24
Sweet adolescence
Thessaloniki, January 1986
Dinos took a sip from the little cup filled to just below the rim with foamy and slightly muddy coffee, while sitting at his usual place at the top end of the oval formica table by the kitchen door. He lit up a cigarette and inhaled with delight. It was savouring moments like this, being in his body and feeling the smell and the texture of the coffee passing his lips, temporarily filling his mouth with aromatic bitterness and eventually warming his throat, and sensing the scent of his favourite Assos cigarette filling his lungs, these were the moments that made life worth living. It was as though nicotine fuelled his blood with the right substance for contemplation.
In his last check-up, after Leonora’s insistence, the doctor had bullied
