Once, in a Story
Meanjin, March 2019.

I met you the first week I was in Athens. You were working as a waiter in the bar I liked so much, the one with the orange chairs. You walked over to my table and sat down, rolling a cigarette.

‘What’s your name?’ you asked me in English.

‘My name is Ainslie,’ I replied in Greek.

‘You speak Greek!’

‘Not very well,’ I said, this time in English.

‘I am Dimitris.’

You took a long drag of your cigarette and stared at me, then jumped up and returned to the bar.

I returned to my book.

‘I always wanted a girlfriend who had a name starting with A,’ you said a little later.

‘Oh, really? Why is that?’

‘So I could call her Aggie,’ you said. ‘From now on I am going to call you Aggie.’

‘From now on?’

‘Yes, didn’t you hear? We are about to fall in love.’

read the full short story here.