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the answering machine message began to play I also heard the rapid clicking of the kiosk’s meter calculating my toll. It was only then that I asked myself what time it would be in Australia. Would Colin even be home yet?
    â€”It’s me, I’m calling from Athens. Are you there? I allowed a short gap of silence and then I continued. I’m safe. Nothing’s changed, it’s all still beautiful and mad. I’m ringing to say I love you very, very much. I will call again tomorrow. I waited hopefully for another moment, then I put down the phone.
    It wasn’t true that nothing had changed. It had been over twelve years since I had been in Athens and even after only two days I was aware that this was not quite the same city I had visited when I was twenty-three. The bilingual blue street signs had not changed, nor had the sun and the dust. But the alleys and arcades behind Ommonia had been cleaned up. A giant inflatable corporate clown floated high above the entry to the old market square. Its monstrous grinning facemocked the Greeks smoking and drinking below. The five rings of the Olympic movement were everywhere, as were the red and orange circles of MasterCard. Arabic and Mandarin calligraphy competed with the ubiquitous Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Athens had changed.
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    I awoke the next morning with a hangover. I had to be at the gallery by ten. What time had I fallen asleep? It must have been well after four. After my phone call to Colin, I had walked around the square, drinking, smoking, listening in to conversations. A young man in tight black pants winked at me. An older woman smiled and stretched out her leg towards me, her partner oblivious to the flirtation as he spoke vehemently into his mobile phone. I drank another whisky and then I walked the streets for kilometres. I walked until I was sure I was lost and when I finally grabbed a taxi to take me back to the hotel, the driver picked me for an Australian, told me I was standing on the wrong side of the road for where he was driving, and took me on a route that seemed tortuous and slow. I didn’t care. When I reached the hotel, the man at reception was smoking another cigarette and spat as I walked past. I didn’t fucking care. I jumped into bed and fell immediately to sleep.
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    I was ten minutes late to the gallery and I had to wait another twenty minutes before anyone else showed up. The gallery itself was on a small side street off Panepistimiou and I sat on the stoop chain-smoking cigarettes and making my headache worse. A young woman walking towards me lifted her sunglasses and started shouting.
    â€”Why the hell are you sitting there?
    I extended my hand and introduced myself. Immediately her face softened, she kissed me warmly on both cheeks and asked if I wanted a coffee. She took my arm and led me down the street.
    â€”Don’t you have to open the gallery?
    â€”We have plenty of time, darling, she told me in her faintly American-tinged English, no one buys art before lunch.
    Anastasia had flaming red lipstick, dressed herself in a short tight black skirt that clung to her plump tanned thighs, and spoke as she smoked: incessantly. I drank my sweet Greek coffee, chomped into my rich oily pastries and listened to her talk. She told me that she was born in Kozani but her parents had moved to Athens when she was very young. Of course, she told me, Kozani is the most beautiful part of Greece but what kind of work can I do there? It’s provincial, of course, and that is sweet but tiring. She told me how she had travelled to Morocco, to Rome, to Paris, to Sofia and to the United States. She told me that only New York as a city could compare to Athens. I asked her if she had ever been to Australia.
    â€”No, darling, never. It’s too far. I detest aeroplanes and you have to fly a ridiculous amount of time to reach Australia, no?
    I said she could always stop over in Singapore or Bangkok.
    â€”Not interested.