Honestly, We Meant Well Read online

  “Just because you refuse to leave, that doesn’t mean the rest of us want to stick around,” she said.

  They turned a corner and came face-to-face with the sun. Stavros squinted.

  “And what, exactly, are you proposing you would do with it, if given the opportunity, koritsi mou?”

  “I’d sell it.”

  “Ha.”

  “I would,” she said. “I’d sell it like that.”

  * * *

  And now, finally, she has. Those two years are up, and she’s found a buyer—a developer. In one month’s time, Eleni Papadakis’s four-year hiatus from life will, God willing, come to a close.

  Still, Stavros had been half right: unloading the Alectrona wasn’t as easy as she had initially assumed it would be. The market for broken-down inns on smoggy Saronic islands wasn’t exactly booming—but then, the market for anything, anywhere, wasn’t exactly booming. The economy had shrunk by something like a quarter in the past six years. Over half of the people her age were unemployed. The paper was saying that there was a new rule limiting cash withdrawals from the ATM to sixty-six euros, and people were still waiting in hour-long lines just to get that. A month before she put the property on the market, she heard about a friend of hers who had a car break down on the E75, just outside Kifissia. The girl couldn’t afford to get the thing towed or repaired, so she hitchhiked the rest of the way into town. Five hours later, when she and her brother returned to see if they could get the car started again, they found the vehicle stripped of its tires and stereo, and the gas siphoned from its tank. Instead of filing a police report, they took a selfie of the two of them smiling next to the shell of the car and posted it to Facebook. As a caption, they used a line from Simonides: Not even the gods fight against necessity.

  Eleni, though, had defied the odds, had toppled fate. Six months out from the two-year mark, she contacted a former classmate from her time at the university, a Macedonian grad student named Mehmet whose singular, defining characteristic was how many people he knew. She didn’t explain what she was doing—just that she was looking to speak to someone interested in real estate acquisition. Within five minutes of emailing him, she had a response: email my cousin’s sister-in-law, Marija, he wrote. She might be able to help.

  Mehmet was right: Marija could. Not directly, exactly—she was a Swedish masseuse—but certainly indirectly. The company she worked for, Lugn Escapes, had for nearly a decade owned and operated a handful of high-end spas in Stockholm and its environs. Now, however, it was looking to expand its wellness empire southward, specifically into regions where its faithful clientele tended to travel during the Scandinavian winter, that long stretch of months when the days are replaced with a cold, reluctant twilight.

  They sent a scout first. A real estate appraiser who was in charge of the company’s foreign acquisitions. Before he arrived, Eleni lit a few candles and cleared away the Alectrona’s older pieces of furniture: an ottoman she had been meaning to get reupholstered; an étagère where she kept, among other things, an antique teapot and her grandfather’s wooden pipe, artifacts from her family’s past whose value was purely contextual. She was worried that the appraiser wouldn’t be able to see the Alectrona as anything other than what it was. Instead of imagining its future, he’d get bogged down in its past.

  “Those things smell like bug spray.”

  Stavros said this to her, his nose buried in one of the unlit candles.

  “They’re lemongrass. I paid a lot of money for them.”

  “Well, they smell like bug spray.”

  “Stavros, if you’re going to be an ass about this, then leave.”

  He didn’t. He set the candle down, lit the wick, and passed his finger through its flame.

  “Who are these people again?”

  “They’re investors. They’re Swedish.”

  “They’re turning us into an Ikea.”

  “They’re turning us into a spa.”

  “A spa.”

  “Yes, where people can relax, or whatever.”

  “Where housewives can take a break from doing nothing.”

  “You’re going to burn this place down.” She took the candle from him and set it on the front desk. “And don’t be sexist.”

  The scout’s name was Oskar. He was tall and lithe, and had shoulder-length blond hair that he kept swept up and tied in a bun. Beneath the cuffs of his white shirt she could see ink on his wrists, the stark borders of tattoos.

  “Great views,” he told her, when he stepped out on the back terrace. His English was smooth, shaded with only the slightest accent. Beyond the standard pleasantries Eleni used with guests—hello; can I call you a taxi; the Wi-Fi is down—she hadn’t spoken the language in months. She worried she sounded like a child.

  “Yes,” she said. “You can see all the way to the harbor.”

  “And the structure itself. You can feel the history.”

  “My family has owned it for four generations.”

  He smiled at her and, despite herself, Eleni blushed.

  “Sublime. What … energy.” He smiled again. “I’ll be in touch.”

  He called two days later, named a price, and, after a few rounds of negotiations, Eleni agreed. Hanging up the phone, she floated through the next hour in a daze: just like that, she had managed to create a future. In six weeks, after playing hostess for one last family, she would be back in Athens. Before going to sleep that evening, she spent two hours in bed hunting for apartments online, her laptop propped on her knees. She did this often. Looking at real estate calmed her and let her imagine other mornings—ones spent with conveniences like ice makers and lamps that weren’t pillaged from condemned ships. Now, though, instead of surfing wistfully, she searched for real, coming back again and again to a place in Kolonaki. A one-bedroom on Leventi, a side street off of Irodotou. Quiet, but loud enough that she wouldn’t feel like she was back on the island, where the silence still keeps her up at night. It wasn’t cheap (even with the economy hobbled, real estate wasn’t exactly a steal), but it wouldn’t break the bank, either. There would still be cash leftover to keep her afloat while she regained her footing in her old life. She would go back to school and finish her degree—that would happen first. Then she would get a job. Something that required her to wear suits, instead of jeans and a T-shirt. An analyst at Eurobank Ergasias, maybe, or a position in the Ministry of Finance. She would bring her country back from the brink of economic collapse, accomplish the thing at which the men who have come before her have failed so miserably; she would win the fucking Nobel Prize. Or, she wouldn’t; she didn’t care either way. She would be just as happy to come home from a run on Filopappou Hill and take a long shower in her new apartment. A shower that was built this century. A shower that actually worked.

  * * *

  Now, she finishes her beer and heads back into the kitchen, where Stavros is lighting his third cigarette.

  “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that,” she says to him, shutting the door.

  “Like how?”

  “You know how, Stavros. Like I kicked your dog or something.”

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “Fine, then like I spit on my father’s grave.”

  Stavros doesn’t respond. Instead, he offers her both of his palms.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she says. “I couldn’t keep the place, even if I wanted to. It’s not exactly cheap to operate. And, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s not like people are banging down the door to stay here.”

  “We have three guests coming today.”

  “Yes, and they’re the first three guests we’ve had in a month.”

  Stavros scratches behind his ear, where his hair has grown thick and wiry.

  He says, “We still could have found a way to make it work.”

  “That’s easy for you to say—you’re not the one going into debt.”

  “But your father—”

  “Please don’t but your father me.” A fly ho
vers an inch in front of her nose. She tries to snatch it and misses. “If he really wanted to chain me to this place, he would have made me hold on to it for longer than two years.”

  “Christos, he was not that kind of man.”

  “Not to you he wasn’t.”

  A half inch of ash threatens to tumble from the cigarette’s end. Rushing over, Eleni catches it with her empty beer bottle before it has a chance to spill to the floor. Stavros doesn’t flinch; he just stands there, his eyes downcast, the creases along his cheeks quivering. He is, she realizes, about to cry.

  “Hey.” With her free hand, she gently takes hold of his chin. “Remember what I said: you’re going to be totally fine.”

  This is true: she’s promised him 20 percent of the Alectrona’s sale price—if he’s smart with it, he’ll never have to work again. He’ll live the rest of his life playing dominos, drinking metaxa, yelling at ERT1 as it warbles from the radio in his kitchen, and doing whatever else it is he does during those few, precious hours when he’s not here, trailing her like some chain-smoking basset hound. She likes to think of it as a commission, of sorts. Not for helping her sell the place, but for allowing her to do so without too much of a hassle. For allowing her to reclaim her own life, burdened with only a reasonable amount of guilt.

  “But what about you?” he asks her. Eleni releases his chin and steals one of his cigarettes from the pack he’s set on the bar.

  “What about me?”

  “When will I see you?”

  “Whenever you want. The ferry takes an hour. You can come over for Easter. You can come over for Sunday dinners. I’m going to Athens, Stavros, not Los Angeles.”

  “You know I don’t like the ferry.”

  “Well, take a helicopter, then. You’ll have the money.”

  Stavros fits his hat over his head and pulls the brim down low on his face.

  “It’s not about the money,” he says. “It’s about having somewhere to go.”

  Eleni lights the cigarette with a match from an Alectrona-branded matchbook. She had ordered two hundred of them last year, the result of a sudden and inexplicable burst of optimism during which she’d convinced herself that all the inn needed was a little bit of marketing. A siren’s call—in the irresistible form of swag—to lure future guests. She’s still got 195 of them left. The other five she gave to friends.

  “I’m sorry, Stavros,” she says. “You’ll just have to find somewhere else.”

  Will

  July 7

  Thirty-five Thousand Feet in the Air

  Trapped on a plane somewhere over southwest Europe, Will Wright punishes himself the only way he can: by banging his head against the window.

  Stupid, he thinks, in time with the collisions. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  The person sitting next to him—a bald man in a black sweater and gray slacks—snores, and Will looks at him with envy. He’s been asleep for ten hours. They took off from SFO, and then somewhere over Denver he reached into his pocket for an eye mask and a small white pill, which he took with a nip of vodka. “Wish I had one of those bad boys,” Will had said. He grinned at the man, and the man glared back. At first Will worried that something had been lost in translation—they were flying to Greece—but then he remembered that before the man had drugged himself he’d been reading the last Dan Brown novel, in paperback, in English. So, no, he thinks now. Nothing was lost. The guy’s just a dick.

  He reaches up and pushes the call button to summon a flight attendant. He wants to know how much longer he’s going to be stuck here before they land. Turning back toward the window, he presses his nose against the Plexiglas and looks down. Thirty-five thousand feet below them the sea spirals in blue, and green, and gray. They cleared Italy ten minutes ago, leaving behind the hills of Puglia and Molise for the tie-dyed Mediterranean.

  “Sir?”

  Will looks up and sees a blond flight attendant—the same one he argued with back in San Francisco. She’s smiling down at him, her cheeks strained and her eyes puffy and reddened from the overnight flight.

  “Is there anything I can get for you?”

  She reaches forward and presses the call button, extinguishing a small orange light. The man next to him snores again, gulping for air.

  Her smile widens; her eyes sadden. Even flight attendants get the blues.

  “Do you know how much longer it’ll be until we land?”

  “Another hour and a half or so.”

  Will sinks further into his seat. He says, “We have been on this plane literally forever.”

  “Literally forever, sir?”

  Will considers this for a moment.

  “Any other questions?” she asks.

  “A bottle of wine.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’d like one of those little bottles of white wine.”

  She checks her watch. “You realize it’s nine o’clock in the morning in Athens.”

  “Is it?”

  “It is.”

  “Well then, I guess you’d better make it two.”

  Will watches the flight attendant as she makes her way back down the aisle, and then sinks further into his seat. He knows he should be embarrassed (chardonnay for breakfast is, objectively, embarrassing), but given the present circumstances, he decides to give himself a pass. When did things take such a precipitous turn? Spring break, probably. Or, if not spring break, then a week after, when his boyfriend, Rajiv, dumped him.

  It was a Thursday, and he had invited Will to the Polar X-Press, a café that specialized in sno-cones that had just opened a few blocks from campus. Rajiv asked for a grape-cherry-mango concoction, and then before Will had a chance to order, he turned to him and said, “I think we should break up.”

  “Uh.”

  “I’m sorry, Will. It’s just time.”

  Will looked down. He was still holding the menu—a thick, laminated placard that advertised cones with names like the Berkeley Blizzard and the B-Town Blast.

  “Couldn’t you wait until I ordered first?”

  “Right—I’m sorry. Of course.”

  Will got a bottle of kombucha, which he hated, but Rajiv had offered to pay, and it was the most expensive thing on the menu. Then they sat down.

  “I read somewhere that breakups should happen in neutral locations,” Rajiv said. “And neither of us had been here before. So.”

  “Of course neither of us have been here. We don’t eat sno-cones. We’re twenty-two years old.”

  Rajiv licked cherry syrup from the edge of his lips.

  “I wish you wouldn’t yell,” he said.

  “You’re joking, right? Christ, Rajiv—fourteen days ago we were camping in Baja. We were talking about moving in together.” He looked at the bottle of kombucha, with its orange label and smug little top. “I think I deserve an explanation.”

  So Rajiv gave him one. In less than two months, they would be graduating, he said. And while the time they had spent together meant the world to him, the fact remained that he—Rajiv—was moving into a new phase of life, and he worried that Will was stagnant.

  “I mean, you don’t have a job yet, Will.”

  “What, and you do?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Well, that’s news to me.”

  It had happened two days before, on Tuesday. Fama, a brand-strategy firm with offices in San Francisco, had made an offer, and Rajiv had accepted it.

  “Fama,” Will said, repeating the name. “You mean the company where I was interviewing.”

  “You spoke so highly of it. I guess, well—look at it this way: you inspired me to apply.” He reached across the table for Will’s hand when he said this, but Will recoiled. He white-knuckled the kombucha bottle instead.

  “And what, exactly, will you be doing at Fama?”

  “I’ll be a namer. I’ll be naming things.”

  “You’ll be naming things.”

  “Yeah. Brands, products. That sort of thing. Snack foods, mostly. Potato chips.
”

  “Potato chips.”

  “They told me it was one of their more prestigious teams. I guess I did really well in the interview.”

  “Rajiv, that was the position I was interviewing for.”

  “It’s weird, right? We could have been colleagues.”

  “No, actually, we couldn’t have.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you stole my job.”

  Rajiv looked down into the melted mess of his sno-cone. He poked at the sludge with his straw and furrowed his brow.

  He said, “You’re upset.”

  Will nearly responded but stopped himself just before speaking. This had been a theme of their (now-dead) relationship: Rajiv would do something upsetting and, in turn, Will would feel upset. Before he had a chance to articulate these feelings, though, Rajiv would preempt them—he would say, as he just said now, you’re upset. It was a declaration as much as it was a diffuser; in hearing Rajiv tell him what he felt, he no longer felt the right to feel it. Instead, he would spend the next ten minutes backtracking, explaining how his reaction had been wrong, and how Rajiv, blessed with a sense of eternal calmness—a stoicism that bordered, occasionally, on the catatonic—had been right.

  Except this time. This time, Will said: “I am, in fact, upset.”

  Rajiv nodded slowly, his chin rising and falling half an inch.

  “In all fairness, Will, you mentioned after your last interview that you didn’t think you’d get it.”

  This was true. After his last trip to the Fama offices, he had met Rajiv in Union Square and told him that he thought his chances of getting the job were next to nil. Rajiv listened and then looked at him, stunned.

  “But you were so sure before. You said that this was just to rubber-stamp it,” he said. “What changed?”

  Will had looked down and torn away a piece of the croissant they were sharing. He knew he couldn’t tell Rajiv the truth—that it wasn’t because of his talent, his ability to think up synonyms for such chip-specific terms as ridged and twice-fried, but rather something decidedly more complicated—and so he half lied. He said, “It’s just a feeling I got.”