MORNING SERIAL

I HAD been minding my own business for a few hours, slowly making my way through some light beers, thinking winding thoughts like this, when I became aware someone was standing over me.

“I’m Tara.” The woman who was introducing herself was in her mid-fifties; she had cropped white hair that spiked like crystals above a beaming face of dense Mediterranean tan.

As she smiled down at me in my seat, her face pulled into numerous leathery lines up her cheeks and across her forehead. It was a generous and welcoming sight, and I found myself smiling back up at her as a matter of reflex.

“Hello Tara,” I said, halfraising my glass to her, not really sure what else to say.

“I just wanted to check you were okay,” she said, her smile not dropping. It was not a fake smile, and it was not a ditsy one, it was the smile of a person broadly aware of her place in this immediate life; it was confident and at-home, and had the measure of every inch of the bar.

“There’s not a problem, is there?” I said.

“Not at all. I work here. Or rather, I help out. My partner owns the place. Which means I suppose I have a certain vested interest when I’m on the premises. And I seem to have some sort of rank. So I was just seeing how everything was going and the waiter pointed you out and said you had been here a while on your own, and seeing as you looked British I thought I’d come over and say hello.”

The smile I noticed now was as awkward as it was warm.

“Isn’t everyone here British?” I said.

“True. But you seem more my type.”

“Your type?”

“I’m on a mission, and I need an easy subject. I’m trying to put the effort in, you see. Into the business. The Ayia Napa nightlife is not my usual crowd.”

“Okay,” I said. “Next question: why did the waiter point me out?”

“I was asking.”

“I see.”

> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks.com