erotic thriller

part one

The Athenians at the taxi stand are watching her. A swarm of them, jostling, prodding her with sharp black eyes. They tug at their singlets, flapping their elbows to cool the lather, stubble-smeared chins like wet dirt. It is 3:40 am, a Wednesday, mid-June. Slow night in the high season. The lack of work is making them grizzle. The men spit, sniff the air, drain paper coffee cups, crunch them flat for sport and then frisbee them into the empty square. Only once the final disc has been tossed, the winner decided, do they begin to consider her. But when they do it is a task undertaken in earnest. A grave ritual. Their eyes move over her like a mother’s hands scouring a child for tics.

She’s alright, nothing special. Pale hair, hard-cropped. Fine features, loose at the edges, the gentle unfocussing of middle age. She’s been out all night, that’s obvious. Bit wild, and yet her stillness belies this. The precision of her hands as she takes a cigarette from her purse and lights it. She’s not drunk. Maybe a little? She holds it well. Green silk shorts cut high on the thigh. Flat leather sandals unraveling at the seams. Gold plait at the throat. Her great-grandmother’s necklace. They don’t know this.

Despite the hour, the fag, the man who left her here, almost pointedly, legs on display, the Athenians can see from the tilt of her chin she’s a bit spoiled. Haughty, superior. Yet also, the wildness. Chaos swarms around her like blackflies. The whisper of something unstable. The smallest and ugliest of the cabbies, a virgin at thirty, draws in a sharp breath. Cursed, he thinks.

She is one of those people who often looks familiar to strangers. One says he’s seen her in something. Swedish? No, German. A singer? A teacher. No, a tourist. Divorced. On a tear. How old, you reckon? Old enough to be grateful. Laughter like a thunderclap. There are five of them and one of her. 

Now a Sixth is joining, swinging his long body out of the cab. The Sixth slams the door and rakes down a head of dry curls with long fingers. He is clean-shaven, leaner and longer, more promising than the rest. His friends greet him vaguely, in the manner of under-employed young men in the south. And the Sixth, well. The Sixth changes everything. Her mouth dries and then wets itself, pooling. A small animal hooks a claw in her navel and pulls down like a zipper. She winces at the brutality of what she wants.

The Athenians absorb the Sixth, backslaps and handshakes, regrouping then settling. She watches them surreptitiously through a scrim of flight-hardened mascara until twelve eyes swing back to her, more hungrily now, where she sits perched on her cheap plastic chair. She is directly across from them, a distance of just twenty-odd feet, within spitting range. She squeezes her pale legs together, studies the constellation of freckles on her upper right thigh, the trickle of scabs on her wrist, last remnants of a tickle fight with her younger son. She presses her elbows tight to her sides and finds herself wondering if they would like to spit on her? She has only just lately begun to enjoy it and even then only on certain parts of her body, under very specific circumstances, with her lover. The cabbies are hissing now, goading. Bile rises in her throat. She glances up at the sky and shakes her hair back, effecting an air of contemptuous boredom. On her small hands are three rings. One by one she examines them. A blue vintage tourmaline for her marriage, a diamond band for the broken engagement, plus the tiger-striped topaz her father gave her for her thirteenth birthday. She relights her cigarette and exhales, then turns her head toward the all-night cafe’s glare. She wants to go in but knows better than to risk it. A wave of impatience wells in her chest, rises and crashes, fizzling into irritation. It’s so hot.

Inside the cafe, P is standing with his back to her, swaying. His face is tipped up, bathed in fluorescent light. He is mesmerized by a wall of refrigerated bottles and cans. As ever, he is trying and failing to decide. 

He shifts softly on his toes, trainer to trainer. His little feet, she tries to ignore them. Pale-veined hands dangling listlessly at his sides. His shirt (slate blue silk, buttoned only two-thirds of the way up) conceals well-muscled shoulders. He is thin now, so much leaner than when she met him, she feels badly, he likes it. His skin, creamy and poreless, almost hairless, cool as marble to the touch even when he is hot and damp. She loves watching him like this, at a distance. It is new. They have barely been out in public. The subtle undulation of his buttocks beneath frayed denim cut-offs, trading off the burden of his weight. Inside his body is a pendulum. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. 

She smiles as the aggravation drains from her body replaced by the familiar cool sweetness. It is ludicrous, the pleasure he brings her. Even his haplessness delights her, the wide-eyed air of apprehension he carries everywhere except in bed, where self-consciousness slips off him and he becomes something else. He looks young from a distance but close up he is not quite so young. Still pretty though. Eight years her junior, which is not so remarkable. In truth she is not so much pleased by him as pleased by her ability to be pleased by him.

The Athenian cabbies pull her back to the square. The tallest one, the Sixth, has accepted his role as the chancer. He bunches his lips tight and sucks in, air squeaking like rubber on concrete. She lifts her gaze slowly, which emboldens him. He moves forward. One step, two steps, then three. A snake in his stride. So promising. She raises her eyebrows, and in tandem he lifts his tee shirt above the belt of his jeans, revealing a flat hard belly, black forested navel like an arrow, then claps a large palm to his ribcage. Her eyes fix on his belt buckle with interest. It is silver. Heavy and gleaming. Big enough to whip a large dog.

She looks down, draws on her cigarette. Shifts, pulling her bare legs apart for a moment, then sits up straight, presses her knees together and crosses her legs at the ankle like a duchess. For some reason, the Sixth stumbles, loses his nerve, then raises his hands as if to say, Mercy!  He falls back to his friends who are laughing, making wisecracks in Greek. She leans over and begins to look for something in her handbag, and as she rummages, she feels her blouse fall open. She knows she should right herself to be safe, smooth down her shirt, tuck her hair behind her ears. Get up and go into the glare, to her lover, forcing his decision. She means to do this, she does, but instead something inside her buckles and gives way. She stays bent at the waist and allows the Athenians to take a long look at the top of her breasts, then snaps up and applies pink gloss to her mouth, radiating contempt. Inside her pants a hot febrile dampness. She turns her head and this time her blue eyes search openly for the Sixth. When she finds him he is furtive. Head dipped. She holds his gaze flat, subduing it with force.

All she wants is to see his belt buckle again. There is something about it. So shiny. But it’s hidden by the cheap cotton of his shirt. He pulls back his shoulders and shakes out her curls, a gesture of vanity. Her lips suppress a giggle. A shiver of understanding passes between them. The distant blare of a car horn. She smiles at him pointedly then closes her eyes, throws back her head and leans forward exposing her throat. This is how the wordless bargain is struck.

The men strain toward her, laughing and slathering like dogs tethered to a post. She feels like the butcher’s wife, apron full of scraps. One of them releases a low pointed whistle. Finally, the Sixth stands up again, modest and boyish. Now that it’s decided there is none of earlier bravado. He side-steps away from the group, looks at her, then tips his head twice toward the empty square. Without waiting for an answer he saunters round the corner and disappears into the blackness. 

She looks toward her lover and finds him in the cafe, still swaying before the wall of beverages. She sighs, stubs out her cigarette, rubs her jaw with both hands, releasing the ache. A helium gust fills her body then. It’s wonderful, effervescent, an unexpected surge of honey in her veins. She looks toward the square. Then to the hollow of the alley where she knows the Sixth is waiting for her, stroking himself. She hesitates. The Athenians watch breathless. She rises without effort. She turns. Then she goes.