It was easy to find a seat at the Loumidis. Kleo picked a sunny corner, glancing around appreciatively. Her roommates wouldn’t be caught dead seen going in there; probably because it was a coffeehouse actually true to its title. The very authenticity of it reflected on the faded photographs of landscapes studding the pine-wood walls, walls stained from the steam of rich black coffee served with one hard biscuit and a cigarette bowl. Smoke and accents floated around the room, the varying dialects of Athens’ old or poor citizens who came for the coffee and the conversation. Kleo envisioned the tendrils of steam from the coffee-cups swirling into their nostrils and pores and bandaging the cockles of their hearts in a warm embrace.
She frequented the little Athenian café; the curly-haired waiters bantered with her like brothers, and the rowdy backdrop warmed her heart after the strange faces of modernity and materialism in the streets. She came before or after her classes, and breathed in the familiar whiffs of fresh coffee beans and stale tobacco. It was the best and only way she could bring herself to write home. The only way she could forget her hunger, the debt of missed rents, the time the old neighbor had tried to rape her, the time when a rabid dog had come bursting into the lobby of the rooms-for-rent lodging where she slept now.
“The usual?” The waiter winked down at her, momentarily forgetting the pain of his bruised arms from when he’d jostled and fought his fellows in the kitchen for a turn to wait on the prettiest customer Loumidis could boast of. The boy had just turned fourteen yesterday, and Kleo had scraped together enough thread to make him the much-needed new sweater he was now wearing beneath his uniform. Boys his age grew so fast, Kleo mused. Suddenly she wondered how tall her brother Yanno had become in the span of a few months, and her stomach flip-flopped.
“Always,” she grinned, and reached into her bag, automatically feeling for coins and paper that wasn’t there.
“Covered by the house today,” he beamed, and immediately set down a cup of expresso on the table before her. His heart near skipped a beat as he realized how presumptuous he’d been to bring her ready-made coffee; what if she’d wanted something different today?
The corners of her hazel eyes crinkled with gratitude. “Here’s to you, Ike.” She took a sip of the coffee, burned her tongue, and thanked him once more. Ike tripped away, leaving her to collect her thoughts.
She pressed the pen against the paper, and began to write a salutation.
Then her hand quivered and an abrupt line sizzled across the paper like a stroke of black lightening. She was shaking again; from excess of coffee or troubling thoughts she could not tell, but she knew that this was enough writing for now. She folded up the letter slowly, slipped and sealed it within an envelope, and downed the remainder of her coffee, feeling the slime of the last drop trickle down her throat.
"Angreek87"
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