New York City
April 25, present day
Tox stood on Calliope’s doorstep with a smirk. He’d had a long day of meetings, but he wanted to see her. Plus, his ridiculous excuse was too amusing to pass up. Coco was barking up a storm in greeting, and he spied Calliope through the sidelight heading toward the door from the kitchen. She threw open the door and immediately retreated.
“Come in. Come in.”
Tox followed her down the long hall, Coco hot on his heels.
“Your timing couldn’t be better.”
“Why’s that?”
Calliope stood in the kitchen doorway and gestured to the corner where a tiny gray mouse was trapped under a glass bowl. “Help.”
Coco went down to the floor, waiting for the game to begin.
“Shouldn’t you be standing on a chair?” Tox grinned at her.
“Oh, shut up. I’m trying to be this fierce, self-sufficient woman…Argh!!! To be brought down by a stereotype. It’s infuriating.”
Tox set down the small duffle he carried and removed his jacket. He crossed the room, lifted the bowl, and snatched the mouse up in a big fist. “I’ll put him outside.”
“No. You have to kill him. He knows where I live.”
Tox pulled his lips inward to stifle the laugh. “I’m not going to kill Stuart Little.”
Calliope raised a brow. “Don’t be fooled by the innocent act.”
Tox looked down to see a little gray face peeking out of his closed fist, whiskers twitching. “Yeah, he’s a real demon.” He crossed the kitchen, opened the back door, and trotted down the cement steps. Moments later he returned.
“He seems to be heading in another direction so you’re safe.”
Calliope retrieved the bowl on the floor and set it in the sink with a huff. “Probably recruiting his other mouse buddies to invade.” She gave Tox a slow up-and-down. “What brings you by?”
“Oh, I brought back your tube.” He snatched up the duffle he had dropped by the kitchen door and fetched the white plastic tube.
“My tube?”
“Yeah, turns out it won’t work to repair my pipe, so I thought I’d return it.” He gave Calliope an I-know-this-is-a-lame-excuse lopsided smile. “Good thing, too. You can use it for your Habitrail for Mickey and his bangers.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
Tox surveyed the kitchen for the first time and his eyes lit. “You’re cooking?”
“Baking,” she corrected. “I have one living grandparent, my mother’s mother. She’s lived on Aegina her whole life. It’s–”
“I know it.” Aegina was a Greek Island in a part of the world he knew well, from Ukraine to Yemen. “Never been, but I know the area. Some really beautiful spots in the Mediterranean.” Some really ugly ones, too. He boxed up a particularly unpleasant memory from Al Bayda in northern Libya.
“It’s incredible. My yaya’s village is like something out of a nineteenth-century novel—the old men sit outside and complain about the government, the teenagers hawk souvenirs to tourists.” She seemed lost in the memory for a moment. “Anyway, she taught me how to make one thing. Galaktoboureko.”
“Come again?”
She repeated it with a dulcet Greek accent. “Galaktoboureko. It’s a Greek version of a custard pie.”
“I’m listening.”
“We used to make the phyllo dough from scratch. It takes hours, and you have to stretch it a mile long and as thin as paper. She’d hit me with the box if she saw this.” Calliope held up the package of the pre-made pastry. “I don’t make it very much because it’s incredibly sweet and the recipe makes a huge batch, but I love the actual baking. It reminds me of my grandmother and her village. Her kitchen always smells of coffee and cinnamon. Which might explain why, despite the fact that I cannot stand the taste of coffee, I love the smell of it.”