“Can’t say I do. And I’d remember if she’s attractive.”
“Just my luck,” said Fanis.
Aliki fluttered her blue-powdered eyelids. “Don’t worry. There are plenty of other ladies who would—”
“Three days ago it was pouring chair legs,” said Fanis, fanning himself. “Now I’m sweating like a sausage.” Aliki and Julien looked perfectly comfortable, but he was burning up. Could this overheating be a sign of more trouble? Aliki offered him a handkerchief embroidered with a single violet. Fanis thanked her and dabbed his forehead. When Emine served their teas, he said, “Could you raise the awning, dear? It’s blocking the cool breezes coming up from the Bosporus.”
Emine side-nodded. “Of course.”
Fanis looked toward the street. Rea Xenidou, supporting herself on the arm of her son, Kosmas, was shuffling onto the patio. Rea’s ankles and knees were unnaturally swollen. She winced at each step and progressed at a turtle pace, but her middle-aged son Kosmas showed no sign of haste or annoyance.
“Almost there, Mother,” he said.
Fanis offered his canvas chair. He had always appreciated Rea’s elegant French twist, the barely there shade of her lipstick, and the fact that she still donned all her gold jewelry for teatime, just as everybody had done half a century ago. Ladies like her deserved special treatment.
Rea’s son, on the other hand, was a real piece of work. It was obvious that his mother still dressed him because he wore hideous, horizontally striped polo shirts in which Fanis would not have been caught dead. Kosmas had the brush-cut of a soldier, which, in combination with his tasteless outfits, led one to suppose that he was some sort of computer geek rather than an award-winning pastry chef.
“Ach, that feels good,” said Rea, as she eased herself into Fanis’s chair.
Aliki leaned against the low wall of the Ottoman cemetery and covered her mouth. “What are you talking about? These chairs are awful. They sag in the middle.”
“Don’t do that,” snapped Julien.
“What?” said Aliki.
“The cemetery shakes at night from the unrest of its souls. It’s bad luck to touch that wall. Unless you’re in a hurry to join its inhabitants, that is.”
“God forbid,” said Aliki.
“Come on,” said Fanis. “We aren’t superstitious. Stop trying to frighten poor Aliki.”
Just then, a seventyish woman wearing a gold necklace that disappeared beneath her blouse—an obvious sign, to the trained eye, that she was a Christian or Jew who preferred to keep her religion private—approached arm in arm with a young woman who walked with the rod-straight posture of a ballerina and the curious gaze of a foreigner.
“Good evening,” said Aliki in Greek.
Gavriela Theodorou, a remarried divorcée from the hilltop neighborhood of Tatavla, kissed her friends and said, “This is my niece. Just arrived from America.”
Fanis suddenly understood the workings of destiny: the curly-haired woman was not the one, but rather the rabbit who had led him down the hole to the wonderland in which Gavriela Theodorou’s niece was waiting for him. Then again, Gavriela had never made any mention of an American niece. That was rather strange. Suspicious, almost.
Julien stood and pulled out his chair with a gallant sweep, a bow, and a chivalric triple turn of the wrist that ended in an upturned palm pointed at the chair. Kosmas also stood and offered his seat, but without any embellishments. Fanis tried do the same, but the skinny gray cat, which had apparently resettled beneath his chair, screeched so loudly that it startled him, and he fell back down.
“Stay where you are, sir,” said the niece. “We only need two.”
Annoyed that he had been surpassed in gentlemanly conduct, Fanis waited until Julien and Kosmas had gone inside for more chairs. He took advantage of their absence to pull his seat over to the young lady’s and ask, “What’s your name, dear?”
“Daphne.” She gathered her loose hair, which undulated like the curls of a Minoan princess, and let it tumble down her back. Although Daphne was not as voluptuous as the curly-haired siren, Fanis was excited by the way her black shirt exposed one of her pale shoulders. It was as if she was only half dressed.
“The most beautiful name there is,” said Fanis. “Where are you from?”
“Miami.”
He held out his hand. “Fanis.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Daphne. Her voice was nasal and her accent in Greek strange: something between Istanbul and Athens, with a tinge of American.
He grasped her fingertips as gently as he would an old tapestry. “What beautiful, natural nails you have. It takes pluck not to hide behind polish. I suspect you have quite a lot of fire in you. What’s your sign?”
Daphne tried to pull away her hand, but Fanis held it firmly. “Scorpio,” she said.
“I knew it! Didn’t I say you were fiery?” He kissed her chapped knuckles.
“What’s your sign, Mr. Fanis?”
The ‘Mr.’ nettled Fanis, but he let it slide. “Guess,” he said.
“Leo.”
“Not far off. But I’m neither cruel nor bossy. Guess again.”
“Gemini,” said Daphne.
“That’s an air sign. Do you really think I have an air sign?”
“Aries, then.”
He released her hand. “I knew you’d get it. After all, it’s the sign of energy and ardor. I’m Aries through and through. Did you know that Aries men and Scorpio women can be a perfect match?”
Daphne clicked her tongue. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”
Fanis continued: “It’s because Scorpio women are so difficult to satisfy. Aries is the only sign that can handle it. His passion is raw, whereas Scorpio passion is—”
“Cut it out or you’ll scare her away,” said Julien, just returned with Kosmas and the extra chairs. “Now, tell me, Daphne, what brings you to the City?”
“A Turkish class.” She twisted a tendril of hair around her finger.
“Turkish?” said Rea.
“I’m thinking about a PhD. In oral history.”
“How interesting,” said Fanis. “Do you know, my dear Daphne, that you have the heavy eyelids of the last Ottoman sultans? But that’s not surprising because most of the sultans’ mothers were Rum.”
“For how long will you be in the City, Daphne?” asked Julien.
Gavriela removed her
