Page 25 of The Summer Show
And that was that. Not another word out of him until the marathon was over and he left to sleep wherever it was he was sleeping.
* * *
The thing about people with money and clout is that they have the ability to make magic happen that simply isn’t possible for the rest of us. I guess that’s why so many people chase fame: they want the perks, the ability to pick up their phones and demand a hundred cheeseburgers at 3:00 AM, whether they want a burger or not.
This would become relevant in a moment.
When I got up, Ana was hiding poop in Thanos’s lunch box. I busted out laughing and she grinned at me.
“It’s not real.” She thumped the brown log on the counter to prove its non-authenticity. “It’s rubber, and I think I’ll put it under the grapes.” She sealed the lunchbox’s lid and placed it next to his water bottle.
“You can take the girl out of the enemies-to-lovers trope, but you can’t take the enemies-to-lovers trope out of the girl.”
She clutched her chest in mock outrage. “We are not a trope! Okay, we absolutely were. But we’re better now. Mostly. Thirty-plus years of antagonization doesn’t just go away overnight. Last week my husband left fake cockroaches in the bathroom. He placed them so it looked like they were pouring up and out of the sink drain. Do you know how hard I screamed? Our neighbors barged right into the house because they thought I was being murdered and they wanted to be the first ones to dish the gossip. I spent half an hour trying to get them to stop touching my things and asking how much everything cost. Then I had to provide them with coffee and sweets because I was the host, and not treating them like guests would be a stain on my whole family’s reputation for eternity.” She tapped a fingernail on the lid. “So today Thanos gets lunch poop.”
“Where is Thanos while you’re pooping in his lunchbox?”
“Sweeping the front yard. Does it need sweeping? No. But that’s what we do now because we’re Greek and our DNA memory remembers all the yards our ancestors swept.”
The front door creaked and in came Thanos with a whiskbroom and a large box tucked under one arm. He winked at his wife and set the package down on the kitchen table. “That’s for you,” he told me, then he dropped the broom and threw Ana over his shoulder. “Have you been a bad girl?”
She cackled. “No.”
“The windows are all open, so let me ask you again. Have you been a bad girl?” He patted her on the butt and set her down.
With her hair all messed up, she put a hand to her chest and batted her eyelashes. “Who, me? Never.”
Thanos shook his head at me in mock exasperation. “This is what I get for giving her the gift of cockroaches.”
They were adorable. Really. Greece needed to hurry up and drop true love in my lap. In the meantime, I had this mystery box with my name scribbled across the label in a spiky, unsure hand. There was no return address or the sender’s name.
“It’s not the Goop woman’s head in the box, is it?” I asked.
Ana sniffed the box. “I don’t smell her vagina candles, so I think you’re safe.”
“I want to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Thanos said, presenting me with a knife. “But sadly I do. Middle school teachers hear everything sooner or later. The kids are always trying to shock me.”
Wondering who would send me a package in Greece and why, I slid the knife under the tape. As soon as they were no longer restrained, the flaps popped up, revealing the content.
Pens.
Correction: Sharpies.
The box was filled to the top with Sharpie pens in a rainbow of colors, including the black that I had almost lost for good yesterday. There was a note inside, penned in the same hesitant hand that I recognized now as someone writing in a language that wasn’t entirely comfortable for them.
Now you have more than one pen
—Effie
Dazed, Ana pulled out a kitchen chair and plopped down. “Effie Makri sent you a package.”
“She did, but honestly I never expected you to be dazzled by someone famous.”
“Me either, but here we are.”
“Aww, my wife is a super-fan,” Thanos said.
“Take your poop lunch and go to work,” she told him.