The year is 1965. The American prestige and the dollar value are both riding high. At the sea-side tavern in Greece, where Kostas works, the clientele consists of merchant mariners constantly talking about the exotic places and the exotic women they've known, and of retirees from America receiving their pension in dollars. The retirees say that in America the minimum wage is one and a quarter dollar per hour, the same as for a full day's hard labor Kostas is putting in the kitchen. And over there, they say, with a few dollars down-payment you can buy any kind of car you want and have the women running after you like cats after a fish monger. To the ears of twenty-four year old Kostas it sounds like the song of the Sirens, beckoning him and when suddenly he is confronted with the prospect of a shotgun wedding he quickly signs on a freighter, planning, when the time is right, to jump ship and get his share of the American good life.