White Vespa by Kevin Oderman Page A

Sými, but they’d been let go and found beautiful ruin. Myles took his photographs.
    â€œJust this much loss,” he said, “and no more.”
    Jim looked at him quizzically from where he leaned against a wall, watching.
    â€œUntil we turn our backs and go,” Myles whispered.
    When the light started to fade they walked on, away from Livádhia, toward Megálo Horió on the other side of the island, where the human distraction was in full swing. Walking into town they watched bright green bee catchers flash over the orchards in the last of the sun and then the owls and bats come out for night hunting.
    Megálo Horió crouched under the ancient citadel and seemed alive enough. Why this town to live and Mikró Horió to die? They didn’t know. At the recommended taverna they ate well, grilled eggplant and stuffed cuttlefish, a plate of red peppers, a slab of féta, two cans of retsina from the barrel. Jim pointed three times, each time in the direction of a not too distant beach.
    â€œThe place is surrounded,” Myles said.
    â€œIt is an island.”
    â€œAha.”
    â€œSays here,” Jim was looking down at a guidebook, “that over at that beach,” he pointed over his shoulder, “at Ayios Andónios, you can see the bones of some very dead Greeks,” Myles raised his eyebrows, “buried Pompeii-style in the last eruption of the volcano on Níssyros.”
    â€œHmm,” Myles said, occupied with the cuttlefish.

    â€œDoesn’t actually say the last eruption,” Jim said, looking up from the book.
    â€œBut some eruption?”
    â€œYes, and buried alive.”
    â€œSo,” Myles said, “the trouble that started over there landed here?”
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œAs trouble often does?”
    â€œYes,” Jim laughed, “sort of.”

Twenty-nine
    June 25
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    Anne sat on her barstool like she’d done it too much and she had. Even drunk she perched there sure as a bird, a cormorant, she thought, with disgust. It was after hours and the doors were locked, but the help who still wanted to drink were doing so in the upstairs bar. There was a bottle of gin open in front of Anne and she’d had a few. Everybody’d had a few and a false hilarity rippled through them and a little malice, too. Anne wanted to get away from all their sticky chumminess, but she leaned forward and bent the bottle over her small glass and poured another.
    Lisa pressed close to her and was muttering something about men, what bastards they were, and Anne said, “Yeah,” the way she did when she didn’t want to talk all that much.
    â€œAll of’em. Oughta get—”
    â€œGet?” Anne prompted.
    â€œâ€”what’s comin’ to ’em.”
    Anne turned her head toward Lisa, and it was like turning her face to an over-heated stove. “They don’t often,” she said.
    â€œBut they oughta.”
    â€œI know one really oughta,” Anne said.
    â€œI know way more’n one,” Lisa slurred, wagging her raw face side to side, as if she was contemplating big numbers.
    Anne stood up and her body waved unnaturally over her feet. Lisa reached over to steady her and Anne grinned.
    â€œTell you what. I’ll let you know,” she blurted out, “when the slaughter begins.”
    Lisa considered, then said, “Do that.”
    The bathroom reeked but Anne went in anyway. The sallow light ran on the walls. Anne splashed her eyes with water and pulled her sleeve across her face to dry it off. She didn’t much like the person she saw looking back in the mirror. The glittering hardness. She looked untouchable even to herself,
though she knew she’d been touched too much before she’d ever had any say in the matter. But maybe it wasn’t true she couldn’t be touched. Maybe she could. Maybe she was scared she could.
    â€œFuck it,” she muttered, looking down at