Let Me Explain You (24 page)

“Not really.”

“What are you talking about?” His elbows tipped him forward.

“It's nothing special.”

“Nothing special?”

Dina jostled her straw. She did not look at him. “Not for me.”

“With me, things will be better.”

She did not react at all. He wasn't sure she had heard him. He saw she had left him half the doughnut and said, “Go ahead, finish it. I've had hundreds.”

The next night, they strolled through the
kentro
, guided by large glowing bulbs that hung from poles. Power would be cut by midnight, but until then,
gerakos
strummed their instruments, sang without shame to single women the same age as their granddaughters. Stavros Stavros wanted to sing, too, but he was nervous in front of Dina. He was grateful to sip from the bottle of ouzo he had swiped from Onus.

“Want to go pick some fruit? I know an old blind farmer who can't tell if he's growing cantaloupe or rocks.” He led her away from the lights, the singing men. They walked through the darkness without speaking, only the slosh of alcohol and the hoot of night-callers. When they reached a rusty wire fence, Stavros Stavros offered his hand. Dina hesitated, and he dropped it.

“I'm not marrying you,” she said. “I'm just here to get away from my parents.”

Stavros Stavros was surprised. Until that moment, he had not quite decided if he was going through with the arrangement. But hearing this, it made him determined to change her mind. She would be marrying him. He offered his hand again. “
Nai
, OK.”

Dina let him partly lift, partly push her over the fence. He was lucky enough to cup her
kolo
when she went over. He pulled himself up, looking strong.

“I'm not staying in Crete. I'm going to Nepal,” she said. “I'm going to meet Angelos.”

He dusted his hands. He did not know what Nepal was. “Angelos?”

“My cousin.”

He nodded and offered his elbow, which she took. She also took a long drink. He took one, too. He liked the way the ouzo made the moonlight into something liquid. Something he could run through a strainer. He liked that he knew the way to the
peponi
patch. He liked that he had an American girl with him that he could change into wanting him.

“When my father bought the tickets, I knew I'd be coming only so I could leave.”

The ouzo was making her friendly, honest. She told Stavros Stavros how she was going to hike the hippie trail to Istanbul, through Syria and Jordan, Iran and Pakistan, not stopping until she arrived at Freak Street in Kathmandu. Angelos had told her about the cheap hotels, the stalls selling enlightenment, the prayer flags that stretched across the city like clotheslines. In Nepal, even garbage smells of sweet incense, Angelos said. He would be waiting for her.

“This is your cousin?” he asked.

She nodded. “He was my best friend in America.”

Stavros Stavros wasn't sure what questions to ask. He would never chase any of his cousins through Asia. But it did not really matter. Her parents would make him her chaperone, and he wasn't going to let her get anywhere near a Freak Street. These were girly dreams, the kind that would be replaced by her sixteenth birthday.

They reached the patch. He knocked a
peponi
against a rock until it cracked in half. “I also wanted to run away when I was young,” Stavros Stavros said, scooping out the slippery seeds with an old spoon he kept hidden in a nearby tree. “I wanted to live in the caves of Malta.”

“I don't want to be in a cave,” Dina said. “I've been in a cave my whole life. I want to be with people. I want to be enlightened.”

He picked up the fruit, took a bite. His face disappeared in the
peponi
. His chin came back dripping. He held the fruit out to her. She took as large a bite as he had. Then he loosened some of the flesh with the spoon so they could get at it with their fingers.

“Forget Nepal. You should go to California.” He smiled at the idea of it. California.

“California is boring. It's like America's version of Greece.”

“No, California is beautiful. We can go together if you want,” Stavros Stavros said, “after you get back from India.”

Stavros Stavros was eager to show Dina how American Greece was. He wanted her to see that he and his friends could big-party-party. Same as New York. Since the early seventies, kids had been growing their hair, listening to rock and roll through US military radio stations and local ones that were not supposed to exist. But he also wanted to show her how Greek Greece was, how proud. He took Dina to a
bouzouki
joint.

“You will love this place,” he kept saying.

Yannis Fafoutakis greeted his cousin and bought drinks, until a tourist caught his eye.

Stavros Stavros was feeling great. A second good time, arranged by him. He could tell she was loving this. They were getting lots of attention. He was a popular guy on the island with some people. Her lazy eye, it was kind of cute now. It was like a little practical joke between them.

“You have LSD?” Dina shouted against the music. “Hashish?”

“Sure,” Stavros Stavros lied. He kept dancing. He was a pretty good dancer.

He was naïve about drugs. There wasn't much in circulation unless you were from the mainland, a musician, or a member of the US military. When he rebelled, when any of his friends rebelled, it was with movies, alcohol, music. Drugs were too Europe, and Greece was many years away from being Europe.

“Can we get some?” she said.

Stavros Stavros passed Dina his glass. “We can do that later.”

“Why not now?”

He watched her hips. Proud hips, hips that nodded yes to your questions. Her ass, her waist, her tits, they all moved like they had done this a hundred, thousand times before. A nose to match his, in some ways bigger than his. More sure of itself, maybe, in America, a country of unsure noses. Her hair was gluey with sweat, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. But right now, all he saw were those Greek hips.

“You don't want to dance more?”

She shrugged. “I want to have fun.”

“OK,” Stavros Stavros said. “Let's go have fun.”

He brought her up to Yannis Fafoutakis's place. Yannis lived with his grandmother, but she was asleep and could sleep through tanks. There weren't many places to sit. A single chair. A bed. They sat on the bed.

“You ever hear Dionysion Stavropoulos?” Stavros Stavros asked.

“No.”

He lit up. “
Ela
, how does a Greek not know the hero of Greece? You've never heard ‘Dirty Bread'?”

“I listen to Led Zeppelin.”

“Me too. This is better.” He played the album for her.

He put his arm around her shoulders. He sang into her ear. He wanted a chance to see her nipples, just one. He liked nipples. He liked to touch them. He didn't know how to do much more. Really, he had only fucked one German tourist, and if he were honest about it, she had fucked him. Some of his friends, the ones with bad girls, put their penises between the girls' thighs, just above the knees, and rubbed themselves into goodnight-goodnight. Sex was not a possibility for Greek girls. Dina had to be a virgin the night they married.

Dina got up, opened Yannis's dresser. She pulled out a scarf and tied it around her neck. “What do you think?”

His buzz and his interest in her body made him grin like a big cat. “Better on you than that anteater.” He wished he had said something funnier until he saw she, too, was smiling. No one else on the island had made her smile—not her parents, not his brothers, not her cousin, not the
malakas
on the corner. Him.

“Hey, look.
Ela
.” She pulled out a thin strip of wax paper. She unfolded it. It was marijuana.

Stavros Stavros came over to inspect. He nodded as if he approved of the quality, but really he was shocked. “What are you going to do?” He almost added “with it” because he wasn't exactly sure how you did marijuana.

She laughed. “What do you think.”

Stavros Stavros watched Dina pick up a can from Yannis's floor. She bent the can in the middle, poked a couple holes, turned it so the marijuana could sit atop the holes. “Got a light?”

Stavros Stavros watched her suck smoke out of the drink hole. She passed him the can. He was clumsy holding it, she had to show him how. He took too big a hit trying to make up for his clumsiness. He coughed harder than he had ever coughed before. She laughed every time he tried to talk, because it made him choke. She poured them rum sodas. He drank his like water. He kept clearing his throat. She took another hit. He tried to get hold of himself, change the music, get serious. He leaned in to kiss her. He ended up coughing too close to her face. The coughing made him nauseous. He went to the bathroom, stared himself down in the mirror.

“You all right?” she called. She asked it from a faraway place, like America.

“
Nai
,” he said, but he wasn't. He promised himself he'd never touch the stuff again.

Three dates, all of his spending money, not even a kiss good night.

The engagement was announced on Dina's sixteenth birthday.

The church was scrubbed. The day was set, changed, set again. Money for the wedding and the
pappas
and the food and the wine and the band, but also money to build another bedroom for the distant cousins and aunts and uncles who would come to the ceremony. Money for the cousins' boat ride, their clothes, their haircuts. Stavros Stavros didn't complain. He spent freely. He wanted everyone to see what he was about to make of himself.

The
pappas
visited Stavros Stavros twice before the wedding. First at Takis's, during midday. Except for the pulse of cicadas that drowned out the napping men's snores, it was quiet. The
pappas
asked Stavros Stavros how he felt about entering into the heavenly, holy vow of marriage by saying, “You know Greek women grow new teeth after they marry, don't you? A sharper set, ones that will whittle your little pizzle to nothing.”

“That what Presbytera Maria did to yours?”

The
pappas
chuckled. “
Re
, it isn't so bad for me because I started with more than enough. Not so with you.”

There was no beating him. The
pappas
was well versed in scripture, art, the ancient civilizations, and shit-talking. The
pappas
gestured for more ouzo with his pinky. “What is it you like about this girl?”

Stavros Stavros dipped a crust of hardened bread into the ouzo, the way the
pappas
liked. “She comes from a decent family. She wants to have kids.”

“Mm-hmm, and you have a pleasant time together?”

“We have an all right time.”

“Just not too pleasant.”

Stavros Stavros grinned. “No, Father.”

“Too bad. There are ways to have pleasant times without nosy priests finding out.”