Exactly!
Eh, this doesn't seem out of the ordinary. All of them are staying in or working at Nikos' hotel, so the odds of various hotel guests bumping into each other in the lobby are pretty high.
Oh right. I assumed Nikos had several hotels, as there's no way I believe the lobby we see in these last couple of pages belong to a hotel that has the outside we've seen before. My mind refuses to accept those are the interior and exterior of the same hotel. But I guess they are, aren't they.
This would follow if we prescribe to the "Nikos is evil" theory. I've been going back and forth on that, but currently I don't think he's evil.
I think he's manipulative to mold people into getting what he wants. Is it 'evil Nikos' if ultimately Andrew is happy, well taken care of and embracing his new life?
Because James is the one going around openly calling himself her Husband. If you take everything at face value, there's a number of reasons why this would be upsetting for Marina.
1) If her family is in danger/under surveillance, she might not want to endanger the life of someone that's uninvolved.
2) She doesn't want Andrew to hear and think that she's been unfaithful.
3) She doesn't want the rest of her family to hear and again, invite questions of infidelity. One of the things we're told by Niko's daughters is that (supposedly) Marina values loyalty above all else. That was the justification for apparently them all insisting that Andrew honor the promise he doesn't remember making.
Marina fled to Crete to think things over after Andrew agreed to be Nikos' wife for an evening. Somehow she interpreted that as a coming out of the closet moment, without talking to him.
The fact those conversations should have happened between Marina and Andrew directly, but were instead had with the cousins as an intermediary I feel are the number one reason there's a rift starting between the couple. They didn't grow apart, they were pushed apart because they were unable to communicate directly. The 'daughters' also took Andrews phone away and refuse to give Marinas number, so he isn't able to talk to her.
But Marina knew exactly where Andrew was. Did she ever try to get in touch with him? Were there messages that were withheld by anyone, preventing her and Andrew from communicating in those days she was in Crete?
If she didn't get in touch with the person she loves most in the world, is she really such a caring person to give a shoot what happens to some guy she doesn't know and (as she claims) talked to for an entire couple of hours and comes dangerously close to stalking her? Is that really the kind of person Marina is, with everything she's done to Andrew before?
I don't know. I think she's right to fear people questioning her fidelity. And that's the point. I don't think she's telling the entire story.
If she did remain loyal to Andrew in Crete, the only thing that would make sense to me is she's afraid of an extortion scheme.
I mean, she also doesn't mention being threatened with a gun (page 1117). You could argue she didn't mention James for the same reason she didn't mention the gun. Or, the same reason why a husband will say he's meeting an old college friend "Sam", and doesn't bother explaining that Sam is short for Samantha. Even if nothing happened or will happen, if you consider the situation "closed", you might not want to have to explain and defend yourself over a "non-issue". Especially if we're all saying that their relationship is in a rough patch.
I think leaving an aspect out of the story that ultimately doesn't really matter to the big scheme of things like the gun is less suss than trying to change the topic like she does.
Marina is an American journalist. It wouldn't surprise me if she's seen a gun before, so it may not be that startling to her. Especially as the man wielding it leaves as easily as he did. Which to me points to James being a plant, for what it's worth. He used the bald guy to get into the good graces of Marina, he helped her out and later he approaches her again. He isn't an innocent bystander. She may not know that, but I definitely assume he's a player into the bigger game. And if he is, he would want to do things to either drive a further wedge between her and Marina or to use her to get closer to the family on behalf of someone else.
If that is indeed the goal of James, what would stop him from trying to seduce Marina even though she's said she's married?
I don't really know/care if it goes either direction other than whether it makes sense once we see the full picture. Right now, Nikos being a passive participant doesn't ring true to me. We've got very little characterization for him personality wise, but from a behavior stand point the one thing we have seen is that he seems awfully eager to be making out and fucking his niece's husband once femmed. That seems a bit beyond "lonely rich guy is eager to reconnect with someone and when the opportunity comes will leap on it" and more towards "seems like this guy wants something and seems willing to take things down his preferred direction." Going back to Page 68, him getting on one knee and proposing always felt weird to me. It wasn't done playfully, it was something Nikos intent on doing. Same with him making out with his niece's former husband in front of her. There's keeping up appearances, but then there's making a show of it. And often, his actions seem to lean on the later, in my interpretation.
I agree with your interpretation in that last sentence. I don't trust Nikos in being innocent. He may be only using the situation as presented to him and it may only be his daughters outside of his knowledge feminising a guy to mold him a new wife. That may be what's going on too. But I think he has a more active hand into things than that.
