by Alex A King
"I'm chasing a ghost. You're the only lead I've got."
She sits next to him, pats him on the back. It's unprofessional, but the guy looks like he could use some kindness.
"I'm not a lead. I'm just a bystander who got caught in the crossfire."
91
Leo
"Welcome home."
Stamp.
Just like that, he's on American soil again. The air is alive with Americans speaking English words the American way.
It's jarring.
Nothing to declare. The Customs officers and their dogs look through him as he rolls on by with his luggage.
Then it's out the doors into the space filled with people wearing (mostly) happy faces. None of them are waiting on him. That comes later, after another flight, another airport.
No payphone this time. He got online back in Turkey, paid the phone bill, charged his cell on the plane, and now it's three bars and counting. Four. Five. His phone shakes with unacknowledged alerts. From Dad, from Soc, from spammers peddling spam.
He checks. Nothing he doesn't already know, except he'll win a cruise if he comes to some timeshare thing.
He inches toward the domestic terminal on a slow-moving shuttle. Sunny day, but it's missing Greece's blinding edge. Smells different. People look different. His people, but they seem foreign. Nobody on the shuttle is carrying a sack of live chickens or wearing black knee-high stockings. It's a mixture of faces, from dark to pale, with every variation in between. Not a lot of golden tans, though, or skins browned and lined from years of honest work under the sun's wicked glare.
So this is it: culture shock.
"What are you looking at?" the guy across from him barks.
"I don't know," Leo admits
What is he looking at?
Nothing, that's what. His eyes are pointing in the other guy's direction, but there's no looking going on. Leo's seeing Kiki all over again, beautiful in that rumpled black dress as she stood at the border waving.
Too bad he couldn't pack her in his luggage.
He wonders if she has a passport, if he can fly her here when his mother is—
When things return to the kind of normal his family has to face here on out.
He open his email, considers shooting her a note, but he never got her email address, did he? That damn one-way swap. He's at her mercy, unless he bugs Papou for her digits or email.
Off the shuttle, into the terminal. The flashing board tells him his flight is on-time. He checks his bag, knocks back a latte at Starbucks, glances at the New York Times's front page.
Nothing but bad news.
Leo is a man with a lot bad news headed his way, so he doesn't bother buying the newspaper. He wants to hear something positive, something good.
He texts Dad, his brother, gives them his flight info again, in case they forgot. Only his brother replies. He'll be waiting, Soc says, because Dad's at the hospital. He uses a kind of teen shorthand that makes Leo's eyes want to bleed.
Then it's boarding time …
Departure time …
Wasted time in the air, where he's got nothing to do but percolate …
Landing time, but the pilot is goofing around, waiting on permission to land from the FAA gods.
On the ground—finally.
Everyone surges in the same moment, causing gridlock in the aisle. Luggage falls from the overhead compartment, onto heads, into arms. No grace, only chaos.
Leo's tall enough that his bag pops out with minimal persuasion. Then he gets busy helping the women next to him. They're grateful in a polite, detached way. They're less polite as they near the front and it's every woman and man for themselves.
Leo remembers the days when a person waiting on you could walk right up to the gate. Not anymore. He does a lot of walking before he sees Socrates the younger slouching against a wall, thumbs dancing over his phone.
"Hey," he says.
His brother glances up. Tears explode out of him.
Leo thinks: I'm too late.
92
Kiki
Summer drags Kiki along behind it. The passing of time is in no way awesome, as far as she's concerned. The missing of Leo never wanes. Soon August is coming, then September, and with it, school.
What's going to happen, then?
The principal has assured her that she still has a solid place amongst his faculty, but he's not from Agria. He lives in Volos, where Agria can't squeeze him.
"Are you coming to the festival?" Soula asks.
"No."
"You're coming to the festival," she says decisively.
The Fishermen's Festival. Or the Fishermen's Night. Whatever you want to call it, the festival happens in late July, early August. This year it falls in July.
And Kiki is not going.
"I can hear you thinking," Soula says. "And we're going together, okay? If anyone attacks you, I will punch them in the throat."
Kiki believes her. But she's still not going.
"Yes, you are."
"Stop doing that."
Her sister shrugs. "Don't think so loud, then."
* * *
"You cannot go to the festival," Mama says. "What will people say? You are in mourning, which means no festivals for you."
"It's been more forty days."
"It is still disrespectful! Two years!"
Kiki hadn't considered that angle. Mostly she was worried about the taking-a-beating-and-being-spat-on-for-murder thing.
"Soula told me I have to."
"Soula, Soula, Soula. Who listens to Soula? Would you ask a man with no legs how to walk? No! Then why would you listen to anything Soula says?"
"Soula is like a man with no legs?"
"It is a metaphor," Mama says. "Your sister has no etiquette and a very big mouth."
"Just like her mother." Her father drops a kiss on his wife's head on the way out the door. She swats at him.
"Careful, or I will spit in your food."
He winks at Kiki from behind Mama's back. "Again?"
"Relax, Mama," Kiki says. "I'm not going to the festival."
* * *
If she's not going to the festival, why is she at the festival?
Soula. Of course.
The bulldozer in high heels pushed her all the way down here, despite their mother's shrieks.
"It's not so bad—see?" Soula says cheerfully.
Kiki is temporarily dazed. The promenade is lit up from end to end with multicolored lights, and people stroll beneath them, from St. George's to the bumper cars. In between, the tavernas hum with conversation and the sounds of glasses clinking. Everyone is toasting to good health, good fortune, good life.
Before they left, Kiki made her own toast with a bottle of EPSA lemonade—a toast to invisibility.
So far, it's working. Everyone is dazzled by the lights, the noise, the corn toasting over hot coals. Bowls of fish soup and other freshly-caught seafood dance across the promenade from taverna to table.
"Kiki, Soula!"
Kiki's blood plunges to freezing, then warms back up when Vivi, Max and Melissa push out of the crowd.
Hugs, hug. Kiss, kiss.
"Look at you," Kiki says to the pretty blonde girl, "every time I see you you are more beautiful."
Melissa closes one eye and winces. "You're not going to spit on me, are you?"
Kiki laughs. "I'm not going to spit on you."
Fist pump. "Hooray! Greece is finally coming around to my way of thinking."
"Melissa, Vivi!"
More bodies out of the crowd. This time it's Vivi's aunt Kyria Dora.
"Look at you, Melissa," she crows. "Prettier every day." Then she dry spits in Melissa's direction.
"Great," Melissa mouths. Kiki tries not to laugh, and succeeds—mostly.
"Hello, Soula, Kiki." The bigger, older woman nods at them both. "Kiki, where is your friend?" A very innocent-sounding question, that—underneath—is the equivalent of a backhoe.
"Which fr
iend is that?"
"Kyrios Socrates's boy. Leonidas."
Vivi wags a finger in her aunt's face. "No! We've had this conversation."
Palms up, Kyria Dora says, "I was just asking. Leonidas is a good boy. I read his cup the other week. But there was not much inside because he drank the coffee and the grounds. Then he caught some wild animals for me."
"How is Effie?" Kiki asks.
"Still a lesbian. All she needs a good man and she will change her mind."
Kiki thinks that's not how it works, but what does she know? Effie had a husband for a long time, and before that—rumor has it—she and Detective Lemonis had a fling. But she knows how gossip is here. It's like popcorn, mostly filled with hot air. Mostly.
"My family loves her show," Kiki tells her.
The big woman beams. "In Germany, they worship her. This is because they do not know how stupid she is. But these are people who voted for Hitler and love David Hasselhoff, so they have no taste." Despite her words, it's obvious she's proud.
"Have you heard from Leo?" Vivi asks.
No, she hasn't heard from Leo. And Leo hasn't heard from her. The paper he gave her sits in her desk between the pages of a diary she never uses. She keeps meaning to fire an email across the ocean, but when she sits at her computer, her fingers find the backspace faster than SEND.
What is she waiting for?
A miracle.
"Leo? He is well. He is back home," Kostas says, pushing into the circle, black robes swirling around his calves. "He sends his gratitude and good wishes. And I sent him ours. He has a new address." He gives Kiki a meaningful look.
Kyria Dora double-takes. "Skordia, skordia," she mutters. She's old school, which means catching sight of a priest going walkabout in the street is potentially bad luck. But the mere mention of garlic chases the bad luck away.
Like vampires, bad luck doesn't like garlic.
"Is his mother—?" Kiki starts.
"Holding on," Kostas assures her. "I think Kyria Kara must be a very strong woman. She had to be to survive here."
"His mother was very strange woman," Kyria Dora says.
"You mean she was American," Vivi says.
"Eh, it is the same thing. Even your mother is strange—" She points to her head. "—after all those years in America. It must be the radiation."
Vivi blinks at her. "Radiation from what?"
"The satellites."
The older woman doesn't see her niece shake her head slightly, or the tiny smile flitting across her lips.
"I'm starving," Soula says. "Anyone else?"
"Good luck finding a table," Kyria Dora says, glancing back. "Every chair is full of bottoms."
Soula's large hooped earrings rattle in time with her head shake. "No table necessary. Every time I come to the paralia, I eat the same thing."
"Souvlaki," Kiki says.
"Souvlaki," Soula confirms. "And not just any souvlaki."
Vivi slings her arm around her daughter's shoulder. "You want souvlaki?"
Melissa jerks her head up, makes a tst sound.
"Oh my God," Vivi groans. "Can you not do that?"
"They all do it." Kiki shakes her head at Melissa. "Try listening to a whole classroom full of them making that sound."
"No," Vivi tells her daughter. "The word is no. Learn it. Use it. Or you're grounded."
Kyria Dora is the first to snap off the group. She staggers over to the stage set up at the promenade's concrete lip and finds a chair. The music is on, the dancers are dancing to a traditional Greek folk song. Kiki danced there once, when she was a girl. The clothes were hot, heavy, not made for summer nights.
"Kiki?" Soula says.
"I'm fine. Go get your souvlaki."
"Will you be okay?"
Maybe.
"Wait right there," Soula says. "Do not go anywhere."
* * *
Kiki doesn't go anywhere—anywhere comes to her.
"Kiki, what are you doing here?" Stavros's best friend, Akili, appears at her elbow. Retsina fumes roll off him. "It's disrespectful."
"Then it's a good thing I care about your opinion."
He glances side to side, then back at her. He tilts his head toward the meandering crowd. "Walk with me, Kiki."
Kiki doesn't want to walk, she wants to scream. "I'm not going anywhere with you."
"It's just a little walk. Come on."
His fingers are an iron manacle around her wrist. She's going nowhere, except with him. Unless she screams. And all this noise, who can separate a cry for help from a cry for more?
"You like to ride, Kiki?" He nods to the Ferris wheel, making its slow tour of the night sky.
"I don't like heights."
Not true. Kiki has never minded heights. It's the falling that worries her, and the crash at the bottom.
"I'll protect you," he says.
She thinks about flinging herself on the ground, throwing an epic toddler tantrum, but who would notice? People here act out their own personal melodramas all the time—hers would be minor. And anyone watching would shake their heads and say, 'We knew Kiki Andreou was crazy, just like Candy Box.'
So she goes, hoping for an intervention between here and there.
No such luck. Akili buys two tickets from the guy working the wheel. Kiki doesn't know the man—they're a package deal with the equipment, moving from town to celebrating town. Akili shoves her into a swaying red bucket, then they jerk up and away so the next couple can take their seat.
"How are you, Kiki? Are you well?"
They're staring into the same darkness ahead, his arm casually curved around the bucket's back. Possessive, but not touching her.
If he touches, she'll break his finger off, throw it to the fish. No mercy like she showed the Romani woman.
In a bored voice: "Fine."
"Are you going to ask how I am?"
"No."
"Come on, Kiki, why not? I thought we were friends."
"You were Stavros's friend—not mine."
"And now I do not have my best friend. So you owe me."
Now she looks at him, nothing but disdain on her face. "I owe you nothing."
"Yes, you do. You killed Stavros, now you owe me a friend."
The wheel jerks again. Higher. On the promenade, people are shrinking like they've been hit with a ray gun. A cold needle makes frozen stitches up and down her spine. Her fight and flight is malfunctioning: she wants to punch him in the face first, then do the running.
Anger. Fear. Kiki's feeling both. "God, I'm so tired of defending myself."
"Good," he says, glancing her way. "Confess, then you will feel much better. Did you get the present?"
"What present?"
"I left it for you on your table."
"You left the bomb?"
He looks confused. "Bomb? Hey, I don't know anything about a bomb. All I did was deliver something Stavros told me to give you. He said to give it to you at the church, but then—
A lightbulb flicks on in her head, brighter than all the lights on the promenade combined. That little bastard. "You knew, didn't you? Stavros meant to stand me up, and you knew."
"He wasn't supposed to get mur—"
"I don't have time for this skata." She stands. The bucket sways, but it's more stable than the guy still sitting.
"Where are you going?"
"Away from you."
The wheel moves another bucket higher.
"You'll fall!"
"Oh, please," Kiki scoffs. She was one of those kids who used to scale trees—sometimes to steal fruit, sometimes to throw it at Soula and the other kids. This metal giant is nothing—nothing.
It's a short drop to the next bucket.
"Hi," she says to the bewildered people sitting inside. "I'm Kiki Andreou. Nice to meet you. Hey," she calls out to the wheel operator. "Can you stop this thing? I need to get down. I'm trying to get away from a crazy person."
He gives her a look that says the other crazy person must be ce
rtifiable, because Kiki's not looking too sane herself. But he stops the wheel, because who needs that on their record?
Kiki clambers over the two people in their bucket, straddles the wheel's arm, shuffles forward a meter or so, then drops to the next bucket. From there it's just a short fall to the ground.
She lands with a gymnast's flourish.
"Thanks," she tells the operator. Then she dusts herself off and curtseys to the people waiting on their turn to ride. She looks up. "Hey, Akili?"
He's leaning over the bucket's edge. Even under the colored lights he looks pale. "What?
She thinks about all the things she could say—should say. But she can't do it. Akili is an ass, yes, but he's an ass in pain. He lost his best friend in this whole world, so she can't twist a knife in him.
"Take care of yourself, okay?"
93
Kiki
Mama's performing a post-mortem on Kiki's evening. Because everything Kiki did, everything Kiki said, showed up at home before she did.
There's no way to beat gossip home, unless you're one of those flying superheroes.
Kiki isn't a superhero. That should be obvious by now.
"…And then she jumped from the Ferris wheel onto the ground!"
She should be in the theater, Margarita Andreou. None of that modern day performance, where subtlety lives, but theater circa Ancient Greece. They'd eat her performance and beg for more in one of those stone amphitheaters.
Deep breath. Kiki waits for the perfumed air to work its magic, but the gardenias are sleeping, thick petals pulled tightly around their shoulders.
Thanks for nothing, flowers.
She doesn't tell her mother about Akili's unintentional revelation, not when she's unsure how she feels. Too bad Stavros wasn't man enough to deliver the news himself. Too bad he didn't feel like he could. Overjoyed is how she would have felt if he'd come to her with his breakup plans.
It's all just too, too bad.
"I jumped," Kiki says, "but not onto the ground. Not at first."
