From: valerie@sdacs.ucsd.edu (Valerie E Polichar)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: Short Story:  Summertime_In_Lindos
Date: 28 Aug 92 00:50:08 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: University of California, San Diego

I posted this about five years ago, so it's technically a repost.
----

 Summertime in Lindos 
  
 
She was standing on the east side of the Mediterranean when the war
broke out.  The hotel bar had long since closed and a tour bus was
making its long, slow climb up to the Akropolis of Lindos for the night show.
She was almost alone on the beach and she heard the sirens very soft, far away,
like a fog horn.  On the far shores of the mainland
she could see lights beginning to go on.
 
At the other end of the hotel's fenced-off section of shoreline,
the German couple from the suite next door was getting up and dusting
off sand.  "Halloo," Marilyn called down to them.  "You heard the sirens?"
 
The woman wiped wet strands of hair from her chunky face as she
approached.  "Ya, I heard," she said.  "It is all the time, here."
She looked pointedly at her husband and said a few words, quickly, in
German.  He nodded and began to run back along the sand.  "I have
forgotten the bag," she said to Marilyn with a smile.  "Every day I
forget it now!  I think he would kill me, you know?"  She laughed
broadly.
 
"The sirens," Marilyn repeated.  "You heard them?  They're fighting over
there!"  She thrust a frantic arm out towards the water, but the woman
just shook her head.
 
"It is all the time, here."  Her husband ran up, panting; she took her
purse from him and they turned back towards the hotel.
"We will maybe be here a while longer, perhaps.  Good evening,"
she said, kindly.
 
Marilyn didn't answer, just stood staring at their backs until they
disappeared into the lit lobby.  In the dim light she could just make
out her toes, half-brown with sand.  The water was a puzzle of moonlight
and murk; she squinted hard and looked for boats, but there was no way
to be sure.
 
Jerry would be in the room by now, she thought, ordering bad Greek wine
and olives, hoping he could pass for a native Athenian vacationing in
the islands.  He thought they didn't know he poured the retsina down
the sink a minute after they left.  It lived up to its name: retsina
for resin, like bitter tree sap.  The olives were salty and tasted like
the ocean; Jerry would save her a few, she thought, if she went up
soon.  Otherwise he'd give up and eat them himself.  It was hard to
worry Jerry; he wouldn't even wonder why she was gone, just solemnly
sit and eat olives and watch Greek newscasts on the tiny
black-and-white TV.  She stared out over the water.

"Halloo there!"  She turned, startled, and saw the German woman waving
merrily from her room on the second floor.  "You are sleeping on the
sand?  It is cold!"  The words floated blurrily down.  Marilyn waved
back.

"No, I'm coming in soon," she yelled.  The war is coming, she wanted to
call, run, we have to hide, something, there's war on the mainland.
She forced a grin, turned back towards the sea.  The woman laughed and
shut the window with a bang.

Marilyn dragged her toe through the wet sand one last time and decided
to go in; there was nothing for her out here but the water and the
faint noises on the far shore.  She pushed open the lobby door with
effort, dragging her muddy feet on the carpet.  The night girl eyed her
curiously.

"You heard," Marilyn asked, slowly, "the sirens?"

"Yes, I heard."

"The war," said Marilyn.  "It is the war, isn't it?"

"It's the war."  The girl picked up a magazine, and idly began flipping
pages.

"But - " Marilyn said, helplessly.  "What should we do?"

"It is always the war,"  said the girl.  "What do you want to do?"


The elevator creaked up to the second floor and settled with a bump.
She hurried out into the hall and found herself running towards the
suite, glancing fearfully over her shoulder now and then.  Not knowing
quite what she was running from, she fumbled the keys out of her skirt
pocket and jittered the door open, locking it behind her.  Jerry sat in
the middle of the warm room, staring at the television.  The sound was
off; fuzzy figures moved back and forth.  "Hi, kid," he said without
turning around.

She dropped her keys on the carpet and walked gingerly over to him.
"Hi," she said, uncertainly.  He looked at her, finally, and grabbed
her hands.

"Mar, you're shaking, baby, what's wrong?  Did anything happen?  Did
one of those goddamn Greek bastards try to talk you up?" She pulled
away, shook her head.  "Baby, what's wrong?  Talk to me, hey?"

"Are there any olives left?" she asked.

"On the counter, I think.  Unless I ate them all.  Hey, you okay or what?"

She found the olives, carried the plate over to the bed and sat down.
"I'm all right.  -- Did you hear the sirens?"

"Sirens?  Like police sirens?  No."

"No, the public sirens, the loudspeakers.  You know.  Across the water."

"Dunno what you mean, baby.  But no, I didn't hear anything.  Something
wrong?"

Marilyn ate olives, mechanically, one at a time, putting the pits
carefully over on one side of the dish.  "No, nothing wrong.  I just
wondered if you heard them."  Through the window she could still see
the lights on the far shore.  They were brighter than before; she knew
some of them were fire.  She felt herself beginning to glaze over, like
an old photograph.  Her gaze wandered to the television, where muffled
figures waved brightly from limousines, and back to her plate, where
the mud-brown pit-pile grew slowly larger.


	-Valerie Polichar
-- 
Valerie Polichar				valerie@ucsd.edu

     "Our dreams our real; our lives are bitter lies."
Newsgroups: alt.prose