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.