by Alex A King
She laughs. "Sometimes I forget. I don't drive much."
No kidding.
The lights pass. Pushing them is a convertible packed with loud, waving people. Kiki honks, waves.
"Do you know them?"
"No, but they're having fun. It's good to see people enjoying life."
She means it. He can tell. "What do you do to enjoy life, Kiki Andreou?"
She doesn't look at him. "I watch other people enjoying theirs."
That doesn't sound to him like it's enough.
* * *
Leo doesn't do church. It's not the God thing, it's the people thing. Leo is okay with God, but he's not okay with the frenzied devotion some religious groups put on display. As far as he's concerned, if you're protesting at funerals, your heart is more than two sizes too small. And he's not big on people bashing on his door, peddling their favorite flavor. So if he talks to God, it's on the quiet.
"This is a church?"
Can't be a church. Not a Greek one. Greek Orthodox churches scream, "Come get me! And don't forget to leave your money." Like anyone else trying to lay for pay, they dress up fancy. Yellow gold is their jewelry of choice.
This place, yeah, it does its decorating in wood and stone. Its open hand is a simple box with a narrow mouth, sitting near a basket of new candles.
Kiki smiles, but it's not for him. It's for this place; he can tell by the way her finger caresses the back pew's shoulder. "It's a church. My favorite one."
A door opens, clicks shut. As his eyes adjust, he sees a man in head-to-toe black hurrying down a small set of stairs cut into the church's left side.
Things in Greece have definitely changed. The pappas isn't clean shaven, but he's not far from it. Used to be Greek Orthodox priests never left home without a beard. No long hair for this guy either. Looks like it's almost as short as Leo's own, under the soft skufia on his head.
The priest takes one look at him, starts laughing. It's a big, full sound that fills the church. "Leonidas Karas, is that you?"
Leo remembers that laugh. "Kostas Andreou?" He looks at Kiki whose gaze is swinging from man to man. "I didn't realize you were one of those Andreous." Then it's back to the man in black. "What are you doing in a church? Hiding out?" Because the Kostas Andreou he used to know was trouble's drinking buddy. No way would you find him in a church, unless he was panning for gold.
"God beat me over the head with a stick, and then put me to good use." He hugs Kiki, kisses her forehead, hugs Leo. "Where did you find this clown?" he asks Kiki.
"He followed me home."
"Technically I'm a fugitive," Leo adds. Not that he's proud of it, but it doesn't seem right to lie to a priest in his own digs.
"What—"
Kiki interrupts. "I'm going to make coffee to take with us, okay?"
Kostas nods. "Okay."
"Take with us?" Leo says.
Kostas steers him toward the pews. Nothing else to do but sit, so Leo sits.
"My cousin tells me you're a man who needs help getting out of Greece."
On the wall, Christ is sleeping or dying, Leo can't tell which. "Yeah, I do. My mother has cancer. She doesn't have long. Greece won't let me go, and America won't twist their arm."
"This country …" Kostas shakes his head. "It is no wonder we have problems. I love Greece, but I do not always love her behavior."
"No offense, but I'm not sure how a priest—even you—can help."
The reformed man smiles. "I help a lot of people, my old friend. Most of the time it is people who want to come into Greece because their own countries are inhospitable. But sometimes I help people like you, who need to get out quickly and quietly."
"You're a Coyote?"
"A Coyote?"
Leo fills the gap in his education, tells him about the booming smuggling business between the US and Mexico; it's a sad, desperate story.
Kostas shakes his head. "Yeah, then I guess I am a Coyote of sorts, but I don't take money from anyone. Helping people is not a business opportunity. What I do, I do because I can when they cannot."
There's something in his eye. Feels like hot sand. It's been happening a lot lately. There's a thank you coming, but he can't say it now, or that desert in his eyes is going to manifest an ocean.
His voice is thick when he asks, "So what happens now?"
"My cousin is making coffee, then we will drive north to the border."
"Which one?"
Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Turkey. Those are his options.
Kostas grins. There's the boy he used to know. "Hold on tight, Leo Karas. You are going to Turkey."
* * *
Macedonia. Now there's another pain in Greece's butt. Nowadays everyone knows Macedonia as one of the former Yugoslavia's shards. But—like everything in Europe—it goes way back, wearing a bunch of different outfits of varying sizes. It's been part of this empire, part of that, with much of it slopping into modern day Greece. Macedonia is still a region in Greece—which, in this instance, means it's a state. It's the largest region—basically Greece's Texas. And it butts right up against the other, newer Macedonia.
After Yugoslavia became just another broken home, Macedonia—the new country—argued with Greece over its newly-adopted name. Macedonia's coming-out conversation went something like this:
Macedonia: Rawr, we're Macedonia!
Greece: No, we're Macedonia!
Macedonia: No, we are!
Greece: No, Macedonia is Greek!
Macedonia: Nuh-uh.
Greece: How about you call yourselves Northern Macedonia, eh?
Macedonia: Nope. Macedonia.
Greece: Here is a much better name for you: Macedonia the Country That is too Stupid to Think of an Original Name, So it Must Steal One From Greece.
Macedonia: Hahahaha—No. Macedonia.
NATO and the UN mediator weep openly.
Greece: Grrrrr!
Macedonia: (To Everyone) Hey, did you know Alexander the Great was Macedonian?
Greece: We hate you.
The custody battle over the name Macedonia is ongoing.
* * *
Before they leave, Leo pulls out the clump of euros his family spent the evening shoving into his hands. About five-hundred US dollars, he figures. He stuffs them into the collection box, picks up a candle. Lights it in his mother's name.
The second he lights for Kiki.
82
Helena
All of Agria knows Kyriaki Andreou is a putana.
They know because Helena tells them so.
"I saw her with my own eyes!" Two fingers pointing at her face. "She went off with that Leonidas Karas to cheat on my son!" she tells the sun-scorched man.
"You what? " He glances at his mate. "I don't think she knows we're British."
"I don't think she knows she's crazy, either."
The first guy leans in close to her, thumb pointed at his chest, and says, "I no speak Greek. English!"
* * *
Travel tip: When encountering foreigners, speak loudly, clearly, and in broken English. The more stupid you treat them, the more easily they'll be able to understand you. Stupidity is universal.
* * *
"Malakas," Helena mutters before moving on to the next person.
By the time she's done, all of Greece will know what Kiki Andreou is made of, even the touristas. Soon Kiki will come to her and speak her mind. That is Helena's plan.
"Worst plan ever, Mama. Kiki won't come."
Silence.
It's a first, Helena ignoring her son's voice.
But children, what do they know about the terrible prices parents pay, the bargains they strike with any of the universe's open ears?
Nothing.
Not until they are parents themselves can they know.
* * *
A seething, bubbling woman walks into Dr Triantafillou's office. Today she does not sit. When she's not pacing, she's staring out the window at the helpless world, milling in and out of the hospital's door
s. She has a plan, yes, but she needs this anger to steer her ship.
"You seem upset today," the psychologist says.
"Why would I be upset? Do I look upset? I am not upset."
What does this woman know about being upset? All she has to worry about is fashion, about what clothes she will wear that day.
When Dr Triantafillou says, "Is that how you see me? As a woman who only cares about clothes?" Helena realizes the words have escaped from her head through her mouth.
"I—"
The psychologist holds up her hand. "It's okay. In this room we must be honest with each other, otherwise we have nothing."
Her words touch a pin to Helena's fury. Her shoulders slump. "I misspoke."
"It is true, I do like clothes. A different color can change your whole mood. Red for confidence, yellow for happiness. At home, I wear white or blue, because they are cool and calm. And when I am cool and calm, my daughter is cool and calm also."
Today she's in a bright orange shift that would make anyone else look like a piece of fruit. Her heels are the same bronze as her tan; they make her legs go forever.
Helena remembers orange, but it's a color from a lifetime ago. "Many years ago, I, too, loved fashion. Today I am an old woman in black. My time for fashion is gone."
"You can still look good in black."
"Bah! You cannot fix grief with a new dress."
Dr Triantafillou shakes her head. "I'm not trying to fix your grief. But it is easier to do life when you wear clothes instead of them wearing you."
Helena sags into the chair. It is comfortable, as though it is glad she has chosen to sit.
"That girl is cheating on my son," she tells her hands.
Smooth, easy, barely a pause: "How do you know?"
"I saw her last night, sneaking down the street with a man. He was tall and handsome." Alive.
"Perhaps he was family."
Helena shakes her head. "No. I know the family as well as I know my own. We were inseparable, Margarita and I. Since we were children."
"Were?"
"I do not want her pity."
Silence, then she glides to the next question. "What about your other friends?"
"Other friends?" Helena laughs. "Nobody wants to be friends with the dead man's mother. What if it is contagious?"
* * *
Helena will not be back. She has already decided.
83
Kiki
It isn't long before they turn their backs on the sea. Here Greece is thirsty, her lands covered in stretch marks, nature-made. Lots of invaders have tried to leave their own set of scars on Greece, but where are they now?
Not here, that's where.
"Music?" she asks her traveling companions. Leo's riding shotgun, while her cousin sprawls in the backseat, as much as a Mini Cooper will let a grown man sprawl.
"Only if you don't sing," Kostas says.
"I hate you," she tells him. Leo tries the whole not laughing thing, but it's not easy, she can tell. "I hate you, too," Kiki tells him.
"No you don't. I'm charming and handsome."
Yes, yes he is. Too charming. Too handsome. "All Greek men think they're charming and handsome."
Kostas laughs. "That's because we are."
Leo turns in his seat. "Did Kiki tell you she went to jail?"
"Kiki!" False outrage. The priest is grinning. "All this time I thought you were the good cousin, like Max. What did you do?"
Kiki shrugs. "It was nothing. A very small fight with a Romani woman."
Kostas looks at the Mini's ceiling. "Forgive her, Father, for she is truly an Andreou. What did you fight about?"
She gives him the barely dramatic highlights.
The priest frowns. "It is not like the Romani to go to the police. They make a habit of avoiding the authorities."
Kiki bobs her head. "I know."
"You're a smart woman, what do you think?"
Her cousin's eyes are dark in the rearview mirror. Kostas has an uncanny way of seeing into a person. Always has, long before God chose him for service.
"I think bending a woman's finger backwards until she squeals like a pig is not a good reason to file an assault charge. But perhaps I offended her some other way."
"So close," Kostas says. "You're almost there."
Does she dare say it? "I've seen her before. She came to the house begging for money." But she didn't ask for a single euro—did she? "And I think I saw her across the street at Stavros's funeral."
"You think he was—" Leo starts.
"Fucking a Romani woman? Why not? He fucked everyone else." Kiki speaks plainly. And why not? Stavros had no shame—why should she?
"You knew?" Leo says. Thanks to her stellar peripheral vision she witnesses his shock. Very fish-like.
"Everyone knew, except maybe his mother." Kostas tells him. "Stavros did not know the meaning of discretion."
Leo won't quit staring. "And you were going to marry him? Why didn't you say no?"
"I might have, if there was someone worth the fight."
"What—you're not worth the fight?"
Kiki's gaze meets her cousin's in the mirror again. "I'm not an angel, Leo. I haven't been waiting for marriage all this time, not to a man I didn't love. There were men. Stavros's affairs outnumbered mine by a lot, but there were still men."
"Wow."
She glances over just as he turns back to the road. Is he horrified? Disgusted? She can't read him, not when all she's got to work with is his profile, one stolen glance at a time.
"Are you shocked?"
"Sex doesn't shock me. Sex is amazing," he says. "You surprise me, that's all."
"I surprise you?"
"You're unexpected," he says. "Surprising at every turn."
"Everyone is surprising, Leo. That's one of the most interesting things about being alive."
With one finger, she flicks on the radio. Music pours from the speakers, fills her world. Kiki sings. Sometimes it's fun to watch grown men beg for mercy.
84
Leo
The Vale of Tempe has seen its share of war. During World War II, the Germans (playing the part of Xerxes and the Persians) threw ammunition at a combination of Greek, Australian and New Zealand forces (playing King Leonidas and his Spartans), because they had the audacity to stand between the Germans and the city of Larissa, a geographical bottleneck, through which allied troops flooded north.
Spoiler alert: The Germans won that battle, but lost the war. So both sides went home with a plush toy.
The pass still sees a lot of death. Greece builds its statues and houses to last, more or less, but its roads … not so much. If it's not the pitted roads and rolling trucks, it's the falling rocks.
* * *
"Tempe is a copycat," Kostas says of the village squatting on the far side of the river. "They put a church in the mountain, too. But my church is better." There's a twinkle in his eye as he says it.
A suspension bridge hangs between the road and the village. Pedestrians only.
Kiki says, "Not the whole church."
"Not the whole church," he agrees. "Some of it sits outside.
Ten degrees cooler in this green corridor. The river chatters as it crosses under the bridge, on its hunt for the Aegean Sea.
"Are we stopping?" Leo asks. His legs want to walk, but his brain and heart want to charge the border.
"No. I just enjoy complaining about their church."
But it's obvious the man is kidding. The Kostas Andreou he knew was the same guy, he didn't have a mean bone in his body.
A handful of miles down the road, the gorge spits them out near the coast. The land flattens as Kiki pushes the Mini Cooper north-east.
"Want me to drive?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "I'm good. Just enjoy the ride."
Hard to enjoy the ride when Kiki drives like she's one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But Kostas is relaxed, so maybe he should just chill the hell out, too.
&n
bsp; He leans back, closes his eyes. Replays the plan over and over. He doesn't skip forward to the end point, to the getting home. There will be time for that later—if the plan works.
It's not that he doubts Kostas, it's that he knows people. People have a way of screwing up a great plan. Throw in high stakes and a slow rotating finger at the law, and the chance of disaster increases exponentially.
But he's got to get home, and this is the only plan that ends without him saying his goodbyes to a marble slab.
His mind wanders a few inches left, to the woman with the lead foot. What are the odds he can come back and make things right with her?
Time. Leo never has enough of it. Hasn't since childhood. Those early years were tortoises, then somewhere along the way, they turned into race horses. Probably around the time he took out a mortgage. Banks hurry you from month to month so they can empty your pockets sooner.
By the time he makes things right with family, Greece and Kiki will be out of reach. Won't be long before the men come calling, with more to offer than Leo.
Ha! He barely knows Kiki, yet he already misses her.
He thinks about how he almost took a wrong turn at Soula. Good thing they both recognized zero chemistry when they saw it.
Eyes open. "Where are we?"
Kiki glances over. Dark smudges under her eyes. Messy hair. Creased dress. His cock thinks she looks amazing—and so does he.
"Katerini," she says.
Fields on both sides of the highway, growing crops he doesn't recognize. There's a faint perfume in the air he knows on some primal level, but his base self isn't speaking to the rest of his brain.
"Tobacco," she says.
"You reading my mind?"
"No. Just the question mark on your face. Greece is one of Europe's largest tobacco producers."
