Platres Conclave

There was a note on the door reminding me that the early arrivers at the conclave were meeting at the Plaka taverna and that I should go there. I presumed the note had been on the door when I left for dinner, put there because Nico didn’t want to interrupt my writing, and that I had just missed it when I’d left the room.

I left the hotel and walked down the curved drive and then down onto the main street of Platres, which ran along the top of a ridge below the higher rise that the hotel perched on. There was essentially only one main street to Platres, with a square halfway between the ends of it. In recent years a couple of streets had been added off to either side, where the rich friends of the government and government officials of the capital had built vacation villas, but almost all of the amenities of the village lined the main, ridge-top street.

The Plaka taverna couldn’t be missed. It was at one corner of the village square. Most of it was devoted to an open-air taverna with tables and mismatched chairs sitting precariously on the beaten-earth ground. Strings of colored Christmas lights on poles marked the parameter of the café, and paper lanterns hung in the olive trees inside the set-off area, giving soft illumination to what was quite a happy and boisterous crowd for after midnight.

Nico was standing just inside the interior portion of the café, open to the outside with a long string of accordion doors. Another man, if anything more handsome than Nico, all sultry looks and expressive eyes and brilliant smile, was sitting beside Nico in a bright-blue, rush-seated wooden village chair. This man was strumming a guitar—quite expertly—and Nico was singing a song, also quite expertly.