FALSE SUMMER / FALSE SAFETY
The shutters were still closed when Marcus woke, but light came through the slats in clean white bars that fell across her shoulder. She was face-down in the sheets, one arm thrown above her head, the other tucked beneath the pillow. Her hair was dark against the white linen, still damp at the roots from the night before. He could see the small constellation of freckles between her shoulder blades, three of them forming a triangle he’d traced with his thumb more than once.
The room smelled like salt and sex and the faint chemical tang of sunscreen that never quite washed off. Outside, he could hear the distant buzz of a moped climbing the hill, the irregular clatter of someone setting up café tables on the street below. Mykonos in late September. The crowds thinned out, the prices still obscene, the light turning gold earlier each afternoon.
She stirred, made a small sound into the pillow that might have been his name or might have been nothing. He watched the movement of her ribs as she breathed. There was a hickey just below her left shoulder blade that he didn’t remember making. Evidence. The word came to him unbidden and he pushed it away.
“You’re staring,” she said without opening her eyes.
“You’re awake.”
“Unfortunately.” She rolled onto her side, squinting at him. Her face was creased from the pillow, makeup smudged beneath one eye. She looked younger like this, less composed. “What time is it?”
“Almost ten.”
“Christ.” She stretched, arching her back, and the sheet slipped down to her waist. She didn’t pull it back up. “We’re supposed to check out at eleven.”
“We can pay for another night.”
“Can we?” She raised an eyebrow. “Won’t someone notice you’re still in Greece?”
“I told her I’m in Frankfurt until Thursday.”
“Frankfurt.” She laughed, a short bark of amusement. “Very romantic.”
“It’s a conference.”
“Is it, though?”
He didn’t answer. She reached for the water bottle on the nightstand, drank half of it in one go, then offered it to him. He took it, their fingers brushing. The water was warm and tasted faintly of plastic.
“I need coffee,” she said. “Real coffee, not that Nescafé shit from the lobby.”
“There’s a place down by the harbor.”
“The one with the cats?”
“That’s every place.”
She smiled, a real smile this time, and swung her legs out of bed. She walked naked to the bathroom without self-consciousness, her body lean and pale except where the tan lines cut across her hips and breasts. He heard the shower start, heard her swear when the water came out cold.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling. There was a crack running from the light fixture to the corner, branching like a river delta. The plaster was old, probably older than he was. The whole building felt temporary, held together by paint and tourism and the collective agreement not to look too closely at the infrastructure.
His phone was on the nightstand, face-down. He’d turned off notifications three days ago. No emails, no calls, no texts. Complete radio silence. It was supposed to feel liberating. Mostly it just felt like holding his breath.
The shower shut off. He heard her moving around in the bathroom, the cabinet opening and closing, the hair dryer starting and then stopping after thirty seconds. When she came out she was wrapped in a towel, her hair still wet, water beading on her shoulders.
“Your turn,” she said.
“In a minute.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and started going through her suitcase, pulling out clothes and discarding them in a pile. “I didn’t pack for an extra day.”
“We can buy something.”
“With what? Your imaginary Frankfurt per diem?”
“I have cash.”
“Of course you do.” She found a sundress, pale yellow with thin straps, and held it up critically. “This is too much, isn’t it? For coffee?”
“It’s Greece. Everyone’s overdressed or underdressed. There’s no middle ground.”
She pulled the dress on over her head, not bothering with underwear. The fabric clung to her damp skin. She caught him looking and smiled. “See something you like?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Consider faster. I’m starving.”
He got up and went to the bathroom. The mirror was still fogged from her shower. He wiped it with his hand and looked at himself: forty-three years old, starting to go soft around the middle, hair thinning at the crown. Not old, not yet, but no longer young. The face of a man who made reasonable decisions, who filed his taxes on time, who remembered birthdays and anniversaries and never caused a scene.
The face of a man who was currently in Greece with a woman who was not his wife.
He showered quickly, the water pressure weak and inconsistent, the temperature swinging wildly between scalding and freezing. When he came out she was sitting on the balcony, smoking a cigarette and looking at her phone.
“I thought you quit,” he said.
“I did. This is a vacation cigarette. Doesn’t count.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Sure it is. Vacation rules.” She took a drag and blew smoke toward the street. “There’s something weird going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“My phone. The signal keeps dropping. And when it works, everything’s slow.”
“It’s Greece. The infrastructure is—”
“I know, I know. But it’s been fine all week. Now suddenly nothing loads.” She held up her phone to show him. The screen showed a spinning wheel, a half-loaded news site. “See?”
He checked his own phone. Same thing. The signal bars flickered between full and nothing. When he tried to open his email, it timed out.
“Probably just network congestion,” he said.
“At ten in the morning? In September?”
“Maybe there’s maintenance.”
She stubbed out her cigarette on the balcony railing and flicked it into the street below. “You’re very committed to finding boring explanations for things.”
“It’s a gift.”
“It’s something.” She stood and stretched, the sundress riding up her thighs. “Come on. Coffee. Before I get homicidal.”
They left the room and took the stairs down to the lobby. The hotel was small, family-run, the kind of place that looked charming in photos and slightly shabby in person. The walls were painted bright white but scuffed at the corners. The tile floor was cracked in places. There were potted plants everywhere, most of them half-dead.
The woman at the desk looked up as they passed. She was in her sixties, heavy-set, with reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She said something in Greek that Marcus didn’t understand.
“Sorry?” he said.
She repeated it, more slowly, then seemed to realize they didn’t speak the language. She switched to English, heavily accented. “You are checking out today?”
“We’d like to stay another night, if that’s possible.”
She frowned and looked at her computer screen, clicking the mouse several times. “The system is very slow today.”
“That’s fine. We’re not in a hurry.”
She kept clicking, her frown deepening. “Everything is slow. Internet, phone, everything.” She looked up at them. “You have heard the news?”
“What news?”
“From Athens. There is...” She gestured vaguely, searching for the word. “Problem. Big problem.”
Marcus felt something tighten in his chest. “What kind of problem?”
“I don’t know exactly. My daughter called this morning, very upset. She says there is trouble, maybe military. The TV is showing nothing clear.” She shook her head. “Always something. Always drama.”
Beside him, he felt rather than saw the woman—Claire, her name was Claire, though he tried not to think of her by name too often—go still.
“Is it serious?” Claire asked.
The desk woman shrugged. “Who knows? In Greece, everything is serious and nothing is serious. But the phones are not working right, so maybe yes, something real.” She turned back to her computer. “I can give you the room for one more night. Same price.”
“That’s fine.”
She wrote something in a ledger by hand, the computer apparently too slow to be useful. “You pay now or tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay. Enjoy your day.” She said it automatically, without conviction, already looking back at her screen.
They walked out into the street. The sun was high and bright, the sky that particular shade of blue that seemed to exist only in the Mediterranean. The street was narrow, barely wide enough for a single car, lined with whitewashed buildings and bougainvillea spilling over walls. A cat sat in a doorway, watching them with yellow eyes.
“Military problem,” Claire said. “That’s comforting.”
“She said she didn’t know what it was.”
“She said her daughter was upset.”
“Everyone’s daughter is always upset. It’s probably nothing.”
“You and your boring explanations.”
They walked down toward the harbor, following the maze of narrow streets. The town was built on a hill, everything either uphill or downhill, no flat ground anywhere. Marcus’s calves ached from three days of walking. They passed a group of tourists taking photos, a man selling jewelry from a blanket, a restaurant with tables set up in the street and no customers.
The café was where he remembered it, tucked into a corner near the water. Small tables, mismatched chairs, a chalkboard menu in Greek and English. Three cats lounged in the shade beneath the tables. The owner, a thin man with a gray beard, nodded at them as they sat down.
“Kalimera,” he said.
“Good morning,” Marcus replied. “Two coffees, please. Freddo cappuccino.”
The man nodded and disappeared inside.
Claire leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, tilting her face toward the sun. “This is nice.”
“It is.”
“We should do this more often.”
“We can’t do this more often.”
“I know. I’m just saying we should.” She opened one eye and looked at him. “Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically is a dangerous word.”
“Everything’s dangerous if you think about it too much.” She closed her eye again. “That’s your problem. You think too much.”
“Someone has to.”
“Do they, though?”
The owner brought their coffees, tall glasses of iced cappuccino with foam on top. Claire took a sip and made a small sound of pleasure. “God, that’s good. Why doesn’t coffee taste like this at home?”
“Different beans. Different water.”
“Different everything.” She looked out at the harbor. There were boats bobbing in the water, fishing boats and sailboats and a few larger yachts. The water was impossibly blue, almost artificial-looking. “I could stay here forever.”
“No you couldn’t.”
“I could try.”
“You’d be bored in a week.”
“Maybe.” She smiled. “But what a week.”
They sat in silence for a while, drinking their coffee, watching the boats. A group of tourists walked by, speaking German. A moped buzzed past, the driver not wearing a helmet. Everything felt normal, lazy, suspended in amber.
Then Marcus heard it: a siren, distant but distinct, coming from somewhere inland. Not the two-tone European police siren he’d gotten used to, but something else. Something longer, more sustained. An air raid siren, he thought, and then immediately dismissed the thought as absurd.
Claire heard it too. She sat up straighter, her coffee forgotten. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
The siren continued for maybe thirty seconds, then stopped. The silence afterward felt heavy.
The café owner came out, wiping his hands on his apron. He was looking toward the hills, his expression troubled. He said something in Greek, too fast for Marcus to catch any of it.
“Sorry,” Marcus said. “English?”
The man switched languages, his accent thick. “You hear the siren?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“I don’t know. Civil defense, maybe. I have not heard this sound in many years.” He pulled out his phone, tried to do something with it, then swore in Greek. “Nothing works. No internet, no news.”
“The woman at our hotel said something about trouble in Athens,” Claire said.
The man nodded. “Yes, I hear this also. My cousin called from Piraeus this morning, very early. He says there is military movement, ships, planes. He says people are worried.” He shrugged. “But people are always worried. This is Greece.”
Another siren started, closer this time. Then another, overlapping. The sound was eerie, primal, designed to trigger something deep in the hindbrain. Marcus felt his pulse quicken.
“Maybe we should go back to the hotel,” Claire said quietly.
“And do what?”
“I don’t know. Watch the news. Figure out what’s happening.”
“The internet’s not working.”
“There’s a TV in the lobby.”
The sirens stopped again. The silence was worse than the sound. Even the cats had disappeared, slinking away to whatever hiding places cats found when the world felt wrong.
Marcus put money on the table, more than the coffee cost. The owner nodded his thanks, but he was still looking toward the hills, his phone in his hand, waiting for it to work.
They walked back up through the narrow streets. More people were outside now, standing in doorways, talking in clusters. The conversations were all in Greek, rapid and urgent. Marcus caught fragments—“Athens,” “military,” “Turkey”,"NATO" —but couldn’t piece together a coherent picture.
A man on a moped roared past, going too fast for the narrow street, nearly clipping a woman carrying groceries. She shouted after him, but he didn’t slow down.
“This doesn’t feel like nothing,” Claire said.
“I know.”
“So what do we do?”
“Let’s get back to the hotel. See if we can get any information.”
They climbed the hill, both of them breathing hard by the time they reached the hotel. The lobby was more crowded than before. A dozen people clustered around a small TV mounted on the wall, all of them talking at once. The picture on the screen showed a news anchor speaking urgently in Greek, but the sound was turned down. Behind the anchor, there was footage of what looked like a military base, helicopters taking off.
The desk woman saw them and waved them over. “You see? Something is happening.”
“What is it?” Marcus asked.
“They are not saying clearly. But there is military alert. High level. They say people should stay inside, stay calm, wait for information.” She gestured at the TV. “But they give no information. Just ‘stay calm, stay calm.’ How can we stay calm when they tell us nothing?”
On the screen, the footage changed. Now it showed a map of the eastern Mediterranean, with red zones marked across Turkey and the Aegean. The anchor was pointing at something, his expression grave.
“Is it war?” someone asked in English. An American tourist, young, wearing a college t-shirt.
“No one knows,” the desk woman said. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe just exercise, maybe real.”
“Jesus Christ,” the American said. “We need to get to the airport.”
“Airport is closed,” the desk woman said. “I hear this from my daughter. All flights cancelled.”
“What? They can’t do that.”
“They can do anything. This is emergency.”
Marcus felt Claire’s hand find his, her fingers cold despite the heat. He squeezed back, trying to project a confidence he didn’t feel.
“We should call the embassy,” Claire said quietly.
“With what? The phones aren’t working.”
“They have to be working somewhere. We can find a landline.”
“And say what? We’re American tourists who don’t know what’s happening? They’ll tell us to stay put and wait for instructions.”
“So that’s what we do?”
“What else can we do?”
She pulled her hand away. “I don’t know. Something. Anything. Not just stand here watching Greek TV we can’t understand.”
The news footage changed again. Now it showed the harbor at Piraeus, the port near Athens. There were ships moving, military vessels, and crowds of people on the docks. The camera was shaky, handheld, someone filming from a distance.
“This was this morning,” the desk woman said, translating the caption. “Six o’clock. They say the navy is mobilizing. They say there is threat from the east.”
“Coalition?” someone said.
“Maybe. They don’t say.”
Marcus watched the screen, trying to read meaning into the images. The ships looked purposeful, organized. Not panicked. That was good, wasn’t it? If it was organized, it was controlled. Controlled meant manageable.
But the people on the docks didn’t look controlled. They looked scared.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, hope flaring—maybe the network was back—but it was just a notification that his storage was almost full. No signal. No data. Nothing.
“We should get our things,” Claire said. “Pack. Be ready to move if we need to.”
“Move where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere but here.”
“Here is fine. We’re on an island. We’re safe.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know panicking doesn’t help.”
She looked at him, her eyes hard. “I’m not panicking. I’m being realistic. Something is happening, Marcus. Something big. And we’re stuck on a fucking island with no information and no way to communicate and you want to just... what? Wait it out? Hope it goes away?”
“I want to not make things worse by running around like a headless chicken.”
“Better than standing still like a sitting duck.”
They stared at each other. Around them, the other guests were still focused on the TV, their voices rising. Someone was crying. Someone else was on their phone, shouting in Italian.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Marcus said quietly. “Get our things together. Then we can decide what to do.”
Claire nodded, her jaw tight. They went back up to their room. The shutters were still closed, the bed still unmade. It looked exactly as they’d left it twenty minutes ago, but it felt different now. The intimacy had curdled into something else. The room felt small, claustrophobic.
Claire started throwing things into her suitcase, not bothering to fold anything. Marcus watched her for a moment, then started packing his own bag. His hands were shaking slightly. He tried to remember what he’d brought, what was important, what could be left behind. His passport. His wallet. His phone charger, for all the good it would do.
His wedding ring was in the side pocket of his suitcase, where he’d put it three days ago. He looked at it for a long moment, then left it where it was.
“We should try to rent a car,” Claire said. “Get off the island. Take the ferry to the mainland.”
“The ferries might not be running.”
“Then we find out. But we can’t just sit here.”
“Okay. Okay, you’re right.”
She stopped packing and looked at him. “Really?”
“Really. Let’s go downstairs. See if we can get information about ferries. If they’re running, we’ll take one. If not, we’ll figure out plan B.”
“Thank you.”
They finished packing quickly, both of them moving with the jerky efficiency of controlled panic. Marcus zipped his suitcase and took one last look around the room. The bed with its tangled sheets. The balcony with its view of the street. The bathroom where they’d showered together that morning, laughing about something he couldn’t remember now.
Three days ago, this had felt like freedom. Now it felt like a trap.
They went back downstairs. The lobby was even more crowded, people shouting questions at the desk woman in multiple languages. She was trying to answer, her face flushed, her voice strained.
“The ferries?” Marcus asked when he could get her attention.
“I don’t know. Maybe yes, maybe no. You must go to the port and ask.”
“Is there a car rental nearby?”
“Yes, down the street, but I think they are closed. Everyone is closed.”
“We’ll try anyway.”
They left their bags at the desk and walked back out into the street. The sun was still bright, the sky still blue, but the atmosphere had changed. More people were outside now, moving with purpose, carrying bags, loading cars. A man was arguing with someone on a balcony, shouting up in Greek. A woman hurried past with two small children, both of them crying.
The car rental place was three blocks away, a small storefront with a faded sign. The door was locked, the lights off. Marcus cupped his hands and looked through the window. Empty.
“Shit,” Claire said.
“There might be another one.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. We’ll ask.”
They walked toward the port, asking people as they went. Most didn’t speak English. Those who did either didn’t know or were too busy to help. The streets were getting more crowded, more chaotic. A car honked, long and angry. Someone dropped a suitcase and it burst open, clothes spilling across the cobblestones.
At the port, there was a crowd gathered around the ferry terminal. The board that usually showed departure times was blank. A man in a uniform was trying to make an announcement, but people kept interrupting, shouting questions.
Marcus pushed closer, Claire behind him. “Excuse me,” he said to the uniformed man. “Do you speak English?”
“Little bit.”
“Are the ferries running?”
“Not now. Maybe later. We wait for instruction.”
“When will you know?”
The man shrugged helplessly. “When they tell us.”
“What about private boats? Can we hire someone?”
“I don’t know. You can ask.” He gestured vaguely toward the marina.
They walked along the waterfront. The marina was full of boats, but most of them looked empty, locked up, their owners nowhere to be seen. A few people were on their vessels, loading supplies, preparing to leave or preparing to stay, Marcus couldn’t tell which.
He approached a man coiling rope on the deck of a sailboat. “Excuse me. Do you speak English?”
The man looked up. He was in his fifties, weathered, with a gray beard and suspicious eyes. “Yes.”
“We need to get to the mainland. Can you take us?”
“No.”
“We can pay.”
“I don’t care. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Please. We’re stuck here. We don’t know what’s happening.”
“No one knows what’s happening. That’s why I’m staying here.” He went back to his rope. “Go away.”
They tried three more boats. Two didn’t answer. One told them to fuck off in Greek.
Claire was breathing hard, her face flushed. “This is insane. We’re trapped.”
“We’re not trapped. We just need to—”
A sound cut him off. Loud, mechanical, coming from above. They both looked up. A military helicopter, flying low over the water, heading north. Then another. Then a third.
The people on the waterfront stopped what they were doing and watched. The helicopters were close enough that Marcus could see the door gunners, could see the weapons mounted on the sides. They weren’t trying to be subtle. This was a show of force, or a deployment, or both.
When the sound faded, the silence felt oppressive.
“We need to get off this island,” Claire said. Her voice was shaking. “Right now. I don’t care how.”
Marcus’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out. One bar of signal, flickering. A notification: emergency alert. He tapped it, but the message wouldn’t load. The signal dropped again.
“Did you get that?” he asked.
Claire was looking at her phone. “Yeah. But it won’t open.”
“Same.”
They stood there, both of them staring at their useless phones, while around them the port descended further into chaos.
