While walking through the ruins of the Acropolis and Parthenon, Nadia shooed the summer heat with a cheap touristy fan. She wiped away a thin trail of sweat from her forehead, thankful that Ruben allowed her to keep her hair pinned up. He liked her pale blonde hair hanging down with large curls framing her oval-shaped face. Her heels click-tapped against the marble as she strolled up the steps just behind him. He looked handsome today, his face shadowed by stubble and his jet-black hair slicked back with gel. A single lock fell over his left eye, a softness at odds with his hard, chiseled features when he turned to glance at her. Nadia tried to concentrate on him, but the mottled marble pillars called out to her in a way she couldn't justify or explain.
"Touch me," someone whispered to her.
Glancing around, she found no one near enough to have spoken so softly and be heard. She held her fair fingers out to the ancient column, intrigued by the request, wondering if she'd imagined it. The heat in the air dwindled the closer her fingers came to the stone. She reached, anxious to slide her palm across the time-smoothed surface, her breath catching in her throat. Her fingers less than an inch from the stone, Ruben clutched her wrist, pulling her hand away and startling her back to reality.
"Don't touch." He wagged a finger at her, his expression patronizing, his dark brown eyes flickering with condescending playfulness in his tanned face.
"Not allowed?" she asked. Heat ran up her neck and across her cheeks as she blushed. He made her feel like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
"Don't take the stones from the ground either." Sweat trickled down Ruben's forehead. He didn't bother to wipe it away. To Nadia, that inaction made him even sexier. "If every person took a rock or a piece of the ruins, there'd be nothing left." He smiled his white-toothed grin, an expression that used to melt her heart, but now only made her feel insignificant. "Besides, the gods would get angry." He chuckled at his joke.
Releasing her wrist, he turned to saunter along the concrete walk. Nadia paused, lured by the pull, the need to touch that column. She stared at its surface. Surely, everyone that passed this way touched it. The marble appeared silky smooth, its edges flattened over by oils from human contact. How many people have laid a hand on it? Caressed it? And did anyone else hear that voice?
"Touch me."
Shaking her head, Nadia ambled on, finding it hard to walk in her black heels even though they weren't high. Ruben liked her in heels; she wore them for his pleasure. She preferred tennis shoes or even hiking boots, but he'd weeded such comforts from her closet after she moved in with him. Her short skirt kept trying to fly up in the occasional hot, gusty wind, leaving her befuddled and wishing for a pair of cool, summer shorts. That too, he denied. Ruben rummaged through her suitcase before they left the states to be sure no such unfeminine garment came along. He wanted no woman of his seen in anything but a skirt or a dress.
The couple left the gargantuan ruins, passed a sign with verbiage about the monument and stopped to linger at a lookout point. Nadia gaped at the dense city of Athens spread below. Buildings coagulated together in masses of blocky white. Smog hung low in the air, shading the pale blue sky with a sickening gray color. At the height they'd reached on the hill, she could no longer hear blaring taxi horns or the drone of traffic, but she knew the noise was there, waiting to smother her when they descended. It was incomprehensible, yet not beautiful. Athens was disappointing. It was not what she had expected from the birthplace of myths and gods ... of civilization. The city choked off the last bits of natural land left. She longed for the green of meadows, the cool winds of a quiet forest, or the pastoral peace of a shepherd's flock grazing idly through thick grasses. In her heart, she was not a child of the city, any city, even though it was the only way she'd ever lived.
Why am I even here? It had happened so quickly, Ruben inviting her to Greece on a business trip. He rarely took her anywhere. Excited, she had packed up her dusty suitcase and followed along for the sheer freedom of it, the strange wonder of going somewhere she'd never been and perhaps would never have gone, if not for him. For that, she was grateful but because of the pollution and crowds of Athens, she wished she were back home. Most of all, she wished for tennis shoes and shorts. Although this wonder of the world called to her in its mysterious way, the thought of a cool, air-conditioned room and loose, comfortable clothes sounded like heaven.
"Touch me." The whisper returned just behind her.
Nadia rubbed at her temple for a moment, deciding the heat was getting to her. She glanced at Ruben. He clearly hadn't heard the strange voice. The couple strode across the barren ground, departing from the lookout. She imagined the Acropolis would be something more substantial, a place of dreams and fallen gods. The gravel and dirt they passed over hardly felt significant at all. In a grass splotched clearing beside the museum, she glanced at the pieces of scattered columns and chunks of marble waiting to be pieced back together like a massive puzzle.
Inside the simple museum, her heart sank. A sign read: No flash photography. All she had brought was her old thirty-five millimeter camera. "Wish I had a digital," she muttered as they passed the entry exhibit. Most of the statues were fragments, ruins left after invaders pilfered Greece ages ago. Cement or plaster filled in the gaps. Headless figures guarded the center of the first room, no arms to call their own. The entire display filled Nadia with an overwhelming sorrow at the loss.
Ruben talked on and on about a fabulous bar he wanted to take her to after dinner. She tuned him out as they exited, her mind reaching for that other voice. Pausing to drink at the public fountain, she couldn't shake the feeling that someone watched her, and it wasn't Ruben.
He took her arm, leading her back the way they'd come as he rehearsed the sales pitch he'd have to give that evening. He blathered about Greek coffee and the beach where she could go topless. "You'll do it, won't you?" He elbowed her. "I'd like to see you naked in the sunlight."
Nadia giggled halfheartedly. The closer they came to the columns, the more her attention waned from Ruben. The voice called to her. It murmured gently, seductively, luring her closer. When she slowed, Ruben let go of her arm to push through the crowd of tourists.
"Touch me."
Glancing at her boyfriend, she realized he stood paces ahead. She reached out to the smooth, orange-colored column, hoping this time to feel the presence that willed her to make contact.
"Touch me."
Nadia reached out. Her fingertips grazed its surface. The stone, so old, so warm, so full of life and stories made her feel as if her fingers were made to be against it. Passion and lust stirred within her, emotions so intense she thought she might faint. The stone grew hot beneath her palm. Heat twisted her womb. Wetness slicked her womanhood. She didn't want to take her hand away. She felt the urge to embrace the column, to hold it against her, to feel that heat sweeping through her body. She wanted to meet the being within, to know him.
"Nadia!" Ruben called out. "Come on. We have to get to the room. I can't miss my meeting."
She barely heard him over the buzz of tourists wending their way around her and throughout the roped-off areas. Ruben stomped toward her, his cowboy boots clip-clopping on the cement and marble. He wouldn't admit it, but she knew his black Levis were uncomfortably warm. She knew he'd want to take a shower before the five-o'clock sales meeting and probably roll her in the sheets as well.
"Nadia!" he barked.
She didn't turn.
Ruben slapped at her outstretched hand. The tingling vanished, the magic died. The spell broken, she gaped at her partner of five years, and frowned. At that instant, she awakened to thoughts and feelings she'd never acknowledged before. Ruben's glower no longer seemed attractive; it made him appear mean and cold. Was he always this way? Did he always glare at me like that? Like I meant nothing? Do I mean anything to him at all? Does he even care for me?
"What did you do that for?" she asked, bitterness tainting her voice.
He scowled at her, his eyebrows black lines above stark eyes. His gaze roved up and down her body, falling on her breasts.
Her nipples were rock hard, awakened by the desire trapped in the column. A tickle strained her womb. She bit at her bottom lip, hungering for a hard kiss, but not from him.
Snatching her hand, Ruben pulled her along. "Come, my love, I don't want to be late."
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