A runner’s job is to lie about where he lives, then convince people to come home with him. Every runner’s hotel was nearly identical, part of a cluster of brick and concrete walk-ups in the red-light district; none had bathrooms in the room, rarely was there hot water, never was there breakfast. They were stifling, blazing hot in summer, and far away from the kind of ruins everyone wanted to see.
We would take the train outside the city to a smaller city—Elefsina or Corinth—and then get the next train back in, which would be packed with tourists from Northern Europe or the port at Brindisi.
Our job was to intercept them, sell them on our hotel while they were still captive on the train, dreaming about the birthplace of civilization. Then we’d walk them from the station to Olympos and make sure they checked in. Ideally two or more people ran a train. One laughed at the other’s jokes, one confirmed the other’s lies. And, back at Olympos, one stood behind the tourists so they didn’t leave once they saw what the hotel was really like. After they had checked in and paid, after their passports were taken and stored, we got our commission money and went directly to Drinks Time to spend it. What happened later to all their nice things was purely a matter of chance.
In exchange for these services, we lived for free in a small room on the top floor where we could see, at night and far in the distance, the tiny Acropolis lit up in the twilight haze like a state park diorama.
Apart from our room and one other, the top floor was gone, the walls had crumbled; brick and plaster and cinder blocks lay strewn across the cracked tile and you could see beyond the missing wall what had once been a rooftop terrace. It was the kind of mess caused by a construction project given up mid way. Or, if you are more observant, by a small bomb.
Declan was not truly a runner. Sometimes he went away to places where there were wars and came back with money. Boyhood skills he’d honed fighting the Royal Ulster Constabulary made for a good second career when he had to leave Ireland. Now he lived in hotels. In Athens for years, and, before that, Gaza, Angola.
We were supposed to think of ourselves as a squad, Declan said, to strategize our runs, to answer to him and “be good,” never draw attention to ourselves. We were like the Spartans, he said. Spartan soldiers.
“Too right,” Jasper said. “But not for the reasons he thinks.”
The names Seamus, Joseph, and Tommy were tattooed on Declan’s right forearm. A rising phoenix bloomed in faded red across his muscled back, interlocking shamrocks on the side of his neck, his arms a junkyard of symbols, his earlobes marked with stars. He saw the three of us as some kind of project: a girl and two queers, people in need of protection, people who’d be grateful to him, because without him, he reasoned, we’d be dead. We were the way he tithed.
Declan was paranoid about police and extradition. He’d mention having to kill one of us at least once a day, wanted our obedience, insisted on politeness; mind your fucking manners and watch your fucking mouth. I liked his sense of humor but never understood why he couldn’t keep quiet about what he did.
“’Cause he’s a fucking nutter,” Jasper said. “Really not a mystery, is it? Man who stabs a cat, throws it from the balcony on passersby—isn’t exactly inauspicious, now, is he?”
“When did he do that?” I asked.
“He didn’t,” Milo said.
“He might have,” Jasper said. “We don’t know. We’re not with him every second of the day.”
Standing in line at a kiosk outside Larissis station in the morning amid the crush of people pressing past, clean and bright for work in the dirty city, some wearing dust masks against the smog, we lined up to buy our cigarettes and beer and lemon crème cookies, staples for the ride and the run. We were tired but feeling good in the relative cool and didn’t mind when an English tourist carrying a tall pack cut in front of us.
Declan did mind, though; tapped the man on the shoulder, asked him to step aside. The man’s eyes skated over us, rested for a second too long on Milo, before he smirked and spat on the sidewalk. Milo winced and Jasper started laughing and Declan grabbed the man rough and quick by the sides of his face, pulled him forward with a vicious nod, snapping the man’s nose flat. He yelped, twisted away; blood poured down his shirt, painted Declan’s forehead bright, splattered across the sidewalk.
People in line took no time at all to recognize what wasn’t their business.
“You’ll have to get that set,” Declan said, rubbing his head, then licking the man’s blood from his fingers.
“You’ll have to get that set,” we said for weeks after.
No one was unhappy when Declan decided to find a more respectable hotel to live in. He said the highway noise on Diligianni was ruining his beauty sleep. Plus it was always a good idea to move around, just in case.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he told us. “I could always kill youse now to have peace of mind. But dumping three bodies is not a thing I’m bound to undertake at the present moment. Y’can thank me.”
Jasper raised his bottle to that. I looked up from my book and nodded. Milo said “Thank you” and stood to help him pack.
* * *
The last place I’d seen Declan was Athens Inn. I was hoping he would still be there, sitting with Milo down in the vine-covered courtyard, sipping ouzo and passing the time between trains.
The granite sidewalk was worn and slick, looked like melting ice, and the neighborhood seemed older and more lively. I hurried along, thinking of Milo’s face, of how he must be feeling if things the boy at Drinks Time told me were true. A sudden shock of loneliness flooded my body and I couldn’t walk. I stood, refusing a sob that must have started in Milo’s chest and now somehow burned in mine. It was a mistake to have left the bar one round behind.
In the lobby of Athens Inn, Declan was drinking water, sitting alone at a café table. His face beaten elegant; high, uneven cheekbones, flattened nose. His body, even in repose, was a warning, built by fast and brutal acts.
A Greek soap opera played on a television atop the reception desk, and a dull gray ceiling fan whirred and clicked but brought no relief. Declan was wearing a jean jacket despite the heat and a pair of army boots like mine.
He’d no doubt seen me but waited until I was sitting across from him to shut his book. A smile revealed the chip in his left incisor, then he leaned in to kiss me, held my hand.
“To what do I owe this lovely surprise?” he asked, then looked into my eyes to see if I knew about Jasper, nodded. “Let’s get some air,” he said.
Out in the vicious glittering sun we sat on the steps surrounded by the bleak white buildings of the neighborhood, their striped and slanted awnings pulled down against the glare and heat and emptiness of day.
He put his hair back in a ponytail, revealing a black tattoo star.
“Who told you?” he asked.
“About five different cocksuckers sitting around Drinks Time,” I said. “Stopped over when I got in, thinking he might be there.” I pulled out a cigarette and lit it and he took it from my lips, threw it into the street.
“Milo been by to see you?” I asked.
“Y’know, it’s puzzling,” Declan said. “I’ve not seen Milo for days. And he didn’t say good-bye. No farewell a tall. Last time someone left so rudely, she didn’t turn up until”—he looked at his watch—“eight minutes ago.”
“He say where he was headed?”
Declan smirked. “Nah. Figgered he’d gone to meet you, didn’t I? Figgered the two of youse had a neat little plan.”
“My only plan’s to keep sleeping indoors; you know how it is.”
“I don’t,” he said, and whatever he said next I was constitutionally incapable of hearing. I shaded my eyes and gazed across the street to where a man in a faded polo shirt and soccer sandals was trying to start his moped. Another man leaned over an upstairs balcony that was thick with climbing vines and potted flowers, and threw something metal that clanged against the curb. Declan was still talking, so I looked up and tested how long I could stare into the sun without blinking.
Declan believed in things only ruined people could: borders and nations and pride; family and loyalty; retribution. He was everything Jasper and Milo and I had left behind; a cipher from the straight world spouting the gospel that had wrecked his own life. I could tell by his tone there was a summation coming, so I made myself pay attention to specific words.
“Some people just don’t know how to stick together,” he said. “But it could be worse. Some people don’t know how to survive at all. Like your li’l mate Murat Christensen, am I right? You’re not asking me about him, though, are you? You’re not asking where he is.”
I shut my eyes and flicked the lighter inside my pocket. I wanted another drink badly. Sweat was running down my back. A woman wearing a veil and a long burgundy dress walked by holding a pudgy baby with dark eyes. Few people passed at this hour in the afternoon. The heat was stupefying and there was no breeze, no noise, no motion at all.
Declan turned toward me and held my face, gently brushed the hair out of my eyes.
“When did you last eat?” he asked.