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don’t know what possessed me not to fly home right away. I kept saying to myself it wasn’t time yet. Then one day I received a telephone call from my brother, who told me, rather self-righteously, that she had died. I suppose he wanted me to express my guilt to him, in that very moment, but I didn’t. Nor have I. Not at the funeral, not ever.
    Famished and dry as a bone, I enter the restaurant. Some of the excited new tourists are also here. I ignore them, take my regular table in the rear of the terrace, and order white wine and light a cigarette. The wine is just cold enough; it sits dryly on my tongue, prolonging those vapors and bubbles of memory, champagne bubbles of memory.
    Night is now falling, and the moon begins its ascent. The lights glow across the harbor, and one of the fishing boats is making ready to set sail. A slight wind lifts the pink tablecloths, and the water slaps more vigorously against the seawalls. What a strange idea, that night falls. Perhaps not. I muse and sip the cold wine. The moon does go down, the sun does rise. Christos brings me broiled fish-sardines caught this morning, I like small fish-and a salad, some bread and more wine, though I see Nectaria trying to stop him from offering me another bottle. The day has been shot to hell anyway, lost when earlier I broke my drinking rule.
    Roger ambles over to the table, complaining about how the plumber didn’t come again today. It’s Saturday, I remind him. Roger also complains that he couldn’t get any writing done. He heard from his publisher yesterday. I don’t care, I want to say, but don’t, even though the wine has loosened me up. I stiffen instead, smile cryptically and hold myself more erect than usual, to fight the dreadful desire to blurt out something awful. He goes on jabbering. I ought to poke him in the eye or tell him what I think of his petty problems. His conservatism drives me mad. He would be terribly shocked were I to articulate what I really thought. We’ve had so many arguments over the years, the truth is, he must have an inkling, and not care a jot.
    Roger and I have often argued about the terrible imbalance of wealth in our country, with Roger taking the position finally that the poor can shift. I think it is a good thing he is not in the States, though his views are as obnoxious here as they would be there. Poverty is all around us here too. Rich people, I once told him, become lawyers because they know how to defend themselves. He called me a class traitor. Very amusing really, as he is not from my class but wishes he were.
    A privileged lad, I used to cavort on the streets of Manhattan and Boston at 4 A.M. when the police didn’t care what a crazy white boy from Harvard did as long as he didn’t get himself killed. He would never kill someone. That’s what they thought. But rich people do murder, they murder each other the way the poor do—perhaps not in such great numbers—and they make killings on the market that certainly cause great societal distress. Roger hates the flamboyant in me; he likes to imagine he is always in control—of himself, of the conversation and so on.
    Roger suggests that we play chess later. I announce that I’m going home to work. He arches one eyebrow, as if to say, Oh, Horace, poof, you aren’t going to write anything, nothing of value in your current state or, for that matter, ever. He glances at Yannis, who’s sitting nearby, chewing his fingernails, which I’ve told him not to do. Roger is figuring, I can see it in his transparent blue eyes, how to steal Yannis away from me, because though he let Yannis go, or rather though Yannis quickly left him, Roger likes to steal my lovers. He’s done it before. My book, my Household Gods, I insist unsteadily, will be an important work. Roger stands up and flutters his eyelashes at me. Then he most ungraciously laughs and says, while patting me patronizingly on the back, Blow it out your asshole, Horace! Can you imagine?

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