Eat, Drink, and Be Wary by Lisa Mangum

Author:Lisa Mangum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

The honey arrived in a parcel that required a signature, and Dio knew this would be all he would ever get. When Sebastian found out he’d spent two thousand bitcoin on it, well, he might be looking for another job. But not before the mayor tasted it.

Flaherty looked over Dio’s shoulder as he dug through the bubble wrap to find an unmarked jar the size of a nine-millimeter bullet casing. He held it up to the light, and the amber glow inside made his mouth water.

“I should have gotten two deciliters.”

The mizithra had proven elusive in the daily listings of Food Underground. Who’d have thought goat cheese would be harder to find than honey?

After work, Dio hitched a ride with a produce vendor headed for the Bayview communes to the south. He rode between the vendor and his security man. The butt of the man’s rifle swung past Dio’s face as the guard scanned the vacant buildings that had once been a war zone.

Dio remembered the feel of the molded plastic rifle butt as it hammered his shoulder with every shot. The tide of the riot had swelled and broken here at 16th and Potrero.

Evander wasn’t the only brother lying dead in the street that day.

Streamers of photosynthetic fabric snapped and fluttered in the breeze off the bay—the only things moving here anymore.

When the produce vendor stopped on the corner of Castro and 24th, Dio wasn’t sure why he’d even come.

He kept a hand on the kitchen knife at his belt as he walked the block to Adrastos market. It was just where Yiayia had said it would be. The barred door had been pried off, hanging on by one hinge.

Dio slipped inside. Broken glass, coins, and Turkish cigarettes crunched under his boots. Everything edible had been looted long ago. Stairs at the back of the shop led up to what had once been the home of Adrastos Karakalos, by the look of the address on yellowing envelopes. Stairs beside the back door led down to a cellar.

Dio wiped the window clean on the back door and saw a flash of movement in an auto salvage yard across the alley. He opened the door and listened.

“Fáte méchri mikrá angeloúdia mou.” A woman’s voice was followed by the sound of grain streaming into metal.

“Eat up, my little darlings,” Dio translated in a whisper. He thought he’d forgotten his Greek.

The baa of goats, or maybe sheep, had him creeping across the alley to peer through a fence of corrugated sheet metal. A small herd of goats ate from a trough, their tails spinning in happy circles.

Clothed in filthy overalls, the woman who fed them stood with her hands on her hips, smiling down on them, dust circling her with a sudden breeze. Like Dio, she was in the evening of her youth, but radiant with a satisfaction that might come from caring for living things.

A braid of dark hair streaked with gray trailed out of a flowered kerchief. When she started toward the alley, Dio considered hiding.

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