One Way or Another(9)

“Everything okay?” I asked, hesitating for a moment, giving him an opportunity to eye me up and down, which of course he did.

“Better now you are here” was his reply, making me laugh.

“Corny,” I replied. “Hackneyed, if you want the truth. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.”

He was silent, though still looking at me. I felt uncomfortable and made to move on, but he said, “Wait.”

I waited.

“Is your hair naturally that color?”

He could not have said anything that would have surprised me more. My hair was pulled straight back and firmly anchored with a clip, as per the rules of the house. No hairs in our food, no mane sweeping sexily over one shoulder, enticing men when you should have been selling them more wine. I said yes, cautiously, but with a professional smile, it was real. He was looking intently at me and I was uncomfortable. I wanted to leave but he said, again, to wait. He felt in the inside breast pocket of his jacket and took out a thin leather wallet from which he removed a card. He handed this to me.

“I have connections in advertising,” he said. “I know there’s a shoot coming up in Turkey and Greece. The model has to have red hair, your color hair. Unfortunately today, the girl they wanted fell and broke her ribs and has had to back out. What they are looking for is that great mane, not that they can’t add to it with extensions, but this is an outdoor, sea and sand, wind-blowing deal. The hair must be right.”

He paused, still looking at me. Out of the corner of my eye I caught my supervisor lifting a hand to call me back to my job. I palmed the card quickly and agreed to call him. Double-sealing my fate. Which is why I am now drowning in the cool, clear azure waters off the coast of Turkey.





7

It was Apollo Zacharias who saw her. He was the owner and proud captain of the fast black-hulled trading boat, the Zeus, a modified version of the Turkish twin-masted wooden gulet. He happened to be on the bridge, binoculars held to his eyes, scanning the sea and the storm clouds, when he spotted what looked to be seaweed, kelp or something like that, spiraling upward. Except the seaweed was attached to a woman’s body. It was her hair he was looking at, floating above her.

Yelling for help, he ran to the deck and leaned over the rail. His crew, three bare-chested men, arrived at a gallop.

“Turn the boat,” Apollo screamed. He was always at full throttle when excited. “There’s a woman in the water. Take care now, look out for her.”

He pushed back the gold-braided captain’s hat he always wore to ensure people knew his status, leaning anxiously over the side as the boat made its maneuver. He was a stocky man, Greek, a sailor all his life, but this was the first time he’d seen a woman’s body floating past his ship. Fifty years old, experienced, married with three children, owner of a retirement home north of Athens, he would rather not have seen her. It could only mean trouble. Now he had to do something about it.

“Throw down the net,” Zacharias ordered, worried because he could no longer see the hair. She might have gone too deep; the currents were treacherous, causing riptides that could suck you under in minutes. But no. There! He could see her now.

“Get in the water,” he yelled to his crew. “Catch her.” It was as though he was after a marlin.

The net was lowered, as well as an inflatable dinghy. Two of his men jumped after it, hitting the water with a thud. The engine was shut down. The only sound was the slap of waves against the black hull and the cry of seabirds overhead searching for prey. The gulet heaved silently on the swell.

Zacharias pushed his captain’s hat from his sunburned brow, leaning anxiously over the side. He had seen her, hadn’t he? That was red hair and not seaweed? The heat penetrated his shirt, layering his skin with sweat. Maybe he should have left well enough alone, not gotten himself into this situation. Finding bodies at sea meant a lot of explaining to police, a lot of paperwork, more angst when he should have been looking forward to a peaceful retirement. But that was a woman he had seen down there. Or a woman’s body. Who knew which? He would soon find out.





ANGIE


Am I now a “body”? A mere creature? A person from whom all emotion has been stilled? It’s strange but I can see myself, a smaller image of me, somewhere above my broken head, floating in a deep blue sky crisscrossed with meshes that tangle with my hair, pulling at my head, pulling me upward. Please, I want to say, please leave me. I am calm and peaceful here. I do not want to feel again, to have to remember my own vulnerability, my “innocence,” or at least the kind of innocence I thought I had, where I knew who I was. I knew how to deal with men, how to take care of myself; I was no silly girl ready to be duped by the next smooth talker. After all, I worked in the smart restaurant where men always gave the eye to an attractive girl. We expected it, knew how to fend off the pushy ones, how to smile at the guys out for the night from under the wife and kids. Girls like me “understood” them. And if sometimes, we had a “fling,” well why not, though the truth was we were always hoping to find Mr. Right. Or at least be “discovered.” And that is what happened to me. I was suddenly, amazingly, discovered, and all because of my red hair.

Mom would have been surprised. She had always wondered where the red came from. She herself had been blond as long as I could remember, covering up the gray as she grew older, only to depart this world, my world, too young. It was the saddest day of my life, the saddest year before it when she was sick, the saddest after, when she was gone. It had been two years now and I still could not think of her without tearing up. Which was another reason I was ready for an adventure, a change; a radical change.