Come Tuesday morning Ela got up early to ride the 169 bus out to the last stop.  She had been on the 169 numerous times but she didn’t actually know what the last stop was, she’d always got off in Üçkuyular.  It took over an hour from Bornova.  It turned out to make its last stop in front of the gates for Balçova Thermal.  Red was standing there waiting for her. 

            “Ela!”  He called out.  “Glad you could make it.”

            “Well, how could I say no to hiking and bathing?”

            “It’s great.  First you work up a sweat, then you get clean and relaxed.”  He didn’t seem to pick up that she was making a joke.  Red took them through the gates and down a green parkway.   Balçova Thermal was a large complex with pools, tennis courts, a hotel, a space for weddings and even water slides.  Red ignored all that and turned down what looked like a service road behind one of the less impressive buildings.  Ela began to wonder if he knew where he was leading them but then she saw a sign that displayed different trail routes. 

            “How did you find this place?”  Ela had been living in Izmir most of her life and she had no idea there were trails here.

            “Same way I found you.  I flung myself out into the city and wandered around until I got lucky.  It’s a method that can result in many afternoons that go nowhere, but occasionally pays off quite well.”  They walked a bit further and Red pointed out another sign that amused him.  It was in Turkish, English, German, and Swedish.  The English read:  

To the attention of our dear Guests

The route is a landslide area.

Its dangerous for your life safety.

“A lot of people don’t take precautions when it comes to life safety.”  Red chuckled. 

The possibility of a landslide struck Ela more than the grammar.  “Could there really be a landslide though?”

Red looked at her as though she had said something very strange.  “Nah, we’re going to be walking in the woods, not beside a cliff.  We’ll be fine.”

They walked a little further and then went off the paved road.  Soon it no longer looked like they were in the city; it looked as though they had entered a small village.  There were ramshackle homes amid nectarine and olive groves.  There were the remains of a stone house, perhaps 200 years old, not old enough to be considered an antique in Turkey.  Most oddly there was the Ali San Vadi Dojo.  The Dojo appeared to be the only business in the area aside from tables offering jars of honey to passing hikers.  The tables were unmanned but someone working in the fruit groves could probably assist if you wanted to buy a jar.

Red soon led them off the dirt road and onto a narrow path.  Ela didn’t know if she had actually ever been to a proper wood before.  The path was all uphill.  They seemed to have it all to themselves though an occasional piece of litter showed that other people had to be using the trail as well.  Litter was ubiquitous in the city but it annoyed Ela more to see it out here in the forest.

“What’s something you’ve learned today then?”  Ela asked through labored breaths.

“Do you know how many flavors of Pringles there are?”  Red asked in response.

Ela shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Five?”

“Try more like 25.  Plus that number doesn’t even include regional flavors.”

Ela looked slightly disappointed “That’s what you learned?  The number of Pringle flavors?”

“That’s only an example of the implications of what I learned.  The real question is why there are so many flavors.”

Ela shrugged again “Because people want them?”

“Yes, but why do people want all these flavors?”  Ela only shook her head in response to this. “Because,” Red explained, “Plato’s theory of forms is wrong.”

Ela giggled, this was more of the esoteric proclamation that she was expecting.  “How do multiple chip flavors make Plato wrong?”

“For the reason that there is no one ideal, perfect chip that resides in the realm of forms that we only make shadowy imitations of.  Individuals have different tastes and desires.  This matters far beyond crisps.”  Crisps, Red must be picking up some British vocabulary from his coworkers.  “You’re wasting your time trying to create perfection because there is no such thing, not universally anyway.” 

Ela laughed again.  “I don’t see how learning something like that can possibly help on your quest to find magic.”

“It’s probable that it won’t.”  Red admitted.  “But philosophy is not disconnected from the world we live in.  Why just this week I went on a day trip to Miletus which I found more meaningful since I’ve studied the ideas of Thales.”

“Who?”

“Thales of Miletus.  The grandfather of philosophy.”  Red explained.  Ela just shook her head to show she didn’t know what he was talking about, which clearly annoyed Red.  “Thales was the first philosopher that we know about.  His best known idea was a theory that everything is made of water.”

Ela blinked.  “How is that even a philosophical theory?”

“Because it was an attempt to explain the world in a rational way rather than a supernatural way.  Thales thought that at the base of every element in the universe must be a common factor.  This had to be something that could change, that existed in different forms and was essential to life.  Water was the most logical answer.”

“But he was wrong.”

“Of course he was wrong.”  Red snapped.  “That’s not the point.  In science it’s OK to be wrong as long as you’re willing to admit that you were wrong and move forward.  Thales lived 2,500 years ago and we’ve obviously moved forward a lot since then.  The point is that Thales was using reasoning rather than just saying the world was created by the gods.  Considering how many people today still turn to religion for an explanation of how the world works I think Thales was a groundbreaking thinker.”

Ela stopped walking.  “Wait.  Are you saying that you’re an atheist?”

Red turned around “Yes.  Be careful, you don’t want me to start a rant about religion.”

“But you believe in magic?”

“Yes.”  He laconically replied.  Ela let this apparent contradiction slosh around in her head for a while before Red said.  “Keep walking.”

“My legs are short.”  Ela declared with a stomp.  Red hadn’t seemed to notice that she had to take three steps for every two steps he took.  So they rested for a bit before continuing on the trail.  As they huffed up the hill they encountered a middle aged man with a giant bag of roots on his back that ran right past them.  Eventually they reached a fire road.  Red said if they continued up the hill on the fire road there was a great view of a reservoir and supposedly an old monastery though he’d never seen it himself.  Ela opted to take the fire road downhill instead.  By the time they got back to Balçova Thermal they had walked about 8 kilometers of hills, which Red described as “Less than I normally do, but not bad.”

They then headed towards the building that had the thermal baths.  “Now,” Red explained, “I normally get one of the private rooms for a bath, which have two tubs each, but since there’s the two of us today I thought we could do the thermal pool instead.”

“No,” Ela said with a smile “I was told there would be bathing, I came prepared for that.  I haven’t carried a backpack full of toiletries all over these hills only to not use them because we decided to go to the pool instead.”

“Alright, just as long as you understand that in the private room there’ll be no…er…changing area.”  Red nervously stammered the last part out.

“I think that will be OK with me.  Will that be OK with you?”

“Um, yeah, why not?  No problem.”

“We’re not going to have sex.”  Ela thought it was best to be straight on this point.

“No, no of course not.” Red replied with a mixture of embarrassment and disappointment.

They went into the bathhouse; Red asked for a private room.  The girl at the desk asked to see their IDs.  Without much thought Red and Ela handed them over.  After a glance the girl said in Turkish “You’ll have to have separate rooms.” Red, who didn’t understand, just looked blankly between the girl and Ela.

“Why?” Ela asked.

“Because you’re not married.  Single men and women must have separate rooms.”

This shocked Ela.  She had heard of hotels out east doing things like this in the past but she wasn’t expecting this kind of prudish morality in present day Izmir.   “What does it matter to you if we’re married?” 

“Those are the rules.”

“I want to see a manager.”  Ela demanded.  The girl grudgingly picked up a phone and called her manager.

“What’s going on?”  A perplexed Red asked.  “I’ve never had any trouble here before.”

“Have you ever tried to bring a girl with you into the baths before?”

“Well, no.”

The manager came out; it was a girl who didn’t look much older than the one at the desk.  “What seems to be the problem?”  The manager asked.

“She won’t give us a room together because she said we’re not married.”

“That is our policy.”

“But we are married.  My husband is American.  In modern American marriages the girl doesn’t change her last name.”  

The manager looked at Red who stood there clueless as to what was going on.

 “Give them a room together.”  She instructed the receptionist.  Ela got the impression that the manager didn’t really believe her but had decided that it wasn’t worth a fight.

Red and Ela went to their private room.  There were two large marble tubs each with two old faucets like you found in traditional hamams.  Between the tubs was a shower; in the corner was a two tiered bench like you found in a sauna.  Red started filling both the baths.  “This will feel nice.  Though a shower first is a must, after being on that trail you’ll turn the bath water black if you go straight in.”  

“Alright.”  Ela politely responded.  He was clearly a bit nervous about having her there.  They undressed.  Red tried not to stare at her as she removed her clothes but it was painfully obvious that he wanted to see her disrobe.  Red also tried to turn so she wouldn’t see, but it was hard not to notice that he had a massive erection.  It was all Ela could do not to laugh.  If there was one thing Ela knew about men it was that they didn’t want women laughing at their manhood.  Ela decided that while she was going to stay true to her word and not have sex with him she wouldn’t make him suffer.

“Sit down here.”  Ela instructed.  “I’ll wash you.”  Red silently obeyed, sitting by the side of a tub.  He put his hands over his penis.  The first thing Ela decided to wash was his arms, forcing him to uncover himself.  She scrubbed his shoulders and chest for a bit before reaching down and gripping his dick.  He bit his lip and reached up to grab her breasts.  Ela slapped his hand away.  “No.  Men aren’t allowed to wash women.  I am only washing you.”  Ela jerked her hand up and down.  “And here is very dirty.”  It wasn’t long before Red face had the unmistakable look of a man in orgasm.  His legs uncontrollably thrashed and he gripped Ela’s thigh as though he was holding on for his life.  Yet he didn’t come.  Ela kept going but after a while her hand was becoming tired.  She decided that a more drastic step was needed.  Ela reached down with her left hand and pressed a finger against his sphincter.  “Ooo, it’s dirty here too.” She cooed.  Sure enough that did the trick; Red sent a load flying across the room.  He was now more breathless than he had been at any point on the hike.

“That… was incredible.”  he gasped.

Ela playfully sprayed him in the face with the shower head.  “Your bath is ready.  Get in.”  Again he silently obeyed and slipped into his bath.  Ela showered herself off then got into her bath.  Red had been right, after exerting herself on the trail the hot mineral water felt great on her muscles.  She was so relaxed that a good half hour had passed before she realized that Red looked like he was stoned and his face had turned the color of his name.  “Red?  Are you OK?”

“I am a-maz-ing.” He stressed every syllable as he slowly responded.  “I went from the city to the forest and challenged myself on the hills.  Then I went from filth to pristine cleanliness before being taken to the heights of ecstasy.  Now the water, I can feel it pushing my mind somewhere else.  All this changing, all these states, I feel like I’m so close to the possibility of magic.”     

Ela eyed him suspiciously; he was slurring his speech a bit.  She got out of her bath and stuck a hand in his bath; it was far hotter than her own had been.  “Oh my, Red I think you need to get out.”  

“No… I’m so there...”

“Red, get out or I won’t help you look for magic anymore.”  Red gave a frown before standing up, stepping out of the tub, slipping and falling to the floor.   “Red!”  Ela exclaimed.

He seemed not to hear her or be bothered by his fall.  Something else had grabbed his attention.  “What’s that?”  He asked.  He crawled across the floor to the two tiered wooden bench.  

“Red get off the ground, you just got clean.”  He ignored her and reached under the bench to pull out a coin.

“Look at this.  I think I may have just found a piece of solid magic.”

“It’s just a coin.”

“No it’s not, look at it.”  Ela did.  It wasn’t a current coin by a long shot.  She couldn’t read anything it said since it was in Ottoman script rather than the modified Latin alphabet used in Turkey since 1929.  “This is not something that just falls out of your pocket.”  Red commented.  Ela silently agreed; it was quite an unusual find.

After Red stopped staring at his new coin long enough to get dressed they left the bath house.  They walked back out towards the bus stop.  Ela realized that she had almost forgotten to ask an important question to Red.  “Hey, how would you like to go to Germany for me?”

Red looked at her, then he looked at his old coin.  A smile crept across his face.  “Magic.”