Penny, who resembled her mother to a degree that disconcerted Achilles, appeared to have interests that excluded the cafe. The other day in the kitchen, out of nowhere, in the middle of lunch service, she asked Achilles if he knew what radium was, and if he’d ever heard of Marie Curie. How would he know these things? What was he, a schoolteacher, a marker of exams? When Achilles answered in these terms she smiled briefly, as if his response confirmed something. Her teeth were yoghurt-white like her mother’s; she looked as thin as a salt shaker beside her sister, who possessed the bodily dimensions that Achilles associated with Greekness, with his own mother, with his aunts, with Ithakans. But if asked (and this query was never presented to him, rather a question he posed only to himself), Achilles would have said Penelope was the fairer daughter, because of that certain resemblance. His connection to Eleftheria had been bad from the start. Probably his fault. Then his relationship with Penelope should be better, he thought. It could be a way to make amends for his marriage. Maybe Penny would change her mind about working in the cafe, maybe she’d come to enjoy Achillion life, like Lucky. There was love going on here, Achilles told himself.

He finished with the club and studied his hands. His fingernails were grainy and dark yellow like stained pine. He picked up a one-page letter from the university, which had arrived that day. A stranger, a professor of chemistry, invited Penelope Asproyerakas to meet with him and discuss a possible course of study. Achilles read the letter, and read it again, until it no longer upset him, then he folded the paper, slid it back into the envelope and carried it out of the room, into the kitchen.

A sleepy Valia, after brushing her teeth with powder, picked up the stack of magazines she’d been setting aside. With cigarette papers she’d tabbed the articles that might interest Penny—about Australian women at teachers’ college; women who were midwives and doctors; or who were writers; or who worked in the Foreign Service. Over several weeks Valia had compiled stories that described a range of professions possible in 1946. None of these articles mentioned working in a family-run restaurant; just as well, since it was now plain as a cafe plate that Penny wasn’t meant for the Achillion. Valia hoped her sister might read these stories and see, in some electric moment, a line of work to pursue. Maybe Penny already possessed secret life plans; or maybe she’d view Valia’s best intentions, her maternal effort, as another kind of interference? You couldn’t tell how Penny would respond. Valia went down the hall and knocked on her sister’s door, the magazines under one arm, then she turned the doorknob and called her sister’s name into the obscurity of the dark room. Penny’s legs moved in the bed.