1
Fethiye, Turkey
Marco Polo Mahoney sprawled happily in a listing sun-lounger whose webbing straps would certainly not last much longer. Still, it was a comfortable spot to rest and sip every now and again from a bottle of arak, a bit acrid but it gave him a peaceful buzz. Pleasant for the time of the evening. Sixish? It had to be sixish, didn't it? A man certainly could not be found drinking earlier; people might think badly of him.
He reached out to stroke his dog's ears. What the hell, he was on holiday and he liked a drink or two. Maybe more. Sometimes. But drinking alone was not supposed to be good for you; he should stir himself, go out and find some company in the village. He got to his feet and stood surveying his own small part of the southern Turkish coast: a strip of white beach, a turquoise sea turning azure where it met the deeper blue of the sky now darkening with storm clouds, all set against a green, foresty background.
Marco was a well-known portrait artist. He was thirty-five, attractively craggy, currently bearded because he never shaved on holiday; brown hair brushed straight back and salty-stiff from swimming in the sea; dark blue eyes narrowed against the sun, eyes which seemed to see everything. At least that's what his sitters said, and it was true. He saw all their flaws, something they also said made them uncomfortable. But of course he was worth it.
Marco was in good shape though he never worked out. He'd played basketball in his youth; tennis too, but more often he was the one on the sidelines, charcoal in hand, sketching the action. The girls had been flattered, the boys called him a wuss. He'd laughed, but that passion was what made him who he was today, sought out by the rich, the famous; a man who knew how to play the social game but, when on his own, wore old shorts and went barefoot, like now. He was also a man who enjoyed solitude.
He was taking a short vacation, alone but for his dog, renting a cabin and sailing a small wooden boat known as a gulet out of the Turkish port of Fethiye. He was sun-brown and naked but for his bathing shorts-surfers' shorts, baggy-legged, hanging low on his lean hips-a scuffed pair of ancient flip-flops dangling from his toes.
He lifted his face to catch the last of the sun, welcoming its warm caress. He knew he should have remembered about the sunblock; had his girlfriend been with him it would not have been forgotten. The daughter of an English lord, the Honorable Martha Patron was consistent, persistent, and insistent. You knew exactly what you were getting with Martha; slightly severe beauty of the straight nose, high cheekbones, tightly pulled-back blond hair variety. It would have been worn in a ponytail on vacation, but in what Martha would surely have termed "real life" she would have worn it in a neat bun sitting low on her long neck. In bed though, it hung loose and soft over her shoulders.
On vacation too, Martha would have worn a designer bikini with a designer cover-up, which Marco knew from experience would probably be of some chiffonish material in a gentle green or blue, with rope-sole wedge heels, the real thing, made of canvas in Spain or somewhere like that. Martha was the kind of woman who always knew where they made things and where to get them, how to be first with them. With everything, actually.
Which was why Marco was still surprised she would go for a guy like him, a bit of a scruff really, his light streaky brown hair too long, always in shorts or jeans; he didn't own a real shirt other than the ones she bought him, and which were mostly still in their plastic wrappers. He did own a pair of shoes, though. They had belonged to his grandfather, handmade by Berluti in Paris many moons ago. Marco kept them polished to a rich gleam in respect for that grandfather who had raised him, and also in case he might one day have to wear them to a stylish event in some international city where shoes were the expected norm, though in any case he usually got away with sneakers.
In "real life," which this vacation most certainly was not, Marco was "an artist" as Martha kept on reminding him. "A portrait artist, in fact," she would add, pleased because Marco's clients included some of the top international CEOs, men whose likenesses Marco painted to keep the wolf from his door, enabling him, financially, to slip away from that reality into the glorious reality of this vacation, where he could be alone. Apart, that is, from his dog, Em, who went everywhere with him.
Long story short, he'd reply when strangers were curious about the grizzled mutt always at his heels, always at his side in cafés, always tucked under his arm when he traveled. Small and un-beauteous, Em lived in a part of Marco's heart that understood the loneliness from which he had rescued her.
When he'd found her, a few years ago, he'd been alone on a terrace café in Marseilles. The place did not even have a view and he'd stopped there solely for the purpose of a quick caffeine fix, served in one of those short, dark green cups with the gold rim all French cafés seem to use; plus, of course, a glass of wine made from vines grown up on a hill near St. Emilion and an almond croissant made with enough butter to die from. That's when he saw the animal-catcher van with its wire cage drive slowly by. The dog sat, small, grayish/brownish, youngish, a street survivor. Until now. The van stopped. A man got out on the passenger side, strode across, reached for the dog. Marco got there first.
"Oh no you don't," he said, or words to that effect, quickly scooping the mutt from under the man's hands. "This dog is mine." And so of course, from then on it was.
He named the dog Em, for the St. Emilion he'd been drinking when he saw her. It seemed to fit and she responded to the name from first go. Now, of course, that's who she was. Em. Marco's dog. She ate anything, which was useful since he took her everywhere. He would not visit a country that would not accept his dog, not fly an airline where she would be made to fly in the hold, would not stay at a hotel that did not welcome her as well as him. He was, Martha told him, more in love with that bloody dog than with her. Marco did not admit it but it could be true. And that was why the dog was with him now, on this beautiful southern Turkish coast, sharing the small, whitewashed plain slab of a one-room house with the bright blue wooden doors and shutters he'd painted himself, and the even smaller boat, the old wooden gulet, as well as the orange inflatable from which he fished every day.
If he was lucky and caught something bigger than six inches, big enough not to throw back in, that evening Marco would grill it over hot coals on an improvised barbecue made with stones and a piece of wire mesh. He'd share it with the dog, sitting outside under the stars, moving on from the arak to that odd Turkish wine with the slight fizz that caught in his throat but which he enjoyed. Other evenings, they'd walk to the village café/bar where they'd sit under the spreading shade of the ancient olive tree and devour roast goat and couscous flavored with lemon, or a sandwich on thick crusty bread with sweet tomatoes picked that very moment from the garden, with sliced onion and crumbly feta cheese.
The proprietor, Costas, a lean, haunted-looking man in his forties with a springy mustache, very white teeth, and deep blue eyes, knew them by now, and there was always something special for Em: a bone that might have come from a dinosaur it was so big and which made Marco pause to think twice about what he might be eating; or a bowl of fishy stew complete with heads and tails, of which Em seemed particularly fond.
Anyhow, of an evening and sometimes deep into the warm night, Costas's café/bar became their place, where they were known and there was always company and conversation, and where there was always somebody who spoke enough English to make sense of it all. It was a good, simple life, quite separate from Marco's life in Paris, and the cities where he painted rich men's portraits and their wives in pearls and diamonds and small, superior smiles. Still, he made a good living at that, and despite the drawbacks he enjoyed it. And it paid for all this. Thiskind of life, this village, this coast. This, he loved.
Sprawled in his sagging lounger, he swapped back to the arak, took another swig, pulling a face. He told himself he really should go a bit more upmarket, spring for the extra couple of bucks and drink something that did not make his eyes water. He turned to watch as a yacht chugged slowly out of the harbor, its black hull cutting smoothly through the waves. The sky had darkened, the air was tense with the threat of thunder, and lightning flickered quick as a blink. A storm was approaching and pretty fast too, as Marco knew from experience they did in this area. The storms could be severe and in his opinion the boat would have been better off waiting it out in the harbor, or at least moored close to shore.
The boat was a hundred yards away by now, and picking up speed. Marco got to his feet, hitched up his baggy shorts, and picked up his binoculars. It was a modern yacht. This one, though, was bigger, smarter, faster.
As he watched, a woman emerged from the cabin and ran along the deck. Her long red hair caught in the wind that was coming with the storm, clouding around her in a coppery halo where the sun's final gleam lit it momentarily. She was wearing a blue dress that, as she balanced at the very stern, whipped back from her slender body. She put a hand up to her head, her neck drooped in a gesture of what seemed to Marco to be pain. Shocked, he caught a glimpse of a gaping, bloody wound, her white skull. And that's when he saw her fall.
Marco stared at the place where she had gone under, waiting for her to come back up. The yacht chugged on. There was no sign of her in its wake. No one had come running to help, no one on the yacht seemed to know she had gone. It had been maybe thirty seconds too long and Marco knew she was in trouble. He ran for the old orange inflatable, dropped it into the waves. The outboard started at first go. In a few minutes he was where he'd seen her go in. He circled, staring deep into the sea, but the water was less clear here, disturbed now by his boat. He stilled the engine and jumped over the side.
It was like falling off a cliff. He went so deep his lungs were bursting when he finally popped back up next to the dinghy. The sea was kicking up, the sky dark, the storm was getting closer. And then he saw her hair, long, copper hair floating upward toward him. He was there in a second.
But he could not find her. He dived, and dived again, but the storm had moved in and turbulence shifted the waves, shifted him. He had lost her.
And now the past came back at him, bringing memories he never wanted to relive.
Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Adler
