Before Rita Tereza had a chance to object, the bishop swept in, buttoning the collar of his blue cassock. He made his way around the table, stopped in front of Kosmas, and said in a low voice, “What a fine suit that is. Such elegant fabric, such precise tailoring. Italian?”
“Hüsnü Mirza,” said Kosmas, pulling in his tummy and puffing out his chest. “On Balo Street.”
The bishop winked. Fanis, now looking like a debonair Einstein in a sleek black suit, skipped into the tea room, grabbed the empty chair on Daphne’s right side, and said, “What do you say, Daphne dear? Did I do a good job today?”
“It was a real treat, Mr. Fanis. You have a lovely voice.”
“I do my best. The ‘Kalofonikos Eirmos’—the piece I was chanting during the distribution of the antidoron—was for you. It’s a very special hymn that we use only on holidays.”
“What’s that?” said the bishop.
“The chanting,” said Fanis. “Our guest enjoyed it.”
“Yes, but our feet didn’t,” said the bishop. “Anyway, you haven’t introduced our guest.”
“My niece Daphne,” said Gavriela, from the other end of the oval table. “From Miami.”
“Miami,” repeated the bishop. “Now there’s a city. I toured the whole country—New York, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco. We also went to a desert town with casinos, grandiose hotels, and dancing girls. What was the name of it?”
Daphne smiled at the thought of an Istanbul bishop playing the slots in Sin City. “Las Vegas?”
“Las Vegas! What a fun place that was! Now, Miss Daphne, tell me, are you married?”
Before Daphne had a chance to reply, Gavriela said, “Not yet.”
“Have you moved back to the City?” said the bishop.
“I’m just—”
Gavriela interrupted, in an insinuating singsong tone: “She’s thinking about it!”
Kosmas offered Daphne a plate of dry, stale-looking cheese pastries.
“No, thanks,” she said. “My aunt stuffs me with cheese pies every morning.”
“Just like my mother.” Kosmas passed them to the grizzly, cigarette-stinking priest. “I bet you can’t stand the sight of them.”
“Just about.”
The bishop’s pot-bellied, mustachioed assistant approached with a hot-water pot in one hand and a steaming teapot in the other. “More tea?” he said in Turkish.
“Thank you,” said Daphne. “Very light, please.”
The man poured an inch of dark tea and paused before topping up with water. “Is that all right?”
“Perfect. And might I have a glass of water?” said Daphne, with a side-nod.
“Of course.”
Kosmas offered the sugar bowl. Daphne placed her hand on her heart in a gesture of polite refusal. “I drink mine plain.”
“Your Turkish is superb, Daphne,” said Rita Tereza, whose armpits barely reached the table top. Daphne wondered if they ought to bring her a booster seat.
“Indeed,” said the bishop. He stabbed a quartered sesame ring with his mini-fork and held it in the air. “But it’s not just that. It’s the accent, the intonation, the mannerisms . . . all entirely Turkish.”
“You heard very little, Your Eminence,” said Daphne. “I make loads of mistakes in conversation.”
“Grammatical errors are one thing,” said Rita Tereza. “Mannerisms and accent are another. You must have spent quite a lot of time with Turks.”
“Maybe it’s from watching my teachers,” said Daphne, avoiding eye contact with the bishop. To parry any more delving into her origins, she asked, “Which reminds me, Your Eminence, could you suggest a chocolate shop? My teacher’s birthday is tomorrow.”
Kosmas winced. In her haste to change the subject, Daphne had forgotten that he was a pâtissier: asking about a sweet shop other than his had been bad manners on her part.
“Of course,” said the bishop. “The Savoy has always been one of the best.”
Even worse: the bishop had also forgotten Kosmas’s profession.
“It’s true,” said Rita Tereza. “But the Lily’s mille-feuille is superb.” She smiled flirtatiously at Kosmas. “My grandmother always said that the secret to a good mille-feuille is freshness. It has to be made and eaten on the same day and left at room temperature.”
“Actually,” said Kosmas, “there are many secrets to good mille-feuille. But, Rita Tereza, I thought you didn’t eat sweets?”
Rita Tereza pushed up her glasses. “I ate them until I was twenty-nine. But it seems there are things I don’t know about you, too, Kosmaki. You never mentioned you had an American friend.”
Dimitris, with his briefcase resting on his lap, grinned boyishly. “So what are the secrets to a good mille-feuille, son?”
“The beurrage, for example.” Kosmas grabbed the pile of napkins at the center of the table and ran his finger along the side. “It’s the butter, separating the dough, that creates layers like these, thin as leaves.”
“I’d think the assembly would be the most difficult part,” said Daphne, trying to figure out what sort of relationship Kosmas had with the Mad Hatter albino. If Rita Tereza was indeed his girlfriend, how could he not know that she used to eat sweets? Perhaps they weren’t a couple after all.
“Of course,” said Kosmas, straightening his suit jacket. “It takes years to learn how to cut the pastry without a ruler. Mille-feuille is architecture. It must be symmetrical, squared, and level. If anything is off, it will be a failure, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
Fanis, whose voice was still a little raspy from chanting, said, “Mille-feuille is a princess, but the queen mother was the Balkanik.”
“I asked Uncle Mustafa about that pastry,” said Kosmas. He picked up Daphne’s fallen napkin, gave it to the mustachioed man, and handed Daphne a new one from the stack he had used to demonstrate butter layering. “He described it to me as best he could: the choux pastry, the consistency and flavors of the creams, the unique way in which they were piped. I actually made a first attempt, but it fell short of Uncle Mustafa’s memories. You see, making a good chocolate, cardamom, cinnamon, or pistachio cream isn’t a big deal, but I haven’t been able to figure out how so many flavors can complement each other in one pastry without turning into a discordant mess.”
“The recipe
