Greece Jazz

   It was very hot. The only breeze was an occasional zephyr that teased the dust of the road. The dust would dance with twirling skirts of sad form then drop to the ground in exhaustion. On both sides slight twitches of bramble and round sage brush boringly applauded the occasional dust fandangos. The collar of my shirt rubbed my neck, breaking out sweat, then rubbing it dry. It pissed me off. I tried to wrap my handkerchief between the two but it would eventually slide one sided and that would piss me off also.

I trudged along the dust road with sandals moist beneath my feet and sweat mud caking my toe partings.

I was looking down as I walked away from the sun. I did not see or hear the car approaching in my pissed off, hot mood. They pulled up alongside me before I looked up. Dust rose into diamond sparkling air. I was surprised and watched it slowly fall into invisibility not seeing exactly where it all landed. The guy behind the wheel had that pouty lips under a thick moustache that Greeks had on Mykonos. It was the only taxi on the island. In the back of the old brown Renault were two people who were hidden in its shade.

A head emerged half sun lit. I recognised him as somebody I had seen in the village. His brown-blond hair was short and downy, laying wetly upon a perfectly rounded head. There was one of the permanent smiles I hated set upon his smooth naked face.

‘Hot, isn’t it?’ He said smiling. ‘We thought you might want a lift. We aren’t going far but we could offer you some cool refreshment on your journey. You are from that boat in the harbour, aren’t you?’

There was something like a type of pronounced intelligence in his tone that I also didn’t like. I had to force my mouth to say nicely, ‘Thanks but I think it is just a bit more.’ Then I thought what am I saying it is too hot to be walking and I quickly added, ‘Actually, sorry, yes, thanks for the offer.’ 

I walked around the front of the taxi and with a squeak opened the front passenger door and got in. The naugahyde seat was hot and broken above the seams leaving knife-like wedges that dug into my under-thighs. I nodded to the driver, who smiled sadly and smelled of Ouzo and tobacco. His fingers held yellow stains as he gripped his wheel and stepped on the accelerator. Hot air blew into the cab of the car. I turned around to face the man and a beautiful woman with arching eyebrows. I looked at her breasts beneath the sheen of a silken robe and blinked a few times. ‘Sorry, my eyes need to adjust. How far are you going?’ My eyes made the lift to her eyes. She was smiling more and I saw that she raised her chest a bit higher.

He answered, ‘Actually, just over the next rise, but as I said, we can offer you some refreshment, or’ he paused, then continued, ‘… or you can use the taxi to get all the way to the cove? You were on your way to the cove, weren’t you?’

I looked over at him. Of course there was no other place to be headed on this road. I looked back at her. She let me know with the tiniest of nods that she was hungry. She smiled at me, ‘We have a variety of refreshments.’ Her smile widened. ‘What is your name?’

‘I’m Rod and and the variety of refreshments sounds perfect.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it must have been a very hot hike out there. Not much better in here with this breeze so hot. But this ends quickly. Trekking out in this heat and dust can’t be leading to a great stroll.’

They both laughed lightly with the same tone and timing. Her laugh pushed her nipples out on her moist blouse and I unconsciously licked my suddenly thirsty lips.

At the top of the next small knoll there was an oasis of trees and shrubbery with little cottages almost hidden. A low stake fence painted in pastel blue stuck out between some bushes and a gate tilted in its middle. The car stopped and the driver turned the engine off. He didn’t turn around. It was probably too hot even for him. We got out. It was still hot. The guy paid as the woman and I moved toward the gate. She took my hand and pointed both toward the gate, ‘Home.’ Her voice was huskier.

Through the gate there were three cottages with grape arbors between all of them. Purple grapes hung under deep green leaves. Both colours were so vivid I thought I was hallucinating and blinked several times to clear vision that needed no clearing.

‘Those grapes are magnificent.’I said, stopping to look at them.

‘Paul is an excellent gardener. They are his creations.’ she offered. ‘They taste even better.’

I noticed she had an accent, maybe French, but definitely European.

‘You live here long?’ I asked with honest curiosity.

‘Actually, no.’

We went to the central cottage and she opened an unlocked door. I looked up to a second flooring window and looked back where the view had to be to see the shrubbery and entrance.

‘From above is the view’, he said from behind us, ‘but I am glad you are actually interested. That is good.’ 

I saw that he also had an accent but I could not pull in any country references. Inside the central cottage the shading had me in a nightfall. Pastel colours softened the furnishings but hey took defined shapes quickly. A large black vinyl stereo system with large speakers on its sides commanded the room. Cushions and pillows roamed about the place. A very large collection of vinyl records in their jackets lined one wall at hip level. They were tilted slightly to the left and easy to pull out and read. There was a small round table at the centre of the cushions.

‘My husband’, she began, drawing my attention to her eyes and mouth, the bottom lip much fuller than the top, ‘is a jazz musician. This is probably the best collection of jazz you will ever find in one place. I took it when I left.’

‘You left him?’ I asked, thinking I was supposed to.

‘No. He had me leave.’

‘Why?’ I asked and with a silence knew I had gone too far.

Paul interrupted, ‘Would you like some lemonade or something more heady?’

‘Sorry, about being nosey.’ I admitted, then turned to Paul, ‘If you have a cold beer I’d be in heaven.’

He nodded, ’What type? British, German, American, Belgian, Mexican?’

‘Do you have Dos Equis?’ I smiled, knowing he wouldn’t.

But, he or they did, ’Of course, and a fine beer that is. It is German, I believe, from Vera Cruz…’

She pulled me by my forgotten hand over to the albums. ‘Do you like jazz?’ Her slender neck bent toward the music.

I bent, ’Oh yeah.’

Turning her head her face was very close to mine. ’Look and see if there is anything here you might like and we will play it.’

I looked down, and pulled out a Cal Tjader, pushing memories of my first times trying the congas. As I turned back to get close to her face again, she released my hand and took the album with the hint of a recognition smile, and went over to the player. She floated with a slight disturbance of the loose flimsy linen trousers around the hips. She bent with strong features in the roundness of her rear and turned the player on. She pulled the record out of the jacket and delicately placed it on the turntable. She moved the needle arm on the record and vibraphones filled the air. Then the soft thuds of conga, da dun dun dun da dun dun dun da dun de dun da dun dun dun…

I was in San Francisco, North Beach, playing on a misty night with my buddies telling passing people to give us wine money. It was cold and I was hot. The night gave a swirl of passing cloud and I was stoned happy.

‘Yeah, this is wonderful. Reminds me of home.’

‘Where is home?‘

‘San Francisco. And you, is this home?’ I looked around the room again, noting that it seemed larger than when I entered. There were no furnishings save the pillows, the table, a hookah leaning next to the entertainment wall, which was low. I deduced that the room actually was not large but unfurnished. Measuring by eye I thought twenty by twenty foot.

‘I move about. We are here now.’ She lowered herself onto corner pillows near the hookah, patting a space next to her for me to sit. Her legs were parted and I saw that there were no underpants and no hiding a crotch that was clothed in a mass of hair. I felt my own crotch issuing suggestions. I sat next to her quickly not wanting her to witness the stirring in my shorts.

‘Where are you from?’ I said, settling next to her warm body. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I am Parisian but I was raised in Turkey and for that I have the nickname, Turkey. It is nickname, no?’

I looked down at the albums. Archie Shepp, Herbie Hancock, Miles, the Bird, Trane, Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Olatunji. ‘You are into Afro-latin.’

‘That is the beginnings of progressive jazz.’ She said with the emphasis of an authority.

‘Ain’t that right.’ I sat next to her trying not to show a building need. ‘I’ve been saying that for a long time.’

‘And now,’ Paul entered the room, handing me the brown bottle, ‘hashish with Tres Equis to see the sunset?’

She was smiling and nodding, ’Our friend would like more latin jazz… I suggest the Palmeiri.’

I jerked back, ’Eddie Palmieri?… damn, you do have it?’

Paul went to the hookah first and crumbled some hash into the cup, then to the long cabinet and without searching pulled a papered-over cover half way out, then the black record and placed it on the turntable above the Tjader turning. He went back to the hookah and lit it with a long match that he must have struck somewhere while I was slugging back the cold and cooling beer. He passed a mouthpiece to me and then to her from an assortment of five arranged neatly around the bulb neck.

I looked at her perfectly cut toenails, and feet with finely laced ocre designs on their tops. I felt her studying everything I looked at. She started to suck as Paul lit the hashish. The bouquet filled the room with flowers and soil. I pulled and the bouquet entered my body and made me smile.

‘Roses.’

‘Yes,’ Paul agreed, ‘from our garden in back. The petals are crushed and mixed with a bit of oil, then put into the bowl with fresh petals.’

I looked in the clear hookah bowl to see red and pink petals floating in an off-white layer of liquid. I smiled again and looked at her ankles and their perfect turn and shadow.

Paul was smiling now. ‘I will be in the kitchen, and will prepare a bit of a snack. Snack, right, snack in English?’

I nodded, smiling at him.

He nodded and left. Turkey re-lit the hookah and we both drew in the roses.

With a bit of joy I had to say, ’Thank you for this. It is like a step into another place entirely.’

She nodded, leaning closer to me, ’We hope so.’

I leaned closer to her, ’You always say ‘we’. Is there a you alone anywhere?’

‘I like we.’ She smiled languidly into my eyes and looked directly down at my crotch. ‘I know you, you know.’

Thinking that she meant my longing for her body, I said, ‘I am sure it is easy to read me like a book.’

‘No, I mean I know you.’ She put her hand on my thigh and rubbed it. I was a bit confused but was quiet waiting to hear and feel what came next. ‘Do you remember another Turkey back in San Francisco?’

I definitely remembered Turkey. I had met her in the park, she was sunbathing on a slight incline of grass and her hairy crotch was showing also, but more clearly under a short skirt. My dog had run to her and started licking at her thighs and I told her her thing was showing. We ended up making love there in that open field in the Golden Gate Park. We didn’t stop meeting for a couple of weeks. I would hear her at night while I was sleeping with my steady woman and felt I had to go to her. She eventually told me she was a witch and next door to her apartment was her servant, who continually would be waiting for me with flowers, juices, fruit, teas when I answered those callings. I stiffened my thigh and moved it away a bit. She took her hand off.

I started looking at her more intently, ’Go on, what next?’

‘Turkey and I are sisters.’

There was no physical resemblance. Both were physically beautiful in a sensuous way but neither could be taken as a relative to the other.

Tilting her head to the side, as Turkey had done many a time, ‘Not with the same mother or father, but through blood.’ She showed me the palm of her hand and a very faint old cut. ‘Like you American Indians, a blood sister.’

‘How did you know I had Indian blood?’

‘I also know you lived at 1050 Haight Street when you were growing up and your best friend was Jacob.’

I sucked the hash and decided I had enough witchcraft for my life. Turkey ended up with me fighting some guy who wanted her back. During the fight, which was not an easy one I saw her smiling. After the fight and he was down with me stomping his hands, she turned and walked away. I never had another message from her and she moved away. Her servant told me she had gone back to Turkey but I saw her with Timothy Leary at a reception for him at a friend’s apartment. She never acknowledged my presence and I left the place.

I was hooked on that kind of mystery about the women I was meeting and for a long time after Turkey I only was with witches. San Francisco is like that. But none commanded the calls in the night that Turkey had. There was always some kind of problem. Nobody else generated that need she left me with.

I looked at the roses again. ’So, you are Turkey Two?’

‘No, I am Turkey and she is Turkey. Do not be afraid and I know about her dropping you but there were reasons. There are always reasons for what we do.’

As much as I wanted to sit back, have cold Tres Equis and pulls on the hookah and taste her juices, I shook my head, ‘Look, I love simplicity, ya know.’

She smiled, showing perfect teeth, ’Simplicity. Rod, I am different, but we are sisters and I wanted you to know that and who I am before anything else.’

Paul came rushing in. ‘Turkey, look at this.’ She looked down into his right palm and over at me.

‘We were going to take some acid pane from Berkeley and when Paul cut it into two parts it turned into three. He read this as an omen and wanted to offer one of the pieces to you. This is not a normal thing… no, that is not the way to say it… this is a direction, a path chosen outside our powers. Yes, that is the way to say it.’ Turkey’s accent had deepened. ‘Would you like to take it?’

Paul came over to me with a cherub smile and innocent glow and sat down on the cushions next to me, centring me between them. He put his left hand on my other thigh and opened the right palm to show me the clear, divided panes.

I looked down at the hands and my contrasting skin, but not at the acid. I didn’t want to deal with the evident threesome, but contrary to my mind’s intention, I was starting to get a hard-on. The little square translucent wafer seemed innocent enough and I took one of them and placed it on my tongue. They did the same with the hands that were not resting on my legs.

‘Gots’ta go.’ I smiled to Turkey, who looked mildly shocked.

‘You can stay here. Share this with us.’ she said with a line between her brows. ‘We can see each other clearly.’

‘Naw,’ I said, still looking at her and starting to wonder how old she was. Just then she seemed about twenty but earlier I was sure she was generally in the middle age range somewhere. Both were sensually attractive but there was one too many for my movement toward her body. ‘I want to see this jungle clearly. I think there is something there for me to experience this way. But thanks. I might still see both of you out in nature though.’

Then, in the heat and sun again a family waved and smiled perched in one of the only trees around, an olive tree. I waved back and continued on only to be pulled around by a pretty young girl who threw her arms around me and kissed me squarely on the lips. She ran back to those on the tree who had turned into goats.