The first seizure occured in 1994, wintering in Crete. I have always wondered if something happened. I sense it like a dream I can't recall in the morning. Not a memory, but a shadow.

This account, being, as it is, a retrospect, we could assign them thoughts. Like cartoon bubbles with three ellipsis circles, cloudlike, above their heads.
Why didn’t we bring water? That’s Linda’s thought-bubble. And it recurs several times over the next 48 hours. At the moment, the cause is obvious. They are walking in the midday heat. Unprepared. This small path between Lutro and Agia Rumelli wanders along the southern, undeveloped shore of Crete for about 6 miles, among dry chaparral cliffs, Libyan sea and insignificant beaches. It was Orren’s idea. He found the little village on a map, totally cut off from the rest of the island. No roads. People who sell their fish at various larger towns along the coast. Shawn, from Bristol had been there.
“Nice place. Romantic. Maybe a bit sleepy.”
Shawn got there by boat. Hitched a ride from a local. At the moment, he wouldn’t walk more than fifty feet from where he slept, ate, and played cards in the Youth Hostel at Rethymnon, on the north shore. That larger distance being to the Café Neon where raki was served in the afternoon. It was difficult to imagine, but in previous months, Shawn had toured the island in great detail. He’d visited Minoan sites, driven through villages where cart and mule were the primary modes of transport, slept with several youth of undisclosed (by him) gender near the University, and run out of money in Rethymnon. Shawn had convinced them to stay and explore Crete. Originally, they had planned to go on through a grand tour of the archipelago, heading eastward to Cyprus and Turkey.
Linda and Orren are both shocked that they’ve spent a month on Crete, not island-hopping at all, but the thought doesn’t register as words but rather as a vague pressure as when something is left behind. They both experienced the same feeling when they left Tuscon in December. Various things were missed, his shaving brush, her eye-cream, their camera. But they were all replaceable, and gradually, that disquiet faded.
“I’m thirsty,” Linda says, and she stumbles a bit as she goes. The heat and dehydration have weakened her just a bit. She knows she needs to be cautious. It would be a complete disaster to twist an ankle here. How would they get you? Probably the only helicopter was in Iraklion, on the other side of the island. By boat, she supposes. But the image isn’t a good one. Being lowered down from the cliffs into a small boat filled with middle-aged, sexually frustrated Cretian men.
Are Cretian’s sexually repressed? Make note of that for possible future study. What is the healthy size and population for an island? Little places like Santorini seem be hotbeds of inbreeding, but at the same time, the men don’t stare at her nearly as much as they do here on an island fifty times larger. Maybe it’s large enough for territorialisms to develop, but still the people are trapped by the enormous psychological barrier of the sea. A heightened sense of competition for a limited resource. So people just stay in their villages, marry their neighbor’s children or maybe someone from the neighboring village.
Linda looks at her husband’s shoes. He’s about fifteen feet ahead of her. He stops and waits every once in a while for her to catch up. They both repress the fact that this routine annoys them. It annoys him to wait, it annoys her that he has to wait.
He hasn’t responded to her statement about being thirsty. That means he’s probably thirsty too and it annoys him that she just brought it up. His shirt was off. He’d tied it on his head to block the sun, in lieu of a hat. She could see the sunburn beginning on the exposed parts of his shoulders. She had darker skin and was a little better-off in the sun. In fact her complexion was close to that of the local Greeks. Her ancestry was Alsatian, which didn’t immediately account for her Mediterranean features, the skin, larger nose, and dark eyes. But she was okay with it.
They reach the village of Lutro in the early evening. They had completely underestimated the time the trek would take. Fortunately, finding a room poses no difficulty. There’s a sign posted in English next to a small Café Neon. They men sitting there watch the trekkers arrive with a kind of concerned bemusement. One of them stands up and says something to his mates and leaves quickly.
Orren asks for water in his tourist-Greek and this request produces general laughter. The oldest man, with the face of a mole-rat, gestures, toothless, at the ocean. The owner brings two bottles of retsina along with two glasses of water. Linda drinks her water in one gulp and when the owner fills her glass again from a pitcher, she has a momentary urge to stand up and offer him her body as a gesture of gratitude.
She doesn’t do that. She wouldn’t. She can’t speak Greek.
“Parakalo,” she says, which means please, but in this case suffices. The owner nods in a way that indicates friendliness.
Orren, meanwhile, has been drinking his retsina and has not even touched his water. That’s his decision. His prerogative. He estimates that it will earn him a greater respect among the café men this way. Though he’d like to drink the water.
The men converse and focus their attention on Orren. This is a relief to Linda. Greek women don’t go to the Café Neon’s. Orren drinks and smiles and tries his Greek on them. He tells them they’re American. This generates more interest. They see Germans and Brits. Americans are a novelty. Orren drinks another retsina.
Lights come on as the sun sets and Linda notices this. She can’t hear any generators, so that means there must be electricity coming from somewhere else on the island. It’s a mystery. Power lines but no roads. Why?
After awhile, the owner brings out food for Orren and Linda. They are grateful. There is some grilled fish, which is excellent, a little gristly sausage, and some stewed greens of uncertain variety, and hard bread. Linda is enjoying herself and now she feels like Shawn was right in describing the place as romantic. It’s quiet. A little collection of simple houses nestled in a cove, a dock with a few fishing boats. Rustic locals who were generous and friendly.
The man who left earlier returns as they finish dinner. He speaks English with a London accent.
“You must be tired. My wife has a room for you. I’ll gladly show you the way when you’re ready.”
They are ready.
The owner of the Café insists that they only pay for two retsinas. Only a few drachmas. Linda calculates about fifty cents. They try to offer more but he makes it obvious more would be an offense. They thank him over and over until he appears offended and walks away.
Following the man through a narrow walkway and up some steps, Linda finds she must step over half a dozen cats. They come out of partly-opened doors and shadows and disappear quickly.
“My name is Manolis. This is my wife.” She is built like her husband, barrel-chested, almost cubical in proportion. In her face she seems vulnerable.
Everybody shakes hands. What’s the woman’s name? Wife of Manolis? Sometimes the sexism in Greek society irritates Linda. She commits herself to talking with this woman in the morning.
The bedroom smells musty and oceanic which is actually a nice smell at the right moment and this is the right moment for Linda. Orren is not very conversational.
“Wish I had some toothpaste,” he says, sitting on the bed to remove his shoes.
“You’ll be okay for one night.”
“Aw.”
“You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“Slightly.”
Orren feels a different drunk than usual. He’s had as much retsina as it takes to do the job at the Youth Hostel. It seemed to take a little longer this time. Maybe the Lutro retsina has a lower alcohol than other retsinas.
In bed everything is quiet except for the ocean and Linda has the desire to make love but Orren is clearly not interested tonight as his jaw is already slack and his breathing long, like the slow waves outside. Through the window, Linda can easily make out hundreds of stars. As many as she sees when they go to the desert back home.
Linda wakes up early and leaves Orren in bed and walks outside. There’s some activity down at the dock, so she makes her way down the irregular concrete steps to the street at the bottom of the village and she approaches the dock, stopping partway to sit on one of the concrete pilings.
Some fishing boats have returned and a fisherman is cleaning his nets, picking bits of fish and what appear to be crustacean from the nylon webbing. He throws the scraps onto the pier and into a swarm of cats. Linda estimates there must be fifty. They’re crying and arching and flopping around, not so much starved as in an ecstasy. Two of them see her and immediately come over and begin rubbing against her legs. The fisherman sees her. She smiles.
By the time he finishes cleaning the nets, the cats are gorged and lethargic. Linda has made friends with a gray tabby and a skinny calico. She sees the man’s shadow when he’s a few feet away. He’s in jeans and a wool shirt.
That man has more than one lover, she thinks. She enjoys making the observation. She feels like traveling has improved her sense of people as well as giving her a tolerance for their differences. She imagines his lovers, one in each village along the southern coast of the island. Some villages he’ll never visit again. It seems normal here, out of the context of her home, with its entrenched morality and codes. At home she would consider him promiscuous and therefore she would ignore him.
I’ll talk to him.
The man puts his foot on the piling, supporting his elbow and chin. The cats circle his leg and purr, almost loudly. He ignores them.
He says something to her in German. She recognizes German because German tourists visit Arizona. He has a fair complexion with some sun-damage on his face. Lines emanate the corners of the eyes and mouth.
“Good Morning,” she says.
“Good Morning. You must be an American.”
“That’s right.”
His English has an accent which might be German or Greek. She’s not sure.
“How’s the fishing?”
“Excellent.” He picks up the calico and scratches its ears. “How do you like Lutro?”
“It’s sweet. Very relaxing.”
He nods his head and straightens up. Tosses the cat into the water.
Linda jumps up and looks over at the water.
“Hey! Why did you do that?”
He doesn’t answer. The cat is swimming in the water. It makes its way to a concrete piling. It can’t climb the piling. It claws desperately for a purchase.
Linda gets down on her knees and tries to reach it. She and the cat lock eyes.
“Don’t do that,” the man says, but she doesn’t care to know anything about him anymore.
She lies on her stomach and reaches over the dock, holding a bolt on the piling. The water rises with a wave and the cat lunges. In a fluid instant, the cat scrambles up her arm and onto the dock. It runs away into the village without pausing, shaking itself dry as it goes.
Linda comes back to her knees. There is an intense burning up the length of her arm to her shoulder over part of her back from the cat’s claws. She looks.
“That was stupid,” the man says.
“Fuck off,” she says, the pain in her arm easily converts to anger. She inspects the damage. Viney red marks braiding upward. There’s some dots of blood. It’s mostly superficial.
The man shrugs and walks away. The second cat follows him.
Back at the room, Orren is just waking up. He’s sitting up in the bed when Linda enters. He’s holding his head rubbing it.
“Jesus, I feel hung over,” he says.
“I’m not surprised. You were dehydrated and drank alcohol.”
“What happened to your arm?”
“Cat-scratch.”
“Looks like you reached into a bag of ‘em.” Orren likes this image. It’s funny.
Linda doesn’t like it. It’s like something Orren’s father, Hank would say.
“No. I rescued it from the water. It just scratched me getting out. It was scared.”
“I’ll say.”
Linda doesn’t talk to Orren after that for awhile. It’s fine with him. He’d just as soon go back to bed, except that he’s really hungry.
They go back to the Café Neon. The same men are there. Smoking. Now they’re drinking Nescafe. Orren has taken a liking for Nescafe. Linda tried it, liked it for a few days, and then, suddenly stopped liking it. A bad chemical reaction in her mouth. So now she just doesn’t drink coffee. It’s been nice, weaning herself from coffee. Now, when she went back home, she won’t have to feel that pathetic self-loathing that accompanies her daily visits to Starbucks.
I am not just a consumer. I am not addicted to anything. I can make choices. Maybe I’ll become a vegetarian.
Orren was a vegetarian when they met. For some reason he stopped around the same time they first had sex.
I’d like to ask if it had something to do with me or with sex. But he won’t like that question. It’ll make me look obsessive.
Orren tries to ask for some food and the Café owner brings them some bread and Nescafe and water. There’s humor in his eyes when he sets down the water. Both Linda and Orren notice it. But there’s not much to say about it. They just smile back at him.
Linda sees the man from the dock come over to join the men. She avoids his eye contact. After awhile he comes over.
“Is your arm okay?”
“It’s fine.” She looks at Orren.
“Hello,” Orren says. “care to join us?”
He and Orren immediately hit it off. He introduces himself as, “Helmut Schmidt.” He smiles at Linda when she looks at him. She would like to glare at him, but she’d rather not give Orren any clue of previous encounters. Helmut and Orren talk for awhile about Crete.
“Lutro is not completely normal,” he says, “there are no roads to anywhere in the island.”
“We noticed,” says Linda.
“Spiros says that you came on foot.”
“We sure did,” say Orren.
“It’s a long walk, isn’t it?”
Orren is about to answer when Linda says, “It’s not so bad.”
“You didn’t find it hot?”
“We live in the desert at home. It’s normal to us.”
“Why don’t you take a ride back on my boat, when you’re ready.”
“Sounds great,” says Orren. This is the first moment during the day when he has actually felt good. His headache subsides.
“How many days do you think you might stay?”
“We’re leaving today,” Linda says quickly.
Orren is still working on his response. He stops and studies Linda.
She doesn’t like him. Why?
He’s handsome. Orren concludes that Linda finds Helmut attractive, and that makes her uncomfortable.
“Fine. I can take you this afternoon.”
Helmut rises from the table and says something to his friends. They immediately burst into a conversation which, to Linda, sounds like it borders on disagreement.
“We’re going to walk,” she says.
Orren is shocked. He looks at her.
“Okay. If you like,” says Helmut. “You can change your mind.”
“I think I’d like the ride,” says Orren.
This is a test. If, like speech or thoughts, we could see emotion, this time there would be sharp little arrows flying back and forth between Orren and Linda. Orren’s would be blunt and heavy, Linda’s would be small, black, and laced with an icy poison that makes Orren uncertain and anxious to please her for several hours.
Helmut looks to Linda.
“I’m still on foot.”
He shrugs and walks away, saying, “I’ll be down at my boat, the Freilich, at two.”
For the morning, Orren and Linda walk around the village of Lutro. The people are friendly. They are obviously accustomed to tourists, in spite of their remoteness. There are more than a handful of English-speakers, including a woman who shares olives with them from a large bowl and who talks about Athens like it was Paris.
“Around the Acropoli, you see everything. Everything,” she says, to see what you might reveal of your imagination and secret thoughts. Her hair is fried like dry flax.
Linda holds to her determination to walk back to Agia Rumelli . At one o’clock she buys a liter of water to carry with her.
“You’re serious about walking, aren’t you?”
Orren looks worried. The sense of casual relaxation he has felt is being replaced by a general anxiety over having to walk the six miles back east. More sunburn, dehydration, exhaustion. It didn’t appeal to him.
He imagined their friend, Shawn, back in Rethymnon. He’s headed over to the Café Neon and his first beer now. Orren wishes he wasn’t in Lutro any more. He even wishes, for a moment, that Linda had stayed in Tuscon. But that goes away quickly.
They don’t see Helmut on their way out. During the hike, Orren feels a little better because they are carrying water. He’s glad Linda is with him. In less than a week they would be home in Tuscon.
“Next year, honey, let’s travel for two months,” he says, way out in front.
She hears him. She agrees, but doesn’t feel like answering. The scratches on her arms are stinging terribly from her sweat.

Copyright © 2000, A. P. Swearengen