Page 22 of The Summer Show
The gate opened. In came Thanos’s grandfather, carrying a glass of water. He crouched down beside Proyiayia and felt her pulse.
“She is pretending,” he declared.
The old woman sat up. “Ana’s friend said my Nikaki will be on TV.”
“Is that so?” Mr. Roussos kissed Yiayia on the forehead and pulled up a chair next to her.
“Can Nick fight?” I asked.
“He can carry hundred-pound rolls of roofing materials on each shoulder, so I think he can probably figure it out,” Ana said.
I gulped. I used a hand truck to ferry book boxes around. And I always crouched to lift the heavier boxes so I wouldn’t spend my forties crying when it was time to flop out of bed.
“You know what Thanos and Nikos used to do during the summer?” Yiayia said to me. “Fight.”
“I cleaned up a lot of their blood,” Mr. Roussos told me. “And stitches …”
“Ah-pah-pah,” Proyiayia said. “Children today never fight. Only on the TV.”
“Did you see him?” Lina asked me. “Where is he staying?”
I nodded. “He didn’t say where he was staying, but I have to go to the Hotel Ble tomorrow, so maybe there?”
“That is the most expensive hotel on Nera,” Mr. Roussos said. “Maybe they are housing contestants there, too.”
“Don’t leave me,” Ana said.
“I’m not leaving. I’m not even going to be on TV. But I’m going to the hotel tomorrow anyway because I’m curious. I need to know things. This is knowledge dropping right into my lap.”
“Tell us everything,” Yiayia said. “Otherwise we will make it up.”
* * *
I’d love to say that I wasn’t excited about meeting with the casting director tomorrow. During my stint as Bush Lake Elementary’s librarian, I’d met all kinds of literary celebrities. Dog Man came to our school last spring. Dog Man, I tell you.
The kids were beside themselves, and so was I.
Anyway, these were television people who were worshipped all over Greece and Europe, come to find out. They were maybe even bigger than Dog Man, and it was becoming harder to tamp down the bubble of excitement and nerves building in the pit of my stomach where butterflies occasionally hung out.
As the day wore on, that feeling intensified.
Over a meal of crusty Greek bread that Ana and I were sent to buy from the bakery down the street, Greek salad, chunks of feta, and pastitsio that Ana carried back from the bakery after the baker had cooked it for Yiayia in his wood-fired oven, the two families gave me a comprehensive primer about Greece’s Top Hoplite, the highest rated TV show in Greek history.
The show was conceived ten years ago, when Greece wanted a uniquely Greek television show, during a time when the country was suffering economically. It couldn’t be too glitzy or too expensive to produce. Basically they wanted bread and circuses. And so, GTH was born. Effie Makri was a contestant during the first season. The show was a massive hit, and audience hate-loved the acidic woman who had come out of nowhere. When the show was renewed for a second season, they invited Effie to return first as a guest judge, then as a permanent judge.
GTH’s episodes followed a similar formula. Fighting. Spears. Swords. A variety of weird challenges that regularly had nothing to do with war. The first episode was typically a kind of battle royale used to eliminate and pare down the contestants to the small group all of Greece and Europe would get to know better. For the second episode, the remaining group was divided into teams and pitted against each other, while those who had been eliminated watched from the audience.
Teamwork.
One of my top ten least favorite things.
I know, I know, as an educator I was supposed to be a cheerleader for teamwork, but … nope. Every single day I watched kids form groups for various projects, and one child always wound up doing most of the work while the others goofed off and greedily accepted the glory. Group projects rubbed some of the shine off students who worked the hardest.
Anyway. It’s not like I was going to be on the show, although Ana had already lined up a marathon of episodes for me to watch this evening. She was hoping—they were all hoping—I would agree to be a contestant in the new season. She said it would bring honor to my house.
You can always rely on a teacher to be there with a good Disney quote.
But my house was actually an apartment, and sometimes homeless people camped outside and pooped on the steps. So what it needed more than honor was a Porta Potty.