pressure again allowing her another single breath. “Just pick someone you don’t know. Random is best. And always dispose of the body with care.
“Now, where was I? Yes, the world is corrupt. Everyone gets away with what they can. And there are too many…too many people doing too much evil. The human race – we are just animals with nice things. Do you need a breath?” He released his grip again. Stale air rushed out and fresh air replaced it. Her throat hurt.
“Where was I? Yes. I am like your Dexter. You know the show? Good. I weed out the evil. Anyone with privilege and means, we must assume has come about that privilege and means by doing something wrong, or through wrongdoing somewhere in their bloodline. You see now why this is happening to you, don’t you? I am just an instrument. I hope you appreciate that.”
A man in a stylish hat photographs one of the many wells on Delos.
He stopped talking but continued looking into her eyes. Her eyes were watering and her head ached. She was thirsty and her hand rested on the hilt of the pearl-handled ankh knife in her handbag. During his monologue she had been very carefully unhitching knife from sheath and felt confident she had bared the blade. “What do you say, one more breath and then we say goodbye?” he said.
“Because Delos was sacred, as the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, no births or deaths occured here. The sick were not permitted entry, nor were pregnant women. That island,” Tassos pointed to Reinia, “the sick went there to die and that is where the women gave birth.” “Didn’t thousands of people live here? What happened to all of the people?” Susannah Fontaine-Williams asked. “Ah,” Tassos replied. “I assume you mean after the invasion. 20,000 people lived here – all were either killed or enslaved. But the interesting thing is, no human remains have been found on the island to this day.” The late afternoon sun burned and SFW clinged to the slowly lengthening shadows. She leaned against a shaded wall startling a lizard, sending it scampering over the rocks. “We call them ‘crocodelos,'” he said.
“Try to envision it as it was found more than a century ago,” he went on. “Rubble everwhere. Much was covered by vegetation, like over there on that hillside. Only a third of Delos has been excavated and recovered. It is very slow going. Most of these buildings were three stories high. It’s hard to picture, isn’t it?” She nodded yes, closed her eyes, and her TV mind played a documentary of toga’d people conducting their affairs and discussing philosophy on the crowded narrow streets as warships filled the harbor on the eve of Delos’s destruction.
Ruins and rubble.
The afternoon heat radiated from the stone, marble, and rubble. Susannah Fontaine-Williams felt just a touch faint and longed for a glass of cold water, chased by that sublime Cuban rum cocktail they served at the pool bar in Mykonos.
Tassos proved to be a thorough guide, walking her through the enormous agora, to the theatre, to the Temple of Apollo and finally to the museum and the little refreshment store. He showed her elaborate tile floors, translated the Greek inscriptions for her, and described the many cisterns and wells and other clever ways the Delosians gathered, saved and used the scarce fresh water. “Let me show you the hidden cistern,” he said. “Very few people get to see this.”
A ship’s horn sounded and she peered over a wall to see the 5:00 ferry pulling in to dock. They came to what may have been a courtyard surrounded by walls with a large cistern to one side in the shadows. “Look,” he waved her over. “The water’s such a bright green,” she said. “It’s the minerals,” he said. “Mostly limestone. Very acidic.” He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. She thought she would have to endure a kiss, but instead, she felt his hands gently on her neck and she tried to take a step back. He pressed his thumbs on her windpipe and she gasped for air. “You’re my first American celebrity,” he said, squeezing just a little bit tighter.
The 5:00 ferry unloads.
Want to know why this post’s title is immensely clever? Check out “Love in the Ruins” by Walker Percy.
Alethia stared out at the harbor while Macallan paid the 34 euro for the two tickets to Delos on the 5:00 p.m. ferry. He smiled at his wife even though she was looking the other way. The Macallans journeyed to Greece every other year to visit Aletheia’s grandparents and assorted relatives, distant and otherwise. After a week of dinners, dancing, and drinking they were relieved to have a couple of days to themselves on an island, and they especially loved Mykonos because of its proximity to Delos and its famed ruins.
“Two tickets to…,” he said, handing the tickets to Aletheia, stopping mid-thought.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing. I thought I saw someone I know just now.” He pointed at the blond woman and the tall man strolling away from them toward the dock.
“Well, I don’t know who she is,” Aletheia said. “But the man is Yiannis Kardas.”
Susannah Fontaine-Williams lay on the prow of a strange man’s yacht propped back on her elbows, wishing she had her wide-brimmed floppy hat to shade her from the hot sun. The fast boat etched a creamy V through the Aegean Sea at nearly 50 knots.
She had already bought her ferry tickets to the Island of Delos when a man who introduced himself as Tassos offered to speed her there personally on his yacht. It was the kind of opportunity that presented itself to her frequently when she traveled alone, and the sort of offer she rarely refused. Who would? It didn’t hurt that he was striking.
But she hesitated an instant, perhaps because he had one blue eye and one brown one. In that moment between yes and no, Tassos convinced her, explaining that he had made his fortune in shipping which allowed him to indulge his interest in archaeology. “I will be your personal guide on ancient Delos. I can show you things you could not possibly discover on the tour.”
Before boarding the 60-foot craft, she’d said, “I thought you said you had a yacht.” She had then taken a look around to see if there might be someone else with a larger boat waiting to whisk her away.
She reached into her bag hoping that maybe she had stuffed a hat in at some point but knowing she hadn’t. Her hand felt something smooth and cold and pulled out an ivory-handled dagger with a leather blade cover. She gasped, not with surprise, but at the knife’s intricate beauty. She turned it over, unsheathed it, rubbed her thumb along the blade. “Sharp,” she thought. It had the symbol of the ankh delicately carved on the fat part of the blade on both sides.
She tucked it back in the bag, remembering where so she could study it later at her leisure. She rooted around some more and pulled out an unfamiliar floppy sun hat which she placed upon her head. It fit perfectly and the wind did not blow it off.
The view from the deck of The Gambit as it approaches Delos.
A long time ago my people would correct errors in any number of ways. For large or infuriating mistakes, we liked to rip a page from the typewriter, crumple it, and toss it into a wastebasket. For smaller mistakes, we would turn the platen to easily get to the line in question, then apply whiteout, a product used to obscure letters and words, then turn the platen back to the original position and resume typing.
The editorial committee have determined (or is it has determined?) that the last chapter, The Hyphen Backstory, is a catastrophic error and in fact doesn't work for the overall storyline we've got going. I do happen to be in Greece and I was swept up in the moment and thought wouldn't SFW not only travel to Athens but in reality have a secret family? This is, of course, completely ludicrous. Nonetheless, I swore a solemn oath not to delete any more posts in the SFW adventure and so I must ask the both of you to disregard the last post. Consider it a dream or a fantasy, possibly even an hallucination. While there may or may not prove to be a Bob Williams there certainly can be no triplets.
I apologize for any inconvenience, but I really can see no way to resolve the story if the previous chaper is not disregarded. I'm open to suggestions, however. Anyway, thanks for your time. If anyone needs anything, please feel free to comment or drop me a line. Thanks.
The head of security at Neiman’s, Macallan, saw what he saw in the monitor and radio’d the doormen to stop the blond talk show host as she left the building. The man everyone called Single Malt very much liked Susannah Fontaine-Williams. They’d met a few times in the massive department store and she chatted with him as if they were old grade school buddies who’d somehow lost track of each other over the years. She remembered his wife’s name and how old his kids were. He made a point to DVR her show though he seldom had a chance to watch it, what with the crazy hours and the side jobs.
So when Darrel’s voice came over the radio, “She’s here boss,” he felt more than a tinge of sadness as he made his way to the 52nd Street entrance. He found Susannah Fontaine-Williams and Darell talking basketball. “If I was the NBA comissioner, Miss Fontaine-Williams…” “Please, Darrel, just call me Susannah already.”
Darrel continued, “…first thing we do is get rid of at least six, maybe eight teams. Talent’s too diluted.” She nodded appreciatively. “Then, I order the refs to start calling ‘traveling’ again. Anyone can make Top Ten if you can take four steps to the basket!”
“Mac!” SFW squealed. Macallan watched her face and body language and thought, wow, for someone caught shoplifting on camera she is one cool customer.
“Miss Fontaine-WIlliams,” he started. “I mean, Susannah, I hate to ask you this, but I need to have a look inside your bag.”
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