Scorpionfish by Natalie Bakopoulos

Author:Natalie Bakopoulos [Bakopoulos, Natalie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781947793750
Google: 8jvOyQEACAAJ
Amazon: B07Y1V51GZ
Publisher: Tin House Books
Published: 2020-07-06T23:00:00+00:00

10

The Captain

Though I was staying in my father’s house, I still hadn’t seen him. When I’d arrived, I’d found the bed was made; the place looked clean. His dishes—an espresso cup, a saucer, a spoon, some plates and forks and knives—remained in the dish rack. It would not be unlike my father to suddenly meet a woman and disappear. As he got older, though, and as he felt his own relevance slipping away, his disappearances worried me.

I checked the closets for his two small suitcases, hard, light-blue Samsonites that he’d had since the 1970s. Both were there, but his small blue duffel was not. Strangely, I felt some relief seeing them, hoping he was indeed in the hills with Nefeli as the novelist had thought. He did not attend the christening.

Aris did, though, and he invited me for a drink the next day. We agreed to meet at the port, at the café associated with the distillery near our fathers’ village.

There was not much wind now, and the day was warm. I ordered a beer and drank it quickly, eating the pistachios the waitress placed before me. When she brought my second round, she was distracted by someone who had entered. I turned to see what had brightened her so, and there stood Aris. He greeted her politely and then spotted me, moving across the café to join me at the table.

He’d barely had a chance to sit when the waitress reappeared, beaming at Aris, who flirted back at her. He ordered an ouzo, glanced at my beer, and changed his mind. “And would you bring us some more nuts, please.” The waitress seemed happy to fill his request, and had he kindly asked her to unbutton her shirt she would have. He was the type of man who eyed women with that particular aggressive blend of admiration and possession.

I don’t know why I was so angry.

We sat on adjacent sides of the table, so I had a view of the harbor and he had a view of the promenade. Eventually the evening volta would begin. Right now the only people out were the tourists whose skin was least suited to the sun.

We exchanged pleasantries about the christening, about when we’d last been to the island.

“We met when I was a child, you know,” Aris said. “You were visiting for the summer, from university. I remember your Michigan T-shirt: a bright orange with blue letters. When we got home that night I asked my father for a shirt like that.”

This admission startled me. As a young man, I’d admired his father; had even imagined being a writer myself. Now here was Aris with political ambitions. We’d been born to the wrong fathers. Or perhaps there was no difference.

The waitress arrived, gently placing each item on the table, first Aris’s beer, then the frosted glass, then the small dishes of peanuts and olives. He smiled, offered her his studied attention in exchange, as if they had rehearsed their roles in this transaction.

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