from Ariadne's Dream--Chapter 2

Ariadne's first room on Nysas is the wine cellar under Thanasis' house. The free accommodations that come with the job at The Scat Club amount to a small, dank room with two single mattresses on metal frames, one window, and a sink but no toilet. She is to use his family's bathroom upstairs, Thanasis has told her, but must supply her own paper and soap. Ariadne accepts this predicament as her fate, and trudges up the stairs to wait her turn behind Thanasis, Aliki and Soula, often surrendering her place in the line-up to her new employers, no matter how badly she has to go. Her roommate, Karina, takes to balancing her ample butt over the room's small sink to piss, using plastic bags for more complex evacuations then depositing them in the trash can on Thanasis' expansive terrace. It takes Ariadne only a day or two to follow suit.

Thanasis blames the frazzled tourists who make their way past his house toward the island's only hostel for the foul deposit. "Gourounia!--Pigs!" he yells down at them as they march up the narrow stone path, single file, crouching under the weight of overstuffed backpacks hung with sneakers, rusted pans and watering cans like a hobo's Christmas tree. The tourists, mildly seasick after the twelve hour journey from Athens to Nysas over rough seas, ignore him. They have already encountered plenty of ranting Greeks on their travels and have learned not to take the national pastime personally. Ariadne and Karina smirk at the newcomers who parade past the wine cellar, diligently following the geometric patterns whitewashed onto the grey stone path--a leftover island habit from the days when donkeys were the most frequent passersby, the white lines directing their clumsy hoofs, providing them with a choreography--left, right, forward, back--like black footprints on the floor of a dance studio.

The girls settle into a routine quickly, becoming intimately acquainted with each other's habits, sounds and smells. During the day they go to Anthemusa, the island's main beach, swaddled against the crisp, spring winds. From the sheltered terrace of the Way Out Café, they laugh as they watch the eager, early tourists frolicking in the still-cool sea, shivering and pretending to be warm. They sip the Way Out's lukewarm coffee all afternoon and chat with other "Perms," people who will be staying on Nysas and working the entire season. The veterans give them the low-down on Thanasis and Aliki, the more scabrous offering that the former fucked the latter doggy-style once a month behind the bar of the No Problem to keep her in line, the rumour having long ago been accepted as fact on the island.

In the evenings the girls are lectured on the methods and madness of their respective jobs in preparation for opening night. Ariadne memorizes the names, prices and ingredients of all The Scat's cocktails, and rattles them off-- Catcall, French Kiss, Foreplay, Orgasm--while Thanasis stares disinterestedly, waiting for her to make a mistake. Karina, hired to run the gift shop next door, folds hundreds of cheap T-shirts stamped with The Scat's or the No Problem's logos while Aliki, dissatisfied with Karina's method, unfolds most of the shirts and throws them back onto the bottomless pile.

Within the confines of the small room, Ariadne learns that Karina has never been in love and that she fakes her orgasms by laughing out loud. The laugh becomes the secret signal to Ariadne, waiting out on the stoop, that in a few minutes the latest bumbler will be pushed out the front door and it will be safe to come in. And Karina figures out that her roommate's crying jags in the middle of the night are real and it is best not to ask about them or the neighbourhood bar in Athens where she first saw Ariadne. When she brings up the subject on the third morning of their stay, Ariadne stares back with contempt, as if she has caught Karina eavesdropping on her dreams.