Everyone hummed in satisfaction: it was long enough.
“How old are you, dear?” asked Aliki. Fanis could have kissed Aliki’s bristly cheeks. It was just what he wanted to know, but he made a point of never asking a man’s salary, or a woman’s age.
“Thirty-two,” said Daphne.
Slightly young for Fanis, but he was sure he could win her. Instead of taking part in the usual chitchat, he sat back in his chair and listened while each of his friends put forward what they considered the most important subjects.
“Do you work, sweetie?” asked Rea.
“I’m a teacher.”
“Oh, that’s the very best profession for a woman,” said Aliki.
Rea smiled sweetly at her son, turned back to Daphne, and asked, “Do you love children?”
“Yes, but I don’t always love their parents.”
“Are you married?”
“Not yet.”
Fanis felt a secret tickle of delight, but he kept his hands folded across his belly, as if these details held no importance for him. He watched the flexing and curling of Daphne’s unpainted toes, and he suspected—despite her confident replies—that her fidgeting was an indication of a certain discomfort.
“Good for you,” said Julien. “Marriage destroys romance. Stay single if you want to have a good love life.”
“Still,” said Aliki, “one gets lonely.”
“Don’t worry, little mama,” said Gavriela to her niece. “We’ll find you a groom.”
“But you haven’t told us,” said Rea. “Whose child are you?”
“My aunt’s sister’s,” said Daphne. Everyone laughed.
Meanwhile, like any expert hunter, Fanis was completing the essential task of reconnaissance: the girl prickled at their questions, and her replies, although proper, were evasive. How he loved a mysterious woman. More than that, however, he admired her trim dancer’s torso, the round posterior that he had glimpsed just before she sat down, and the child-thin wrists on which she wore silver cuff bracelets. Fanis knew, just as he could estimate the quality of an antique ring or some other fine thing, that Daphne was a find.
Of course, sitting as they were in a group, he couldn’t use the infallible strategy he had developed and refined throughout his decades of amorous adventures. That would require him to gaze directly into the eyes of his intended and say, “I find you incredibly beautiful.” So he thought for a moment and, with his instinctive acumen, adjusted the line both to his age and to the current situation by looking into Daphne’s eyes and saying, “Every young man in our City must find you incredibly beautiful.”
“Why don’t you ask them?” said Daphne.
Delighted by her riposte, Fanis said, “What an original idea. Kosmas, don’t you agree, as a young man, that Daphne is incredibly beautiful?”
Everyone fell silent. Kosmas scratched his brush-cut hair, stood, and asked, “Would anyone like more tea?”
“You haven’t answered the question,” said Fanis.
“Of course she is,” Kosmas mumbled.
2
A Baker’s Son Awakens
As a result of fanis’s puckishness, Kosmas found himself inside the narrow shop, standing at the unattended counter and waiting to order tea that no one wanted. He looked through the windows and beheld his mother’s friends laughing and chatting, and then his eyes settled on her, the American who resembled the actress Semra Sar in the 1960s films of which Rea was so fond. She had the same ribbon brows, the same downcast glance, and the same tentative smile as that heartbreaking Turkish actress. Wearing only a plain dress and orthopedic sandals, without any makeup as far as he could tell, the American was indeed incredibly beautiful.
Kosmas leaned on the high counter with folded arms, lowered his forehead onto them, and sighed. All he had ever wanted was to become a pâtissier, restore his family business to its former glory, marry a lovely Rum girl, and live a normal life. The first dream he had realized by completing pastry school in Vienna. Since then his mille-feuille had become so famous that he had been asked to give lectures on its preparation at the Istanbul Culinary Institute. Moreover, he was well on the way to doubling the original size of his father’s pastry shop. But he still had not found a bride, and now that a diaspora Rum had appeared in his life, like a golden coin in a Saint Basil’s cake, he didn’t even have the mettle to pay her a compliment.
A Greek voice recalled him from his sulk: “Those look tasty.”
Kosmas raised his head from the counter and saw the American peering into the cookie case. “You’ve got to be joking,” he said.
She cocked her head to one side.
Instinctively switching into culinary-professor mode, he explained: “It’s just pre-prepared frozen stuff that they bring in and bake here. The City has much better to offer. Come by the Lily sometime and you’ll see.” He presented his card.
She stuffed it into the pocket of her cross-body bag. “Is that where you work? At the Lily?”
“It’s our family business.”
“I guess that explains the flour on your pants.”
He looked down and saw the white dusting on his left thigh. Damn it. “Confectioner’s sugar,” he said, brushing it off. “From the mille-feuille.”
She pulled her hair to the nape of her neck, twisted it, and let it fall over her chest in a long coil. “If you’ve got a bakery,” she said, “then why are we here?”
Kosmas straightened his shoulders. “The Lily is a serious pâtisserie. Not a bakery, and definitely not a tea garden.”
“I see. Anyway, I just came in for some napkins. My aunt spilled her tea.”
Kosmas grabbed a stack from the counter and gave them to her. “I’ll have somebody come out and wipe it up.”
“It’s not necessary.” She smiled and held up the wad of napkins. “These are enough.”
He watched her long dress sway as she crossed the patio. When she bent over to clean the table, her buttocks separated. The soft fabric of her skirt draped between. From behind she was almost obscenely beautiful.
As if reading his thoughts, a woman said in Turkish, “Güzeller güzeli.” A beauty of beauties. Kosmas turned back toward the counter and saw his old flame
