by Alex A King
Soula threads her arm through her cousin’s. “No, I need to ask Max for some medical advice. Take your time.”
Anastasia stalks away, all legs and miniskirt. Heads turn, ogle her body. Max doesn’t care. Watching her move used to turn him on. Now he wants her to keep on walking.
“I'd rather eat crunchy glass flakes than play best friends with her. Sorry.” Soula doesn’t look sorry.
“Don't be.”
“Do you really have to marry her?”
“Soula . . .”
“Fine, fine. Forget I said anything. You want to leave her here and come up to Vivi's with me?”
Does she know? He can’t tell.
“I can't.”
The folk music dies out. Something that was hot in the 80s takes over. Teenagers swoop the stage and Max laughs. He danced to this song when it was new.
“Maybe I can find her a good man. I found her a house; I can definitely find her a man. Blond or dark? What do you think?”
“She’s been through a lot. Let her make her own choice.”
“Sounds like you know.” Eyebrow raised. No, not suspicious at all. “Pity you have to marry Anastasia, otherwise Vivi would be perfect for you. I wonder if Kostas would consider leaving the church?”
Was a time he couldn’t imagine his brother in black. Now he can’t imagine him the other way.
“Yeah, I don't think so.”
“Let's ask him. Kostas!”
Speak of the –
Well, not the devil.
Anyway, Kostas appears, robes swirling around his feet.
“Look who came down from his mountain,” Max says.
They hug. Lots of back slapping.
Kostas winks at Soula. “The food is good and I like to look at the pretty women.”
Now Soula’s got a cousin on each arm. They walk all the way to the Ferris wheel.
“I was just telling your brother it's a shame he's marrying Anastasia. If either of you were free, you'd be perfect for Vivi.”
“Ah yes, Vivi.” Kostas doesn’t make eye contact. “She’s a good woman. Just ask Max.”
“Kostas – ” Max starts.
Soula looks interested – very interested. “Do tell.”
But Max doesn’t kiss and dump and tell. (And look, Anastasia’s headed their way.) Says, “You should come to the hospital, Kostas. The children would love to hear some Bible stories.”
No time for Kostas to say anything – Anastasia’s back and she’s pissed.
“You left me,” she announces.
“And you found us,” Soula says.
Anastasia ignores her. “I thought you had gone home without me.”
“Max wouldn't do that.” Soula’s smile is brittle. “It's my fault. I wanted to take my handsome cousins for a walk.”
Anastasia notices the priest. “You are him.”
“Holy Mother of our Lord, I am him. At least I think I am.” He looks at Soula. “Am I?”
Soula smiles. “You look like him.”
“Since the lady is never wrong, I must be him.” Kostas takes Anastasia's hand. “And you must be my worthless brother's beautiful fiancée.”
Embarrassing how fast she jerks her hand back.
“Max, your mother would be angry if she knew we were socializing with him.”
Max has never hit a woman, but he wants to slap Anastasia.
“Kostas has a name, Anastasia.”
That woman has no self-control. She turns on the other brother. “Why didn't you honor your parents wishes the way Max did? Your mother deserves better.”
Max grabs her arm, jerks her away from the group. She winces but he doesn’t let up. He pulls her close, gets up in her face. He doesn’t want to be misunderstood.
“He is my brother.” Teeth gritted, face dark. “Show some respect for him and for the church. And for me!”
“What do you care? Your mother – ”
“To the devil with my mother! He is the most important person in the world to me.”
Her lip shakes. “I thought I was the most important person in your life.”
She does this: softens him up with her baby routine. Now it makes him sick. He wants a woman, not a girl.
“You won't be part of my life if you can't accept my brother.”
“Look, Kostas. The lovers are fighting,” Soula calls out. “You're meant to save that until after the wedding.”
Max gives her the not-now look.
“Come on, I'm going to buy souvlaki,” Soula tells the priest. “If my stomach gets much louder they'll have to turn the music up.” She kisses Max on both cheeks, and Anastasia, too. “If I don’t see you both later, I will definitely see you next weekend,” she says.
Max says, “Next weekend?”
“Thea is throwing an engagement party for you and Anastasia – an official one. So you'd better be there.”
“Party?”
“She didn't tell you?” To Anastasia: “You knew – right?”
Anastasia knew; it’s on her face. He’s going to strangle Mama. Slowly. Until her bones snap.
“Nobody did,” Max says.
Soula shrugs. “If Kostas won’t be my date, I'll ask Vivi. She might enjoy a Greek engagement celebration.” But the twinkle in Soula's eyes says she’s playing. She reaches up to hug him, keeps her voice low, for his ears only. “Cousin, if you want to get out you better hurry. Do it quick, like pulling off a sticky plaster.”
Then they’re gone. The crowd eats them whole.
“What did she say?” Anastasia demands.
“Nothing.”
“Don't lie to me. She said something.”
“If you want to know Soula's business, ask her.”
“Okay. I'll go and ask her. I'm going to be your wife, you should be telling me everything. If I don't like what she tells me, I'm leaving.”
“You do that.”
“You better be here if I come back,” she says.
“And if I'm not?”
“Then it’s over.”
“Okay,” he says. “It’s over. We’re done. Goodbye.”
“It’s over when I say it’s over!”
He holds up both hands. “Goodbye, Anastasia. Have a good life.”
She walks away – that’s what she does. Hips swaying, demanding attention from anywhere she can get it. But Max won’t give her another minute.
He’s free but he doesn’t feel it yet.
That’s because he knows:
There’s going to be war before it’s really over.
80
MAX
FOR A WHILE HE’S lost.
That’s okay, he wants to be lost.
Lights flash. From the bumper cars, from the carousel, from everywhere. Children shriek.
Happiness bleeding all over the place.
This is how it’s supposed to be.
He makes a light pole home. Crosses his arms, watches life. Teenagers flirting, vanishing into the long, dark stretch of the promenade. Full of hope and fun. Certain that life and love will always go their way.
Been about a thousand years since he was that young. Tonight, maybe longer.
An engagement party. Fuck. That means wedding plans are underway. Imagine if he’d prolonged this. He’d wake up one morning to a text demanding he be at the church that afternoon.
His phone rings.
Ignore, Ignore, Ignore.
He doesn’t pray much, but he prays now – for salvation, for freedom without bloodshed. He saved himself, now he needs saving from what comes next.
And when he opens his eyes, she’s there.
His salvation.
81
MAX
SHE’S IN YELLOW AND he’s in trouble.
Aphrodite in her sundress, hair spilling over her shoulders; his heart aches just looking at her.
He misses her face, misses her conversation. A life with Vivi would be one of fire and friendship. A good life.
“I wasn’t going to come over,” s
he says. “Then I was, then I wasn’t.”
“Then you did.”
“Apparently.”
“Soula and Kostas wondered if you were here.”
Vivi glances around. “Are they still here?”
“Somewhere. They got hungry.”
Small talk mimicking mortar, filling in the cracks, holding the conversation together long enough for it to step onto solid ground.
“Is Melissa enjoying the festival?”
Vivi shrugs. “I don’t know. She's here somewhere. My mother has a leash on her. The family suggested it might not be a hot idea to let her be so free. She exploded when I told her. Said I was ruining her life. The exact same thing I told my mother when I was her age.”
“What do you think?”
Vivi looks up at the stars. “I think they're full of shit. I want to protect my daughter but not to the point where she can't have any fun with her friends. Apparently she has to pick her friends based on the family's approval, too. No whores, chicken thieves, or people whose families vote for opposing political parties. At this rate all that's left are imaginary friends.” Her gaze drops, finds his. He tries not to look at her mouth. “What do you think?”
He abandons the pole for a nearby bench. A couple of kids were on it – now they’re not. He sits, she sits.
“When I moved to England for what you call college, I was just a kid. At the time I thought I was badass. I loved that nobody knew me there. Nobody cared what I did or who my friends were. I could party as I pleased – no judgment.”
“Okay . . .”
“Greece is different – especially here where the town is small. They thrive on knowing what everyone else is going, and they talk and talk and talk. The bigger the scandal, the more excitement it produces. If there are no big things, they magnify the small things. That sustains them between major dramas. The trick is to not let their talk stop you from living your life. If you want to do something, do it. Just be aware that they will talk about you, and all of them will have advice or tell you how you could have done it better.”
She moves her eyes to the constantly shifting crowd. “So I should just let Melissa do her thing?”
“Within reason, of course. She's still so young. It would be nice if family feuds weren't passed down to the next generation. In the grand scheme of things a chicken thief is not so bad.”
“It's not exactly murder,” she says. “What were you like in college?”
“Horny.”
They laugh together. He holds out his hand. Vivi makes a fist against the yellow.
“Dance with me,” he says.
“Okay, but I have to warn you . . .”
82
VIVI
“. . . I DON’T REALLY DANCE.”
Max leads her to the stage. She takes in the other dancers, the worn, scuffed planks, the instability of it all.
“Is this thing safe?”
Max laughs. “Yeah, it’s safe. They’ve been using the same wood for fifty years.”
He’s joking. He’s joking?
“While I have confidence in your confidence, a lot of things have been going wrong lately. Dragging me up here might end in disaster – just so you know.”
“It’s not much of a drop. Chances are we’ll make it.”
He curls his hand around her hip. Nice, she thinks. Too nice. But she steps closer, embraces the nice. His body runs hotter than hers, but hers runs wetter.
Bodies do their own thing. They don’t wait for permission. So Vivi’s body is getting ready for the possibility of getting what it wants. Doesn’t matter what her head has to say.
“Is your fiancée okay with this? I don’t want her coming after me with a meat cleaver.”
His hand goes north, cups the back of her neck.
“It’s just a dance,” he says.
“Just one dance. This can’t go any further. I won’t be the other woman.”
Yeah right, her body says.
“Anastasia and I are done. It’s over. There’s no engagement. No relationship.”
She stops. Doesn’t know what to think, doesn’t know what to say. What’s appropriate when someone loses something you didn’t want them to have? Aaaand, what’s appropriate when your last thought was purely selfish?
“I’m sorry,” she says. Silence. “Wow, when did that happen?”
“Not long ago.”
To an outsider, it looks like she’s relaxing into him.
That’s a no. She’s tighter, tenser than she’s ever been. They could use her nerves to restring an orchestra. Max’s hands are on the move again. Down, down, to the small of her back. The S curve. The yes, yes, yes curve.
“Wait,” she whispers. “I don’t want to be the headline news in tomorrow’s gossip fest.”
The dancing horde doesn’t give them much room. Max moves back maybe an inch.
“Better?”
“Better,” Vivi says. And worse.
Max closes the distance with his head. His breath is hot against her ear. “I’m going to fuck you so hard and good you’ll never stop craving me.”
Vivi scans the crowd, scans, scans.
The music is loud, yeah, but what if there’s spy equipment about? People this nosy, can’t have them missing any of the juicy stuff.
“I don’t have an addictive personality,” she says.
“I can change that.”
“When did you plan on starting?”
“As soon as we get back to the Jeep.”
“Where is it?”
“Not far.”
She thinks about her mother and Melissa and how she should tell them she’s leaving. But Melissa is safe with her grandmother, and if Eleni sees her with Max there will be questions. Too many questions.
So: “Everyone needs one addiction – right?”
Right.
* * *
World’s oldest teenagers, these two. Back to the Jeep and he’s up her dress and down her dress and into her with his fingers.
He stops long enough to drive, but he keeps one hand on her and in her.
Max makes her crazy for two whole minutes with his small talk. Don’t talk, she thinks. Do. As in, do me.
He talks and talks and she can’t because his fingers aren’t letting her.
The Jeep jerks to a stop outside her cottage and Max changes the subject – to them, to her, to what he’s going to do with her.
To her.
“Just shut up and do it,” she says.
“Trust me, it’s hotter if I tell you first.”
He’s down and out of the Jeep and opening her door. And then he lifts her out and bends her over the hot, damp seat.
“I’m going to keep talking and you’re going to keep listening. Okay?”
Can’t speak. She’s too busy raining all over his fingers.
He stops before she explodes, pulls away. Her world is instantly ten degrees cooler.
“Inside,” he says.
“Inside.”
She can hear the promenade’s music from here. Thump, thump. Her pulse is racing to keep up. She unlocks the front door and Biff bolts out.
The look on his face says he’s real sorry he’s interrupting. He pees. Then it’s back inside to the cool kitchen floor, as though he’s been there all evening and the dog hair scattered on the couch is an illusion.
Max knows which room is hers, so he takes her there.
She feels wild and awake and simultaneously hazy. Too hot to care that there’s never been anyone but John. She should tell him, but not right now. No way does she want to dislodge his fingers from the underwear he’s pulling down, down, down with her dress.
Now she’s naked and he’s not and her shyness kicks in. He grabs hers wrists, stops them from doing a shitty job of covering herself up.
“I want to look at you,” he says.
“I want to see you, too.”
She gets one wrist back so he can unbuckle his belt and shuck his clothes. Talented man, that Max.
> “Can you see how much I want you?”
Like she can miss it.
She kneels in front of him, looks all the way up.
“Show me.”
83
MELISSA
SLIPPING HER GRANDMOTHER IS easy. Melissa waits until she’s too busy socializing to notice her fading away. She knows she shouldn’t be doing this, but whatever. It’s too late now.
Come at eleven, the note said. She found it this morning, wedged in the gap between her shutters and the window.
Didn’t tell Dr Triantafillou, did she?
An hour ago she was fretting, trying to figure a way to meet Thanasi without Mom finding out, but then Mom let her go one way with Grams, while she went another.
An opportunity presented itself so she took it.
She’s wearing her favorite outfit and Mom’s least favorite. One or the other, Mel, she always says about the pink pleated miniskirt and the white top with the spaghetti straps. But Melissa’s clever. She hid the top under a T-shirt, and now she’s stowing that T-shirt on the far side of the tiny church near their house. That way she can find it easily later, before she sneaks back to the promenade with a mouthful of excuses she’s already thought up.
Thanasi is going to go wild when he sees her outfit. At least she hopes so.
Doesn’t she?
But by the time she reaches the meeting place, the buzz is mostly gone. Suddenly, meeting a boy in the dark doesn’t seem like a great idea. She can’t back out now, though, because Olivia’s voice is whistling through the night. “Woo . . . Tyler, is that you?”
She can hear Olivia, but she can’t see her.
“No, I’m a psycho with a chainsaw, and I’m here to eviscerate you,” Melissa calls out.
“Eww, gross,” Olivia says, but she’s laughing. “Don't be such a loser. Come on. Wait. Put this on.”
Makeup changes hands. Melissa sets her font to bold. Then she steps into the olive grove. The town lights give one last flicker before vanishing.
Olivia is there. Vassili, too. And next to them Thanasi is smiling, his teeth almost glowing in the dark, like they’re painted with the same spooky stuff they put on those sticky stars and planets.