Stuffed peppers, red mullet; bitter coffee and incredibly sticky sweets. The gods were smiling on us that night; not a single noisy German youth in earshot. The restaurant had champagne, too. We ate our fill, and wandered back along the shore path and across the beaches, clutching a last bottle of champagne and talking and belching.
Christine yawned, stood on the beach and looked up at the clear sky. I stopped too. She took a slow drink from the bottle, then handed it to me. 'What's that?' she said, pointing.
'What's what?' I looked.
'That; there; beside those stars. Across from the moon and down a bit. Moving. Is that a plane? A UFO? What is it?'
I saw what she meant eventually, after she'd got me to kneel down and she'd crouched behind me, arm over my shoulder, so I could follow the line of her arm. 'Oh, that,' I said. 'It'll be a satellite.'
'Really? I didn't know you could see them. Are you kidding me on?'
'No; it's a satellite.'
'Hmm.' Christine shook her head. 'Never knew that...' She took the bottle back, yawned and drank. 'So fucking tired, Weird.'
'Come on,' I said, holding out my hand. 'We'll get you back to your bed.'
She shook her head, sat down heavily on the sand. She looked towards the quietly breaking waves. 'Do you know what we've been doing the past two weeks, Weird?' she said. I squatted beside her.
'Just relaxing?' I suggested.
Christine took a deep breath. 'Trying to get Davey off smack, finally, for good... at last... one last...' She looked round at me. 'Did you know he'd been taking it?'
'There's a lot of things I don't know,' I said; one of the stock, off-the-peg answers it helps to carry around with you if you're as naturally conversationally clumsy and awkward as me. In fact, I'd guessed Davey was on something, but I hadn't been sure. Like I still wasn't sure whether Christine knew about what had happened between Davey and Inez. Inez and Davey had both been vague on that point.
So it all came out then, sitting on that dark beach, on golden sand and before a blue sea, both of which had lost their colours till the dawn; all the hurt and tension and the fear poured out of Christine, and I sat there and just listened.
How he'd started, how he'd controlled it at first; the talk of only weak people really needing it but he was living on a high all the time anyway; H just intensified it, and how he got his greatest kicks out of playing on stage; nothing could match that, and how for the past few months, including during the tour, she'd been trying to get him to stop, and thought he had, then found he hadn't, and discovered things about herself and about him she hadn't known; that she felt responsible for him, that he could, nevertheless, infuriate her to the point of hate and rage; that he could use the drug to hurt her; taking it to spite her when she annoyed him; and encountering the user's duplicity and illogic; I've given it up; I've virtually given it up; I'll give it up tomorrow; hey look I went a day without any so I deserve some as a reward...
She'd talked and shouted and screamed, she'd hit him, threatened to break his fingers, shop him to the police, she'd searched all his clothes and possessions and thrown the stuff out when she found any; finally, she just hadn't let him out of her sight for the last couple of weeks of the tour (I had noticed they'd seemed very close in one way and very distant with each other in another way, towards the close of the tour), and the same for the first two weeks here, on Naxos.
And so she was tired, not just because Davey was one of those people who didn't seem to need very much sleep, and she didn't dare go to sleep before him, but because of the tension, the concentration... And so, also, she'd needed to tell it all to somebody.
We sat there and drank most of the champagne, and watched another few satellites drift slowly overhead; and there were a couple of shooting stars too, thin bright silent lines that disappeared before you had a chance to look at them.
'Anyway... ' Christine said, 'I think he's over it.'
She looked at the brushing line of white where the waves hit the beach. 'I hope he's over it.'
I couldn't think of anything to say. I put my arm around her, patted her shoulder. 'Weird,' she said, closing one eye and looking at me from very close range, 'I'm going for a swim.'
'Oh?' I said, as she peeled off her jeans and jumper.
'Coming in?' she asked. She took off a T-shirt under the jumper, snagging it round her head for a moment and giving me a chance to ogle her breasts in the moonlight and think, Oh God, I'd love to screw you, Christine. 'Oh, fuck,' she grunted, finally hauling the T -shirt off. She stood in her bikini bottom, looking down at me. 'Well?'
'I don't have any Ys on,' I told her .
'Weird, I've already... oh, suit yourself.' She padded down the sand to the water. 'It's still quite warm,' she said. 'Come on in.'
I shook my head. She waded in a little further until the small waves were breaking around her knees, then stopped, turned round to me and stepped out of the bikini bottom. She threw it up the beach to me. 'Does that make you feel any better?' she said, then turned and ran and dived forward.
I stood up, watching the splashes of her easy-looking crawl draw slowly away. I stripped too, and laid both lots of clothes neatly on the beach.
My crawl is spectacular but inefficient; Christine swam rings round me. I had my feet tickled and my bum pinched, water splashed at me, and I lost the race back to shore.
We lay there, side by side on the sand and breathing hard. I lay looking up at the stars and the chip of moon, and shivered a little. I wanted to turn over and kiss Christine, but I knew I wouldn't. These things don't happen that way with me. Besides, I tried to tell myself; it would be too tidy, and too much like a deliberate revenge, to form the fourth side of this eternal square on another beach, before another line of surf, under the high-tech lights of passing spy satellites...
Forget about it.
I wondered where Davey and Inez were: in bed, in Athens, or an island between here and there? Or had they really given up their little affair, and were they chastely apart, separate rooms while the plane was repaired ?
Jesus, I thought, for all I know they're both at the bottom of the Aegean. But that didn't bear thinking about.
Christine gave a big, sort of whistling sigh at my side. I tipped my head a little, to see her staring up at the stars again. I let my gaze wander down her body, over nipples and belly and mons and thighs and knees, and I thought what a damn shame it was that it seemed so important that I be the woman's friend, and be thought trustworthy and kind and somebody she could talk to, when what I really wanted to do was throw myself on top of her and cover her in kisses and be covered in hers and pull her legs apart and have her pull me inside her and... oh, dear God; that didn't bear thinking about either.
I looked back up into the sky again. The stars in the north were gone; cloud must be moving in.
'You pointing out any particular star, Weird?' Christine asked lazily.
'What?' I said, mystified. My arms were both down at my sides; what was she talking about?
Christine showed me. Her hand was wet, warm/cold. She propped herself up on her other elbow and said, 'Well ... what are we going to do with you, Weird?'
'Do you' — I cleared my throat — 'want a suggestion?'
She brought her head down to mine, but as I reached up with my hands and opened my mouth, she kissed me briefly on the nose and pulled away again. I opened my eyes to see her holding the champagne bottle. She sloshed what was left of it around in the bottom of the bottle, stroking me gently with her other hand. 'You ever had a champagne head-job, Weird?'
'A champagne hedgehog?' I said, mishearing.
'Head job... I mean, blow job,' she said, laughing. I shook my head. She put the bottle to her lips and threw her head back. Her cheeks bulged as she put the empty bottle down, held up one finger and said, 'Mmm mm m-mmm mm.' Which I think was meant to be, 'Don't go away now.' Then she lowered her head.