Everything Beautiful Began After Part 5

She nodded. "I speak Italian too, and Dutch, but no Greek."

"G.o.d in heaven," Henry said with a l.u.s.tful groan. "All men love flight attendants."

Rebecca raised her eyebrows with mild distaste.

"I love the little hats. Were you good at it?"

"I think so,"

"Did you ever have any difficult pa.s.sengers?"

"Never," she laughed.

"That means they all were-tell me some more about it, I'm really interested, really interested!"

Rebecca brushed a few strands of flame-red hair from her face and took a drink before speaking.

"To see those people there like that, up there in the sky with me-some sleeping, some reading, but most staring up at the television, was very bizarre."

"Really?"

"I wanted to paint them, not serve little plates of warm pasta."

"Is it true that the pilots seduce the flight attendants?"

"No," she said, reaching for her gla.s.s, "I don't think that's true."

"Do you still have the uniform?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Do you want me to go and put it on for you?"

"Christ, are you serious?" he said. Then he got up and went into the hall. He returned with a clean ashtray and a blanket.

"In case you get chilly," he said.

They talked for another hour, staring at one another intently between sentences. When the last of the wine filled Rebecca's gla.s.s, Henry gathered everything up off the table and carried it inside. Rebecca followed him holding a cigarette.

Henry balanced the plates and bowls in the sink, then turned the faucet on. Rebecca sat down at the kitchen table and watched. The table was dark wood. There was a terra-cotta bowl of salt and a bowl of lemons. The lights were very bright.

"I think I'll do this tomorrow," he said, looking at the mess of dirty bowls and cutlery.

He went to the freezer and removed a small tray of baklava, which he cut into triangular pieces with a large knife. The plastic handle of the knife had been melted out of shape by the rim of a very hot pot.

Henry ladled thick cream over each piece and gave a plate to Rebecca with a fork.

"I don't want any," she said.

He held the plate in the air for a few moments, then set it down in front of himself.

"We'll share mine then."

They chewed the sweet, heavy baklava without talking. Rebecca looked at the cream.

"What's your surname?" she asked him.

"Bliss."

"You're joking," she said. "Bliss? Like happiness?"

His mouth was full, so he nodded.

"Henry Bliss," she laughed. "It does mean happiness, yes?"

"Pure, wanton happiness," Henry replied swallowing.

"Henry Bliss," she said. "It sounds nice, Henry Bliss, Henry Bliss, Henry Bliss, Henry Bliss."

Henry stopped chewing for a moment.

"What's your surname?"

"Baptiste."

"Jesus!"

And they both laughed without knowing why.

Then Rebecca said the light was very bright. Henry lit candles and turned it off. Their faces glowed in the darkness. Henry lit a cigarette and pa.s.sed it to Rebecca.

"I can't believe I had dinner with a man I picked up at Monastiraki," she said.

"You didn't pick me up-I came with the book. Where is it, by the way?" He asked and then realized what had happened before she could speak.

"The foyer at the museum," she said. "Should we go back tomorrow?"

"I have to go away tomorrow."

"For how long?"

"Eight days."

"Should I miss you?" Rebecca said coyly.

Henry smiled. "Yes, please-it's only to Cambridge for a series of lectures on new carbon-dating technology that my boss thinks I should hear."

"Will you send me a postcard?"

"I will-and don't look so sad. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, doesn't it?"

"We'll see," Rebecca said.

Henry put down his gla.s.s and balanced his hand above the flame of a candle.

They both watched.

"Agapi mou," he said. "My love."

Rebecca picked up her gla.s.s and swirled the contents, as though it were a tiny ocean at the mercy of her reticence.

"It's just an expression," he said. "I think I'm drunk."

"Sorry," she said, pa.s.sing the cigarette back to him. "I just realized we were supposed to be sharing this. I suppose I should tell you that I sort of have a boyfriend."

Henry retreated from the flame of the candle.

"d.a.m.n," he said, then looked at her. "Is it serious?"

"Actually he's not really my boyfriend at all because I don't want to see him anymore." She reached for another cigarette. "Maybe I'm a bit drunk too."

With vague coolness, Henry said: "Don't hurt him."

"What do you mean?"

"He probably loves you."

Rebecca sighed. "He does, I think."

"Well, don't hurt him."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because if I were your boyfriend, I would want it to be serious."

"He's not my boyfriend-I don't know why I said it. Anyway, what does serious mean?"

"Ask me in a year from now," Henry said, "and I might have an answer for you."

A cool wind pushed through the blinds.

Henry stood and leaned across the table to kiss her. The awkwardness of where he had chosen to embrace was quickly overcome when she stood and they both stepped into the hall, toward his bedroom, kissing and b.u.mping into things. The floor felt cool against Rebecca's bare feet. His bedroom was dark. He handled her with gentleness, undressing her quickly but deliberately.

She let her dress drop and then stood out of it. Henry reached up her thighs with both arms as though quietly imploring. She squeezed his hands and guided them purposefully to the places on her body she wanted to feel him the most, any hesitation having long been dissolved by wine.

She opened her eyes when she felt the weight of his body s.h.i.+ft. He was hard and his body was heavy. The feeling that began in the market that afternoon had grown in power. And from far away, something was dragging her to a place where she would momentarily lose herself. She dug her nails fiercely into his shoulders and bit him hard. He didn't flinch but slowed, suspending himself above her, strands of muscle in his shoulders like strings. She swirled in the currents of her life, where her sense of self was revealed as arbitrary, extraneous, and so easily washed away by the force of that singular intent.

She grabbed on to his black hair, exhaling savagely.

Afterward, they lay on their backs, holding hands. Two people divided by the illusion of experience. All was silent.

Like a single drop, she hung upon the edge of sleep.

He reached for her hand in the darkness and together they fell from this world and into another.

Chapter Eight.

When Rebecca opened her eyes it was still dark. Henry was not in the bed, but standing against the shutters. Cool air was pouring in. She pulled back the sheet.

"That feels nice," she said.

He turned around. "You'd be shocked at how early it is."

Through the open shutters, Rebecca could see into a bright apartment across the street. A man stood s.h.i.+rtless over a pan of boiling water. Henry went into the kitchen and came back with two gla.s.ses of orange juice, which he set on the bedside table.

"Do you see him?" he said.

The man lowered several white towels into a nest of steam.

"What's he doing?" Rebecca said.

"Boiling towels."

"He looks miserable," she said.

"He has a right to look miserable."

Rebecca lifted her head from the pillow and opened her eyes very wide.

"That's the neighbor who left the fish outside my door."

"But why is he miserable?"

"Five years ago his wife and baby were hit by a taxi on the corner."

Rebecca gasped.

"The child died, and when the wife was out of hospital she left him and went back to her parents' village. The woman downstairs told me," Henry said.