“So, Jan,” said Brad, turning right on cue. “Contact lenses, huh? Looking eagle eyed. Nice.”

I colored. Beside me, Marcus frowned with bewilderment. He knew how bad my eyes were, but he also knew that I had an aversion to anyone—myself included—touching my eyes. I had tried contact lenses one time, and it had taken me twenty hellish minutes to get one of them in. I never got the other in and fled from the optician’s, weeping, the moment I had managed to get the first one out. Neither Marcus nor any of the others had noted my missing glasses.

“Just trying something new,” I said.

A stupid, unsustainable lie, but sitting there with them all, the Pluto, the black hole of the group, I just couldn’t say “No, I lost my glasses in the sea because I’m a pathetic, clueless, moron.” Marcus’s eyes narrowed doubtfully, but it was too late. I just couldn’t bear the idea that I’d tell them the truth and they’d laugh at me. Or that they’d stifle that honest impulse out of pity. That would almost be worse.

“Good for you!” Brad said.

“Thanks!” I replied.

The trees sped past: blobs of dull green and pale, sandy ground, illegible road signs like teasing question marks all pointing at me, Lying Jan . . .

How was I going to get through a week like this? I couldn’t see shit beyond about three feet. There was no way I would be able to sustain the pretense that I could function normally. I was used to covering my ass like that, keeping track of my various exaggerations, elaborations, and flat-out untruths so that I didn’t catch myself out, and generally I got away with it. And usually I was also careful about the initial lie, floating it only in situations where I knew nobody or was about to leave so that the chance of being exposed was minimal. This was different. A week in close quarters with people I knew pretending I could see? I could barely tell them apart!

I bit my lip hard, punishing myself till I felt the blood run.

Idiot. Pathetic, lying, idiot.

Chapter Eleven

My name. The voice in the dark—strange, sexless, sepulchral—says it and I clench every muscle. I can hear the tremble of my limbs in the miniscule shaking of the chain around my wrist, drawing myself together like some shell-less turtle.

“Jan.”

“Who are you?” I manage. “What do you want?”

The silence that follows lasts an age. All I can hear is the thin hiss from the corner that sounds dimly like radio static, and the stuttering quaver of my own breathing. The pinprick of green light doesn’t reveal anything more in the blackness, but then, I remember with a start, that might not just be the lightlessness of the room.

I lost my glasses.

In the sea. I lost my glasses in the sea. I remember now. My mind tries to hold on to that thought, to anchor the person I am now, chained in the blackness with this . . . this thing that is talking to me, as if having a past will somehow explain the present, make it manageable. But I can’t remember anything else; the attempt is drowned out by the dread of whatever is sharing the cell with me. It speaks.

“Tell me about before.”

I stare blindly into the dark, my eyes fixing pointlessly on the green-glowworm brightness.

“W-what?” I stammer. “Before what?”

Another long silence like a chasm, and I feel like I’m on the lip of a pit peering down, terrified of the black depth, and even more terrified of what might come out of it.

“Last time,” says the voice.

“What?” I say again, confusion and panic making me stupid. What does he want me to say? What will he do if I get it wrong? “I don’t understand. Last time when?”

“You came to Crete five years ago,” the rolling, droning voice intones, each syllable dragging like snagged audiotape.

“Yes,” I say.

“Tell me about it.”

The panic rises again, kicking mulishly inside my head. I don’t understand and I’m going to get it wrong. I’ll die because he—or she or whatever the fuck it is—has me confused with someone else and I don’t know what he wants to know, and he’ll reach out with a blade I won’t see coming and I’ll bleed out here in the dark . . .

“Five years ago,” says the voice. “When you were here. Tell me what you did.”

Chapter Twelve

“So, Brad,” said Simon, “how’s life in commercial real estate?”

“Awesome,” said Brad. “Just reeled in a deal for sixteen new Value Auto Parts stores across the southeast. A little economic downturn, and suddenly everyone wants to work on their own cars!”

“Gotta love that,” said Simon, laughing.

“No kids to put through college, so I guess we’ll get that boat!” Brad cooed, reaching for the high five. Simon responded on cue, as if the whole thing had been carefully choreographed, and their two palms rang out crisply. It looked like a scene from a movie, the two of them, with their easy GQ elegance and professional good looks, like brothers, in sync, comfortable and on top of the world. “Or a zeppelin,” he added musingly. “Always wanted one.”

He gave me his trademark skull grin, and his blue eyes flashed.

We were sitting in the villa’s glorious glassed-in lounge, its rustic stone floor and great fireplace flanked by immense windows looking down over the patio to the rugged coast and the sea. The golden light of the late afternoon had reddened into sunset as vast purple clouds rolled in, crisp-edged and solid as heaped boulders. It was extraordinary.

“I’m looking at getting into a little real estate dealing in London,” said Simon. “Might want your input. Residential rather than commercial, but still. Man, the appreciation there is through the roof. It takes a little capital down, but if you have it, there’s serious money to be made. If you’re in the right spot, you can charge what you like. Fifty million dollars for an apartment. More. I shit you not.”

“Yeah?” said Brad. “Some people have a lot more cash than brain cells.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Some of these Saudi businessmen, man. You wouldn’t believe what they walk around with in their pockets. But if it’s a swank London apartment they want, overlooking Hyde Park or whatever, and they can afford it . . .”

“Oh hell yeah, I’ll sell it to them,” Brad said with a laugh. “Their ill-gotten oil money will do a lot more good in my wallet. Sure, send me what you have and we’ll talk.”

“You should come over soon. These post-Brexit prices won’t last forever. I’ll walk you through some options. Might be something you want to get into. I gotta show you the new Panamera. The Turbo S, baby, it’s a sight to see!”

“Absolutely,” said Brad, nodding. “And we can talk about that wine dealership idea too.”

“Yeah,” said Simon, making a face. “Not so sure about that. Looks to me like most guys who get into that do it so they can score some deals on a few crates. I doubt they’re making much more than pocket change. I mean, could be a tax write-off, but it’s more of a hobby than a real business enterprise.”

“Maybe,” said Brad, “but if you can get your foot in the door with the big distributors . . . Total Wine, the supermarket chains . . . you put enough investment in . . .”

I caught Marcus’s eye, and a private smile rippled the corner of his mouth. It had been like this last time, the two business guys trading tales of profit and loss, stock market tips and portfolio recommendations in a language where every fifth word sounded coined by some MBA textbook, and me and Marcus looking at each other, feeling both out of it and on the edge of giggling. Of course, the first time, we had then taken solace in each other, celebrating our difference from them with little looks and grins that would, later, become whispers, kisses, other things . . .

Now, with the weight of my professional failure hanging around me like a wet coat—the heavy woolen kind that holds rain like a camel’s hump—the humor of being so obviously excluded was harder to find. Even Marcus’s wry amusement looked weary, as if he had dug out some old TV comedy that had once seemed so hilarious and found it dulled by repetition and familiarity. We were sitting across the room from each other. Gretchen was one seat over from him on the couch, but she was too entranced by Melissa’s iPad pictures of the house she was redesigning for some newspaper magnate, and when Marcus’s eyes wandered toward her she didn’t react, so he got up and went to the bar by himself. I considered going after him but didn’t know what I would say and, without my glasses, couldn’t read his face well enough at this distance to see if I was welcome.

Brad was still pitching his wine-supplier idea.

“I don’t know,” said Simon. “Risky commodity. Too fragile, too niche . . .”

“But with the right capital outlay and people on the inside who really know the product . . . ,” Brad persisted.

“Yeah, but the hardcore enthusiasts aren’t your market, are they?” Simon quipped. “Or if they are, your market is too small and you’ll never earn out. And if they’re not your market, if your target consumers are people more like . . . well, us, who frankly don’t know that much about wine . . .”