by Alex A King
Churchill may or may not have said it best when he said, “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put”. But whether he said it or not, one thing was certain: he never had to say it in Greek. So I didn’t say it, but I was thinking it.
Someone whistled.
Takis was back. He shook a bulging manila envelope at me.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“But—” I looked at the farmers, at the board on the ground.
“No. No but.”
“I should help—”
“No helping,” he said, “only leaving.”
“Well,” I said brightly, “it sure was nice to meet you all.”
Back in the car Takis said, “It sure was nice to meet you,” in a mocking voice.
“I was being polite.”
“We don’t have to be polite to them.”
My mother raised me to be polite to everyone, unless they’re not being polite to me. “Why not?”
“Have you seen them at family parties?”
I didn’t need to think about it too hard. “No.”
“Exactly.”
“Are you saying they’re not loyal to Grandma?”
“Of course they are loyal. She would kill them if they weren’t. They are farmers.” He said farmers like he’d scraped the word off the bottom of his shoe after walking through a bar at closing time.
“Are you ... prejudiced against farmers?”
“I don’t trust anyone who prefers the company of farm animals.”
A light came on in my head. “They don’t like you, do they?”
“Who cares? I don’t like them.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t like you first.”
“Katerina?”
“What?”
“Skasmos.”
That was the not-so-polite way of telling me to shut up.
I shut up. We were back at the compound anyway, and I was sitting right next to enough cannabis to put me in prison for more years than I had left. I thought it was to my credit that I didn’t whimper and begin figuring out my prison name. Marika and I had worked out our aliases in Naples, but ‘Cedar’ didn’t have that shank-between-the-ribs edge.
“Fine.”
“Get out,” Takis said.
“You’re in my car.”
He made a face and climbed out. “Marika better have some tiganites ready.”
If anyone had fries ready for her husband, it was definitely Marika. But knowing pregnant Marika, the pile was fast dwindling.
“It’s too late in the afternoon,” I told him. “No fried patates for you.”
“Fuck the Virgin Mary’s donkey!” He threw the overstuffed manila envelope at me and fled the scene, leaving me holding the goods.
Goods that I was supposed to cook with.
With Takis at home and in one of his moods, I didn’t think enlisting Marika’s help was in anyone’s best interests, least of all hers. What if she ate the cookies? So what was I supposed to do about the koulourakia?
Back in Grandma’s kitchen, I dumped the envelope on the table and got down to the serious business of taking inventory.
Sugar. Flour. Butter. Cocoa.
Cannabis.
With those I could make something better than koulourakia. With those I could bake brownies.
I found a bowl and got to work.
#
In the Brothers Grimm’s timeless story of Little Red Riding Hood, Little Red’s grandmother is sickly, a plot device used to illustrate the power and cunning of the wolf and the heroine’s altruistic, naive nature. In my story Grandma was both sickly grandmother and wolf. Also, she was the huntsman, on account of how right now she was looking at me like she wanted to lop off my head with a big rusty axe.
“What are these?” she said. “I cannot eat these. They look like kaka.”
For the record, the only thing my brownies had in common with poop was their color; and my brownies were definitely several shades more chocolate than healthy human waste.
“Just try them,” I said.
She thrust the Tupperware container at me. “I do not eat these ... brownies. I said koulourakia, Katerina. These are not koulourakia.”
Uncle Kostas glanced up from his phone. “Just try them, Mama.”
Grandma ignored him. “Take them away. Bring me what I asked for.”
Wow, someone had really woken up on the wrong side of the hospital bed.
“You want one?” I asked my uncle.
He laughed. “My mother told me never to sample the product or she would make me eat wood.”
“Keep talking and I will make you eat wood today,” Grandma said.
They were still bickering when I left the hospital room, container tucked under my arm. I saluted Xander on the way past, then jogged down the stairs, figuring it would burn off a calorie or two of the brownie batter I’d sampled before lacing it with narcotics—although medically speaking, cannabis isn’t a narcotic.
I skulked through the lobby, hunting for signs of NIS. Neither Hera nor her clowns had been around on the trip up, but—a lot like germs—just because I couldn’t see them didn’t mean they weren’t there.
This time I saw them. This time they were scattered around the exit, their attention glued to the plastic container under my arm. MENSA wasn’t about to claim me as one of their own any time soon, but even I knew NIS plus Pot Brownies spelled Very Long Prison Sentence.
Hera stepped out in front of me. The bitch made it look like ballet.
She eyed the baked goods. “Are those brownies?”
Panic mode engaged. “Maybe.”
“I’ve never had brownies.”
And she never would if I could help it. “Grandma doesn’t like brownies. You’d hate them.”
“Let me be the judge of that.” She reached for the container. I snatched it out of her reach.
“No. Bad Hera. They’re Grandma’s.”
She made a face. “You just said she doesn’t like brownies. So what are you going to do with them?”
Compost, most likely. “Eat them all and bitch about my hips.”
“If I had your hips I would complain, too.”
“Hey, Hera. Eat a bag of dicks.”
“Oooh,” she said, grinning. “They come in bags?”
“Isn’t that where you found your Detective Melas lookalike?”
The smile fell off her face with a speed somewhere between alarming and hilarious. “Whatever you think you know, you know nothing.”
“Keep on telling yourself that.”
She snatched the brownies out from under my arm. “Mine now,” she declared, popping the lid. As I stood there watching in horror, she passed them around. Intelligence agents eating pot-laced brownies. Nothing good could come out of this except a photo op, and possibly footage for Stavros and Takis’ YouTube channel.
I took off at a fast clip.
“Don’t you want your container back?” Hera called out.
“Keep it,” I said. “It’s contaminated with skank cooties now.”
CHAPTER 19
I was going to prison, for sure. As soon as Hera and her spooks crashed down from their high, they’d be coming for me.
My hands shook on the wheel.
Headlamps flashed in my rearview mirror. There was a low growl as my knotted guts twisted into a newer, colder configuration. I was done for.
No. Wait. It was just Elias.
I pulled over.
He stuck his head in the passenger side window. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. Why?”
“Because the sheep finished crossing the road five minutes ago and you haven’t moved.”
“What sheep?”
He shook his head at me, but his eyes were soft and concerned.
An angry line of traffic had built up behind me. Someone honked a horn. Another kind person told me to stuff my mouth with a goat’s privates. A kindly bus driver left his cushy seat to describe in detail what my mother should do with the current prime m
inister, a priest, and three fish.
“My mother is dead,” I told him, hoping for a reprieve.
“Even better!” the bus driver yelled in my face.
Elias escorted him back to the bus with the help of his little friend.
When we got back, Takis was loitering out front at the guardhouse. “Stavros is waiting for you,” he told Elias.
My bodyguard’s eyes slid over to me. “Need anything else?”
Very Greek the way I tilted my chin up then down to signal no. Energy-wise it was more economical than a headshake. “Enjoy your dinner.”
“Do not come crying to me when you get food poisoning,” Takis called out after him.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said.
“Nothing.”
All evidence to the contrary.
I nudged him with my elbow. “You can tell me.”
He did a pouty face. “Stavros used to cook for me all the time. Now it’s ‘Elias this, Elias that’ all the time. And who doesn’t get fed now?” He stabbed his own chest with a pointy finger. “Takis, that is who.”
“Doesn’t Marika feed you well enough?”
“Lately she is eating all the food. Even the boys are complaining that they have to steal if they want to eat.”
“Stealing.” Definitely Makris boys.
“They are excellent thieves already,” Takis said proudly. “In time they could be the best.”
“What about college?”
“They can still go to college. The world needs more lawyers.” Laughing, he rubbed his head. “That was a joke. Hey, you missed your boyfriend again.”
“Boyfriend?”
“The doctor. He came again—with more flowers.”
Grandma’s doctor. I didn’t need to meet him to know I wasn’t really interested. My life was a disaster zone, and I didn’t need to drag anyone else into my descent to hell. Besides, did Greek prisons even have conjugal visits?
“I’m going to jail,” I said to no one in particular.
“For what?”
I told him about the pot brownies. He laughed.
“Relax. Baboulas will never let you go to prison. Money will change hands, and maybe some people will die, but you will not see the inside of a courtroom.” He thought about it a moment. “Or the outside, unless you drive past.”
Even less reassured, I trotted back to Grandma’s shack and drowned my sorrows in iced water and an unadulterated brownie. It tasted like home, wherever that was.
Several hours passed, and I wasted every one of them. I did laps of the compound. I scrolled through my Facebook feed and Liked everything, going back weeks. Finally I logged in to the Crooked Noses message board while I waited for the NIS to come down from their high and arrest me.
There were new pictures of me, head down, ducking into the hospital with the brownies under one arm. Me arguing with Hera. And, to my horror, there were several of me down the street from Melas’s house, moments before the moped exploded.
So much for my disguise. I’d be better off just being me.
BangBang’s light was green. I wasn’t the only one up this late. I messaged him—or her.
Have you ever been to prison?
There was a long pause.
Why?
Never mind, I typed back quickly. It was a stupid question.
Not that stupid. To answer your question, yes.
Yikes. Did you do the crime?
Not the one I was detained for.
How long were you in?
Another long pause into which I stuffed a lot of paranoia. BangBang was potentially a hardened criminal, one who might whack off my head if he knew who I was. I’d already dropped one hint too many, that I knew of.
Long enough, he or she wrote.
For?
To know I’ll never go back.
Did they have conjugal visits?
Not the kind anyone wants.
Yikes. I was this close to thanking BangBang and logging out when the envelope blinked again. I clicked.
Can I ask you a question?
You just did, I typed.
Winky face. Another question.
Okay.
What would you do if you discovered someone wasn’t who you thought they were?
Like who?
Like anyone.
Who is this? I typed.
I have to go. But I’ll be back.
The light next to BangBang’s name faded to gray. They’d logged out—and fast.
Stupid phone. Stupid message board. Stupid people who couldn’t just say what they mean and mean what they said.
I loaded another brownie—okay, two—onto my plate and began systematically forking pieces into my mouth. Maybe if the police came for me I’d be able to deny everything. I was, after all, eating the brownies—right? Not the same brownies, but they wouldn’t know that without a microscope.
Would they send Melas?
Would he use handcuffs—and not in a good way?
I was tired. Of Greece, of the NIS, of the three-ring circus my life had become. I really wanted to go home. And I really wanted a good glass of American milk to go with these brownies. Greek milk tasted like sadness.
Before I had a chance to ferment in more misery, my phone shuddered. Incoming text message. Anonymous. Of course.
I rolled my eyes. This was so freakin’ typical.
Are you still following the NIS woman?
Maybe. Who is this?
A friend.
I doubted that. What do you want?
To meet. Maybe we can work together.
Ha-ha. Very funny. Like I was going to charge into the night at the behest of some anonymous messenger.
Okay, so maybe I had done something similar before, but that was different.
Okay, no it wasn’t.
Why? I fired back.
There was a long pause. Then: Because I know who has your father.
Time for my own longish pause, into which I packed a whole pile of reactions. I gnawed on my lip; pondered the veracity of the messenger’s claims; wondered how I could mount the forces discreetly; wondered how I could sneak out alone, because inevitably they’d want me to come alone, because that’s how this always seemed to work. Bad guys never want you to bring a buddy for emotional backup.
And this was a bad guy, I was certain. Good guys called the police. Bad guys left furtive messages dipped in catnip.
Okay, I typed back. When and where?
The abandoned olive factory up the mountain.
An abandoned olive factory. Of course it was an olive factory, and of course it was abandoned. That shouldn’t be too creepy or smelly.
Come alone, the messenger wrote.
Because—again—that’s how this always worked. And I was in luck—or maybe out of it—because with the local NIS temporarily indisposed, I wouldn’t have a tail.
I suppose you’ll know if I talk to anyone about this?
Yes. How did you guess?
Because that’s how this always goes.
So I’m not original? Sad face.
Not even close, buddy.
#
I didn’t go alone. I brought along Sad Kat, my widowed alter ego. The guy manning the front gate knew Katerina but he didn’t know Sad Kat. Sad Kat mumbled “kalinykta” in a damp, gravelly voice that garnered a respectful “goodnight” in return and an immediate dismissal. Sad Kat left the compound under zero scrutiny. As Sad Kat I was invisible.
Perfect.
Sad Kat and I had transport. We’d commandeered a bicycle one of the family kids had left propped up in the courtyard. We fled slowly, carefully, rolling over stones and other assorted speed bumps designed to test the human body for leaks. Sad Kat and I were glad we didn’t have Uncle Kostas’s thimble-sized bladder.
By car the factory wasn’t far. By bicycle was another story. My GPS turned out to be a dirty, rotten liar, feeding me some bullcrap story about how the ride should take twenty minutes. A humid hour or so later I was ne
ar the factory grounds, Aunt Rita’s widow’s weeds glued to my skin. Out here in the middle of nowhereish, there was a cloying overabundance of night. The dark was too empty and too full. The silence was loud in a way it never is in the city or suburbs. The cicadas were singing about how all their noise was for the nookie.
I leaned the bicycle against the chain fence surrounding the property, and hunted for a way in that wasn’t the main gate. Whoever was waiting, I wanted a look at them before they got a clear shot at me. Good thing the fence was in sorry shape. Lots of holes. Myriad gaps between the ground and chain link. I picked one and went for it, clawing my way into what could be a trespassing charge, if the land’s owner was so inclined.
Shadows are nice, provided you’re the one in them, not the one wondering what’s lurking in their depths. I glued myself to the factory’s outer wall and crept around to where I hoped the back door would be.
CRACK.
That dreadful sound?
Twig.
A bitty twig with the circumference of a pencil. Tinder dry from summer’s brutal reign, the wood didn’t have enough moisture to muffle its snapping when my borrowed sandal landed on it.
The noise echoed.
My throat expertly caught my breath and held it still.
You know in The Night Before Christmas, when nothing is stirring, not even a mouse? That’s what happened. Nothing stirred, not even a mouse. The crickets and cicadas stopped to listen, for a long, awful moment. The kind of moment when anything could happen ... and might.
But then it passed, and the creepy crawlies went back to trying to get laid before dying. They lived for it; they died for it.
My breath whooshed out.
Then a witch flew down on her broomstick, cackling.
Just kidding. It was Hera and there was no broomstick, unless the stick up her butt counted.
“Gotcha,” she said in English. “Thanks for the brownies.”
Boy was I surprised. Of all the people I’d suspected of sending me cutesy, opaque text messages, she wasn’t one of them.
“Did you eat a whole brownie?” I asked, inspecting her discretely. She didn't strike me as high.
“Why?”
I made what I hope was an innocent face. “No reason.”
“Aren’t you bored with following me yet? I can print you out a copy of my schedule if you’d like. ”
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew you were following me. Do you think I’m stupid? Your disguise was lame. Did you come up with it all by yourself?”