by Sara Alexi
Reading about free-standing baths, Poppy awkwardly manipulates the chopsticks that came with her plate of Asian cuisine as she dips a roll of sushi into the small portion of green paste. ‘Wasabi paste,’ the man behind the counter called it. There isn’t much of it, and she would never serve such a mean portion in her taverna. Scooping half of it up in one go – to really try the food properly, as her mother would have said – she readies herself to anticipate the flavour. Fifteen years of running a fast-food outlet with Argon and serving souvlaki has made her a picky eater. The meat for the kebabs in her shop rotates all day long in front of a grill, slowly cooking from the inside out, and slivers of meat are shaved off with a long, sharp knife throughout the day, wrapped in pitta bread with chips, tomatoes and tzatziki, and served to appreciative customers. At first, the meat was whatever the butchers supplied, but over the years she became fussy, went to oversee what was put in it, insisted on finer cuts of meat. This attention to detail, Poppy feels sure, led to the success that allowed them to open a taverna, which she has been running for two years now. They are full every night. So busy that, in the last fifteen years of living together, in an Orthodox country, no less, Argon has repeatedly convinced her that they do not have the time to get married.
Poppy turns to an article with ideas for underfloor lighting and pops the sushi roll with the green paste into her mouth.
A wasabi firework explodes into the back of her nose, spreading like an electrified acid stream up her sinuses. Her eyes promptly try to dilute the sensation with a flood of saline, her hand catapults to her nose and she holds her breath, wondering if the feeling is going to subside or cause permanent damage.
She loves it!
The interior design magazine slides to the floor as Poppy picks up the sushi menu. Her nerves return to normal and her eyes temper their generous flow but the menu does not give her the information she needs. ‘Sushi’, ‘wasabi paste’ … Perhaps if she returns home quickly she can take fifteen minutes to look it up, find a reference in one of her many cookery books, before starting on the accounts.
Another sigh escapes her. The accounts will take hours and she needs to do them before Argon is up and about, demanding coffee and clean underwear. She wonders if he will bother to go in to the taverna today. As usual, she has no idea what time he came home last night.
Selecting a family-sized takeaway box and three tubes of wasabi paste, Poppy pays the bill. Her magazine lies where it fell under the table, the abandoned dog’s doe eyes uppermost.
The lock-fitter smiles as he holds the door open for her again and Poppy feels a surge of chaos inside as her excited response to him, her loyalty to Argon, and her new-found passion for sushi all battle for centre stage. The tag on his overalls declares he is Nektarios from Kleidi Services. He clears his throat and puts his cap back on. Poppy smiles and heads for her car. The early morning grey is giving way to bright sun and the tarmac steams slightly as the damp evaporates.
The car door doesn’t shut properly before Poppy sets off, but the forward motion of the car clicks it closed and she drives one-handed, pulling at her seat belt with her other hand, only to reverse the process moments later at the house.
Muttering to herself, she mentally organises her day as she marches up the path. Every day she takes a couple of hours to meet with planners, builders and officials at the new shop, a second taverna. Keeping this new venture a secret from Argon has not been difficult. He seems to have lost all interest in any aspect of the business, no matter what she does to try to engage him. His only real delight is the money in his pocket at the night’s end and whom he can impress with it.
She enjoyed taking this burden of work from him in the early days, when the two of them ran the giro shop. Now, managing the accounts by herself is just how it is, like changing the sheets, or going to the produce market before dawn.
The second taverna is going to be the climax of all her long-term passions – her passion for business, her passion for interior design, her passion for food. She hopes it will thrill Argon. This second restaurant is going to be a surprise present for his fortieth birthday.
She can picture him already, appearing late in the evening, just before closing time, fluttering from table to table. Building social networks, he calls it, gold cufflinks on a shiny white shirt, open-necked, showing his jade pendant on his hairy, tanned chest. Just as he does now in the first taverna. It is a bittersweet image if she thinks about it for too long. It is wonderful to see him feeling so successful, but on the other hand his habit of coming in late results in him always inviting the remaining diners to go on to a bouzouki club with him. In this department, Argon is a generous man, free with both money and time. Poppy is always asleep by the time he comes in; her days start as his finish. They never seem to celebrate their success together.
She closes the front door and drops her keys onto a patch of pollen under the flowers on the hall table. She takes the time to pop Kyria Katharo’s money under the vase ready for her weekly visit, lest she forget later.
Poppy pauses to look into the mirror behind the flowers. She smooths her hair and licks her lips, sliding them together, finally pouting, trying to ignore the wrinkles, before dismissing her reflection with a dissatisfied sniff. These are not the years for vanity; this is a time for work. There will be a season for preening somewhere in the future.
Before turning to the kitchen, she looks up to the ceiling and lifts her chin, testing the air, ascertaining by the stillness that Argon is not yet up.
With the family box of sushi in the fridge, she flicks the kettle on and lugs her tired weight across the sitting room. Her aging skirt stretches to its limits as she walks, causing it to ride up. The sun streams in the window, highlighting motes of dust that spin and swirl in the gently moving air.
There is evidence of Argon’s late-night return: the TV guide on one of the sofas, a coffee cup balanced on the over-padded, oversized chaise longue, a styrofoam box from a half-eaten takeaway from the restaurant on the red lacquer coffee table, and a fork on the floor. The rest of the room spreads large, designed, and unlived in. The room is an expression of their wealth, their separation, her loneliness. Poppy exhales and fights a wave of unexplored, denied feelings. She holds tight to the feeling of blankness that has become her norm.
She picks up the fork from the floor and tosses it on the coffee table as she crosses the room to a door disguised as a bookcase: the door to the study. It is her place of work after the produce market and before the taverna.
The study is small and cosy, with a desk and high-backed swivel chair, and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Poppy studies the titles and selects Gourmet Food from Around the World, and finds the entry for sushi. Her mind instantly feels light, absorbed in a new interest, free again.
She is about to turn the page when she accidentally kicks a pile of car magazines that Argon has been clearing out. The top one slides to the floor and some papers fall out – small squares of paper, notes. No doubt Argon has been making note of makes, engine sizes and all the other incomprehensible details to do with cars that give him such a thrill. Curiosity prompts her to pick one up. It is a square of lined paper, torn from an exercise book, and on it is written Argon? Can we talk? in swirling, rounded, girlish letters.
Poppy’s stomach turns backward, her temples abruptly seem to be compressing her skull, her eyes glaze with tears and her lungs are held in suspended animation. She waits for the sensations to dissipate, as she did after the wasabi paste shock. But the perturbation deepens, nausea settles into a heavy weight in her chest, and all her self-doubt, gathered over the last few years, passes through prisms of fear and resolves into what she has known all along. She deflates into the chair.
The rush in her ears is the sound of all her unborn dreams imploding and the shards slicing through her future, her safety, her ego, her stability, her love. All that she thought she has, and is working towards, spins into her peripheral vision and vanishes, leaving a chasm of pain spiral
ling back towards her.
Steeling herself, she fills her lungs to get oxygen to her brain, grips the edge of the desk and focuses her vision. ‘It only says “Argon? Can we talk?”’ Poppy reminds herself as she picks up a handful of the other notes and drops them on the desk. A new wave of pain penetrates under her ribs as the scraps of paper, note after note, flutter and settle. She reads one after another. Nothing specifically intimate is mentioned, but there is a sense of familiarity in the way they are written. Coffee? … The film was good … 1.30? She skim-reads the lot and grows frostily calm.
Pausing to assess her feelings, words such as ‘hollow’ and ‘lonely’ come to her, but, above everything, she feels stupid. The truth is, she has known for some time, but she ignored the signs and now she feels foolish. How many of her friends and family know and haven’t had the heart to tell her – or, worse, feel sorry for her?
Poppy flings open the windows and the shutters, and the sun blazes in. It is a sharp contrast to how she feels, but she wants the light, the clarity.
She has always approached their relationship in the knowledge that his needs are different from hers; somehow, her part of the deal was to make his life as easy as possible and, if she did this, she conned herself, he would naturally be doing the same for her. Fantasy!
The reality is that, even from the beginning, right back when he couldn’t get the lease to start the takeaway in joint names, he began to retreat from her. Looking back, she can see it.
How else can she explain to herself their not getting married?
Oh, he had his reasons, and each one felt legitimate at the time. They were either too busy, or they needed to focus on the business because they did not have enough customers, or they didn’t have the money for the kind of wedding he thought she deserved. But, even as they prospered, he still always wanted a grander wedding than they could afford. At the time she had thought these details so romantic, so passionate. She, however, would have just married him on the spot with no fuss necessary.
Gathering up the notes, she puts them back between the pages of Sports Car Today and replaces the magazine on the pile and exhales.
Back in the kitchen, she opens the fridge door and pulls out the family-size pack of sushi and, grabbing a tube of wasabi paste, she leans against the fridge, her feelings sweeping over her undiluted, eventually drawing quiet sobs from her, until, consumed, she slides to the floor, where all she can do is refocus on the sushi box in her hand. She sniffs her last sob away and opens the box.
Eyes streaming from the punishment and the pleasure of the wasabi paste, she eats until she cannot face another grain of rice, and allows everything to settle. With food numbing her feelings it is easier to accept what she already knows – that she lost Argon years ago – and so begin the assessment of what will actually change in her life now she is alone.
From a business perspective, there is nothing to lose: he is never there anyway. From an emotional point of view, she realises, with a certain sense of pity for herself, nothing will really change either. All she thought she had was just in her head.
‘No, absolutely not! I am not going to fall into feeling sorry for myself.’ Poppy blocks out a black hole that threatens to engulf her. ‘Self-pity will get you nothing,’ she tells herself. ‘And …’ – she draws the words out as a new thought comes to her – ‘I want everything!’
Poppy lets this thought roll around in her mind and then seep around the weight of emotional pain in her chest until it ignites her passion. She becomes lighter, and yelps as the drive takes hold.
‘Oh, yes, the lot. I’m going to have the lot! And Argon – ha! He can have exactly what he has put into our lives – nothing!’ She rolls off the chair and her taut skirt tears up the back seam. She hates the skirt anyway. Tearing it off like an ungracious stripper, she whoops and skips her way to the bedroom, bottom wobbling in her overwashed, sagging, grey knickers.
She is brought to a sudden halt at the bedroom door. Oh my God, she has forgotten – he is still there, asleep. In her mind he was already history. He is prone, black satin sheet pulled over his head. Her elation melts into the white wall-to-wall carpeting. The shape of him is so familiar.
Poppy gasps, emotions flooding her in response to his outline, before pulling herself back. ‘No,’ she admonishes herself. Turning her eyes away from his form and opening the wardrobe, she chooses the dress Argon hates most, coincidentally her favourite, which she doesn’t often wear, along with high-heeled boots that accent her ankles, the only slender part of her these days. She is going to shake herself up, quietly, gently.
The taverna opens for lunch with no sign of Argon. Poppy has known Alethea for over twenty years, since Alethea’s girls – one now in the kitchen, the other two doing a wonderful job of waitressing – were all babies. The four of them make a great team and in truth have not needed Argon’s supposed management skills for years.
Poppy dumps the box of courgettes on the counter, next to Alethea, who is polishing cutlery. Alethea smiles and looks up, but on seeing Poppy her smile flattens and her brow creases in concern, and it is only a matter of minutes before the whole story is related and Alethea is holding Poppy, soothing her.
The stream of tears is eventually broken as Poppy finds her strength again.
Poppy stammers through her tears, ‘Alethea, how do you fancy being manager here, but now getting paid for it?’ She does not wait for Alethea’s response. ‘We don’t need him, right?’ she asks, and with this the tears become hugs and even a little laughter before Alethea returns to the cutlery and Poppy, feeling more in control than she has done for years, goes back out into the sunshine.
Until this point her feelings have been unstable, but now, having taken some action, having claimed the taverna as hers, the question that begs to be answered is, ‘What next?’
She turns at the corner of the street, where the bougainvillea climbs the wall and sheds a pink sea on the pavement. With her high heeled boots looking at odds with the translucent crimson leaves, Poppy has a revelation.
The weight in her chest lifts and her sinuses clear as the shackles of time-worn thinking break open.
The ‘us’ of her and Argon that she has always worked for was all a mirage. The takeaway and flat above were leased in her name, and she is the person who employs the man who manages it for them. Manages it for her, she corrects herself. The restaurant’s lease is in her name, and the new shop, which Argon doesn’t even know about yet, was bought in her name. To add to this, their home – her home, which she and Argon have lived in – she inherited from her mama.
She isn’t even married.
‘Oh my God,’ Poppy exclaims to herself. ‘My life is my own!’ She allows herself to revel in the thought, for it to fill her senses, empower her stature, growing into a passion, not for Argon, not for the business, but for herself. She feels proud, she feels accomplished, she feels strong.
She lifts her chin, and is about to accompany this sense of potency with an appropriately liberating yelp, when she thinks of her home, and the feeling wavers. She pictures her home empty, with no Argon. She will rattle around in it, with no one to love. She is a woman of passion, and she needs to love someone, to dote on them, to work for them, to plan the future for them. Her energy comes from this passion.
‘The passion of love. I need that,’ Poppy whispers.
She will confront him. Argon will need to offer either a convincing explanation for the notes, or a strong renewal of his dedication to her. That or a clean break, no strings. It is up to him.
Sweeping into the house, she is vibrating with determination to make something happen.
He isn’t there.
But his absence is not enough to curtail Poppy’s determination to take charge of her life. Half an hour later, after a quick search in the telephone directory and a couple of phone calls, the doorbell rings.
‘Good afternoon, Madam, how can I assist?’ He has a hint of a village accent, a dazzling smile and the bluest
of eyes. Poppy experiences the excitement of attraction all over again.
‘Good afternoon.’ She smiles shyly. ‘Could you please change the locks, front and back?’
‘Immediately,’ the man promises, doffing his cap, his curly locks falling free. Nektarios grabs a screwdriver from his bag of tools, and before Poppy has returned with a cup of coffee he has the old lock out and a new one in place. A thrill passes through her.
At two o’clock the next morning, Poppy is woken by the sound of a key being tried in the lock. She stays calm, listening to the scratching at the door as the key fails to fit. Then comes a low muttering, an incantation of swear words floating through the keyhole, losing their power as they echo down the hall.
Poppy remains unmoved, curled up on the chaise longue.
‘Poppy! Poppy, the bloody key won’t work.’
She doesn’t stir. She smiles.
‘Poppy! Poppeeeeee …’
But she is lost to him. She is a woman of passion. Feed her passion and she will grow and blossom. Stunt her passion and that passion has no choice but to find new pastures in which to ripen and grow. Poppy is lost to Argon’s infertile world and now there is richer soil, another love, another passion.
They are curled up on the chaise longue together in mutual adoration. Poppy looks into his eyes and sees her love returned. She feels such a surge in her heart that she pulls herself closer. He nuzzles into her neck, breathing in her scent, drifting in and out of sleep. They fell instantly in love, in the time it took to have a cup of coffee. No history has been exchanged, no questions, no explanations, no small talk. Just deep, reciprocated, passionate love.