Long Lost Dog of It

by Michael Kazepis

  “I don’t feel like walking.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  “. . .”

  “Like a little baby.”

  Junesong growled.

  “Just don’t want to sit around tonight. We can clear our heads, get obliterated or something. Besides, you’re the one who wanted to go out.”

  “That was before we fought. And weed.”

  Pallas stared. Junesong stared back.

  Junesong capitulated. “Okay.”

  Slight grin. “Thank you baby.”

  There was just enough room they could simultaneously try on outfits in front of the mirror on the closet door. Pallas came out with a pile of clothes in her arms and threw them on the bed. She picked up random shirts and held them over herself, facing the mirror but looking to Junesong’s reflection. “Which do you think? I like this one . . .”

  Junesong messed with her hair. “Try it on.”

  Pallas did. “And?”

  Junesong shook her head. “Eh, I don’t like that with those jeans.”

  Pallas nodded up, clicked her tongue. “I’m feeling like I might start my period soon. The other ones are too light. I want dark jeans.”

  “No then. Not that shirt.”

  Pallas held up another. “This one?”

  “Maybe.”

  Pallas still assembling an outfit as Junesong started putting on makeup, which she applied sparingly. Eyebrows thinly drawn. Junesong’s high had come down some, but she still felt the randomness of it. Junesong tongued her cheek. “Anyway so ah where was I earlier?”

  “You lost me at the beginning.”

  “...I read somewhere that outside four dimensions we look like worms or something.”

  Pallas tried to imagine. “Maybe we’re like pretzels.”

  Junesong thought about it. “More like funnel cakes, I’d imagine.”

  “What’s a funnel cake?”

  “Existentially speaking?”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s like . . . loukoumades, only the batter’s tangled, like a ball of yarn.”

  “Ah, that sounds delicious. Is it crispy?”

  “Somewhat. We still going?”

  “Finish getting dressed.”

  “Okay, okay.” Junesong passed the pipe. Pallas hit. Junesong retrieved the pipe from her and lit, and hit the last of it. “Oh yeah it’s that well we don’t really know what’s out there. Water, I mean, every sea looks empty from the coast and they’re full of all kinds of shit. You think space is like that? You think we see the black and the stars and maybe space only seems empty, but there’s actually way more, even sharks or something?”

  “Space sharks? Malakies.

  “But like . . .”

  “Come on, I’m ready now.” Pallas scraping resin with a bobby pin, rolling it.

  “Fiiiiiine.” Junesong touched up her eyebrows, hating the way her face had puffed up from the earlier crying. It still stung at the back of her mind, the lingering notion she would be alone again soon, when it was all said. Junesong wanted to do something about it. “But you still have to eat me out.”

  Karras had said to meet him on Lofos Strefi, where some outdoor show was happening. His tone, which was uncharacteristically calm, had unnerved Maniotis—Karras was one of those unconsciously nervous types. Maniotis hailed a taxi from outside his apartment complex in Kerameikos and took it to the end of odos Themistokleous in Exarcheia. He walked the rest of the way to the base of the hill. Past the basketball court, power cords were tapped into an OTE box, snaking up the stone path, toward the sound of punk music. Kids playing in the court, talking shit to each other. Maniotis glanced up. No moon tonight, weak stars. Bruised by pollution. He followed the power cords.

  Up ahead, an ellipsoid clearing in the trees. Tripod lamps, stacked amps and instrument stands. Maniotis scanned for threats, seldom at ease. Tangles of cables. A single tree growing out from a gap in the pavement. The clearing cut off on one side by stone and mortar stepped up into a makeshift amphitheater. Spray-painted symbols, attribution tags. He remembered trying to learn guitar as a teenager. His hands never shaping chords the way they needed to. His father had disapproved. Here, amplification was picking up the guitarist’s fingers, itching their way across the strings, a cheap pedal itch, distinctly thin tone, lots of mid and high. Now he felt old, saw those days far behind him. A lost adolescence, a part of him disconnected from who he was now, not feeling like part of the same history.

  Maniotis shrugged. “Where are you?”

  Karras still hadn’t showed. Not one to keep idle, Maniotis scanned a sparse distro table, but found little of interest to him. CDs, vinyls, zines, patches, some shirts and posters. He asked the female behind it who was playing. Tried to act natural.

  “Tomb City Blitzkrieg up now. Then there’s The Midnight Picture Show and Despite Everything, and . . . fuck, I don’t remember who else. The one just on was Dirty Wombs. They’re pretty good.” It was difficult to appear interested. Her accent stood out a touch, smooth as it was. Might have taken a trained ear to catch the vowels—he noticed. “So what are you doing here?”

  Aris stepped back. “Why are you curious?”

  “Oh, sorry. Didn’t know it was a thing. I thought maybe you were a punk in the eighties or something, old as you are.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Or you’re a cop.”

  “Not a cop.”

  “You could be a cop.”

  “Hate cops.”

  “Me too.” Maniotis bought a beer from a Rastafarian standing next to an ice-filled bin. He dipped his hand into the bin and plucked out a Mythos. Cracked it and drank fast. Bought another. This time he told the Rastafarian to keep the change. He moved over to the stone seating and waited. Watching, being obsolete.

  Well over an hour passed. He was approached by a female with a pink mohawk, asking for a cigarette. He shrugged and said “Sure,” feeling impatient. What’s taking so fucking long? He wasn’t one to wait, but Karras was one person that still held real currency with him. Maniotis tapped the tobacco carefully. He grunted and handed the tightly rolled smoke to the female. Looked down at his hands, shaking. She rejoined another female she was with and they moved closer to where the bands were, their heads turning this way and that, looking for someone. He muttered “Fucking dykes” and reached into his pocket, fingering a roll of filters.

  Other conversations drifted past between tracks: “we don’t like journalists very much,” “I’m not a journalist,” “has anyone heard from my friend,” “this cop chasing one of the immigrants,” “she was muttering,” “like greedy children beating a piñata filled with blood,” “the distance,” “politics for us,” “the man kept saying help,” “it looked like a flytrap,” “Aris”—

  Maniotis snapped out of it and turned, Karras facing him. “You’re late, motherfucker.”

  He hugged his friend. They kissed cheeks like old family.

  “Where you been?”

  “Let’s talk a walk, yeah? Young people give me the creeps.”

  “You wanted to meet here. How’d you figure this place?”

  “Seemed random enough.”

  “I’m over it.”

  “What’s with the layers?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Maniotis shook his head. “Good to see you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “So tell me what’s going on.”

  “Didn’t you used to love this punk shit?”

  “Yeah. When I was fifteen . . . in 1987.”

  “Ouf. You realize most of these kids are, I don’t know, half our age?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “You want coffee? Look like you need coffee.”

  “I’m not thirsty. So don’t waste my fucking time.”

  Maniotis ordered a double cappuccino, Karras a frappé—half milk, half water. Maniotis broke two brown sugars over the milk foam and stirred them in slowly. Karras moved his straw in and out of the drink. From where they sat
outside the café, they could see the church that crowned Lykavitos. Maniotis tapped his fingers on the table. Karras tapped out a cigarette.

  “Heard about your father.”

  “Don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Alright.” Karras pointed at the hill. “I was just reading this morning how—”

  Maniotis made a fist, cracking his knuckles. “I was under the impression this was about something important. But here we are at a kafeteria like it’s a social date. I got shit to do.”

  Karras smiled, darkly. “You need to relax, man.”

  Maniotis looking over his shoulder at the way they’d come. “I’m old and bored.”

  “We both are. How the shit goes.”

  “Talk.”

  “Life spits us out and chews on the next generation awhile, a real heartless bitch.”

  “. . .”

  “I wanted to ease you into it.”

  “So.”

  “So you’ve got a problem. You didn’t hear this from me . . .”

  Already he had an idea.

  “The job you just got back from, the one on Andros.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I know some things. Not as much as I’d like, admittedly.”

  Maniotis held his breath. Alarm torpedoing from his head to his heart.

  Words echoed, somewhere distant, irreal: “Someone saw you.”

  Junesong and Pallas missed most of the show, though they still got to stop and catch up with their friend Lydia, who’d been at the front of the crowd, headbanging. The three of them smoked a joint together, talked Katarameno Syndromo and politics, but the couple didn’t stay long and soon left the show, headed central. A mass demonstration expected to last the week, with some protestors coming in from as far as Spain in a show of solidarity.

  Every kiosk along the way was out of beer. Pallas bought cigarettes. At plateia Syntagma, the entrance to Hotel Grand Bretagne was cordoned off, damaged by recent action. The square was fully packed, but the energy was low, not hostile—the usual BMXers and skateboarders replaced by tents and activists. Some commuters waited for final buses, but it looked like the cops were closing off more streets because the gathering had gotten bigger than expected, and no one seemed to know where to go.

  “Poor bastards.” Pallas spit, mouth still dry.

  Kebab and sandwich vendors walked back and forth through the center of the square, making the most of it. Union banners waving over the metro entrances. Leftists slamming poetry. An almost spooky prevalence of Guy Fawkes masks peppered throughout the crowd.

  Junesong scanned around, detouring through the center. “Populism makes me thirsty.”

  As far down odos Ermou as they could tell, street merchants had set hundreds of counterfeit accessories at the front of closed storefronts. The cops were leaving them be, too focused on the potential for a clash.

  “The situation stays like this, one day, I swear, I’m going to jump out in front of the tram.”

  Pallas shook her head. “Honey, the tram goes real slow.”

  “Don’t care. I’ve made up my mind and I know what I’ll do.”

  Stray dogs waiting at the intersection for vehicles to brake before crossing the street. The line at McDonald’s stretching around the block. Junesong smelled decent dope in the square and scanned for the source. Looking around, she raised her hands, squared her thumbs and index fingers. Captured the photogenic hell of a crowd thousands strong. Raised hands up at the night sky and held that shot too. Held its silence. Junesong imagined it a deep pocket or a fold in time, everything frozen. She compared that slide of darkness to others and thought Yep it was exactly the same shade of a girl’s apartment in Paris, the ceiling of her old studio in Tulsa, the bottom bunk of a hostel in London, a friend’s floor in Brooklyn. She imagined, for a moment, the lens reversed—something instead looking down at her, one face in a horde of the damned. . . .

  “Fuck. Everywhere really is out of beer.”

  “Can’t believe this.”

  “And tomorrow’s the actual protest? Better restock or there’ll be a riot.”

  “I hate that this exists and at the same time, I’m glad.”

  “Me too.”

  “Let’s do something. Let everyone else protest.”

  “I don’t even know. Variemai.”

  “We deserved to be shitfaced.”

  “Okay.”

  “Strip club?”

  “Hmph.”

  “I’ll buy the bottle.” Junesong reached out her hand and Pallas took it.

  When his mother finally called back, he said he’d be right over and hung up. His breath fogged out into the night air. He rubbed his hands together to keep warm as he walked. Thoughts racing full speed, a demolition derby. He stopped in the middle of crossing odos Themistokleous and held his head. A car honked and he threw a mountza without looking up. Its driver yelled “Are you crazy?” but stayed in the car. Maniotis hobbled over to the opposite sidewalk. He sat on the curb and waited for the feeling to pass.

  His mother heard the door shut behind him and called out.

  “It’s me.”

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “Thanks. I’m doing fine too.”

  Everything smelling holy, almost sibylline. In the kitchen, his mother cooked hilopites with chicken, dressed as he expected, entirely in black. There was no one to cook for but she was doing it anyway. Peels and stems and utensils littered the counter. Low bouzoukia music from an old radio that’d been there since the second Papandreou. He kissed her on the cheek.

  “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

  “I missed your cooking.”

  “Don’t suck up, vre. You never visited.”

  “He disowned me.”

  “You broke his heart.”

  “. . .”

  “You’re hungry.”

  He tried to remember when he’d last eaten. It’d been a few days. “Alright.”

  “So sit.” He did. “We need to talk about the will when all of us are together.”

  “Mom.”

  “You should have come to the funeral. The way he left—”

  “Mother.”

  “What.”

  “There’s a problem.”

  “You can tell me after you make the tzatziki.”

  Maniotis suppressed his panic and did as she asked. He grated cucumber over a bowl and added olive oil, minced garlic. “We got any lemons?”

  “No. Use vinegar.”

  “Alright. You’re much better at this.”

  “You’ll learn same as I did. Years of repetition.”

  He added yoghurt and blended it with a soupspoon and tasted it. He set it on a shelf in the refrigerator, among several plastic containers and towel-covered dishes. uncertain who’d eat any of it. “What else you need help with?”

  “You can do some dishes.”

  Maniotis turned the faucet on.

  “Gloves. You’ll ruin your hands. Your father kept his gloves under the sink.”

  He checked under the sink, digging around behind boxes of dish soap, and found a pair of old dishwashing gloves. They were worn in enough that they fit okay, a little snug. Maniotis shoved away the thought of his own taking the place of a dead man’s hands. He washed bowls and plates, silverware, all of it pealing over the radio as he set it in the rack. Engines revved by outside.

  “Why didn’t you two ever leave the city and go live somewhere more quiet?”

  “Where would we have gone? All the family in the village either died or moved to the city or lost contact.”

  “But dad—”

  “He’s my husband. Was my husband. What do you want me to do?”

  Maniotis held what he wanted to say, then: “. . . I don’t know.”

  “Changing the subject. What brought you over?”

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything, child. You need some money?”

  “No, not like that. I messed up.
I messed up bad.”

  Her expression dropped. His mother turned the stove low and stopped stirring the pasta. She looked at him without anymore interruption, all the concern of uncondition.

  His mother gave him an earful for bringing trouble so soon after his father’s passing. He urged her to go on holiday somewhere, discreetly. He asked if he could drive his father’s old car. She handed him the keys and made him promise to find his sister and make sure she was fine, that he wouldn’t do anything else until he did that. The whole time they talked, both knew she’d stay exactly where she was, firmly rooted.

  Later, he returned to his apartment expecting confrontation and found none.

  Rewind: final pieces snapping into place, courtesy of Karras:

  A couple walking their dog in the middle of the night.

  Street lamps, bugs flying circuits around them.

  All action lit just enough for clarity.

  He was no longer slipping. He had slipped.

  He dragged a wooden kitchen chair into the hall and sat in it, facing the front door, holding a loaded Kalashnikov.

  “I fucking dare you,” he repeated several times.

  Remix of Rob Zombie, “Foxy, Foxy.” Opalescence masking the place, a combination of the stage’s fog machine and cigarette smoke converging at the ceiling. Orange and red lights strobed over the stage and the closed red velveteen curtains behind it. Junesong picked a booth farther back and sat with her lady and they ordered bourbon. Huddled around the tables facing the stage and its runway, at varying degrees sat many of the club’s male patrons. Others lined up at the bar ordering drinks. Most everyone chain smoking, one cigarette after the other. Not nervous but deliberate, intent on total absorption of the entertainment.

  The server brought over a bottle of Jack Daniels and a pair of shot glasses and set out a dish of carrots and nuts. Most of the men weren’t well-dressed, that is, few seemed cut from a finer cloth. In fact, they reminded Pallas of kinds of men she’d grown up with, men who might regularly have arrived with friends to watch a woman strip with the same casualness of an evening at the cinema or a concert. Most of the drinks were bottled beers, working class lagers, though there were a few basic cocktails in collins glasses. The servers dressed fairly conservative, all things considered: black shoes, slacks, polos. None of them were even wearing thongs, with underwear lines plainly visible, a maybe purposeful contrast to the skin and performances on stage. Nevertheless, the dancer that was on was already naked and worked her way up the pole. She moved like an acrobat, spun around, slid down, rose back up. Almost fluid over the metal. Few conversations happening during the dance, as most talk came in brief, hushed, mouth to ear insights or thorough glances, glances that seemed less predatory than gluttonous. Pallas noted the faint bruises of the dancer’s legs under the soft light and wondered how pronounced they looked in the daytime. She loathed the athleticism—her body would never move like that.