A cool wind blew into the tea garden, ruffling the branches budding over their heads. Julien shivered. “What’s that smell?” he said, sniffing.
“Do I stink?” said Kosmas.
“Not exactly. Kind of like mahleb bread baking in a wood oven.”
“You mean I smell like a pâtisserie.”
“It’s not bad. Really.”
“I showered and changed, but sometimes the Lily sticks to me.”
“Calm down. You’re dressed like a GQ fashion plate but still you’re a wreck. Why don’t you run down to the pharmacy for some eye drops?”
“I already tried some,” said Kosmas. “They didn’t help.”
“If I’d been in your place—” Julien began.
“But you weren’t,” said Kosmas. “So it doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t care whether it matters. You listen to me. It’s time to stop jerking off and get the girl, do you hear? Otherwise you’ll end up a sorry old man like me, drinking café-au-whiskey for breakfast.” Julien stood. His chair scraped across the flagstones as he pushed it back. “Herethey come,” he said.
Kosmas looked up the street. There was Daphne, walking arm-in-arm with her aunt Gavriela, who seemed to be lecturing her about something. Kosmas’s eyes traveled over the face he had seen only through a computer screen for the past nine months, the hair that had grown at least ten centimeters since he had last seen it, and the body he remembered better by touch than by sight. Daphne wore a red, unbuttoned gabardine coat and clean, pressed gray pants, the hems of which were “cleaning the pavement,” as his mother would say. She had clearly lost weight. Kosmas was struck by how small she was, how delicate. Inside the Skype screen, everything seemed so big.
Kosmas stood but remained rooted to the slate pavement. Julien crossed the patio and embraced Daphne. “I wish you many years, my girl! May you have all that you desire, and in your bed, fire!”
Daphne laughed.
“Health and happiness!” said Kosmas.
Daphne approached him with a sleepy smile. She raised her hands to his shoulders, but as he embraced her, her arms somehow got in the way. He couldn’t tell if it had been an awkward move on the part of an exhausted woman, or if it was an effort to push him away. He kissed her cheeks, disappointed that she had shown more enthusiasm for Julien.
“Looks like we need tea,” said Gavriela. “Dark as rabbit’s blood.”
But Kosmas couldn’t wait for the tea. He said, “I need to show Daphne something.”
Gavriela pulled her dark glasses down her nose and glared at Kosmas over the top of the lenses. “I don’t think—”
Kosmas interrupted: “We won’t be long. I promise.”
He took Daphne’s hand in his. Skype could keep a relationship breathing, but it couldn’t give you touch. How he had missed her warm hand. As soon as they turned the corner onto Akarsu Yokuşu Street, he pulled her close. She turned her face slightly to the side, so that her chin dug into his chest. Her forehead smelled of jet fuel and cheap airplane soap.
“You came straight here, didn’t you?” He squeezed her, as if he were trying to push her body into his, to make it part of him so that she could never leave again.
She took a step backward, forcing him to loosen his embrace. He noticed a wrinkle between her ribbon-like brows. Her mouth was tightly closed. She caressed his cheek, but her expression remained troubled. “We need to talk,” she said.
“Let me show you something first.”
They started down a sloping street that led to the terrace overlooking Nusretiye Mosque. Because it was early, the tables of the tea garden at the edge of the terrace were still empty. A few faces could be seen in the windows of the apartment buildings above, but there were no passersby. Kosmas looked out to sea. A red ship trailing white foam was sailing between the mosque’s two baroque minarets. He leaned on the terrace railing, facing Daphne. “I’m really sorry. My mother’s troubles took me by surprise. I overreacted. And then there was just so much to do at the pâtisserie. . . . I should have come, even if it was only for a little while.”
The wind blew Daphne’s hair into her eyes. She peeled the strands from her face, twisted them, and stuffed the coil into the back of her loose coat. “I’m torn,” she said. “I like that you take such good care of your mother, but her prejudices are . . . strong, to say the least. She doesn’t want me anywhere near you.”
“She doesn’t want anybody near her son. She’s jealous. Your father is just an excuse. But she’ll come around, I promise.”
“Even if she does, I’d never be able to live in the same apartment with her.”
“Look up there,” said Kosmas. He spun Daphne around and pointed to a grand white apartment block with stacked oriels on every floor from the first to the sixth.
“Built in 1897,” he said. “See the oriel on the sixth floor? That’s mine. I moved out of my mother’s place over a week ago. I wanted to surprise you with a furnished place, but I haven’t had time to buy anything but a bed. It’s stilla mess.”
Daphne stared upward. The blue sky and a few wispy cirrus clouds reflected on the windowpanes. The wind whistled in the corbels of the first floor. She said, “The oriel must have some view.”
“It’s yours.”
Daphne continued gazing at the building with an expression of wonder. “Your mother?”
“Busy with Dimitris. And you don’t have to worry about her visiting us. It’s a walk-up. You’ll see the whole City from up there without ever setting eyes on her.”
Daphne smiled. “It sounds perfect.
