by Alex A King
Yeah, that one. The ate-Persian-steel one
This is not Sparta, it's Agria. Which means his mother spent a lot of her days in social purgatory after that episode.
Somebody shoves a cold beer into his hand. When that one's gone, there's another. There's food to go with that drink. Mountains of it. Dishes crammed onto a long table on the patio. No way does he remember what every dish is called, but he remembers them by sight, and he definitely remembers how good they taste.
Another somebody thrusts a plate at him, piled with snippets of everything, looks like. But there's no time to eat; they're bouncing him from conversation to conversation.
How is your father? How is your mother? And your brother? We have never met him! Po-po, why your father does not bring him to meet his family?
Leo doesn't say Dad's got his hands full with Mom's cancer. He just shrugs and tells them he doesn't know. They're not looking for answers anyway; questions are just something they throw into the air to keep silence distracted.
He works his way through the crowd. Says the right things. Makes the appropriate noises. Fake-spits on the family's newest members.
The idea is to work his way to his grandfather, but Papou isn't around.
One of his aunts shoves money at him. Cash. Monopoly money, this whole euro thing. Drachmas at least looked like money.
He tries "No thank you" on for size, but she waves away his objection.
"Take it for your brother."
Soon more money is flying at him—a lot of money—all of it for his brother, after word gets out Leo won't take it for himself.
"Has anyone seen Papou?"
His question zips around the room, but everyone is too busy auditioning for Greece's Loudest Voice. Nobody has brought their inside voice to this shindig.
Want something done right, do it yourself. He sets the beer on a window sill, grabs a fork, jams a chunk of rotisserie lamb into his mouth. It's good—it's better than good. Herbs and lemon explode in his mouth, leaving him weak and dying for more.
Room to room, he stuffs his mouth with food.
He finds Papou in his bedroom, sitting in the edge of the bed in the dark. Who can blame him? It's a zoo out there.
"Not having fun, Socrates?"
"Eh. Even dead, your grandmother is better company than those goats."
Leo sits beside his grandfather. "I'm not in a party mood myself."
"I tried to stop them, but they came anyway. Your aunts are like the ocean. Hold up your hand and say, 'Oxi!' still they keep on coming. Even the Turks eventually took 'No' for an answer—but not your aunts. I would lock them out, but I cannot find the key."
"Look on the bright side," Leo tells him. "All these people. One outhouse. I can't see how that could go wrong—can you?"
"Wait until they discover there is no paper!"
They share a laugh, which is more therapeutic than any drink.
"You are a good boy, Leo. I wish you could stay. But I understand that you have to go."
"I don't suppose you've had any visions?"
"Nothing that will help you. But soon—very soon—we will hear screaming."
"Who?"
The outline of his shoulder rises and falls. "I do not know. Laki was not specific."
Right on cue, the screaming starts.
Leo runs.
* * *
Years ago there was a moderately funny movie where Ben Stiller, pretending to be a teenager, got the ol' frank-and-beans trapped in his zipper.
Son-less women and girls everywhere wondered how that could possibly happen. Who gets their dick caught in a zipper?
Guys, that's who.
* * *
The kid could be a champagne bottle, the way he's spraying curse words all over the yard. To him everyone is a putana, and he tells his mother to do something anatomically impossible, unless she's a snake with a penchant for incest and necrophilia.
Leo shakes his head. "Wow. Where does a five-year-old learn those words?"
"Life," his grandfather says.
They're standing there looking at the boy's mother—Leo's cousin Toula—tugging the zipper in all the wrong directions. It doesn't help that the kid is leaping around, slapping her hands away.
"Stop it, you little bastard!" she yells in his face.
"Like I said," Socrates tells Leo, "he learned those words from life."
Leo can't watch this. He shoves the plate into his grandfather's hands and snatches the boy up by his armpits.
"Fuck the putana!" the boy hollers. "Suck Zeus's poutso!"
What is it with these people? Everyone wants somebody to suck someone's dick. If there's dick sucking going on, it better be his dick and Kiki's mouth.
He carries the kid inside where there's light. Cousin Toula follows, spitting out questions. Stupid ones, mostly. But when someone you love is hurt, the stupid ones come more easily.
"Relax," he tells her, dumping the boy into a chair. "You'll still have grandchildren."
"Are you a doctor?" she demands.
He remembers when his cousin was a kid herself. Cute little thing with messy hair. She was bossy then, she's bossy now.
"Veterinarian."
"What do you know about fixing … this?"
He grabs her by the shoulders, pushes her into a second chair. "Sit. Stay. Shut up."
"What—"
"You think your kid's the only one who got his dick caught in a zipper? Been there, done that. What's your name?" he asks the boy.
Toula looks at him like he's lost his mind. "His name is Socrates!"
Socrates. What else?
"Okay, Socrates," he tells the spitting, hissing boy. "Take a deep breath."
Socrates doesn't listen, he just keeps on kicking and screaming like he's part cat, part donkey. That's okay, Leo's dealt with worse. Try a kicking, squealing pig. He grabs the kid's shorts, either side of the zipper, jerks the metal teeth apart. The cotton makes one hell of a ripping sound, but better the shorts than the boy.
"You ruined his shorts!" Toula cries.
"Think of me when your first grandchild is born." He stuffs twenty euro into her hands. "Get him a new pair."
* * *
Three main groups form as the evening wears on: men, women, and children. Those first two groups are talking about one thing: Kiki and Stavros.
And why wouldn't they? Murder is the third most exciting thing that can happen around here—football and basketball take first and second, depending on the season.
("How can America call themselves world champions of basketball when they do not play against the world, only themselves, eh?" one of his cousins asked earlier.)
"They say you are seeing Kiki Andreou," someone asks.
"She helped me with some paperwork. We're friends."
Are they friends? Leo's not sure. Maybe they are, but it sure feels like they could be something else under the right circumstances.
"Friends." His cousin nudges one of the uncles. "Friends."
"Friends," Leo confirms.
"Careful with that one. If she thinks there is another woman she will kill you."
He takes a long pull of cold beer. "Come on, Kiki didn't kill anyone. Do you really believe she did?"
His cousin shrugs, palms up. "Who knows? She is a woman, and women are capable of anything."
"Except common sense," one of the uncles says.
Lots of laughs, but not from Leo. He doesn't mind a sexist joke when the women are giving back as good as they get, but this isn't a fair fight. All over town right now there are people talking about her, and she doesn't get to defend herself to a one of them.
It's a rerun of the bakery—the one with all the cakes.
"I'm capable of pissing in your beer." He nods at the bottle in his cousin's hand. "Doesn't mean I would—or did. That you know of."
His cousin looks uneasily at the beer. "You didn't—"
"No. And Kiki didn't kill Stavros."
Someone else says, "Who could blam
e her if she did?"
"What do you mean?"
"There were a lot of women. Stavros was just a life-support system for his poutso."
A round of laughter.
"Kiki never dated anyone else?" They're not telling him anything he didn't already know about Stavros, but about Kiki, yeah, he's curious. Too curious.
Another shrug. "Some. But not for years."
"Let me ask you this," Leo says, after another swallow. He points to the men with the bottle. "Let's say Kiki didn't kill Stavros. Who would you say did?"
Glances move from person to person, followed by the shrugs.
Greeks shrug a lot, he thinks. Their body language is almost as loud as their voices.
"Maybe someone who did not want him to get married to Kiki," Leo says. To his ears he sounds almost like one of those old Greek philosophers, trying to push these clowns to think.
"Why do you care, eh?" one of the cousins asks.
Laughter streaks around the group. "Because he wants to sleep her, of course. Why else does a man care?"
Leo ditches his beer, heads out into the night.
It's not children that are better seen and not heard—it's family.
* * *
Leo doesn't find Kiki in the dark, but he does find Soula.
The other Andreou woman is sitting in her own patch of night at the foot of her street, the long skirt of her dress wrapped around her legs. This little light, her toenails appear as if they've been dipped in black paint.
"Soula?"
"Leo?"
"Come here often?"
Her laugh is low, husky. The kind of laugh men hurl themselves against rocks to hear. Not Leo, though. Not when he knows Kiki's clear bell.
"Only when I'm waiting for someone."
"Anyone special?"
Shrug. "If he wasn't special, I wouldn't be waiting. I'd be living."
"Is he going to show?"
"Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. If he doesn't, you want to have a drink?
"Yeah," he says. "But not with you."
A low laugh. "Another woman would be offended, but not me."
"That's why I said it. Better to be honest."
"Is it Kiki?"
"It's Kiki."
Soula shakes her head. "Leo, Leo."
"Yeah, I know."
"My sister is too good for you."
"I know."
"No, you don't. My sister is too good for anyone. She is the best person I know. There is no one like her." She nods to the patch of ground beside her. "Sit and I will tell you something."
Leo sits. He wants to hear whatever it is she wants to tell, especially if it's about Kiki.
"I am glad Stavros Boutos is dead. It is the best thing that could have happened to her."
Boy does she deliver. "Okay. Why?"
"If they were married, he would have been a faithless husband. There is no way he could have made her happy. And if he had broken their engagement, Kiki would have been left wondering what was wrong with her that he didn't want to marry her. It is better this way. Not for anyone else, but for Kiki—yes. Once her mourning time is over, she will be free to find love. Not purchased love, but real love of her own choosing."
"You think we get to choose who we love?"
Soula laughs quietly. "No. I am proof that we have no choice at all. Love comes for us in its own way, and sometimes it makes fools of us all."
"You sound like you know."
"Don't you?"
In the distance, some kind of vehicle is rolling their way. It's growling along the streets.
"Yeah, I know."
Soula stands, reaches out for Leo's hand. She pulls him to his feet. "I like you, Leo Karas. And if things were different, I would be proud to have you join our family. But your life is elsewhere. You are temporary. My sister deserves more."
"Why don't we let her decide what she wants. It's about time someone gave her the chance."
She laughs. "As I said, I like you."
Then Soula's gone, nothing left of her but the memory of a beautiful woman in a flowing dress.
78
Helena
"Did you go out last night?"
"No. Why?"
Kristos unfolds the newspaper. "I woke up and you were not in bed."
"Maybe I was in the bathroom."
"That long?"
"I must have eaten something bad."
"Like the Chernobyl fruit?" There's the ghost of a smile on his face.
Everyone in Greece over a certain age remembers the Chernobyl disaster. Helena recalls the panic, the warnings not to eat fruit and vegetables without a thorough washing, the food inspections, the closing of the borders to foreign foods.
Helena's aunt, Thea Kalliope, ate food by the bucketful. (Thea Kalliope was a woman known for breaking more than one toilet seat in the family.) When the Chernobyl disaster happened, her eating didn't slow one bit. She worked her way through a box of plums, and when it gave her the runs she blamed Russia.
For years afterward, whenever her aunt caught a stomach flu or ate something bad, she claimed Chernobyl and its radiation were the culprits.
It's almost normal the way he says it. How can he make jokes?
She tries but she cannot join in. She cannot pretend this house keeps a room made up for humor and good times.
"Like the Chernobyl fruit," she manages, by some miracle. But the smile that used to go along with it never comes.
His gaze stays on her face too long, as if he's trying to discern whether his wife is still tucked away inside her somewhere.
"Where do you go, Helena?"
"I am still here," she says.
"Are you? I wonder. I have not seen you for so long."
79
Kiki
Stupid refrigerator. She's been standing in front of it for fifteen minutes, gazing sightlessly at its contents, and still it refuses to give her what she wants: a solution to the Leo problem.
Or rather, a solution to Leo's problem.
On the walk home from the police station, he dialed down the drama and kept things light. But she can't help knowing what she knows, thanks to that fax.
She's not much of a do-nothing person when it comes to helping people she likes—and she really likes Leo.
"Come on, refrigerator, think."
But the only thing it's telling her is that it's too late for Leo and his mother. All she gets are flashes of a future where Leo goes home—months from now—to a cold grave where the turf has already stitched itself to the surrounding grass.
"Who do you know, Kiki? Who can help him?"
Theo Kristos works for the government, but she can't go to the Boutos family now. No way can she ask for their help when she couldn't help them.
"Who else?"
The feta says nothing.
It's on the way to bed that she has an epiphany of the semi-religious kind.
She makes a call—just the one. That's all it takes. After that, there's no time for sleep.
Leo doesn't have the luxury of time.
* * *
Soula's not home.
Kiki scribbles a note, pledges undying, sisterly devotion, snatches Soula's car keys out of the wooden bowl where she keeps odds and ends.
Then she jogs down the stairs, sprints through the yard.
A wall stops her, of the flesh and blood kind.
"Kiki?"
"Leo? Leo! I was coming to find you."
He laughs. "Great minds. I was coming to find you."
"No time to ask why. Let's go."
"Where are we going?"
"Church."
80
Helena
Helena is a small patch of shade in the night.
A mosquito latches itself to her arm. The slap leaves a dark smear. Red, but without light it appears black.
Inside Kiki's house there is movement. Kiki is awake. Is she like Helena, where she cannot sleep?
Footsteps, moving her way.
Hel
ena dissolves into the deeper shadows.
She hears the slap of Kiki's shoes as she runs upstairs, then down and out, through the yard.
A small smattering of talk, half of it Kiki's. The other half of the conversation belongs to a man.
All these nights she has been watching over Kiki, but she did not deserve it.
Worthless. Faithless. Good for nothing except—
Helena smiles in the dark. Life is tasting sweeter. Stavros is gone, yes, but with Kiki's help she can bring him back.
A life for a life.
81
Leo
Well, everyone is right: Kiki is a killer. Just not the kind of killer they're talking about.
Her driving is—
"Why are you swerving?"
"Snake," she tells him.
Jesus.
She zags right—to the correct side of the road, at least.
"And now?"
She shrugs at the wheel. "Another snake."
"Snakes," he mutters.
A quick glance in his direction. "Have you been to Mount Pelion before?"
"Years ago. Not since I got back."
"Where did you go?"
"My mother loves Makrinitsa, so we went there a lot." His voice stays strong, steady. Good. This is no time to crack.
She smiles at the winding road illuminated in the headlights. "I love Makrinitisa, too. But not as much as where I'm taking you."
"Where's that?"
Headlights coming their way. They're weaving left, right, left, right. Got a serious case of the Kikis.
"Relax, Leo," Kiki says. "You're so tense."
The super-cool dude isn't tense. No way. He's just forgotten how Greeks drive: like they're the only ones careening through a rubber-padded world.
"You know this isn't a bumper car, right?"
