The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis

of the boys, though he’d never gone through the initiation of challenging a leader — a king of the crooked narrows — nor would he have the nerve. A less conceited man would have understood there was no way to forego this step, to simply be invited into the circle, no matter how well his songs tickled the cauliflower ears of stoned men. Music was necessary to their high, the piercing trills of the bouzouki essential to the process of intoxication. The manghes appreciated Spiros’s skill as a musician, and for the service of being entertained, they filled up his narghile and let him call them by their secret names. But a song could never replace action.
    The hideout of Manolis the Cucumber and his gang was a hillside cave near Keratsini. Half a dozen tough guys, already stoned enough for trouble, shared the finest hashish from Bursa with two sailors who’d asked the right questions when their ship docked in Piraeus, and with a carnival strong man who had arms the size of small pigs. Spiros was there too, a squeaker among these men of the streets, of the world, with nothing but his bouzouki to save him.
    How exactly he’d offended the Cucumber was not spelled out to Kivelli by Sakis the Sweet-Talker. To repeat the slight would be to commit it again and put himself in danger. You didn’t even dare smile at a big man like the Cucumber unless he smiled first, let alone mouth off about his business. What Sakis could tell her was that Spiros had said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and that the Cucumber, so named for both his hardness and coolness, did not react other than to tell him it was time to go home and start packing. This could be interpreted in several ways. Leave the neighbourhood for a while. Skip town altogether. Or make your final arrangements: run up some debts, get crazy high and fuck like a spring rabbit because that permanent black cloth would soon be pulled over your face. And like the song went, once they put you in the cold earth, everyone would forget your name.
    But Spiros did not go home to pack, did not make any arrangements one way or another. He showed up at the taverna that night as if nothing had changed. Had he not grasped the implications of what had taken place and the Cucumber’s prerogative to settle the score, or did he believe his music was magic? Kivelli never got the chance to ask him whether he was afraid or ready for his big test, though she was sitting next to him when it happened. The shock that registered on Spiros’s face told her he never saw it coming. Not when the Cucumber and his gang stepped into the taverna. Not when the big man raised a glass to him. Not when the Colt .45 was pointed in his direction. And not when the bullet penetrated Spiros’s chest — a perfect shot right at the end of a song the Cucumber had requested. It was the last song Spiros ever played, a lively song delivered with gusto and pride, celebrating his killer’s fierceness in love and war. There was complete silence in the room. Kivelli held her breath, waiting for the second bullet that would bind them in death, or for Spiros to sit up and drag her outside, where he would punish her for believing herself free of him and rejoicing.
    When the Cucumber stood up and walked towards the platform, the men began to applaud. He was short and thick around the middle, red-faced and flabby-jowled, and there was more white than black in his moustache and eyebrows. His Republican was dark blue and never removed, not even in church. Once, during a game of dice, a guy trying to prove something knocked it off on a dare, but he wasn’t around anymore to answer questions about what was underneath. The Cucumber ruffled Spiros’s hair and apologized to Kivelli, not because he’d shot her lover but because blood had spattered her dress. “We had debts to clear,” he said and shrugged, then handed her a gardenia and tossed a few coins into her plate. It was the