Christos Ikonomou - Something Will Happen, You'll See

I said, past tense.

And you accepted four.

That asshole doesn’t listen to anyone. And I begged him. Anyway. Four hundred is fine. I’m going over there now. We’ll talk in the morning.

Did you try giving him a blow job?

Effie.

You should be ashamed. You call yourself a man? If you were a whore he’d give you more. I don’t want to ever see you again, you hear? Don’t you dare show your face around here because I’ll call the cops. I’m sick of you, you pathetic fool. You’re small change. It’s over, we’re through. Hear me? We’re through. Just listen to him, four hundred. That’s a euro per hour. You pathetic idiot. Loser. You’ll always be someone’s bitch.

• • •

The receiver is black and heavy in his hand. He hangs up and leaves the phone booth and crosses the street to get back in the Nissan. Four hundred euros. He rolls down the window and straightens the mirror and looks at himself. Four hundred euros.

He looks at himself in the mirror. He has black circles under his eyes and the whites of his eyes are full of tiny red threads. His mouth tastes like something died in there. He hasn’t eaten or slept since yesterday. He smooths his hair back and runs a hand over the top of his head and can feel the shards of glass. Little pieces of glass under the skin. It’s got to be glass. In May he crashed the car into a low wall around a field. Early in the morning on the fourteenth of May. He was going a hundred kilometers an hour and went straight through a wall down in Aspra Homata on Beloyannis Street. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt and his head hit the windshield and the airbag even opened. He wasn’t hurt, just a few scratches. But the Nissan was totaled. At the dealership they wanted ten thousand to fix it. Ten thousand euros. As much as he’d paid for it new. He felt like grabbing the bastard by the throat and strangling him. In the end he found a mechanic in Keratsini who got it back into some kind of shape for two thousand. Effie loaned him half. He still owes her for it.

And the Nissan drives like a boat these days. Every time he gets in he’s worried it might not start.

He doesn’t remember hitting the wall. He only remembers getting out of the car and checking to make sure nothing was broken and then walking to Effie’s house and the whole way feeling his head and finding little pieces of glass. From Kokkinia to Agia Sophia by foot, who knows how he managed that. He remembers Effie opening the door and screaming and making him lie down in the bedroom. She wanted to call an ambulance but he wouldn’t let her. She sat there all night by his side and talked to him. He can’t remember what she said. He only remembers swearing that he’d never drink again. And ever since then whenever he breaks his oath he’s afraid. Which means he’s afraid when he drinks and afraid when he doesn’t drink, too. Fear.

He grabs his cell phone off the dashboard and puts it in the glove compartment. The battery is dead again. For ages he’s been saying he needs to get a charger for the car but he always forgets. And today the battery ran out of juice and he ran out of money. Again.

He holds his hands up in front of him so they’re facing one another and stretches out his thumbs. They’re trembling slightly. He holds his breath then slowly lets it out and lets his fingers relax and watches as they approach one another slowly and hesitantly until they’re tangled together like lovers’ bodies — his fingers coming together like lovers, like people touching in search of shelter from some terrible disaster.

He sits like that for a while with his thumbs together and thinks of all the things he needs to do, and of the nights he’ll spend with Effie. Then he turns the key in the ignition and releases the emergency brake and sticks his head out the window. Somewhere someone is cooking and the air smells like french fries. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath and sighs.

Four hundred euros. Four hundred. At the end of the month.

And it’s still only the third of August.

• • •

Its name is Leben. A Belgian sheepdog with bloodthirsty eyes and jet black fur that shines even at night. He’s only seen the dog three times and all three times it lunged at him, then walked off and stared at him with its mouth half open and its long pink tongue hanging out. It watched him and laughed. Fucking dog. From a distance it looked like a bear.

And Alamanos laughed too.

Don’t be scared, man, he said. It’s just until he gets used to you. Look at you, shitting yourself with fear.

Alamanos asked him to come by the house last week so he could give him instructions and show him where things were. There isn’t another house like it in all of Schisto. People pass by and marvel. The house itself sits on five hundred square meters and has another two thousand of yard. A pool and grass and strange trees and hidden lights in the garden. A covered patio with a built-in grill and wood-fired oven. And the whole thing enclosed in a high stone wall with cement on top where they’ve stuck pointy pieces of sharp green glass that glitter in the sunlight so that from a distance it looks like an enormous grey dragon sunning itself on the top of the wall and looking out with a thousand shiny eyes.

It’s stupid, that dragon, said Alamanos. The wife’s idea. She saw it on television. You know how women are. Whatever bright idea gets stuck in their cunt.

He showed him how the alarm worked, how to turn on the lights in the house and in the garden, how to water the grass and how the lawn mower worked. He showed him which keys opened which doors and explained what to do with the dog. How and when to feed it, how often to walk it. They would be gone for all of August — ten days abroad, in Tunisia or Morocco, and the rest touring the islands on their yacht — and Alamanos needed someone he trusted to look after the house and the dog. And he said he would do it. Not just for the money but also to get on Alamanos’s good side. Times are tough. Things at work aren’t going well at all. A bagmaker. That’s his job. He puts newspapers and magazines and flyers in plastic bags. But things have been getting messy since spring. There’s no cash to speak of. Everyone’s been working on credit. Alamanos has been fighting with the customers and the customers are leaving and orders are dropping like flies — and Alamanos is firing people, too. The Poles and the Russians were the first to go but starting in September there’ll be others, too. For sure. So he’s afraid of losing his job. He hates his job and hates having to lie about what he does. A bagmaker. When he was little and people asked him what he was going to be when he grew up he never knew what to say. But it never occurred to him, he never could have imagined that one day he’d have a job like that. Most people don’t even know there is such a job. Bagmaker. They don’t even know what it means. That’s why when people ask what he does he just says he works in the private sector. And if they insist — the way Effie did when they first met — he says he operates packaging machines. Or works at a graphic arts firm. Bagmaker. Because if you really think about it even that’s a lie. He doesn’t make bags. He puts things in bags. Newspapers magazines promotional flyers. So he’s not a bagmaker, he’s something else. He just doesn’t know what.

But he still doesn’t want to lose his job. So when Alamanos mentioned the house, he offered immediately. It’s good to be on good terms with the boss. It’s good for your boss to trust you and be indebted to you in some way. It’s a great opportunity. A man doesn’t entrust his house and his property to a nobody. An operator of packaging machines. He’s written a whole scenario in his head. All of August off from work. A huge house all to himself. Free booze. In the mornings he’ll swim in the pool and lie out in the sun and put on music and drink colorful cocktails. In the afternoons he’ll walk the dog and water the lawn and flowerpots and then lie down again by the swimming pool and wait for Effie. Glamour. Hollywood. No one would believe him if he told them. And as soon as Effie gets off work she’ll come straight there and they’ll swim in the pool and then cook dinner and drink wine and do lots of other things, too — all night every night. Every night they’ll stand naked across from one another and let their bodies go free and their bodies will approach one another slowly and hesitantly and slowly and hesitantly come together. Their bodies will rest on one another and their eyes will be closed and they’ll smell one another and feel that strange thing. That heat that emanates from a body that’s free of clothes. The sweetness and dizziness and desire born of the union of bodies. That’s what he wants more than anything. The union of bodies. That’s the gift he’ll give to Effie, along with all the rest. And he doesn’t care that it’s only temporary, that it’ll all be over in a month. He doesn’t care that this life will end in a month. Because what someone once said — that the meaning of life is that it ends — is the only thing worth knowing, for however long you’re fated to live. That and nothing else.