starting up his scooter. So it happens that the threesome in the car swerve together, at the speed of agitation, around the winding cliffs of Mykonos, the girls both too drunk and bothered to even realize they are not heading back in the direction of Plati Yialos, but onward.
M ARY SITS UP front, impervious as a queen. In the backseat, like a naughty child who has eaten (drunk) too much, Nix reclines, head resting in the crook of her arm. The treacherous curves, around tightly wound cliff roads, feel like bed spins. Zorg is driving too fast. In the scenario they no doubt all envisioned, there would have been hours at the beach still for the three bottles of consumed wine to wear off. Instead, Zorg is pink in the face from climbing all the way down to the beach to retrieve their things, just to turn around and climb back up to the car at the insistence of Nix, who has claimed a “killer headache.” Only now, as she grows dizzy from the car’s lurching, has it occurred to Nix that it might not be the best idea to drive some of Greece’s most hairpin turns with a drunken, pissed-off man at the wheel.
Well, okay, to be honest, she and Mary drank most of the wine. They are good for that, even at home. Not just the Ass sisters but the Lush sisters, too. Probably Zorg, who weighs almost as much as she and Mary combined, is not even
that
drunk. No doubt it will occur to him any moment that he should slow down—he is an airline pilot, after all. Nix closes her eyes, tries to sleep.
But no. Instead of settling into the rhythm of the road, Zorg seems to be only accelerating. When Nix sits up, she sees that his jaw is set, the muscles in his right thigh twitching, his broad hands clutching the wheel. The car rims the curves of the road like a darting tongue, teasing. Somewhere below, the restaurants, discos, hotels of Mykonos wait nestled at sea level, the rest of the island straining upward; they are caught in an elevated web of cliffs.
A lump rises in Nix’s esophagus, signaling danger. Beneath her legs, the car’s seat trembles, unsteady; she pitches to the other side of the car at each turn, clings tight to the door handle to keep herself still, as if clutching the rails of a roller coaster. Her hands are slick with sweat. She thinks of having to powder them before gripping the parallel bars, and even though she is not on a gymnastics team at Skidmore—has not done gymnastics since leaving Kettering more than two years ago—she is gripped by a terror that she will never touch a parallel bar again, a fear that this seat is the last thing she will ever hold before they plunge off a cliff to certain death below. She cannot imagine . . . oh, but yes, she finds she
can
imagine it: the weightlessness before her body begins to fly upward against the car’s roof, the pitching in her stomach, so that she might vomit before she hits earth. It is in our DNA to be able to feel such scenarios in our bodies, like archetypes of fear: possible ways the human body can meet its end. With scraps of yellow hair, white and red flesh, torn to bits by the very teeth of the jagged cliffs she’d mused on earlier in her foolish, drunken rhapsody.
From what she can tell, Mary is utterly immune to Zorg’s efforts to kill them. Serenely, Mary gazes out the window, impassive as though she wouldn’t jump if someone tossed a snake in her lap. The tires hit a bump, perhaps no more than a stone in the road, but Nix’s head bounces against the car’s ceiling. Zorg doesn’t slow the car. Dry dirt and rocks crunch and scatter beneath the wheels. Nix tastes blood, realizes she must have been biting her lip when her head hit the roof. How long before Zorg misjudges, one tire, one flick of the wrist, one crumbling piece of earth too far? Or maybe it is what he sincerely
intends,
only wants to make them suffer first for being American whores, for embarrassing him in front of his friend. Nix kicks the back of Mary’s seat. Hard, in hopes of eliciting a
M ARY SITS UP front, impervious as a queen. In the backseat, like a naughty child who has eaten (drunk) too much, Nix reclines, head resting in the crook of her arm. The treacherous curves, around tightly wound cliff roads, feel like bed spins. Zorg is driving too fast. In the scenario they no doubt all envisioned, there would have been hours at the beach still for the three bottles of consumed wine to wear off. Instead, Zorg is pink in the face from climbing all the way down to the beach to retrieve their things, just to turn around and climb back up to the car at the insistence of Nix, who has claimed a “killer headache.” Only now, as she grows dizzy from the car’s lurching, has it occurred to Nix that it might not be the best idea to drive some of Greece’s most hairpin turns with a drunken, pissed-off man at the wheel.
Well, okay, to be honest, she and Mary drank most of the wine. They are good for that, even at home. Not just the Ass sisters but the Lush sisters, too. Probably Zorg, who weighs almost as much as she and Mary combined, is not even
that
drunk. No doubt it will occur to him any moment that he should slow down—he is an airline pilot, after all. Nix closes her eyes, tries to sleep.
But no. Instead of settling into the rhythm of the road, Zorg seems to be only accelerating. When Nix sits up, she sees that his jaw is set, the muscles in his right thigh twitching, his broad hands clutching the wheel. The car rims the curves of the road like a darting tongue, teasing. Somewhere below, the restaurants, discos, hotels of Mykonos wait nestled at sea level, the rest of the island straining upward; they are caught in an elevated web of cliffs.
A lump rises in Nix’s esophagus, signaling danger. Beneath her legs, the car’s seat trembles, unsteady; she pitches to the other side of the car at each turn, clings tight to the door handle to keep herself still, as if clutching the rails of a roller coaster. Her hands are slick with sweat. She thinks of having to powder them before gripping the parallel bars, and even though she is not on a gymnastics team at Skidmore—has not done gymnastics since leaving Kettering more than two years ago—she is gripped by a terror that she will never touch a parallel bar again, a fear that this seat is the last thing she will ever hold before they plunge off a cliff to certain death below. She cannot imagine . . . oh, but yes, she finds she
can
imagine it: the weightlessness before her body begins to fly upward against the car’s roof, the pitching in her stomach, so that she might vomit before she hits earth. It is in our DNA to be able to feel such scenarios in our bodies, like archetypes of fear: possible ways the human body can meet its end. With scraps of yellow hair, white and red flesh, torn to bits by the very teeth of the jagged cliffs she’d mused on earlier in her foolish, drunken rhapsody.
From what she can tell, Mary is utterly immune to Zorg’s efforts to kill them. Serenely, Mary gazes out the window, impassive as though she wouldn’t jump if someone tossed a snake in her lap. The tires hit a bump, perhaps no more than a stone in the road, but Nix’s head bounces against the car’s ceiling. Zorg doesn’t slow the car. Dry dirt and rocks crunch and scatter beneath the wheels. Nix tastes blood, realizes she must have been biting her lip when her head hit the roof. How long before Zorg misjudges, one tire, one flick of the wrist, one crumbling piece of earth too far? Or maybe it is what he sincerely
intends,
only wants to make them suffer first for being American whores, for embarrassing him in front of his friend. Nix kicks the back of Mary’s seat. Hard, in hopes of eliciting a
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