by Alex A King
"Where's home?"
He pointed to the far left corner on the top floor. "Here, of course. Me, my fat wife, and our children. Stavros lives down there."
Bottom floor.
"Bachelors' quarters," Stavros said glumly.
Then the bastards deserted me.
Grandma led me to her house of straw and sticks. "This is the house your great-great-grandparents bought when they were first married."
I nodded, hoping the noise I made was a polite one.
"After your grandfather and I married, your great-grandparents moved into the big house so we could live here."
Very generous of them. What did they do to the kids they hated?
"It is a tradition," she continued. "The eldest child lives here, and then their eldest child."
Chilled water began a slow pour through my veins. "Who's your eldest child?"
She looked at me. "Your father has told you nothing about your family?"
"He told me about Baboulas. Does that count?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Yes, that he told you. Very indiscreet."
"I was a kid."
"And now, as a woman, you still remember his stories."
I nodded.
"Like I said," she continued, "indiscreet."
She pushed through the metal gate. The fence sat atop a concrete footing about six inches tall. Inside the fence the ground was smooth concrete. Plants everywhere, all in pots painted red. Not a subtle red, but an IN YOUR FACE BECAUSE I AM RED shade of red.
The front door wasn't locked.
"Nobody locks their doors here," she told me
"Well, it's not like a stranger could just walk in here, right?"
"I mean in this part of Greece. In the city, yes, but in the villages? Not unless a person is very paranoid. And I am not paranoid about my front door."
Doors … maybe not. But I had the stomach-sinking, throat-gripping feeling that Grandma was super-duper paranoid about other things. More dangerous things. Come on, this was a woman nicknamed after the boogeyman. We're not talking complete sanity here. I really hoped it wasn't a dominant gene.
Grandma's place was a dump, inside and out. A clean dump—but a dump is a dump is a dump. The grand tour lasted fifteen seconds. Bedroom (hers), bedroom (mine—allegedly), a big cupboard between bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and two-thirds of a bathroom.
I scratched my head, wondering where she'd stashed the missing piece of the puzzle. "Where's the toilet?"
"Outside."
"Outside?"
"Outside."
I stalked over to the kitchen window, flung the shutters open, shoved my head outside. Sure enough, the toilet was outside. In an outhouse.
An outhouse.
"No indoor toilet?"
"What for? I have a good toilet."
Good was subjective.
I fell into one of the kitchen chairs to contemplate the situation. Right now every angle looked the same shade of bad.
The kitchen was marginally less awful than the rest of the place. A generous counter, an archaic oven with a pipe running overhead, all the way to the outside wall, and a big slab of a table with six chairs. The refrigerator was pre war—though I wasn't sure which war. One of the early ones. It had a lift-and-pull handle. I squinted at the bottles lined up on the windowsill.
"Which one is Granddad?"
She pointed out an olive oil tin with a photograph taped to the front. The subject was a middle-aged male with a lush black pelt on his head. He was wearing a three-piece suit and his eyes were shut.
"Aww," I said. "He's sleeping."
"The photographer took that at his funeral. That is not his real hair."
Yikes.
When I recovered I said, "Why the toupee?"
"He wanted to look his best for God."
Was a sit-down with the Big Kahuna a sure thing for any member of this family? It was looking a whole lot like, No.
"You want coffee?" Grandma asked.
"At this time of night?" She gave me one of those looks reserved for annoying grandkids and other pains in the ass. "Okay, just one cup. Please."
She heaped finely ground coffee into a tiny long-handled pot. Then she lit a match, touching it to one of those gas cookers people take camping. The coffee was done when the pot started to boil and the foam rushed to top. She divided the coffee between two cups that belonged in a dollhouse. I knew coffee, and that was barely enough for a minor caffeine tingle.
"Something to eat, eh? A little something sweet?"
Now she was speaking my language. "Yes, please!" I might have whimpered.
At my sudden burst of enthusiasm she chuckled and lifted the glass dome lid on a cake stand sitting on the counter.
Baklava. I'd know that nut and pastry confection anywhere. The layers of phyllo start out crispy, and then slowly drown as the honey syrup seeps in.
"You like the syrup, eh?"
"It's the best part."
Another chuckle as she spooned a diabetes-inducing waterfall of syrup over the diamond-shaped slice, with a single clove stuck in its center. "That is the best part."
The baklava was otherworldly, but the Greek coffee kicked my butt back to Earth. So much for a minor buzz—this stuff could punch Starbucks in the throat.
"Why did you send Takis and Stavros to get my father?"
"My reasons are my own," she said. "But trust me, they are very good reasons."
Oh. Well. That changed everything, didn't it? "Where's my father?"
"If I knew that he would be here."
"Why am I here? Takis and Stavros brought the wrong Makris. You could have made them send me home."
"I want you here so I can protect you."
"From?"
"Whoever is responsible for your father's abduction."
"Our next-door neighbor saw them. He said they looked like mobsters."
She scoffed. "Everybody in the abduction business looks like a mobster. What else would they look like?"
I thought about it for a moment. "I guess I'd try to look like I fit in."
"Good idea," she said. "I will consider that."
Things were looking shadier by the minute. "Who do you think took him?"
She shrugged, but it was no casual move. There was a weight on her shoulders, and that's when I remembered my father was her child; she had to be worried sick, even if she had a face like an Easter Island moai.
"If I say names they will be guesses. I cannot do anything with a guess."
A long sigh escaped me. "Then I have to go home."
"And do what?"
"Call the police, the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security. Whoever it takes to find Dad. Then after he's found, go to sleep in my new apartment, and get up and go to work."
A funny shadow tiptoed across her face.
Uh-oh. "What?"
"It was a terrible accident. Okay, two terrible accidents. Very coincidental. First your work burned down, then your boss fell down some stairs and broke his legs."
"Both those things?"
"Yes."
"What a coincidence."
"Yes. But your boss is a little bit of a criminal, and not a successful one at that."
"Huh. They say stuff like that comes in threes. Anything else you want to tell me?"
She shrugged. "Maybe your apartment building burned down, too."
My breath was coming out in short huffs. My brain was screaming, FOR GOD'S SAKE WOMAN, RUN.
"Maybe my apartment building burned down? I hadn't even moved in yet! What about the people who live there? What about my deposit?"
"How much?"
When I told her she left the table and reached into one of the kitchen drawers, pulling out a thick roll of euros. She peeled off several notes, pushed them to my side of the table.
"The people are all fine. Nobody was hurt."
No crime, I thought, remembering my father's words. Which was funny, because it was looking a whole lot like my family was crime around here.
<
br /> "Thanks," I said.
She came around to my side of the table, kissed me on both cheeks. "Get some sleep, Katerina. We will talk more tomorrow."
When I woke up during the night, nothing had changed. I was in my grandmother's second bedroom, with its rustic furniture and shuttered windows. The curtains were sheer, the sheets were white, and the walls were a gag-a-rrific shade of green. One single bed, two bedside tables that started life as crates, and a lamp with a naked bulb to complete the picture. I needed to pee, and if I didn't want to pop, the place I had to pee was outside, in a wood hut. Like a civilized savage.
Using my super-stealth skills, I tiptoed down the narrow hall and tried to avoid a sudden onslaught of claustrophobia.
I've never been claustrophobic (or any kind of phobic, unless you count spiders, snakes, ringworm, Ebola, head lice, venereal diseases, hornets, and—for some weird reason—geese) but I was developing a case of it here in the dark. By the time I burst outside, I was covered in a thin layer of cold sweat.
Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber had packed a bag, yeah, but the essentials were missing. No pajamas. No nightgown. The only thing they had for me to sleep in was a Keep Portland Weird T-shirt and packet of underwear I won in a Secret Santa three Christmases ago. My size, but they were dotted with cats and cutesy phrases about pussy. So that's what I was wearing to my middle-of-the-night sojourn.
The stars were strangers here. Configurations altered just a hair, brighter shine. Back home we were so busy shining our own lights in their eyes that they'd become duller over time—when they were there at all. But here on Mount Pelion they had gathered to watch me sneak to the outhouse. Check out the American chick in the cat undies. This should be hil-a-ri-ous, I imagined them whispering.
Yes, very funny. I'd jumped from indoor plumbing and air-conditioning to something slightly more current than a cave, with suitable bushes near the entrance. A bush would be better, in some ways. With a bush there's no pretense. An outhouse is just a bunch of bushes with ambition but no real skill.
The air was warm and lightly scented with something I didn't recognize. Some kind of flower. Delicate, slightly sweet. Candy. My stomach grumbled. There was a hint of chlorine, too. Somewhere nearby there was a swimming pool.
I held my breath for a moment. Listened. Heard the faint slosh, slosh of someone cutting through the pool water's surface.
Someone else was up.
My burning desire to pee subsided. Bathroom performance anxiety; what if the swimmer heard me tinkle?
I crept along the side of the house, past the wretched outhouse. Potted bushes and trees obscured the view, but I had hands, didn't I? Yes, and they did a half-assed job of pushing the slender branches aside. Those things might have looked thin, but they were made of some kind of semi-bendy steel. They bit and slapped at my arms. I fought back—and hard. Triffids would never get the best of me.
The night swimmer was male. He was tall and big, but solid. The kind of solidity you find in walls and concrete blocks. Broad sloping shoulders, carved out of bronze. Dark hair slicked back with pool water. Face like a pretty-boy with an extra ten years on his odometer to sharpen his soft edges. When he turned, I saw his back was a river of scars.
He grabbed a towel off one of the deck chairs, started drying himself off. My motor started to rumble. Between work and watching television, it had been a while between sexual escapades.
Then I mentally slapped my forehead. Ugh. What the heck was I thinking? The compound was for family and a few employees—but mostly family. Which meant there was a serious chance I was separated from Adonis there by a few pointy twigs—at best—on the ol' family tree.
There were laws against drooling over a cousin. Although, maybe not in Greece. I didn't know what their incest laws covered—brothers and sisters, maybe—but at home there was a serious ick factor involved if you share the same chin.
On my hands and knees, I backed away from the bushes, from the fence, from potential birth defects in any future offspring.
Then I stopped.
Not my fault. Something was blocking me. Instinct kicked me in the guts, forcing me to act. I rolled over onto my back, limbs flailing. Just my luck: my flight-or-fight made me go belly-up like a cockroach. A bear would have been better.
Thanks, brain. After all I've done for you.
"Argh," I whimpered. It was meant to be a scream, but it lost serious weight on the way out.
Standing over me was Pool Guy. He was bigger up close. A fraction older than me—early 30s. I wasn't normally intimidated by hot foreign guys, but this one had two big guns, and the metal one was pointed right at me.
"I'm Katerina Makris." The words whooshed out. "The old woman who lives there—" I shook a shaking finger at the shack. "—is my grandmother."
Not a word out of the guy. He took in my T-shirt, my cat-covered underwear, then he lowered the gun. He offered me his hand. My pride wouldn't let me touch it.
"Thanks, but I can do it," I said. "It probably doesn't look like it, but I get up off the ground all the time. I do yoga." No—no yoga. Not in my past or present. I rolled over first, mooning him with my cats, then hauled myself to my feet. Very graceful—more rhino than swan. When I turned around—poof!—he had vanished.
Weird. I peered behind the bushes, peeked over the fence, but he'd done a bunk. Not my bladder, though. It was back, and it wanted to know why I was standing around, jiggling.
It's okay, I told myself. Pool Guy probably wasn't on the other side of the fence, watching me limp into the outhouse.
Chapter 4
Grandma inspected me as I shlepped into the kitchen barefoot. Morning's thin light was doing her all kinds of favors. It softened her wrinkles, knocking at least six months off her age.
"Where are your shoes?"
"All I have boots. What's wrong with bare feet?"
She dropped what she was doing and disappeared into her bedroom. When she returned it was with slippers. She dumped them at my feet. "Put them on." Then she nodded to the rest of me. "Did you get into a fight with a cat?"
"Bushes," I said.
"Which bushes?"
"The ones at the back."
"What were you doing in the bushes, eh?"
"Checking out the view."
"Of what? It was night."
"I didn't realize you have a pool."
"Katerina, my love, I have everything—even a plane or two."
Or two? "There was a guy out there swimming. In the middle of the night. Who does that?"
"What did he look like?"
"Greek."
She went to the pantry, hauled out a sack of flour. I went to lift it for her but she shooed me away. "You would make a terrible police witness."
"I know. It's a curse." I was like that old MadTV skit: He look-a like-a man.
Footsteps interrupted the conversation. The screen door swung open and in walked a conundrum. I always felt bad when I couldn't figure out which pronoun to use, especially when using the wrong one could hurt someone's feelings. The hair and makeup said woman; biology said dude.
"This is Rita," Grandma said. "My youngest son. He's a travesti, as you can see."
The English-Greek lexicon in my head failed me. Was travesti a cross-dresser or transgender? It was a muddy puddle I didn't want to jump into, so I went with woman until Dad's sibling corrected me.
Aunt Rita grabbed me by the shoulders, stamped hot pink kisses on both my cheeks. "Katerina! I am your Aunt Rita!"
Well, that took care of that. Aunt Rita it was.
"You have come to see us at last! And look at you, you are beautiful!"
No sooner had the compliment left her lips than she began dry spitting to ward away the evil eye.
Generally speaking, the evil eye floated around hunting down compliments. It was like that one skanky acquaintance every woman has in high school or college, the one who can't handle anyone else scoring male attention. So the minute you excused yourself to go to the restroom, she'd
pounce and offer your potential date a BJ.
Where there were compliments, there was the evil eye. And like that one skanky chick, it would stick around if you didn't spit on it.
Aunt Rita was a looker. Sequined hot pants and a ruffled blouse tied around her midriff. The shoes were ejected out of the seventies, landing in Greece, 2014. A cake decorator had gone crazy with her face, frosting her angles with pink blush and gold sparkly shadow. On her left forearm, a green-blue anchor had moored itself to her skin.
I squinted at the tattoo. "Were you in the navy?"
"Yes," she said, sounding like her voice got chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged for ten miles over gravel, through an Adam's apple. "But only for the guns and the men." Grandma said nothing, but her lips mashed together and her hands got busy scooping flour into an earthenware bowl. "Do you like it?"
"It's very evocative of the ocean," I said.
Aunt Rita pulled me back into her personal-sized cloud of Opium with a chest-bumping thud. What did she have in there—rocks? Impressive. "Your father is my favorite person," she said. "How is he? When will he come to see us, eh?"
"I don't know how he is," I said, feeling teary, not just from the perfume. "He was kind of kidnapped yesterday."
She pulled back. "Kidnapped! By who?"
"I don't know."
She looked at Grandma, perfectly plucked eyebrows raised. "Mama?"
Grandma shrugged over the sugar bag. "Maybe I have my suspicions."
"Why would they kidnap Michail?" my aunt asked.
"About that I have my suspicions, too."
Aunt Rita held out the chair for me. Old habits must die hard. We both sat and watched my grandmother hand-beat sugar and butter into oblivion. A little voice told me that Grandma was the kind of person who ponied up information when she was good and ready, and not a minute sooner.
After a few moments of silence, Aunt Rita reached for my hand. "Tell me," she said, "are you married?"
Grandma stopped beating for a moment. "Is there a ring on her finger? No. No ring on her finger."
"How old are you?" Aunt Rita asked me.
"Twenty-eight."
My aunt nodded. "Mama will find you a rich man."
"I don't want a rich man. I want a good one."
