Jovan wiped his glasses and after putting them back, he scanned Trevor. Grabbing his shoulders, he joyfully exclaimed: “You are a real badass, and you still look cool. Haven’t changed a bit! Right, Anna? This is Trevor… Teo, a friend I once told you about."
Jovan’s wife held out her hand and gave Trevor an appraising look.
Anna was a tall, slim, conventionally attractive woman with no makeup, dressed in a cheap grey coat and long black skirt, which could not hide her aristocratic posture. Trevor took immediate notice of her wonderfully manicured and well-cared-for hands, although he was taken aback by her contrasting appearance.
“Well, you were also once a tall, handsome guy with green eyes and thick dark hair,” she joked, lightly stroking Jovan’s bald spot. “As far as I know from what my husband told me, you are the same age, and were thick as thieves many years ago.”
Anna spoke Serbian well, but with a slight Russian accent. She looked, maybe, ten years younger than Jovan and seemed unnaturally guarded; even her joke sounded forced to Trevor.
“Jovan, you talked about me?” Trevor said, and immediately offered: “Friends, let’s sit on the terrace. My table is free, as if it was waiting for you.
“Yes, I spoke a lot about us, my friend,” answered Jovan as he sat down at the table. He turned to his wife and continued: “Honey, we have been friends since we were twelve. Oh, the trouble we got into! We even planned to serve in the Legion together. Right, Teo? I didn’t pass the medical then, but we did dream to be together always. By the way, how long are you here for?”
“A couple of days. I wanted to spend Christmas somewhere in the mountains, close to the snow, because I don’t think we’ll have snow here this year.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty warm for December. Well, Trevor, tell me what you are up to these days?” Jovan smiled.
But Anna took Jovan’s hand and said: “Honey, you stay and catch up with your friend and the boys and I will take a walk along the waterfront. I’m sure you will have fun without us.” She stood up.
As Trevor was helping Anna with her coat, he noticed a small piece of paper stapled to the inside of the collar. It was a receipt with a drycleaner’s number. Jovan had the same receipt stapled to his coat. Trevor thought about it for a moment, but Jovan’s voice distracted him.
“A fine woman, isn’t she?!”
“Yeah…” he replied hollowly and glanced at Anna’s retreating form. Both kids dragged their feet after her and soon all three were lost in the crowd on the square.
“You can’t imagine how lucky I am with her. We’ve been together for ten years.
“Is she Russian?”
“No, Serbian, but lived all her life in Catalonia. Ok, enough about me. How are you? Married? What about work?"
It really had been a long time and they did have a lot to talk about.
Trevor met Jovan in the early 1980s, at school in Paris, where Jovan’s Serbian family had moved from Yugoslavia, having fled Kosovo after the 1981 clashes. As a kid, Jovan would often tell Trevor about those events, when crowds of refugees traveled from Kosovo to Serbia, leaving behind their houses and villages because of Albanian nationalists. Albanians had burned the village where Jovan’s family lived to the ground, turning hundreds of people into refugees.
Trevor befriended Jovan the moment he crossed the school’s threshold. At first, Trevor felt sorry for the modest, quiet and always hungry boy, who spoke very poor French. After some time, however, they became the closest of friends. Jovan was a frequent guest at the house of Aunt Anne Frachon.
