by Alex A King
Or her worst, so that's something.
She regrets the bare feet the minute they hit the side road leading to home. Road, loosely defined. It's not so much a road as it is a dirt path scattered with rock and other things that like to bite feet.
"Ouch," she says. Two seconds later: "Ouch."
Soula shakes her head. "That's what you get for going barefoot."
"Did I say ouch? I meant, wow, this feels great!" But Soula's not laughing. "Are you okay?" Kiki asks her sister.
"Of course. When have I ever not been okay?"
Kiki stops. "Soula …"
"What do you think they wanted?"
"The Romani? I don't know. What do they ever want with us? Money or trouble."
"I do not think so," Soula says.
"Then what?"
"I don't know."
Don't you, Kiki thinks. I think maybe you do.
But she's a woman who lets the world come to her in its own sweet time, even when the world is her strangely silent sister.
40
Leo
Leo makes good on his promise. After dark, he beelines for Kyria Dora's house to sort out her wild animal problem. She lives off the main road heading up to Drakia (one of Mount Pelion's larger villages), on a skinny road with a killer incline. Great place to ride a bike no-handed, if you're a kid. The only problems are the potholes and complete absence of fucks given by the person who poured the original road.
Kyria Dora is waiting on her patio in the dark. Her house is a single white-washed story, shaped like an English L.
"Is that you, Leonidas?"
"Good evening, Kyria Dora."
Her silhouette clutches its heart with one hand. "My Virgin Mary, that is good! I thought maybe you were the animal."
Not the first time a Greek woman has mistaken him for an animal. Used to be, he and his buddies would sneak around, throwing rocks on roofs in the middle of the night, whizzing on their front doors, making noises like the undead were coming.
Sometimes a woman peeled out of the targeted house, waving a broom at the animals, and sometimes it was a man with a hammer.
Boys do things that make sense to them and no one else. Stuff like that is fun when you're ten. It's still fun when you're thirty, but by then you've got to get a good night's sleep so you can work the next day.
"Always it happens around an hour from now." Kyria Dora's silhouette nods at the roof. "You should climb up there and hide. That way you can jump on the animal if you see it below. And if comes on the roof, then you will be close, eh?"
Leo nods to the dark cluster of bushes. "Or I could hide there in the bushes."
She laughs, pats his arm. "Those are not bushes, those are my thistles. You will be a very sorry man if you hide there."
He's already a sorry man, and the idea of being more sorry doesn't suit him. So he makes a ladder out of the wood trellis that frames the patio. It's sturdy, built to last. Built to handle a load of climbing man. Which is good, because Kyria Dora doesn't own a ladder. He knows because she announces it proudly, as though not owning a ladder is an achievement.
"Would you like a broom?" she asks.
"No, I'm good."
"Okay, but do not blame me when you need a weapon and you do not have one!"
A half hour later, Leo's sitting on the roof, arms loose around his knees, wondering what kind of Greek animal only shows up at a particular time.
Yeah, not an animal at all.
Kids, mostly likely. Kids like he used to be. Either making trouble or making fun—probably both.
He leans back on the flat roof, arms behind his head. Takes his best shot at memorizing how stars look when cities aren't blinding them with their own blazing lights. He's not a sentimental guy, but here he is hoping for a falling star. He's got wishes to make, places to go.
First thing is getting home. Second is finding a place to live. He's thinking about selling off his practice, starting fresh closer to home. Whatever happens with Mom, Leo wants to be close. That's how life goes. When you're a kid you can't wait to run away from home. When you're an adult, you can't wait to run back the first time someone needs you.
Maybe in time he'll meet a great woman, but it's going to be a while before he can set anything in gold again. Maybe never.
Anyway, pointless worrying. Getting home is the only priority right now.
And there it is: Kyria Dora's noise.
The gate doesn't squeak because whatever it isn't entering the civilized way. It's clambering over the fence.
And it's got company.
Leo grins. This should be good.
He flattens himself on the roof and watches the new arrivals unpack their pockets. They've come loaded with slingshots and … not rocks, some kind of fruit. Janera or figs, maybe. They load up their slingshots and take aim at the roof.
Leo rolls until he's on the far side of the house, then he drops into the bushes—not Kyria Dora's thistles, but something with a softer landing.
They boys are so consumed with their mischief that they're blind to Leo until he's on them.
* * *
"So, either of these look familiar to you?"
One neck in each hand, he gives them a shake.
"Yes," Kyria Dora says in one of those voices that heralds trouble's arrival. "Yes, those little animals are very familiar to me."
"Don't be angry, Yiayia," the smaller boy says.
"Who is angry? It is your mother's job to be angry, not mine." She stomps out of the room, a lot of tectonic movement happening under her nightgown. "Leonidas," she calls out, "do not let them run away."
"Not going anywhere," Leo mutters. He looks at the kids. They're wide eyed and pale under their tans. "Bad night?"
The little one looks up at him, grins. "It was a good night, until you caught us."
Cute kids, Kyria Dora's grandsons. Play-dirty clothes. Hair that won't do what the comb says. They look like trouble. Leo knows—he used to see the same thing in his mirror when he was a boy.
He laughs. "Why were you scaring your grandmother?"
They glance at each other, shrug. "Why not?" the older one says. "It's fun."
Little monsters. Yeah, they remind him of him, which is why he can't quit smiling. "You want to make mischief without getting caught, you better learn a thing or two."
"Like what?"
He lets them go, leans against the wall, arms folded. "Don't strike at the same time every night. It's easier to track someone when they have a pattern."
In the other room, Kyria Dora is puffing angry words into the phone.
The boys are nodding, eyes big. Not out of fear now, but interest. He's speaking their lingo, this stranger who doesn't think trouble is a bad thing.
"Wear dark clothes. You'll be able to hide better."
The little guy looks down at his shirt. "But I like Spiderman."
"I like Spiderman, too. But all that red? No good. Go black or dark blue."
"What else, Kyrios?"
"Be aware of your surroundings. Listen. You should have heard me jumping off that roof, but you were too focused on shooting fruit. If you can't listen while you're working the slingshot, take turns keeping an eye out for trouble."
"Anything else?"
"If, like tonight, you get caught, don't lie. Accept whatever comes your way. Punishment's always worse if you lie."
Nod, nod. "Did you ever get caught?"
"All the time. Until me and my buddies got good at it. Then we almost never got caught. People knew it was us, but there's not much they can do if they don't catch you."
Kyria Dora rushes back into the room, gushing words. "Your mother is coming, and then you will be her problem!"
The kids don't howl this time. Leo just dumped a pile of gold in their hands, so they're in their own timeout, waiting until they're alone so they can plot their next strike.
"I need to get moving," he says.
"Stay! Effie will want to thank you."
Effie rolls in five minutes late
r, and thanks is the last word she's got for anyone.
Yeah, he remembers Effie now that he's looking at her. There was some kind of scandal when they were kids. He can't recall what. But anyway, he definitely remembers her, though she was skinny back then, not muscular like she is now. Less makeup in those days, too. Tonight she's all spackled pores.
Effie doesn't waste time—she launches right into the shrieking. Within seconds, she's dialed all the way up to eleven. But her words bounce right off the kids like they're rubber. Effie sounds like she's had a lot of practice yelling, and the boys look like they've had a lot of practice listening to her yell. They've mastered the art of tuning out while they nod.
Eventually she runs out of steam. Hands on hips, she glares at Leo.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the guy who caught your kids."
"Are you?"
He can almost hear the whirring of a fisherman rewinding his line, getting ready to cast again. Then her mother steps on her foot—literally.
"Mama!"
"Where are your manners? Effie, this is Leonidas Karas, Socrates Karas's grandson."
"I thought you went to America."
"I did. And now I'm back."
"Why?"
If he was a guy with fur or feathers, she'd be rubbing them the wrong way. But he's a pretty chill guy, so he says, "What can I say? I love Greek women."
"Have you met Vivi?" She shifts her focus to her mother. "Mama, has he met Vivi?"
"Is that your American cousin?" Leo asks.
One sour word: "Yes."
The older woman rolls her eyes at the ceiling, mutters the Virgin Mary's name. "There is a small rivalry between Effie and Vivi, but blood is blood, and they secretly love each other."
Must be a story there, but Leo doesn't care. Agria is filled with stories, many of them petty and founded on nothing.
"I remember your mother," Effie says.
"Really?"
Effie frowns, as if mildly confused by his reply. "Yes. Nobody thought she had the power to make your father leave."
Kyria Dora waves her hands. "Effie, always you talk too much." But nothing is stopping the Effie train.
"How is your mother?"
What does he say? Not the truth. Say something out loud that way and it has a way of becoming real. It's a desperate man who tells the lie and says: "She's great. Much happier back home."
"In America." It's a question without a hook.
"In America," he confirms.
She looks away. Leo knows when he's been dismissed. The next words fizzing out of her mouth aren't for him. They're all about Kiki Andreou and some fight she got into with a bunch of Romani.
He barely knows Kiki, but when Effie gets to the part where Kiki walked away, barefoot, a piece of him is proud of her.
41
Kiki
"Now you know what it is like to be poor," Mama crows. "It is a good thing nobody saw you."
"The tsiganes saw her," Yiayia points out. Very helpful for a woman who isn't in the conversation—or in the room.
"Like I said," Margarita hollers, "it is a good thing nobody saw her!"
The prejudice goes way back. Times are changing for Greece's two people, but it's moving on Greek time. And Greek time moves how it pleases—sometimes fast, sometimes slow. An hour can be a week or a minute, depending on its mood.
"You have very bad luck with the tsiganes lately, eh, Kiki?" Yiayia calls out. The old woman is down the hall in her room, but her hearing is keener than a dog's. "What did you do to them?"
"Nothing." Kiki's mulling it over, but the way life has been lately, her mind is slow at making connections. Now it makes one—hallelujah? "The Romani woman, I think she's the one who came here."
"When?" Mama wants to know. "Tsiganes come all the time to our door, begging for money."
"The other day. The weird one who cursed me."
"Always they give us curses, because always we kick them out and do not give them money. You must be more specific."
"The one with the ants."
"Her! She is a terrible tsigana. Why they let her make curses, I will never know." Mama waves her wooden spoon at the floor. "I forgot to see Kyria Dora, but do you see any ants? I do not see any ants. We have no ants. Not a one. Not so much as a fly without wings that we can mistake for an ant."
Yiayia rolls into the room in her wheelchair. "In my day, they made good curses. They cursed me with a terrible daughter, and look, I have your mother."
Mama drops the spoon back into the béchamel sauce. Tomorrow morning, early, the moussaka is taking a short trip to the bakery. "I thought you were in a coma today?"
"I was." The old woman shrugs. "But I do not want to miss out on something interesting."
It's like watching a game of tennis, and Kiki doesn't like tennis. "I'm going to bed," she says, dropping kisses on every cheek in the room.
"Not me," Soula says. "I am going back out. The night is still young."
"Live the way you do, and soon you will not be so young," Mama says.
"You are full of good advice, Mama," Soula says. "You should write a book."
"It will be the world's shortest book," Yiayia says.
Kiki leaves Mama and Yiayia to their bickering, Soula to her vanishing act. Bed is waiting, and it's impatient. But by the time she's traipsed up the stairs, washed the evening off her feet, and wrapped herself in a robe, sleep doesn't want anything to do with her.
She doesn't spend much time with her computer when school's out, but tonight she flips open the lid and goes straight to the browser.
It's asinine, childish, and something she secretly scoffs at when she overhears her kids talking about it, but she goes to Facebook and pulls up Stavros's page. They're not "friends," but Stavros wasn't a careful guy, and his life's highlight reel is open to all audiences. Funny, you'd think an accountant would be cautious. But no, there he is in color, women hanging off him like streamers. Not just his pictures, but women who've tagged him in theirs.
Popular guy, which she already knew.
Lots of women, which she also knew.
I love yous and kisses and promises to do it again.
Did Detective Lemonis see all this? Did he invite all these faces to that airless room for a conversation about murder?
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Down and then up again.
Woman of every flavor but Romani.
42
Leo
Two more days—after today—until he's a wanted man.
Good thing the postman's got his paperwork. He waves the thick yellow envelope at Leo, then putt-putts away on his red motorcycle.
Fast. Extremely fast for Greece.
Leo empties the packet on the kitchen table. Big stack. Thicker than a couple of IHOP pancakes. When he looks them over, he understands the bits where his name's supposed to go, and his address, but that's about it. They're Greek forms made for native Greeks—ones who've run the educational gamut, beginning to end. Not part-time Greeks like Leo who've forgotten more Greek words than they remember. They may as well be Hebrew, for all the sense they make.
No way does he have time for this. Even with a Greek-to-English Lexicon he'll be here forever. And time has a funny way of vanishing quicker when you need more of it. It likes the thrill of the chase, the being in-demand.
"Papou?" he hollers in the direction of the open door.
His grandfather shuffles out, hair in hand. He's raking through it with a wide-toothed comb. "Take the dirt road toward Taki's place. But keep going until you see a white cottage with a big dog out front. That is where the American woman lives."
"How—"
Socrates dumps the hair on his head. "If you have to ask, you are very stupid. And maybe your mother had a man on the side, because my blood would not be so stupid, eh?" He's grinning as he says it, gold tooth twinkling. "Go. Take my motorcycle."
Leo goes.
* * *
It's hard to feel badass on a moped, but Leo makes i
t work. The dark sunglasses help. There's no trail of broken hearts behind him, but there's one hell of a dust cloud.
He finds the cottage where his grandfather said he would. The dog, too. He finds the American woman when she wanders outside to see who her dog is rolling over for this time.
"That dog," she mutters in English, but she's smiling, isn't she? Cute woman. Petite. Lots of dark hair held up high in a ponytail. Doesn't look much older than a college kid, but word is she runs her own company.
"I'm Leo Karas," he says. "And I really need some help."
"You're American!" The smile grows. She's one of those people who smiles like life is always sweet. "Whereabouts?"
"My family lives in Florida, but I grew up here. You?"
"Oregon. You get all our sunshine, we get all your rain."
He laughs because she sounds like home. "It's good to meet you, Vivi."
"You know my name?"
"Your aunt mentioned it the other day."
"It's a miracle." She shakes her hands at the sky—Greek-style. "Usually everyone calls me the foreigner." Then she nods at the cottage, ponytail swinging. "Come on in, Leo. I'll make you a real cup of coffee. Then we can talk about what kind of help you need."
"I think I love you, Vivi," he says. "Vivi what?"
"Tyler," she tells him. "Soon to be Vivi Andreou."
The same Andreou family? What are the odds?
* * *
High. Very high. Because Kiki Andreou is sitting at Vivi's kitchen table, not even close to naked this time. She's in a black dress, hair scraped into one of those no-nonsense buns that's begging to have its pins pulled out.
Pretty woman. Bright eyes. Full lips made for kissing—and lots of it.
"We meet again," he says.
Vivi looks from one face to the other. "You two know each other?"
"From school," he says, just as Kiki says, "From my bedroom."
"Not like that," Kiki is quick to add.
Vivi is a woman who looks hungry for a good story. "Okay, I know I've been in Greece for way too long, because there's a story here and I'm dying to hear it."
