“I beg you, boys, if it was you, tell me now. You won’t be in any trouble. I just need to know.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Peter, turning away.
“Sorry, Kyra Leni,” I said. “It wasn’t us.”
As Peter and I headed back toward my stairs, Peter whispered “Did you guys put something in her mail?”
Before I could say anything, Tony was flashing Peter the pack of mini-cards. I looked at him.
“You put those cards in?” Peter said excitedly.
“Just three of them. We put other stuff in, too.”
“Tony!” I said.
“Like what?” Peter asked, getting even more excited.
“It doesn’t matter,” I answered. “Look, no one can know about this, OK. You can’t fucken tell anyone.”
I couldn’t understand Tony. Peter was one of the most unreliable humans in the world and this was exactly the sort of thing he wouldn’t hesitate to use against us. He could blackmail us with it for years, and Tony should have known that.
Even as I was thinking these thoughts, Tony said, “He wrote a note.”
“What the fuck!” I cried.
“He signed it from the Jews and said that they were watching Dimitraki and he was in big trouble.”
“What?” Peter howled, gazing at me with gleeful incredulity.
“That’s not what it said,” I replied. I turned to Peter. “Peter, I’m not joking. You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Who’m I gonna tell?”
“I’m fucking serious, man. You have to promise. You have to swear on your mother’s life.”
“I’m not gonna tell.”
“You have to promise.”
Peter didn’t answer.
“Oh my God,” I cried, “he’s gonna fucken tell!”
“I’m not gonna tell. Relax.”
“So promise.”
“I promise.”
“You have to promise on your mother’s life!” I wailed.
Peter rolled his eyes. In a bored, apathetic tone, he said, “I promise on my mother’s life.”
“You promise what?”
“That I won’t tell anyone about the note you put in Dimitraki’s mailbox.”
I eyed him sternly. “You better remember those words.”
“I gotta go,” Tony said.
“Why?” I said. I didn’t want to be left alone with Peter Liakos.
“It’s almost lunchtime. And I’m hungry.”
As Tony headed toward his place, I said, “I’m gonna go too.”
“What are you doing later?” Peter asked as a door slammed above us. We looked up and saw his grandmother and Maria, his little sister, coming out.
“Do you have your key?” Peter’s grandmother asked in Greek. She was a small skinny woman and appeared hardly older than most of the mothers on the street.
“I have it,” Peter said.
Peter’s grandmother shut the door and, taking Maria’s hand, came down the stairs. “We’re going to Voula’s, I left a note for your father. Mamá can call us there when she gets home. Or she can just come over. We can have dinner there if she wants. I think your father is working tonight.”
Voula was Peter’s aunt, his grandmother’s other daughter. She lived on Waverly. There were also two sons, Peter’s uncles, both still in Greece. Peter’s father owned his own taxi and usually worked in the afternoons and evenings. His mother cleaned rich people’s houses.
“I don’t know,” Peter said.
“I think that’s what he said. So if your mother feels like, we can have dinner at Voula’s tonight.”
“All right.”
Without even a hello to me, Peter’s grandmother turned and headed with Maria down the street. My parents and the Liakoses were polite but not close. They didn’t socialize, even though we lived right next door. The Liakoses hardly socialized with anyone on the street. They seemed to hang out mostly with their own relatives and some other people they knew on Waverly. Peter’s parents were from a mountain village in the Peloponnese and people made fun of their accents and the way they behaved. Some people tisked at the fact that Peter’s father was fifteen years older than his mother and had married her when she was sixteen. Her own mother married when she was even younger, apparently. People would also comment on the fact that Peter’s grandmother didn’t wear black even though she was a widow. There were all kinds of dark and cryptic murmurings about the Liakoses, and they seemed to be regarded generally with suspicion and disdain for reasons I didn’t really understand. I knew one reason my parents weren’t friends with them was that they were for the king.
“Are we playing baseball today?” Peter asked me.
“I don’t know. If we get enough people. I haven’t seen anyone yet.”
“It’s the perfect weather.”
“It’s kinda hot.”
“It’s perfect.”
“We’ll see,” I said, heading up my stairs.
“Let me know if you do anything later.”
“OK.”
Shutting the door, I went straight to the double room and, standing several inches back from the lace curtain of the bay window, was relieved to see Peter going up his stairs. I watched until he’d gone inside. What had I feared he would do? I had no idea. But seeing him go back into his place was a relief.
I went to the dining room and watched some Sesame Street and then went to the kitchen. I heated up some of the chicken and kritharáki from the night before and made a salad with tomato and cucumber. I had to do it all very quietly because of my uncle. I had lunch in the dining room while watching TV. When I was done, I put the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. Just as I was about to go to the front balcony to see if there was anyone out, the doorbell rang.
Even through the curtain on the front door, I recognized the top of Tony’s head. He was seated on one of the middle steps and remained with his back to me as I went down the stairs. I had a feeling something was wrong even before I sat next to him and saw his face.
“You’re not gonna believe this,” he said. “Dimitraki’s mother showed the letter to the French lady downstairs.”
I went cold. “How do you know?”
“I saw them. She went down to the backyard to get her to translate. She even showed the letter to my mother, but she can’t read English.”
“Holy shit.”
“The French lady told Dimitraki’s mother she should never let her son out of the house. She told her the Jews were after him and she better make sure her door was locked and call the police.”
“You’re joking.”
Tony shook his head gravely.
“She’s not gonna call the police.”
“Why not?”
“She’s not gonna call the police for something like that.”
“She called all the other Greeks on the street to see if they got a letter too. She didn’t call your place?”
I was mute with terror.
“Didn’t she call your place?”
“No,” I said. “But she knows my parents aren’t home.”
“What are we gonna do?”
I sat quietly a long time, trying to think.
“What are we gonna do?”
“I can’t believe she woulda called the police. I can’t believe that’s what the French lady told her to do.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“What’s there to do? I mean, even if she did call the police, what are they gonna do? They’re not gonna take something like that seriously.”
“Why not?”
