The electricity went out on the Greek island in the small hours. Every air conditioner stopped, all the appliances shut off. Without WIFI, no one had cell service. It was nearly noon by the time power was restored. By then one of the Italian tourists was being airlifted to the medical center on the mainland. 

“Dead?” the wife says to her husband. It’s day eight of their two-week vacation in Greece. Not mainland Greece, and not those white-washed picturesque Greek islands on postcards and in movies. They had chosen an island closer to Turkey, part of a chain of islands that had a name so foreign sounding it felt like a personal affront, as if it were being intentionally difficult. This was also part of its charm. The wife liked how the letters jumbled in her mind. Doh-doh-Kah-nees. It offered freedom, perhaps.

“Is one of them really dead?” she repeats. They’d been married twenty-seven years and somewhere around year ten her husband had developed a bad habit of not listening.

He makes a vague noise of recognition.

They’re sitting at one of the taverna tables in the shade of bougainvillea, waiting for their breakfast. The little pink flowers tinkling in the hot wind. Below them, the Aegean is blue against sun bleached rock. Her guidebook says whole ancient cities, entire army fleets could be beneath those waters. She considers texting her son but he’s on the side of the world where it’s still night. 

“I don’t know how you can be this calm,” she continues. “We were just swimming in the sea together yesterday.”

“Not together,” her husband says, adjusting his sunglasses. “Just at the same time, and we don’t know what happened. Why haven’t they brought the coffee yet?”

“It’s what the cleaning lady said.”

“Don’t pretend you understand Greek.” He twists in his chair to try to see inside the taverna. “The power’s back on. If they can boil water, they can make coffee.”

They’re in the shade but the wife’s sun dress is sticking to her skin.

She watches him drum his fingers on the taverna table. A familiar feeling sweeps over her. It’s a sudden acute awareness— of the taverna table painted blue, of the gentle rising and falling of her own breathing, her hands heavy in her lap, and of the sunlight that’s made its way through the Bougainvillea canopy, scattering little dimples of gold on her freckled skin, her husband’s too. This is her life. The awareness is brief, like sunlight glinting off her son’s cellphone or her husband’s wristwatch or her diamond ring. A momentary blinding.   

 “She didn’t need to speak English,” the wife says. “I understood enough.”

The wife and her husband are quiet once more. The mild surf on the pebbly beach below sounds like children running on a very wet playground.

Then her husband says, “I heard one of the women this morning. A loud moan, or something like a moan. The three of them shared a room, you know.”

“You’re right, they should have brought our coffee by now.”

The sun dress has ridden up, her thighs are sticking to the chair. They’ll be imprinted with its woven pattern.

“A throuple,” her husband continues. “They call it a throuple.”

The hotel owner briefly appears from the recesses of the taverna. He holds up his finger as if to say just a moment, give me a moment, before ducking further into darkness.

 “I wish you wouldn’t call it that—it sounds like something you do to wean a baby off breastfeeding.”

“Throuple, throuple, throuple,” he says chuckling. “My wife, the prude.”

If he only knew, the wife thinks. While her husband slept beside her, his hot arm across her hip, his breathing as even and steady as the waves outside their window, she was awake, listening. Every morning she listened to the three Italians in the room next door. It always started the same. With one of the women, she didn’t know which. The blonde who sunbathed topless, or the darker brunette who swam in the sea without taking off her jewelry. Then she’d hear the man, the one with silver chest hair and bathing briefs that made her husband feel silly in his board shorts. Finally, the other woman, a tremble at first. Hesitant, maybe. Like slipping a toe into a hot bath. But then that feeling of release as the whole-body gives in. It sounded like that. Mostly it was the two women she listened for, their slow pleasure like ice melting on asphalt. Inevitable and languid. She would lie there unblinking at the curtains as dawn made its slow transition from dark to light, thinking what it must be like to feel pleasure, to want to give pleasure, before the sun even rose. When it was over, she would slip from beneath her husband’s arm and masturbate in the bathroom. 

This morning was different though. It had just been the one woman. A bit louder than usual, and longer too. It made her uneasy to think they both had been lying there thinking the other was asleep. 

“It sounded like the blonde to me,” her husband is saying, wagging his brows. “She looked like a screamer. What do you think?”

“Oh darling, don’t.”

“What did you say last night when the blonde came down to dinner in that bandage dress? Bondage, that’s what you called it. Because they were probably into that sort of thing and something happened. They got too kinky. Not enough lube.”

“I remember what I said.”

“You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing, I’m sure they’re fine.”

It had been their little game. This focusing on the Italians—what they were to each other and why and how. There wasn’t much to do on the island except swim and sweat. There were some Byzantine ruins, but that required hiking in the August heat, which was relentless. The moment they disembarked from the plane, it crawled into their mouths. It pressed into their eye sockets in the cab ride from the port. It sat on their chests at lunch, gripped them by their heels when they tried to walk into town for dinner. They were not used to this kind of humidity, they were from coastal California. Her husband did not like being hot. It made him touchy. He snapped at the owner when the WIFI didn’t work in their room. If my wife can’t reach our son, he had told them. She won’t be able to relax. They were given a room closer to the router, which was also next door to the three Italians.

She feared something else lurked beneath her husband’s disappointment that first night—that it had been there from the moment they said their wedding vows twenty-seven years ago. A slight hesitation on his part. But then she was pregnant, and their son was born. The last twenty-seven years revolved around his well-being. Private schools and soccer club and supporting him when he changed majors, and again while he went through EMT training. He was gone now—not from the world but from their home. When they return from their trip, he won’t be in the converted garage which they outfitted especially for him. He applied and was hired by a nonprofit to do good works in strange foreign places with names that jumbled in her mind. The wife is proud of him. He’s finally embarking on his own life, which is as it should be. She congratulated herself on a job well done. His departure meant she raised a successful son. It also meant there was one less thing tethering husband and wife together. She fretted over this. They hadn’t been alone together since their honeymoon, and technically she was pregnant by the time it ended so they weren’t alone then either. 

So, the wife had been thankful for the distraction the Italians provided. They were something to keep the conversation moving. The blonde floating on her back, breasts buoyant and free, the brunette with her gold earrings and gold necklace and gold bangles on slim wrists—producing a cigarette holder, and the man, all sinewy muscle and silvery hair, climbing out of the surf just to light the cigarette she had delicately screwed into the end. Who are they? She asked her husband, breaking the silence that had descended on them that first day on the beach. And he replied, how did they meet? They discussed this at length. Over beachside cocktails, while swimming in the sea, as they applied and reapplied sunscreen. They watched and whispered about the three beautiful Italians—what they were doing, or saying, or what, if anything, they were wearing. The wife felt buoyed, a little flushed, yes, but also firmly linked to her husband. They shared the same point of view, she believed. Then night would come, and she would climb into bed, exhausted yet strangely wired, and the light would shut off and she’d just lay there listening to her own heartbeat. That acute awareness became paralyzing—the overly starched sheets, the hum of the AC, the sweet scent of a peach the cleaning lady had brought her, ripening on her bedside table, her husband rolling to his other side. Away from her. Until, from the other side of the wall, their chorus began.

The owner of the hotel has finally appeared with bread and jam and plenty of butter and honey. His wife brings them boiled eggs and a bowl of watermelon. The owner tells them he’s sorry for the delay. He hopes they slept ok. He says the blackout is because of the humidity, motioning to the powerlines on the dirt road that cuts back toward town. 

“They get stuck together and we have to spray them with water.”

“That doesn’t seem right, does it?” Her husband asks when they’re alone again. “Water on powerlines?” He’s smeared a piece of bread with so much butter the wife can see his teeth marks after he’s taken a bite. “Still warm, yum.” 

The coffee is bitter but good. She forgoes her usual milk and sugar. It’s several days away but she’s already thinking of their return flight. Two weeks doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but it did when they first arrived. Her husband tells her to eat up, he wants to go for a swim before it gets too hot.

 It doesn’t take her long. She doesn’t have much of an appetite. Soon she’ll be on the plane, she thinks. Belt buckled, luggage and tray tables stored. Soon she’ll be back home. The mail will need to be sorted. The now empty converted garage dealt with. Maybe she’ll renovate it to fit her son and his future wife, their future children. The thought calms her and she’s able to eat some bread and jam. But then that woman’s moan from this morning—the sound of it returns to her and she’s replaying how her husband had laid there, his arm over her hip, breathing evenly but not asleep. He had been listening too. Had he heard them every morning? She’s reminded of the first time their son smiled and cooed at a woman who wasn’t her. He was just a baby, the woman a passerby who stopped to say how cute he was, but in that moment, she felt anyone could be her son’s mother. That sudden clarity pierced through her: the baby’s soft blanket; the Frappuccino sweating in her hand, the grocery list in the diaper bag. All of this could change and when it did, she would cease to exist. 

 The question almost leaps out of her the moment they’ve chosen chaises out of the line of them on the beach. But she shoves it down. She doesn’t want to talk about the Italians with her husband anymore. He’s ruined it. But what else is there to talk about? They spread out their towels. They apply sunscreen. Her husband calls someone over to adjust the umbrella and then orders two gin and tonics. He settles into his chair, opening a book on Macedonian architecture. The breeze whispers. There are children playing in the surf. A hornet buzzes around the wife’s toes.  

“What do you think happened?” She blurts out. The gin and tonics have made her weak. She cannot stand the silence.

“To who?” 

“The missing Italian,” she finishes the last of her drink. “Maybe it was murder."

 “You read too much Agatha Christie.”

“If it was an accident why did the police come?”

He lays his book on his chest, splayed open. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about them anymore.”

 “I bet the brunette was his wife and he killed her,” she continues, trying to get him to play this new version of the game. “The blonde was the mistress.”

“Why would he be vacationing with his mistress and his wife?”

“That’s why the wife had to die.” 

She asks the beach boy for another drink. 

Her husband’s sunglasses flash at her. “Ok,” he says. “Then how did he kill her? We didn’t hear a gunshot, and if she was stabbed it would have been louder.” 

The wife leans toward him. “Poison,” she says, sucking the last of the gin through the straw. She lays back in her chair, watching the children playing in the surf. They’re all sinew and bone at that age. Knobby knees and scraped elbows. 

“Do you see that little boy?” She points. Her arm feels heavy. It’s as if she were under her weighted blanket at home. 

“And that sound we heard this morning?” 

 “What? Oh, the agony of being poisoned.”

 One of the boys has fallen. She watches his mother race over. 

“Did you see that? He was trying to outrun the waves. How old do you think he is—five, six? I can’t tell anymore.”

Her husband is tapping her freckled thigh. “It sounded more like a moan of ecstasy to me.” 

“Let me guess, you think it was a woman on woman crime.”

He shrugs, “Women fight over men all the time.” 

 His hand is still on her thigh. It’s large and brown. The knuckles are so deeply creased they could be miniature canyons.

“I’m a little lightheaded,” the wife says, sitting up. “Should we go up for lunch?”

“Let’s take a dip first.” 

The water is cool and sobering. The swells gentle and rolling. They swim until they can see the entire taverna above the beach where the other guests are finishing lunch. The children from before are at the table where the wife and her husband had their breakfast. 

“Statistically speaking,” she says, treading water around her husband.  “Men are more likely to murder their wives or girlfriends.”

“As you so often liked to remind our son.”

 “Excuse me for wanting to raise a responsible man.” She’s offended now and moves away. The water is so clear. It’s less like she’s swimming and more like she’s hovering high above the ocean floor.

 “Didn’t you want a son who was respectful to women?” She asks her husband when he’s caught up. 

 “Of course,” he says. “But women do despicable things all the time.”

She can see his limbs too. They’re just as untethered as her own.

“Your gender is far more—sneaky,” he continues. “Remember when that brunette waved her cigarette around to get the guy’s attention? He came running out of the water just to light it.”

The wife watches him watching her. For a moment she’s convinced they’re strangers. She’s drunk, she realizes. Very drunk, and they’ve missed lunch. She can see the owner and his wife turning over chairs. They won’t open again until dinner.  

When his arm slips around her, she splashes him and swims back to shore, dropping onto her chaise lounge out of breath. Heartbeat in her ears. Saltwater drying on her skin, tight and itchy.  

Her husband lays down in the chaise beside her. They’re facing each other, cheeks pressed into their towels. 

 She says slowly, “I don’t think women are as calculating as you think we are—we’re just very bad at expressing anger. We shove it down until it slips out.” 

He grins, rivulets of seawater dripping from his hair into his mouth. “So, you do think one of the women offed the other.”  

 “If someone is murdered,” the wife says, still feeling the sway of the water but no longer weightless. “The killer is more likely to be a man than a woman. Serial killers, rapists, wife beaters—men are dangerous.”

“Sure,” he says, removing a piece of seaweed from her shoulder. “But women are not to be trusted.” 

She doesn’t push his hand away when his fingers linger, tracing her bare shoulder. She doesn’t roll over when they walk down her spine.  

“If it were us,” he says. “Who would be the killer, you or me?”

“That’s not a fun game.”

“It’s not so different from our recent conversations.” Her husband’s eyes are the same color as the ocean behind him. He’s tracing where her bathing suit cuts into her thighs. “You, me, and a third woman. Who’s the killer?”

 “You,” the wife whispers, closing her eyes.

 “And what would my motive be?” 

“You’re tired of being married, you’re sick of me.”

 “Twenty-seven years is a long time, but that’s not why I’d murder you.” 

The wife is aware of her bathing suit being untied. She’s aware of a boat motoring across the bay, the owner calling to his own wife in Greek, which she shouldn’t be able to understand but does—and also what the wife must do. She’s aware also of the water on the pebbly beach, the push and pull of the waves. That it’s a constant cycle, like the sun on the back of her eyelids as it begins to set over the horizon, heading toward the other side of the world where her son is still asleep. 

“Why would you kill me?” She asks, eyes still closed. 

“Love.” 

“Not hate?”

“Semantics, darling.”

She can sense his lips before they touch her own. It’s the golden hour. Everything is gold, except the sky, which is the color of starfall. The sun drops behind the mountains just as the wife and her husband go up to their room.