CHAPTER 6

  © 2010 GREG DUNAJ

6. 

          

           

         Carlo was jostled awake by a bump. Strong morning sunlight was cascading  into the car as it sped along. He was in the back seat of the sedan, his feet on the cooler as he used Harry's backpack as a pillow. Harry was driving; he had driven throughout the night since they had stopped for dinner in Delaware. It was his choice, Carlo had offered to spell him after a few hours of sitting beside him in the car and watching the last light of this late summer's day and eventually the lights of Washington, D.C. slip past them on their way to the meeting in Utopia, Texas. Harry did not know they were on their way to Utopia, and Carlo wondered when he would have to tell him the truth, but when they entered the cool of the Blue Ridge mountains as they headed through Virginia towards Tennessee, Carlo figured sleep was more important than getting Harry worked up about the truth, and deposited himself in the backseat.        

         Harry was singing softly to himself. Though painfully aware of a kink in his neck and a wet spot, the result of oozing fluids from a crack in the Styrofoam cooler that was soaking a pant leg, Carlo did not sit up. Instead, Carlo listened to his friend's voice as he watched the car speed past trees. Beyond Harry's singing Carlo could hear the dull rumble of other traffic on the road. The car smelled of cigar smoke; a thick, musty smell that was everywhere, even on the t-shirt that Carlo was wearing.           

              Harry's voice was pleasant enough; a soft burr of a baritone with not a lot of range. He was singing quietly, but Carlo remembered the times Harry would sing when they were younger, in high school. They were still a pair, hanging around together, before Harry went away to college and Carlo took to traveling. Then, Harry would take his guitar to the park or to parties and sing. Harry would struggle through the higher notes and on deep notes his voice would take on a raspy quality that was not unpleasant. But, when the notes were just right for his voice, the song seemed to pour out of him with emotion and strength.           

         This made Carlo think of his youth and how filled they each had been with the desire to seize the day and create. His own career at writing had stalled when he became frustrated with having to search out people to read his things. Carlo had always envied Harry's form of expression; he never had to sit people down and force them to listen. Instead, his voice, his music was out there, on a breeze, in the air, touching everyone. To write is to sequester oneself in a locked room, emerging triumphantly only when you think you are finished, but then the real work begins. Having to lasso others and hope they are interested in sitting down to read your words, and worse, hope they understand everything you are trying to say was a fate that Carlo tired of and left behind.        

         Dreams of Keroac, Hemingway and Maugham had spurred him initially; visions of ribbons of highways and distant sandy beaches, cafes in exotic settings and seedy bars on the dark side of towns were his destinations. Although the need to write and explain his place in the world had left him, Carlo never tired of traveling. He evidently never had the desire, the discipline and subsequently the time to write, but he had time to explore and experience and drink and lounge. Someday he would write he felt and he would write only for himself, with damned little regard for anyone else. But, for now, thoughts of Celine and the easiest journey towards the night now consumed his less-than-ambitious attack on this world.        

         They passed a river. From his little bed in the back of the car Carlo could not see the river, but he could smell the heavy moist smell of its water and mud. He heard the sound of the wheels of the car as it rolled across the metal crisscrossing of the bridge and the steady thump thump as they crossed over girders marking sections.          

        Carlo thought about Harry's little white lie the other day in the backyard of his home; the one about his guitar playing and song writing. It made him feel a bit better about himself, and about his own lack of endeavors. Despite Carlo's loss of desire to write, had Harry actually been playing and writing music, it would have been a stake in Carlo's heart. In the backyard he had felt a deep, solid lump in his throat when Harry told him he had been playing. If his boyhood chum was doing that much better, he would have died right there. Misery loves company and there was no better way than for both of them to be hurtling down the highway, simply struggling to get through the day, rather than struggling with creativity.        

         Carlo wondered about the song Harry was singing and fearfully tried to listen to the words, but Harry was singing too quietly. He decided it was nothing he recognized, and quickly dismissed the song as one he had yet to hear on the radio since his return to the United States, though a lingering, nagging thought remained.      

        Utopia was going to be the beginning of a life for Carlo. Not a new life, but simply a life. With his writing and his relationship with Madeline now an implausible dream, returning home to the United States was the most practical destination. Anywhere else would have simply been prolonging the inevitable. In years past he might have hitched a ride down to Nice to spend the summer sleeping in parks and train stations and then getting work during the grape harvest in Bordeaux, but, he was getting older and he was afraid he was starting to look more like a street-wizened bum rather than an adventurous youth slouching his way through a summer on the continent before getting on with his life. Summer was over felt Carlo as he looked out the window from his bed in the back of the car.       

        Even so, Carlo had tried to talk himself out of this trip. So what if he looked like a bum; why was he not heading off to Majorcca or Sitges or St. Tropez. Or Greece again; he had just been there with Madeline, to Crete. The prospect of tanning without tan lines was certainly more of an allure than driving halfway across the United States to a final destination in the desolate hill country of Texas. Oh, he forgot, the idol of their youth was the culprit, the lure. Dedalus, inspiration to all without a life, that's why he had come back to America.       

        That thought made Carlo laugh. A life? He had no life and how was he able to consider a comeback appearance as the start of a life? Hell, this whole trip was a sham. Dedalus wasn’t even giving a concert. He was leaving Texas for good. He had been there for years and now he was leaving. Yet, since Madeline threw him out of the apartment, having a life was all he thought about. Perhaps this was an age-influenced decision. He had never had a family except his aunt. His mother had died in childbirth; his father had left him with his aunt, and then walked out of his life forever. As he thought about it now, as he lay in the back of the car that winged him ever closer to Texas, listening to the whine of traffic, still smelling the dank, heavy smell of some river, this whole trip was absurd, corny, sublime. Men usually go through a mid-life crisis by running about in extra-marital affairs, or reliving teenage years again. Carlo, albeit reluctantly, wanted to start his life.      

         Such thoughts would have never come to Carlo had he not been tossed by Madeline. He would have been content to remain in Paris, forever the ex-patriot. He liked Madeline, she was easy on the eyes. He loved Paris. Of all the cities he had visited in his travels, Paris offered one the chance to breathe slowly. The Seine itself meandered through the city, turning and curving as if it too wanted to linger. Carlo liked to hang at the Cafe Aux Deux Magot and imagine himself to be a latter day Sartre, or to sip Pernod and water and listen to scratchy jazz records in the Rosebud Bar in Montparnesse. He enjoyed going down to the Academy Des Beaux-Arts for a cheap meal and spirited discussion with students and travelers. He liked to linger on the steps of the Sacre-Couer at dusk and watch the City of Light come alive. He HAD a life then. It was complete, filled to capacity. He was after all the AUTHOR and he was gathering information for THAT novel that he infrequently worked on as he lounged about in his bathrobe.     

         Eventually Madeline tired of him. She tired of having to take care of the finances as well as the apartment. Carlo did not lift a finger to help in any way. The writer bit worked for awhile with Madeline as she felt her efforts were contributing to the arts. At first she even accompanied him on many of his soirees to the cafes, with the idea that a part of her would flourish with the will and desire to create, as though the process could be rubbed onto her in some fashion. But, each time she went out with Carlo she invariably left alone when she had to turn in for work. Carlo would stay far into the night, usually meeting Madeline at the breakfast table the next morning. But, had he been producing anything, anything substantial, she would have gained the inspiration for continuing her sponsorship of Carlo. Carlo liked the idea, the image of being a writer, but did not want to spend the time at his craft. When pressed by Madeline, he would produce some scrawled notes on scrap paper, but nothing that resembled cohesive thoughts. She would not buy his feeble excuse that this was poetry.     

        Carlo's first reaction at being thrown out of the apartment was to seek out an acquaintance, another American. They had met during a night of carousing and had shared an appreciation for Dedalus. Carlo went to his boarding house in the 16 arrondissement, but the concierge told him the man had left rather abruptly. He had told the concierge that he was not to return and even left behind as gifts, a television set, a radio and a microwave oven, which delighted her to no end. A large, red-faced woman, the concierge could barely conceal her delight to Carlo, as she wrung her hands in an apron, though she did say she was going to be hard-pressed to find another tenant so wonderful. "Imagine," she said, "an American so generous?"      

        She told Carlo that her fabulous American tenant had returned home to America. In his haste he had mentioned Texas. "I think he is to be a cowboy," offered the concierge.      

        Armed with this news and hoping Madeline would change her mind about kicking him out, Carlo returned to Madeline to tell her he too was returning home to America. This was her last chance to take him back. She asked him to take out the garbage on his way out.      

        There in the back of the car Carlo again cursed himself and his bad luck and his loss. He had had it good in that apartment. If only he had lifted a finger to help once in awhile, he would not be in this predicament. He didn't need a "life", he had a life. If only he had taken better care of it. Now, the only life he had was again this open road. It was a vast, unending void that surprisingly panged his heart and caused a lump to grow in his throat as he considered the realization that he was truly attached to Madeline and the stability she represented.           

         Carlo thought about his trip to Crete with Madeline this past August. It had been a successful solution to their waning relationship; spirit her away, shower her with attention. But, it was a brief affair. Her newly found affections for him barely got out of Crete alive. Carlo thought it was his fault. If only he had known better, she just wanted him to take out the garbage. 

        Before the trip to Crete, it had gotten so bad between them, that they barely discussed the arrangements in the weeks prior to their departure. She had even gone so far as to tell Carlo he was merely a convenience, someone to help share the costs of the trip, rather than a traveling companion. Consequently, she wanted to hop, to go to Santorini and Rhodes and Paros. She wanted to party and carouse, which was a normal aspiration for Carlo and he nearly acquiesced to her wishes. But, against his innate desires, he pushed for Crete. He had been to Santorini and knew there would be trouble there. The revelry that throbs along the narrow streets of Thea and Ia would extinguish whatever bond was left and they would return to Paris separately, no longer a couple. No, the vast island of Crete was safer and he thought he would be able to better control the situation. He would have her largely alone to himself. For the first time in his life, Carlo had made an effort to remain faithful. Previously, similar attempts in his life would have been easily explained. It was the thrill of the hunt; the prize, a lost quarry. Now though he was not so assured of his intentions. Was it the pang of lost love swelling his heart, or was it his ego? This troubled him, and he swore up and down that he loathed the emotion of love, but still, he made plans to pursue this romantic endeavor.

         Despite Carlo’s best and truthful intentions, the trip did not start off well at all. Thinking an overnight boat would be romantic, he swayed her away from a plane ride from Athens. Instead, the steamer from Piraeus was a disaster that nearly ended up with her throwing him overboard. Carlo remembered it had been a fun, adventurous trip when he was younger, but this time, too much ouzo, too many swells and too few amenities reduced this proposed beginning of a romantic vacation into a bickering, finger-pointing, night-long argument that involved several retching trips to the cramped and dirty W.C. for both parties. Dawn had barely broken when they finally landed in Iraklion. Damp and drained and cold, they struggled with their bags and then a bus, its windshield trimmed with a string of little blue pennants, crammed with families and parcels and at least one chicken. It trudged along the narrow, mountainous roads and switchbacks to cross the island to the black sand beaches of Ierapetra on the south-eastern coast. When they finally made their pension they collapsed and slept until evening.      

        It got better, somehow. They spent their days lying naked in the sun and swimming in the Arabian Sea. The water was a vivid green; its froth angelic white as it died with each wave absorbed by the black sand. As they lay they would listen to the bells of goats being herded along the white, rocky hills that ringed the shore. It was very quiet there; few other couples traipsed down the beach. They were very much alone.    

       They took their breakfasts with the family that owned their pension; hot, sweet, black Greek coffee, swirling with grinds, and baklava. Only once was Carlo allowed to make the mistake and call this strong, bitter brew Turkish coffee, and he was politely admonished for his lack of knowledge about modern Greek history.     

        If they stayed near the pension for the day, they would also take lunch with the family; simple salads of greens and tomatoes and feta cheese and olives, good, crusty bread and always a Metaxa afterwards.                   

        In town, a short walk down the beach road, there was one restaurant they enjoyed frequently. "Zorba The Greek" sported a wall-sized mural of a mutant Anthony Quinn, dancing, fingers snapping above his overly large head. The eyes were in the wrong place. His face looked like it was melting. For hours they furtively laughed over the painting, lest they offend the hosts, but they were never able to figure out the reason for the octopus that dangled over the side of a Doric column painted in the background. 

        They had found the place while walking along the market in town. There, at one fish stall was a swordfish; its long epee snout pointing skyward, its mouth agape, its black, round eye gazing back down along its noble, grey length that had already been halved. A man emerged from a nearby doorway, wearing an apron and carrying a tray. He walked up to the cross-armed man with green eyes and a bushy moustache that guarded this massive creature that presided over the lesser fish and mollusks and octopi and ordered a steak. The hapless swordfish was again defiled with a sharp knife, though the animal gave no indication of worry with its lone eye that gazed almost approvingly down on the scene. Carlo and Madeline followed the waiter back into his restaurant, looked through his kitchen, as is the Greek custom, and eventually took many of their dinners at this place.    

        And that's the way it began; a shared laugh over the mural; a fluttery kiss over nothing while walking along the beach; a searching finger caressing his forearm as they lay naked before the blue sky and green sea and black sand. She had begun to accept Carlo again as a companion rather than a nuisance. Her voice was no longer sharp when talking to him. Her green, almond-shaped eyes were no longer piercing and angry when they glanced in his direction. Instead, they reflected the brilliant, unblemished, blue sky as Carlo caught her more than once gazing after him as he wrote. That was her one concession she required of Carlo in coming to Crete, that he keep a journal of their travels. He leaped at the chance to please her in this way, and soon found himself viewing her not simply as a prize to be won, but a companion, a friend, a love interest, though he still loathed to admit that emotion. He too would gaze after her; marveling at her beauty once again. Their lovemaking turned from release to exploration and more than one day was spent in a lazy haze of denouement. Their skin turned a golden brown in the hot Cretan sun and Carlo would often awake from a sun-induced slumber with Madeline caressing his chest hair or one particularly enthralling afternoon, his pubic hair.    

        Carlo's entries into his journal were perfunctory. They did this, saw that, ate something with tentacles. He would write in the morning, about the previous day's events, not worrying about how fresh things were in his mind. Carlo did not think to be descriptive or incisive in his writing. He saw what he saw, and wrote accordingly. He saw a tree, he wrote that he saw a tree. He witnessed a brilliant sunset unleashing a swirl of colors and wisps of clouds into the gathering twilight sky and wrote that the sun went down. He saw stone windmills stretching heavenward from amid a field of red poppies and wrote the people of Crete were poor.     

       Madeline insisted on reading from the unlined black book everyday. She poured over every entry. It was a laborious task; her English was poor. She was willing though to struggle with Carlo's language. He refused to write in French, claiming he could not "express" himself as well. Seemingly it did not matter what language Carlo employed, Madeline was simply happy to see Carlo working daily, and she would snatch up the journal at the first opportunity he allowed. She did not even seem to mind that Carlo was giving a textbook rendering of this beautiful island, he was writing. This made her happy.  

        She did question him once though about a sunset that had inspired them enough to jump and dance and wave their bottle of ouzo like drunken sailors, so blue had the sea turned, how colorful had the sky been painted by the waning light of a full, deep orange sun that seemed to sizzle when it touched the water, and asked why he wrote so simply about it. He had written that they watched a sunset. His answer was, "There will be others." Madeline had to nod in agreement.    

        One day, they took to the roads on a rented motorcycle, deciding to give their bodies a break from the sun. Madeline wore a halter top, shorts and a nylon windbreaker. Carlo braved the wind with a ripped t-shirt and cut-offs. They left after breakfast. Walking into town to rent the bike, they told the British lads who tended the shop they were going to ride into Iraklion to see the ancient ruins of Knossos. 

         They never made it to Knossos or Iraklion. Instead the day was spent following the narrow lanes and switchbacks that served as roads in the mountainous interior of Crete. Carlo attacked the curves and sped the short straight-aways as if on some cross-country race, skirting disaster with every twist and bump that threatened to send them over the edge of cliffs unguarded by rails. Laughing at Madeline's fear, for she gripped him tightly and screamed at every opportunity, her face grey if he were foolish enough to turn around and view it, Carlo throttled the motorcycle like this for hours. Desperate attempts by Madeline to point out some beautiful vista or scene were ignored by Carlo as he caromed past mysterious caves along rocky outcroppings; as he dived down into green, pastoral glens past colorful Byzantine churches nestled in their leafy confines; as he barreled through rocky fields flecked with red poppies and whitewashed farmhouses where turkeys puffed their chests and dragged their wings along the ground menacingly; as he tore into a small town, no more than a few houses clumped together, and past darkly dressed men sitting at tables set in the middle of the road, their voices of derision never reaching him. Groves of olive trees, and oranges and grape vines decorated the roadsides, but Carlo never saw them. They headed up into the mountains and skirted the snow line of Mount Idhi and passed fields of wheat and barley and sheep and goats dotting the slopes. A storm quickly overtook them, the clouds billowing grey and white, and drenched them and still they rode. Just as quickly, the sun reemerged and graced them with a double rainbow. 

         He was finally halted in his attempt to reach the afterlife when he was unable to scatter a herd of sheep that had clogged the road.  The creatures stared blankly back at him as if unbelieving that anyone would want to speed so quickly to escape this beautiful land. He had to stop. Madeline took the opportunity to hop off the motorcycle. 

         "Lunch," she said as she picked her way through the sheep.        

       "Where?"      

       "Up here," she said pointing to a small hill off the road. She waded through the sheep and climbed to an area of the hill that was flat enough for the two of them to lie down.       

         Carlo followed Madeline up after pushing the motorcycle through the herd. She already had her top off when he reached her. She was gazing out across the road and onto a plain skirted by snowcapped mountains.  She held her arms akimbo, an intent look on her face. Carlo approached her from behind and nestled his face in her wavy, raven-colored hair. Each hand cupped and squeezed a breast, fingers pinched her nipples. She allowed him to caress her in this way but exhibited no response. Her hands remained on her hips as she pondered the vast verdant plain that spread out before her. Skirted by snowcapped mountains and dotted by trees the plain was sectioned into recognizable fields with countless windmills, their white cloth sails twirling in a cool breeze. The mountains pierced a blue, now cloudless sky.     

         "I like that," she said.       

       "Oh, yeah," said Carlo as he pressed his hips against her buttocks. He began to work a hand into her shorts, tracing lines in the warm skin of her belly as he dove down towards her loins. But she pulled away.      

         "Stop," she said, still gazing out onto the beautiful field. "What is this place? I like this place."      

         "I don't know." Carlo wagged his head with disgust.      

       "Is it not beautiful?"      

       "As you are," he said, taking a step towards her. She stepped away and covered her breasts with her arms and continued to gaze out onto the Lassithi

Plain, as the sounds of the herd below their hillock perch muffled Carlo's protests.  

         Madeline leveled a stare at Carlo. 

       "A place like this you should know," she said.

       "Why?" Carlo sat on the ground and leaned against a rock. "I've never been here. How could I know this place?"

         "Because you should see more."

       "I see it now, I know it now. There's no great mystery. We've had this conversation before."

         "But these windmills and fields are beautiful. This place is peaceful and like no other. Forgive me this weakness. My romantic soul wants you to know about this place before our arrival. I want us to have come here through passion and not happenstance."

         Carlo began to protest, shaking his head and running fingers through his thick black hair, but Madeline approached him then, and held her finger to his lips. She then kissed him, her tongue probing his lips and she unbuttoned his shorts.  

         They eventually drove around to the far side of the Lassithi Plain, stopping again, this time at a cave called Dikteo Andro. A plaque there said in Greek and English this was the birthplace of Zeus. As they made to enter this cave a man offered to guide them. Carlo refused.  It was Carlo's belief to not be led, to not seek out advice, and he thought to wallow through this.

         "But, it is dark you will need a candle at least," said the man in English and holding up two candles. There was no one else at the cave. Their motorcycle was the only vehicle.  

         But Carlo only offered a gruff "no" in response. 

       "Without me you will perhaps miss all the mysteries of the cave. You will not understand that you found the birth chamber of Zeus. You will not know you have found the beginning of life on Earth."

         Madeline yanked on Carlo's arm. He puffed on his Gitane, an eye closed as he looked between the two.

         "No," he said and he turned again. 

       "It is not a lot of money for me to show you the cave. You will need the candles." 

         Carlo waved a hand over his head without turning around; he was near the mouth of the cave. There was a wooden railing following steep steps. Madeline ran back to the man and asked him in halting English how much were the candles. 

         "Fifty drachmas each. I will come with you, it is dangerous and wet. I will show you anyway, but you will not have to pay me. Only for the candles."

         Madeline flashed a broad smile and thanked the man and together they caught up to Carlo. He was standing at the entrance to the cave. He was about to protest, but she leveled another stare at him that drove all such thoughts away. As he passed Carlo the Greek thanked him, but did not meet his eyes and did not give off a triumphant air. He led them into the cave, at times taking Madeline by the hand, and pointed out the sights. Sometimes Carlo had to translate. At one point he led them to a small alcove and had them lean close. 

         "You see how smooth and curved this is. This is where the baby Zeus lay. Like a body of a baby, an impression in the rock. This is where Rhea gave birth to Zeus, the ruler of all the gods."

         Carlo had been translating the man's spiel quietly into French with his own take on things, making little jokes that Madeline did not laugh at, and the man, either not hearing or understanding, ignored. But when they arrived at the chamber Carlo stopped talking and listened intently. When the guide, his clean-shaven face dabbled with candle-light asked them to gently touch the worn rock of the alcove, Carlo hesitated after Madeline's turn. The guide urged him and Carlo held his breath and caressed the stone and felt out the curvature of a bottom and legs, a back and head. He then quickly withdrew his hand and laughed a short, giddy laugh, his eyes wide and his white teeth ablaze in the candle's light. 

         "From Rhea came order, from Chaos came Zeus," the man repeated as he led them up the stone steps and out of the cave. 

       It was Carlo who paid the man thrice what he would have normally gotten on such a slow day at the cave. He thanked the guide profusely. The man took the money, eyes cast downward with a slight nod of the head and Carlo felt ashamed that he had not accepted the man's offer to guide them at first. Carlo thought to say something, but the guide turned and walked away.

         They picked their way home carefully. Carlo was not interested in attacking the roads and they rode quietly, Madeline’s head resting lovingly on Carlo’s shoulder. They paused frequently to ponder the sights they had missed earlier, but said little to each other throughout the trip. Stopping in the little town they had previously barreled through they ate a quick meal of mousaka and spanakopita at a café. They held hands as they waited for their food. They arrived back at the pension after dark. It was cold and the wind was picking up; a storm was heading ashore. The two of them curled into bed together and fell fast asleep.      

        Had these feelings remained intact and had there been some way to preserve these emotions in vitro, so they could be reexamined under a magnifying glass or captured in a photograph complete with captions, perhaps their relationship would have endured. Carlo and Madeline would have been able to compare their current feelings of inadequacy and difficulty with the deeply tender emotions of that night. If only they learned to trust themselves, they would have understood how easily their life could have been together.

         ‘Look how good it was!’ They would cry, ‘could it be, again?’ Just uttering those words would perhaps have been enough for their relationship to survive.

Their visions of Nirvana would be conjoined and not set in opposite directions. Carlo never would have returned to the United States looking to refill the void he laughingly referred to as his life and Madeline would have reconsidered his quirks as those of an artist and regard them as a plus and not a debility.

         Alas, there was no memory they could evoke from the grave, no tape deck that had recorded their utterances or camera to show how close they were, no spell to concoct, no incantation, no chant.

         They fell out of love and no memory of better times could have saved it.

         But they did not fall out of love because Carlo did not take out the garbage, or drink in the cafes too much. Their relationship did not finally end for good because Madeline expected too much of Carlo. Indeed, their love had been true, and the trip to Crete proved this by how easily their relationship had restarted. Yet, their relationship did end, badly. It unraveled rather quickly, beginning with that very same night.

         What had led Carlo so far to a cramped bed in the back of a rental car hurtling down the highway towards a mysterious Texan rendezvous with a symbol of youth and vivacity and pop culture began when he seemingly awoke early to the shutters of the pension being rattled by fierce gusts of wind. It was that in-between time, when the night still fiercely gripped the Earth and the day unsure when to make an appearance. Rain lashed the pension in waves. Cold air surged through the room with every gust. Madeline was turned on her side, away from Carlo. He absently caressed her naked back and felt the long line of her spine and the curve of her buttocks as he lay in bed listening to the wind and the shutters rattling against the house. 

        A sadness consumed him then. He felt lost as he listened to the heavens flailing the pension. There was something missing, even with Madeline lying by his side. As he lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness listening to the wind howl and the ocean roil, the dark room suddenly expanded. The bed got smaller and the darkened ceiling disappeared. He groped for the sleeping Madeline, in an effort to anchor himself to reality, but she was no longer by his side. He gripped the sides of the bed as the wind took the bed sheets and angrily snapped them. 

         He began to float then. He floated away out of the room through the open roof, through the billowing, surging clouds, over the white capped waves of the black ocean that crashed again and again onto shore. He floated over the colorful fishing boats that struggled to remain upright in the angry sea. He floated over the town, darkened and shuttered against the weather. He floated inland, over capricious mountains ringed with snow, tethered in the clouds. He floated over the vast Lassithi Plain where white-flagged windmills spun rapidly in the chaos of the storm. Lashed, a latter day Odysseus, to one of the windmills, was their guide from the cave, his face distorted as he cried out against the storm for help. The guide worked one hand free and reached out for Carlo on his bed sheets. But Carlo was not able to steer this magic carpet and was only able to cry out in return, "Why!?"

          Then the winds blew him out of sight. Here was the beginning Carlo thought as he floated high above the Earth, just as the guide had told them. Here were all the answers to questions he had not yet known to ask.   

        Suddenly, the storm ended. The wind ceased. The weather calmed. A bright, full moon, a yellow so like straw, its mottled surface so easily seen, emerged from behind the clouds. The sea quieted and the waves became gentle lapping ripples. With the wind dying, his magic carpet turned into a sheet again and he began to fall. He fell, slowly, but not towards the plain and its windmills. As he gripped the bedding he fell towards the small town they had passed through that day, towards the table in the middle of the road, which was ringed by the old men dressed in black and who were playing dominos and hoisting glasses of wine and Ouzo to their lips. Carlo braced himself for the pain of landing, expecting his bones to crack, his limbs to tear from their sockets. He landed on the table startling the old men with his appearance, but Carlo alit with a grace and serenity that instantly shocked him into wakefulness, his breath coming quick.

         He awoke in his pension, Madeline by his side. Carlo padded naked over to the window and peeked through a crack in a wooden shutter. He could see the ocean, its white-capped waves thrashing in the light of a full moon. Opening the shutter, he stepped out onto the small balcony and watched the boats heave and pitch. He stood there in the salted air, naked, shivering, pondering his dream, until Madeline roused in bed and beckoned him to return to her side.           

        The next morning when he wrote, he described his dream. He wrote how alone he felt, how small and pinched and confined the dream made him feel. He described the plain dotted with churning windmills ringed by mountains and about the previously unknown and hence unasked questions that now welled inside of him. How his mind worked, where he had once been content to allow the day to pass, his mind churned like the windmills in his dream. His entire world had once been an easy and content progression from one day to the next and up till now his biggest concern had been to present himself as a viable suitor to Madeline, but now he labored over philosophies that were far beyond his present sphere of vision. He pondered his own mortality, his own finite existence and thought about the world as it would be without him, unending, unchanging. How long had the mountains been there and how long shall they remain? How long were the old men to remain? How long was the guide to be leashed in this manner?

         Suddenly for Carlo time began to contract, as if time itself was ending. He was reminded of shark’s teeth incessantly moving forward and being replaced, as though on a conveyor belt. Compressed, squeezed, small, Carlo had the desperate urge that morning to mark his time, to stake his claim on this planet and fretted that he had allowed too much time to already pass.

         He tried to assuage his fear by asking himself why the worry. He asked himself why he should care. He thought of all the places he had visited in his travels and thought he should be content with his lot; he was fortunate to have lived this lifestyle without tethers; but this did not appease him and he realized then throughout his travels he had been looking for something, some solution to his empty self. He thought of the countless people he had passed on the road, on the train; the people he had bumped into in bars and restaurants and wondered what made them happy. His thoughts flew away home to the United States and he thought of New York and the masses of people there, and thought of all their deaths, but not in some sadistic hated way, but in a pondering, worried way. He thought of himself walking down a crowded Fifth Avenue, searching for solutions in the eyes of the people who passed him, their eyes never meeting his, ignoring him, avoiding him and his inane questions. Despite their lives, their apparent hopes and dreams and the happiness each life should brim with, he concluded these were not solutions. These were only transient emotions. There was no solution. No one had yet solved death and yet no one had come out and pontificated that simply living was an accomplishment.

        He wrote at a feverish pace that morning, the words flowing from him easily. Though laboring with thoughts and emotions, several blank pages of the ledger were filled. All combined that day he wrote thrice the output of his previous week of writing. At one point Madeline intruded on his little web of thought by asking if he was ready for breakfast and he simply barked at her to leave him alone.

        Emerging from his trance sometime around ten, Madeline squealed with delight and made for the journal. But, Carlo refused her; he would not allow her to read the day's entry, despite her glowering anger. "It is folly," he said in explanation, which was not enough for Madeline and she cursed him and reminded him of their agreement. Carlo held fast and shrugged his shoulders and hid the journal from her and later that evening he ripped out the pages from that day's writing and stuffed them into one of his shoes. 

        Afterwards he returned to his previous style of giving a textbook rendering to the day's events. So curious was Madeline about the missing entry, now shredded and burned by Carlo, that she lost all interest in reading daily from the journal and the spark that had caused their love to re-bloom was doused that day, never to rekindle. Within weeks of their return to Paris, Madeline had him out of the apartment.

         Given the opportunity, Madeline would speak of a lack of trust that had finally broken her will to continue. Had he allowed her to see so deeply into his emotions, had he not worried of the consequences of baring one's soul to another, as lovers are expected to do for each other in some undying quest for parity, Carlo would have recaptured his Madeline.

         Carlo would never have described his refusal as trepidation, but truthfully felt folly in fawning laboriously over such thoughts. Introspection leads to an inert state he would contend.

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