by Alex A King
Some primal instinct kicks in and she goes still. Thanasi has broken off from the group and he’s swimming her way. If she doesn’t move he won’t see her.
She wants/doesn’t want the attention.
Thanasi moves like he’s boss. Long, easy strokes, commanding the water to get lost.
Melissa Tyler will go down in history as the biggest failure with guys ever. People are going to point and laugh in the streets.
Don’t be so lame, Tyler. What Would Olivia Do? Be flirty, of course.
“Hi,” Thanasi says, in thick English. His hand brushes against hers as he reaches for the buoy.
She says, “It's easier to float here.”
Is her dialogue killer, or what?
Thanasi doesn’t look fazed. Total opposite of that. He’s checking her out – up down, up down – painting her with his gaze. “You look sad over here.”
“I’m not sad.”
He looks back over his shoulder at the others. They’re splashing around a shrieking, giggling Olivia. And she’s not envious – nope, not at all.
“I can go if you like.”
“No,” she says quickly, in her crappy Greek. “Stay.”
Thanasi smiles.
She smiles.
He’s a honey with his messy boy-band hair. The guys at her old school never looked this good. The few hot ones were real dicks that preferred cheerleaders to girls like Melissa. Like . . . oh, Josh Cartwright.
“Your Greek is very good.”
“My grandparents, they made my parents send me to Greek school. I haven't been since I was twelve. It was embarrassing.”
“Why?”
She doesn’t want to explain, but he seems interested and she really wants to keep talking to him. “It made me different.”
“And this is bad?”
“In America? Yeah, if you're a teenager.”
It’s not the real reason she’s unpopular, but it’s not exactly a brilliant idea to tell the hottest guy ever that she was considered a total dork that would rather read than go to parties and make out.
Okay, so maybe she does want to make out – sometimes.
“No boyfriends then?” His smile never quits.
“Some.” Liar, liar.
His smile goes supernova. “I like you. You have a very beautiful face.” His leg touches hers in the water, now she’s burning up. But she doesn’t pull away, does she?
“You're beautiful too,” she blurts. Recovery is a hasty: “I mean, what grade are you in?”
“Eleventh grade this year. What grade will you be in?”
“How do you know that I'm not already in school here?”
“Because if I'd seen you before, I would have remembered you.”
“Ten,” she says quickly. Gaze slides to her watch. It’s nearly noon and she promised Mom she’d be home for lunch, didn’t she? “I have to go.”
“But we just met. Stay.”
God, the boys are so smooth here. So much smoother than at home. Satin. Silk. Marble cool. She’s way out of her league, but Thanasi is talking to her and smiling at her and she really wants him to never stop.
“We can meet again,” she says. “Me and Olivia come here practically every day.”
Not true, but so what?
(Tyler, Tyler, how very Olivia of you.)
“You want to come and watch us play football?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow afternoon up at the fields. Your friend will know where.”
Olivia gives her a thumbs up.
“Sure,” Melissa says, with some other girl’s voice. “We’ll be there.”
* * *
“Friends are good for the soul,” Dr Triantafillou says. “It’s great you’re making some. Healthy.”
Melissa says, “I guess. Do you have lots of friends?”
“Not as many as when I was younger. But enough, yes.”
“What happened to them?”
The shrink taps a pen on her knee. Jeans again, and those wedges Melissa likes. They’re sitting in a sunbeam on the hospital’s third floor. Big sunbeam, spilling all over the shrink’s office. Melissa didn’t picture it this way. She imagined the room stuffed with generic furniture and a fake leather couch. Surprise, surprise: no couch. And the chairs are super-comfortable. Definitely not hospital issue.
“Life. As you get older, you change, you grow, you get busy, they get busy. Tell me about Olivia.”
“What’s to tell? She’s a girl, that’s all.”
“Do you like her?”
“She’s my friend.”
Smile, smile. “That’s not always the same thing.”
“I guess I do. She’s kind of . . . Is it okay if I stand up?”
“Of course. You’re not a prisoner.”
Melissa goes to the window. It’s big – floor to ceiling. Hence all the sunlight. Not high enough to transform people into ants, but they’re definitely doll-like. People coming, people going, people grinding the hot end of cigarettes into the concrete. Gypsies –
– Romani. Mom will kick her ass if she hears her call them gypsies –
– scattered all over the place, like the hospital is their watering hole.
“Olivia is okay. She’s not a bad person – she’s just kind of an asshole sometimes. Is it okay if I say ‘asshole’?”
“If that’s the word you mean to use, sure.”
Melissa nods. “She’s kind of an asshole. But not all the time. Just sometimes. I haven’t decided if she’s a nice person with a shitty – can I say shit?”
“You can say anything here, Melissa.”
How cool is that?
Mom wanted her to switch shrinks after the drinking thing. But Melissa told her if she had to see a shrink, she wanted Dr Triantafillou. Mom shrugged and said, “If you’re cool with that, I guess I am, too.”
And now here she is.
Olivia doesn’t know. Melissa isn’t sure she can be trusted. Could be she’s one of those people who bottles up secrets, saving them until she can spray them over a crowd and look cooler, bigger.
“I don’t know if she’s a nice person with a shitty shell, or a shitty person with a candy shell. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. I know people like that.”
“I’m waiting to see what she’s really like, I guess.”
“That’s very mature. What about this boy?”
“He’s just a boy.”
Casual shrug to a casual observer.
Dr Triantafillou is anything but casual.
59
MAX
MAMA IS LIKE GOD: her eyes are everywhere.
Back in the old days (cold days?) in England, he would jerk off in the dark under the bed covers so the fly on his wall wouldn’t see and report back to its Greek commander. So he’s not surprised when she calls again. Took her a while; gossip train must be malfunctioning, unloading the details one car at a time.
“This woman is a xena?” Like the word is shit-dipped.
He counts to five. “She’s a friend. Her daughter was my patient. And she’s not a foreigner, her parents are from here – which makes her as Greek as you.”
“She’s an American! A whore! A married woman who leaves her husband to cavort with my son! Anastasia will not marry you when she hears of this, the poor girl.
“Mama, you're overreacting.” That’s new, isn’t it? “She's alone in this country with a sick child. You raised me to help people and now you complain when I do?”
“I raised you to heal people, not take them out for dinner and walk arm-in-arm on the promenade! What is wrong with you, Max? What would your father say? This must stop. You and Anastasia must announce your engagement formally and set a wedding date. And you must never see that woman again.”
He makes a fist.
Why the hell can’t he stand up to one sixty-year-old woman?
She wants him to be a boy, not a man. But this man makes his decisions. He conquered university. He survived the brutal residency.
He put in the hours.
“No. This is my life, Mama.”
“Yes, Max. This is the way it will be. You will bring dishonor on this family – on me – if you keep seeing this whore. And if you don't marry Anastasia . . . Oh, the shame, after I made a promise to her mother! It will be the end of me. No beautiful grandchildren to show people. Who will carry on your father's name? Kostas? He is not a man. He is little more than a eunuch! That thing lies useless between his legs.”
“Mama, enough! Kostas is still your son and my brother. You will not insult him again or you will lose another son! Then you will be a woman with no sons and no grandchildren.”
End Call.
He stalks toward the cafeteria, veins throbbing.
A small boy is walking the halls with his mother. She’s wheeling the IV stand while he shuffles. The little guy waves, smiles.
Max stops to say hello. He pockets his anger with the phone. This isn’t the time, isn’t the place.
60
VIVI
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER WHIRLWIND.
Vivi wants to sleep, but Dora is dragging them all over town, visiting family, showing off Eleni. She won’t shut up about how good Eleni looks with her dyed hair and Jane Fonda waistline.
Her mother looks like she’d rather be hanged. But she’s enthusiastic enough – eager to catch up on years of gossip, maybe knife a few backs while she’s at it.
The family wants to know everything about life in America. (How much is this? How much is that? How much does a house cost? Can you buy Greek food there?)
Beautiful afternoon under the trellis at cousin Effie’s house. Ice cold frappe, sweet and sour preserved cherries for dessert. Can’t complain. Every Greek home seems to have one room set aside for company. It’s always done up with fancy linens and too many shiny things. But not Effie’s house. If she has a room like that, they’re not allowed in.
Keeping the riffraff out.
“How was your flight, Thea Eleni? I hope you weren't too frightened on the plane,” Effie asks. As usual, she slapped on her makeup with a bucket and trowel. Looks like she’s auditioning for The Cure with that lipstick.
“It was good. Comfortable. The food is another matter. All that money I pay and what do they give me to eat? Cardboard. Whoever is responsible for the food . . . their mother should spank them.”
“Did you take off your clothes?”
Eleni blinks. “For who?”
“The security,” Effie says. “That is what they say on the news: that people in America are strip searched before they get on the plane, that everyone is guilty of some crime until they prove otherwise.”
“That is not true,” Eleni says.
“And they look in your ass for drugs and bombs.” (Vivi doesn’t dare make eye contact with her mother; she’ll lose it if she does.) “I saw this on the TV so it must be true.” She looks around and everyone else makes agreeable noises. “They do not lie on the news.”
Vivi can’t help herself. “They only strip search people who ask stupid questions.”
But it’s lost on Effie, who continues her interrogation in some weird game of one-upmanship only she understands.
“Why would they say it on the news if it is not true?”
“Television always lies,” Eleni says. “Anything to get higher ratings.”
Vivi nods. “Reality TV.”
“I couldn’t fly.” Effie is on a roll. Good thing she’s the perfect shape for it. “Planes are so small. How can people survive for so many hours in such a small space with no fresh air? I do not understand.”
“They're not at that small,” Vivi tells her. “In fact, a lot of them are huge. Imagine about fifty people lying end to end in the street here. That's about how long a 747 is.”
“I do not believe it. Something that large cannot fly! How does it get off the ground?”
“A 747 is seventy-six meters long, so believe it. Google it, for crying out loud!”
“Now here is some good news!” Thea Dora comes to the rescue. “Vivi is going to start her own business!”
Yeah, not a rescue. More like tossing a honey-coated Vivi into a bear pit.
Effie goggles. “Why would you want to do that?”
“There's this really neat invention called money,” Vivi says casually. “You can buy stuff with it. Been around for centuries.”
“So get a job or get married like other women,” Effie says.
Because that worked out well for Vivi, didn’t it? “Thanks but no thanks. I like the idea of being my own boss. Flexible hours, and I can choose who I want to work with.”
“You can't do this. What will people say?”
“Why would they say anything? Lots of women all over the world run their own businesses every bit as well as men,” Vivi says.
“Maybe in the rest of the world, maybe even outside Agria, but here it is different. Here women get married and raise families. That is a woman's work,” Effie insists.
Vivi feels sorry for her, because Effie’s got this desperate look in her eye, as though once upon a time, she had dreams but they turned to shit, and now here she is: a mother, a wife. Been nowhere, going nowhere.
“Look!” Thea Dora yelps, pointing at Vivi’s cup. “You spilled the coffee in the saucer!”
“I'll clean it up,” Vivi says. Eleni glares across the table at her. “Don't worry, I won't lick it.”
“No, no, leave it,” her aunt says. “It is a sign of good luck. It means that money will soon come to you.” She waves her hands in a hurry up motion. “Finish it. I will read the grounds for you.”
“Do not start with that hocus pocus, Dora,” Eleni says, but she knocks back the last drop of her own coffee, swirls the grounds, upends the cup on its delicate saucer.
Thea Dora wags a finger at her. “Hocus pocus, eh? I remember one time many years ago when I read your grounds and warned you – ”
“Enough, enough. Always with the talking,” Eleni says. “Go on, read her grounds and make up something good, eh?”
“Bah! I make up nothing. The grounds tell the truth. Vivi, my love, swirl the cup, turn it three times counter-clockwise, and place it upside down on the saucer.”
She swirls, she dumps. “What now?”
“We wait for a few minutes for the grounds to harden. Eleni, give me your cup.”
Eleni slides the demitasse her way, taking care not to break the seal between cup and saucer.
Thea Dora peers in the cup.
“The bottom of the cup represents the past,” she says for Vivi’s benefit. “The curved part where the bottom meets the side represents the present. And you will find the future near the top.” She looks up at Eleni. “What I once saw in your future is now in the present as well as your past. Strange.”
“That is impossible.”
Vivi asks, “What do you mean? Is it time travel? Because it sounds like time travel.”
They ignore her.
“How can it be impossible if I see it? You are here, are you not?” Thea Dora says. “Now, in the future – I think the near future because it is a little low – I see a doorway. You will have an important meeting with someone from the past.”
“So basically everyone here?” Vivi asks.
“Mock the grounds if you must, but believe in them, Vivi, for they hold the key to our destinies. Now give me your cup.”
Vivi doesn’t believe in fortunetellers or horoscopes, and she doesn’t want her destiny spelled out. What if it spells f-a-i-l-u-r-e?
Not cool.
What the hell, it’s just a bit of fun, isn’t it? The future isn’t really hiding in a dirty cup, waiting to be read by a superstitious aunt.
Is it?
“I see two men in the bottom – ”
Vivi thinks: John and Ian.
“ – and a line. A journey. Of course you are here, so there is your journey. I see a snake in your present.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“No, this is good. It
means something you desire deeply will come to pass very soon.”
“What about her future?” This comes from a scowling Effie, who doesn’t look like she wants anything good to swing Vivi’s way.
Thea Dora says, “I see a bridge. You must make an important decision soon. Only you can decide if you want to cross it or not. But there's a line through it. Something, or someone, will try to stop you.”
“Will I win?”
“Eh.” She shrugs. “Maybe. The cup does not say. We try it again another time.”
Effie thrusts her cup at her mother. “Do me.”
“Bah! I don't need to look in your cup to see your future, Effie. You have a husband and children, what more do you want to see? Old age?”
“Maybe you'll be surprised,” Effie says.
“Some people do not have surprises in them.”
* * *
There’s a small bouquet on Vivi’s front doorstep. Wildflowers tied with yellow ribbon.
Eleni hovers at her elbow. “Who are they from?”
“No note.”
“Why no note?”
“Here, let me pull out my psychic whodunit guide and I'll tell you.”
“I bet they are from that doctor.”
“No, Mom. They're not from that doctor. He’s unavailable. Maybe they're for you.”
“Okay, I will take them.”
61
VIVI
THE NEW, NEW TOILET doesn’t break.
After it’s in place, Vivi trudges through the olive grove, back to Takis’s mansion. Biff comes along for the goats.
She wasted a lot of time last night, beating her thoughts into submission. Now she knows two things: Takis will teach her everything he knows about harvesting and processing olives, or she’ll pester him until he drops dead or files a restraining order.
The other thing is Max. She can’t see him again. Ev-er.
No way is she going back there, to that place where she can’t have what she wants. One sham relationship is enough.
There was love – there was. In a distant sort of way. She and John were shopping lists and renovation and a wan sort of friendship. But she wants shopping lists and renovation and friendship and fire.