White Vespa

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Authors: Kevin Oderman
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cable to the shutter release and when he was ready moved his chair off to the side.
    â€œWell,” he said, “show me.”
    When he looked up, he flinched. It wasn’t the same face. All her extreme angularity was still there, but it no longer looked natural; it looked to have been made, forged, held in tongs and hammered into shape. Myles began to make pictures. He encouraged her to arrange herself, to push her angles into the angles of the confined frame of the divan. And to dream. To imagine the worst, and the best, love and falling. And a hard history seemed to flicker over her face, to contort her limbs.
    â€œThat’s enough.” He said finally. He’d shot three rolls, a hundred and eight frames. He had no idea what was on the negatives. But Anne looked drained.
    â€œYou okay?” he asked.
    â€œI must be. I feel like I’m just waking up, a little foggy.” She paused, “That was very strange. Everything was normal and then I looked up at you looking expectant sitting next to your camera and whoosh, I was gone. Like a trance, I guess.”
    â€œHuh.”
    Then one of those awkward silences started. Finally, Myles forced himself to stand up, suggesting a ride on the Vespa, lunch at the point, beyond the clock tower and the boatyards, at the last taverna before the road turned to gravel and away from Yialós.
    Anne stopped in front of the saw-edged mantle, looking at the photo of the man in white.
    â€œI thought you didn’t take pictures of people,” she said.
    â€œThat photo was an accident,” he said abruptly, not wanting to explain
how a photo of someone else could turn out to be a self-portrait.
    â€œBesides,” he added, “it’s just a street scene. It’s portraits I don’t take.”
    â€œExcept for me.”
    â€œExcept for you.”

Nineteen
    21 June
    Â 
    They sat face to face over a small table, a half-eaten lunch between them. Myles had eaten his half; Anne had watched him eat it. They were drinking red wine, a dark red wine called mávro, “black,” by the Greeks. Myles kept remembering Anne on the divan, and even with the live woman sitting at the table across from him, he was distracted by the image of the woman he expected to appear in the developing tray. He wanted to be alone, to study that woman alone. When they’d finished with the camera they’d almost run from it, uneasy, as if they’d found themselves suddenly standing too close together. The ride down on the Vespa, Anne with her arms around his waist, her head turned sideways and pressed to his back, hadn’t helped any.
    So they sat quietly under the arbor at the point, Myles looking out toward Nímos, Anne toward Sými town. The light dappled the green table top, but the light on the water was all glare. There was too much of it. Myles was fighting down the impulse to confess, to disclose too much too soon. He wanted to see those photographs. Anne’s eyes were down; she was toying with the food on her plate.
    â€œWhen do I get to see the photos?”
    â€œSoon,” Myles said. “Whenever you want; I’ll develop them tonight or maybe tomorrow morning.”
    Paul came into view, strolling, gesturing elegantly as he talked. He was talking to a woman Myles didn’t think he’d seen around town. They were both in swimsuits and must have come from one of the inlets beyond the point favored by those who liked to sunbathe nude. Myles raised one hand, and Paul saw him and smiled broadly, heading for their table, but he could hardly have avoided them, as the track ran right under the taverna’s shady arbor.
    â€œEh, Paul, working on that tan?”
    â€œMyles! This is Pru, a new friend.”
    They nodded. Myles turned to introduce Anne, but before he could say anything he saw that they’d met.

    â€œAnne, been a long time,” Paul said.
    â€œI guess so.”
    â€œWhat are you doing

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