“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. You’ve got more important things to worry about now.”
“What could be more important than that?”
“Listen. It’s imperative that you begin taking these medications today. Not tomorrow, today. Otherwise your condition could worsen rapidly. You’re still a vibrant man. I don’t want to see you lose your independence.”
“And the Viagra?”
The doctor sighed. “We’ll revisit the subject at your next appointment. Two weeks from today, okay?”
The doctor shook his hand, lifted the yellow curtain, and disappeared. A male nurse handed Fanis the clothing and accessories that had been neatly stored in a cabinet at the foot of the examination table: a crisp shirt, creased pants, a gold-buckled belt, and well-polished shoes. Thank God no one had stolen his watch. It was still on his left wrist, and his wedding ring—along with that of his dead wife—was safe on his right ring finger. After tying his silk handkerchief around his neck, Fanis thanked the nurse and left the hospital through the back entrance in order to reduce the chance of being seen by acquaintances.
Once outside, Fanis turned right into Turnacıbaşı Street. While walking beneath the grapevines that crawled over electric lines and drooped like pearls on a woman’s chest, he tried to decide whether he should follow the doctor’s advice. Fanis wasn’t against sleeping pills, necessary antibiotics, or romantic helpers. After all, those weren’t things you took every day. But chronic medication was another thing altogether. Once you go down that road, he had always said, there’s no coming back. You’re on the fast track to more and more disease. But if the alternative was a stroke that could put him in Baloukli Nursing Home, where he would spend his days staring at the ceiling, muttering incoherently, and doing his business in a bedpan? Then what?
He entered the Turnacıbaşı Pharmacy, whose floor-to-ceiling wood and glass cabinets were filled with sinister little boxes. “Is anyone here?” he asked.
“Be out in two minutes!” shouted the pharmacist from the back room.
Fanis went outside and petted the two homeless Kangal-mix dogs that lived nearby. They lifted their dirty heads, sniffed his air, and leaned into his caresses. Fanis’s neighbors were stingy on love, but at least they kept the beasts fed and watered. Everywhere you saw the bottoms of five-liter plastic bottles that had been cut to make water dishes for dogs and cats. Across from the pharmacy, an artist had made a cat bed from an old pink suitcase and a green pillow, and she had placed a pot of carnations beside it so that the cat would imagine he was lounging in his own private garden.
“How I would love to be that cat,” said Fanis in Greek.
“Me too,” replied a voice, in the same language. Fanis looked up. A full-figured woman with black hair so curly it was almost horizontal gave him a quick smile and a flash of her dark eyes and scampered off.
“Madame,” he called out, but she didn’t turn back.
Fanis looked through the open door. The pharmacist still hadn’t appeared. Fanis stuffed the prescriptions into his pocket and took off toward the narrow pedestrian byway into which the woman had turned, but he made it all the way to Çukurcuma Street without another glimpse of her. He sighed and glanced down the hill toward the Galata Tower, rising like a party hat above the peninsula. The view was especially touching at that time of day, when the orange light of sunset zigzagged over the tile-roofed buildings of Pera.
Suddenly a beat-up black sports car came whizzing around a curve in the road. Fanis was obliged to jump backward in order to avoid being flattened. The car skidded to a stop.
The buff young driver opened his window and said, “Sorry, Uncle.”
Fanis kicked a tire. “You’re going to kill someone!” he shouted.
“It’s not my fault they made these streets for mule carts and carriages!”
The car sped off. Miffed that he had lost the curly-haired vixen and also afraid of falling prey to the next rapscallion on wheels, Fanis hurried into the crook of the side street embracing the local mosque. Before him was Çukurcuma Antiques, the shop he had owned and operated for thirty-eight years and sold in 1996.
He popped his head inside, scanned the fifties retro furniture that was now passed off as “antique,” and said in Turkish, “Attila! Good evening, son, how are you?”
Attila put one hand on his hip and waved with the other. “Mr. Fanis!” he called. “Come in for a tea.”
“Thanks, but I don’t have time right now. Did a woman with black curls come this way?”
“Skirt-chasing again, Mr. Fanis?”
“Never. Have you seen her?”
“Maybe. She climbed the hill toward Firuzağa Mosque, but you’ll never catch up. Why don’t you come in? I’d like to get your opinion on some carpets.”
“Another time, son.” Fanis hurried toward the next shop, which specialized in antique kitchen counters and basins. Ten or twelve heavy marble pieces leaned against the wall, like uninscribed tombstones. Fanis wondered how many of the meals he had eaten at departed friends’ houses had been prepared beside those very sinks. Such a macabre thought. He drove it from his mind, scurried past the graveyard of oblong kitchen vestiges, and hung a left up a steep hill. Before continuing up Ağa Hamamı Street, where red flags and election placards waved from the lampposts, he caught sight of a nest of crazy black curls behind the great jars of preserved onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and lemons on the shelves of the pickle-shop vitrine. He crossed the street and stepped inside the aquarium-like store, but the curly hair he had spotted from afar turned out to belong to a chubby teenage clerk.
“Good afternoon, dear,” he said. “A small jar of pickled sea herb, please.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” said the girl, “but the greengrocer next door has fresh sea
