Chapter 5
In Mykonos Town’s serpentine, narrow, cobblestoned streets—lined with whitewashed cubic houses, doors, windows and balconies painted bright reds and blues—cool, predatory eyes shot through the hazy scents of cheap perfumes, hashish and food odors in search of a warm body—the younger the better.
Starving, and bouncing off the walls with energy, on some narrow Little Venice road right on the bay (waves hitting the heels of my croc-loafers), trying to make sense of the menu outside Phillipi’s, somebody said, “Absalon, it is Absalon Lauenfeldt, isn’t it?”
Turning around, oh god, not that one! But Harry Paul, the bow tied basset hound/rattle snake chimera, whose age embraced the uncertainty principle, it was and who nobody knew what he really did for a living. He jumped up on the portico, flicking out his tongue out like a lizard as he said: “For a moment I thought you were the owner of the Narcissus. Remarkable resemblance, though he has more hair than you, and looks younger. How’s your mother?”
I barely listened. My attention was on Harry Paul’s delicious young companion who reminded me of a fire fish, not the ones you find in a tropical fish aquarium—no, more like a mermaid, not that they exist, with glistening black hair, cut very 1920’s, and sultry, red-red lips, exuding a scent with lilac in it.
“And your mother, how is she?” Harry Paul asked.
“Great,” I said crazed, feeling I was on every possible illegal drug. “Staying on town?”
“No, we are staying at the Plutókratos, in a most divine bungalow. You must come and visit us,” he said.
“Staying there. But a bona fide Democrat like you?”
Harry Paul jumped down from the porch, “How rude of me not to have introduced my muse (60 years younger than the others) Sam Sara. Sam has completely changed me. I am leaving my Spartan life style (sponging on rich women) for a couple of weeks of luxury,” he said and put an arm around Sam. “Is she not just the most adorable Irish lassie you have ever seen? Well, anyway Sam, I met Absalon’s mother (Harry Paul, I suspected, was a walker, or the worl’d oldest gigolo) in southern England at the Kent Ranch. We were high-teaing (please) when Gertrud experienced near-none heart beats, shivering, body temperature plummeting (the strict no salt diet). She almost crossed over,” (wished both had). “So whenever I am in Europe I always try to make it to Denmark and stay with Gertrud at her beautiful home on the classy Øresund Coast, the Whiskey Belt, just south of Hamlet’s castle.”
“Didn’t the Danes raid Dublin?” Sam said, triggering a thousand-and-one X-rated, flicks to fast-motion through my head.
“It was mainly the Norvegians, but I’m part Norvegian,” I said, entranced by her deep violet eyes. “And yes, we fully enjoyed our Irish sojourns—actually I have been considering organizing mock raping-pillaging-plundering therapeutic trips to Ireland for the aggression-inhibited, or is it challenged?”
“Challenged, Absalon, challenged,” Harry Paul said.
“I’m sure Harry Paul will sign up,” Sam said. She had money or Harry Paul wouldn’t bother.
“Absalon was the star of ‘The Werewolf’ Loup-garou,” he said. I hated it when people called me Absalon.
She touched my arm, “Cool vintage Diderot-Diderot I just loved it when you tore a boot off one of your fellow lady moutaineers and then chomped it down all while en route to K-2.”
“I think Absalon knows the plot. Anyway it is just a movie Sam, not real life, and Absalon was acting,” he said. God was he square.
“Just call me Axel, or Wolf my acting name.”
“But Absalon is so dignified,” he said.
“Axel is right, Absalon is a phony name,” Sam said.
“Guys, gotta eat. I’m famished,” I said and took a hungry look at Sam before running off to Phillipi’s maître d', knowing I’d have to pick up the check, a pattern whenever Harry Paul and I dined in Manhattan where he lived too. He never reciprocrated. Same scenario with my poorer artist and actor friends. Always resented it, but was too meek to say anything (then). Once you’ve picked up the dinner check, you’ll be picking it up forever. Exiting, Mr. Generous!
“I’m sorry sir, we have no tables left, but you can sit at the bar,” the maître d' said.
“And the garden?” I asked.
“That is full too,” he said.
“Next time I’ll make a reservation. Can I take a look?”
“Of course.”
After a couple of minutes looking over Phillipi’s romantic candle lit garden, a boisterous bass thundered in Danish, “Ax, how’s life in the Big Apple?” Agathon Thorsen, an old class mate, sitting at a large table under a bougainvillea, stuffing his face like an owersized bulldog and letting the retsina flow amply. He was with a tall, near anorexic Caucasian/Southeast Asian woman.
“Are you alone? Can’t be, a star like you? Join us,” Agathon said. “Grab a chair Ax. When did I last see you? Two years ago and now, married! Can you believe it of all the fuckers in our class, but Pema stole my heart. Mrs. Thorsen, say hello to the biggest heart in Nordsjælland. He has other big assets too,” he hollered, “I know, I’m a closet homo.”
Pema raised her glass, “Skål,” she said in fluent Danish, “great to have finally met you. Agathon has tons of funny stories about the two of you on the loose weekends in Manhattan. I almost feel I know you,” she said. I got high on her delicious scent, heavy on tuberose. I’d smelled it before. What was it?
Of my class mates Agathon was the least snooty and the one with the worst grades. In the 11th grade he was kicked out of Holte Gymnasium our posh private school, when Miss Muus, our 300 pound French teacher, surprised him coming out of a lavatory with Birgitte. So he didn’t make it to university. Big deal, he had a knack for business. After two years working for Oticon, a hearing aid manufacturer, he launched his own factory Pin Drop in New Jersey, so we saw a lot of each other the three years he stayed in the States. He sold Pin Drop for a billion dollars, another reminder hammering home what a failure I was, but at least I wasn’t manic-depressive to use a good-old term (or was I?), like Gunhild, the class-genius. Actually, I fancied schizophrenia. Had more clout. Was more marketable.
“So Ax, you have a double,” he said.
“Yes, amazing isn’t it, you look just like our friend Bruno Heldberg,” Pema said. “Agathon told him he had a double.” She reminded me of a sylph, with her long slender face and nose made longer and skinnier in the black understated dress.
“I used to go out with Marina Staffelt, before she became Mrs. Heldberg. You know the old Staffelt is dying, don’t you?” he said.
“PLC is a nasty way to go. My father just died from it,” I said, my eyes starting to tear.
“Sorry buddy, that’s a tough one and I’m really sorry it happened to you of all people. Pema, Ax was the most fun in Holte Gymnasium’s class of ’85 even though he can’t sail and horseback for shit. Drink, ski, and make love to anything that moves well, definitely, and of course acting he’s good at. But water and horses? Forget it! And I spent more at his home in Vedbæk than at my own (banging Bettina). His mom’s so generous.”
“Shit, not him,” I said, spotting Harry Paul and Sam with the maître d' at the entrance to the garden. I ducked under the table.
“What’s wrong?” Agathon said.
“The guy and the pretty woman with the maître d' . . .”
“She’s gorgeous, but what an odd fellow and wearing a bow tie in this heat. I think we can definitely make room for her,” he said.
“No, he’s a real pest. Tell me when they’re gone.”
I was still hungry—even after my third portion of lamb kebab when the three of us left Phillippi’s—lusting for Pema and Sam. Maybe I should’ve tolerated Harry Paul’s nauseating company?
We followed a happy crowd of drunken Swedes (sort of redundant) under the full-eclipsed September moon in Pisces, to a square, densely packed with stoned and drunks, spilling out from a disco named Dionysus. This cosmic event might be blamed for the tourists altered states and astrologers say (often a lot of nonsense) that during such an alignment of heavenly bodies, you might fall in love with a lamppost.
Climbing the stairs to Dionysus—blaring with Middle Eastern World Music—my heart beat. Our mistress of the Narcissus, Marina, on a whitewashed bench next to the entrance, playing with her large canary diamond ring, the Saluki’s at her feet, and good-husband-Bruno (third pet in that order), he could be her brother, faggily leaning against a Doric pillar, sobering the night with his white attire, wavy blonde locks and smile, destined to make the entire Greek pantheon jealous. Had a feeling that the lady and lord of the Narcissus looked at us mortals in contempt.
“Absolutely dreadful in there. Don’t even attempt it,” Bruno said, peripherally checking me out. “I owe W a drink for banging his head against the keel of my dinghie.”
Agathon, with an arm around my shoulder said, “My old classmate-buddy Axel Lauenfeldt, Wolf de Lamb, star of Loup-garou, ‘The Werewolf’, your double. Remember I gave you the DVD.”
Bruno, still not looking directly at me, “I absolutely knew I’d seen you before when climbed on to the boat bridge this evening,” Bruno said and turned to Marina, “Remember we saw it together. A brilliant movie, just brilliant! W, Wolf or, Axel was it?”
“Wolf, Axel—all fine with me,” I said.
Marina looked up and said with a reserved smile, “Saw you on the boat bridge with my husband . . . disconcerting you two looking so much alike.”
Bruno, still not looking at me, said: “My wife Marina. Why don’t we all go for drinks at Xenos’?”
Ten minutes later the five of us (a bad number) were happily installed at Xenos’, an outdoor taverna across the square.
I filled Marina’s glass with retsina, “You have an admirer who couldn’t stop talking about you,” I said. “Think she’s in love with you.”
“Feralia? No, she’s only in love with . . .” Marina replied.
“Her big pussy?”
“Touché—Bruno and I often wondered about her sexual proclivities. Then at her age, well what can I say . . .”
“Bring out the scalpels and she’ll be purring all night.”
“You’re bad . . .” she said twirling her canary diamond ring, 40 carats at least.
“I’m a Gemini, the trickster sign. Ruled by Mercury, really Hermes according to the Greeks; they invented it all. Versatile Hermes: protector of wayfarers and merchants. And I almost forgot, and most importantly: of thieves and liars; and I’m just an actor,” I said.
“Well, you’re in good company . . . few authentics here.”
“Your perfume, is it Fracas?” I asked.
“How did you know?”
“My mother wears it,” I said. Only hookers should; too much tuberose in the blend. I continued, “I take that back. It’s your company, aura. So authentic. Maybe I can learn something from you. No, you definitely don’t need any perfume.”
Swag-bellied Agathon stood up like like a mudslide sliding in reverse singing along to the Scooter band’s Posse (meet me on the floor) blaring from Icarus’, “I need to move,” he said, gallantly and offered Marina his hand. “Sweetheart for old times sake let’s have a twirl.”
Marina smiled and took his hand. Bruno froze. Ah, so he was the jealous type; but jealous of what . . . Marina or her money?