Seven Days of Friday (Women of Greece Book 1)

S
even Days
of Friday opens with Days of the Week underwear and closes with a forty-year-old secret that refuses to stay submerged.

T
hirty-four-year
-old Vivi Tyler is living her nightmare: gay husband, self-harming teenager, melodramatic mother. They’re picking apart her sanity, one stitch at a time. She’s crawling along rock bottom when the arrival of a mysterious package opens a new door to a new country. A desperate Vivi dives headfirst into the quicksand that is Greece—her parents’ birthplace.

B
ut it’s
a paradise far from perfect, and instead of the new beginning she covets, Vivi discovers trouble is determined to keep her in its pocket. Soon she’s fighting for her daughter’s life in a Greek hospital, clashing with her Greek relatives, and cobbling together an inadequate cage around her heart, lest she fall for an unavailable man.

B
efore this story ends
, somebody will be dead. And if some people are to be believed, this particular death is a good thing. A blessing, of sorts . . . .

C
opyright © 2014 Alex A. King

A
ll rights reserved
.

T
his is a work of fiction
. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

O
ne and Only Sunday
(Women of Greece, #2)

Paint: A Short Love Story

Lambs (as Alex King)

F
or B
& C, the two great loves of my life.

W
hen the garbage disposal
choked
, eleven-year-old Vivi Pappas began planning her imminent funeral. A big Greek affair, with all the requisite wailing and coffin-hugging.

“Elias, fix the garbage disposal!” her mother yelled into the basement.

“I don’t have the tools for that.”

“You have tools for everything, but you do not have tools for that?”

Back and forth, back and forth, went her parents.

Closed casket, Vivi thought. Definitely a closed casket. She’d be in chunks by the time Mom was done with her.

T
he plumber showed
up the next afternoon. Late. Dusty footprints across her mother’s glowing linoleum. Vivi sat at the kitchen table waiting to die, and her mother hovered at the plumber’s side, waiting for him to screw up.

He didn’t screw up. Unlike Vivi’s father, he had the right tools for the job. And it wasn’t a big job. Within minutes (long, long hours to Vivi, who was mentally crafting her obituary) he had made a countertop collage of the asphyxiated disposal and its stalwart pieces. He looked down at the mess, scratched his shoulder.

“I ain’t ever seen nobody put underwear in the garbage disposal before.” Then: “Heh. I guess someone around here really hates Fridays.”

Eleni Pappas turned. She looked at Vivi – looked at Vivi
hard
.

“You better run,” she said. “Because I am going to kill you.”

T
here was
a reason for the Friday underwear. Not a good reason (in Vivi’s estimation), but still a reason.

Vivi is short for Paraskevi.

Paraskevi is Greek for Friday.

The name was a hand-me-down from her father’s mother, because that’s how Greeks name their kids. Paternal grandparents first, then Mom’s parents get a shot. No new name unless they run out of grandparents before they run out of kids.

So Eleni Pappas (a.k.a. Vivi’s mother and part-time sadist) bought her daughter underwear with her name stamped on the front. Seven days of Friday. Easier to see which underwear was whose, she claimed. Clever, no?

No.

Not clever, at all.

Riding a wave of fury and humiliation, Vivi fed all seven Fridays into the garbage disposal, banishing each one from her underwear drawer forever. The disposal didn’t mind – at first. They’re not known for being discerning, and usually only stop for silverware. But it gagged while gulping down last pair, and the water began to rise.

Vivi scooped out the water with a tablespoon.

Why not put the Fridays in the garbage, like anyone else who wants to throw perfectly good stuff away?

Good question.

For that there is a good answer.

Eleni Pappas goes through their trash – all their trash – looking for secrets.

She misses nothing, that woman.

Almost.

T
he rake is
in
Vivi’s hand. She wants to slam it into John’s face.

“Vivi,” John repeats. “I'm leaving you.”

“Excuse me?” A small headshake. “Sorry, I was just fantasizing about your death.”

“My death?”

“Yes, your death.”

“You’re a strange woman, Vivi,” he says. “I said I'm leaving you.”

“I heard you the first time. Leaving me what?”

“Leaving you. Leaving the house. I'm moving out. Vivi, are you listening?”

“Oh. I thought that’s what you meant, but I wanted to be sure.” Vivi tilts her head. Her dark ponytail lurches right. “Forever?”

“Yes, forever,” John says.

“Okay. Don't forget to pack clean underwear.”

“I'm not going to change my mind. This is what I need to do.”

“If you say so.”

“I'm going tonight – now. I'll be back during the week to pick up my things.”

“Okay. Do you think you could drop dead before then?”

He shakes his head as though she’s the asshole standing on their manicured lawn. “Vivi, come on.”

His delivery sucks. He needs to work on that.

“Jesus, Vivi. Say something.”

“I don't know what you want me to say, John. Some warning might have been nice.”

The rake falls. Vivi crouches, scoops a crunchy handful of desiccated leaves into a gaping black bag, before asking the only thing that really matters when a relationship ends:

“Is there someone else?”

The sound John makes reminds her of their neighbor’s old hairball-afflicted Tomcat.

“No. Shit. No, there’s no one else.”

Shifty eyes. Pretty, sky blue – but shifty.

Shitty poker player, John. No bluffing gene. Anytime she asks what he wants for his birthday, Christmas, anniversary, and he says, “Nothing, Honey,” his eyes go epileptic. Now he gives her that look: the disapproving, nostril flaring look of a man who thinks he’s standing a rung higher on the social ladder.

He’s on a ladder, all right, except they’re called shoe lifts. In bare feet he’s five-ten, but he likes the boost.

Vivi says, “Your face . . .”

“What about it?”

“It’s not doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

She waves a hand over her own face. “Moving, like you’re a normal human being.”

It’s true, John’s face doesn’t move much. Thank you, Botox.

Business expense, he had insisted. It wouldn't do for the fastest-selling real estate agent in town to slap an airbrushed glamour shot on his business card. “They want the real deal, an honest face,” he said in his own defense, seconds before the doctor stabbed his forehead.

Speaking of honest:

Capped teeth. John has them in Arctic white. Sometimes, at night, Vivi thinks about tapping them with her fingernails, see if she can play Chopsticks in his mouth. She can’t play the piano, but what else is she going to do when she can’t sleep?

Anyway, Vivi knows there’s someone else.

She knew something was up when John went in for his cosmetic overhaul, but she didn’t think, at the time, that it was his dick.

That was the first (conveniently ignored) clue.

Clue number two (also conveniently ignored): What looked (and, okay, smelled) like spots of semen on the tie their daughter bought him for Father's Day, year before last. Since their sex life had devolved into a biannual affair, Vivi assumed John (like her) had been doing a hasty DIY in a private place.

Hopefully not in a park near an elementary school.

And now look at him, guilt splashed all over his sculpted, artificially preserved face.

“Let's be reasonable about this for Melissa's sake,” John says, in a tense voice, like he’s trying not to shit his pants.

“Let's be reasonable,” she mimics, in a way she knows will drive him the bad kind of crazy. “You don't want to be in this marriage, fine. You might have said something years ago. That would have been much more helpful.”

“I didn't know then, did I, that it wasn't going to work.”

Okay, that’s fair, but Vivi doesn’t want to hear about fair right now. With the last of summer’s little jagged corpses in the bag, she knots the flaps and stalks to the curb. John follows.

She says, “Okay. You can fuck off and die now.”

Harsh words, but her tone is pure sugar.

Blatantly ignoring her serving suggestion: “What about Melissa?”

Her fingers fumble with the thick gardening gloves. “What about Melissa?”

Melissa, their fifteen-year-old, spends most of her time with her nose in a book. Probably she won't even notice her father is gone. She carries her books to every family meal, hiding herself between the covers, while she ignores them both.

On nights he’s home, John drones on and on about sales figures and escrow over pot roast, or chicken, or some French thing he read about that Vivi has to cook. His eyes glaze over whenever she interrupts and offers some small detail about her day. As the years slip by, Vivi has been doing it less and less. Why bore someone to death when silence is easier on the fraying ego?

“We can talk about it later, I guess,” he says.

Silence.

“I have to go now.”

More silence.

“I’m sorry, Vivi. I really am. Say something?”

She ignores him until he wafts away.

It’s cold, Vivi knows, plotting her husband’s sudden (yet simultaneously slow, painful, disfiguring) death, but it’s been sixteen years in the making. Tonight’s revelation is nothing more than canned icing on box cake.

Her morbid fantasy plays out like a grisly scene from one of those old B movies they show near Halloween. Picture Vivi Tyler holding the rake, while John Tyler (handsome in that all-American golden boy way) bleeds. Mouth slack with astonishment. Arms waving. Eyes –

Yeah, the steel tines prevent his eyes from doing much at all.

And near his end, she lifts her foot, puts it right in his middle and pushes.

“Get off my damn rake,” fantasy Vivi says.

The (Bloody) End.

On the outside, Vivi is drama-lite. Which is why there’s simmering rage instead of homicide. Which is also why she doesn’t flip him off as he glides away in his status-mobile.

She and her rake go back into the garage. John doesn’t do yard work. No time, no inclination. Vivi picked up his slack years ago. She’s the reason he doesn’t need a scythe to get to his car.

All done in the same hour, her marriage and the yard work. Only one of those feels good and satisfying.

Now she stomps back inside, where all her loneliness resides.

Beautiful house, the Tyler house. Gleaming planks, fashionable furniture, no soul.

John’s choice. Cold and expensive. Vivi has never loved it the way John does. Her hands shake as she curls her fingers around the kitchen counter’s granite rim. White-knuckled, she wills her knees to stay steady, to never fold. A tsunami of grief slams against her heart, leaving her gasping.

John is gone.

Nothing can bring him back; it was in his eyes.

Fucking asshole.

N
ot even five minutes later
:

The phone nags. It only nags when her mother calls. Anyone else and it just plain rings.

Snot travels down her nose into a tissue. A second tissue catches tears. She needs a quick fix-it before she snatches up the phone.

“I can't talk right now, Mom.” Sounds like her face met Mike Tyson.

“What, you do not say hello to your mother?” Screech, screech, squawk – in thickly accented English. “That is no way to answer a phone. You have a cold? Your nose sounds stuffy.”

For the record, Vivi didn’t major in disappointing her mother (not a single college in this country offers those classes), but it always feels that way. She rubs her forehead, waits for the genie to pop out and offer wishes.

“Now’s not a good time,” she says.

“Always too busy to spend five minutes talking. Maybe I have something important to say, but you would never know it because you do not have time to listen.”

Eyes closed, Vivi conks her head on the polished counter. “So then talk already!”

“No, no, you are in a bad mood. I should call back when you are not menstruating . . .”

This – this is what she has to live with.

“ . . . But then why spend good money on phone calls when I already have you here? Dinner. Saturday. You are coming.” Not a request. “And put some rubbing alcohol on your chest. It will fix your cold.”

“I – ”

Click.

An Eleni Pappas click is louder than any other. That woman ends a call like she means it.

Vivi should have told her mom about John, but she figures it’s much more fun to play the emotional masochist, torture herself by dragging it out until she’s in a deranged neurotic frenzy.

Shouldn’t take long.

F
ood processor
. Now that would be a cool story to tell at John’s funeral.

Poor John, he slipped in the kitchen and fell into the fancy processor he just had to have. All his limbs gone. The mortician tried, but . . . Closed casket, no choice. Poor, poor, tragic John.

Vivi’s all foggy on the inside.

She pulls out a chair and embraces the cold. Over the cherry dining room table, with its mirror shine, she weeps. Then she wipes the tears away with a sleeve, because John would have a fit if he saw his precious table all damp.

Look at this house, filled with things John loves. But she isn’t one of them.

These shaking hands, they’re all about John, but not the crying. It’s been years since she shed a tear over him. A broken marriage is awful, so is the idea of Melissa being shuffled between two homes. And she’s an idiot, because who doesn’t move when they see a derailing train smashing its way closer?

(Vivi Tyler, that’s who.)

So her stupidity is a semi-decent excuse for this river she’s sourcing.

But the banks are flooding, going pre-1970s Nile, because of her mother.

Her inevitable gloating is going to drive Vivi insane. Eleni will throw an
I Told You So
party, with a special
You Should Have Listened to Me
and Married a Good Greek Boy cake
.

And Vivi loves cake.