DON’T KILL THE MESSENGER
by
Joel Pierson
Copyright 2010
CHAPTER 5
I have never been to Tarpon Springs, Florida before, but courtesy of the forces that have summoned me there, I have a turn-by-turn map in my mind of where to go to find Mr. Stelios Papathanissou, and thank God, too, because I think I’d have a hell of a time spelling his name if I had to look him up in the phone book.
The city isn’t large, only about 20,000 people or so from the looks of it. As I turn off of the main highway onto Dodecanese Avenue, I see that the city is awash in Greek influence. Restaurants, shops, and even the boats themselves all bear Greek names. And the boats are everywhere, hundreds of them at the marina.
Rebecca is looking from side to side, taking it all in. In a moment of practicality, she asks, “Do we have time for lunch before you meet this guy?”
“Don’t you think we should do what we came here to do first?” I reply.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to answer a question with a question?” she retorts.
“Don’t you?” I volley back.
“Amusing as this banter is,” she says, “I’m hungry, and I thought you said we’re fine if you talk to him before 3:00.”
“We’re fine if I convince him before 3:00,” I answer. “Not everyone is as easily convinced as you. I want to find him, give him the message, and then see if I need to spend time with him to persuade him. Then we can eat.”
“Fine,” she says, “but if it’s another three hours until lunch, I’m gonna be cranky.”
“I seem to recall something about us not being partners. I can drop you off at any restaurant you like, and then come get you when I’m done.”
“No …” she answers quickly, then regains her calm. “I want to watch you work … if that’s all right.”
I think about it for a moment; it’s a new circumstance, one I’ve never had to deal with before. I don’t imagine there are any rules prohibiting it, and from what I know of the details of the assignment, there’s no inherent danger in it. I allow her to join me, and she looks clearly enthusiastic about the prospect of it.
“Let me do the talking,” I caution.
“Hey, that’s fine. I’m just along for the ride. So … where do we find this guy?”
“Slip 218,” I reply, looking at the slip numbers as they climb sequentially.
“You nervous?” she asks.
I am, but I don’t necessarily want her knowing that. “There’s a certain level of anxiety as I approach each new assignment. You never know how people are going to react. Some are abusive, others are openly aggressive. Some even think they can come with me while I work.”
“Ha ha,” she says humorlessly. “I wonder who that could be.”
I see the sign on my left for slips 210 to 219 and find a parking spot as close as I can to the marina. After putting the top up, I get out of the car, and Rebecca follows right behind. I scan the harbor, looking for 218. It is the fourth one out on the right-hand side, and parked at it is a thirty-foot fishing boat named Calliope. I’m certainly not an authority on fishing boats, so I can’t state with any assurance that it’s a lovely boat or it isn’t. It’s clearly seen many years of service, and its owner has not gone out of his way to keep it pristine. It bears the scars and blemishes of its trade, but by the same token, it’s not about to sink to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Not for three hours, anyway.
As we approach the boat, I notice a lone man standing on its deck. As always, we’ve never met, and as always, I recognize him instantly, courtesy of the message I’ve received. He is Stelios Papa… Papathan… the Greek guy who’s in some serious trouble if he doesn’t listen to what I have to say.
We stop right at the gangplank and I call out to him. “Hello?”
“Hello, yes?” he replies, turning to face us. “What can I do for you?”
He seems pleasant enough. I estimate he’s approaching sixty years old. His hair and face and hands speak of a life of hard work and salt water, but his eyes have a pleasant air about them. He clearly loves his work, which will make what I have to tell him all the more difficult.
“Are you Stelios?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“This is me,” he replies amiably. “And who are you, my friend?”
“My name is Alex,” I tell him, dismissing Rebecca’s next retort with a discreet but insistent glance over my shoulder. “I have a message to give you.”
“And who is your friend?” Stelios asks, clearly impressed by the sight of Rebecca.
Before I can answer, she introduces herself. “Persephone,” she says.
He’s impressed. But with her looks, she could have said “Dog Turd” and gotten the same enthusiastic reaction. “A beautiful name for a beautiful young lady. Please, come aboard my boat and we’ll talk.”
Knowing what I know, I am initially hesitant but decide it will help my case. We board and Stelios invites us to sit on benches on deck. He offers us a drink, but I politely decline on behalf of us both. It’s go time; no more stalling. This is the part I hate, but there’s no way around it and no easy way to launch into it. “Stelios, this will sound strange, and let me assure you that we don’t mean you any harm. I know that you’re planning to take your boat out on the water at 3:00 today, and I need to warn you that there’s a problem with the starboard engine. If you take the boat out, the engine will catch fire, and there’s likely to be a hull breach, which would cause your boat to sink. So please, before you go out again, take care of that engine. I’d hate to see anything happen to you.”
I pause, looking at his face for any sign of a reaction. He remains curiously unaffected—much more so than anyone in recent memory. I wait a few seconds for a response, expecting disbelief, but still he remains silent. I’ve done all I can; it’s time to go.
“I’m sorry to bring you bad news like that,” I say to him. “We’ll go and let you see to your repairs.”
As Rebecca and I walk toward the gangplank, Stelios breaks his silence. There is a curious tone to his voice—not anger, not confusion, but more … acceptance; confirmation. “That’s all? You’re just going to tell me this and walk away, Alex? Or should I say Tristan?”
The sound of my name stops me in my tracks. I shoot Rebecca a swift, accusing glance, and her expression instantly and clearly replies, Hey, don’t look at me.
I turn around to face the fisherman again, and my eyes ask How? without my mouth saying a word. He nods a bit and gives a little chuckle, as he says, “You think you are the only one with gifts?” To emphasize, he taps a finger on the side of his head. “You’re hungry,” he says, informing us rather than asking us. “It’s been a long drive for you to come here. I have moussaka ready in the galley, and I insist you stay and join me for lunch. Maybe we can answer some questions for each other.”
The boat isn’t elegant, but it feels like home, because for Stelios it is home. He spends more time here, he tells us, than he does at the small apartment he rents in Tarpon Springs. Over plates of moussaka—a wondrous dish made of ground lamb and eggplant, the best I’ve ever had, the first Rebecca has ever had—he describes a life spent fishing. Forty-three years of it. He started off as a sponge fisherman, then, when the industry fell on hard times, he switched to more traditional fishing. And when sponge fishing resumed in the Gulf, he was one of the first to jump back on the bandwagon. He is friendly and charming, a bit flirty toward Rebecca, and for the moment, he is avoiding the all-important questions.
At the risk of discourtesy, I steer the conversation. “I’m curious about your gifts,” I tell him. “How you knew my name.”
“I have the sight,” he says simply. “God’s third eye, my grandmother called it. I can see the truth in people. Sometimes I know what will happen before it happens.”
“When I told you about the engine, you didn’t seem surprised. Did you know there was a mechanical problem?”
“I suspected,” he answers. “My sight told me to be careful, but I couldn’t see what the exact trouble was. But my sight told me I would be safe. It must have known you were coming to warn me.” He laughs. “Tristan’s psychic boat repair, eh?”
“Let’s say boat diagnostics,” I amend. “My gift doesn’t come with repair skills, unfortunately.”
“Oh, I can fix it,” he says confidently. “It’s the intake manifold. I will bet you money. So maybe I stay in dock today and don’t go out. I lose a little income, but at least I don’t go live with the sponges. I think they wouldn’t be too happy with me, no?”
We laugh at the casual, easy way he has. It’s so refreshing to be met with gratitude, rather than doubt, suspicion, and fear. Finally, someone else understands what it feels like to carry around thoughts that don’t belong to you. But how much does he understand?
“Stelios …” I hesitate a moment, unsure of how to ask him. “Do you know why I’ve been chosen to do this? To tell people these things?”
He looks at me and thinks a moment. “For the same reason I am a fisherman. Because you can.”
It’s a logical answer, but it doesn’t help me much. “Can you see how long I’ll be asked to do this? Is there a time when I’ll be able to stop?”
“I think you will do this until you can’t do it anymore. Just like me with my boat. Someday, I won’t be able to fish anymore. And thanks to you, that someday isn’t today.”
“But …” I search for the right words, still trying to understand. “Why send me at all? Things happen. Accidents occur. Sometimes people die. Why set that in motion and then send someone to keep it from happening?”
He nods; now my question is clear to him. A variation on the age-old selfish cry: Why me?
“You ever send a message you wish you could take back?” he asks simply. “A phone message, maybe an e-mail?”
“I guess so,” I answer.
“Maybe God does too.”
The answer is unexpectedly profound and metaphysical, coming from this ordinary man. Of course, that may be my unintentional classism surfacing, equating lack of an advanced degree with lack of wisdom and sophistication.
My silence leaves Rebecca an opening and she grabs it. “Stelios, I have a question too …”
He laughs at this. “I think you are confusing Greek with gypsy. I should be telling you to cross my palm with silver, maybe!” She looks confused by this.
“It’s something gypsy fortune tellers said in old movies,” I explain.
He invites her to continue. “Don’t worry, little Persephone. You can ask me your question.”
“Tristan told me I had to leave my job, leave Florida, and go back to Ohio. He told me it was for my own safety, but he couldn’t see why I had to leave. Do you know why I have to leave? What the danger is?”
He looks at her intently from across the table without saying a word. He then reaches out and holds her hands in his for many seconds, still not giving an answer. I watch as he opens that third eye he spoke of and searches deep within Rebecca’s very being, trying to complete the message I started—the why to my what.
Stelios stares at her for thirty seconds, then forty-five. Almost a full minute passes before he releases her hands and says, “No, I can’t see it.”
“You can’t?” I ask, surprised.
“It … changes,” he says cryptically. “Today’s danger may be different tomorrow.”
“What does that mean?” Rebecca asks.
“I wish I knew,” Stelios says quietly. “Sometimes, what I see is very clear to me. Other times, it’s like I’m seeing it through cloudy water. You, my little Persephone, are very cloudy water. Maybe you stay with Stelios for a few days, the image will get clearer.”
She smiles pleasantly, looking for the right words to decline, but I beat her to the punch. “Tempting as that is, we have to head north. Your moussaka and your hospitality were impeccable, though. And thank you for sharing what you shared with me.”
We all rise, and Rebecca is the first to the gangplank. She makes her way back to the pier, and I am about to follow her, when I feel a hand on my shoulder. Stelios pulls me aside to speak to me privately.
“You know, don’t you, that you can’t fall in love with this girl?” he says discreetly.
I notice that Rebecca is watching us from the dock, but she can’t hear what we’re saying.
“So I’ve been told,” I answer quietly. “But no one can tell me why.”
“The water is not as cloudy as I let her think. But she can’t know the reasons, not now.”
The question I’ve been pondering and dreading surfaces, because I know that he may be the only one who can answer it for me. “Stelios … am I the danger she has to avoid?”
“Tristan?” she calls to me from shore. “You coming?”
“Be right there,” I call back, then look back at the fisherman.
“You might be. But you must take her where she needs to go. She needs you. And you need her.”
“I need her?”
“You will. Soon. Now go on. There’s a long way to travel yet.”
“Thank you, Stelios.”
“Be careful, Tristan.”
I rejoin Rebecca on dry land as Stelios goes to get his toolkit. “What were you two talking about?” she asks me.
“You know, boy stuff. Football, beer, pretty girls.”
“I see. Was one of those girls me?” she asks coyly.
“Come on, you know I can’t violate the sanctity of boy stuff.”
We make our way back to the car, climb inside, and lower the top again. The weather is pleasant today, not too hot. Good driving weather, which is a good thing, since there’s a hell of a lot of that to do.
As we pull out of Tarpon Springs, Rebecca asks me, “So, did we just save that man’s life?”
I smile a little at the realization that she’s right. “Yeah, I think we did.”
“God, that’s freaky. And how weird was that when he called you by your name? I saw you look at me like ‘what did you tell him?’ But then you knew I didn’t tell him anything.”
“It was a little disconcerting, I have to admit.”
“Think how I feel!” she says. “Two days ago, I thought that psychics were just people trying to scam you out of twenty bucks in a storefront. Then I meet you and Stelios, and all of a sudden it’s like a psychic fair.”
I don’t respond, and the absence of a reply affects her. “What?” she says. “What is it?”
I feel caught. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing. Did he say something to you? What did he tell you?”
“Rebecca, it’s nothing, really.”
“He told you what’s going to happen to me, didn’t he?” she guesses. “He couldn’t tell me, but he told you …”
“No,” I reply quickly, and for the most part honestly. “He doesn’t know and I don’t know.”
“If you do know, I want you to tell me. Even if it’s bad, I want to know. Promise me you’ll tell?”
“I promise.”
A familiar silence ensues for about ten minutes, but I start to feel guilty because of it, so I start up the conversation again. “So when did you change your name?”
The question catches her off guard. “What are you talking about?”
“At some time, you must have changed your name to Rebecca. I was just wondering when. And, you know … why.”
“Why do you think I changed my name?”
“I didn’t until today. When we boarded that boat, I told Stelios my name was Alex. I usually give a false name, to avoid complications. You decided to play along and you told him your name was Persephone. But when he saw through me, he started calling me Tristan. And to the end, he called you Persephone. So I have to think that it’s your real name, which is why he didn’t see through it.”
I can see her working it out inside, considering whether she can make something up to cover for it, and then deciding that the truth is out. “On my eighteenth birthday. I was tired of my old name. And Rebecca was my middle name anyway, so I changed it legally.”
“You were tired of your old name. That’s the only reason?”
“Yes. Why?”
She sounds defensive, and I don’t want to upset her. “Well, it’s just that a legal name change is a big step. Most people who don’t like their name just go by a nickname unofficially. I just wondered if there was something more that was motivating it. Some reason why Persephone wouldn’t want to be Persephone anymore?”
She is silent, and I can’t tell why. Either I’ve offended her by asking because she was telling the truth or I’ve upset her by asking because there’s something more she isn’t telling me. Whichever the case, I won’t get anything else by prying, so I do the honorable thing … for a change.
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
The apology seems to disarm her a bit. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. We’re gonna be in this car together for a long time, and I should be friendlier. You want to know more about me; that’s natural. It’s just …”
“Just?” I prompt.
“What happens once we get to Ohio? After you drop me off? Are we going to be friends? Will we call each other? Send e-mails? Christmas cards? Or will you just drop me off and never see me again?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I hadn’t thought about it. This is all new terrain for me.”
“Because …” she starts, “I feel like this is a big thing we’re going through together. You may have even saved my life, I don’t know. And I feel like that should make us … you know … friends. But that takes an investment of myself. And I’m not sure I’m ready to invest that, because I just don’t know where I stand with you, Tristan.”
She has me dead to rights, and I have no defense. “Nobody does, Rebecca. You want to know the real me? That’s the real me. A man who’s been unable to have a meaningful relationship with anyone in years. Even before this whole crazy mission of mine started. Maybe that’s why I was chosen—somebody knew I wouldn’t be leaving anybody behind. You know the reason why I let you come along with me? Do you think it was because I was being nice? No. It’s because for a couple of days, I had the chance to interact with someone on a personal level. Someone pleasant. Someone … pretty. And now it seems that I couldn’t even do that right. Because you’re sitting there, and you don’t know what to make of me, just like the rest of the world.”
In my peripheral vision, I see that she is looking intently at me as I look at the road ahead. I feel naked in front of the former stripper, and with each second that passes without a word spoken by Rebecca, I feel smaller and smaller. If she rejects me now, after opening myself up to her this way, I’m fairly certain I’ll vanish into a diminishing puddle of my own self-doubt.
Just before that moment arrives, I hear her quietly utter: “I want to be your friend.”
My difficult brain tries to invent other things I might have misheard her say, but I realize at once how unhelpful that is, and I am willing to accept that she may have actually said what I thought she said.
Gracious, thoughtful people would respond, “Thank you.” I respond, “Why?”
“Because you’re unexpected,” she replies directly. Curious response.
“Unexpected like a bee sting?” I ask.
“No, unexpected like a warm day in December, when you’re sick and tired of the cold. That’s what you are. You’re that warm day.”
“I have no people skills,” I say apologetically. “I haven’t since this whole thing began two years ago. Now I travel around so much, and the nature of what I do is so isolating …”
“You have no people skills because you have no people. Now you have a person. And I promise, when you act like a dick, I’ll gently let you know, so you can work on those skills.”
A surprising amount of happiness is starting to well up inside of me. And I swear that I am on the verge of smiling broadly and saying something very kind and thoughtful to her. Unfortunately, at this precise moment, the universe chooses to fuck me once again.
A wave of intense pain starts at the base of my spine and rockets up into my neck and my head. This is new, this is unique; I’ve never before gotten a message while I was behind the wheel of a car. My vision blurs, and my hands clutch the steering wheel so tightly, small rips appear in the vinyl under my fingernails.
I am marginally aware that drivers around me are honking and swerving, trying to get out of my way as I try to get out of theirs. The message is coming in, loud, persistent, fast, detailed. But I can’t crash the car. I think Rebecca is calling my name. When I don’t respond, I feel her grip the wheel and pull us to the shoulder of Route 19. As the message plays out and the pain subsides, I feel the presence of mind to take my foot off the gas pedal and move it to the brake. Once we come to a complete stop, I put the Sebring in park, and sit there for a moment, gasping for breath.
“So,” she says calmly, “where are we going this time?”
I look at her, taken by her aplomb, while simultaneously terrified at how close I just came to crashing the car, and utter a single word: “Atlanta.”
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