The Writer's Perspective via Snoopy

Three short stories I wish I wrote. I’d recommend to anyone who writes or who loves literature.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro Ernest Hemingway: A couple on safari wait for a plane to rescue the male lead character whose leg has developed gangrene. It appears the plane will not arrive on time as the guy reevaluates his life. He drinks and berates his girlfriend. The story unfolds through their dialogue. The male has flashbacks of his life and they largely run parallel to Hemingway’s own travels. The flashbacks are interspersed with the main story. Throughout the story, vultures wait for him to give up.

The flashbacks are very Hemingway-like. He talks about Paris, Greece and Turkey. Through these glimpses you get a sense of a wider world exists in this fiction. He talks about skiing with former enemies. His observations combine to show his great eye for detail and his talent for understatement. One of my favorite observations is: “But he had never written a line of that, nor of that cold, bright Christmas day with the mountains showing across the plain that Barker had flown across the lines to bomb the Austrian officers' leave train, machine-gunning them as they scattered and ran. He remembered Barker afterwards coming into the mess and starting to tell about it. And how quiet it got and then somebody saying, ''You bloody murderous bastard.''

Those were the same Austrians they killed then that he skied with later. No not the same…”


Ice Palace F. Scott Fitzgerald: Ice Palace published in 1920 is an early story in which Fitzgerald first makes his Zelda-like character into his muse. It's obvious that the genesis of this story came from his days when he was stationed in the south and first courted her. Zelda is on the verge of hooking up with him and coming north. There is a heartbreaking scene when her old local boyfriends realize that they are no longer good enough for her.

Clark stared straight in front of him at a bolt on the clattering windowshield.
“Sally Carrol,” he said with a curious intensity, “don’t you like us?”
“What?”
“Us down here?”
“Why, Clark, you know I do. I adore all you boys.”
“Then why you gettin’ engaged to a Yankee?”
“Clark, I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but—well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, Clark, I love you, and I love Joe here, and Ben Arrot, and you-all, but you’ll—you’ll—
“We’ll be failures?”
“Yes. I don’t mean only money failures, but just sort of—of ineffectual and sad, and—oh, how can I tell you?”
“You mean because we stay here in Tarleton?”
“Yes, Clark; and because you like it and never want to change things or think or go ahead.”

The Zelda-like character then moves to Minnesota. You really get a clash of civilizations from the juxtaposition of the slow languid pace of the south to the north where she needs warm beverages and blankets while travelling on the train. Up north, they have this big winter festival. In the town they build a giant ice palace. The female lead goes into the palace, somehow gets separated from the others and gets lost in a labyrinth of ice.

“Harry!”
Still no answer. The sound she made bounced mockingly down to the end of the passage.
Then on an instant the lights went out, and she was in complete darkness. She gave a small, frightened cry, and sank down into a cold little heap on the ice.

She gets lost inside and can’t find her way out. She is eventually rescued by friends of her boyfriend who say,

“Child, child! We’ve been looking for you for two hours! Harry’s half-crazy!”

Great use of elements as a way of showing the lifestyles that is really separating these two cultures and also as a way of showing what is separating the two protagonists. Fitzgerald also shows a fantastic ability to see things from someone else’s perspective, in this case Zelda’s.

Gigolo and Gigalette Somerset Maugham: This is a fantastic story of a depression era couple who are living at their wits end as to how they will survive tough economic times. The woman has always been the bread winner and she makes her living by jumping from height into a small tub of water. He wrote:

"How's Stella?" asked Sandy.
"Oh, she's all right. Likes to have a lay-down before the show, you know. Steadies the old nerves, she says."
"I wouldn't do that stunt of hers for a thousand pounds."
"I don't suppose you would. No one can do it but her, not from that height, I mean, and only five foot of water."
"It's the most sick-making thing I've ever seen."
Cotman gave a little laugh. He took this as a compliment. Stella was his wife. Of course she did the trick and took the risk, but it was he who had thought of the flames, and it was the flames that had taken the public fancy and made the turn the huge success it was. Stella dived into a tank from the top of a ladder sixty feet high, and as he said, there were only five feet of water in the tank. Just before she dived they poured enough petrol on to cover the surface and he set it alight; the flames soared up and she dived straight into them.

The female lead is very good at the acrobatic trick they are using to make a living but she is beginning to lose her nerve. The crowds continue to gather at each swanky hotel and you sense that what they are really coming for is that one time that the female lead doesn't make it. It's a little like people going to a NASCAR race for the accidents.

"What's the matter, darling?"
"Syd, I can't do it again tonight," she sobbed.
"Why on earth not?"
"I'm afraid."
He took her hand.
"I know you better than that," he said. "You're the bravest little woman in the world. Have a brandy, that'll pull you together."
"No, that'd only make it worse."
"You can't disappoint your public like that."
"That filthy public. Swine who eat too much and drink too much. A pack of chattering fools with more money than they know what to do with. I can't stick them. What do they care if I risk my life?"
"Of course, it's the thrill they come for, there's no denying that," he replied uneasily. "But you know and I know, there's no risk, not if you keep your nerve."
"But I've lost my nerve, Syd. I shall kill myself."

The couple is trapped in their own con as they really have no other means of surviving tough economic times. It is either go through with it or back to the scrap pile that they came from.

"Tonight, and every night till I kill myself. What else is there? I know you're right, Syd. I can't go back to all that other, stinking rooms in fifth-rate hotels and not enough to eat. Oh, that Marathon. Why did you bring that up? Being tired and dirty for days at a time and then having to give up because flesh and blood just couldn't stand it. Perhaps I can go on another month and then there'll be enough to give you a chance of looking round."
"No, darling. I can't stand for that. Chuck it. We'll manage somehow. We starved before; we can starve again."
She slipped out of her clothes, and for a moment stood naked but for her stockings, looking at herself in the glass. She gave her reflection a hard smile.
"I mustn't disappoint my public," she sniggered.

Any of these three I would take, and it makes my world feel a little more rounded to know that someone experienced these experiences and had the good senses to write it down.

The Boy And The Blue Tricycle

The boy in the gray shorts sits on the brick stairs above the blue tricycle. It’s the only thing of value he owns. His legs are as spindly as that of a newborn foal. The boy spends his days alone, taking things apart and putting them together again.

He dreams that his bike will take him places. The boy flips the bike on its side and, like a bus driver, spins the rear wheel until the rubber tire turns his palms gray.

      His mother forbids him from:

              swimming – afraid he’ll drown.

                riding in the street – afraid a car will hit him.

              leaving the yard - afraid a stranger will snatch him.

One day, the boy is befriended by his slightly older neighbor. He envisions his neighbor being able to open up doors for him. They get along until his neighbor digs up his tricycle’s white cushioned seat, with a stick, to impress older kids. The boy feels violated. He wishes he’d fought back. He knows that his single mother will never replace his bicycle. The boy cries but stops, looks down at the brown foam oozing from the open wound.

Years later, his neighbor dies in a crash and everyone is sad. They remember his neighbor as being a great athlete, a valedictorian, the model son/neighbor.  The now adolescent boy feels out of place. No one remembers how his neighbor picked on little kids.

The now adolescent boy feels guilty that he missed the wake. He hears how the brakes in his neighbor’s – relatively new and recently serviced – car inexplicably failed. How his car careened into traffic and collided head-on with a city bus. The boy looks at his hands, still gray from working on the wreck out back, and marvels at their capability.
First published in Bethlehem Writers Roundtable https://sites.google.com/site/bethlehemwritersroundtable/gary-floyd

Moths Around A Light

My life ricochets from marriage to marriage. In each of these, I’ll age a little more and understand life’s condition a little better. For one shining moment I’ll take center stage; but mostly I observe other people’s celebrations.

I am six – awkwardly, out of place – my oldest brother has just gotten married. I’m a live wire, physically incapable of standing still each time his photographer yells at me for ruining another shot. I try again – one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand – I twitch as he seems to purposely snap another picture. Once again, he yells. I sneak a glass of champagne, and then another. I soon have a blinding headache. My mother allows me to go to the airport with my aunt and uncle. My uncle is flying to Italy that night to visit his family. He is flying Alitalia: an airline I imagine that serves wine and has better food than most. We hurry. We breeze through the airport, to the gate where my uncle will disappear. No one is concerned with safety back then. My aunt and I remain near the cool glass looking out as the lights on the jet’s wings twinkle and we notice the plane laboriously pulling away from the terminal.

I’m a high school junior when my second oldest brother gets married. At the rehearsal party, I get drunk on cherry Vodka. My older cousin agrees to drive me home. My best friend and I hang out at my brother’s wedding. Amongst friends and family, it is a safe environment. We order drinks, though I’m still under age. My friend is more concerned with to my sister-in-law’s sister. She is cute in her bridesmaid’s gown and I’m jealous. She is younger than he is and doesn’t take life as seriously as he does. They have a good two month run – where, after his car breaks down, he’ll even walk miles through the snow to see her – until she breaks his heart. We’ll never talk about her or that day again.
It is hot and humid where I live. Swarms of mosquitos and moths flutter around my outside light on warm summer evenings. Many people focus on the insects closer to the light. They don’t notice the ones that operate on the periphery– left in dark trying to maneuver their way in closer to the light.

My older brother – tall and blond – gets married on an Albuquerque mountain. Initially, he asks me to be his best man. He and his future wife plan to fly me and the maid of honor, who I’ll never meet, out for the wedding. It doesn’t happen. My brother claims that the maid of honor started to act weird over the arrangement and he and his future wife decide to elope instead. A short bald Jewish guy in his sixties, who just happens to be visiting the mountain on the day of their wedding, replaces me as the best man. Years later: I travel out west with my girlfriend, and future wife. I will suffer from altitude sickness shortly after seeing another couple get married on that same mountain.

A few years later, my older brother acts as my best man. We have beer before my wedding. It’s a late wedding and we spend a few moments talking. It feels like any other day, until I say “It’s getting late, might as well go get married.” My wedding is informal. I wear a suit and a tie. My wife brags about how much she saved by buying a dress off the rack. We’re older. We cut out several unnecessary expenditures. Pretty soon we answer we do before adjourning to a gaudy oversized hall with plenty of food. I observe. People appear to enjoy themselves but I’m exhausted. It’s hard to imagine that by tomorrow night I’ll be on a cruise ship miles away from my life.

I’ve been looking at my outside light lately. There is a loose connection and sometimes the light works better than others. I watch the way that the outlying moths and mosquitos try to muscle their way into the light. There they’ll take center stage for an hour or two, before they burn out and disappear into the darkness again. I wonder, what is the life expectancy of one of these insects?
How do they mark the milestones in their lives? What have they learned from these events? How have they overcome their disappointments and at what moment do they change into something they weren’t.

originally published Blue Lotus Review Winter (12/14/15) 2015

http://bluelotusreview.com/2015/12/14/fiction-10/

Getting a title

Obviously the title of this blog is a play on the Robert Frost poem. A few years back (7 to 10 by now) my wife and I stopped by Robert Frost's house but he wasn't home. I guess we were fifty years too late. I like the idea of taking the road less travelled, many times in my life I've stuck upon the well trod path, and sometimes I have only ventured in direction that I can't travel in life in my minds eye. An imagined life is a well lived life. At least I imagine that it is.

When I was younger I read a biography of Thomas Wolfe. He was 6' 5" at a time when people weren't. I have been blessed with plenty of height as well. He grew up at 48 Spruce St. and I grew up at 46. He had a rocky relationship and I related when I went through my own travails, as probably people do when they grow up. He seemed to want to capture the world around him and so did I. I was amazed by the concrete coincidences I read about. I remember telling that to a poet one time who dismissed like "sure and then lightening struck and you were one in the same"; but I don't care, I still find the coincidences amazing and if any of his immense talent leaked through I'd be happy to receive the donation. I hope you enjoy the writing here, bloggers please link me, and please check back again as  I hope to be adding more material, and other interesting observation.

Thanks,

Gary.

Old Stuff

image: https://evenlodesfriend.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/writers-nbk-planning-22-04-2013-14-59-52-3648x2736.jpg


When I put together this blog I decided to include some old stuff that had been published. Some of it I'm proud of and others are officially cringe worthy. I've decided to include them here as they were originally published.

Things that I'd want to change I'd like to put a red circle around sections where I felt I'd lost the magic: hopefully to make better at some later date. I'd condense it, glue it, and once more redistribute it. Or, for one of the pieces, the start just isn't good enough - what the hell was I talking about there - and there is too much fat in the texture of the piece, but there are parts of it I really like. It is like hearing the voice of a younger me which at times I'd like to recapture that passion. Kind of a kernel of truth. When it was right it was really right; and when it wasn't it really wasn't. I'd just put something aside in hopes of changing it when I got to be a better writer. Some day soon.

Gary

Faith

https://mostlyvictoria.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/photo-18.jpg

Faith

Ted had gone back to the room.

We’d been on Paros for three days. I had sent my parents a post card of a Greek church at sunset. I had sent home to a few friends cards of half-naked women with their hair slicked back and their bottoms wetly transparent. The sights bled together. It was a religious experience.

Wake up to a cup of Greek coffee – half grinds and half water – and a piece of greasy bland pastry, bake on the beach all day, stay out all night; and do it all again the next day.

Time, space, and accountability had become irrelevant. Experience was the key. It broadened the horizons and prevented the scope from becoming too parochial.

I wrote on one card, “I’m hundreds of nautical miles from anywhere with hundreds of the nicest strangers I’ve ever met.”

I was on the sea wall with two of them. We had known each other for less than two days. On Paros that was long enough.

It was past three in the morning, and Chris had just turned thirty. He and Carol were from England, and I was their “Bloody Yank” friend.

Chris looked lost whenever Carol and I were talking. He was hard of hearing and relied on reading lips.

“Ted and I are leaving Paros tomorrow,” I told Carol.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You should go to Ios. That’s where we’re heading.”

“I want to go there, but Ted doesn’t.”

“Darling, you can do anything if it’s important enough to you.”

Life was more complex than that. There was always something to consider.”

The horizon was black and lifeless except for a flashing green electronic buoy at the mouth of the harbor.

“How long have you known Chris?” I asked.

“Actually, we just met. We were both planning to go to Greece. Some friends introduced us, and we decided to travel together and cut costs. I feel we’ve struck it off quite nicely.”

A ferry had turned the corner near the buoy and made for port – three stories, with its passengers moving about. It lit the sky like a coming event.

“If anything, I’m more protective of him than he is of me,” Carol added. “There’s times when he disappears. Chris’s sense of direction is bad, and he gets lost.”

“Hah?” Chris asked.

“I said, you know you have a bloody bad sense of direction, don’t you, darling?” Carol called to him.

I guess he did. He didn’t answer.

Carol looked at me and smirked. “I find myself shouting at every person I come in contact with.”

The ferry approached on a collision course with the dock. On both sides of the dock were moorings, semi-submerged battering rams, with thick planking hitched to them. The ship turned in a slow wide sweep. The engines reverse their polarity, the water bubbled beneath, and the boat continued to slip backwards. There was a pause, the dock lifted, the sound muffled, and the ferry stopped.

…the captain spoke in Greek, and then in English. Neither was comprehensible, except for the last line, “Any passengers proceeding along to Naxos should be prepared for immediate debarkation.”

The front ramp recoiled in slow electronic increments while the passengers waited behind in the drowsy glow of the lower deck.

It took guts to arrive at this time. Or had it been dumb luck?

Ted and I had arrived here from Athens at ten AM. The Greeks had been there to meet our ferry, take our hands, and walk us through every detail – at prices that made us blush.

The dock was now deserted. The Greeks hadn’t waited for the late ferry; with their maps and photos and in the Pidgin English, “You need room.”

Once the night air permeated the whitewashed plaster, the town was one long sweep of blue. The houses had a uniformity about them like a sub-division within a complex. The guest houses looked no different from the residential ones, and the caretakers were home in bed.

One alley led to another alley; another alley to a third alley; and by the third alley they’d be lost.

Remove the roofs, and the town unfolded like a nativity pop-out book. In the middle of the town was a glowing Coke machine which dispensed beer as well as soft drinks. We had found that out last night.

The concession machine was the red push pin that held the pop-out town to its cork bulletin board.

…and I thought of a woman who had befriended us on the train from Patras. She had said that Ted and I were “good travelers.”

I wore her praise like a badge.

The rules were clear: anxiety was the common enemy. A situations wasn’t desperate until your mind distorted it. Change was the foundation for true stability.

New experience was the momentary salve for the many ailments, and boredom was lingering death. All the answers were on the horizon, and I continued to mine the source. Call it faith.

We got up and left. Paros was refilling. The town was in motion. Some come. Some go. It never ended.

Try and Catch it.

“Maybe we can remain out a little longer,” Carol said. “I’ve got some vodka in my backpack and Chris could get his guitar…”

…and I could enter the maze again, and search for the Coke machine that dispenses the holy ale.

The departing ferry was heading toward the buoy and the open sea.

“…you should hear Chris sing, he’s quite wonderful.”

“Hah?”

“I said, you know you have a wonderful voice, don’t you, darling?”

I guess he did. He didn’t answer her again.

# # # # #

The three of us sat on the landing that connected the sidewalk to the beach. The water line was only a few feet from it.

Late night after the bars had closed, there was a continued flow of people on the main street. A fluctuating audience had gathered on the sidewalk above us.

One guy flopped on a bench directly over us hadn’t moved for over fifteen minutes. He was either drunk or asleep or just off the ferry.

The later it became, the smaller the audience. Eventually, it was just the three of us and our friend on the bench.

Carol looked shyer than she was. She was smiling at me, and I knew.

“Chris, play some Bob,” Carol demanded. “Can you play some Bob? Like you did last night.”

He smiled. He could and did play some Bob.

“Oh, to be stuck inside of Mobile

  With the Memphis blues again.”

“I told you he was wonderful,” Carol said.

I was holding her hand.

I looked up to see a musician who I’d seen earlier, and his girlfriend was standing on the sidewalk over us. Carol saw them, too.

Chris hadn’t noticed them.

“It didn’t take her long to find someone,” Carol continued.

I didn’t want her to dwell on it. I rubbed her back. Her eyes looked at me with drowsy contentment and she smiled crookedly. The irony struck me as funny.

The ovation startled Chris. The musician asked if he could have a turn, and Chris handed him his guitar.

There was no hesitation to the singer, and he played bravely.

Carol, quietly but concisely, undercut his bravado. “Chris’s voice is better, don’t you think?”

Earlier, I had enjoyed the singer’s style, but tonight he was drunk, and his presentation was lousy.

I didn’t answer her.

After the musician finished, he declared, “I have come to Paros from Ireland to live forever.”

Chris was disappearing within a conversation again.

I told the musician that I’d seen him at a café.

“What did ya think?”

“I thought you were really good.”

His face glowed. His reaction was overblown. I couldn’t tell if it was a put on.

“Don’t tell him that,” his girlfriend whispered. “His ego is big enough.”

“I’m not paid by the café,” the Irish continued. “But the people take care of me.”

He handed Chris back his guitar and lit a cigarette.

Carol wasted no time, “Do Bojangles, Chris. Will you play Bojangles? For me?”

She was such a brat, but I liked the way her skin felt.

Chris played Mr. Bojangles while the Irish musician smoked his cigarettes and tapped his feet.

“I don’t know why he listens,” Carol said. “I figure he likes it when I’m a bitch.”

We kissed. I stroked the brown hair from near her temples.

The Australian girl watched us. What she saw was evident. It was what they all came to Greece for – one suspended romantic interlude.

She and her boyfriend left. Chris wanted to leave, too. Carol wouldn’t let him. He sang, and sometimes Carol and I made out. At other times I held her while watching the sea. The sky was changing from black – black to gray – black, and it was still overcast.

…and Chris had finished again. He sat up and said “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

“Oh, Chris, don’t be a fuddy duddy all your life. You promised you’d play until dawn, don’t you remember?”

He hadn’t promised her that.

“It’s your birthday,” she prodded, “and you did promise.”

He remained, and she seemed energized by it.

# # # # #

It wasn’t quite dawn when Chris left.

Nothing had moved in the streets for hours. Above us, the guy on the bench was lifeless. It was growing brighter in sections, and with each passing section we lost privacy.

I kissed the bridge of Carol’s nose. Then her closed eyelids. They tasted of salt, and my teeth ground beach sand.

“What are you doing to me?” she asked.

“Nothinnng…What do you think I’m doing?”

We made out hard and almost rolled off the landing. It felt unnatural this late in the morning.”

“Come on, let’s go,” I said, taking Carol’s hand.

“Where?”

“You’ll see.”

I hadn’t decided yet, but I knew we couldn’t remain here.

We cut across the landing and nearly stepped on another couple curled up in a sleeping bag on the opposite side. Oops, I’d missed them totally…Some privacy.

Two dogs, one twice the size of the other, followed us, the smaller dog lagging behind.

We walked for nearly twenty minutes among the hills that overlooked the sea, foaming in the rocks below. We climbed some concrete steps. I supported Carol when the path fell away sharply.

She made fun of my American accent and told me that her mother had spent lots of money so that she could learn proper English.

I laughed at her.

“I didn’t realize that ‘bloody’ was such an integral part of the English language.”

Her eyes were in love, and she smiled crookedly again. “Bloody right it is.”

She had such a vain streak. She went on defending herself. Insisting that she could speak properly if she chose to.

Several times, Carol confronted the dogs with a stormy “ohey.”

The little dog would sit and look longingly. The bigger dog ignored her.

Eventually, the little dog followed too.

“That seems to be working really well,” I said to her.

“I can’t help it if they don’t understand Greek.”

The path went inland, and we took a different track that headed back toward the coast, by a donkey, eating, and a dog who chased until his extra long leash snapped back his head, leaving him desperately flailing at the air and baring his sharp yellow teeth.

“I hope he chokes,” I said.

The little dog sat on his haunches and looked hurt that we were leaving him behind. The bigger dog remained bothersomely loyal.

…on a deserted beach we undid one another while the dog settled at our feet.

Carol’s tan lines were yellow, the color of faded bruises. Her eyes were filled with tension. She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes and I lost sight of her.

By the time we finished, the tension had drained and Carol got up to go swimming.

“Where are my knickers?” she asked, fishing through her belongings.

“You don’t need them.”

“I want my knickers.”

She found them and slid them on, ignoring my unbiased advice.

“Cute yellow knickers.”

“I have many different colored knickers.”

It was chilly and deafeningly quiet in our inlet. Bright, but overcast. I wondered how long it’d be before people started arriving.

Carol continued, “One guy at the club is always asking, “So, Carol, what color knickers you got on today?”

One faceless guy who knew she had different colors – a guy who didn’t exist.

She nonchalantly walked to the ocean. Stooping over in the surf, she ran water up one arm and then the other.

A breeze curled back my hair. I was overtired. I longed for this public beach to be closed. I wanted to sleep there all morning.

We were leaving Paros later that day.

In the distance Carol was bouncing in waist-deep water, brown, topless and half-frozen.

In the further distance a fishing boat was heading to sea. What a way to start a morning.

Carol came out after fifteen minutes, all goosebumps. She wore a gilded chain which combined with the shimmer of the water beading upon her brown skin to make her look like a sun goddess. Today, she was mine… “What color knickers you got on today, Carol?” “Yellow,” I’d say “Now shoo.”

“There’s a lady watching us,” Carol said.

“I hope she’s enjoying herself.”

“She probably thinks we’re on our honeymoon.”

I was exhausted, and the words came tripping from my mouth.”

“Probably.”

Sure enough, off in the distance was a stick figure dressed in black watching from her balcony with quiet disapproval.

I collapsed into the sand. So this was the honeymoon for our half-marriage. Imagine. The lawyers would have a field day.

# # # # #

We dressed and headed back to town. The dog trailed us again. I put my hand in her back pocket and squeezed her for sensation.

Carol was saying that the dog was following me, and I said that he was following her. We were both punchy and giddy and bumped and wisecracked along the trail.

I called her a brat; she made fun of my accent again.

“Come to Ios, darling,” she said. “We’ll make the most of the few hours we have together.”

“I want to. God, how I want to. And I think I’ll be there. But I can’t promise it.”

“Anyway, you’ll know where Chris and I will be, and I know you can work it out if it means enough to you. I believe in you.”

When we separated, the dog followed her. I could imagine her muttering beneath her breath, “Bloody stupid dog.”

Ted heard me come in. After ten minutes he sat up on his elbow. He had had five hours sleep, and I hadn’t been to bed yet – who wanted to go sailing?

I wanted to stay on Paros. I liked it here.

He asked some vague questions about the night before. I told him about Chris’s concert and the musician we’d both seen at the café.

Then I crushed him. “Ted, I’m going to Ios.”

“I thought we hadn’t decided.”

“I’m going to Ios.”

He didn’t know what to say, and I rolled away and pretended to try to sleep.

He was so angry with me that he rattled things around the room. I didn’t say another word.

After fifteen minutes, he grew accustomed to the idea and asked if I knew what time the ferry left Ios. Anything I wanted.

# # # # #

The seascape was psychedelic orange-black. The sun was low and orange, and the non-distinct islands were ashen black.

The engines were puttering, and the ship was moving too slowly. We had left Naxos, almost an hour ago it seemed, and I hoped Ios would soon appear on the horizon. Ferry rides were slow, boring and relaxing. My eyes were closing.

The heat which had baked us when we left Paros was gone. I took out my warmest sweatshirt from my backpack and pulled it over my head. I was still cold.

Ted was wearing a brown sweatshirt with a hood that came to a point on top of his head. He looked ridiculous. He also looked cold, and I felt responsible.

A tall, good looking woman was standing near the railing of the bow. The wind cut off the ocean, and her red sweatshirt rattled and furled in around her. She stared into nothing for several minutes.

Finally, I exchanged a look and a smile with her. She made me feel less like the selfish bastard I was.

Her boyfriend returned with two coffees. I think they were French or Dutch. We had little in common except in traveling we transcended international limitations. We didn’t speak, but momentary glance said everything there was to say.

I had to have faith that Ios was out there, somewhere, and it’d be as good to me as Paros had been. Time and experience were slowly easing my guilt.

I hoped we wouldn’t be arriving on Ios too late.

Initially published in Crazy Quilt June, 1992