Page 15 of Savage Daddy
“What kind of man?”
“He was . . . threatening.”
“Katerina.” Sharper now. She set her cup down. “What kind of man comes to a girl alone in a shop at night?”
I looked at the alarm coming up in her face, the real fear for me, and I took everything I’d felt the night before—the hand on my hair, the smell of him, the inventory eyes, the cold sick turning in my stomach that was still there if I went looking—I took all of it and I folded it down small and put it away where she couldn’t see, and I smiled.
“A pushy one,” I said. “Made his pitch, knocked something over, left. It was nothing. I sent him off.”
“He knocked something over?”
“A frame. It’s fine. I’ll get a new one.” I waved it away with the hand not holding the coffee. “These guys are all the same. They lean and they bluster and they think a woman alone’s goingto fold, and then she doesn’t, and they go home. I’ve handled pushier men over a koulouraki count. Don’t make a face.”
“I’m allowed to make a face. He frightened you.”
“He did not frighten me.”
She just looked at me. She has a look, Despina, that’s worse than anything my father ever managed, because his was disappointment and hers is patience, the same patience that horse-with-the-biting-mouth patience.
“And the police?” she said.
“What would I tell the police. A man bought a cookie and broke a frame.” I shrugged. “I’ve got it. It’s handled.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “Of course it is.” And there was a whole world in how she said it, a year of it, that I chose not to hear.
So I gave her something else. To turn her off the scent, mostly, I’ll be honest. To get her off the thug and the not-being-frightened.
“There was another one, actually,” I said. “Last night. After. A different idiot.” And here something in my voice must have shifted, must have come up off the flat, because her eyebrows went up half an inch and her cup stopped halfway to her mouth and she set it back down without drinking.
“What other one? Threatening again?”
I tutted—no. “There’s a man who comes to the shop. Mornings. Every morning, for months.” I rolled my eyes hard enough to hurt. “Buys eleven dollars of bread for one man and a dog. A great drooling gray dog, the size of a pony, that he says isn’t even his. Over-tips. Stays. Leans on my counter like it’s a bar. Thinks he’s the most charming creature God ever made.” I broke a koulouraki in half and didn’t eat it. “Italian. The accent. You know the type. Looks at me like I’m—“ I stopped. Started over. “He thinks he’s irresistible. He’s a nuisance.”
“Mm,” said Despina, who’d gone very still and very pleased in a way I didn’t like.
“Anyway. Last night, after the first one, this one—he must have been outside, parked, I don’t know, watching the street like a creep—he comes crashing through my door. Saint George. Charges in like the place is on fire, grabs the thug, throws him against my own front window, tells him off, and then—” I jabbed the koulouraki at her, “—then he turns around and grins at me. Grins. Like I’m supposed to swoon. Like he’s done me a great favor. In my shop. That I had handled.”
“He defended you.”
“I didn’t ask him to.”
“He saw a man frightening you and he—”
“He saw nothing of the sort, he saw a thing he could put his nose into, and he put it in, the way men do, and then he stood there waiting for his medal.” I dropped the broken cookie on the plate. “I threw him out. I had to say it three times. He stood there the whole time grinning wider and saying he was having a wonderful night, and—” I ran out of road. “Anyway. A nuisance. I told him we were closed today and he can go to hell.”
Despina was quiet. She picked up her coffee. She drank it, slow, looking at me over the rim the whole time, and when she set it down she was smiling, and the smile was the kind that’s seen something it intends to keep.
“This man,” she said. “He likes you.”
“He likes himself. There’s a big difference.”
“He comes every morning? For months? He buys bread he doesn’t need so he can stand in your shop and look at you, and last night he sat in the cold outside watching to make sure you were safe, and when a man frightened you he came through your door without thinking.” She ticked it off on her fingers, calm as anything, like a woman reading a recipe back to make sure it’s right. “And you,koritsi—you threw him out three times.”
“Yes.”
“Why,” said Despina, gently, leaning in, “are you so terrible to a man who likes you?”
And I opened my mouth to answer her, and the answer that came up was longer than I meant it to be, and harder.
