Chapter 28

     Ari had been all over the Greek Islands during his years as correspondent, but now they seemed different.  Not just because of time, maybe because of Sam’s influence. Maybe because of his obsessive commitment to understanding his own creativity or maybe… just because Sam was sitting atop one of the most ancient pieces of ground in all of Greece, reminding him how brief his own life and hers might be in the big picture.  The island of Delos was one of the oldest remnants of Greek history known and seemed most fitting as he gazed up at Sam standing atop Mt. Kynthos, the birthplace of Apollo. She seemed naturally suited in this image with the Island of Mykonos in the distance and the crumbling stone at her back of the island’s summit, It had taken them but 20 minutes by boat to reach this once religious capital of the Ionians in 1,000 BC, but they were into their 5th day of wandering about now, and although they enjoyed the light headedness of eating only vegetables and bread with a goat skin of wine for the present time, he could see a longing for something in her eyes as she gazed back at Mykonos.  He lifted his camera once more, logging in his four-hundredth-and-something picture in three weeks of pursuing his quest for the real Sam.  “Are you missing something?”

     Sam didn’t answer.

     Click.

     “A private moment?”

     Sam didn’t answer.

     Click.

     She turned and looked down at him.  “You don’t have any eyes to see the world, except through a lens, do you?”

     Ari slowly lowered the camera, holding his fixation on her for another moment.  He then put the camera down, opened his knapsack and retrieved the wine flask.  He lifted it, “Wine?”

     She didn’t answer.

     He then lifted the water skin from the bag, “Water?”

     She maintained her gaze on him.  It wasn’t a belligerent stare.  It wasn’t a challenging look she fixed on him.  It wasn’t even an “I want an answer” look. It was more of a maternal look, an understanding that he didn’t feel comfortable with having offered his divergent offerings of food and drink.

     “Do you?” she persisted.

     “Do I what?” he answered.

     She nodded and walked to another corner of the summit.  Ari held the wine flask above his head and squeezed the skin, taking one swallow in the ceremonial fashion befitting a rationed pleasure on this hot, desolate ruin of time.  The warm red wine had the unmistakable musty taste of a Greek dinner wine and he smiled, wiping the trickle from his chin.

     She turned once again, studied his face, and walked down to his level.  In a voice that he had never heard before, she said, “May I take a picture of you?”

     He paused, taken aback.  “Me?” he asked.

     “You’ve taken hundreds of me, why not one of you?”

     “Why?” he pondered.  He dropped his chin, thought a moment.  “No reason, really, just…”

     She reached down and gently lifted the camera from him and positioned herself, straddling his chest.  “Lay your head back and rest it on the stone.” 

      He slowly reclined, stifling the sudden surprise, for not only was this not the position, or role, he was used to (photographer straddling his body, staring down at him through a lens) but that the Egyptian cotton sheath she had become attached to and had washed and warn daily – was all that covered her slender body.  That realization, coupled with the powerless feeling of his camera being pointed at him, left him feeling uneasy, vulnerable…

     “Feeling defenseless?” she muttered and grinned as she clicked off three shots.

     “What do you mean?” Ari managed to say in surprise, having a third realization that he did, in fact, feel defenseless. 

     “Your thoughts… they’re so transparent at times,” she whispered. 

Click.  Click.

     Ari squinted up at the lens.

     “Perfect,” she uttered in a whisper, leaving Ari with an indelible impression of his subject in complete control of him.  She depressed the magic button one more time.  “Now hold still.  I’ve seen you do this with me, so give me a moment.”  She zoomed in tight, took a deep breath, held, and pressed.  She knelt down upon his body, slowly lowering the camera from her eye as she released her breath.  Ever so slowly she moved her head to his, holding back the last of the exhalation until she was but a fraction of an inch from his lips.  She then closed her eyes and allowed her breath to merge with his.   After a moment, she reopened her eyes and asked, “Want to see?” 

     He didn’t answer.  His breath was short, not wanting to disturb whatever the moment was. 

     “Well?” she repeated, adjusting her dress to get more comfortable as she nuzzled her body even closer to his.  He remained still.  This was not a moment he had anticipated.  Her perspiring body was unexpected.

     “Well, what?” he muttered.

     “You… feeling defenseless?” she repeated.

     He squeezed his eyelids tightly, gave a quick shake of his head as if clearing some kind of shroud from his consciousness.  He opened his eyes and took another look at his predicament. “Yes,” he muttered, “Defenseless.”

     She nestled her head beside his and lay still.  “Good, now we’re starting to understand what this is all about.”  The words were gentle.  The voice, however, was one that Ari had never heard before.  A voice she had shared with only one other audience… a voice unknown to Ari, but all too familiar to Max. 

     As the two lay motionless, a sound in the distance went unnoticed. 

     “Caw, Caw, Caw.”  Against the clear Aegean sky, the hovering raven blinked and hovered suspended high above them.

***

      Her fingers caught the clear blue waters as the boat’s wake swept over them.  Ari cradled her as the old fisherman (part time island taxi) guided his green and red motorboat the short distance back to Mykonos.  The air was cooler now and both their heads tilted toward the sky, letting the salt air rush past them.  As droplets of sea water cascaded across their closed eyes, both wore smiles of unmistakable acceptance and honesty.   Suddenly, above the chatter of the old Evinrude motor, “I must go back to him now, Ari.  Today.”   Ari’s eyes squinted but did not open.

     Once again, high above, riding the afternoon breezes between Delos and Mykonos, flew the black raven.  “Caw, Caw, Caw.”

***

     They didn’t speak much the next few hours.  After packing their meager belongings, they caught a cab to the small airport servicing flights to and from Athens, boarded a twin-engine shuttle and sat silent during the one-hour flight.

***

     Upon arrival, Sam wasted no time in finding a telephone and ringing Max.  He wasn’t at the hotel.  He had checked out.  With no forwarding information, she left him a message on his cell phone and another message on Jerry’s cell phone.  Both contained the same glib message.  “Max – Sorry for the long silence.  It was necessary.  Will explain whenever you come home.  I will arrive Los Angeles Thursday.  I love you.”

  While she made her phone calls, Ari made arrangements for their flight back to New York and her continued flight from New York to Los Angeles.   As he walked away from the counter, he paused.  He knew to give in, to pause and reflect, he could lose his resolve.  But this was about the hundredth time in the last few hours that his determination had been interrupted.  This is not how he wanted it to end, and to allow himself to dwell on it was to labor the disappointment and yes, he thought, this new and unexpected experience with another person.  Perhaps that is what is so troubling, he thought.  He never thought this quest would go beyond the computer screen.  But, it had.  He didn’t even know why, for this was not his first truly unique relationship with a woman, and there had been many times when the end had been bitter sweet and he had gone on, chalking it up to… he’d never been able to define this kind of reality for himself.  He knew one thing about the past few weeks, however.  What had started out as a project, another commitment to his unique creative process, had left him confused and unfocused.  It was an experience that had him begging his within for answers.  He was experiencing an emotion that he had all but rendered defenseless with his ability to control mind and emotion, especially the fearful emotion of pain.  Pain management was a discipline he had mastered through too many war assignments; too many surprise domestic battles of the rich and very famous seen during his paparazzi days.  Too many successes, he thought.  Too many successes in avoiding the kind of life experiences he knew to be common among people with normal perceptions, normal drives, normal desires to just get on with it… the normal instinct to survive.  The thoughts came rushing in on him now.  The villagers of Serbia and Croatia, the Vietnamese, even the victims of the most suppressive society he had ever been with, the Iraqis… even in their pain and suffering, they understood and could enjoy reacting normal to their experiences.  Why can’t I?  he thought as he suddenly realized he had walked across the terminal and was coming up on Sam as she stepped from the phone booth.   Suddenly it hit him.  He wasn’t finished with his work and he was sure she wasn’t finished with the reason she had gone with him in the first place. 

     “Sam, God damn it, it was your idea to do all this.  It was your craziness that caused all this to happen.  Now you want to just stop it dead in its tracks?”

     Sam did a double take and then smiled her condescending way, “My idea?  Craziness?         Ari…”

      At that precise moment, a moment, even Ari, with his rich imagination, would have called a moment “out of the surreal… at that moment his cell phone rang, it’s LCD window conveying the caller. 

     “Yes, Harrison. This better be an emergency.”

     “No, Ari, It’s not.  This is…”

     Ari hung up and tucked his phone back into his pocket.  Just as he gathered his focus back to the still staring, “oblivious to the outside world, Sam,” his phone rang again.  Again, the window indicated Harrison.  “Yes.  It must be more than an emergency…”

     “God, damn it, Ari.  Don’t you hang up again, God damn it.”

      Annoyed at the interruption, Ari raised his finger to Sam as he turned and listened.  “Okay, Harrison.  You’ve got a one-minute pause factor.”

     “Pause factor?  Who the hell you think you’re talking to?  Who the hell is paying your crazy bills, contributing to your fucking retirement, giving….”

     “Stop it, Harrison.  Get to the point.  We both have a need right now, so let’s get on with it.”

     “I swear to God, you little prick, when you get back here, I’m going to fire you.”

     Ari spoke through clamped teeth, “Your point, Harrison.  You seem upset.”

     “Upset?  Upset?” gasped Harrison, losing his voice.  “Okay.  Okay.  Your pictures are sending me to an early death.”

     Ari took a deep breath and leaned against the wall, beckoning Sam to come to him.          She hesitated, then with a flirtatious flare, she sauntered up to him, as…

      “If you don’t like the pictures, Harrison, just say, ‘I don’t like the pictures,’” quipped Ari.

      Harrison exploded.  “This isn’t about liking or disliking, your pictures for fucking sake.  Doesn’t matter if you or I like them or not,” Harrison seized control of his rant and in straight forward dialog, said, “they’re fucking nuts.  That’s why they should sell.  Now… have you got any idea…” finding himself going over the edge again emotionally, “… any idea how fucking vulnerable I am, the magazine is, you are?”

     After a short pause, Ari maintaining his gaze into Sam’s eyes, replied, “to what, Harrison?”

     “Jesus, Ari, a lawsuit.  Has it ever occurred to you that Max and Samantha are going to come unglued when they see themselves on the cover looking like… God only knows what?”

      “Just a minute, Harrison,” whispered Ari.  He put the phone back on its clamp hanging from his belt and sat down, pulling Sam down with him.  They both sat cross-legged, looking like a couple of nomads about to have a meeting of the minds as they gazed at one another.

     Temporarily ignoring the phone, “We were at your craziness,” whispered Ari.

     “No,” smiled Sam, “Your craziness.” 

     “That’s what he says.”

Sam glanced at the phone on Ari’s belt, still showing a flashing green light indicating the line open. “You mean him?”

     Ari lowered his eyelids, “Yeah… him.”

     “Who him,” whispered Sam.

     “His fucking boss,” came the squeezed little voice from the phone.

     Ari picked the phone back up, “You’re still my boss, Harrison?”

     Ari returned the phone to its clamp as the distorted screaming reply drifted, a reply he knew was something like, “yes”… at least for the time being. 

     Sam grinned.  “He’s afraid you might sue.”

     “I might.”

Ari picked the phone back up.  “She might sue.”

     “God damn it, Ari, listen to me.  If there is even a little chance… she’s right there… telling you she might sue, and you just say she might sue?”

     “Yeah.  She might sue.  But, Harrison, is that what this call is all about… you scared to death she, or Max might sue?”

      “What the hell you think this call is about, if it’s not about that… suing, loosing the magazine, you losing your job, your career, your… shit…”

     “Okay,” said Ari, “Tell you what.  We both need to think about this, you know, the pros and cons of a lawsuit, and then…”

     “Pros and cons?  You are fucking nuts.”

     “I know that, Harrison, and you’ve known it from the first moment you looked at one of my pictures.  So that makes us both nuts to have gone this far.   So, take a deep breath, ‘the pros and cons’ rule?  Later.”

      Ari hung up and looked at Sam more seriously than ever before.  “What do you think?  Is there anyway to be safe but not sorry?”

     “I don’t get that” said Sam.

     “To throw it out the window, these past weeks, the experiences, the God knows how many photos, to chuck it all might be safe, but then what?”

     “Then maybe we’ll be sorry.  Is that what you mean?”

     Ari nodded.  “Yeah.  Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

     Sam stood up.  “I’ve told Max I’m on my way… that I love him… and…”

     “And what?” prodded Ari.  He rose and faced her.

      “And… he knows me well.  He’ll know there is still something I’m not finished with.”  She turned without waiting for Ari’s reaction.

     Ari stood for a moment until there was safe distance between them, with several travelers creating a physical barrier.  “Not finished with what, Sam?” he shouted.

     The travelers paused and glanced at Ari and Sam, then continued as Sam continued walking toward the gate, throwing her voice back to him.  “We’re going to miss the plane, Ari.”