by Alex A King
“A little fall.” Aunt Rita rolled her eyes. “Her hip is broken.”
“How?”
“I slipped,” Grandma said.
“She was dancing on a table,” Aunt Rita said.
I raised both eyebrows. “Dancing on a table?”
Aunt Rita filled in the blank that really mattered. Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “She had been eating some of her special koulourakia.”
To help combat the nausea resulting from chemotherapy, my grandmother did magical baking. Brownies weren’t really a Greek thing, so instead Grandma was baking her herbal pain relief into twisty cookies. Grandma had access to the best pot her money could buy. Aunt Rita, Papou, and I had spent an afternoon contemplating the universe after we stumbled upon her baking and mistook the green bits for oregano or spinach. Then Xander came along and confiscated the cookies.
Now I was thinking weed in her baked goods wasn’t such a great idea—not if she wound up falling off tables and busting her hip.
“Now I have to sit around on my kolos until this heals.” Grandma made a face that told me exactly what she thought about her situation. “It could be a while.”
No kidding. The cancer and chemo would add extra time to her recuperation period. “Do you have to stay here?”
“They are sending me home the day after tomorrow, but I will be in a wheelchair. Can you believe it? Me in a wheelchair like that old malakas. Now Papou will want to race me all over the courtyard, and he will win because he has had more practice.”
“Just hook your wheelchair up to Xander and make him run.” I couldn’t help stealing a glance at Xander. As expected, his face was passive. He wasn’t big on showing emotion. I wasn’t sure he had any, although I had seen him smile and heard him laugh. His vow of silence didn’t extend towards humor, thankfully.
“You could invest in a riding crop,” Aunt Rita said.
The blood drained out of Xander’s face. He looked away. The man who never lost his composure was rattled. Just as quickly he was back to carefully composed normal.
I didn’t know much about Xander, but I knew his entire family was dead and that his entire back was covered with a waterfall of scars. Interestingly—and inexplicably—Melas also wore nearly identical scars on his back. The two men went way back but I didn’t know how or why, and I didn’t like to ask. If either man wanted me to know they’d tell me.
“Maybe,” I said, moving the conversation out of painful terrain, “we could buy her one of those motorized scooters. Papou would never outrun her in one of those.”
“He does not know those exist,” Grandma said. “Can you imagine how unbearable he would he in a scooter? Honk-honk all day long.” She shook her hands at the ceiling, then winced. “How am I supposed to bake in this condition, eh?”
Baking was her stress release, her way of dealing and processing, working through problems. With busy hands she bought herself time to think and scheme.
“Katerina can help you,” Aunt Rita suggested.
Grandma crossed herself.
“I can cook,” I said in my defense. Which was true, I could, but Grandma and I didn’t work well together in the kitchen. I asked too many questions and Grandma left too many questions unanswered. Plus she made little faces as I carried out her instructions.
“Katerina.” Grandma gestured to the bedside table. “Pass me my phone.”
I reached over to grab the iPhone and raised my eyebrows at its new exterior. “New case?”
Previously in a plain case, Grandma’s phone was now wrapped in a white doily.
“From a cousin,” Grandma said, waving her hand at the crocheted phone cover. “She said the coffee cup told her she would make it for me.”
Greece: where logic had the stability of quicksand.
“Nice,” I said, handing her the phone. Her hand shook; heavy-duty hospital drugs, probably. The phone fell, and I bobbed down to grab it.
Something tumbled out of my pocket. We all looked at the object laying on the floor, big pink plus sign facing up. Then everyone looked at me.
I jumped backwards, away from the evidence, but the damage was already done.
Grandma fastened her steely gaze to my face. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“It’s not mine!”
Aunt Rita threw her arm around my shoulder. “It’s okay. We will figure this out, eh? Greece is a country with options. You could marry the father—”
“There’s no father!”
Horrified gasps all around.
Wow. For people who killed, stole, and dealt drugs for a living, they sure were judgmental.
“It’s not—”
I stopped cold. Melas was standing in the doorway, staring down at Marika’s pregnancy test. His gaze slowly rose to meet mine.
“It’s not what?” He kept his voice neutral.
“Not mine!”
“My wife said the same thing when she was pregnant with our first,” Aunt Rita said.
“My wife said the same thing,” Aldo Fontana said from his corner. “What she meant was that it was not mine.”
“You’ve got issues—I get that,” I said to the elderly Italian man. “But this test doesn’t belong to me.”
Melas scrutinized me. “Then why have you got it?”
“I found it.”
Their expressions shifted from horrified to appalled. What kind of person picked up discarded—used—pregnancy tests?
I was wondering that myself.
Christ on a crouton, I was making things worse. I crouched down, snatched up the test, shoved it back into my pocket. Out of Grandma’s hospital room I stomped, turning back when I remembered I had no money, no keys, and no desire to hike all the way back to the compound.
“Does anyone have change for the bus?” I asked hopefully.
Melas rattled his keys. “Come on, I’m going your way.”
Melas’s family lives in Makria, the village closest to the family compound. The village was named after my family, and its citizens are loyal to Grandma. During the Reign of the Colonels, when the military seized control of the government, in the late sixties, early seventies, Grandma saved a lot of lives and kept a lot of secrets.
People from Makria aren’t scared of Grandma. People outside of Makria are definitely scared of Grandma. Not me—mostly. Melas’s mother, on the other hand, has played the lead in several of my nightmares. Unbeknownst to her children, she was once Grandma’s torturer. Given what I know about the woman I could definitely envision her inflicting pain on humanity, and enjoying the screams while sipping iced coffee.
“You won’t make me have coffee with your mother, will you?”
“In those clothes?” He eyed my bedraggled dress. New a couple of weeks ago, its lifecycle had run its course. Probably I’d have to burn it and hope the smoke didn’t destroy what was left of the ozone layer. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Melas didn’t say another word until we exited the elevator. Hera and her clan of slightly lesser morons were waiting in the lobby. She uncrossed her endless legs and swished her hips in our direction as soon as the doors opened.
“Great,” I muttered.
“She’s not that bad,” he said.
“You’re right—she’s worse.”
Hera rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Nikos, you brought me a purple moose. You’re so sweet.” Her eyes hardened. “Okay, time for your debriefing.”
“This went pretty badly for you last time,” I said. “Are you sure you want to try again?”
Melas looked from her to me. “What happened?”
“Nothing for you to worry about or even know about,” Hera said, charm oozing out of her pores. She gave a pretty shrug. “It’s a girl thing.”
“That’s the difference between us,” I said. “You’re a girl, I’m a woman. Now scram.”
Her eyebrows took a long, fast walk up her forehead. “Scram?”
“Do you people not have Sesame Street? Oscar the
Grouch? And you call yourselves civilized.” I pushed past Hera yet again. Why couldn’t she just get on her broomstick and flit back to her coven?
“You have to talk to me,” she told my back.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
I turned around. “Does your boss know you kidnapped an American citizen? Does his boss? How about his boss? Do they know the only reason you bounced me out of Greece was because you’re trying to get your boyfriend back and you think I’m in the way?”
Hera’s face turned the endearing purple-red of a baboon’s tailpipe. “That’s not true.”
I glanced at Melas behind her. His expression was unreadable. “Yeah,” I said, “it is.” I nailed Hera in the face with a snooty mean-girl look. “Could you be more obvious?”
“Does he know you’re pregnant?” she snapped.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I shouted. “I’m not pregnant!”
Like a late-summer hurricane in Florida, I stormed out of the hospital, not stopping until I reached the road. In my fit of completely justified anger I’d bypassed my ride. If I turned back now I’d look like a goober. I was already filthy; I didn’t want to add looking like a nitwit to the damage, so I turned right and set off along the busy Volos street.
Everything looked different on foot. A passing truck shot a cloud of diesel fumes into the air, triggering an immediate coughing fit. Brakes screeched. Horns howled. The air had a metallic flavor. Hopefully I wouldn’t get lost on the way back to Grandma’s. If I could find the road that led to Mount Pelion, I might get back to the compound before the small cell carcinoma set up shop in my lungs.
A car pulled up alongside me. The window rolled down.
“You looking for a date?” Melas called out.
I kept my eyes on the horizon. “No.”
“I am. So how about you get in and I’ll take you home. Get cleaned up, maybe I’ll buy you dinner.”
Hmm ... that didn’t sound so bad. My stomach was already launching a protest about the no-food situation. “Could this dinner be moussaka?”
“Anything you want. I have to warn you though, I need to visit Mama on the way.”
“Do I have to see your mother?”
“You can wait in the car.”
I shot him a dirty look.
“Or ... I can drop you off first, go see her, and then come back for you.”
I sniffed. “I guess that would be okay.”
Melas stopped the police car and reached over to open the door. “Come on, baby. You’re making me unpopular here.”
He was right. Traffic was lining up behind him and the horns were apoplectic. That he was a cop in a cop car didn’t cut any ice with Greek drivers. Too much longer and they’d abandon their vehicles to wave their hands in his face and yell obscenities. The Virgin Mary would feature heavily in their rantings, along with an assortment of other religious figures, farm animals, and his mother’s privates.
They wouldn’t talk about his mother that way if they knew Kyria Mela. With one glance she could burn them and their mothers to the ground.
Reluctantly, I climbed into the police car and buckled up.
“You promise you won’t take me to see your mother?”
“I promise ...”
My eyes narrowed. There was an invisible “but” at the end of that sentence, so I supplied it for him.
Melas shrugged. “She loves Italy and she wants to hear all about your trip. Not tonight, but soon.”
“It wasn’t a trip, it was an abduction!”
“Do it for me, okay? She’ll nag me into an early grave otherwise.”
“What do I get out of it?”
He leaned closer. His breath warmed my ear ... and other places south of the border in the underwear I’d been wearing for three days. “Anything you want,” he said in his low, sexy voice.
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
Leaning my head on the headrest I closed my eyes and smiled. “Anything. I’ll remember that.”
#
There was cheering as I padded through the family compound’s courtyard.
Did I say cheering? I meant jeering. My mistake. I took solace in the fact that if they got to be too much I could possibly order them killed.
Family; a few weeks ago I’d had none ... or so I thought. Now I had a full complement of relatives, and I was growing attached to even the worst of them.
“What is that smell?” one of the cousins called out.
“Smells like Italians to me,” another one said.
“Smells like your mother,” I yelled at them.
My cousins—second cousins, most of them—cackled. There was a lot of thigh slapping involved, and some hand signals that recommended I do things that were popular in German and Japanese porn.
“Skasmos,” Marika screeched at the cousins from her apartment’s balcony. “What is wrong with you all? There are children playing!”
“They’ve heard it all before from their own father,” someone fired back.
“Try me,” Marika said, giving him the pointy ‘don’t you dare’ finger. “I will cut off your archidia and serve them with skordalia.” She waved to me. “Katerina! Come up!”
Everything tasted better with the garlic and bread sauce, except maybe balls.
I trotted closer to the balcony and looked up, hand shielding my eyes. “Are you okay?”
Marika’s face was thunderstorm dark. “First chance I get I am going to kill Hera.”
“Me, too.”
“I will take video and put it on YouTube,” Donk’s voice said from behind her.
I raised my eyebrow. What was Baby Dimitri’s nephew doing in Marika and Takis’ apartment? When I asked, Marika said, “I felt sorry for him. Do you see how skinny he is? Bones. How can he be a man when he has no meat on him.”
“Hey, I have meat where it matters,” Donk said.
Marika rolled her eyes. “Greek men are pigs.”
“That’s all men, I think,” I said.
I waved goodbye and trotted toward Grandma’s shack. My goat was on the far side of the compound, chilling in the shade with a passel of the family dogs. He bleated when he spotted me and trip-trapped over for a head scratch. About twelve feet away he stopped. His ears assumed the ‘hell no’ position, then he backtracked and skedaddled back to his canine posse. Apparently I was too stinky for a goat. That’s how low I’d sunk.
An hour later, I finally made my exit from Grandma’s bathroom, semi-human. My clothes were clean, my hair was shiny, and with a generous layer of makeup I could pretend I was a real girl again. Too bad about the pumpkin on my shoulders.
Melas was in the courtyard shooting the breeze with Takis and Stavros when I emerged. He gave me a long appraising look and a flash of his bad-boy smile.
“Nice dress,” he said. His appreciation stopped when it got to my head.
Forgiving him for the head thing, I was hit with a sudden attack of shyness. “You like it?”
“I like it.”
“You like it?” Takis mocked. Stavros slapped his arm. Takis shot him a dirty look. “What?”
“Leave her alone,” Stavros said.
“Leave her alone,” Takis mimicked in a girly voice. “What’s the matter with you? Did you grow a mouni where your poutsa used to be?”
“If he did, he evolved,” I said. “Talk to your wife lately?”
Takis' eyes darted from side to side. “Maybe. Why?”
I made a face. “No reason.”
“Come on, Katerina. Talk to me. What did I do wrong this time?”
“You tell me.”
Two palms up. “It was one strip club, okay? I didn’t even look. I collected the money and left—that’s all. Marika understands. She knows the business is the business.”
I shrugged. “Hey, don’t look at me. Keep me out of your marital issues.”
Takis muttered something under his breath. Something about my dead mother’s privates. Nothing
is sacred when it comes to Greek insults. Given that Mom had been married to a Greek, I was sure she understood her body was up for grabs when the conversation heated up.
Takis hot-tailed it out of there, headed away from the apartment he shared with Marika and their sons. Time—and my patience—were running out; Marika needed to tell him about the impending baby. Maybe then everyone would quit thinking I was the expectant mother. I was already sick of pregnancy—and I wasn’t even pregnant.
Five minutes later we were in Melas’s car, easing down the long dirt and stone driveway that stretched from the compound’s gates to the narrow road threaded through the mountain. The route was scenic. Some Makris ancestor had planted an olive grove on the wide patch of land, possibly for subterfuge.
Melas didn’t look too shabby either. Dark gray slacks, pale blue button-down shirt folded to mid-forearm, revealing a generous expanse of tanned, muscular forearm. Unconsciously, without a shred of permission from the smart part of my brain, I licked my lips.
Melas glanced over. He looked entirely too happy with himself. “I saw that.”
“You saw nothing.”
“Yeah, I saw that.”
He took the road to the waterfront where restaurants, tavernas, and coffee shops lined the street. The city was just now sealing off both ends of the road so that traffic couldn’t flow, creating a safe space where Greeks could wave their hands, talk loudly, and pace without getting hit by cars. It was a place to see and be seen. We hadn’t come alone. Elias followed from a discreet distance, fully armed and dressed like a swarthy ninja.
Melas chose a table inches from the darkening water. Colored lights flickered on the surface. Pretty. Carefree. Our conversation was casual, lightly flirtatious, until it took a U-bend of a personal turn.
“Hey ...” Melas slung his arm around the back of my chair “... you could have just told me there was someone else.”
“Is this the baby thing again?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not mine.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Are you kidding me?” I demanded. “You believe Hera over me?”
“No ...”
“And by ‘no’ you mean ‘yes’.”
“Look, I’ve known Hera a long time. She’s a lot of things but she’s not a liar.”