Read Online Lily and the Lost Boy by Paula Fox - Free Book Online Page A

little bits of dried squid, which they ate with their drinks of ouzo. As usual, the lawyer was wearing his prosperous-looking suit of salt-and-pepper tweed. He stood up and shook hands with all of the Coreys, and Rosa wagged her tail once. Mr. Corey had let Lily taste ouzo; it reminded her of licorice. The Greeks always served it with water. They served water with nearly everything, it was so precious on the island.
    Efthymios welcomed them, flicking a napkin at the only table that had an umbrella. They knew he prized it, and although they would have preferred to sit at another table—the umbrella made them feel a bit as though they were in a cave—they felt obliged to accept the honor of sitting beneath it. Still, though the faded canvas flaps drooped down, Lily could watch passersby—the best thing about eating outside on the street.
    An old man went past carrying a loaf of bread shaped like a discus; two girls arm-in-arm, laughing, their hair combed up and teased into enormous dark beehives; a plump lady, hurrying, her face peering out from a huge bouquet of roses she was carrying; couples; several families with small children; and an old fisherman in a black sweater, whom Lily and Paul had seen setting out in his caique to fish by himself. Although the fisherman’s face was ridged with deep wrinkles, his hair and beard were black.
    â€œOdysseus,” Mr. Corey said to Lily.
    â€œToo short,” said Paul.
    â€œToo short for what?” asked their mother. “I’ve seen him stand in his boat and lean on those huge oars, and it looked like he was rowing away the whole Aegean.”
    People stopped to speak to them, to ask them if they liked their supper. They even made comments about how the fish was fried—too long, said the cobbler—and how thick the soup was—the right way to make it, said a sister of Stella’s who lived on the road to Panagia.
    They hardly ever spoke about home anymore, Lily observed to herself. When they’d first come to Thasos, they’d compared life here and back in Williamstown. They’d found the house uncomfortable, not having dependable electricity or plumbing or a refrigerator and furniture, and there was not much either, it had seemed at first, to choose from in the markets. She recalled how, on their third day in Athens, before they had come to the island, she and Paul had spotted a dusty box of American cornflakes in a grocery shop window and how they had stood in front of it for what seemed an hour, wishing they could eat it all up.
    But they didn’t notice the discomfort anymore. When Lily walked into the kitchen and saw the table covered with huge strawberries, or yellow-green zucchini as slender as her fingers, or four pomegranates, blood-red in the sun, she couldn’t think of anything that was missing.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t believe I can bear seeing that movie again,” said Mrs. Corey. “What if, instead, we go to the pastry café and eat cake?”
    Everyone agreed to that. Mr. Corey paid Efthymios-Onassis, and they set off for the café on the quay, which was usually crowded all evening with people drinking coffee and eating ices, or cakes made from walnuts inside honey-soaked leaves of pastry so thin they looked transparent, or small, hollowed-out chocolate buns filled with cream, or puddings redolent of oranges and cinnamon and vanilla.
    On their way they passed through the main square, which was, Lily thought, like a vast living room for the entire village. Beneath the overarching branches of two enormous plane trees were shops that stayed open until late evening, a tourist restaurant, and several tavernas in which the older men of Limena often came to sit and visit with each other, drinking wine or ouzo very slowly during the hot, still hours after midday. Sometimes a young boy from a nearby coffee shop would pass among the men carrying brass trays with small white cups