Literary LGBTQ
Date Published: 5/29/21
Publisher: Blue Fortune Enterprises, LLC
Three friends, one life-changing summer.
Vana, the math prodigy with a voice that is 85% Sarah Vaughan, 10% Billie Holiday, and 5% Aretha Franklin and an attitude to match. Desperate to leave her chaotic family and become the independent woman of her imagination, she lands a summer job on an aging Greek cruise ship as a member of the house band.
Marko, who failed his university entrance exams, is on the trail of bouzouki god Markos Vamvakaris, in hopes of claiming his own artistic identity.
Stepan, agronomist, accordionist, occasional mystic, has spent the last ten years hopelessly, secretly in love with his only friend.
Stranded in the surreal microcosm of a cruise ship, the three friends stumble across a series of dark and dissolving frontiers: between love and friendship, memory and forgetfulness, sacrifice and redemption. On this voyage to the heart of an ancient world, can the bonds of a friendship forged in childhood survive the tests of tragedy and self-discovery?
Excerpt
Cursing, she tugs at the
magnifying mirror a little too hard, and it comes away from the wall with a bathroom tile. Undeterred, Vana removes the screw from the tile, the chewing gum from her mouth,
and remounts the tile with the gum as
adhesive, patting it into place and ignoring the gaping, crumbly hole where the
mirror was once attached.
“Mama’s going to
kill you when she sees that,” Kiki observes
with satisfaction. Vana begins clearing whole
armfuls of cosmetics from the countertop and dumping them in a massive, ancient
hatbox.
“No, she won’t, because she
won’t see it until I’m gone, unless you tell her.”
The younger girl changes her tone,
wheedling, “At least leave me your hot rollers. The voltage is probably
different—or maybe they won’t even have electricity on the ship.”
“Of course it has
electricity, idiot. And I need them for the show, whereas you,” she observes with an airy
wave, “don’t have anyone to impress in middle school.” With a final searching
glance at her mascara, she stuffs the mirror
in the bulging hatbox and zips it shut.
Tikhon, a scrawny
six-year-old in pajamas, pops
his head in the bathroom. “Vana, the truck is coming up
the road! I saw it from the balcony, and anyway you can smell the rotten
vegetables from a mile away. Are you going like that? Your boobies are popping
out the top of your dress.”
“Get out! I hate
all of you! God, I can’t wait to be rid of you!” Vana pushes him aside on her way to the bedroom, which she orders Kiki to lock behind them. To take: hatbox, the suitcase,
all the things that had been in her school rucksack which had to be rehoused because at the last minute she
determined a rucksack to be amateurish and
undignified. In the end, she decides on a
shopping bag; at least things might be construed as new purchases.
“Vana! Sweetie,
the truck’s downstairs!” Her mother’s trebly call adds to the chaos. Vana turns the stereo up louder and struggles with the zipper of her patent-leather boot which refuses to move.
Emboldened by her sister’s
imminent departure, Kiki continues, “Mom said I can have your bed since
it’s bigger and you have the window so I’m going to take your posters down,
since it’s really my corner now, until you come back. God, your ankles are
really fat. I don’t think those boots fit you at all really, why don’t you
leave them?”
With a final, determined
pull, the zipper slides up her calf, and Vana reaches for her jacket from the knob of
her footboard where it always hung, where Kiki knows better than to even breathe too closely. Triumphantly, she
slides into the soft, heavy garment and as it settles its leather weight on her shoulders, she feels instantly transfigured, as if the very idea of herself has been altered to something altogether finer, more powerful,
that soars so far beyond these familiar
aspects of her life that it can no longer be
recognized or understood. “…like a tiger,
defying the laws of g-rav-i-teeeee.” She pops out the cassette and sticks it in her
pocket. Luggage in both hands, she gives a nod
to the faces on the wall and as nonchalantly as possible, gestures with her hatbox hand. “You can do whatever you like in
here. I’m not coming back.”
About the Author
Lori Frey Ranner is a New Orleans native and Oxford-trained Byzantinist. For the past twenty years she has taught history, theology, and Classics in various New Orleans institutions. Married and mother to three children, Sailing to Byzantium is her first novel.
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