Mobility by Lydia Kiesling

Author:Lydia Kiesling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zando

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Bunny woke up to the sound of the rooster and lay blinking at the ceiling of her whitewashed island room, noticing the shaft of light that came through the rattan blinds and beatified her toiletries. Across a small gulf from her own twin bed was an empty one, which brought to mind a thousand sun-soaked Greek mornings in rooms like this she shared with her brothers, waking up dazzled by the light, spoiled with beauty, spoiled for beauty going forward. She could hear tender murmurs through the wall that adjoined John and Sofie’s room. Last night she had heard them laugh drunkenly as they struggled to move the bed away from the wall and then there was a period of suspicious, loaded silence that she tried not to dwell on. She rose from the bed and brushed her teeth and looked at her skin, the creases of sleep on her neck, which she feared would become permanent lines. She rubbed sunscreen carefully around her face and on her neck and put on her dress and found her bag where she had dropped it stumbling into her room after too much retsina.

Bunny walked down the three concrete stairs to the dirt path that fronted their block of rooms. An empty lot spread with stones and thistles sloped down first to several rows of low white buildings, then to the aquamarine waters of the small port. She saw Sofie standing on the other side of the plastic partition that divided their concrete veranda. Sofie stretched her arms up to the sky and then out beside her and then behind her back, rolling her shoulders and looking out at the sea. She was wearing a faded blue wrap around her body, knotted at the back of her neck. Her hair was loose and she looked disarmed, her face soft and open. Bunny could see the outline of her breasts, which were large and slightly pendulous, and felt a surge of surprised envy. “Hi,” she said, her voice rusty from sleep.

“Hi,” said Sofie, yawning. “Where are you off to?”

“I’m going to get a coffee and something to eat. Want me to wait?”

Sofie stretched again. “I’ll go with you. He wants to sleep more,” she said. “He can’t hold his liquor. One sec.” She went inside and emerged wearing a boxy white shift and a straw hat under which her face bloomed with health. “Let’s go,” she said.

They walked down the dirt road to the rough asphalt and in a few minutes reached the port road and the row of cafés with small groups of foreign holidaymakers. After a brief conference they sat down on the dingy white cushions of wicker armchairs and inspected a laminated menu card. Familiar curlicues of prices were handwritten next to printed descriptions in syntactically creative English, half the prices blank or regretfully crossed out with marker. They ordered freddo cappuccinos of medium sweetness and bacon and eggs.

When their coffees arrived, they both lit cigarettes, Bunny having acquired her own pack.

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