“I know this is unexpected,” she said to Maria before she could walk off with her plates, “but this is from Nico and me. It’s just a thank you gift for your staff for working this evening. We understand there are eight of you?”
“Si, Missus Makris,” Maria replied.
“Great,” she said, “so that would be $150 for each of you. Happy New Year.”
“Thank you, Missus Makris,” Maria said and took the envelope graciously from Ruth’s hands.
“Now,” Ruth said, “the real secret… do you think you could have a bottle of Champaign put in our cabin with Mister Makris knowing?”
“Si, Missus Makris,” Maria responded.
“Great,” Ruth replied. “I have a special plan for him tonight and I want to surprise him.”
“Si, Missus Makris,” Maria said, a conspiratorial smile growing across her face, “I take care of it myself.”
“And that is why you are my favorite, Maria,” Ruth returned.
Turning away as Maria took the plates and the envelope back to the kitchen, Ruth looked for her husband. Glancing through the glass of the dining hall, she saw him standing outside in the waning light of the sunset. He was laughing and smoking a cigar while standing in a circle with three friends, “the boys” as Ruth called them. She smiled and walked out the door near them.
“So then I said,” Nico was saying as she approached, his accent weak after nearly 45 years living in the US, “if you want to jerk me off like that, you should have got a hotel room.”
All four of the men laughed at her husband’s story. Ruth rolled her eyes as she approached the men, accepting that they were all still tween boys in their minds. That was how all men were.
“I bet that shocked him,” Levi Goldstein, one of her husband’s closest friends, said.
“It did,” Nico replied, puffing smoke from the cigar out of his mouth. “But it also got him to double his offer.”
“Damn right,” a semi-slurred voice said from behind Ruth.
Turning quickly, she smiled as her eyes confirmed what her ears had heard. Alex and Jackie were approaching the group, smiles on their faces. She could tell that Alex had been drinking, something of a problem she had begun to expect, but he seemed to be still put together. Plus, Ruth trusted Jackie to keep her son in line, which she had for a decade now.
“Kamari mou!” Ruth exclaimed as she opened her arms. “I thought you would never make it.”
“Hi Mom,” Alex said, wrapping his arms around his mother.
She had slowly gained weight over the years, mostly because of age and slowing metabolism, but Alex, even in his drunken state, realized that his mom seemed more fit. She still had a thicker frame than when she was younger, but there was something about the way she gripped him that seemed stronger and lither.
“You look good, Ruth,” Jackie said from behind Alex as if she could read his mind. “I guess those yoga classes have been paying off.”
“Yes!” Ruth said as she pulled away from her son. “I have been noticing quite the change.”
“My boy!” Nico shouted from the deck. “Happy New Year! Come have a cigar with the men.”
Alex stepped out of the hug with his mother and looked to his wife. She nodded and he gave her one of his goofy smiles before heading up the steps to join his father and the other heads of household clearly holding some kind of business meeting in their dinner jackets and fancy, sheep-lined bomber coats to fight off the cold. At least Alex was dressed like he should be there.