Long Lost Dog of It
Page 11
“In the dream I’m trapped in a glass box. I’m completely naked. There’s a crowd of people around me. The box is in a white room. It’s like a void or maybe it’s a factory, or a warehouse with very bright lighting. I hammer at the walls of the box with my fists and no one comes to help me. I can’t get out of the box. There’s no door, no bolts. No indication of how I got stuck in it. This is a perfect, transparent cube. No one tries to help me, like they can’t read the panic. They either can’t hear me or can’t understand me to know what I need. Maybe the box is soundproof or maybe there’s something wrong with my voice. The people see me, they’re so close, but it doesn’t matter. They can’t seem to get it. I keep thinking, If I only knew sign language. If I knew how to sign, I could at least communicate with someone. The realization that something this simple is so impossible, I start freaking out. I’m feeling like I’m suffocating, gasping. The dream typically ends around there. I assume that’s when I’m screaming, out here.”
Sotiropoulos massaging her shoulder.
“Maybe it’s all related.”
“Is there something I can do for you?”
Pigeons scattering, provoked by nothing she can see. “I think I need a ride home.”
Ektoras Karras tapped his alarm and fell back into it. Exposed brick studio, large window, bed sheets over the curtains to dampen any light further. Karras recessed back to where he’d been, in a dream of a beach on which he ran, chasing beautiful women. He always slept face down, afraid of what he sometimes saw waking up, eyelids fluttering toward dreams. The shore went for miles and was cut on each side by water or forest. The room just wide enough he could fit a queen bed in it, sideways. Snoring harmonized from the woman beside him. Between his shoulders, the wraithlike emergence of a shadow, indeterminably humanoid, hovering over his back like a kobalos and exerting psychic pressure he felt physically, stirring him. Hijacking his dream. Waves turning black, the sand into burning coals, all women demonic, chasing him. The alarm went off again and dispersed the figure.
Karras lay, holding his head. He had a fierce hangover. Vague flashes of the night before. How much had he drank? Enough, obviously. He didn’t recognize the person beside him. He shook her lightly to wake her, hoping to figure out who she was. She had a pretty face and he could still smell what they’d done. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. It rushed back to him. The stranger was a Bulgarian prostitute named Borislava and he’d met her driving drunk down Pireos in the middle of the night, homeward from the bars, slowing and yelling for her. “You can stay for breakfast.”
He yawned over a toilet filled with old piss and cigarette butts, adding to it with a steady stream. He ran a shower and when he got out his skin was pink from the heat, revealing cuts and scrapes he hadn’t noticed before. He brushed his teeth hard and spit out blood with the paste and watched the drain swallow it all.
Karras heard the vacuum start and peered out, watching Borislava start to clean, still naked. She looked good, firm. He scanned the rest of his mess—more than just laundry. He hadn’t picked up after himself in some time. Empty mugs balanced like totems around mounds of takeout boxes and junk food wrappers. Posters hung with slack tape and sagged off the walls. Every girl he’d ever brought over had said he still lived like a teenager. And he’d laugh, thinking Yeah and half the men my age still live with their mothers. There were unfinished paint-by-number paintings leaned against each other, against a wall. The sink full of dishes, dirty water, cigarette floaters. He hated what the unfinished paintings said about him more than what an unclean apartment might have implied. He set some water to boil and spooned generic Carrefour grounds into a French press. He wanted aspirin but couldn’t be bothered to look for it. He threw some eggs on a skillet and watched her, pretending for a moment she was his girlfriend. Knowing the actuality that a hooker was the one who felt sorry for him. Head throbbing. Books on art rested in uneven stacks on his corner desk. He’d never picked them up. While the food heated, he searched the piles of laundry for a shirt. Smell test. He found a shirt and put it on. The television still on in the background, some lady muttering about how anything can be an internal mirror if you knew how to look. Borislava smiled up at him, filling a garbage bag with the obvious waste. He imagined himself burning the building down and starting over, then imagined himself burning with the fire and thought Nah.
Mesrine approached the apartment building carrying a black nylon bag. He pressed every button on the intercom panel and after a moment the door buzzed open. He removed the AR-15 from the bag and raised it, training down the end of the corridor as he walked. He found the apartment on the second floor and put an ear to it and listened. Thumping noises, faint breakfast smell.
Karras asked Borislava to get on the bed, pointing. Her Greek wasn’t very fluent.
He found himself telling her things he wouldn’t otherwise say.
“I’ve always wanted someone to wear my face. You know, cut it off and put it on like a mask. I’m not sure if this counts as a fetish or what. It doesn’t excite me sexually or anything. It just seems like something. . . .”
Borislava nodding, moaning when he’d thrust.
“I think we should get married, probably.”
When the door burst open, taking a chunk of the frame with it, Borislava screamed.
She rolled off, taking cover on the floor beside the bed. Hands over her eyes like this wasn’t the first time it had happened. Karras scrambled. Back against the headboard. Mouth agape. Man in the doorway. Rifle pointed. His own gun in the top drawer of the dresser, far from reach. He settled down quick and sat against the board, hands raised.
No one saying anything. Then Karras: “Did I do something?”
The man glancing around. “You should take more care of your home.”
Karras eyed where Borislava was. She raised her head up after not hearing gunshots. The man pointed at her, then at the pile of clothes on the floor and motioned for her to leave with his thumb. Borislava plucked the wad of money from the nightstand and ran out with her clothes in her arms, not once turning back.
“Who are you?”
“I have some questions.”
“I guess I know what this is about.”
The man said “Clean up.”
Karras looked down. He hadn’t noticed, certainly did now. Blood on him and the sheets. The prostitute had started her period. He looked back up at the man and sighed.
“It’s really not my day.”
Pallas and Junesong walk in silence, cutting through the middle of the protest. Hundreds of thousands of sweating bodies, chanting. Handmade populist signs. The old and young alike.
NO
Cops dressed in green are singled up behind the phalanx of shields and water cannons, gas masks at the ready. Cops in blue patrol the corners, staking out in armored vans. Some cops are drinking coffee and talking. Some cops pace uneasy patterns across the sidewalk. Others remaining stationary, scanning around. All gear, uniforms are clearly marked ASTYNOMIA / POLICE. Excepting: plainclothes cops walking through the heart of the crowd, shouting alongside, looking to stoke.
THE NEW JUNTA
Metal barriers positioned across the streets leading in. All buses rerouted. Some politicians and staff watch through parted curtains in some of the parliament windows. Those that were around back then recall that nothing has felt quite like this in nearly thirty years. Many already evacuated by helicopter.
COPS!
PIGS!
MURDERERS!
Pallas keeps thinking that if violence erupts tonight, it may take an army to stop it. There is no telling what this will mean, whether it will mean anything. There have been rumors all year of an inevitable military coup. Still, George Papandreou keeps winning votes of confidence, albeit with a slimmer margin each time. Maybe it means nothing, then again, maybe this was the plan all along.
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
FUCK OFF
Protestors with arms raised, mountzes to the sky.
NO
FIRST WE TAKE THE BANKS, THEN WE TAKE BERLIN
But no one is making a move.
etc.
Junesong lights a cigarette. “Remember when they burned down the giant christmas tree?”
Pallas is surprised she’s finally speaking. “Yeah.”
“I just like the idea of destroying a holiday.”
“It was beautiful.”
They walk along odos Ermou. Teenagers surrounding the Kapnikarea church. Some tourists are snapping photos. Junesong stops to browse the Bershka window display. Pallas is feeling hunger pains. When you’ve hurt someone you really love, that is, hurt them bad, it rarely feels like you can say anything right. Junesong holds her hand in her back pocket, fondling the collapsed blade. She’s always been paranoid of pickpockets. Feels like everything you try to communicate comes out either in whispers or punches, lacking any balance. Pallas asks about the tattoo and Junesong says that it itches but the bruising has gone down some. An amputee begging where the pedestrian walk gives way to the street. I want you to know I’m so fucking sorry. Junesong imagines a special heaven for amputated parts where they come together to form new people. I am.
Junesong not sure what to say, saying: “Did you ever read that book I gave you?”
“The one you found in the park?”
“Yeap.”
“I tried but the English was too difficult.”
“Oh well.”
“What about it?”
“Nothing really. One of the stories takes place here. I think, called The Ivory Acrobat.”
“Is it good?”
“Just more of the same nostalgic bullshit. I remember reading it and thinking ‘Has the man writing this even visited the country?’”
“And?”
Junesong spits. “It turns out he lived here for three years. Just seems sometimes like no one has ever paid enough attention to us to know who we really are. Other stories in the book were good, though.”
“I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”
Mesrine stood in the doorway of the target’s apartment, rifle angled down. He adjusted his tie and walked through, clearing each room slowly. The place was deserted. Mesrine yawned.
Setback—this needed done today—priority, as he understood it.
The kitchen floor all torn up, boards pried, dusty sheet.
Bedroom closet, he found weapons. Some ammunition boxes. He searched for something missing and found 7.62x39mm, one box mostly empty, no matching gun.
Decided he’d go where the family lived, then.
Mesrine didn’t do many rush jobs. He didn’t like to. They had the tendency to get messy.
The family’s building: he took the stairs.
Stalked door to door with the assault rifle, searching for the right number.
What the city lacked in a skyline it more than made up for in corridors.
Mesrine found the door and knocked. Hand over the peephole.
The mother opened the door; Mesrine threw his hand over her mouth and shoved his way inside, kicking the door shut behind them. He locked it back and prodded her forward with the barrel. Stopped a second when he passed a mirror and glanced at himself. Unusual calm about her that said she either experienced this before or expected it now. Mesrine sat her in a chair in the kitchen, pointing the gun, and asked. “Where is your son?”
“I . . . know your face, aren’t you dead?”
“I’m very much alive.”
“Are you an avatar?”
“Where is your son?”
“I don’t know.”
Mesrine pulled back the slide. “Where is your son?”
“He comes and goes.”
“Where is your son?”
“He—”
Sometime later, the light through the windows started to weaken. Mesrine searched the refrigerator and whispered “It’ll all be over soon” to a plate of meatballs. He lifted the plastic wrap and plucked one and tried it cold. He spit what he chewed to the floor, unmoved. Mesrine leaned into the rifle stock and considered. He spotted raw steak on a blue styrofoam dish that had been left to defrost, primed for a meal. He checked the cupboard and picked out the spices by smell. Turned on the gas range and lit it and set a pan on.
Sotiropoulos parked the car out front and walked her to the stoop. Elektra Manioti couldn’t find the keys in her purse so she hit the intercom and waited for the prompt from her mother. The speaker crackling, accompanying buzz unlocking the door. Sotiropoulos asked if she didn’t want to just keep driving with him till she got her head right. Manioti nodded an upward No. “I’ll call you later.”
“Last chance. . .”
Manioti hugged him and kissed his cheek. She watched the car disappear around the corner, then unlocked the door and walked inside.
An orchestral swell from the kitchen.
“Mama?”
No response—her mother didn’t hear as well as she used to. Just the same, Manioti called out again, staying back behind the thresh. Something seemed pleasantly off, here. Air inside smelled more welcoming than she remembered, less unhealthy, none of that holy mess—the scent of sizzling meat had taken the house. Manioti wondered what was for dinner. The classical music dropped abruptly, radio knob clicking loud. Hm. Her mother never listened to anything beyond bouzoukia. Manioti walked the hall and entered the kitchen and screamed. Human shape in a blood soaked sheet tied like a sack, stirring weakly. In front of the stove, a man pointed an assault rifle at her, one handed, flipping a cut of steak with a spatula with the other. He traded his attention from the pan to her. “Have a seat at the table. Food’s almost ready.”
Manioti cautiously edged over to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair and sat, watching the movement beneath the sheet. “What did you do to her?”
Mesrine lowered the heat. Blue flames dimmed translucent. “I’ve seen your photograph in the albums.”
The sister remained quiet, mouth agape. Mesrine kept the rifle trained and turned the bulk of his attention to the fried steak. He had some trouble cutting single-handed, but he managed. He set down the knife and forked a slice. Gray black, medium pink. Perfect.
“I find that I prefer to sear the meat dry, then cook it very slow. The fire as low as possible, still allowing, ah, progress.” He chewed slowly, mouth closed. “Mmm.”
Mesrine wiped off his mouth with a serviette.
“I need to know where your brother is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Again. I need to know where your brother is.”
“I don’t—”
“Bored.”
Mesrine fired an auto burst into the sheet. Red misted: red blossomed through the fabric. Manioti scrambled over to the body, hysterical. Dogs barked. People in the building shouting.
“It’s okay. You can scream.”
He ate, listening, conducting all sounds with the fork.
“And then we’ll talk.”
Maniotis flipped on the headlights. Line of cars as far up the lanes as he could see. He turned on the radio to see what the traffic was about. Mostly static. He shouldn’t have taken Vouliagmenis, but he knew Posidonos along the coast would be as crowded. Heat turned up all the way in the car, but it wasn’t doing enough. He coughed out smoke. He turned the dial on the console. Talk radio jockey, low band, talking doom and gloom bullshit:
“...credit instead of cannons this time, my friends...”
His mobile died. He tossed it on the passenger-side floor and tightened his grip on the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. Maniotis hating his sister right then.
“Where are you, woman?”
He held his jaw and stretched his mouth. Traffic moved forward a car.
“...like we’re still waiting for some
one to save us...”
He switched off the radio.
He took a hard right off the main road toward Argyroupoli, deciding to go all side streets. Curbed, parked cars obscured visibility, each block a four-way stop. He gassed it, braked it, every odd intersection a near collision. He repeated this until he got closer to Ymittos, then detoured back across Vouliagmenis and floored it through Dafni. He wasn’t a great driver, by any means, but the way he figured it he’d just shaved off thirty minutes of waiting. Downtown turned out to be just as backed up, if not worse. Once he finally got to Thiseio, he swung left onto his mother’s street and found a spot a few buildings down. He parked and heard the unmistakable rattle of gunfire.
Maniotis scanned the street and gauged the situation as best he could. No one outside, no one in cars, waiting. There wasn’t any use in rushing in, there was already silence. He suppressed the emotion stirring. An element of surprise here, at least momentarily. He opened the trunk and went through the duffel bag. Tucked the .45 into the back of his pants and got out the Kalashnikov. He eased the trunk shut and slung the rifle over his neck by the strap.
Looking for any kind of dinner he could scrounge, Varia was disappointed to find almost every trash receptacle he came across to be empty. The generosity of anyone else on the road yielding much the same results.
Cutting through Panepistimiou, he soon came upon hooded figures spraying red glyphs on a large shop window. A peculiar looking ideogram, intersecting shapes and numbers. They turned to face him, faces obscured by masks under the hoodies, wordless. Paint dripping behind them like the sigils were bleeding.
Varia backed away—something familiar about the masks, identical sneering goateed faces—he couldn’t place where he’d seen them. The faces making him suddenly nauseous. Like thousands of hands pressing against the inside of his head and chest.