Spliti was a desperate mix of achievement-focused impressiveness covering up the stains of a complicated slavic past. Kay turned up the collar on his faux-Lacoste polo neck as he stepped down the staircase which connected the Wizair Boeing 737 to the almost-melting tarmac. Early afternoon. It was the time of year, even in this part of Europe, when daytime lasted forever. Kay's Baltic roots yearned for cold when it was summer; for light when in the perma-blackness of the winter.
Carmela had messaged him eight times when he finally turned his phone back on.
"Get here soon dickhead family driving me crazy already"
"Booked a water sports trip Thursday that ok?"
"You still vaping? Pick me up some violet sticks?"
"What the fuck happened to your flight. Shanice is here and she wants to see you for some fucking reason you better be here"
There was a picture message. Her legs on a sun lounger. Presumably at the family compound in front of the voluminous infinity pool. Olive thigh-gap imposed around a powder-blue bikini bottom. She was giving him the middle finger from underneath the fabric.
Kay instinctively turned the phone screen forty-five degrees so that less of the temporary residents of the shuttle bus had a chance to have her form impressed upon them.
"Fuck you and your shitty ass job was followed by four dollar-sign emojis and another middle finger."
Kay smiled. There was a simplicity to their respective geographical realities that made this whole thing make sense. Not a couple. Not in love. Not fuck-buddies or booty-calls either. He would come to Croatia when he was coming this way anyway and she was here for the holidays. And they would hang out. It was physical in as much as they were male and female but it wasn't the main part of it. The conversation, the fun. That was what kept him coming back. If she married some Azerbaijani prince and was just his friend it would take pretty much nothing out of the interaction. Which she probably would.
=======
"Ti se salis?"
Kay's Croatian was non-existent, but he figured that his offer of two hundred kuna for the trip up the Adriatic coast hadn't been received well. He threw another few notes through the plexiglass window of the small cab. The driver grunted his acquiescence and they hared northwards, his chauffeur obviously making up for the meagre payment by reducing the journey time and quadrupling their chances of exploding on the more-dangerous-than-most roads of the Balkan coast.
Kay rolled the window down. Rolled, manually. The taxi felt like it could have served Gorbachev's diplomats. The hot air streamed in through the crack in the glass and it was liquid oxygen. The sea. Scents of fishing, of waves crashing against the bouldered coast. Kay put in his airpods and allowed himself that moment, that pre-moment of getting off the flight and being there. Five weeks with nothing but this. Carmela. More specifically, Carmela's Dacha.
The driver turned around a full one-eighty as they reached the gated mansion. You sure about this buddy? Written in his eyes. Sure enough, something clicked in the robot-and -human mechanism which granted entry to the compound, the gate rolled sideways and the taxi kicked forward and up the winding, crushed-marble drive to the entrance of the vast property.
=======
Kay's best-face was as good as anybody's. When asked to create the best possible impression in whichever situation he found himself, he normally generated success on the fly. Even the imposing one, now, of negotiating the exchange between Shanice, Carmela's stepmother, who was seemingly very frustrated by the telephone conversation that she was having with Carmela's actual father, Eduardo. The reasons why were bleeding out of the terse conversation between them. It was still unclear why Shanice was even there. Other than that she owned the property, that is.
"You were in Dubai for weeks in May, Edu." Shanice was a digitally unaged fortysomething version of Michelle Obama who oscillated between uncomfortably close and uncomfortably distant with respect to her relationship with her stepdaughter and any of her associates. Her hands were on her hips. "I know, this was supposed to be our fortnight." She paused for effect. "But you took five weeks on that goddamn contract. This will be two weeks. Three, tops. This is a huge deal for me Edu. London is the one market I need to break this year." Her hands were on her hips. Kay looked around, still holding his suitcase, absolutely desperate to pee. He didn't interrupt.
It was impossible to see Eduardo's expression at the end of the line, but it was certain that he knew that he was fucked, and now needed simply to absorb his wife's passive-aggressive rant before hanging up. To be fair, thought Kay, it was the business trips like this that made Shanice's make-up startup so profitable. Her energy, her talent. It paid for this luxurious-to-the-obscene, tax-haven position on the Adriatic Sea. Eduardo contributed also, obviously. His business was officially cobalt extraction in the Caucuses, but whether or not this was true was anyone's guess. It could be anything. Kay didn't ask. Oil? Drugs? Israeli-built rocket defence systems? All of the above?
"I'm going to go now." Shanice walked away now, across the vast, flat lobby. "I will meet you in a few weeks. Let's go back to that place in the Maldives."
"Not that place," Aubrey was Shanice's daughter and Carmela's stepsister. Like Kay, she'd been waiting obediently as the matriarch paced rhythmically on the wood-effect tile. "It's so, like, bad for the environment."
Shanice shushed her with a finger. "I don't need your vegan hippy liberal shit right now Aubrey."
Eduardo was still talking himself into a hole on the other end of the line. Shanice interrupted him for the last time.
"Yes sweetie. Yes... Yes. Carmela is here anyway. The girls can catch up." She caught Kay's eye. He tried to minimise his body profile. "Her friend from England is here too, so she's fine. Aren't you honey?" She eyed her daughter, still smarting from being put in her place so strongly. Aubrey shrugged.
"Tell him I'll call him."
"D'you get that?" Shanice was starting her hang-up process. "Yeah. Love you too. See you soon." Checkmate.
=======
"What was supposed to be happening?" Kay sipped his gin and tonic, realising that he already knew the answer to the question. They'd found a spot well away from Shanice and her army of assistants and hangers-on, on the outdoor dining table which jutted out over the cliff above the sea. Beside them the infinity pool was glass-clear. The Adriatic was speckled with cylindrical white cloud formations.
"Dad was supposed to be coming here." Carmela's drink was mint-green with crushed ice spilling onto the white table mat. "They were all gonna do some travelling around Italy. I guess that's not happening now." She was still scrolling down with her left hand as she spoke. Kay took her right wrist. She smiled and dropped the device.
"Sorry. Fucking instagram haters."
"So much for having the place to ourselves." Kay said it like he owned the multimillion-dollar palace. "Who's the other one?"
Carmela's half-sister and her friend had also vacated the villa while her mother ordered others to pack and clean and make preparations. They had found a spot on the loungers near the pool, on the opposite side of the infinity pool, and were in the youth uniform of baggy gymshark wear and long browsing sessions through tiktok.
"Some skinny bitch from her college."
Kay raised his eyebrows. There was little to her, true. Like Aubrey, most body fat, and with it body shape, seemed to have disappeared in the name of athletic prowess. More like instagrammability, Kay thought. Even if he was just the same.
"Sorry. I dunno. I guess it's nice she's got a friend. Must be a fuckup doing this tennis thing all the time."
Kay gestured with his shoulder. "Is she... you know?"
"Her girlfriend?" Carmela brayed, spinning her iphone around on the polished glass surface of the table. "I don't think so, no. Last time I facetimed, Aubrey'd broken up with the last one, some other tennis player. They're all fucking lesbians."
"Huh,"
Carmela instinctively picked up the phone and put it down again. "I'm thinking we need to keep our distance this evening. I don't want Shanice's fucking imagination running away from her as usual."
Kay bit his tongue. It was clear, luckily, that Carmela had no idea about their history, if it could be called that. And Kay needed that to continue to be the case.
=======
The obsidian-black wet room of Kay's room was among the finest shower facilities he'd ever experienced. The shower itself had eight different outlets, including one which had initially shot an ice-cold jet of water directly into his perineum. He'd been keeping a lid on his libido for a couple of weeks, with prospect of Carmela on the horizon, but the circumstances had nullified their recommencement, even if only temporarily. As a consequence he'd struggled to keep down his erection, particularly after managing to remove the upward ice-spray. She got into his brain, within him. She took control of their sex in a way few others had.
There was a knock at the door. Kay scrambled into one of the villa's provided robes. The material was smooth against his still-wet skin, and it nullified the lingering heat of the summer day. He squeezed his dick down a couple of inches. Could it be Carmela? Had she managed to slip through the net?
He opened the door to one of Shanice's minions. He recognised the guy as one of her general fixers. Despite the hour and the heat, he was still in a smart shirt and chinos.
"Mr Kollaste, apologies for disturbing you at this time."
Kay was still securing his robe. And his penis.
"Uh, no. It's okay. What, erm. What can I do for you?"
"Mrs Angalmore has requested that I seek you."
Shanice still used her maiden name after her marriage to Eduardo. Partly a branding decision - the famous crossed-A adorned the counters of the most exclusive make-up counters across the world - partly due, conceivably, to the original wife, Carmela's mother, having retained the Sochiak name for herself. And her prestige.
