Scorpionfish, стр. 19
When we parked the car and walked a few blocks down Kallidromiou—I knew the restaurant Eva had suggested was in the center but I had not expected to be back in this very neighborhood, where I took my long walks—I noticed she was tightly clutching her purse. Alone here I blended in just fine, I suppose, but Katerina in her blue silk blouse, her perfect eye makeup, her hair styled that afternoon—I braced myself for dirty looks. I wondered why he’d chosen this place until I realized Aris, striving politically, wanted to be seen out among this bunch: the people, the rebels, the intellectuals, the anarchists.
I hadn’t seen Aris in years—this evening’s plans had been arranged because his new fiancée, Eva, had long been a close friend of Katerina’s—and even so I only vaguely remembered him. I did not yet know his history with Mira. He was younger than I, by nearly a decade, and when he stood next to me, I noticed that an outline of his body would have fit perfectly into mine. The same mold, scaled down by 7 percent. His shoulders were narrower, his hips thinner, and when I stood to greet him and we both settled into our chairs our eyes met, the eyes of the outsiders, the men brought in by marriage. I glanced at the others, all engaged in animated discussion; if anyone noticed my discomfort they didn’t mention it.
We talked of insignificant summer things, he asked about our kids. Even though our obvious connection was politics, we steered clear of it, though he said nice things about my father, whom he admired very much. Our fathers, both well-known and revered, if not respected, had made their homes on the island. His father had already been in the public eye for his socially astute, acerbic novels, and when called upon he was still a powerful voice. “Few sons are the equals of their fathers,” Athena says in The Odyssey.
I drank a lot of tsipouro. Everyone was talking about a reality television series, based off an American show, which was based off a Swedish show, where a group of good-looking strangers are dropped off on an island and made to compete for resources through strange games. I had not seen the show, but in this world, in this country, at this moment, it seemed in bad taste. But when I said so, Katerina rolled her eyes and everyone laughed. “Come on,” another said. “At this moment it’s exactly what we need.”
A few people came by, snapped photos not so surreptitiously with their phones. Eva was regaining attention: fifteen years ago she had starred in a few Greek movies and some French ones, but in her thirties she had disappeared. Depression, near misses, and a string of bad love affairs had kept her in a constant state of neurotic attachment, unable to focus on her work. But with her recent comeback she’d become suddenly political, as if a new generation’s Melina Mercouri. Her eyes, large and dark brown, had an unsettling depth to them, and she’d always looked at me as though she knew something I didn’t. I had to admit that she and Aris seemed well-matched.
I think now that I was a little jealous, all that newness ahead of them. Katerina thought Eva was as beautiful as ever, but she often said this of her friends. Men never bothered with such statements. If a man was handsome we didn’t have to tell all the women at the table about it. Or we didn’t notice. Then again, if you grew up in Greece where men on talk shows slap women on the ass and adult women are called “girl” until they’re fifty, perhaps you’d want to beat men to the punch, to take away some of the power by assuming it yourself. Later, Mira surprised me by saying that maybe being called a “girl” carried with it a certain air of independence. Before you became a woman, or a wife, the word was the same. Still, to talk so brazenly about other women in the company of women, there’s something aggressive, demoralizing about all of it. Anyway. I have never quite fit with ideals of Greek masculinity.
Katerina seemed happy to be there, which gave me a certain feeling of contentment. But the conversation at the table, petty gossip disguised as politics, the chatter of my childhood, bored me, which had me looking around the taverna. It was then I spotted Mira. She headed across the garden, a confident walk like she’d been here many times before—that’s when she saw me. Or, really, that’s when I guess she saw Aris, the two of us together, and the look of confusion, even betrayal, on her face has stayed with me, particularly because then I had no idea what would have caused it, or perhaps because now I do. I had the urge to get up and follow her, say hello. To say I was going to a bank machine or to get cigarettes or even to disappear to the bathroom and out the back of the bar into the narrow alleyway. I even began to stand. All of this was happening undetected by the rest of our table, yet it seemed at that moment all eyes were on me, on us.
Aris’s chair tipped back as he leapt up, but he caught it. His standing shut mine down, and it was he, not I, who walked after Mira.
At first I thought it was coincidence. After all, what are the chances? But coincidence is story, is it not? He was focused on her; he followed her. I looked around the table but everyone was engaged in conversation and no one noticed Aris slip away. Mira walked more quickly, in front of him. When she turned the corner, she looked back and our eyes met. I waved