by Alex A King
Very compassionate mother, that Margarita Andreou.
During her eighteenth year, Kiki pulled a Soula.
"Guess what?" she said over Mama's chickpea soup. "I had sex with twelve sailors this afternoon."
A shocked silence, then lunch went on as usual.
"Oh well," Margarita said passively. "Good thing it was not thirteen. That is a very unlucky number."
Yiayia reached across the table for the bread. "Thirteen! That must be some kind of family record. One after the other, or did you take a break?"
"Mama, Kiki was joking," Margarita said.
"Panayia mou, why am I not in a coma? Nobody does anything exciting in this family."
"I do," Soula said.
Mama fixed a steel eye on her. "Go on, Soula. Tell us what you do that is so exciting."
"Roma men," the fifteen-year-old told her mother proudly. "As many as I can find."
A sharp intake of breath. "Tell me you did not just say tsiganes."
"And if I did?"
"There will be no kissy-kissy with tsiganes in this family while I am alive or while I am dead. Keep it up, both of you, and you will lose my blessing."
Worst thing ever to a Greek child, losing their mother's blessing. That means their mama is teaming up with God to turn their collective back on you.
Fend for yourself in this world, because God and Mama don't care.
Once that happens, every bad thing that follows, from chipped nails to death, is your own stupid fault.
Should have listened to your mama, ungrateful child.
Kiki quit poking her mother with sticks after that. She quietly accepted Stavros's ring and all its consequences.
Mostly quietly.
Okay, sometimes she complained, but never too loudly. And now here they are, listening to a priest remind them that this is day nine of a world without Stavros. She would cry, but her tear ducts know what her mind hasn't fully processed yet: she's free.
11
Helena
The walls in the detective's office huddle together. They stand too close to one another for her to breathe comfortably.
She paints a portrait of Stavros as an angel, a man without sins or the kind of stains that might entice someone to do wish him harm. Kiki she paints in dense shadows, a fallen angel who acted upon lies.
Akili is her backup. The dear boy, he underscores her words with nods and sounds that confirm she speaks the truth.
When she's done talking, the detective leans back in his chair and tap-tap-taps his pen on his desk.
They have come uninvited and he is unhappy to see them, she thinks. Or maybe he is unhappy that she and Akili are doing his job for him. Who enjoys being usurped in their own kingdom?
"So you think Kyriaki Andreou killed Stavros?"
"Who else?" Palms up. "There is no one else, only Kiki."
"And she did this because she has heard stories that are not true?"
"People have killed for much less," Akili adds.
They have delivered a gift into his hands, so why doesn't he move? He should be running for the door, gun in hand, to toss Kiki into one of their cages.
Helena sighs. Useless, ineffectual man. This is who people rely on to keep them safe? Ridiculous.
"Come, Akili, we are wasting our time." She leaves the chair, the office, the worthless man behind the desk.
"Kyria Bouto?"
She glances back at the worthless man. "Yes?"
"Think carefully before you speak your suspicions to other people. You know what it is like here."
"What is it like here, Detective?"
"Take care that you do not destroy an innocent woman's life—if she is innocent—with gossip and rumors."
12
Kiki
Everyone tiptoes around Kiki. They have mistaken her for glass. Except Yiayia. Her grandmother, at least, speaks to her in her same old bold when she shows up for lunch.
"I wonder who will die next? Agria has not had a funeral since Stavros."
Cutlery screeches across a plate. "Mama!"
"It's only been a couple of weeks." Kiki slides into her chair. "Not in a coma today, Yiayia?"
"Eh, maybe tomorrow. Today the gossip is too good. Maybe I want to spread a little myself."
In a small village like Agria, gossip is a renewable resource. People here will still be talking behind each others backs, long after the Middle East's wells have gone dry and its people are begging the world to buy barrels of sand.
The whole family is at the kitchen table. It's lunchtime, which means (if you're Greek) it's dinnertime. Margarita dumps a bowl of pasta on the table, a bottle of ketchup, chunks of roughly-cut bread.
"For this I work so hard," Kiki's father says. "Spaghetti and ketchup. Who eats spaghetti and ketchup?"
His wife snatches away the plate. "There was a time children in this country went hungry. They would have been grateful for spaghetti without ketchup. But are you grateful? No!"
Hand outstretched. "Just give me the plate, Margarita."
"No. You do not like my cooking." A camper could pitch a tent on Mama's bottom lip.
"I like your cooking just fine—when it is cooking."
She gives him the plate, but she makes sure she knows it's a hardship. Kiki doesn't make eye contact with her sister. If she does she'll crack.
"So what are you going to do now, Kiki?" Yiayia says. "You need to get out there, find a new boyfriend."
Margarita throws her hands skyward. "This is why I keep trying to kill you, Mama. Kiki cannot go out and find a new boyfriend. We are still in mourning. How will it look?"
"Like she wants sex," Yiayia says. "Later we will get dressed up, eh? We can cruise the promenade together, maybe find some nice penis."
Prayers mumbled from Margarita's mouth: Please God strike her down. Let the devil take her.
"When's the last time you got laid, Yiayia?" Soula winks at Kiki, who hides her smile behind a chunk of bread.
"Twelve comas ago. He came to collect the garbage, but I told him your mother was not home."
Mama picks up her own plate, walks it to the garbage can. Dumps everything, including the plate. The screen door slaps the frame when she leaves.
Everybody starts eating except Kiki. She toys with the spaghetti a moment before setting aside the fork and the bread. Nobody looks at her when she stands. They don't want to see, don't want to know. The funeral is over and it's all so sad, yes, but to them this is the season of healing.
How can she heal when, on some level, she's believes she's the reason for Stavros's death? All her wishing and hoping, God or the gods heard her prayers and conspired to teach her a lesson: Here's what happens to good Greek girls when they want to defy their parents wishes. It's not logical; his death, suicide or not, was not about Kiki. The universe didn't just hand Stavros a gun because Kiki might have hitched her wish for freedom to a falling star or fifty.
But the mind goes where it goes, and hers is trotting down a guilty road.
Kiki finds her mother pulling weeds from the potted plants. Not a one of her plants are in the ground; they all live and die in red-painted captivity. When an oil or olive container spills its last drops, it wins a coat of bright red paint and time in the sun to dry. Soon the gardenias will sprout their buds, and by July she'll be drunk on the scent of them, day and night. To Kiki, they are summer.
She kneels beside her mother. "Can I help?"
"Eat. Otherwise why do I cook?"
"I'm not hungry."
"Then do not complain to me later when you are hungry and there is no food."
"I'll eat it later."
Her mother sets aside the small trowel like it's killing her. Since Stavros died, Mama isn't Mama. She has abandoned makeup, styling her long hair, painting her nails. "What do you want, Kiki?"
"To see if you're okay."
Margarita sighs, picks up the trowel again. She digs at the dirt as if it's the problem. "You have lost the man you were meant to marry, a
man you did not love. But I am losing a friend because of this, and her I do love."
"I did love him. Just not like that."
"Not all people who get married are in love."
"You and Baba were."
"Yes, and look at us now. We cannot draw two breaths of the same air without fighting. What is love, Kiki?"
"I don't know. But I think it's supposed to be everything."
Mama reaches over, taps her on the forehead with a dirty finger. "Then you are a fool."
* * *
Greece has one of the shortest school years in the world, but this semester still has more days on its calendar. Those tickets to Paris Soula mentioned lie in wait inside Kiki's handbag. Something has to be done with them, and soon.
She goes to school in a fog.
"Take some more time," the principal urged her. But she can't. To be at work is to be busy, and busy is good. It tricks the mind into believing all is well. At the front of the room with chalk in her hand, Stavros is still alive and juggling funny money for his clients.
That small act of forgetting makes her smile.
How strange: grief has given her a kind of amnesia. Now sometimes she has to remind herself that she didn't love him.
The chalk is damp in her hand. She sets it on the blackboard's lip and returns to the desk at the front of the room. She feels like a paper cutout. The kids haven't noticed. It's business as usual in here. They're passing rumors around the room, exchanging notes and glances. Not a one of them is about her. If they know, they don't care. Teenagers blow their own bubbles and live inside them until the world stabs them with a reality-shaped needle.
She smiles, but hides it in the stack of test papers her desk, when she overhears Melissa Tyler doing English with a Greek accent. They all do the same thing, her native English speakers. There's a handful of them in the school, raised in other countries and brought here by their Greek parents when the homesickness overwhelmed them.
"Ooooh, look," one of the boys says, "it's the police. Somebody is in trouble."
The meerkats pop their heads up, rush to the windows that run the length of the room. Kiki goes, too, but she's the last one to peer out and down to where a police car has parked itself outside the tall iron gates that surround the school.
A couple of constables get out. She knows them both. She taught them when they were younger and she was fresher. Good students, but when it comes to English, most of them are. Television and movies make her job easier.
And harder. It's not easy shaking the slang out of their sentences.
A cold arm curls itself around her shoulders, gives her a squeeze. You like jail? it says. Because jail would love a woman like you. They're here for you.
But that's ridiculous. What business do they have with her?
She already sat on the sad side of their table, answered their gentle questions as honestly as she knew how. What other business is there?
She taps the chalk on the board. "Back to your seats."
"But—"
"Please."
They like her so they go, with a couple of stragglers casting curious glances out the window. She does her best not to look. And her best is pretty good. She barely flinches when a hand raps on the classroom door. She tells them to come in, but the door's already halfway open.
"Despinida Andreou?" Respectful. Trepidatious, too. A few years ago the two cops were backsides in this room or one like it.
Suddenly someone is showering inside her, and they've set the water to cold.
"Who's dead this time?"
"Detective Lemonis sent us. He wants to ask you some questions."
"Okay," she says. "Okay." Her kids' faces are blurring together. "Stay right there," she tells them. "And be good."
When she shuts the door behind her, the room explodes. A chatter bomb. Kids are ostriches: if a grownup can't see them, then a grownup can't hear them.
* * *
They put her in the waiting room, so she waits. No magazines, no books, so she reads the inside of her eyelids. A door opens, closes. Kiki's eyes stay shut.
they think you killed Stavros. Why else would you be here?
She opens her eyes because her reading material sucks, and because someone is breathing in her face.
"At first I thought you were dead, but no you are just lazy." The voice is old, scratchy, like it's coming at her from a phonograph cylinder.
Now there's an old man in the seat across from her. He's on the downhill slope toward ninety. Suitcases under both eyes. Pants hitched up to his armpits. A toupee that isn't fooling anyone. In one hand is a figurine—a crouching man with big thighs and a chin-grazing anaconda.
"What's that?" she says, nodding at the statue.
"A fertility statue. I think he likes you."
"By the looks of him he likes everyone."
"Ha-ha." He points at her with the wood's wood. "Why are you here? Solicitation?" His eyes light up.
"My fiancé died. I think they think I killed him."
"Bah!" He waves a disgusted hand at the thin air. "You did not kill anyone. I saw you in a vision. But your bottom was smaller and your melons were bigger. It was a sign, so we came here to find you—me and Laki!" He holds up the statue.
In a Greece everything is a sign, except street signs. Street signs are there mostly to give drunk drivers a place to nap until the cops show up. Sneezing is a sign someone is gossiping about you. If someone throws salt at you, you can be sure you are an unwelcome guest. Crows bring death. Sometimes they steal your jewelry. (They're like very small relatives—with wings.)
Kiki goes to the counter. "If I say I did it, will you get me away from this guy?"
The constable looks up from his newspaper. "Is that a confession?"
Never mind. Back to the chair.
"You are very pretty," the old man says. "Twenty years ago, I would have pounced on you."
"Twenty? Try fifty."
"Forget it," he scoffs. "You are pretty, but you are not that pretty."
A door sings its song, and Detective Lemonis appears.
"Come in," he says.
* * *
The detective's office is a small room at the back of the building.
Smart, hiding the windows from the street. No throwing a brick or a Molotov cocktail through a window you can't see.
At least he takes her to his office, not an interrogation room. Still, she feels tiny and insignificant on the far side of his desk.
"At first the evidence seemed to be pointing toward suicide, but now it's pointing to something else," he says.
"You think I killed Stavros," she says flatly. Of course they do. And she understands why. She's suspect numero uno, the reluctant fiancée, the wronged woman. They went out there with a muck rake, flipped over the piles of gossip, and heard for themselves the stories about Stavros's dick and the places it went without her.
"Kyriaki Andreou. Twenty-eight. You teach at the high school. You and the deceased have been engaged for how long?"
"We've been here. You already know."
"Humor me."
"Since I was twelve. Sixteen years."
"Arranged marriage?"
Spring is inching toward summer. Light sweat glues her dress to her chest. She tugs at the black fabric, but her skin won't let it go.
"Yes."
"And it took you this long to set a date?"
"We were busy."
"Doing what?"
Putting off the wedding, mostly. "Establishing our careers."
"How did your families feel about that?"
"I can't speak for the Boutos family, but my mother was sure I was trying to kill her."
"Kill her?"
She lets out a long pained sigh, an exact replica of Margarita's. "The normal Greek mother's litany. 'Oh, Kiki, why are you doing this to me? I need grandchildren, and Soula is so busy selling houses that she will never marry. Look at her last boyfriend—poor man, she dumped him for being boring. What does she expect? All
men become boring, sooner or later. If you want excitement in your life, you must have lots of children to torture.' "
Lemonis jots something down in his notebook.
"Did Stavros have any enemies?"
She gives him the old are-you-kidding look, because … is he kidding? "He was an accountant. Everyone is an enemy if they don't like the way you add the numbers."
Stavros was a lot of things (mostly sexual things of a nefarious nature), but he was a good accountant. Nobody ever talked about how Stavros Boutos counted their numbers wrong—wink wink.
"Any real enemies?"
"Arranged marriage. We weren't exactly close, Detective. But town gossip says no. If anything, Stavros was one of those people who never met a stranger. He would drink with anyone, socialize with anyone. He made fun for himself and those around him." Which is why Akili clung to his leg like a horny dog.
In this small office is where she realizes how little she knew Stavros. They played together as children, shared a few colorless kisses in their teens, but that's it. His friends weren't her friends. They ran with different crowds. There were stories about him, yes, but Agria is filled with stories—more than the Naked City's eight million.
Detective Lemonis goes on. "He was an angel, according to his mother."
A short blunt laugh. "An angel? No. He's a Greek son, which means his mother—like yours, no doubt—thought he was Jesus Christ."
"His best friend—"
"Akili? You're talking about Akili, right?" Nothing. "Akili is a snake. Big mouth, small brain. You can't go anyplace but wrong if you listen to Akili."
"You sound bitter, Despinida Andreou."
(Despinida = Miss)
"Bitter? No. Honest."
Back to his notes. "Do you own a gun?"
Is he high? This is Greece. Who has guns in Greece? Almost nobody, that's who. "No."
"Do you have access to a gun?"
"Detective, I don't know anyone who owns any kind of gun. And I didn't kill Stavros."
The detective doesn't look convinced. Kiki's sure he sees a look of guilty faces whose mouths talk innocent talk. And now that he's looking at the real deal, he can't tell the difference.