At that moment, a bus appeared around the corner. They were still a couple hundred meters away.
“Give me your bag,” he said. “We have to run.”
Anna felt a bead of sweat drip down her back and shook her head. “No way. Not in this heat.” But she handed over her duffel bag anyway, thankful for the lightening of her load and a bit offended he hadn’t offered sooner.
He took the bag and sped up. “No, really, we have to run or we’ll miss the bus!”
“Then we’ll catch the next one!”
“No, we won’t,” he said insistently. “There isn’t another one for over an hour, and I am not waiting around until then.” And then he took off running as the bus stopped, leaving Anna behind.
Anna pulled her small suitcase up by the handle and started running after him. She wasn’t about to walk – or wait, for that matter – by herself in this heat.
The people who had been waiting by the stop were pushing onto the bus at an impressive rate, and Anna wished they’d get on more slowly to buy her some time. The man who was escorting her had already disappeared into the crowd, but Anna was still too far away. She pushed herself as fast as her legs could move her, her suitcase awkwardly bashing against her side with every step. She ignored it, willing herself forward. She had to make this bus.
But she wasn’t so lucky. When she was still fifty meters away at least, the bus pulled away, leaving behind it a cloud of dust.
Anna stopped running and bent over, half in devastation at missing the bus and half to catch her breath. She couldn’t believe he had left her alone after specifically telling her she couldn’t navigate it alone! She also had no idea where to go next. He even had one of her bags. She pulled her phone out of her purse and checked her cell signal. Despite having full bars at the airport, out here there was basically nothing. Not enough to pull up directions to the house, anyway. She was officially stranded.
But as the cloud of dust cleared, she saw a figure standing by the bus stop, holding a pink duffel bag. It was her escort.
“You waited for me!” she called, amazed but smiling, then noticed his face was stern.
“You made us miss the bus,” he said, his frown set so deeply that Anna now couldn’t picture a different facial expression on him.
She opened her mouth to apologize, but he pushed past her and began walking down the road, leaving her duffel bag behind. Anna grabbed it and followed, struggling once again to keep up.
After half a mile, she began to realize that they were going to walk all the way to the house like this. She called out a couple of times to ask for help with her bags, but her escort continued to ignore her, keeping twenty meters or so between them, even when she tried to close the gap. So all Anna could do was trudge on.
Nearly an hour later, Anna scowled as they arrived at a big resort. Her escort still hadn’t given a word of instruction. He just strolled through the automatic glass doors and across the marbled floor to reception, whispering something to the young man behind the counter before disappearing down a hallway. This couldn’t be right.
The man at the desk looked at Anna expectantly. She walked up to the large counter, which looked like it was made out of driftwood, set her handbag down on it and dropped her duffel bag and suitcase at her feet.
“Are you here to check in?” the man asked.
“No, I’m looking for my grandfather Christos Xenakis. Does he…” Anna looked around, hesitant to ask what seemed like a silly question. “…does he live here?”
The man sneered. “Christos is a worker. A builder. Right now, he will be in the staff room, having lunch. It’s just down that hallway, last door on the right.” He pointed to an open door behind him to the left, beyond which a hallway stretched. The hallway down which her escort had disappeared.
“Can I leave my bags here?”
“Sorry,” he said, “bag drop is for guests only.” Then he picked up a walkie talkie off the desk and walked away.
What is it with nobody wanting to help me today? Anna thought. She put her handbag over her shoulder, picked up her suitcase and duffel bag, and headed toward the door. But as she came around the desk, a short Greek man came through the doorway and locked eyes with her. He had thick eyebrows, leathery skin and a giant handlebar mustache. He would have looked like a cartoon villain if it weren’t for the broad grin that was getting bigger the closer he got.
“Anna!” he shouted – loud enough that some other people in the lobby turned to look – and wrapped her in a hug, her hands still clutching her suitcase handles. This must be her grandfather. She wondered again how he knew she was coming.
“Hi, Christos,” she said, letting go of her bags and lightly patting his back.
After what Anna felt was a few seconds too long, he finally released her. He furrowed his brow and stared at her, and she touched her face to make sure there wasn’t anything on her to make him look so concerned.
“You…” he started, closing his eyes as if to focus more. Anna realized he was simply struggling to find the right words in English. “You eat?” he finally managed, petting his stomach to emphasize his meaning.
“No, I haven’t,” Anna said, shaking her head to make sure he could understand.
He smiled at her and grabbed her bags, nodding for her to follow as he headed back down the corridor.
As they went, Anna realized that she was actually quite hungry. She could go for a gyro or some hummus, or whatever Greek people actually ate for lunch? There was the smell of something delicious on the air, and it seemed familiar, though Anna couldn’t quite place it. Maybe it was something from her childhood?
As they walked through the doors, someone threw a small white package at Christos, and he dropped one of Anna’s bags to catch it. Anna looked around to see what was going on and spotted a young man throwing things to people all over the room out of a brown paper bag.
A brown paper bag with a big yellow “M” on it.
Of course she would come halfway around the world and still not be able to escape McDonald’s. Every man in the room – and they were all men – was now biting into a burger or eating fries from the distinctive red cardboard holder. Not quite what she would have imagined, but it explained the familiar smell at least, a smell now accompanied by sweat and paint.
The men were all dressed the same with the same complexion: hair so dark it was almost black, olive skin, and dark eyes with long, luscious lashes. There were a couple who were middle-aged or older like her grandfather, but the rest were all young and muscular and looked like they should be in an Olympic God of the Month calendar. She was the only woman in a room full of Adonises – not that she was complaining. But as they started to notice her, she saw that their gazes were less flirtatious, not even curious, but more annoyed. The way she would look at tourists who walked too slowly on the sidewalk in Manhattan.
From across the room, she saw her escort amidst the mass of white tee shirts, leaning against the wall and laughing at something one of the other guys had said. He was holding a burger, and, as he took a massive bite out of it, he caught her eye and winked. She felt herself tense everywhere, and her cheeks went red. She tried to remind herself of the ordeal she had endured at his hand to get here, but still she smiled when he started walking toward her.
“Hungry?” he asked as he walked up, grabbing a spare burger the delivery guy had left on the table and offering it to her.
She hadn’t eaten McDonald’s since she was a kid; her father had taken her after school a few times, but her mother had forbidden it once he’d left, and the habit had stuck once she’d moved to Manhattan. Plus, who needed fast-food restaurants when there was a twenty-four-hour falafel cart less than a block from her building? But she was hungry, so she took the burger from him and unwrapped it, relishing the smell