Page 31 of The Summer Show
“Welcome! I am Dora Makri but you can call me Kyria Dora or even Thea Dora if you wish. Do you like dolmades?”
Dazed, I approached the suite’s kitchen counter. “I’ve never had them. What are they?”
“Leaves of the grape, filled with rice and spices, and sometimes meat. These ones do not have any meat because half of the crew do not eat meat, if you can believe such a thing. They say they are vegan, but I know they lick the souvlaki when nobody is looking.”
“Makri? Are you related to Effie?”
“Of course! I made her myself and carried her for nine months. For years she has been famous working on Greece’s Top Hoplite, and this year she asked me to come and work here, too. But only for one season because the normal casting director is in the hospital recovering from a facelift. The poor woman used to wear a tight ponytail every day, she would even sleep with it, then one days she took it out and realized she was getting old. So she got a cheap facelift in South America. They put her nose back on in the wrong place, and now she is getting it fixed in Norway. Can you believe it?”
I wanted to say no, that I could’t possibly wrap my head around the idea of a facelift gone so drastically wrong that the surgeon would accidentally relocate a nose, but these were people who moved in wildly different circles to me and my books.
“So you are the casting director?”
“For now. This is not the best job I have ever had, but not the worst. I used to work for the police, answering phones, and that was the best job because people all over the village used to tell me interesting goss—uh, things that I wanted to know. Nobody here knows me well enough to share gos—stories—with me yet, but I see things and I hear things. Once the show starts, then I will have all kinds of stories to tell my friend Elektra, yes? I am making sure we cast plenty of interesting people so the stories will be good this season. We have a very handsome man that I discovered at the paralia the other night. He was watching a pretty woman that I think now was you.”
“Do you mean Nick Merrick?”
“Nikos! Yes, that is the one. Maybe something interesting will happen, eh? If not with you, then one of the other women.”
Her sentences had a two-edged cleverness to them.
“I doubt he was looking at me. His sister is one of my best friends, and we were walking together.”
She patted me on the cheek. “You are very naive, and I like that, so you will be perfect for the show.”
“I don’t know that I want to be on the show. I’d never even heard of it until two days ago.”
She rolled a dolmada and placed it in the big pot. “Do you like money? The show pays money.” The sideways glance she gave me was sly, but more like a fox and less like someone out to trick me.
“I do like money,” I admitted.
“It pays about three thousand American dollars. Speaking of Americans, my niece is American although she lives in Greece now. Maybe you know her. Her name is Vivi.”
“I don’t think I know her.” The numbers sank in. “Wait—is that three thousand for the whole season?”
Three thousand dollars when I was expecting to lose money and make nothing this summer was an absolute windfall.
Her corkscrew curls bobbed as she enthusiastically slapped rice and herbs into another grape leaf. “For each episode that you stay in the show, my doll.”
“And there are …”
“Ten episodes.”
I might have whimpered. Hers was the self-satisfied expression of a woman who knew mice would happily scurry into a trap for a taste of peanut butter on crackers.
Thirty-thousand dollars.
If I made it to the last episode.
That was dangerously close to a full year’s salary in one summer. After taxes, I could squirrel a portion away as a small nest egg, in case of emergencies. Some I could use to fund books for children who couldn’t afford a book at the book fair. The money would enable me to make a small difference in my students’ lives.
On the inside, I was salivating. On the outside I was sweating, despite the air conditioning. I think hot and sweaty was just who I was now, at least while I was in Greece. What I’m trying to say was that I was doing my best to look emotionally cool, even as my outsides boiled and my insides threw a small private party for one.
“I don’t know how to fight.”
“Do you know how many contestants on this show know how to fight when they start, eh?”
“No.”