Greece, while a virtual banquet of indulgences, had never been a place of clarity and motivation for Lily. Come to think of it, no place had. Not even New York, with its busy inhabitants who reveled in variety—enjoying life like they would an assortment of frutti di mare on a big silver plate.
Furthermore, what Lily hadn’t counted on was how well Kástro in particular kept its confidences. The rocky cape trapped them like ghosts in a long-abandoned cemetery, and as Lily walked the winding trails and footbridges, nearly every blooming bush and medieval ruin murmured a story of some time or another when Lily had ended up flat on her back with her dress hiked above her hips.
“What place could be more pleasing to the senses?” Etor beamed, uncorking a bottle of Malvasia wine as he beheld his adopted home.
“Please,” Lily yielded, and Etor poured a liberal serving into her pewter goblet. She swished it around, watching the wine twirl.
“You don’t have time to sit on Monemvasia for weeks like a Danish tourista,” Etor insisted. “By age twenty-five you won’t be marketable anymore.”
Lily looked at her watch and nodded. “I don’t know that I was meant for marriage,” she said aloud, but not specifically to Etor. Lily had never been in love. And the only man who’d ever really cared for her was her father—a man whose tender bearing at home and zeal for his family felt at times like Lily’s only true tether to her heart. Of course, his dealings with the outside world were less benevolent, she’d learned.
“Miss Lilia!” Stavros, the concierge called. “A note for you.”
Stavros waved the sealed envelope in his hand as he teetered over the melon-shaped rocks. He nearly tumbled into the water twice, as if he didn’t make the journey from the Hotel Malvasia’s lobby to the seaside at least a dozen times a day.
“It just appeared on my desk,” he marveled. “I didn’t see who could’ve left it.”
It was a plain, white envelope—the size of an invitation—and Miss Lilia Tassos was scribbled on the back, looking more like Miso Lihila Tssas to the untrained eye.
“Thank you, Stavros.” She tucked the envelope into her beach bag, and looked back at the jellyfish, which were now floating out to sea.
“Open it,” Etor demanded. “It could be from an admirer.”
Lily smiled at the Cretan gigolo, retrieving the envelope and then tearing it at the seam. She pulled out a short note scribbled in the same slapdash handwriting. Tucked inside its crease was a simple, metal card with a plus sign embossed on one side and a six-pointed star on the other. It was the size of a calling card and engraved with eight tiny Cyrillic letters.
“Well?” Etor pressed. Lily patted his hand.
“No admirer, I’m afraid. Just a man.”
Tony Geiger sat on a partial fortress wall that looked down over the sea and a rocky perch that Lily Tassos had fled around dinner time—a tawdry Greek Romeo on her tail.
Tony had hiked up from the waterfront an hour early to sit amongst the ruins at the top of the peninsula and smoke Chesterfields in the cool evening air. The night required a light jacket, but Tony had under-dressed on purpose. It kept him sharp when he’d had a lousy night’s sleep—taking the red-eye from Berlin to Athens and then driving another five hours to Monemvasia.
“Fuck,” he said, flicking his last good cigarette into a bush of wildflowers. He watched the butt glow like a lightening bug, then fade under the frizzy bloom of the white buds. He wished he could buy a decent pack of smokes in Greece.
“Well, it’s about time,” he murmured as he watched Lily scramble up a corkscrew rock path from behind a collapsed church wall. She was twenty minutes late and dressed in what looked like a white linen bathrobe that flew behind her like a spinnaker. Though he knew and understood fashion and finery, he’d never learned to appreciate it.
“Tony,” she called.
Lily had the kind of looks Tony could appreciate, complete with a big nose and a full set of lips that saved her from cuteness. As far as he was concerned, she wrecked everything she had going for her with flashy clothes and too much perfume. Despite her Boston upbringing, she looked and behaved like a new-money Greek.
“You might as well go ahead and blow my vacation,” Lily grumbled, stumbling over the broken castle steps.
Geiger rubbed the thick stubble on his cheeks and shook his head.
“Come on, Lily. What’s a girl like you got to take a vacation from—shopping?” He smiled and folded his arms. “Besides, something vaguely resembling a job might actually be good for you. Get you away from the Lotharios that hang around in places like this.”
Lily put her palms to her temples then shook her hands as if she were chasing away an odor. She caught herself smiling at him and changed her look to a smirk. “It’s amazing what a girl will do for a guy who keeps threatening to put her daddy in jail.”
Geiger pushed away from the fortress wall and pointed a finger in her face. The force of the gesture caused Lily to stumble backwards and trip on her white linen train. He grabbed hold of her arm before she could fall and drew her close. “Your father’s an arms dealer, lady!”
He let go of her and glanced around them. Geiger then leaned back onto the stone wall, spitting over his shoulder and watching his foaming saliva disappear over the cliff-side into the black air.
“You should thank me for letting you keep living this life of yours. You understand treason? How about seizure?” Geiger hoped the Greek baron would eat a bullet one day and figured that sooner or later, he would. “What’s it gonna be, Lily?” he said.
Lily tucked her hair behind her ear. She hated it when Geiger popped up out of the blue like this. The funny little errands he’d sent her on—going to the Russian Tea Room at exactly 5:15 pm wearing a red skirt or leaving her purse at the Seven Sisters tube stop in London—weren’t much more than an inconvenience, but his brown eyes told a much longer story than his thirty years, and the way he sucked in his cheeks whenever she started talking made her feel like the kind of woman she feared she was—bored and rich, with the wrong kind of money. Lily had seen enough to know that wasn’t the way she wanted to spend her life, but she wasn’t sure what options there were for a girl like her.
She looked at Geiger—into his eyes, which she often avoided—and nodded her head. “What have you got for me this time?”
Tony Geiger reached down and moved a fallen stone about the size of a gold brick. He produced another envelope with Lily’s name on it; this one long and thick with folded papers. Lily grabbed the envelope and opened the flap, pulling out an airline ticket, itinerary, visa, and various receipts in her name. “This is going to Moscow.”
“You’re going to Moscow,” Geiger corrected.
“Why would I go to Moscow?”
Geiger scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. “All the good parties are happening in Moscow these days—the rich Pinkos love it.”
“I’m not a Pinko.”
Geiger smiled, for once looking sweet, lighthearted and his age. “Lily, you’re not an anything.”
Something inside her wanted to smile back at him despite the insult, but instead she rubbed her lips together as if she were redistributing her lipstick. “Moscow, huh?”
“A little sightseeing—Lenin’s Mausoleum and all that. You know you can view his actual body in Red Square. The Bolshevik Fuehrer.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“No, I’ve seen it. He doesn’t look that different than he does in photos.” Geiger lit another smoke and inhaled deeply. “You still got that little present I sent you?”
Lily tucked her index finger into the bust of her dress and slid the odd metal card he’d conveyed through the hotel concierge over her collarbone. The gesture was meant as a joke—a play on something you might see in a French movie—but Tony Geiger didn’t even smile.