Why I Killed My Best Friend. Amanda Michalopoulou
clears her throat. It’s her day. There are times when certain people shine, take the lead, while others would rather just disappear into their chairs, like me right now. Irini starts to read: “They presented it to us immaculate, marble, smelling of disinfectant, like an airport bathroom. Cold white fluorescent lighting. Private security guards. The Athens Metro is a moving walkway that transports us home after hours of low-paying, back-breaking work. It feels like the inside of a bank, exudes an air of industriousness and order. Music and food are prohibited. Human activity of any sort is avoided. In Europe people at least make themselves at home in their metro, they sing, they sleep in its warmth—after all, no European government cares enough to actually solve the problem of homelessness. We take it a step further: we hide our homeless, we kick them out of the station at Omonia. They mar the Europeanized image of prosperity we’re hoping might attract the business of multinational corporations. Sweep the dirt under the rug! Was the new metro designed for people so exhausted they’ve become zombies? Is this the new Athens we’re so proud of? This imitation of Brussels? Say no to this asphyxiating state ‘security’! Say no to the Olympic spirit being promoted by multinational corporations! Say no to the paternalistic aesthetic regulation of our city’s working class! Bring your guitars and your sandwiches. Come help us give the Athens Metro the color and life we all deserve.”
“Doesn’t it sound a little too hippie at the end?”
“Maria, you’re impossible! It’s already been printed! You’re always wanting to make changes!”
“What I certainly don’t want, Kosmas, is for them to pass our movement off as just another wave of inveterate nostalgia. For them to dismiss it as utopian thinking and all that crap.”
“You want our generation at the demonstration? You’ll have it! I guarantee you, our whole department will be there.”
“Kids whose most cherished dream is to get a job at a private television station are going to come down and occupy the metro?”
“Don’t you want them to?”
“I want young people, not bearded hypocrites from the Communist Youth.”
“Don’t be prejudiced, Maria!” Kayo says, draining the last of his wine.
I throw him a disparaging glance and stand up from the table. Whatever claws I once had are gone.
I use the tongs to agitate the photograph of Irini in the basin of developer. Her features are fluid, our little phantom of liberty. Her eyes are shining, her long hair is braided into Princess Leia buns on either side of her head, which is at a slight tilt, neck bare, inviting a kiss or a bite. Underneath we’ll print a line from Alice Walker, Resistance is the secret of joy.
All the darkroom equipment, the red light, the quiet swish of the liquid in the basin do nothing to alter the way that space echoes within me. The moment I open the door I experience a visceral sense of vertigo, a fear of falling and breaking my arm, even though there’s no stool anymore, and no salt, and I no longer believe in proverbs. When I slip into this room and close the door, something African comes and colonizes Exarheia Square. Something that brings me back to the days of crickets and caves and dismembered dolls. “What on earth do you do in there for hours on end?” Kayo sometimes asks. “I breathe in chemicals,” I answer. “I punish myself for being a racist.”
Now he opens the door just a smidge.
“Close the door, Kayo, are you crazy? You’ll ruin the photographs!”
He steals into the room and hugs me. His body is still warm from the sheets. Doesn’t he ever tire of this game of incomplete conquest? A hug, a kiss or two on the neck, then each of us to our own bed. It only exacerbates the feeling that’s been bothering me since afternoon, of having suddenly been thrown back into childhood. A six-year-old girl came and dusted off certain forgotten regions inside me: self-sacrifice, trust, admiration, disappointment, boundless love.
“Want to come and sleep in my bed tonight?”
I don’t reply. Kayo goes out of the darkroom, and I follow.
“Don’t you think it’s time you found a place of your own?”
He’s picking at the leftover potato salad, and freezes with the fork in midair. I stand on tiptoe and eat the bite off his fork.
“You really want me to leave? You’re that upset?”
“You said our living together was a temporary solution. It’s been three years.”
I enjoy crushing his dignity from time to time. Maybe the cold potato in my mouth is to blame. Or the memory of Antigone’s fake braid. Or of Anna’s high-handedness: give me Apostolos, give me your drawing, pee here, smoke this cigarette, sing whatever song I tell you to. It seems fairly obvious that I’m trying to act as Anna would, to usurp her place. You just say whatever comes into your head and everyone else takes you at your word.
“I think you should leave, Kayo. Find a place to live already. Take your life into your own hands.”
Merde. I’m a sadist.
I peek into his bedroom before leaving for school. He’s cleared all the ballerinas and plastic flowers off the desk. His suitcase is out in plain sight. Is he staging his departure to make me feel bad? I grab my coat from the rack in the hall and run down the stairs. I’m afraid that if I stop for even a second at the mirror by the front door, I’ll remember how I used to primp and preen in that exact same spot fifteen years ago, trying to be whatever it was I thought Kayo wanted. I wore men’s suits and cut my hair short, shaved the nape of my neck. I lived on an apple a day.
These days the bones in my wrists still protrude, but at least my arms are the arms of a normal person, not a ghost. I’ve gained ten kilos since my Paris days. My hair is shoulder-length now, and I use a ballpoint pen to put it up in a bun, the way Anna did during the last phase of our friendship. The only thing Kayo still likes about my looks is the way I dress. I still shop at vintage stores—sometimes for elbow-length gloves, sometimes for men’s suits. The gloves are straight out of My Fair Lady, but the suits are proof of his lingering influence. If I can survive without Kayo the way I survived without Anna, then I’ll be truly free.
I take the metro to school. I scan the platforms for potential escape routes, passages that aren’t being monitored. There are cameras everywhere. And our plan hangs by a thread: there’s no central committee controlling things, just whatever collective telepathy steers us to a certain place, to this electrified now. I’ve got copies of our proclamation tied up in a tube and tucked into my scarf. I bend down as if to brush something off my shoe and shove the tube under the seat. Right before I get off at my stop, I slice the string with a knife and the proclamations roll all over the floor, a torrent of colored paper. I guess I did learn something after all, flying on magic carpets and playing Little Wizard.
“My mom says you should call her.”
Daphne hands me a business card with both cell and land lines, of which there are four: home, work, a number in Paris, another that must be a summer house on some island. The card is warm from the girl’s sweaty palm; it practically breathes.
“Thank you, Daphne. Now go and draw with the other kids.”
“What should I draw?”
“Whatever you like.”
She plops down on her stomach and sticks her tongue out at Natasha, who, terrified, quickly draws a rainbow at the top of her page, over the family she’s been drawing, as if to protect her creation. Daphne turns her back on Natasha, hides her paper with one hand so the other girl can’t see, and starts to draw, speaking all the while in a sing-song: “Look at the lightning, colored rain, the little kid cries, waaa, waaa . . .”
She’s starting to pique my interest.
“Come on, little kid in the cave, pick a big leaf from the tree so you don’t get wet, hmmm, hmmm . . .”
Natasha is straining her neck to see, even more curious than I am.