“I don’t drink,” she repeated, this time sounding like a schoolteacher trying to maintain her patience with an insistent first-grader. “Water’s fine.”
The ice cube slipped and landed in the stuffed mussels. “I’m such an idiot,” said Kosmas. He scooped up the ice with his fork and dumped it onto his meze plate. Unsure what to say next, he dropped a fresh cube into his narrow glass, poured the raki over it, and added a few centimeters of water. What fun was a girl who didn’t drink? Not that he wanted to see her inebriated, but total abstention was a bore.
“To our health.” He grasped the cloudy white glass by the base so that the toast would produce a clear ring. “But you have to clink twice with water, to get rid of the bad luck.”
“Bad luck? Says who?”
“My mother.” He double-tapped his glass against Daphne’s, took a sip of raki, and served her dollops of eggplant salad and cod roe spread, as well as one of the cinnamon-rice-stuffed mussel shells. “Mr. Spyros’s cook makes the best mussels. The salt bonito is also one of his specialties, but the flavor’s a little strong, so I’d recommend leaving it until last.”
“Interesting,” said Daphne, with a quizzical nod that he couldn’t interpret. “Don’t they have music here?”
“Never. Mr. Spyros says it ruins conversation. How are the mussels?”
“Good.”
That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He was hoping for amazing, excellent, the best I’ve ever had. “If you don’t like them, we could—”
“No, I do. You have great taste.” Finally her voice was warming a little. “Do you cook?”
“Never,” he said. “Cooking and pastry-making are entirely different professions, like novelist and poet.”
“Do you like poetry?”
“A little Nazim Hikmet. Some Cavafy.”
“I spent a semester on Cavafy at college.” Daphne added. “We read absolutely everything . . .” She continued speaking, but he lost her words. He heard only the tone of her voice, increasingly soft and feminine. He ate without tasting the food. What importance did it have when he was near her? Was this the moment? Should he tell her she looked beautiful in that dress, with her hair falling over her shoulders? No. Better to start with something small.
“Pretty bracelet,” he said. “It suits you.”
“It’s a watch.” She turned the thick black band so that he could see the face. “My boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday.”
Kosmas had a sudden urge to cough, but his mouth was full of fried picarel. He grabbed his raki glass and washed it down. “Have you been together long?”
“Four years.”
It was all lost. All his dreams, his hope for himself and his community, all swept away by that one word. Boyfriend.
“But we’re on a little break right now.”
“A break?”
“We’re taking some time apart.”
“Who could ever need time away from you?”
“I’m a very difficult person,” said Daphne, resuming her officious, teacherly tone. “I’m critical, I don’t eat meat, I can be jealous, I hate shoes indoors, I wash my hands as soon as I come in the house, I have trouble sleeping when he’s snoring, I don’t give him enough space, et cetera, et cetera.”
Lucky I brought her to a fish restaurant, thought Kosmas. “Apart from the meat thing,” he said, “it seems to me that you’re not difficult at all, just Rum. And titiza.”
“What?”
“All good Rum women are titizes. They’re meticulous. They hate dirt. They like things just so.”
“Titiza,” Daphne repeated. She looked up at the miniature Turkish and Greek flags hanging from the ceiling, side by side, like old friends. “Maybe. But I can be aggravating.” Her voice was lower now, as if she didn’t want to be overheard.
“Is it serious?” he asked.
“After four years, I should hope so.”
What would Fanis do now? The old philanderer would take whatever she had said and twist it around to his advantage. That’s what he’d do. “You know best. But in my opinion, being titiza is a good thing. You deserve a man who appreciates who you are.”
A busboy collected their oily meze plates and replaced them with clean ones. “We haven’t finished,” said Daphne. “Why is he changing our plates?”
“If he doesn’t, Mr. Spyros will be all over him. Nobody likes mixed flavors.”
A hand reached between them with a plate of fried potatoes. Two plates of tiny fish—fried and salted like popcorn and resting on a bed of arugula—followed.
Daphne pressed her hands together like a happy child. “I love fried things! Especially little fried fish. How did you know?”
“They’re my favorite, too,” said Kosmas. He was going to beat this boyfriend after all. “Later on, I thought we’d go for dessert—”
“I have a better idea for after.”
Could it be true that American women were as forward as the four characters on Sex and the City?
“A tango lesson,” said Daphne. “It’s free at a studio not too far from here. I found it on the internet and wrote down the address.” She took a scrap of paper from her purse and showed it to him.
Without bothering to look, he said, “I can’t dance. I’ve always wanted to learn, but—”
“Now’s your chance.”
Kosmas’s fork slipped from his hand and landed on the tablecloth with a soft thud. He was terrified of making a clown of himself on their first date. “I’d rather start with something easier, like the waltz, maybe. Tango seems so difficult.”
“Please. I really want to go.”
Kosmas dished out the fried smelt.
“I can serve myself, you know,” said Daphne. She attempted a laugh, but Kosmas could tell she was piqued. It was exactly as Spyros had said: some women could mistake old-world manners for patronization.
Kosmas loosened his tie and looked over at Spyros, who was having his photo taken with a group of loquacious Italian women. “Ready for the main course?” he said.
“And the tango lesson?” said Daphne.
Spyros helped the last Italian woman into her jacket, kissed her goodbye, and returned to his post behind the cash register. Kosmas said, “Mr. Spyros, can I leave Daphne in your hands for a moment?”
“You
