Junesong sniffed. “Back to this shit.”
“Yeap.” Pallas pointed. “Hey, check out that dog.”
“All dogs here look the same.”
“But that one’s adorable.”
“If you say so.”
They crossed odos Athinas opposite the stray and headed south.
“You hungry?”
“I could eat.”
Savvas was packed so they got souvlakia at Thanasis instead. Pallas and Junesong ate them in hand and started up odos Kolokotroni, searching for something to do. Booze wasn’t nearly crowded enough so they checked out Pop, but Pop was unusually packed out to the street that early because of some event; they headed back to their place and fooled around.
Afterward, they showered. Junesong kept her arm out from under the showerhead. She looked down and thought the cracks around the drain made it look like a wrinkled, pursed mouth, beneath a grated muzzle. Maybe things are like that, she told herself. Hidden beneath the veneer, secretly hostile. She closed her eyes and breathed in her girlfriend’s neck.
Pallas broke their quiet. “When will you take me to America?”
Junesong said “Someday” and wasn’t sure she meant it. Junesong kissed between Pallas’ breasts and held her own face there a moment. Pallas leaned in and smelled the lavender shampoo she’d just rinsed out of Junesong’s hair, and whispered. Junesong mewed and pulled closer.
“I’d like to see Los Angeles most.” Junesong was from Tulsa.
“I’ve been once, it was okay.”
Pallas whispered “Stay still” and she knelt and Junesong did her best to keep her arm away from the water. Junesong mouthed “Fuck” and the water washed out her sounds.
Aris Maniotis missed the funeral by six days. He’d been working, was always working. Now he stood in the room where his father had passed quietly.
His silhouette stood floor-to-ceiling against the east wall of the room. His mother had been lighting incense to feed the ghost and the apartment was saturated with it. He looked into the framed photograph on the nightstand. His father had been a hard, proud man. Their namesake was one of a Mani senator of the early redeemed state, and like many Greeks, his father believed that his blood held some forgotten power, a power rooted in those old-world ties, far back as the Turks, maybe further, all the way back to the Dorians. The picture was taken when his father was younger than he was now—Petrobey Maniotis standing in front of a ruined brick wall. Somewhere in the village of Thouria in 1962, according to a handwritten caption at the bottom. The resemblance between the two was tremendous.
He felt guilty, not for his father’s absence, but his family, his mother and sister’s grieving—he’d not been on speaking terms with his father in some time. But he knew the feeling would pass soon. His heart pumped crude oil. At least the bastard’s finally at rest, there’s that.
Maniotis pinched his fingers together and traced an invisible crucifix into the air, across his head and chest. He kissed the framed glass.
Meat was a family trade for three generations. Aris learned the ropes in his father’s butcher shop. Petrobey long envisioned him taking over the family businesses, both the shop and the smuggling that ran beneath it. His father thought all the boy needed was the same sturdiness he himself had been conditioned with by his own father, that same capacity for ruthlessness. And because there was a tide shifting—the writing was on the wall once the military seized rule, set to fail from the outset—the coup would bring revolt, a staggering, leftward tilt, and with it, porous borders—he would need to be able to deal with foreigners. Like a prophetic vision, he saw it. Feared it. The coming of a slow, inevitable redistribution of power. A death of old ways.
When it finally arrived in the ‘80s, he was not surprised.
But when Aris turned nineteen, he was conscripted, fracturing his father’s plans for him. It was clear after some months to his superiors that he was a natural talent to be uniquely exploited. He could follow orders more efficiently than the conscripts around him, and he seemed meant for more than firing potshots across national lines. He was promoted accordingly and aside from an eleven month block between 1994-95, when he was discharged after putting his time in then subsequently reenlisted, he never returned home, not really. With no heir, his father’s operation began its slow collapse at the rate of aging past his prime and was eventually absorbed into another, much bigger organization, though not before Petrobey managed to negotiate his exit with something to show for it, a rare feat in any era.
After almost two decades of service, Aris Maniotis was rotated out of a final tour in Afghanistan, and found himself back in the big city he once called home, purposeless. His nights soon found him coked out and getting into fights outside bars, wanting to lose but just never getting there. An old army friend from his youth, Ektoras Karras, found him outside Victoria station one night, drunkenly trying to start trouble with the police on patrol there. Karras talked it down and vouched for him. Took him home and got him cleaned up. Karras was the one who introduced him to the Russians, when Karras was still playing bagman. Maniotis soon found his call again, a similar violence to that which he called home, only noticeably more lucrative.
His mother, on the other hand, hated aggression, but it was also her whom had chosen the god of war as his namesake—it had been her father’s name, another tough bastard who’d gone too soon after the Second World War, an ELAS insurgent. He died just after the war had ended, pissing in a field, standing unknowingly over a German mine. Given the occupational tendencies of his family line, Maniotis would wonder sometimes if he had come to exist solely for death, if something like a name or blood could create destiny, or at least limit it. Whether each killing was a countdown to his own.
Maniotis moved to a seated position on the floor and looked up at the ceiling, at a motionless fan that hadn’t worked in years. His shadow moved across the wall as he shifted, touching a painting, the colors desaturated, disconnected from the image they formed: boats in the distance of a Tinos pier at sunset. He focused on the shadow instead, imagining the atomic silhouettes of the Japanese, or the Pompeii mummies he’d seen in magazines. He wished to be preserved like that someday, an anonymous imprint for men to puzzle over across the rest of time. The house was empty beyond him. His mother was busy down the street, having gone to her friend Miss Yiota’s for tea and late condolences, neighborhood politicking. He didn’t yet know how she was taking it.
His mobile rang and he saw his mother on the caller ID and answered. He told her he was at the house, saying goodbye. Other words emerged and struggled to connect, but he got the gist of it, “Elektra,” “an argument,” “hadn’t been home since.” His sister, goddamn typical.
“And you really haven’t heard from her?
“Yeah, call me back.”
The phone rang again, this time Karras. It’d been months since they’d talked.
“Tonight? Re I just got back this morning. Haven’t even unpacked yet.”
Maniotis paused and let him speak.
“Okay, okay. Urgent. I get it.”
“Adio.”
Maniotis felt a chill. He blew on his hands and rubbed them together. Felt clammed up. He checked the thermostat setting but it seemed fine. Maybe it was only him, getting sick. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, holding his head up. Breathed in the mix of church and illness that permeated the room. Men smelled like piss and salt and chlorine and sometimes milk, but when you opened them up and the air touched the red stuff it was all metal. He shut his eyes and wondered about his sister and how she was doing. He saw the face of the last man—debt or any other reason—and a pavement pooled with blood. That always seemed the worst part, some bastard getting his comeuppance without facts. Just point and go and tell yourself that they all deserve it. He grimaced, disquiet sparking. Something felt unusually off, a dark sensation somewhere deep in the reptilian core, and he couldn’t figure it out. The phone rang again and he let it ring. His face spilled int
o his hands.
“I’m definitely still feeling hungover.”
“You want a pie? I want a pie.”
“Then let’s get a pie. We’re already right here.”
The duo crossed odos Voulis and stopped out front of the entrance to the bakery. Scooters and motorcycles parked down both sides of the street, all range of people going in and out. Some of them sat on the curb, eating. Smelled thickly sweet inside.
“I hate getting here this late. All the best shit is already gone.”
“Mushroom is the best one they make.”
“I like the meat.”
“So does your sister.”
“Watch it.”
“Just talking shit, man.”
“You got no sense of boundary sometimes.”
“Take a joke. Anyway, look. We’ve been friends a while.”
“We’ve known each other, yeah, four years. And?”
“You’ve never told me what you’d be doing if it wasn’t this.”
“Farming, I suppose. I’d want something patient like that.”
“That was a quick answer. You’ve given it some thought.”
“You?”
“I want to write a screenplay. Get into Hollywood.”
“You write? Hunh. I’d never have guessed.”
“I don’t. I just have some good ideas.”
“Alright. Lay one of them on me.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll give you a taste. You like buddy-cop films?”
“Like Lethal Weapon or something?”
“I’m thinking more L.A. Confidential or Stray Dog. More serious. But with robots.”
“Anyway.”
“I have these two characters. A classic rookie cop and his experienced partner situation. But in this movie, the rookie cop is an android, but he looks like a man, and he plays it by-the-book. The experienced cop is a street-wise older man that often bends the rules. So they’re on this, I don’t know, real crazy case a-and—here’s where I think it’s fun—there’s a particularly gruesome murder in some old house, and the killer leaves the phrase ‘I Will Return’ on the wall in the victim’s blood.”
“I’ll take the cheese, thanks.”
“Hey, tell her I want one too.”
“You tell her.”
“Cheese pie for me as well. Can you get this one?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you reaching for your wallet.”
“So they can’t solve the crime because the killer has left no trace. Guess why.”
“Simple. He’s real thorough.”
“No, the killer is dead too. He’s actually a ghost that haunts the house.”
“What? I thought this was science-fiction.”
“Just wait. So as the android is going through the house, scanning around for clues, the ghost possesses him. Like, makes its new home his system. He starts to act funny after that. Like a real person. But here’s where it gets interesting, I think, because the android, once ‘ensouled’ by the spirit, starts playing fast and loose with their cases, he becomes something of a tough-guy cop, and his human partner starts to like him a lot more. But eventually he begins murdering and eating people in secret, fueled by the vengeful spirit’s bloodlust. The human cop starts to figure out, little by little, what’s happened, but no one at the station will believe him. The android is promoted, is on his way to becoming the police chief, and the older cop loses his job because his superiors think he’s crazy. The third act of the film, he realizes it’s up to him to stop the ghost and hatches out a plan with the help of another cop, a retired detective, who has also become a priest. I want to call this movie something cool, like Wraith Cop or Ghost Dynamo or something. One of those kinds of titles that’s also the pitch.”
“. . .”
“What do you think?”
“Well shit, that’s—that’s actually really pretty good.”
“Yeap. I know.”
“Look at the time. We better get back to the bar.”
“Hopefully dumbfuck hasn’t burnt everything down yet.”
The past exists only in pieces, anymore. An existence that may as well belong to someone else. Lifted curtain, normalized ties, a decade of reformation efforts, the demilitarization of the police force. At an earlier point in my life, most things seemed simple. I put in the hours. I formed pacts with the dead. I served. My take was modest. I was never a killer, but that’s not to say I had much of a conscience, either. I only wanted to get my wife in a better house, my kids in a better school. What we all want I would tell myself when I did the things I did. Legacy. The chance to leave the blood stronger than you got it. And I have always felt certain I could have been a better man, at least, if not for what I’ve come to perceive as a defect of personality—for an addict, every incline is just as well the precipice of a fall.
August, 1999. My partner, Andrei Nistor and I, finally got a break. We’d been tracking a man that had been abducting children over two years. Thirteen incidents without fail. Read this: the destinies of thirteen innocent souls, eaten away. It took very little consideration from either of us before we decided that we’d handle it ourselves, outside the lines. I called my wife from a payphone and said I’d be real late. Nistor lived alone.
We parked down the street from the house, long into the evening. It was raining lightly. I sipped a thermos of instant coffee, more wetting my lips than drinking it. The windows were cracked and both of us chain smoked. “Is this the place? You think this is it?”
Nistor put his cigarette out in the console’s ashtray. “We’ll know soon enough.”
“What you got in that bag?”
“Some shit to scare the bastard with.”
We put on gloves and balaclavas and Nistor sifted through a handful of filed blanks and found the right brand. We entered quietly, the floor squeaking some. But there was no sign of panic yet. I closed the door behind us and the latch seemed to shockwave through the house. What followed was a heavy quiet, then motion in the basement. We rushed downstairs and found the guy with his pants down, trying to scramble out through a tiny window. We’d found him in the middle of developing photos of a child. He’d stopped, I guess, to . . . ruminate on some of them. Nistor pulled him down to the concrete floor by his shirt, tearing it around the neck. I pulled him back up by the hair and got him to his knees and set the barrel of my gun in his mouth. The man grunted, panting for breath. I remember his eyes—cold and blue. Nistor poured lighter fluid on the prints, the cameras, all of it. He burned them in the sink. I took the safety off and asked the man what the fuck was wrong with him. The pervert held his mouth on the gun, almost fellating it now, though maybe I imagined that part. Nistor said “There’s a better way,” and motioned me off, wanted no witnesses. I had no objection.
Nistor shoved the man between his shoulders, dropping him face flat on the concrete floor. Tie-wrapped his wrists together. I watched briefly then left to search the rest of the house, occupying myself while Nistor got to work. He stuffed an old cloth in the pervert’s mouth and put his weight on him. Held him there and patiently began to cut the man’s fingers off with pruning shears, one at a time. He cauterized each wound with a blowtorch. The pervert gagged on vomit, then fainted. He brought him back with smelling salts and continued. He took his time. I returned downstairs, impatient and saw the mess and puked. What I hadn’t seen, he told me about in the car.
“What have we—?”
“Just think of the kids, brother.”
I pulled over and retched again, empty. “The kids . . .”
“This is just, this is right. We’ve done a good thing, here.”
Every child I’ve ever seen has shared my daughters’ faces. I nodded, somber.
March, 2003. George W. Bush and Tony Blair on the television. The United States and Britain were invading Iraq. I remember thinking that this felt like the beginning of the end of time. A neighbor called the house begging for help, muttering frantic that her husband was acting violent. I heard shouting i
n the background of the call, but it seemed normal, seemed like people at the end of a bad day, a couple fighting, just having it out with each other. I kissed my wife and daughters and got my pistol, and walked down the street to sort it out. I was by now tired of policing.
When I finally arrived at the home, all the lights were out except one. I entered the house through the backdoor, gun drawn. But by the time I reached the kitchen, the wife had already killed her husband with a cleaver. I’d never seen a person so cold about a death, even after the pedophile. I struggled to remember her name, but it clicked into place after a hesitation. “Amalia, are you okay?”
Her eyes darted to the body on the kitchen floor. The decedent’s skull was cracked from the side, the knife entrenched. Blood pooling slow and thickening. I remember how everything felt so warm, like the head contained a small star and was leaking light. I wondered what strength had come to her to do something like that. I tucked the gun away at the back of my jeans and touched her face. We were not close neighbors, I barely knew their names. I had seen the husband mowing his lawn many times. But everyone on the street knew who I was. The bruises on her arms and face said that this wasn’t new action. I asked her where the telephone was and she pointed. I picked it up and dialed and held her until the sirens came.
Twenty years. I can no longer remember the first time I tasted anything with alcohol in it.
I remember early instances, almost dreamily—beer at a party, wine at family dinners. Little tastes here and there. My uncle, Tiberiu Varia, kept a flask of vodka with him when we would go hunting and he would share it with me. I never met my parents, but I heard many stories about my father’s vices on those trips. I suppose it was this uncle, an old soldier, which inspired me to enlist. I do still recall the way the drink held me. How it became a coping mechanism at the end of hard days, enduring onward, a way to function on even the easy ones. It was this way for a decade, the wanting. Like a glimpse of true dark. Oblivion feels like something you can keep practicing until you can make it permanent. But I found strength—the first thing the girl told me was “surround yourself with people who love you.” Svetlana Popescu. She became my sponsor after I was forced (at first) to attend meetings, after I blacked out and wrecked my Dacia. It was the first wisdom she ever learned that she felt the need to pass on. I asked her out and at first she refused to consider any kind of romantic relationship with me—she didn’t want to be my “substitution”—but with the successive bonding that followed her sponsoring my hellish withdrawal period and our mutual accumulation of sobriety chips (my substitutions instead became excessive coffee consumption, an exacerbated tobacco habit), it led inevitably there. Even after the wedding, we continued to attend meetings together at an old recreational facility, near the house we purchased.
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