Page 11 of The Summer Show
Except that in this case the right places were the wrong places for me. As my best friend’s brother, Nick was off-limits. Anyway, it was clear that the man was going through some things, and the thing about going through some things is that all too frequently you need time and space, not an affection-starved elementary school librarian drooling over your casual clothes.
He plucked a frappe off the table and held it up. “This one mine?”
“You bet,” Ana said.
“Did Roussos poison it?”
“Spit is non-toxic,” Thanos said.
The pastry cream on its way from my mouth to my stomach took a sudden detour, rocketing toward my lung’s closest lobe. Tears filled my eyes as my respiratory system got its first taste of Greek confections.
This was it. The final moments of Kathleen Claire Hart.
At least I was going to die in paradise, felled by sugar.
And do you know what I was thinking about? The most prominent thought in my mind?
All the books I would never get to read.
And dying partway through a book, never knowing how it ends? Tragic.
Ana slapped me on the back until the cream corrected course and shot out of my mouth. The grim reaper shuffled away, disappointed. My To Be Read pile cheered.
Once I stopped choking I was sad to see the yummy dessert forming a white and golden splotch on the concrete, destined to be an ant’s dinner. I could have eaten that.
A goat wandered over, plucked the cream and pastry off the ground, then had the audacity to nudge me for more.
“That didn’t happen,” I said, mortified that I’d choked in front of Mr. 24C and his grey sweatpants.
Ana handed me a glass of water. “Ignore the squabbling children.”
“We’re not children,” both men said at the same time.
Ana used her teacher glare on them. Her narrowed eyes and frown could silence two dozen nine-year-olds in a split second, and had the same effect on adult males. “In another life they would have been best friends,” she told me.
Nick grunted. He took his coffee to the far side of the yard and sat in the hammock chair.
Ana watched him walk away. “You don’t want to sit with us?”
Nick ignored her. He leaned back in the canvas seat, sucking coffee through a straw while scrolling through his phone.
“I don’t know who that is, but that is not my brother,” Ana muttered.
“What’s he usually like?”
“Fun. Funny. My brother is one of the best people I know, even when he’s being a horse’s butt. I don’t know what’s going on with him.” She slapped on a smile. “My mom is staying with our grandmother and great-grandmother, so maybe she’ll have more insight. I’ll take you over there later, then you can check out the magic of Nera’s promenade. It’s where people go to see and be seen.”
“It’s the great gathering and dispersal of gossip,” Thanos added.
“It really is. What happens on the promenade is incapable of staying on the promenade.” She raised her voice. “Are you coming to the paralia with us tonight?”
Nick lifted his head. He took a long pull on his straw. “Nope.”
* * *
“Tell the poutsa story again! Tell the poutsa story again!”
My rapt audience consisted of two little old Greek women of indeterminate age, and Ana’s mother, Lina. Lina was delighted to see me and had folded me up in a big mom hug.