Amanda Michalopoulou - Why I Killed My Best Friend

“Be serious, Anna. We’re not nine anymore.”

“If you think like that, you’ll age before your time.”

“Well, I certainly don’t feel all that young these days.”

“Because you’ve lost your faith in our friendship, that’s why.” Anna hugs me tightly and whispers in my ear, “If you think distance always means separation, you’ll spend your whole life looking for replacements. I for one am tired of looking for replacements. You’re my best friend, and that’s that!”

“Forever?”

“Forever!”

Anna strokes my hair, plants a sloppy kiss on my ear and weaves her fingers through mine. We lie down on the cold kitchen floor, wrapped in one another’s embrace. An entire Buttes-Chaumont, with its gentle slopes and trees, springs up around us.

Dear Kayo, Paris continues to feel small without you. I miss you incredibly, particularly when it rains. I open my arms and pretend you’re by my side. But I’m with Anna. She’s changed again: this year she’s full of love and in a generous mood. A chic, bourgeois leftist. She reads the same books, but interprets them however it suits her. That’s her problem, though, not mine. I can’t live in her shadow anymore. For me, that’s the worst form of captivity . I tear the postcard into pieces. I’m too old for schoolgirl confessions.

“Come in here so we can do your hair,” Anna calls from the bedroom.

We’re back in an era of grooming, an acceptance of female beauty. She sits me down in a chair and runs a comb through my hair, as if I were a doll.

“See that?” she says. “You look good with a bit more volume.” Is she implying that my hair is thin?

She opens the closet and tells me to choose something.

“I’ve brought plenty of clothes with me. .”

“But I want to give you something.”

I know these gifts well. They carry a price, she demands emotional sacrifice in return. I have nothing left to give her. My inner world has been flattened, it’s one long row of dusty ruins. I read, think, and do only what aids Direct Action.

“Please, Maria.”

Just to shut her up, I grab a black striped button-down.

“When you wear black you look sadder, more serious,” Anna says.

But I am sadder, more serious than ever.

“What exactly is going on with Kayo?”

She’s on her knees, trying to piece together my torn-up postcard.

“Anna, I can’t believe you! What right did you have?”

Fortunately the piece with her name on it is missing. She thinks “the worst form of captivity” refers to my feelings for Kayo. I grudgingly tell her his news: Kayo is living with a much older man in Manhattan, doing lots of drugs, pursuing his dream of being an artist, at least to a point: he goes to galleries, hangs out with artists, but in a superficial way, to see and be seen, as if he hasn’t figured out how to submerge himself in real life.

“He’s jealous of you, that’s why. He wants to do whatever you do.”

I wonder if she’s also describing our friendship.

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Kayo is superficial, a narcissist, a nobody. You’ve given him the soul he otherwise wouldn’t have.”

“And you wonder why I don’t talk to you! You’re harsh. And bossy.”

“I’m not bossy.”

“Then why are you looking through my trash?”

“I don’t know you anymore. These days I’m always going on old information. I want to know how you live, what you think, who you hang out with.”

Who I hang out with.

The plane’s turbines grind Anna’s words as they spin. I’m always going on old information. . It’s a relief to be leaving Paris. It’s as if I’m emerging from a nightmare full of beautiful people, harsh words, superhuman trials. Thanos is quiet, sad. After all, he’s headed back to work at the bank, in the absence of Anna’s triple kisses, Thierry’s vinaigrettes, the apartment with its half-circle balconies. It turns out he’s ambitious. He enjoys having houses and ideas, he’s adopted Thierry’s way of talking and I’m sure he fantasizes about having Anna beside him in bed.

“I think we need to take a break for a while,” I say.

“Mmm,” Thanos murmurs, as if daydreaming, draining the last of his soda.

No one has ever pursued me enough, no one wants me for his very own. Whereas everyone tries to get Anna to ride on their motorbikes, to kiss them, to come with them to Africa. Even I want her all to myself, a knick-knack in my heart. Or at least that’s what I used to want. It’s time I let her go. It’s time I said a silent goodbye to them all. It’s time I made up my mind.

“They won’t leave me in peace. They’re watching everything I do!”

Aunt Amalia is chewing the ends of her hair. Her eyes look right through me, as if I’m made of air. I stroke the back of her hand.

“Who’s watching you, Amalia?”

“The king, of course!”

“He lives in London, we’ve been over that. And he’s not the king, he’s the former king. For- mer!”

“Oh, honey, you don’t know anything! He has spies everywhere. He has people in New Democracy, they tell him who I’m talking to, what I buy at the supermarket. . They know every last detail.”

Amalia occasionally watches the news, and fragments of reality work their way into the stories her heightened imagination invents. The other day Parliament passed a bill concerning the confiscation of royal assets. New Democracy abstained from the vote.

“Who cares?”

“What do you mean, who cares? He has no money anymore, no estates, no grandeur. Don’t you see? He’s poor and wants to kick me out of my house so he can live here, with that woman. He’s got agents. They ring my doorbell, they threaten me.”

She walks over to the television and turns it on. We silently watch the commercials as night falls outside.

“Shhh! Listen!”

What’s there to listen to? A blond woman is chopping onions to show how natural and healthy a particular brand of instant soup is.

“Don’t you hear what she’s saying?”

“No, Amalia, what’s she saying?”

“I’ll chop you to pieces just like these onions, if you don’t do what we tell you to!”

I light a cigarette. Aunt Amalia claps.

“That’s the idea, a smoke screen!” She apparently knows her James Bond, too.

I hug her, exhaling the smoke behind her back, down onto an empty candle holder sitting on a side table that looks like a God’s eye from above. A proud, unforgiving god, who has completely forgotten his servant Amalia. Forgotten my mother, too.

“Where did you disappear to this time?”

Mom doesn’t really enjoy my visits. We spend the whole time discussing my lengthy absences, my indifference toward my family.

“I have something for you.” She hands me an envelope covered with little angels and roses.

“Who’s getting married?”

“The wedding already happened. Your old friend from Aegina, Martha. I called you for days. Aren’t you ever at home?”

“I was in Paris, with Anna.”

“One logical individual meeting another. .”

“How was the wedding?” I know she likes that kind of thing.

“It was nice, lots of people came. We went to the reception afterward, too.”

She’s talking to me, but looking at the television. Her soap operas have expanded to take over the whole middle of the day. Mom lives a life of weddings and divorces, dastardly deeds of revenge, silk sheets and champagne.

“When are you going to give me that joy?”

On the screen we see a couple in profile, kissing — a redhead with thick, gorgeous eyelashes and a blond guy with a square jaw who’s probably gay in real life. The kind of people you want to throw a bomb at.