by Alex A King
"Why would you think that?"
"The wedding gift."
"You mean the one you dumped on our doorstep?"
"Hey, I left a note."
"What did you think was in it?" The man looks genuinely puzzled.
"A bomb?"
"So you brought it here?"
"I wasn't going to keep a bomb."
He rubs a hand across his mouth. "It was not a bomb."
Wow. Not a bomb after all. She can almost feel her mother's oncoming disappointment.
"What was it?"
"Despinida Andreou, something is wrong here. This room is where I ask questions—not you."
"Can I ask one more?"
"Fine. Ask. But it is the last one."
She leans across the table has far as she can—which isn't far. "How did you know it was me?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why did you come straight to me? How did you know I was the one who bent her finger?"
"The Roma woman told me your name."
"Don't you find that interesting?"
Because Kiki does. Kiki really, really does.
71
Leo
Leo looks at the old woman. "Nice snake."
The roll of scales is curled around her shoulders, stole-style. Kiki's grandmother beams. "My daughter put him in my bed to kill me, but she is so stupid she does not know a venomous snake from a non-venomous snake."
Her stupid daughter sighs like it's killing her. Stab, stab, stab at the needlepoint. He wonders what she'd stab if she didn't have a creative outlet. "It wasn't supposed to bite you, Mama. You were supposed to get a fright and have a heart attack."
"If you want to kill someone," Kiki's grandmother says, wagging her finger at him, "do not ask Margarita. She is a terrible killer. With her skills, she should be a heart surgeon. That is how bad she is at killing."
Kyria Andreou saves her glare for him. "Which of my daughters are you here for this time?"
"Kiki."
"What, my Soula is not good enough for you?"
He can't tell if she's the rock or the hard place; he suspects she might be both. "Soula's a great woman. But I'm here to see Kiki. I wanted to thank her for her help."
"You already thanked her."
"I want to thank her again. That's how grateful I am."
"Listen to this one," Kiki's mother says. "He could be a politician, the way he argues. What do you do?"
"Veterinarian."
"Animals, eh?" The old woman elbows her daughter. "Margarita, look, I have found you a new doctor."
It's all he can do not to laugh. Yeah, he wants to see Kiki, but her family gives one hell of a comedy routine.
"Is she here?"
"No, she is not here," Kiki's mother says. She doesn't volunteer further information.
But the grandmother is happy to squeal. "Kiki is in jail!" The older woman is almost bouncing in her seat. "It is very exciting. Nobody in this family has been to the jail before."
"You were in jail, Mama," her daughter says absently, not looking up from her needlepoint.
"That does not count."
"It counts." She looks up at Leo. "My mother smacked an English tourist with her handbag. This town relies on tourists, and what does she do? Beat them."
"He pushed me."
To Leo: "She smacked him with her handbag so hard he fell off the bus. And it was moving."
"Very slowly. You always forget that part where the bus was moving slowly."
"Why is Kiki in jail?" Leo wants to run to the police station and break her out, but he's already showering with a hairdryer, as far as the legal system goes.
Shrug. "The police say she attacked a tsigana. Then she jumped on top of a police car and told everyone to suck her poutso."
"That is my girl!" The older woman looks proud. Leo gets it. He's proud of Kiki, too. This town has been heaping shit on her for weeks. About time she gave some back.
Kiki's mother sets aside her needlework, stands. "Sit, Leonidas. I will bring you coffee and something sweet, eh?"
It's a test and he's going to fail. "I'm sorry, Kyria Andreou, but I can't stay."
Social suicide, more or less. Family and friends can get away with saying no, but if Leo is aiming to impress, he just threw himself off a cliff.
"Where are you going in such a hurry, eh?"
"To get Kiki."
The rest of the conversation follows him down the street.
"To get Kiki," the old woman says. "This one she should marry!"
"Mama! Skasmos! No one will marry Kiki now."
"This one will. He is very brave and very stupid."
* * *
Leo the very brave and very stupid goes to what's left of the police station.
Which is most of it.
Greek buildings say no to earthquakes, and—apparently—fires.
He's not sure Greece even needs firefighters. All they need is one average Greek mother to command the fire to stop. Fire would tuck its tail between its legs and run back to the stone ages, where it was wanted.
If his mother was Greek, he's sure she could command the cancer to stop spinning its webs throughout her body. Too bad she's American all the way to her red, white, and blue blood.
Inside, a couple of policemen are sitting in office chairs, papers balanced on their laps. No desks. No front desk for him to lean on while he asks the cost of getting Kiki out.
Greek buildings say no to fire, but Greek furniture is happy to burn.
They look up at him when he walks in. He nods, says, "I'm looking for Kiki Andreou."
"She's busy."
"Doing what?"
"Singing."
The second cop looks at the first one. "Can we really call it singing?" He gets up, waves for Leo to follow him. Leo follows him down a hallway with half-assed doors. Looks like they used to be white, but now they're sooty and smudged.
The jail is at the back of the building. Leo remembers seeing the tiny barred windows from the street that runs parallel to the one out front. Standing between the jail and the rest of the building is a steel door.
"Listen," the policeman says, sliding open the rectangular peephole. "If you can stand it."
Behind the door, someone is choking. It's like listening to a Vogon recite poetry.
"Is she hurt?" Because if she is, he's going to wind up in the adjoining cell.
"No! She is singing Madonna songs."
Leo is seriously confused. "That's a Madonna song?"
The cop's head bobs. "Laik Is Fur Gin."
He doesn't recall a Madonna song about fur or gin, but he's not about to tell the cop that. He's too busy trying not to laugh, because Kiki's singing could strip paint off the walls.
Throw her into a battlefield, watch armies fall.
Greece has no idea it's harboring a bio-weapon. Alexander the Great wishes he had just one Kiki Andreou.
And suddenly, so does he.
"What's it going to take to get her out of here?"
"Why? You going to post her bail?"
"Yeah, I'm going to post her bail."
"Praise the Virgin Mary."
"No," he says. "Praise Leonidas Karas."
72
Kiki
It's a one-woman concert, audience of zero.Kiki sings every song she knows.
She's a woman who knows a lot of songs.
The mattress had to go bye-bye. It's leaning against the wall, sleeping off its misspent youth, while she dances on the flat-topped frame.
Madonna's catalog is over. Now it's onto Mariah Carey.
Kiki puts her heart and soul into I Can't Live. She's on her knees, howling at the ceiling when the door flies open. Filling the doorway is Leo, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that shows what he's made of.
"Ha-ha," she says weakly. "Ha-ha."
Leo shakes his head. "Man, it's a crime to put that kind of talent behind bars." He swaggers into the room (what else can she call it? That's a definite swagger, and it's all Greek),
leans against the bars like it's, well, a bar. "I leave for two days and you wind up in jail. What am I going to do with you, Kiki Andreou?"
Kill her—kill her now.
She looks up at him. "I take requests."
73
Leo
Fuck her, he thinks. He wants to fuck her.
But he can't. Obviously.
"Come on. I'm taking you home."
She stands there in her black sundress, sunglasses balanced on her head, nothing but disbelief on her face and one question in her mouth. "You posted my bail?"
He shrugs. "It's nothing. Don't sweat it."
"Leo …"
"You helped me out. Now I'm helping you out. Paying it forward."
"Wow. Thank you."
"Did you really tell everyone to suck your dick?"
"They were asking for it."
He laughs, because he believes it. This woman is something else. The world falls on her, shoves her to her knees, and she sings. Who wouldn't want her on their team? Who wouldn't want to be on her team?
"We'll have to walk," he tells her. "You okay with that?"
"I've been walking for twenty-seven years. I'm pretty good at it."
"I mean are you okay with us being seen together?"
"You posted bail when even my own mother wouldn't. I'm proud to be seen with you, Leo Karas. If they don't like it, they can—you know."
Oh, he knows.
74
Kiki
They walk. Late afternoon, so they're not the only ones in the streets. Everyone else is slowly venturing out to see if the sun has quit blasting its furnace.
Kiki kills them with kindness. They choke on their hellos, but they can't ignore her, can they? She waves to Kyria Maria, one of the worst offenders, and her aunt's closest friend (that would be Kostas and Max's mother). "How are you?" she calls out.
"I am well, Kyriaki. How are you?" She's a squat woman with a frog's mouth and a forked tongue.
"Wonderful! Never better." She nods at Leo. "This is my friend Leo Karas. He's wonderful, too. Aren't you, Leo?"
"Leo Karas—Socrates Karas?"
(That's a Greek thing: adding and elder's name to the younger. When you've got a family stuffed with people with the same first name, it helps to identify them by an extra characteristic. You're never just you—there's almost always a plus one. There is no escaping bad family in this small town; everyone knows to whom you belong, to whom you will always belong.)
Leo, bless him, knows how to play Kiki's game. Of course he would, he's part of this place, whether he recognizes the belonging in himself or not.
"I'm wonderful. It's a beautiful day, and here I am with a beautiful woman." He winks at the older woman. "Two beautiful women."
Kyria Maria, that old hypocrite, smiles, and for a moment it touches her eyes. An attractive man is an attractive man, no matter his age. But when he is also charming, he is ageless.
"Give my regards to your family, eh?"
"I will," Kiki sings over her shoulder. Then she and Leo turn right, toward home.
75
Leo
Leo tells her his sad tale, only he paints it several shades of less tragic. No mention of the calls back home, the cracking of his father's voice and his unwavering devotion to his wife of thirty-five years. Not a hint about the fear in his brother's voice.
Why fill her head with his bullshit? She's got enough of her own worries.
Yeah, she's got her own worries, yet here she is worrying about him, asking, "So, what now?"
Leo rubs his head. His hair is making a fast comeback. "The way I see it, I've got two choices. The legal way or the illegal way."
"You can't wait."
"Right."
"And you can't sneak across all those borders. How would you get into America?"
"I don't have to. All I need to do is get to a country that isn't best buddies with Greece—one that has a US embassy."
He has said too much already, so he stops right there. Plausible deniability. The less Kiki knows, the less Kiki can say if the authorities squeeze her.
They're at the gate, the one that leads to Kiki's safe home and her safe, crazy family.
"Good luck, Leo Karas," she says. "If there's anything I can do, you know where to find me." She points at her castle.
She's a good woman. That face, that body, they're just syrup on an already-delicious cake.
"Good luck, Kiki Andreou."
76
Kiki
Mama glowers.
"So they let you out, eh?"
"Leo posted my bail."
"Leo posted your bail?"
Kiki nods.
It's one of those rare times when it's the two of them alone in the kitchen. Kiki's busy stringing beans, and Mama's busy showing her how to do it properly for the millionth time since Kiki's childhood.
Someone has micromanagement issues.
"What do you think he wants?" Her voice is low, dangerous. There's a storm coming.
"What do you think he wants?"
"I know what he wants. What all men want."
Kiki snaps the end off a bean, tugs on its strings. "Some men want other men. And if you look on the Internet, some men want farm animals and baked goods."
"The Internet! What does the Internet know about normal people? Everyone on the Internet is crazy. Only pornography and the YouTube."
"Leo doesn't want anything." Snap. Pull. "When I helped him out with his papers, I told him to pay it forward. So he did. And here I am."
"That man does not want farm animals or men, he wants my daughter."
"So what if he does? It's not like I'm married."
Mama snatches up the beans, strings and all, dumps them in the huge pot. "You are right, Kiki, you are not married. Whose fault is that?"
"Let me guess: mine?"
"Who else, Kiki? Who else?"
"You think I killed Stavros?"
"No! But I do not think you mind too much that he is dead, otherwise you would not encourage that man."
"Mama, you taught me to be kind. I helped Leo out of kindness, and now we are friends. You are seeing something that isn't there." Kiki stands, touches a hand to her mother's shoulder. "I do mind that Stavros is dead. I mind a lot. There's a wide open territory between love and apathy. I liked Stavros. I didn't want to be his wife, that's all."
Nothing. Her mother is a cold, turned back.
"Will you tell Helena that?" Mama says in a small, choked voice.
"Tell Thea Helena? Why?"
When her mother turns around, Kiki sees she's bleeding tears. "I want my friend back. You helped Leo. Okay. Now help me." She reaches for the big, wooden spoon, dips its scoop into the beans. "Bring my friend back. I cannot do life without her."
* * *
Gardenias. There is no other flower in the world like them. Give them enough acid and they will change your world with their perfume.
Thea Helena has almost as many gardenias as Mama, and like Mama's, hers live in captivity. The women used to paint empty cans and containers together, then sip frappe while the paint dried.Now both women sweep in their separate yards, their friendship gone, the way of the contents that once filled those containers.
"Thea Helena?" she asks the sweeping woman.
Nothing.
"Will you talk with me?"
When she speaks, it's slow, exhausted, as though it has climbed up to the monasteries of Meteora, one bloodied hand at a time. "What do you want, Kiki?"
Kiki leans against the gate, her chin resting on the top of the warm metal frame.
"I'm not here for myself. I came for my mother."
"Margarita and I have nothing to say to one another."
"Maybe not. But she thinks I should tell you something anyway."
"I cannot care, Kiki. Whatever it is."
"Okay." She looks around at the quiet street with its invisible eavesdroppers. She can't see them, but she feels the collective breath-holding taking place behind the s
hutters. "Okay. Maybe I will say it and then you can decide if you want to hear it or not."
The broom continues to scratch at the ground like a chicken, but Thea Helena doesn't speak.
"I'm sorry about Stavros. I didn't want to marry him—and he didn't want to marry me—but that doesn't mean I'm glad he's dead. I cared about him very much. He was a good man. And my whole family—including me—wants to see whoever killed him pay. I didn't kill him—I would never. All I wanted was to not marry him. But that's not worth murder."
Silence. Even the broom has stopped its back and forth.
"My mother misses you. She's making us all miserable, and she's hardly tried to kill Yiayia at all lately. Which should tell you everything."
Nothing from the other woman in black, nothing to indicate a single one of Kiki's words have drip-filtered into her head.
It's no use. Kiki came here to fight a battle in a war that has already been lost.
"Go home, Kiki. Let us never speak again."
77
Leo
Ambush.
If he was playing Jeopardy, his answer would be: What do you call your entire Greek family shoehorned into your grandfather's front yard?
"Leo!" they shout.
Leo is a trooper. He gets down to the happy business of shaking hands, slapping backs, kissing and being kissed.
Even with his problems, he's glad to see them.
The names, the faces, they come back, as soon as he rips fifteen years off their faces. Lots of new faces with old names, too. Socrates, Socrates, and Socrates. Very original with names, the Greeks. Everyone is named after somebody else.
Greek naming conventions dictate that he should be a Socrates, but Mom wanted him to have his own name. So instead of his grandfather, he's named after the warrior king of Sparta.
