The Names

gain. And in the meantime look how lovely. When she left, Dick got down on his knees to lift the edges of rugs arranged in layers on the floor. Hexagons. Stylized flying birds. Palmette stars. He threw back the edges to show more, the mellow colors of an old kilim made by nomadic weavers, a double prayer-niche that allowed both young and old to pray. He threw back entire rugs to show the full surfaces of what lay beneath, the patterns multiplying inward. He was not thinking of investments now. There were grids and arabesques, gardens in silk and wool. He pointed out multiple backgrounds, borders with formal Kufic lettering, things drawn together in crowded surfaces, a contained and intricate rapture, the desert universe made shapely and complete. He bobbed his smallish, round and almost hairless head, speaking in a soft hypnotic singsong. Geometry, nature and God.The living room was crowded when we got back. I was drinking raki for no good reason. David introduced me to a man named Roy Hardeman. I looked at the wall-hangings, the silk calligraphy. They have a tendency to crowd together in doorways, leaving the cinema for instance. A woman's voice. One thing I will say for the English, we don't block exits. Lindsay stood across the room, laughing. What was it about our lives that year we were together that made us so ready to laugh? We were always laughing, it seemed, as if impelled by some quality of the sky on clear nights, the mountains around us, the sea at the foot of Syngrou Street. Hardeman said something. He was a small correct American who stood with his legs together, feet slightly parted. Based in Tunis, David said. Travels widely in North Africa, Western Europe. The pinched face of a killer executive. Dot moved toward me with a bottle three-quarters full. I realized why the name seemed familiar. Refrigeration systems. He was the man who hadn't showed up the night David and Lindsay went swimming in their clothes. A sandstorm in Cairo, someone had said. But who? Dick went down the hall with three Armenians from Tehran, here to get Canadian visas. I asked David if he'd gone to Frankfurt. He paused to wonder. Charles Maitland entered, full of chummy belligerence. Ann, behind him, looked nervous, over-alert. We were all standing, a stylized fatigue, a form of waking collapse that we agreed to undergo together.Drink and banter made us hungry and someone got together a group of seven or eight for dinner. Sometime later we were down to four, sitting in a club in the Plaka watching a belly dancer named Janet Ruffing, the wife of the operations head at the Mainland Bank. David was astonished. He leaned over to confer with Lindsay. Roy Hardeman had gone across the room to make a phone call, wincing in the noise of drums, flute, amplified guitar and bouzouki. That curious bird-footed stance.'I heard some of them were taking lessons,' Lindsay said, 'but I didn't think it would get this far. This is quite far.”'Does Jack Ruffing know?”'Of course he knows.”'I don't think he knows,' David said.Hardeman came back to the table and David explained who the dancer was. Everybody seemed to know Jack Ruffing.'Does Jack know?' Hardeman said.'I don't think he knows.”'Hadn't someone better tell him? Look, I asked an associate to join us for a little last-minute give-and-take. I'm leaving a day sooner than I'd planned.”'I wonder if she gets paid,' Lindsay said.Polychrome sateen. Finger cymbals and scarlet lips. We studied her wandering pelvis, watched her lean and toss and vibrate. She was all wrong, long and slender, a white-bodied bending reed, but the cheerfulness of her effort, the shy pleasure she found, made us, made me, instantly willing to overlook the flat belly and slim hips, the earnest mechanics in her movements. What innocence and pluck, a bank wife, to dance in public, her navel fluttering above a turquoise sash. I ordered another drink and tried to recall the word for well-proportioned buttocks.When the dance ended Lindsay went looking for her in a room at the top of the stairs. The musicians took a break, the three men at the table listened to the noise in the street, the motorcycles, the music from discos and nightclubs.'Like to dedicate this medley of tunes to the deposed shah of Iran,' David said, looking into his glass. 'I run in the woods every day.”'Good country hardball,' Hardeman said.'How is Karen?”'She likes it there. She really likes it.”'Lindsay likes it here.”'She rides,' Hardeman said.'Only keep her out of the desert.”'I have a romance with the desert. That's right, of all people. The desert winds have stirring names.”'Lindsay thinks a lot of Karen.”'I'll tell her. That's good to know. She'll be pleased.”'We may be there in March.”'Our whole division moves to London in March.”'Sudden.”'Hostile oil, both sides.”'Not that many options.”'We had to facilitate,' Hardeman said.Janet wore a skirt, blouse and cardigan but her makeup was intact, shadows, penciled outlines, arcs and bands of color, a little eerie in the muted light, on a face that was a clear work of household prose. She was happy in a certain way, as someone is happy who learns that her motives are not complicated after all.'It was unexpected,' Lindsay said. 'I never thought it would get this far.”'I know, it's crazy. I saw an opening and just went for it.”'You were good.”'My bellywork isn't very advanced. I have a lot of work to do on what we call hip isolation. I'm way too conscious of what I'm doing.”'What a surprise,' Lindsay said, 'to walk in like that and look who's up there dancing.”'People are kind,' Janet said. 'It's sort of an extended tryout.”'Haven't seen Jack,' David said, looking at the woman with carefully measured concern.'Jack's in the Emirates.”'The budget problem. Right, correct.”'I do things by rote,' she said to Lindsay. 'That's the only way I can do things. People seem to understand.”'Well you were good. I thought you were good.”Lindsay and I listened to her analyze her body in objective terms. I tried to work up a salacious interest, I schemed at it in fact, but she was artless, open and bland, so detached from the murmurous subcurrents, the system of images, that I gave it up. In the end this would become her appeal, her arousing power, this very deadness of intent.A waiter brought drinks, the musicians returned. I liked the noise, the need to talk loud, to lean into people's faces and enunciate. This was the true party, just beginning, a shouted dialogue lacking sense and purpose. I huddled next to Janet, asking questions about her life, easing my way into her consciousness. Slowly we evolved a mood of curious intimacy, a sympathetic exchange made of misunderstood remarks, our heads nodding in the painted smoke.I was aware of Lindsay's amused disapproval. It spurred me on, it was sexy, the Mainland wives protecting each other from public shame. The two men played a game with Tunisian coins.'I have to get to know you, Janet.”'I'm not even sure who you are. I don't think I have it quite straight, who belongs to what at this table.”'I like it when women call me James.”'I don't do this,' she said.'You don't do what? I love the way you move.”'You know what I mean.”'We're only talking.' Moving my lips, soundlessly.'Only talking?”'It's those wavelike ripples across your belly when you dance. Say belly. I want to watch your lips.”'No, honest, I don't do this.”'I know you don't, I know you don't.”'Do you really because it's important to me. And with people here I don't want to give the wrong impression.”'Lindsay is special. She's good people.”'I like Lindsay, I really do.”'They'll leave soon. Then you and I can really talk.”'I don't want to really talk. It's the last thing I want to do.”Folk dancers linking hands across their bodies moved sideways on the small stage.'Your lipstick is cracked in places, which only heightens the effect. I could hardly breathe while you were up there. You were imperfect, even deeply flawed, but what a heartrending American body, how acutely moving. Say thighs. I want to watch your tongue curl up in your painted mouth.”'I don't do this, James.”'When women call me James, it gives me an image of myself. It affords me an image. Grownup. At last, I think, I am grown up. She is calling me James. You have gorgeous long legs, Janet. That's rare today. The way your legs emerged from that silky garment, one at a time, bent ever so slightly. Sheer. A sheer garment.”'I really have to leave.”'Because at heart, down deep, I'm still twenty-two years old.”'Honest, I can't stay.”'How old are you, down deep?”'Lindsay's going to think whatever.”'One more drink. We'll talk about your body. It's supple, for starters. It has a married poignancy that single carefree bodies can't even begin to suggest. The suppleness is hard-won. I love your ass.”'This means nothing to me.”'I know.”'If I thought you were serious I'd probably laugh in your face.”'You're shielding yourself from the truth. Because you know I'm serious. And I know you know it. I have to have you, Janet. Don't you see how you affect me?”'No. I totally do not.”'Say breasts. Say tongue.”'We were two years in Brussels, three and a half years in Rome, a year back in New York and now a year and a half so far in Greece and no one has ever talked to me this way.”'I want you. It's no longer a question of choice, a question of actual wanting. We've gone beyond that. You know it, I know it. I want what's inside that cardigan, that skirt. What kind of panties are you wearing? If you don't tell me, I'll reach right under there and pull them off your legs. Then I'll put them in my pocket. They'll be mine. That vivid and intimate thing, that object.”Lindsay, turned away from us toward the stage, was still our listener, our auditor, and in everything we said there was acknowledgment of this, although she couldn't hear a word, of course, through the flutes and bouzoukis. A dancer leaped, struck his black boot with the palm of his hand, in midair, slapped it hard.'Here's what I want to say about your makeup.”'No, please.”'It's compelling without being sexy or lurid. That's the odd thing. It's a statement of some sort, isn't it? The body is supple, open, airy and free. The face is masked, almost bitterly masked. I'm not the kind of man who tells women who they are or what they mean, so we'll just let it lay, we'll let it rest, the face, the mask, the cracked scarlet.”'I don't do this. What am I doing listening to this? Not to mention I have to go to the ladies room.”'Let me go with you. I want to. Please.”'I'm not so indecisive I can't get up and go home. It's just a sleepiness that keeps me here.”'I know. I know exactly.”'Are you sleepy too?”'That's it exactly. A sleepiness.”She put a hand to my face, briefly, and looked at me with a strange sympathy, an understanding of something that applied to us both. Then she went downstairs, where the toilets were.I looked diagonally across the table to see the great Balkan head of Andreas Eliades. He sat talking to Hardeman. Remember. We'd sat with four glasses of brandy in that seaside