from Chapter 3

The Scat Club is a cool, dark cave which, in the days before tourists discovered the small island and its infamous beach, served as a stable. It still has the old four-panelled, wooden door that once allowed animals to stick their heads out for a breath of the island's hot and fragrant air. The Scat's walls are adorned with contemporary Greek art: large black and white line drawings of cartoonish men sitting on rush-bottomed chairs, staring forlornly out of the canvas as wax drips onto tablecloths.

Opening night is not the civilized event that Ariadne has prepared herself for, imagining those who indulged in jazz to be a subdued group of hummers and finger snappers. True, the tablecloths are clean and freshly pressed, the brass candleholders shiny and free of fingerprints and cigarette butts stuck in waxy overrun, and the atmosphere is light and amicable as the island's other bar owners drop in for a good luck drink. But this is only the first hour.

As a few legitimate customers trickle in, filling the inner room of the bar where the drinks are mixed and the music cued, then the outer narrow room by the front door, Ariadne discovers that Thanasis' fly eyes can spot a dripping candle in the farthest corner while he is selecting music, chatting up customers and shaking frothy cocktails. "Candles!" he bellows above the heads of his woozy audience as if making his final statement for the prosecution at a murder trial. Everyone in the bar turns around to look at the condemned employee before she is dragged to the guillotine. Ariadne's eyes flit from table to table until she spots the incriminating evidence. She quickly scrapes the wax off the checkered tablecloth with her nails, smoothing the hot, viscous liquid over the whorls of her fingerprints so she will no longer leave behind any traces. Some customers, too bombed already to care about tablecloths or capital punishment, make a game of tilting their candlesticks so that Ariadne will run over to their table. Petros, who seems unconcerned about dripping wax or Thanasis' howling, just shrugs and continues to serve drinks, charming a group of Irish girls with his obscure, Greek-Australian ways.