The audience went wild, but by far the most fascinated were the women. They hooted and hollered louder than the men. Sergey studied the crowd, a mixed bag of partiers sharing one significant trait: Virtually all had spent serious money trying to look fashionably understated.
When the song ended, Wacki gestured toward the back. Sergey shook his head no, and pushed toward the front door. Outside, he turned right and walked past the public toilets on the left toward a sign marked, BOATS TO DELOS HERE. He stared across the harbor at his hotel on the other side.
Wacki ran to catch up with him. “I wanted you to see the upstairs, they did a great job.”
“No need to. I can tell their crowd has a lot of money to spend. That’s all I needed to see. So, are we done?”
“Not yet, I’ve been saving the big money-making operations for last. One’s in town, two others are on a beach about fifteen minutes away by taxi. We’ll take the backstreets, it’s faster.”
They walked behind the town hall and passed by a small square shared by two bars of the same name. Wacki called it the island’s “meat market” for young straights. After the square, they wove through a maze of four- and five-foot-wide, virtually deserted lanes. There was barely a sound. It was as if they’d gone back in time.
Or to a different island.
They popped back into the crowds on the same street as they’d taken into Little Venice, but this time headed in the opposite direction. As they passed a schoolyard on the left, the street opened into a large square.
“That’s it on the left.”
Wacki pointed at a psychedelic pink marquee looming above a long red carpet, cordoned in half lengthwise by silver-color metal stanchions and a red velvet rope. The carpet ran from the square up to a large grey metal door.
On a Cycladic island long known for its simple, tasteful architecture, Sergey thought the entrance a comic self-parody of what must lay inside. But two massive bouncers by the door, and enticingly clad women collecting euros from a long line of twenty-somethings queued up to get in, made it clear that this was anything but funny. It was a serious, highly profitable business capitalizing on arousing the fantasies that drew so many to Mykonos.
Thirty yards or so beyond the entrance, the square faded off into an outdoor basketball court and playground. Men milled around in the shadows at the far end.
Sergey nodded in their direction. “Is that this side of town’s equivalent of Paraportiani?”
Wacki laughed. “The police station used to be in this square. Today it’s where you come if you want to do business with the Albanian mob. It’s their hangout.”
Sergey pointed at a group of provocatively dressed young women and men outside the entrance to the club hustling passersby to come inside. “What’s with them?”
“All the big clubs have hot looking tourist kids running around passing out handbills and chatting up whoever they can to fill up the places. It’s all about body count, and the kids shill for the clubs by sticking ads on cars parked at the beaches during the day and pounding out their messages in town at night until the last bus leaves for the out-of-town clubs.”
“What do they get paid?”
“Five euros or so an hour, plus free admission and a drink.”
As soon as the bouncers saw Wacki coming toward them they nodded and one opened the door. Inside the place was ablaze with noise and lights and music. The downstairs was one big dance floor and bar, pumped along by very hot-looking women perched strategically above the crowd in places where they could perform their craft, colloquially known as pole dancing.
Overlooking it all was a balcony circling most of the dance floor and filled with more people, some sitting at tables.
“Up there is for VIPs. It’s a more refined crowd.”
From what Sergey could see of the crowd, by “refined” he assumed Wacki was referring to their choice of stimulants.
“Let’s go. I’ve seen enough.”
Outside Wacki pointed at a taxi waiting in front of the club. “Hop in. Only two more places to see, they’re at the same beach.”
It took the taxi five minutes to crawl the two hundred yards up from the club to the bus station. Getting through the crowds was like swimming head-on through a frenzied rush of hot-to-spawn salmon.
At the bus station Wacki pointed to a long line of young people boarding two municipal buses. “We’re all headed to the same place. They’ll have a lot of catching up to do when they get there. By now the clubs are packed with wild ones from the beach tavernas who’ve been going at the same crazy pace since late afternoon.”
The drive took longer than Wacki said it would. Mainly because the taxi driver kept slowing down to avoid motorbikes flying up and down the road to the beach.
The driver said, “I think they call this ‘the road to Paradise’ not because of the beach, but because that’s where crazy tourists who drive like that are likely to end up. If they can, locals avoid this road like the plague between dark and a few hours after sunrise.”
“If locals are afraid to drive on their own roads, why don’t the cops do something about it?” asked Sergey.
The driver laughed. “The cops don’t care. The only ones who care are the club owners. And they don’t want anyone messing with the image of Mykonos as a place where you can do anything you want and be protected by the gods of Delos from harm. Which includes arrest.
“You should see the medical clinic the morning after a busy night. Looks like a combat zone, but you’ll never hear a word about any of that. All’s always perfect on this island.”
And looking to be more so every moment, thought Sergey.
At the beach the taxi turned left, climbed up onto a rise, and stopped by a large stone building overlooking the sea.
“Here we are.”
Again a long line at the door, money changing hands, and Wacki waved in through a VIP entrance, this one on the left. This club was much bigger than the first, but just as packed and looked like it could handle five thousand customers. They entered past a bar onto the dance floor. In front of them was the VIP section, and off to the right a pool. The place packed in thousands of celebrants of every imaginable shape, size, color, sex, and dress, all pumping along in rhythm to the music and lights, accompanied by stimulants of their choice, and all aiming to make it through to watching the sunrise over the sea.
The last club on Wacki’s tour sat on the beach and was smaller than the one above it. A massive glass wall separated the place from the sand. Here, too, the bar was the first thing you saw, next came a pool with the dance floor beyond it, and a VIP section farther along terracing up a hillside. The music and light show seemed a bit more sophisticated, and the place looked to attract a slightly older, somewhat more upscale crowd than the others, but to Sergey its bottom line was the same: Do whatever it takes to bring in the bodies and make the money.
It was a philosophy he knew well.
He’d run these kinds of clubs before. Smaller, yes, but the crowds were the same and so were the problems.
He doubted any of them had the proper licenses, but they obviously had the juice to stay in business, and that was all that mattered.
In the taxi on the way back to town Wacki said, “Now that you’ve seen our magical island at night, what’s next?”
“I want to meet your mayor.”
Chapter Fourteen
The sun came up the same as it always did, though for late night partiers with shuttered windows it wasn’t that big a deal. But Andreas liked to sleep with his windows open when on the island. He loved the smells of wild rosemary and thyme scented by sea breezes. There was nothing like that in air conditioned Athens where he slept behind rolled down steel shutters. None of that here. At least not yet.