Indebted to the Mafia King
The Old Place

Eleni

I lean back in my seat and groan. "Too...much...food..."

Gianna laughs. "Once you give birth, I'm getting you into pole. Even if you never perform, it burns calories like a mother-”

Mama starts to frown, and Gianna stops. I laugh. She's been working on her language.

"Well, it'll let you eat as much as you want," Gianna says quickly.

Mama nods. "If you don't perform, I think that would be all right with Dante."

Gianna launches into a list of how many dancers Dante has gone out with, seemingly just to scandalize Mama, and I look around the homey surroundings. To celebrate the end of my midterms, Mama suggested we go to Zorba's Tavern, a

warm, blue-and-white-walled little restaurant back in the old neighborhood. We used to come here every time Christos or I got all As in school. I tried to explain I didn't have my grades back yet, but she was adamant. She couldn't celebrate my last grades, or me getting into Tandon, so we were going to Zorba's.

"Well," Mama says. "I suppose some...standards might be different here."

Gianna snickers. Mama's working on her language, and she's working on Mama's sex positivity.

Demi, the forty-something waitress who's been here since I was a kid, swans over to our table with the check. "You ladies all done, or do you want to eat us out of house and home?"

Mama laughs. "If you only had this much food back in Greece, you'd lose your house, home, and land before the weekend."

Demi smiles and sets the check down. "Thank goodness my mama moved, then. Are you back?"

"Just for a little." Mama's smile fades, but she takes my hand. "My Eleni is getting married."

Demi's mouth drops open. "Little Eleni? Show me the ring!"

I display my hand, and within minutes, a restaurant's worth of Greek women are fawning over me, asking questions about Dante, suggesting the best Orthodox churches for the ceremony. Gianna laughs at first, but she blends right in soon enough. My chest aches. If Frank Lombardi never got Baba under his thumb, my engagement would've been like this the whole time. But I wouldn't have Dante.

"Now, Maria, you have no excuse to stay away," an elderly woman who's name I've forgotten declares. "The Greek Corner is up for rent finally. You march down there and put your name in right now!" Mama's face falls. "For rent?"

The mood dips.

"Didn't you hear?" asks Demi. "I assumed you were around to look."

Mama shakes her head. People say a few more encouraging things, then start to drift back to their own tables. Quiet falls over the restaurant.

"Baba always promised we'd buy that building, just as soon as we had the money," Mama whispers. "To see it rented to someone else...."

I put my hand over hers. I got my last goodbye to the Greek Corner, the day after we lost Baba. Mama never said goodbye. "Do you still have the keys?"

She looks up at me, shocked. "Eleni Calimeris, are you suggesting we break into a building?"

I shrug and smile. "It wouldn't be the worst thing I've done."

Mama pales. She doesn't ask about my work with the Saints, so I don't even know what she's imagining, but I know she wishes I wasn't involved.

Gianna stands. "I'm going to go get a cup of coffee. There's a place around here I'm obsessed with, and I'm happy to swear up and down you're going with me."

Mama looks from Gianna to me. That's not a "no" or a "what are you thinking?".

She takes a deep breath. "I will join you shortly."

I squeeze Mama's hand. "We will."

Gianna flounces out of the restaurant with a grin. I pay the check, and Mama and I cut through the back way to the Greek Corner. She holds her nose as we pass the dumpster between buildings, and the gesture is so familiar I almost want to cry. How many nights did we walk this way, did Christos tease Mama by drawing in lungful after lungful of stink?

We arrive at the back door of the building. Mama withdraws the key from her purse, the same old key with the half-broken clay gyro keychain I bought her one Christmas. She slots it into the knob and turns.

The door opens. Mama sucks in a sharp breath.

"This isn't smart," she says.

"No, it's not." I tighten my grip on her hand. "But Dante will take care of us if we get arrested."

Mama giggles, sounding young for the first time in a long time. With another deep breath, she steps inside. The air is deathly still, and for a split-second, the thick smell of copper coats the back of my throat. If we walk upstairs, the carpet will still be stained with Baba's blood. If we walk forward, the tables will still be knocked over and the register open.

The smell disappears into nothing more than bleach as Mama makes a small sound. I turn and find her staring around the empty half-pantry that leads into the kitchen.

"It's like a mussel someone emptied," she says, her voice weak and wet.

Before I can answer, she releases my hand, unlocks the door to the back of the restaurant proper, and pushes it open. The bleach smell intensifies. Inside there's just...nothing. The shelves on the bodega half stand empty. No chairs or tables clutter the floor. No register on the counter. Even the lightboxes above the counter where we put the see-through sheets of the menu are blank like staring eyes. Mama sinks to the floor.

"We bought it just like this, your baba and I," she says. "Back then, it looked like potential."

I sit next to her. I've never seen Mama like this, not even in the days after Baba's death. She's not quite sad. Just shellshocked.

"What did you imagine?" I ask.

She smiles at me. "You and that imagination. I always knew you were going to find your own path."

"Tell me, Mama." I put a hand on her knee. "I don't want to talk about me right now."

She laughs. "Fine, fine. Boss an old woman around." She shakes her head. "I imagined exactly what we ended up with. Shelves full of food, chairs and tables, regular customers. Your baba was the dreamer. He thought we'd be able to take out the shelves and become a full-service restaurant. Sit-down dinners." She drops her voice into an approximation of his. "Tourists from everywhere begging for your cooking, astéri mou."

I can hear him perfectly. I swallow against a sudden lump in my throat.

"This is why Christos was never going to settle down like we wanted him to." She smiles as the first tear drops down her cheek. "He wanted to dream like your baba, but he didn't have the-the-apofasistikótita." "Determination," I fill in.

She nods. "He wanted his things easy because Baba made things easy." She sniffles. "I miss them both."

I've been crying easier since I got pregnant, but I don't even notice the tears falling until Mama wipes them away this time.

"Tell me, zouzouni," she says.

I open my mouth to promise I'm fine, and everything spills out instead. How distant I feel from my classmates. How scared I am about bringing a little life into such a scary world. How I think Dante might be getting tired of this life too, but I know I can't leave without him. The night Dante and I talked about moving to Greece with her-less a lot of the details.

Mama just nods and strokes my hair and lets me talk. Fuck, Chloe was right. I did need her.

"-so I don't know what to do," I finish lamely.

"Well," she says, "and do not take this as a mother's selfish whim, but your cousin Vlasis just graduated from NTU, in Athens, and he is a very important computer man now."

I laugh wetly. "I couldn't take that as anything. What's a computer man? What's NTU?"

She shakes her head. "You call yourself Greek. It is one of our best schools. He got a computer degree, and he works in a big tower. I didn't understand when he tried to explain."

What she's saying fits so neatly in with the life Dante and I imagined that I almost can't believe her. A university where I could actually, finally finish my degree in Greece. Safe and sound away from the violence of New York. "What are you saying, Mama?" I ask quietly.

She kisses my forehead. "I am saying nothing at all, zouzouni. I love you, and you will dream your own path. My job is only to support you now."

I nod and stare at the papered-over windows of the restaurant that used to be ours.