Let Me Explain You (15 page)

“What do you want,
mor
i
?” Onus asked when he spotted Stavros Stavros.

“I want to make money,” Stavros Stavros said.

“I don't hire children,” Onus said.

“I want to work.”

The man with groomed forearms took his hat off to scratch his bald, damp head. “You're wasting your time with this cheap crook, Mavrakis. He wouldn't give his dead mother a job.”

Onus did not deny it. At night he sawed off the tops of all his glasses at an angle. But today he poured a free shot of clear
tsikoudia.

“Hey, crook,” the groomed man said, “what's the Mavrakis
agori
going to do with that, water my squash?”

“He's going to swallow it like a man,” Onus answered. “And then I'll give him work.”

Stavros Stavros ignored all the well-deep eyes that followed him and took a sip. It tasted like it had been strained from a goat's coarse ass hair. His tongue pushed the liquor out of his mouth. Onus wiped Stavros Stavros's face with a stinking rag. “Tell your father that if he wishes to be a rich man, he should sell me a hunk of that nice land.”

Stavros Stavros pushed away and left, face wet. He did not go home. Instead, he crossed the road and entered the blue
kafenio
owned by Takis. He didn't know what he would do, but he did know it would take more than a fat Onus to keep him down. Inside, the
kafenio
looked exactly like the one across the road. The customers were identical to Onus's—deeply wrinkled, hiding grassy ears beneath dark gray caps, counting worry beads beneath waxed white mustaches. Even Takis looked like Onus, except he was skinny and there were dark patches below his eyes.

Without addressing Takis, Stavros Stavros picked up a towel and began to wipe down the weatherworn tables. Takis paid no attention. He continued to slice a loaf of rough bread. When Stavros Stavros began to sweep out the lizards curled like bits of dry fat, Takis interfered. “What are you doing there, comrade?”

Stavros Stavros did not look up. “Cleaning.”

“Don't bother. We like things here the way they are.”

“You've got spiders.”

“You leave those spiders alone. Those spiders are socialists. Good friends of the establishment.” Takis put a wedge of bread into his mouth, followed by a hunk of white cheese.

“I'm just doing my job.”

“Comrade,” he laughed, “there are no jobs.”

Stavros Stavros continued to sweep. He picked up the dirt with his hands and dumped the pile into a wastebasket. He wiped his hands on his pants and looked up. He was disappointed to see that Takis didn't look impressed.

“Who sent you, Mavrakis? The government sent you to spy on me?”

“Nobody,” Stavros Stavros said. “I came myself.”

“Onus sent you? He sent you to my shop?”

Stavros Stavros hesitated. A nod. Takis slammed his hands on the table. “That fascist wolf,” he roared. “He thinks he can hire a peckerless runt to take care of my establishment?” Stavros Stavros's eyes darted to the door, sure that Onus was coming to clip his knuckles with a wooden ladle. “My brother, ignorant animal that he is, does not understand that one crow does not poke out the eye of another. Crows do not behave this way, so why should men?”

Stavros Stavros was nervous when he spoke. “I told him that your
kafenio
is the most respected in the village, but he says your shop gives his business a bad reputation.”

Takis pulled a blue handkerchief from his pocket, drew it around Stavros's arm. “That cheap goat thinks he can get his hands on my shop. Let's see how he likes it when I take care of his.”

Stavros Stavros, emboldened, said, “He told me you wouldn't even hire your dead mother.”

“I wouldn't hire
his
dead mother. Now go show that goatfucker who you really work for.”

Stavros Stavros ran across the street. He peered into the window. Onus was smoking a cigarette. He saw Stavros Stavros's head of greasy black hair and came out.

“Kακό σκυλί ψόφο δεν έχει. What do I need to do to make you go home, mangy pup?”

Stavros stood there. He was afraid of Onus a little.

Onus chewed on his cigarette. He peered into the dusk. “What are you trying to show me,
mori
?” Stavros Stavros stretched out the arm with the blue handkerchief. “My brother gave you a job? That poor bastard can't even afford the water he's stealing from me.”

Stavros, still afraid, saw this as a chance to get back at Onus for embarrassing him. He said, “Takis says the youth of Crete won't be corrupted by fascist wolves.” This was a favorite phrase in the village.

“Sure they will. How would you like to make double?”

Stavros Stavros thought about it. He nudged his chin at the red handkerchief tied around Onus's pudgy neck. Onus pinned the cigarette between his front teeth. He untied the handkerchief and slipped it over Stavros Stavros's arm, above the blue one.

“There, Mavrakis. Now you look almost like a man and less like a socialist donkey.”

Young, ambitious Stavros reported to both
kafenia
from then on. He washed glasses, dusted chairs, poured alcohol when the brothers were too drunk to do it themselves, learned the alchemy of Greek coffee. Within a year, Takis was training Stavros Stavros in the kitchen; not to be outdone, Onus let him take over all of the cooking. By age sixteen, Stavros Stavros was feeding all of the village men. His
mezedes
, especially the
sardeles pastes
—fresh, salted, skinned sardines—were so good, the locals said they were sweeter than maternal love. Nα τрώει ημάνα και του παιδιού να μη δίνει, they confessed: A mother would eat it and let her child starve. No longer a boy, Stavros had become a businessman with an eye for a profitable future.

Greek coffee, forever it would be the smell of his childhood, the smell he hoped to be buried with. The long-handled brass
briki
, the thick grounds, the golden froth that cooked slowly to the top. It was prophetic—it spoke of a life better than this one, with riches to come.

For the third time this week, Litza was on her way to the diner. She was going to make him finish the will in front of her while she drank glass after glass of milk. She was going to make him recite the letter from memory—she had memorized it, and so must he. She was going to make him tell her what he wrote to Dina. She was going to order him to leave Stavroula alone, Christ, couldn't he see the inevitable, hadn't he seen it coming like the rest of them? She would tell him he was
the wolf crying wolf
, just as he used to accuse her of being when she was young and
running with the pack, pretending to be one of the animals, crying wol
f
! wol
f
!
She would eat a big piece of carrot cake, slowly, while he confessed . . . whatever. She wanted to imagine the dense white icing changing her insides, like primer, while on the outside she stayed exactly the same. The question of the will, it wouldn't let her concentrate. She hadn't slept all fucking week.

Marina came out and told Litza that her father hadn't been to the diner in two days. This was unheard of. A thrill went through Litza, a whisper that said that maybe he was dead—and if her father's death were true, it made everything else in the letter true, too.

“He's not in his apartment?” Litza asked.

“It's not Marina's place to go looking. But, no, I don't think he is up there.”

Litza went up herself and saw that he was not there. Marina said, “I always know where he is. This is the only time in twenty years that I don't.”

“You don't sound worried.”

“You aren't worried, either,
koukla
.” Marina shrugged. “We both know—your father, he likes his own fireworks.”

Litza knew that better than any of them. He was probably crying in a corner about poor Stavros because none of them had come to his stupid Facebook dinner, and he was gearing up to do his next mean-spirited thing. He'd return in a day or three days or a week.

Litza went to her father's office. Instead of calling Rob, she dialed the main number. She got through to a supervisor, a real 608.89. The
Urethroscrotal
asked her a number of annoying and personal questions until Litza exaggerated the problem and crafted a scene that involved her father's becoming disoriented on public transportation. Yes, they had filed a missing person's report, which she could get to them as soon as possible but, as she anticipated, the
Urethro
608.89 told her that wasn't necessary. To make her feel bad, Litza said, “My mother's hysterical right now. I'm the only one keeping it together.”

The supervisor backed off, and suddenly Rob was on the line. “What's going on, Lizzy?”

“I told you, Rob, family shit.”

“You want me to help you look for him after work?”

This knocked her off guard. Did he mean it? She imagined the two of them stopping at Wawa to hang up Missing Father flyers, then cruising through the neighborhood, Rob's curly hair looking dirtier than hers. She imagined his eyes flicking back to her whenever she spoke, seeing the points of his canines whenever he laughed at her jokes about her father, because Rob sort of had a lynx's face, too playful to be a real predator because he was still so young. Too young to have to repeatedly submit forms for reimbursement for 300.02,
Anxiety
, which was the thing that kept him from really making anything of himself. If she said yes, she and Rob would end up in the backseat, and she'd let him go down on her, which she had only let her almost-ex-husband do. Then she'd stop Rob because it was too much, and tell him all she could smell on him was fried chicken. Spending the day with Rob would be a day of nothing, with no results, because the only way she could ever expect to confront her missing father was alone.

“Yo, I can leave early if you want,” Rob was saying, eagerly grabbing up the silence.

“No,” she said, eyes closed. “No, thanks, it's just a family thing right now.”

Then she hung up and convinced Stavroula to meet her at the diner.

In Marina's story, the widow is so sure she can bring the dead back to life that they find her lying on the cots of the recently deceased; the village hospital bans the woman and yet she finds her way to the stiffening bodies and lies with them, fully clothed. When challenged, the widow says, “Death is only a temperature.” This, told to her by a castrated angel.

“Does the village shun someone like this? No. They go to her for business advice.”

When Marina told the news of home, she wanted a rapt audience and ice tinkling in a froth-necked Nescafé frappe. While she talked, she knitted something amorphous. It was not clear whose third cousin this was. Just because Marina was talking about the woman did not make her Marina's. Marina's news came from her father, the
pappas
, who sent emails about the whole village, and neighboring ones. Marina never called home. She pretended that this was because of the seven-hour time difference. Marina did not visit. She had tried once, in the early nineties, for a wedding. What happened was a lot of rain, and flooding, and the ferry Marina was supposed to be on sank near Chania. Though she had a ticket, Marina had not boarded. She refused, for no reason, or for reasons only clear to her, in her heels and black dress and pearl bracelet.
Something came to me
, Marina said afterward,
a sign. And Marina was smart enough to recognize she was spared.
The sunken ferry was her old life, and she could wave at it from a dock. Or the airport, which is where she told the taxi to go. Having flown seven-plus hours toward her family, she flew another seven away.

Over the years, Stavroula probed the question like salt on her tongue—no, more like salt on a sore. Did Marina ever want to go home? Did she miss it? Did she feel guilty? She kept the deaths of her two brothers private. Stavroula found out about the second-oldest brother's death—and existence—only when Marina created a new recipe, Unadorned Grilled Snapper with Pear Slices and served it for a day only (Name Day, Minos). When she served another recipe for one day only, Unadorned Grilled Dorado with Pear Slices (Patrikios), Stavroula realized that there was another brother and Marina had lost him, too.

Marina told her no one but Hero had shown up for the Last Supper. But Marina wasn't worried. Was she? Stavroula herself kept thinking he was at the casinos, charming old ladies into thinking that he was a good man and the thing that was missing was respect for the father.

“This fat woman lies on a man who is narcoleptic, to the whole village's knowledge, and still everybody thinks she has cured him of death.” No, Marina was not worried. Marina was thinking of her own father, and how the village thought however he thought, even in these modern times. Marina pulled one loop of yarn through another. She could sense Stavroula's distraction. Behind her glasses, eyes like swift clouds. She said, “You have your own story you want to tell?”