by Alex A King
Looking at her, that seemed impossible. I had trouble squashing spiders; she slaughtered grown men for breakfast, and also possibly ate them. That last part may or may not have been true.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I knew? About the cancer, I mean.”
“Katerina my love, you have seen all this before. I would have been surprised if you had not recognized what was happening.”
Elbows on the table, I buried my head in my hands. Deja vu was slapping me all over the place. “What kind of cancer and how long did they give you?”
“Ovarian. They took them out not too long ago, but ... the doctor says maybe fifty-fifty percent chance I will still be here in five years if the chemotherapy works.”
If it did. In five years Grandma would be pushing eighty. Or maybe inching toward ninety. I wasn’t sure how old she was. What I knew about my family wouldn’t fill a Wikipedia page.
Grandma stood. She came around to my side of the table, dropped a kiss into my hair. “Get some sleep, eh? We will talk more tomorrow.”
I sat at the table for a long time, worrying about the future and the people who would or wouldn’t be in it. The way things were going, I wasn’t sure I had a future. Being part of the Family attracted a certain criminal element. Like attracting like.
Company—I needed company.
And I needed to be alone.
I got up, laid two napkins on the counter, and sat a diamond-shaped piece of baklava on each. Then I carried them across the courtyard to Xander’s ground floor apartment. I put my ear to the door and listened. Silence. Probably he was sleeping. I shouldn’t disturb him, right?
On the other hand, I’d brought baklava. Who minds being woken up if there’s baklava involved? I’d be at least eighty percent happier about waking up in the morning if there was pastry instead of an alarm clock sitting on my bedside table.
I was juggling the baklava, freeing up a hand to knock when someone tapped my shoulder. I jumped. The baklava tumbled to its death, but Xander’s hand caught it inches from the ground.
“Jeez!” I said. “How about some warning next time? I know you don’t talk, but how about footsteps or ... or ... one of those bells they put on goats and sheep? Nice save, by the way. Although I wouldn’t have dropped it if you said ‘hello’ like a normal person.”
He shrugged. The man was part panther, I swear. He’d snuck up behind me without the slightest whisper of sound, and he’d done it in slip-on sandals and wet swim shorts. I tried not to look down, but the view straight ahead was just as dangerous. My eyes landed on his pecs, with nothing surrounding them but acres of smooth, bronze skin.
“Baklava?” I squeaked.
He dumped both pieces in my hands.
“No, I brought it for you. Like an offering so you wouldn’t be mad if I woke you up. I didn’t even spit on it, although I should have for the ringtone incident.”
He snorted, pushed his door open, grabbed my shoulders and steered me inside.
Xander looked like the kind of guy whose apartment saw a lot of female traffic. The bedding was black and slinky; the decor was calm and masculine. Neat. Tidy. Everything in its place and a place for everything. Big TV. New, expensive computer. Women would like coming here. I liked coming here; it smelled like Xander, and Xander smelled good. But then so did Melas.
He grabbed a couple of plates out of the cupboard, handed me two glasses, then vanished into his bedroom.
I could take a hint. The baklava went on the plates. I filled the glasses from the cold-water jug in the refrigerator. Speaking of refrigerators, Xander’s was free of beer, soda, and condiments. And food ... there was no food. None. Just water. Which further increased my suspicions that he was some kind of robot.
When Xander came back, it was in loose shorts and a tank top that did his upper body all kinds of favors, but did me none—although my surging hormones had other plans. I said, as tactfully as possible, “Are you a robot?”
He tipped back his head and laughed.
Did robots laugh? Probably, if they were programmed to.
“I guess that’s a Yes.”
Silence. Neither a denial or a confirmation. He cracked the phyllo pastry with the edge of his fork. I did the same and didn’t speak again until there was nothing left but a dusting of crumbs and a smear of syrup on my plate. If I were alone, I’d lick it. Not Xander, though. He’d wash his plate and sit in the rack to dry. Was he ever anything less than perfect?
Besides the crappy taste in music, that is. As far as flaws went, Rembetika was a big one.
I gathered up our plates and forks, washed them, sat everything in the rack to dry. “Grandma wants me to drop the Germany thing, but I don’t think I can. My gut is telling me the Germans have something to do with Dad.”
I wiped my hands on the dishtowel, hung it back on its hook to air dry.
Then I went to bed—my bed.
~ ~ ~
I woke up to the glorious sound of vomiting. Instantly, I was catapulted back in time to Mom’s chemo days. I leaped out of bed and bolted to the bathroom to find Grandma hurling into the sink. I grabbed a face towel, rinsed it in cool water and lifted her tangle of hair. I laid the towel over her neck, and then tackled the business of her hairdo.
“This is going to start falling out soon, but in the meantime, let me redo this bun for you.”
She stood still as I eased the band loose and braided her hair into a thick graying column. When I was done, I went to the kitchen and brought back a glass of cold water and watched while she took small sips.
Grandma looked down at my bare feet. “Katerina, my love,” she said. “Where are your shoes?”
~ ~ ~
I’d seen airplanes flying lower than Grandma. Her soft, dopey smile was out of place with her widow’s black. Usually you could cut yourself on any Greek woman of a certain age. Not this version of Grandma. The only thing she could shred with her tongue was water. She was sitting under the arch in a pile of dogs.
“Ha-ha,” she said, when two hounds made a move on her lips at the same time. “That was the best kiss I have had in years.”
“Mama,” Aunt Rita said, shooting nervous glances at the driveway, “the guests are arriving.”
“So let them arrive. I am going to sit here and cuddle with the cute puppies.” She grabbed a happy looking lurcher. “Who is a cute little puppy dog? You are.”
The compound’s cats were stationed nearby, waiting on their share of the love. Grandma never paid them attention—either she wasn’t a pet person or she didn’t have time for animals—so they wanted to get some while the getting was good. Then they could all go back to ignoring each other.
Behind us in the courtyard, the family had assembled chairs, tables, and a stage for the band—all family. Since dawn, the menfolk had been spinning dead livestock over hot coals. As always, I tried not to make eye contact with lunch on the way past. One of the long steel spits was covered in sizzling kokoretsi, the best-smelling worst thing ever. Kokoretsi was made of the bits no one but dogs normally ate because they didn’t know any better. But somehow, tying the hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, and God knows what else onto the metal spit with sheep guts, and then slow cooking the conglomerate over glowing coals, transformed the offal into a delicacy. I’d eat it on purpose the day I lost my mind and woke up thinking Sardinian maggot cheese sounded tasty.
“Katerina ...” Aunt Rita tilted her head at Grandma. “Help me pick her up.”
My aunt’s dress was a plain fuchsia sheath that seemed conservative until she turned her back on you. Then you got an eyeful of bare skin that was plunging dangerously into crack territory. The wig was red, the style was Marie Antoinette, before she lost her head. Fake birds perched on real twigs. Things sparkled and flashed. My aunt was someone to be avoided if you had epilepsy.
I eyed Grandma. “I don’t know, she’s having fun. When was the last time she had fun?”
“Mama does not do fun things. She does gardening, cooking, and business.”
&
nbsp; “Exactly.”
We stood there for a few minutes, watching the head of Greece’s biggest crime syndicate play with dogs. People who weren’t family—or Family—began to trickle between the gates. Because some of them were enemies as well as friends, nobody who wasn’t blood was allowed to park on the grounds. Their vehicles were confined to the far side of the gates, under the shade of the olive and fruit trees.
“In case of bombs,” Aunt Rita told me.
“Are your kids coming?”
“Not today. Maybe another time.”
That didn’t seem fair, but what did I know? I was new—to Greece and my own family. There were dynamics and nuances I didn’t understand yet. Maybe I never would. My parents had done their best to prepare me for life, but they hadn’t prepared me for this.
But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? I spoke Greek, thanks to Mom’s pushing. I’d met Grandma as a child, also thanks to my mother. If I couldn’t remember that, what else couldn’t I remember? Were there signs and omens that I’d missed, stories I’d forgotten?
“Hey! Katerina Makris, we’re here!”
Oh jeez, it was Lopez and Bishop, and they had dressed pretty for the occasion. Lopez had wrapped his upper half in a Hawaiian shirt that expanded the fiftieth state until, finally, something was bigger than Texas. He was in khaki chinos with a top button that was destined for a major case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Bishop was pretending to be cool in his backwards cap and slouchy pants. Unfortunately, his definition of cool had experienced severe global warming since the early 90s. Vanilla Ice melted years ago.
“Ha-ha,” Grandma said. “Ha-ha-ha. Your friends look funny.”
“Not my friends,” I muttered.
“Why is the fat one dressed like an island? Ask him if he has any coconuts. Never mind, I will ask him myself.” She switched to English, asked Lopez if he had any coconuts.
Lopez scratched his head. He was staring at Aunt Rita. I couldn’t blame him. She was like a beautiful, deadly accident. “Didn’t know we was expected to bring a gift. Did you?” he said to Bishop. Bishop shook his head.
Grandma cackled harder. The dogs took this as a sign of encouragement and continued their adorable onslaught.
“On second thought,” I whispered to my Aunt, “maybe we should get her up and out of here. She might undo decades worth of peace treaties or whatever it is she calls her business deals.”
“I will get Xander.” Aunt Rita stalked off, leaving me with Grandma and the two mismatched amigos.
“The food is that way.” I gestured toward the courtyard. “Help yourselves.”
“Hey now,” Lopez said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “This is a foreign country and we don’t know nobody here. You should introduce us around, maybe be our interpreter. What if we eat something weird? I don’t like weird food.”
“I don’t like no weird food,” Bishop echoed.
“Yeah, you look like a Dollar Menu guy,” I said.
Bishop grimaced. “Shiiiit ... you seen it lately? Everything is more than a dollar. What’s up with that?”
“Except the fries,” Lopez said. “The fries are still a buck. So you gonna show us around? This looks like a place that’s got art.”
“No art,” I said, not entirely sure that was true. “Do we have an art gallery?” I asked Grandma in Greek.
“We have my kolos,” she said. Then she kindly translated into English. “My ass.”
Christ on a couch. Unclothed, Grandma’s rear was probably a Picasso; who knew where the hole was since gravity had got its magnetic mitts on her? And where were Xander and Aunt Rita? Grandma was three-quarters baked. How many koulourakis did she eat, anyway?
“Go on back,” I said to the cops. “I’ll be there in a minute. Don’t eat the pink stuff. Everyone speaks at least a few words of English, except the old guy in the wheelchair. Don’t touch his eagle—”
Lopez lifted his brows. “Eagle? Like, a real caw-caw eagle?”
“That’s crows,” I said. “And yes, it’s real.”
“What about dancing?” he said. “They gonna do that Zorba thing, maybe throw some plates?”
“Throw my plates and I will kill you where you stand,” Grandma said.
They grinned uncomfortably. They had no clue that was a fact of life, not a figure of speech. Portland’s not-even-close-to-finest shuffled off. They were out of their league, in over their heads, and several other similarly hopeless clichés.
A dark cloud fell over Grandma. Aunt Rita had found Xander. He was in the bottom half of a suit, tie dangling loosely around his neck.
“Mama is higher than the moon,” Aunt Rita said to him. Hands on hips, he stared at Grandma in the doggy pile. “We have to get her out of here. And by we I mean you. I can’t carry her in these shoes.”
It was a wonder she could even carry herself around on those heels. They were thinner than knitting needles. Between the shoes and the wig she was almost as high as Grandma.
Xander crouched down beside my grandmother. He stuck out his hand, petted a brown-and-white hound on the head. The dog, recognizing a sucker when he saw one, jumped into Xander’s arms. And what did Xander do? Not what Aunt Rita wanted him to do. He sat down next to Grandma to play Who’s a Good Dog then? You Are, You Are.
“I do not believe it.” My aunt pulled me aside. “What are people going to think?”
“That Baboulas likes dogs?”
“That’s not her, it’s the marijuana. She doesn’t like dogs. I don’t think she even likes people.” She had a point. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked down at me. Hard.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“What would you do if you were Baboulas?”
“But I’m not.”
“But you will be if Mama has her way. And Mama always has her way.”
“Always?”
“Almost always.” She rubbed her lacquer-tipped hands together. “So what is your plan?”
I was out of plans. Not that I’d had plans to begin with. I was taking the day as it came, at least until this party was over. Then the big plan was swing by the police building to check out mug shots. If that didn’t pan out, I’d stalk Baby Dimitri’s shop and maybe get a potato-quality snapshot of the third guy. Maybe then someone would be able to cough up his identity, starting with the German the police had cooped up. The voices in my head told me they were connected.
“There’s only one thing to do,” I told my aunt. “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
“In our family we do beat them.”
“Beating isn’t part of my plan.”
I pulled my dress up a couple of inches, enough to let me flank Grandma’s other side.
“You like dogs?” she asked me.
“I love dogs.”
“I love dogs, too. I had one once, but your grandfather told me the Romanies took it and ate it. So I had a bunch of them killed. Turns out they did not eat my dog.”
Holy cow. “What happened?”
“I burned your grandfather after he was dead, that is what happened. Now he lives in an olive can.”
“Seems fair.”
“Life is both long and short, Katerina. Cuddle dogs, and don’t kill people unless you know for certain they are enemies. Or if you don’t trust their faces. That pumpkin, I do not like him. Maybe we should have Takis take him for a walk in the woods.”
“Uh, no, Grandma. I can handle the cops.”
My gaze slid sideways and crashed into Xander’s turned cheek. He was staring off into the distance. Was he thinking about the family who never had a chance to raise him? Grandma was responsible for the deaths of his whole family. I didn’t know the finer details of the raid, only that something went wrong and Xander was the only survivor. She’d taken infant Xander in and raised him as one of her own tribe. He knew the whole terrible story, or so Grandma told me.
“Go, go, handle them,” Grandma
said. “Before the fat one eats all the food.”
~ ~ ~
The band played on. Popular Greek hits, formerly popular Greek hits, and Rembetika. I eyed the souvlaki skewers and wished I had the guts and the loose screws to jam them into my ears. There was no formal dance floor, but that didn’t stop people dancing. They formed a line and channeled their inner Zorbas all over the courtyard. Takis stood in the middle of them all, doing some kind of hip-wiggling thing. There are some things in life that can’t be unseen, like murder scenes and Takis dancing.
Lucky me, Lopez and Bishop managed to hunt me down among all these people. Lopez held up his plate like he expected a pat on the head. “I followed your advice and didn’t eat the pink stuff. What is it, anyway?”
“Fish eggs.”
“Like caviar?”
“Cod eggs, but with breadcrumbs mixed in. So it’s only about half as disgusting as caviar.”
He scratched his head. “Yeah, I never got that either. Tastes like a mouthful of rotten seawater.”
“Caviar is the bomb diggity,” Bishop said.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Nobody says ‘bomb diggity’ anymore. Not unless they want the school bully to duct tape their butt cheeks together.”
“I say it, therefore it’s cool.”
“You know you’re not cool, right?” I said. “You do know that?”
Lopez laughed into his retsina.
“Shut the fuck up,” Bishop said. He was drinking a German beer, playing it safe. Not Lopez. He’d gone semi-native with his retsina and a pile of kokoretsi it would take a normal person a week to plow through. No way was I going to do him a second favor—I’d already warned him about the taramasalata. Besides, I got a small kick out of watching him stuff his gullet with guts and icky stuff. Too bad he hadn’t been here when someone in the family accidentally added severed human penis to the organ meats.
Takis chose that moment to wander over. He had a lemonade bottle in one hand and a water gun in the other. “Bang, bang,” he said and shot me in the chest.
“Marika!” I hollered.
“Fuck the Virgin Mary,” Takis said in English, showing off for the Americans. “What you got to do that for? We were having fun.”
