Misremember Me
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MISREMEMBER ME by Alex Kiesig A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Boise State University December 2013 © 2013 Alex Kiesig ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE COLLEGE DEFENSE COMMITTEE AND FINAL READING APPROVALS of the thesis submitted by Alex Kiesig Thesis Title: Misremember Me Date of Final Oral Examination: 15 October 2013 The following individuals read and discussed the thesis submitted by student Alex Kiesig, and they evaluated his presentation and response to questions during the final oral examination. They found that the student passed the final oral examination. Mitch Wieland, M.F.A. Chair, Supervisory Committee Martin Corless-Smith, Ph.D., M.F.A Member, Supervisory Committee Brady Udall, M.F.A. Member, Supervisory Committee The final reading approval of the thesis was granted by Mitch Wieland, M.F.A., Chair of the Supervisory Committee. The thesis was approved for the Graduate College by John R. Pelton, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate College. DEDICATION For Vicki and for Molly. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people read many versions of the story and were kind, patient, and helpful over the years, but without Mitch Wieland, this would not be a book but a wishful idea. v ABSTRACT An American travels to Crete with his English ex-girlfriend in Misremember Me, a modern novel in the tradition of the Lost Generation. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION......................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................. vi POSEIDON............................................................................................................................... 1 THE CITY ACROSS THE WATER...................................................................................... 26 ELOUNDA LAGOON ........................................................................................................... 63 CAFÉ AOUAS...................................................................................................................... 106 ONCE.................................................................................................................................... 127 CAFÉ AOUAS, CONTINUED ............................................................................................ 165 PROBABLY THE BAR IN THE WORLD ......................................................................... 180 THE HOPE ........................................................................................................................... 205 FUNEREAL.......................................................................................................................... 236 THE ISLE OF TEARS.......................................................................................................... 252 NOSTOS AND ALGOS....................................................................................................... 274 KATHARO........................................................................................................................... 299 EVER FALLEN IN LOVE................................................................................................... 309 vii 1 POSEIDON SHE COLLAPSED . I reached for her and she fell away from me, into the bed, escaping my touch. Whoo, she said as she landed, less a word than a soft sound she released into the air. I said her name and she looked around, not at me. There was no clock in the room. It was our second night on Crete together, and we were both very far from home. Emma, I said again. She said, It’s too late. It won’t be any different tomorrow, I said. She looked down at the bed, where her hands smoothed the sheets. She watched them as though they belonged to someone else, and the sound they made on the sheets was like last breath. Then she remembered they were her hands, and she twisted a lock of blonde hair into a curl. She looked up, not at me but beyond me, through me, her blue eyes wet and unfocused, the light in them darkening, receding as shorelight from a night ship set out to sea. We had been apart for three years, and now we were together in a place I had never been. I stepped back and lost my center, went forward, and she caught my wrist. She pressed my fingers into the heat of her sunburned skin at her throat, and the taste of her sweat exploded in my memory. I got my legs back under me. 2 She said, What do you want, Alex? I hate you when you’re this drunk, I said. She pulled back. Well, she said. You can just fuck off then. I went out. From our bungalow, emerging into the warm sea air, and up the stone steps to the hotel bar. If there were stars in the sky, I could not focus to find them. The bungalows were pushed at odd angles into the mountainside high above the bay, like catacombs, and the walkway took me over some of the rooftops and under a tall turret and the flicker of television light, past the hanging boughs of fig and lemon and olive, the fruit lost in shadows. Jasmine flowered in the salted wind, sweet with the smell of the marina on the far shore. White linens on lines flapped softly, damp to touch, and I ducked between two sheets, swaying, and got my weight going in the right direction again, forward and up the steepening path. Bouzouki music led me to the lobby, a separate building at the top of the hotel, where the hillside met the road. In the distance I could hear talking and laughter, and I laughed too. It all seemed very funny. Splashes echoed at the swimming pool, louder than the voices but not the laughs. I passed vacant bistro tables on cobblestone, and from under one, a long-faced cat watched me go by. A caged gray parrot with a blaze of orange tailfeathers stood guard at the lobby’s wide doors, and inside, a vine-draped fountain gurgled. The songs in the bar were the same as what we had been listening to earlier in the evening when everyone was happy and dancing, the same songs as the night before. Now I was the last one 3 awake, and it was another song for dancing, though tonight only music filled the room. A disco song, too loud. Won’t you take me to… Funkytown… Won’t you take me to… The bartenders prowled the length of the bar, and I found. My cigarettes were waiting for me with a half-gone bottle of Dutch beer. The hotel did not have draft beer, and only Heineken, Amstel, and a Greek beer called Mythos in bottles, the same as the other places I’d seen on Crete the last two days. The bartenders poured drinks for each other from a spigot at the base of a two-foot-tall bottle of ouzo, bobbing their dark heads to the music and turning with hope to the empty room. Through the windows on the far side of the vacant dance floor, the faraway streetlights and neon of Aghios Nikolaos streaked reflection across the bay. I drank and rested my folded arms on the bar. Just me. The bartender called Manolis leaned down next to me. His eyes stuck out like bulbs, and now, late in that time where night was turning into something else, the lids were heavy and sloughing away. Tomorrow was his day off. You are not so happy, my American friend, he said. I waved him off. Manolis produced a pack of cigarettes from under his apron and opened it, tilting them to me. I pointed to my own pack, flipped the lid, and tapped out a cigarette for myself. Assos International. To call them cigarettes was an act of generosity. The word cigarette suggests lightness, a lilting dainty quality. Assos had no such trait. They were like the black engine fire of a roadside breakdown. I’d bought them at the airport kiosk in Heraklion, and when Emma saw me smoking them, she said she liked my authenticity, and so I bought a new pack of 4 Assos the next day too. But I longed for the easy chemical rush of an American Camel Light. It is problems with the womens, Manolis said in a way that meant he was thinking of other things, perhaps getting his teeth cleaned. He looked to his partner, Nikos, who nodded to the music’s beat. Manolis lit mine and then a cigarette for himself. I pulled a money clip of drachmas from my pocket and flipped through the colorful bills, the numbers on each ludicrously large, the faces of men I did not know. Play money. I spent it as if I were playing a game. One Amstel, please, I said and placed a note for the appropriate amount on the bar. Manolis set a bottle in front of me and cranked off the cap. Five hundred drachmas, he said to himself as he swept up my money. He went to the register and slid it in the drawer with many of the other bills I’d given him, and he tapped his knuckles on the bar. Manolis went to the stereo at the other end of the bar and changed the music. He chose something different but exactly the same. Do you like Bryan Adams? he said. I shrugged. Manolis nodded at his choice. He said, The Englishwoman, Emma. She is back in your room? I told him that she was. 5 She is very beautiful woman. She is too much beautiful. Too beautiful for me? No, no, my friend, Manolis said. I will explain to you the way of things. I know many things about the womens. The beautiful ones will not make the childrens. Manolis leaned close to me and his bulging eyes did not avoid mine. She already has a son, I said. Your son? No. Manolis made a face struck with pity, and I wanted to stab my lit cigarette into one of those eyes. But I had that new beer in front of me. Manolis said, Here is the problem. I know all about this. She will always have someone else, her son. I cut him off. Look, I said and that was all. I drank. Coming into the bar were an English couple I’d spoken to earlier in the evening and at the end of last night, though I could not remember details, nor could I stir up their names. They took stools next to me, all smiles, attractive and well-matched. The man leaned into the bar, square-jawed and handsome with dramatic boomerang eyebrows. Now he raised them to acknowledge me and ran his hand through his dark movie star hair, then gave a small wave to signal Manolis.