The girl who covers her hair
Craig knows he should be mainlining the glory of the Parthenon, and the majesty of its columns. But he can’t stop staring at the dark-haired girl who draws his eye far more powerfully than the damned architecture.
She is standing next to a marble statue of some man — or god — and there is something about the way she holds her strong, brown limbs that suggests enormous potential energy. She wears a white sundress with slouchy straps that keep slipping down her shoulders. He thinks he can see the barest shadow of a nipple; it is enough of a magnet to pull him from the shadows.
As he climbs the steps and gets closer to the girl, he realizes that what he thought was glossy, black hair is actually some kind of covering. A scarf? A snood? A hijab? He shakes his own prematurely balding head. He knows nothing of female hair or the covering thereof. He wonders if she might be Muslim, but dismisses the thought. A good Muslim girl wouldn’t walk bare legged and alone under a bright Athenian sun…or would she?
No, he thinks, she must be Greek, or maybe Italian. He imagines her speaking a melodious and incomprehensible foreign tongue, singing like a tropical bird. He curses his pale, pinkish skin, and soft, incipient belly. He knows he looks like an over-privileged worm. For gorgeous, sun-kissed women who have been cast and molded and burnished by the gods, he does not exist.
Or does he? Now she is walking quickly in his direction. The first thing he does is scan the immediate vicinity for whomever she really wants to see, but he is — thank the gods? curse the gods? — alone. His pores, swollen with sweat, burst and mark his T-shirt with the stigmata of fear.
He’s mentally preparing himself to abase himself for staring at this girl — no, woman — when she smiles and speaks. “Hi, my name is Sam. Want to get a drink?”
He imagines kissing her soft, rosy lips for at least several seconds before he croaks out a grateful, heartfelt yes.
The bar she picks is dark and intimate. A small, wizened man with fingers like twigs murmurs something in Greek, and Sam murmurs back. He disappears behind a curtain. He returns with two glasses of ouzo and a tall bottle of cold water.
“Do you speak Greek?” he asks.
Sam shrugs. “Of course. My family’s from around here.”
He’s going to ask a follow up question, something thoughtful that shows he’s interested in more than the dark, silky expanse of her neck and collarbone, when he blurts, “Why do cover your hair?”
Her lush smile wilts. She looks at him for a long beat with wide, glittering eyes. Her gaze is steadfast. Unblinking. Predatory. He feels small and unworthy. Hopelessly and awkwardly American. “I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I don’t know why I said that. I have a tendency towards self-sabotage, especially around beautiful women.”
Her musical laugh breaks the spell, and her smile blooms again, even more kissable than before. “Maybe,” she says, her lips arranging themselves into a sly grin, “you just need to relax a little.”
She angles her covered head in the direction of a dirty stairwell and, as if by magic, produces a key. For a moment, he is confused and off balance, as if the axis of his reality has tilted by several degrees. Then he remembers the sign outside — bar, restaurant, and hotel — and downs his ouzo in one, fiery gulp.
The slow beat of the ceiling fan is blessedly cool on his slippery flesh. The moisture coating every square centimeter of his pallid body is a mixture of his sweat and hers, so the overall effect is more sexy than repulsive.
He wants to leap out of bed and jump for joy and text all his frat brothers who only accepted him because his father donated a building. He wants to tell them that the loser in their midst, the pathetic Asperger’s geek, just had real, human intercourse with a stunningly beautiful woman.
Of course, he doesn’t actually do this because, while he’s socially inept, he’s not a complete asshole. Instead, he strokes her long, burnt sienna back and marvels that they had wild, enthusiastic sex without dislodging her hair cover by even a millimeter. The fabric is a rich, fathomless black. It looks like it would be marvelously soft, and he reaches out his hand to touch it.
Before he can, Sam twists out of reach with a quickness and muscularity that takes his breath away. “Don’t touch,” she says, lightly tapping her finger against his nose, “if you want to live.”
When he sees his frat brothers — Kayden, Mike and Timmo — sitting behind an army of Mythos empties, he knows that this evening is probably a bad idea. He squeezes Sam’s hand and whispers, “Maybe we should go back upstairs.”
“Nonsense,” she replies, squeezing him back and pulling him in her wake.
“Hi boys,” she says with a lilt in her voice. “How are you enjoying Athens?”
Kayden gapes. “Obviously not as much as our friend Craig here. I can’t believe you’re really real.”
As Sam and his brothers make pleasant if slightly inebriated small talk, he exhales a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. When small plates of squid and roast lamb arrive and quash the conversation, he believes it is safe to step away from the table and take a quick piss.
Kayden, who looks like a paunchy Viking, follows him. As they’re zipping up, Kayden chuckles. “That girl must be freakin’ insane in bed.”
Craig blushes with a mix of pride and anger. Kayden’s right, she’s depraved in the best possible way, but he doesn’t like that his friend is making assumptions. “Why do you say that?”
Kayden shrugs. “It’s the headscarf. Religion makes people kinky as shit. I grew up in Park City, remember?”
She’s sleeping next to him, her breath even and sure. Moonlight from the window across the room illuminates her satiny curves. He wants to rest, he’s even tried closing his eyes, but he’s too wired.
Despite their marvelous exertions, he knows nothing substantial about Sam. He doesn’t know how old she is, where she went to school, or if her family still lives in Athens. And he doesn’t know why she covers her hair.
He runs through the possibilities in his mind. Religion. Partial baldness. Chemo. Surgical scars. None of them seem to fit. She never mentions god or religious services — although, honestly, they haven’t talked all that much — and she is too robust for a cancer patient. The uncertainty is killing him.
He checks her breathing again. It has the slow regularity he associates with deep, dreamless slumber. He can always say the cover came loose while they were sleeping. He gently tugs at the corner and…oh shit.
The hooded indigo serpents growing from Sam’s scalp flick their curious tongues, while his cells undergo a violent transition from animal to mineral. His last, flickering thoughts are a jumble of pain, disbelief, and regret.
When Sam wakes to the next day’s hot, Athenian sun, she frowns. She liked Craig. She really did. But now he is a statue, perfect and terrible. And, like all the other statues, Sam will bring him to the Parthenon, offer him to Athena, and pray that she will lift the curse.
