Intimate Distance Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t want to stay in Athens, I know you didn’t like living here, but we can move now, maybe somewhere nice, Psychiko even –’
    â€˜I don’t want to stay in Athens.’
    â€˜Ssh.’
    He looks around, afraid of waking his parents from their nap.
    â€˜Look, it’s just another short-term contract. Only six months this time. We’ll even be able to afford to rent a villa. Some trips to the islands.’
    â€˜You said we’d go home, for my mother. Remember?’
    â€˜Come on, stop being a child. It’s only six months. I promise we’ll leave at the end of the contract if you still don’t like it here. I promise.’
    I turn my face up to look at him properly for the first time in weeks. I’m shocked at how he’s changed, the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes deepening, the pores on his cheeks larger, his forehead broad and red under the harsh kitchen light.
    â€˜Alright. When are we moving? Straight away?’
    â€˜Give me a chance, Mara. I haven’t settled in yet.’
    â€˜I want to get a job as well. I’m tired of sitting around here with your mother, being ferried around by Dimitri.’
    â€˜Forty per cent unemployment and you talk about getting a job.’
    Then he sees my face.
    â€˜Really, you don’t need to work. You’re here on holiday after all.’
    â€˜Doesn’t feel like much of a holiday to me.’
    He stops, spreads out his hands, tries to draw me to him but I’m rigid.
    DIMITRI AND I go out more – in the day, when Zoi’s at work. One morning, we become slowly drunk in an underground bar; branches of candles all around, reflecting their flames into mirrors. I take his hand and he laughs as if it’s funny we should touch. Flanges of fire around our heads. He and I, in the midst of the flames. Drinking, not speaking, my head leaning on his shoulder: the day becomes sad and happy and exciting and slowly an animal contentment steals over us both in the dim shadows and flickering light.
    We walk home from the trolley stop together and Dimitri comes uninvited into my bedroom. The apartment is empty. Kiki and Yiorgo are visiting relatives, more and more relatives. Zoi is still at work. Dimitri runs his finger up the line of my back as I bend over the bedside table. I tell him to go. Not angry, just tired.
    â€˜Please, Dimitri. That’s the last thing I want. What I want is a nap.’
    He stands by the door. I sit on the bed undoing my hair, laying out a T-shirt, making my quiet preparations. I unhook my bra, taking it off from underneath my dress: a practised motion. I reach under, not looking at him, behaving as though he isn’t there, watchful, by the door. Take off my underpants as I sit on the bed, sliding them down one outstretched leg, then the other. He’s so still, waiting.
    â€˜Take off your dress,’ he says in a small voice. ‘Quickly,’ he whispers, as I shake my head. ‘I just want to see you.’
    I’m so drunk all I want is sleep. My head is heavy and fuzzy, as though I’m someone else. Dimitri is insistent.
    â€˜I only want to look once. Just for a second.’
    Maybe if I let him he’ll let me sleep. So I slowly and deliberately raise my dress to the level of my stomach then take it off all in a rush, warm from the heat off my skin. I stand up close to him at the half-open door, kiss him on the cheek and abruptly walk back toward the bed. I can feel him looking at me, at the way I walk, at the way my thighs rub together and my feet turn inward.
    Then I hear the door close behind him very slowly and softly. I hear his footsteps grow fainter down the corridor to the kitchen, the fridge opening and the clink of ice in a glass.
    8
    EFES, WINTER 2012
    WE WOULD MEET past midnight at an outdoor café lit by streetlamps. Every night after a shift I was late and every night Zoi sat waiting for me beneath the striped awnings, tattered,