Claudia's Big Break

by Lisa Heidke

  No wonder Alex worked incredibly long hours. I would too if I lived with Levi permanently. Maybe I could gag him. What a good idea. A tea towel was what I needed. I grabbed a towel and was so lost in my own thoughts I didn’t notice Levi had stopped screaming.

  Walking out onto the terrace, tea towel in hand, I saw Tara comforting him.

  ‘Don’t you remember, Leev? You said your stegosaurus could go home with Harry last night.’ More sobbing but this time much gentler and certainly not the ear-piercing, rip-your-heart-out screaming that had been going on five minutes before. ‘You gave Stegosaurus to Harry and said he could give it back to you the next time he saw you.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Levi, his tears dissolving. ‘I dib, dibn’t I?’ He hugged Tara, then galloped over to where I’d lined up his other dinosaurs.

  Jeez. No ‘Thank you Claudia’, nothing. I was the one who’d found all the bloody reptiles and it turned out the bloody stegosaurus wasn’t lost to begin with. I was outraged.

  Levi and I didn’t speak after that. Truth be told, I should have been happy. After all, I’d found my new lipstick and Levi had remembered where his stegosaurus was, but I’d had enough of him. The child was spoilt, wilful, obstinate, petulant, irritating, exasperating, recalcitrant and really annoying. Seriously, I wanted to pinch him. So before I gave in to my own inner spoilt child, I picked up my bag, popped on my sunnies and stalked out the front door. Motherhood was definitely not for me!

  Arriving at the café just before eleven, I sat down at an outside table, ordered a coffee and pulled out the local Santorini newspaper. Peace and quiet at last, I thought as I stared at the spectacular views of the cliff and islands. Then I turned in the other direction, out towards the streets, searching for a man who could be Con. The streets were crowded with mopeds and taxis zooming up and down, their horns beeping and engines in desperate need of a tune-up, but at least it wasn’t irritating child noise.

  There were plenty of scooters around. They all looked the same. Any one of them could have been the one that’d tried to run me down the other day. I was making an effort to lose my paranoid edge, so I focused on choosing to believe it had all been a mistake. The rider hadn’t seen me. That’s why he’d accelerated into me, rather than hitting the brakes and swerving. Who said it was a male anyway? It could have been a woman, or a newly qualified driver for that matter. Perhaps it was a seventeen-year-old who’d only held their licence a couple of days.

  While I drank my coffee and waited for Con, I stared out to sea and listened to the tinkling bells of the donkeys as they climbed up and down the stairs to the port. Annoyingly, I was thinking about Jack. Maybe, if asked, I’d go out with him. It might be fun. At least he might take my mind off Marcus for an hour or two.

  It was after half past eleven. Exactly how long was I supposed to wait for this Con character? I’d already downed my coffee and eaten a huge slice of spanokopita, and although the view was stunning, I was growing increasing agitated. Not even the lively games of backgammon being played at nearby tables — complete with loud language and insulting hand gestures — were holding my interest.

  I checked my watch for the umpteenth time. As I was preparing to leave (I do have a mobile — Con could have rung), I remembered an earlier conversation I’d had with Marcella.

  ‘Why wear a watch?’ she’d asked with genuine concern.

  ‘So I know the time,’ I’d replied reasonably.

  ‘Time!’ Marcella threw her hands in the air. ‘Why? Time is, how you say, like a rubber band.’ Then she stretched her hands out in front widely before bringing them together and pulling them apart, several times. ‘Clocks are not the boss.’

  Maybe she had a point about time being elastic here. The locals I’d met didn’t seem to be in a hurry for anything except coffee, backgammon and a robust shouting match with friends and family.

  ‘Proi, Clow-di-ah?’ A man was standing next to me.

  I jumped, then stood up. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Con!’ was all he said. His lips twitched and he didn’t look me in the eye. In fact, his eyes were darting in all directions.

  I shivered a little before extending my right hand in greeting. He didn’t take it. Instead he pulled out the chair opposite me and sat, motioning for me to do the same. He was big, far too big for the dinky plastic chair he was sitting in. He called to the waiter to bring him coffee.

  I guess he looked as much like a Con as the next bloke did — meaning he was not overly tall, not overly fit and not overly attractive. He had a dumpy square face, beaky nose, rough voice and dark skin, eyes and hair — not only on his head. Coarse black hair sprouted in tuffs on his arms, neck and on what I could see of his chest and back. His teeth were crooked and yellowing, and a rolled-up cigarette hung limply from the right side of his mouth.

  I didn’t recognise him as one of the men I’d seen in Athens. That was a relief, but then again, I’d only seen those people for a few seconds, and it had been very dark inside the building. Plus, I’d been shit-scared.

  As polite as I tried to be, I wanted to give Con the flash drive and get him to sign the damn papers so I could leave. His eyes continued flitting feverishly, unnerving me. Hence when he gulped his coffee in one go, I was pleasantly surprised.

  Then his mobile rang. Con mumbled two indistinguishable words into the mouthpiece and then, completely ignoring me, rushed off to a waiting car.

  ‘Hey? What about this?’ I called after him, shaking the envelope.

  ‘Aviro,’ Con barked as he slammed the car door and the driver sped away.

  Bloody tomorrow!

  As if that wasn’t enough, I also got stuck with his bill. Hello? I was trying to stick to a budget!

  ‘Marcus,’ I said into my phone moments later, ‘I’ve had it. I’m not waiting around for this guy any more. He was half an hour late and when he did turn up, no apology mind you, he ran away before I could show him the papers.’

  ‘I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding. Thanks for ringing me at a civilised hour by the way. I’m still in the office.’

  ‘Misunderstanding or not, I don’t trust him. There’s something shady about him —’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I just do, okay. He has funny eyes. He couldn’t look at me straight.’ As much as I tried to ignore my inner voice, I couldn’t. Con unsettled me. I didn’t want anything to do with him. ‘And he doesn’t look like a businessman or entrepreneur. He looks shifty.’

  ‘Shifty?’

  ‘Shifty. This oil and wine he’s bringing to the company had better be special,’ I said, thinking I could hear Marcus talking to someone. ‘Who’s there with you?’

  ‘No one,’ I heard him say as a door closed in the background. ‘Don’t tell me paranoia has followed you to Santorini?’

  ‘I’m not being paranoid. Con’s creepy.’ Maybe that was an exaggeration but I was annoyed that he’d run away without finishing our meeting. I felt like I’d wasted my whole morning.

  ‘Aren’t you having a good time?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t relax. There’s the envelope business here and then when I get back to Brisbane, my relationship with you —’

  ‘Whoa! Back up, Claudia. We don’t have a relationship, I thought we decided —’

  ‘I know what we decided!’

  ‘Look,’ Marcus said, softening, ‘if you do this job for me properly and get creepy Con — he who has the most superior oils, vinegars and wines in all of Europe — to sign the papers, I’ll wipe your debt.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can afford it. Twenty-five grand, isn’t it?’

  I thought about the ring and duty-free cosmetics I’d splashed out on. ‘Twenty-six.’

  Marcus sighed. ‘Okay, twenty-six.’

  ‘A holiday in Greece and twenty-six thousand dollars? You must be feeling very guilty.’

  ‘You’re right, it’s too much. I’ll give you twenty.’

  ‘Really? I couldn’t, Marcus. I —’
/>   ‘Gorgeous, you’ve had a hard time over the last couple of years and maybe I have taken advantage of the situation.’

  ‘Oh.’ I knew if I said anything more, I’d start to cry.

  ‘So we have a deal?’

  I nodded and wiped a couple of rogue tears from my cheeks. ‘Okay, but Marcus —’

  ‘Claudia, before you say anything more, it might be best if you start looking for other work.’

  ‘You’re sacking me?’

  ‘Not at all. I’m just suggesting you might be more comfortable working somewhere else.’

  Great. This was all I needed. Not only was I a spendthrift who went around shagging married men, I was about to become an unemployed, shagging spendthrift. Excellent.

  As I was wiping more tears away, I looked up, taken aback at seeing Jack standing a couple of metres away staring at me. He mouthed to ask if it was okay to sit. I nodded, but was finding it hard to speak. I was actually quite pleased to see him, if a little embarrassed.

  ‘Claud, are you there?’ Marcus was shouting into the phone. ‘I’ll transfer the money into your account, promise. I really do care about you, gorgeous.’

  ‘I guess I can meet Con one more time. But,’ I lowered my voice, ‘I don’t have a good feeling about him —’

  ‘Let me worry about Con. You just wait for the call.’

  I nodded, despite the fact that Marcus couldn’t see me. ‘Okay.’

  ‘And Claudia? Have fun over there. Consider the twenty grand a bonus.’

  ‘It’s a bonus all right.’ I pushed the ‘end’ button on my phone and momentarily thought about bursting into full-on raging tears. While I was ecstatic that Marcus was wiping most of my debt, the flipside was that he wanted me gone. I wanted to quit on my own terms, in my own time. I didn’t want to be shoved out the door like a house guest who’d overstayed her welcome.

  ‘You okay?’ Jack asked, pulling me back to the present. ‘Looks like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I smiled, turning my attention to him. He was looking casual and relaxed, in a worn khaki T-shirt and faded navy shorts. Suddenly I felt nervous. ‘This is a nice surprise,’ I said, smiling broadly.

  ‘Sophie told me I’d find you here — you want to answer that?’ We both looked at my phone, which was vibrating on the table and trumpeting ‘The Toreador Song’ from Carmen.

  Bloody hell, every time I heard my phone ring, especially in public, I wanted to toss it. ‘The phone only plays that tune because I was fiddling with the options button when I first got it. I don’t know how it got stuck on that,’ I explained to Jack and quickly switched it off.

  ‘Lunch?’ Jack suggested. ‘I know a great little place just up the road.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said, even though I wasn’t the slightest bit hungry, having gorged on spinach pie earlier.

  A few minutes’ walk later we came to a tourist shop and I popped inside to buy Levi a cute blue T-shirt with a Santorini dinosaur on the front. ‘I had an argument with him this morning,’ I said to Jack by way of an explanation.

  Jack flashed his killer smile. ‘He’s three, right?’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll just buy these sarongs while I’m here,’ I said, quickly gathering up several sarongs in different colours.

  We left the cobbled pathways of Fira and headed on foot up the dirt road towards Firostefani. ‘This walk’s killing me. Where are the donkeys when you need them?’ I shouted to Jack, who was practically jogging up the steep rocky hill.

  ‘It’s not much further,’ he said, barely glancing behind.

  Jack was obviously a fitness freak. I did my best to keep up, wheezing and puffing as I walked. Not the most attractive start to lunch with a handsome man. After another excruciating fifteen minutes, we arrived at Akteon, the oldest taverna on the island, so Jack told me.

  Sitting at a table in the sunshine, overlooking the Mediterranean, I presented a picture of calm and confidence to Jack, despite the perspiration dripping from my face. Marcus had just said he’d pay off my most of my debt, yippee. But he’d also told me I should look for another job, sigh. He was right, but I couldn’t do much about it until I got back to Brisbane. In the meantime, I was in Santorini and really needed to lighten up.

  It wasn’t as though this was a date. I’d sworn off that sort of thing. I was just having lunch with a fellow traveller. I needed to go on a date like I needed another pair of shoes. Besides, first dates were tricky, even if they occurred in idyllic settings like this. Some were immediate disasters and left me dying to escape. Still, I was pleased to say, I’d never run out on a man before the entrée. That’d be plain rude. But as I watched Jack, I also knew I didn’t want this to be another rung on my long ladder of luncheon disasters.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax, remembering back to the one yoga lesson I’d taken a hundred years ago. Vaguely, it had something to do with breathing in, breathing out, and the ohm sound. I couldn’t quite recall how it worked. At any rate, the memory wasn’t helping me calm down. What a waste of eighteen bucks that class turned out to be.

  After we’d ordered — grilled swordfish and salad for me; smoked mackerel for him — we set about finding out more about each other.

  ‘Here on holidays?’ Jack asked. ‘Sorry, stupid question, of course you are.’

  I nodded. ‘And you?’

  Jack nodded, frowned and stopped while the waitress set down our complimentary antipasto platter and a decanter of red wine. ‘How long you here for?’ he continued as he poured two glasses.

  I flicked my hair. ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘Me too.’

  It was a dying conversation, no doubt about it. I wasn’t being witty and certainly couldn’t think of anything interesting to say. I was asking inane questions and feeling foolish and boring. I couldn’t talk about my work and didn’t want to get into a longwinded conversation about how I came to be living with Tara. So what did I have to fall back on? The beauty of Santorini? We’d already covered that.

  I put it down to being stone cold sober. To be honest, I’d met most of my first dates (not that this was a date) in dark places with loud music, after the consumption of several bottles of wine. Hence, the confidence factor was way up. Sadly, the mystery of the first date quickly evaporated around the second or third date under the heavy weight of that niggling little inconvenience called reality. By the fourth date, I’d notice subtle flaws emerging, like the guy was a mummy’s boy, an arms dealer, a dentist, or simply dull and boring.

  ‘Olive?’ I held the antipasto plate out to Jack.

  I lapsed into thought, watching as his youthful, unlined hand reached out to choose an olive. Then I looked at his other hand. Not a freckle on either of them (mine were freckly and dry). I glanced up at his earlobes — they were generous, not small and mean.

  ‘Claudia,’ he said, drawing me back to the conversation. ‘What are you thinking?’

  I flinched. His expression while waiting for me to answer was boyish and enthusiastic. I’d even go so far as to say he looked interested. So I could hardly say, ‘I was admiring your generous lobes.’ He’d think I was odd. What next? Checking out his nose hair? Not that he appeared to have any visible strays.

  Without thinking I said, ‘About how beautiful it is here and how lucky I am to be enjoying this day.’ No doubt about it, I was a moron.

  ‘With a gorgeous girl,’ Jack added, raising his glass and clinking it with mine.

  I was miles away. ‘Gorgeous girl’ was what Marcus called — used to call — me.

  Jack was a nice enough bloke, but really, what was I doing here? I didn’t want any complications — and I had an unnerving premonition that this was going to turn into a complication. Besides, there’d have to be something wrong with him. A good-looking bloke like Jack didn’t ask a girl like me out to lunch. I tapped my fingers absent-mindedly on the table.

  ‘So how do you, Sophie and Tara all know each other?’

&n
bsp; Ah! So it wasn’t only me who was struggling for conversation.

  ‘School. The three of us have been best friends for years. We’ve known each other so long it’s almost like we’re one person at times. We know what each other is thinking, can finish each other’s sentences.’

  ‘Scary.’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, but I’m not sure Tara and Sophie would be friends if not for me. I’m the glue.’

  A moment or two of silence.

  ‘The glue?’

  ‘Holding it together,’ I said, clasping my hands. ‘We don’t see as much of each other these days, what with Tara’s hectic work schedule and Sophie being busy with Levi.’

  ‘And your work?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, thinking that discussing Cassoli Imports was the last thing I wanted to do. ‘We’re all busy. That’s why it’s been good to catch up on this holiday. It certainly beats a weekend camping at Straddie.’

  Jack smiled expectantly.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said nervously. ‘We’re all different, but somehow our threesome works. Tara’s a writer. She carries around a notebook and jots down snippets of conversations she eavesdrops on.’

  ‘Has she written anything?’

  I nodded. ‘Besides her magazine articles, she’s had a few short stories published. Now she’s working on a novel. I think she’s finding it tough going, but once she gets into it, she’ll be fine. She has an amazing imagination.’

  ‘Impressive. And Sophie?’

  ‘Used to be a litigation lawyer.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘She looks after Levi. It’s a full-time occupation.’

  I sat back in my chair, momentarily fearful that I’d revealed too much.

  ‘And you?’ Jack asked, leaning across the table toward me. ‘What’s the Claudia Taylor story? I know you can’t remember your passport number. What else should I know about you?’

  Loaded question. Jack didn’t need to know I was a closet karaoke tragic, that I hated using public rest rooms and that I had a shocking history with men.

  ‘Not a lot to tell,’ I said, slightly embarrassed. ‘I’ve got good friends, a great family and I’m fairly happy most of the time.’