At the Grand Leoniki that evening, Dosia worked the desk and promised to heat the hot tub for me. I strode to our room to change, allowing the necessary thirty minutes for the water to warm. But as I tugged on my bathing suit, the phone on the nightstand rang. Husband answered it.
“Dosia said they can’t get the water in the hot tub higher than 25 degrees,” he said after the call. “She figured that’d be too cold for you.”
I worked the conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit. She was right; 77 degrees was too cold for me. I pulled on regular clothes again, and we walked to the beach to watch the sun disappear into the Aegean Sea. Olympic Air would whisk us back to Athens tomorrow, but for now, multi-colored stones speckled the water’s edge, a path of jewels for our last night on Crete.
Pestilence crept through the world, and its uncertainty nipped at my soul as I packed my suitcase the next morning. Like Dosia said when we first arrived, COVID-19 hadn’t yet infected the island, but now the government was calling for the timeshare—and other businesses—to close anyway. As soon as we were gone, the staff at the Grand Leoniki would disinfect every inch of the place and lock their doors for who knew how long.
The previous evening on the TV in Adonis and Murphy’s room, politicians and medical professionals stated different facts about the virus and its prevention, their words spraying droplets of fear everywhere. Everyone had advice of one kind or another. Even Thomas, the employee at the timeshare, had urged us not to ingest hot liquids, like tea, at the airport, lest officials took our temperatures and found them elevated. Even so, on this, our last morning on Crete, the sun still shone.
Our room phone rang, and I answered it.
“I left two cups of coffee on your patio table,” Stathis said on the other end of the line.
Images from our island days breezed through my mind. Dosia and Stathis jumping from the desk to see to our needs and questions. The two of them—and other business owners on Crete too—always holding doors open to welcome us in. Friendly people, friendlier animals. Raki flowing, faces glowing, smiles warming.
And now, the man was sharing his personal coffee again. I grinned. “You just made my day.”
On our way to the airport in Heraklion, we made a stop in Archanes to find Koronekes olive oil, a local variety a travel article online insisted must come home with us. After the GPS guided us through some of the village’s tightest alleys—no more than a few inches to spare on either side of our rented BMW—we emerged onto a street where we parked and breathed again. A few loose dogs—the town’s welcoming committee—trotted next to us, tongues dangling from their smiles.
A bakery snagged our attention, and we stepped inside to admire the employees’ work on display in the glass cases. As we gazed at the confections, I thought of restrooms throughout the world and how, in addition to relief, they gave vacationers stories to tell. And so I asked to use theirs, if one were available to the public.
The woman behind the counter beamed at my question. “Of course!”
With a sweep of her arm, she directed me behind the counter, through a doorway, and around to a tiny room, tucked between supply shelves in the back. Inside, I groped in the dark for the bathroom’s light, finding nothing. I opened the door again, hoping to memorize my surroundings before shutting myself in once more. Still no switch to be found.
Emerging from the utter darkness a few minutes later, I rejoined my group. We exited into the sunshine.
“Look what we got,” Murphy said. I peeked into her paper bag.
Along with purchased koubaponi and a small pastry filled with ham and cheese, the shop owner had given her free kouvaroli, tiny bread rolls—a specialty of Archanes and baked to celebrate weddings and babies—“for happiness and good luck.”
We entered a shop to buy gifts: olive oil, silver rings, raki, honey. The owner, Leo, tended to us with the same graciousness we had enjoyed everywhere. He ladled up dishes of wild figs in honey for me and cherries in honey for Murphy to sample. Our purchases made, we ambled along the streets with our bowls of sweetness, noticing now in the sunlight ants swimming with the fruit in the golden syrup.
Orchids, chamomile, and lemon trees lined our stroll through town, empty of other tourists this early in the season. But no loneliness for us; we had the company of the local dogs, all of them as free as oxygen and sweeter than the honey at Leo’s place. And they saw us safely to our vehicle too when it was time to leave.
While Husband returned the rental car at the airport in Heraklion, we waited inside. I savored the memory of the dogs of Archanes who had cheered us, a reminder we were never alone with other humans on Crete. But cats decorated our time on the island too, and even now in the airport, a feline sat on her haunches nearby, eyeing our luggage—and us.
In Athens again after our short flight, we caught a shuttle to the A for Athens hotel where our rooms—normally 300 euros a night now cost us 82—overlooked Monastiraki Square. Unable to navigate the large van through the narrow street in front of the hotel, our driver dropped us off a block away.
“I’ll be back in three days to pick you up,” he said. “I’ll park right here.”
The man left us with our baggage and a “mind your purses” admonition; apparently pickpockets thrived in this part of town.
The idea of personal theft was a new one. On Crete, we left our glass patio doors unlocked. But something else indicated danger was near—something I hadn’t seen before in Greece. Masks covered the faces of many passersby. The pandemic was real, and here was evidence of it, throwing its shadow over the city and obscuring the sunlight for now.
In our third-floor hotel room, I opened the screen-less window to the buzz of our surroundings. I gazed across the square to the Acropolis, planted on a rocky outcrop above the city.
Beauty in uncertainty.
A quote fluttered through my brain: “The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.”
Cheery words, I thought with a chuckle. Thanks a lot, Homer.
But I pulled my jacket closer anyway.
*Come back next week for the fourth and final installment of the story.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.