Why I Killed My Best Friend

by Amanda Michalopoulou

  I spend my entire allowance on Da Vinci watercolors, on charcoals, sketch pads. It’s been five whole years since I drew, since that fiasco with the Savings Day prize. But it’s as if I’ve been drawing on the inside the whole time: where did these color combinations come from? The splashes of yellow, the animals, the women in long dresses, the urgent need for black? I paint like a construction worker pouring cement, thick layers of color on larger and larger sheets of paper. I want to paint the walls of my room black and then cover that black with pictures of snakes wearing crowns, leaky pirogues, female figures in long skirts whose hems blaze with flames. Indigent families warm themselves by that fire, children reach up to pluck fabric fruit off the skirts. The snakes with crowns are Anna’s father. The pirogues are my parents. The women are Antigone, who this year has taken to wearing long, tasseled skirts. And the fire on the hem, of course, is Anna.

  As for me, I’m the hungry child in the background, reaching for a piece of fruit.

  “What kind of crap is this?”

  I’ve unrolled my drawings on the table in the round room in the apartment in Paris, next to a pile of books by Deleuze, Lyotard, Baudrillard and Guy Debord, directly beneath a photograph of Poulantzas and a poster that reads: I take my desires for reality, because I believe in the reality of my desires. It’s Easter. I came to visit precisely because I believe in the reality of my desires. I had the cylindrical container between my legs for the entire flight and this is what I get for my trouble. Anna is back to making her familiar old faces. She’s not afraid anymore.

  “What don’t you like about it?” I ask.

  “Why don’t you ask what I do like? It’s easy, quick, ornamental. You’re better than this.”

  “Do you want me to explain the symbolism?”

  “Symbolism shouldn’t be something you have to explain.”

  I have to admit, she has a point.

  “Come on, I’ll show you something that doesn’t need explaining.” She grabs me by the hand and literally pulls me up to her room, which for the next ten days will be our room. It’s a tiny attic with a slanting ceiling and a double bed strewn with woven Moroccan pillows. She lifts the bedspread, revealing a wooden drawer in the base of the bed. She pulls open the drawer and hands me a photograph of a skinny boy with liquid eyes and short hair.

  “Well? Does that need explaining?”

  “You guys are a thing?”

  “His name is Raoul. He’s half French, half Algerian. Aren’t those the most amazing eyes? I want you to meet him, Maria.”

  “Have you guys gone far?”

  “Yes, I have to tell you about that, too . . . He touched me all over!”

  “You didn’t write to me about that!”

  “There are some things you can’t write about.”

  Anna confuses me the older we get. She’s always telling me what to do—to kiss her, to break up with Kostas—and meanwhile she does whatever she likes. If I were the one who’d let a boy touch me everywhere, I’d have had her to reckon with.

  “I think we’re old enough now. It’s so amazing, to be touched like that.”

  She explains in detail how a boy pushes aside your skirt, then your underwear, then slips his finger into your vagina. It sounds disgusting.

  “And it doesn’t hurt?” I ask.

  “Just at first.”

  “What do you like about it?”

  “It’s a way of getting closer to someone.”

  Before we leave the house I shut myself in the bathroom for a little while. I lock the door and try to find my vagina, some depression that would admit a finger. If it brings you closer to someone else, maybe it could bring me closer to myself, too. But I can’t find an opening. It’s solid everywhere.

  “What, you started locking the door?” Anna shouts, pounding on the door with her fists. “What kind of friends are we, anyhow? We don’t pee together anymore?”

  Raoul opens the door and kisses us the French way, three times, on alternating cheeks. He lives by Blanche station, in a tiny room with an unmade bed, posters for the band Bazooka, and books about Fassbinder, Godard, and Pasolini. His window looks onto the rooftops across the way and while the two of them kiss, I stare out at the depthless, tiled horizon. He’s really very handsome and he’s a university student, too, studying graphic design. From the very beginning, with Apostolos the plumber, I knew Anna would go for older guys. He’s twenty years old, just imagine!

  Raoul is very polite to me. “Anna talks about you all the time,” he says, then opens a beer with his teeth and offers it to me. It’s eleven in the morning and we’re drinking beer; the day is off to a strange start. We go out into the freezing Parisian air, pull our hats down over our ears, and they take me to see Beaubourg. We wear ourselves out with walking, stop every few hours for coffee, mussels with pommes frites, or pear tarte, we climb Montmartre, Raoul and Anna kiss, I stare at my coffee spoon or the hem of my coat.

  “We have to find you a boyfriend, too,” Anna says slyly.

  They decide to introduce me to Michel.

  Michel dresses exactly the same way Raoul does—black shirt, a chain on his pants, a leather jacket with Sex Pistol patches—but his ears stick out and he has a sad look in his eyes. A similarity in dress says a lot about a friendship. Anna and I, meanwhile, are in our goth phase—romantic white blouses with lots of lace, white powder on our faces. It’s not healthy, to consume such large doses of The Cure and Verlaine all at once.

  “How did the two of you meet?” I ask.

  Raoul tells me they went to the same boarding school. One day, during room check, when they were supposed to be cleaning their rooms, Michel picked up all his trash off the floor and pinned it to the wall, like butterflies. The monitor had no idea how to react. The rumor spread from mouth to mouth and Raoul was impressed. He learned everything about the Sex Pistols from Michel, about the situationists and the Marche des Beurs anti-racism movement, even formed ties with some people in squats in Berlin. I figure all that learning must have happened in sign language, because Michel barely ever opens his mouth. Could I fall for someone so silent? For now it’s enough that he’s active in the anti-racist movement and that he rides his bicycle all over Paris, and if he wants to tell me something he just draws it, as if he were mute. He wears glasses, too, like me. How do two people with glasses kiss, anyhow?

  I find out that very same night. They take off their glasses, place them on the table by Raoul’s bed and slowly sink into the pillows, half blind. If you’re nearsighted, the other person always looks better when you’re not wearing your glasses. His skin looks softer, his eyes sort of hazy, as if you’re only dreaming them. Until the others come back bearing pizza, Michel and I kiss, just kiss. I try to unbutton his shirt. “Aren’t we moving sort of fast?” he asks.

  We sit on the floor eating pizza and Anna sings “Avanti Popolo” at the top of her lungs. Is that really a song that goes with pizza? Is it possible to say yes and no at the same time? I want and don’t want? Can you curse your home economics class while touching up your lip gloss in the bathroom? Dream of freedom but be unable to find your own vagina? That night, when Anna and I crawl into bed in the attic room, I speak to her in a disjointed rush, still tipsy from the morning beers and the vodka we drank at Raoul’s. Anna crosses her arms over the comforter and listens to me carefully. She’s thinking.

  “What do you say, Anna?”

  She doesn’t say anything. And it’s not because she’s still thinking.

  She’s asleep.

  I pad downstairs to the bathroom in bare feet. Anna is still sleeping, but her father is awake, sitting in his velvet armchair with the worn upholstery. It’s as if he stepped right out of the photographs: he’s smoking a pipe and reading Liberation.

  “So here I am, finally meeting my daughter’s alter ego,” he says, and holds out a hand to me. His handshake is so warm it makes my knuckles crack.

  “I propose we go out for breakfast. What do you say? It’s a beautiful day toda
y.” He points out the window at a little café across the street. “That’s my favorite place right there.”

  “What about Anna?”

  “She’s not a cripple. When she wakes up, she’ll come find us.”

  We sit in the window and look out at the passersby, and they look back at us. I order hot chocolate and a croissant, Anna’s father drinks a coffee but doesn’t eat anything. I try to picture him with Antigone, in one of those moments that grown-up couples share. Him putting a finger in her vagina, for instance.

  “What are you laughing about?” he asks.

  “Nothing, I just thought of something funny.”

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you? That’s fine, I respect people who protect their thoughts.”

  Anna’s father doesn’t talk about leftist politics all the time, as I had imagined, about separatist movements and revolutionary tactics. He mostly just strokes his beard and tells me funny stories about when he first moved to France, how he got the metro stations confused, or would forget his keys and have to spend the night on the steps of his apartment building. He does tells me a political joke, though: “A leftist gets into a taxi. He tells the driver: turn left here, then left again, then the other way.” At some point his face clouds over. He takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes and stares at me, deep in thought. A minute or two pass before he speaks.

  “What’s all this about the earthquake? What do you think, Maria?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen Anna so scared.”

  “Scared? Just scared? Hopeless is how I’d describe it. Terrified. What did she say to you? Is she going back with you when you leave?”

  “We haven’t talked about it yet.”

  “It’ll be a shame if she doesn’t. She’ll have to repeat a whole year of school.”

  Anna in middle school while I’m already in high school? Impossible!

  “How about the two of us make a deal? Can you persuade her to go back? You’re the only person Anna ever listens to—”

  Me? Anna listens to me?

  “—and when the two of you graduate, I’ll bring you both here to Paris. The two of you can live here with me, all expenses paid. What did Anna say you two wanted to study? Psychology?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Well? What do you say to our deal?”

  He shakes my hand again, even more forcefully, and again my knuckles crack. Anna’s father tells me to speak to him in the singular and call him by his first name, Stamatis. The world is suddenly simpler. Free studies in Paris. A warm croissant across the street from the house, Stamatis’s treat. Art school. Boys like Raoul and Michel. A human shield in support of the Arabs. Pizza on the floor. Beer in the morning, as if we’re characters in an avant-garde French film. And my best friend Anna by my side.

  Speak of the devil—here she is, wild-eyed, pushing through the revolving door.

  “If you ever do that again, I’ll never speak to you!”

  She’s not talking to me, but to her father. She doesn’t just love him, she adores him, and wants him all to herself.

  Her anger at me, too, doesn’t let up all day. We walk through Buttes-Chaumont Park as if we were racing, Anna deliberately keeping a few steps ahead.

  “Anna, I would’ve woken you up if I thought it would matter so much.”

  “You should’ve known.”

  “But why does it matter?”

  Anna can’t explain it to me, she just shrugs her shoulders. She’s perfectly willing to share her only sandwich during recess, but her dad is a different story.

  “I’ll forgive you, but only if we switch boys tonight.”

  “Are you crazy? You like Raoul.”

  “I like Michel more. I hadn’t realized he was so smart.”

  “Take both of them if you want, I couldn’t care less!”

  “No, that’s not how it works. Since you wanted to share my father, you have to share Raoul, too.”

  “How do you know Raoul won’t mind?”

  “Oh, he won’t. We’re in Paris, remember? People here aren’t bourgeois.”

  The four of us meet at a café in Les Halles. Anna leans over and whispers in Raoul’s ear, and he turns and winks at me. They’re depraved. And in the name of liberation, or just in order to make a statement, they’re making me do things I don’t want to do. We go to the movies, it’s something by Wim Wenders, I sit on the aisle, Raoul next to me, then Anna and then Michel. I’m worried that the poor guy has no idea what’s going on, that he won’t know what hit him. But soon enough, in the darkness of the theater, I see him and Anna kissing and feel Raoul’s breath on my neck. I lean my head on his shoulder, try to relax and just let whatever’s going to happen happen. I see Michel’s hand on Anna’s knees, pulling her skirt up and groping around. Now I’m the one who doesn’t know what hit me.

  I’m worried that Anna has a vagina and I don’t.

  I now avoid Stamatis systematically. Shielding myself from view behind Anna’s back, I just throw him a quick hello or goodbye when we pass in the hall.

  “Hold on, where are you going? Go and get Anna, I want to tell you guys a joke.”

  Anna comes down the stairs, sighing. “What do you want, Dad?”

  “Don’t get all worked up, I just heard this great joke I wanted to share.”

  Stamatis gets a tea bag from the kitchen. “Okay, so this is an American missile,” he says. “When the Russians see it they want one just like it. They ask the Americans how much it costs. Ten million dollars, the Americans say.” Stamatis tears off the tab where the brand name is. “What if we take off this piece? Then how much? the Russians ask. Seven million dollars, the Americans say, but without that piece the missile won’t launch.” Stamatis pulls off the little string, too. “And without that piece, how much is it then?” Finally he rips open the tea bag, dumping the leaves, which supposedly represent the fuel, onto a saucer. “Now the missile is dirt cheap, but what use is it without any fuel? the Americans ask.” Stamatis stands the empty bag on the table, lights one edge with his lighter and starts a countdown, from ten to one, in Russian. The tea bag slowly rises toward the ceiling, then falls gently back down to the table—a soft pile of ash.

  I clap enthusiastically.

  Anna glares at him through slitted eyes. “It’s insulting to the Russians, Dad!”

  “Since when are you Russian?”

  Anna heaves a sigh, takes the stairs two at a time and shuts herself in her room. I run after her.

  “Leave me alone, merde!” she says, her head under a pillow.

  “Anna, why don’t you come home? Isn’t it time we were both back in Athens?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about we go across the street for a hot chocolate and maybe you’ll figure it out?” We wrap scarves around our necks and clomp down the stairs.

  “I supposedly came here to bring you home,” I say to her, stirring my hot chocolate.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re completely impossible, but I can’t live without you.”

  We’re sitting in the window with the latest issue of Actuel, on Michel’s recommendation. Anna shoots daggers at an old man reading Le Figaro across the way, then turns to me with a huge grin, as if what I said has just sunk in.

  “Really? You really can’t live without me?”

  She adores hyperbole. She swings from one emotion to the next as if all flipping a switch in her brain: rage, tenderness, jealousy, love. Whereas I need time to collect my thoughts, to swallow my anger. This time Anna has gone too far. I don’t like the way she tells me who to kiss and for how long. I wonder: do I really want her to come back to Athens? Or am I only doing it for the free studies Stamatis promised?

  “Can you live without me?” I throw the question back at her.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well?”

  “Okay, fine, I’ll come.”

  We hug. But instead of relief, what I feel is unease.

  Mich
el and Anna kiss. Raoul opens cans of beer with his teeth and flips through Bourdieu’s La Distinction. I’m sitting in Stamatis’s armchair, fingernails sunk into the worn velvet. I don’t want to read, I don’t want to be kissed. I don’t want to drink beer, either. I want to cry. I jump to my feet, throw open the front door and slam it behind me.

  The air outside is freezing and I’ve left the house with no coat. I need to find an Ikeja, whatever Ikeja still has room for me. By now I’ve learned how to pack a suitcase properly, I won’t try to bring eggs or other breakables, I won’t ask bus drivers irrelevant questions. I’ll board a train, slide my suitcase onto the rack above my seat and watch as one landscape gives way to the next. As the trees whip past into the distance behind me, my thoughts, too, will fly out of my head one by one—zzzmmm, zzzmmm—until my mind is entirely empty—sssssshhhh—and I’ll be nothing more than a girl on a train.

  It’s cold, absurdly cold. So I tweak the story slightly: a boy comes into the train car and wraps a blanket with red flowers on it around my shoulders. It’s my baby blanket, and I’m sorry to have been defeated by my own limitations, but I needed someone to come and cover me with something. The boy’s eyes are as liquid as Raoul’s, he has Michel’s bicycle with him, and he metes out attention with an eyedropper, like Angelos—just enough for me to fall in love without his lifting a finger—and because I don’t like the story I’ve invented, I duck into the metro station and huddle in its relative warmth, shake my head so that every last thought will leave, curl into a ball on the tiled floor and start to cry. No one talks to me, no one asks me what’s wrong. We’re in Paris, after all, and—how did Anna put it?—people here aren’t bourgeois.