Am I Doing the Right Thing

In the mornings I drink tea leaning out my kitchen window, and watch dogs rifle through the rubbish at the top of the street. Across the road, at the hotel on the corner, the Canadian boy crouches in the shadow of his boss's car, smoking. Littered along the path below my window is the stuff I tip out of the bottom of my bag: travellers' cheque receipts, little maps I drew when I first arrived, phone numbers of jobs, and scrappy bits of paper with exchange rate conversions. There's the dead bird I found beside the stove the day I moved in, that terrified me when I first saw it, but it's nothing now, seen from this distance, deflated from its fall and streaming with ants. I slather on sunscreen, do a budget for the week, brush dust off my feet, and dress for work, then I close the curtains against the day's encroaching heat and deliver my rent to the woman upstairs. The Canadian boy, flirting or just friendly I'm unsure, offers me a cigarette on my way to work and I lean against the wall and smoke with him. He is sick of this place, he says, sick of his boss, the pathetic pay, and working seven days a week. I pat the dog that sits at his feet, sandy-nosed and pawed from the beach. I run its ears between my fingers and tell the boy that Panos, my boss, is grumpy but hilarious. `He's having a party soon and he's running around saying Stalloney's coming, Stalloney's coming, and when I asked him who Stalloney was, he said Sylvester Stallone is coming to my party.' `My boss calls your boss vlaka,' the boy says. `He said that Kirsty's been with Costa all year and Panos doesn't know.' I blow smoke rings with the last drag of my cigarette and hurry off to work. Guests waiting outside reception look at their watches as I unlock the door. `Yes, I'm late,' I say, enjoying their irritation. I cook them breakfast and clean their rooms and, in the afternoon when the hotel is quiet, I sit in reception and watch music videos on TV. Sleepy barefoot guests wander in for iced coffees. The English couple asks directions to the Butterfly Farm and stroll off stupidly in the afternoon heat. Panos is on the phone and, though I can't understand whole sentences, I can tell that he is talking about money and asking for more time. I don't like Panos, but my heart turns over for him in some automatic way. He hangs up the phone, wipes sweat from his forehead, takes money out of his pocket and gives me my pay. `Kirsty's coming this afternoon. Go to one of the rooms when she comes. Kirsty and me need to talk. We need to have some privacy.' `I hope things work out for you two,' I say, a total lie; who encouraged Kirsty's affair in the first place? `Of course things will work out,' Panos says. `Things always work out for me.' I go to the room above reception when Kirsty arrives, and notice balls of dust and hair that I missed this morning, and sweep them under the bed. I open the balcony doors, a thin vein of excitement and trespass weaving through my stomach. Pop songs drift up from the television and I sing along to that beautiful Cranberries song that plays over and over in the bars here every night. A spoon hits the sink, the squeaky fridge door opens and closes, and Panos, a terrible buoyancy breaking his voice, pleads to be given one more chance. `He's nice to me now,' Kirsty says, `but what about the last few years? What about all the money he spent and the lies he told me? What about the way he sits in cafes all day and never even took me out for dinner? Was I asking too much, I wasn't asking for the world, is it too much to want some attention from your husband?' It's just before sunset, the day's heat has weakened, and Kirsty and I are sitting on the low stone wall that runs between the beach and the road. Down on the sand, beautiful teenage girls sell bracelets that they tie onto your wrist. `And poor Costa, he doesn't understand. …

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