My Funny Valentina (3 page)

‘
Was there something you forgot to tell me?’

A
chilling softness was detectable in his voice and Lars, for one, appeared confused by the question.  He pushed his glasses up to the top of his shiny dome, looking over at Stash with a puzzled expression, ‘Er…what’s that you said now, bud?’

‘
I said I need to speak to Valentina –
alone!
’  Stash slashed out, sparing him just a flick of a look before cannoning another icy black glare her way that made her blood run cold.

‘
Mama mia
, the strong commanding type I love,’ Mario’s hot pant of breath in her ear sent one of her shoulder-grazing peacock feather earrings swaying.  He stared over at Stash enrapt. ‘How did you get so lucky,
cara?
’

Valentina swallowed
. ‘He’s my hus – my
ex
-husband…’ 

One
black brow on the man across the room arched high upon overhearing her use of the descriptive pronoun ‘ex’.   Valentina knew by that almost imperceptible bodily twitch she was not lucky. 

N
ot lucky at all. 

Lars
climbed down off his ladder to bravely approach the cause of their interrupted shoot with camera still clutched in his hand, though the clenching and unclenching of his bony fingers around the long lens revealed more than a hint of his trepidation.  ‘Now look, buddy, I don’t know what you’re doing here,’ Lars began in a placating tone, ‘or what your beef is exactly, but I’m not gonna leave just because you say to –’

‘
My name is Anastasio Karas – not ‘Buddy’,’ the terse correction was clipped out in a voice overly taut with tension providing an unnecessary warning to Val that the man who uttered it was also liable to snap loose and wreak havoc at any moment. 

‘
Well whatever your name is, you can’t just waltz in here to the studio...’

‘
Do you
own
this studio?’ Stash looked down a classic strong nose first seen in regal profile in fading frescos painted on walls of ancient Greek ruins, at the lanky man with thick black-framed glasses perched atop his fashionably shaved head, who came barely to his shoulder.  Determining the most efficient way to rid himself of this nuisance, as though Lars were an annoying insect to be brushed away, Valentina easily interpreted the look, or failing that, squashed flat beneath the soles of one of his pricey handmade leather shoes.

‘
No, I don’t
own
it.  I work here on a contract basis for Picture Perfect studios,’ Lars replied with bewilderment apparent in his voice, ‘they’re out of New York but I do most of the photo shoots here for them in Chicago.  Now what difference does it make anyway if I own –’

Stash ignored him
, pulling his phone from his jacket and pounding one button.  ‘Evelyn,’ his terse tone a moment later was directed into the cell phone he held to his ear, ‘find out who owns Picture Perfect studios in New York and tell them I want to buy it. 
Immediately
.’  He disconnected the call and slid the phone back into his front jacket pocket before his stabbing dark gaze pierced through Lars again.  ‘It appears I am now your boss.  Your first assignment under my tenure is to get the hell out of here.  And take them with you,’ he jerked his head towards Kandi and Mario.

Lars
’s eyes bugged slightly.  He absently patting around on his head for his glasses, lowering them down to his nose to peer at Stash closer. 
Finally
seeming to understand what he was dealing with here. Valentina shook her head, eyes flickering shut.  She could have told him just as well and saved him some time.  She knew better than most what a determined Stash Karas was capable of. 

‘Kandi, Mario – let’s go and give them some privacy.  Sorry, doll,’ Lars said with a sheepish look at Valentina passing by her on his way out, ‘I can’t afford to lose my job in this economy.’  He paused at the studio door, forever earning Valentina’s friendship by issuing a veiled threat to Stash anyone with halfway decent eyesight knew he could never hope to back up, ‘but I’ll be right outside this door –  you call me, Val, if you need any help and I’ll come running!’ 

‘
She will not require assistance.  I have never harmed a woman in my life and I do not intend to start now.’  Stash uttered the quiet reassurance as the door closed behind Lars and a tiptoeing Kandi who sidled out with him, but Val felt only a modicum of relief.  

True –
you would never lift a finger towards me, but you sure as hell won the heavyweight title pulverizing my defenseless heart.

The
thought reverberated in her head as she watched Mario – in a suspiciously tight in front Speedo – sneaking one last lingering look at the awesome entirety of Stash.  ‘
Buona fortuna
,
cara
,’ he offered her good luck in Italian before bounding out the door in a last flash of black-and-white zebra striping. 

Spurred
into action by their departure, and feeling uncomfortably over exposed all at once in the scanty outfit she wore, Valentina hurried over to a menacing prop straight from a horror movie set.  She snatched the matching animal- print wrap to the bikini off the snout of the giant ape with jaws frozen in a roaring growl, rented for the day for the jungle-themed shots Lars desired.  Thinking to herself how she’d prefer to take on ten of the real thing over her estranged husband, whose palpable anger seemed to be multiplying like an amoeba throughout every part of his formidable frame, puffing him up in a manner that was much more fright inducing.

Valentina
turned away to tie the wrap closed with trembling fingers, conceding it was silly to be so modest really, when the man she attempted to conceal herself from had seen her unclothed from every angle possible.  Some of those angles had proven to take
quite
some contortion on both their parts, but had definitely been well worth their effort she recalled with a shiver/blush combo. Still stalling for time, she glanced nervously around the cavernous studio full of all manner of outlandish props for upcoming photo shoots. 

W
hat I really need now,
is some type of magic carpet to ride out on…or pixie dust to make myself invisible.
  

N
either was available, so she had no choice but to finally turn back to face full on, the wrath of Stash. ‘Well, as always, you’ve gotten just what you wanted, Stash,’ her voice held steady, chin pointing skyward in a false show of bravado. ‘We’re all alone.’

The
sensuous bottom lip on that celebrated mouth curled in derision.  ‘No, I do not
always
get what I want,’ Stash grimly corrected.  ‘For instance, what I would have
wanted
is to have known I was going to become a father.’ 

Stash took a step
forward causing Valentina to take a step back. ‘What I would have
wanted
is to have known I had a child born unto this world.’ He took another encroaching step, his voice roughening as she took two more back. ‘I would have
wanted
to have been there at the moment of her arrival – to have caught her in my hands.  Witnessed her first days,
seen
her first smile,
heard
her first laugh.’

Stash
now stood toe to toe with her as she’d been backed with no further escape possible, right into the studio wall.  He glared down assuming a menacing pose strikingly similar to that of the glass-eyed King Kong looming in the background.

‘
And what I want most now, Valentina, is for you to
tell
me my own child’s
name!
’

~
3~

VALENTINA’S HEART CLENCHED
in an ache of empathy at his wrenching demand.  Oh, God – she
hadn’t
told Evelyn her name, had she?  She’d been so frantic to leave Stash’s office and make the shoot on time, she’d just cried out a promise as the elevator doors slid close in front of her.

I
have to make a photo shoot on Canal by eight, but I will come back for her – and I’ll talk to Stash – just as soon as I can!

‘
It’s… Zoey,’ she whispered.

‘
Zoey...
Zoey
,’ Stash repeated the name, appeared to be testing it out.  A tender smile lifted the chiseled lips for a touching moment before one edge twisted in wry acknowledgement, ‘you couldn’t get any further away down the alphabet than that, I suppose.’

A memory
zinged through Valentina of meeting his family for the first time in the living room of his parents’ small cramped house in a heavily Greek populated neighborhood of Chicago.  ‘Valentina, I want you to meet
Agathe
...
Aphrodite
...
Agnes
...
Althea
...
Athina
and these are the twins –
Alexis
and
Alecia
,’ Stash had introduced them one by one, holding back an amused smile, dark eyes twinkling while her own had rounded into saucers after meeting all of his black-haired sisters. 

‘
The dizzying overuse of the letter A must make all the other letters following in the alphabet rabidly jealous,’ she’d muttered low to his amusement at the elbow-to-elbow dinner table later, chock full of his non-stop chattering siblings. 

Seven sisters
. 

And
Anastasio – the only boy.  Nicknamed ‘Stash’ by a younger sister who’d been unable to wrap her tongue around his twisty-twervy name as a toddler.  A golden-skinned Greek deity come to life. Revered by his family. Other-worldly handsome, smart, successful, and ambitious. 

And
he’s all mine!

Valentina had often
marveled at the fact with a giddy mixture of delight and astonishment in those halcyon first days of their marriage after she and Stash had tied the knot at the downtown courthouse over a hurried lunch break he’d taken from work.  His furious mother had given Valentina the stink-eye for months, having longed for a famously celebrated in lore, Big, Fat, most importantly,
Greek,
wedding for her only son.  A boisterous daylong party with family, friends and neighbors gathering to help bless their union.  

Valentina had
bravely withstood her antipathy; as their wedding on a chilled February day a few weeks before the Valentine’s rush had been absolutely
‘perfect’
in her eyes.  Just the two of them alone in a judge’s chamber.  ‘Stash and I didn’t need anyone else there, we just needed each other,’ she’d smugly asserted at the time. 

Th
at sentiment had taken firm root after she’d gone one Sunday with Stash to a traditional Greek wedding of one of his many cousins held at an ornate Greek Orthodox Church near the lake.  Val had come away stuffed with Greek delicacies, tipsy from the ouzo, and more than a little overwhelmed by it all.  There’d been loud serenading of the wedding couple and dancing with food and libations flowing – before the ceremony even began!  A variety of puzzling rituals and traditions had been scrupulously adhered to; the bride and groom both wearing elaborate crowns with a ribbon linking them together, sipping wine as they’d circled the altar three times, the rings blessed over their heads then slid on their right hands instead of left, as was Greek custom.

T
he wedding reception had been even more loud and rowdy; the hall crowded to the rafters with Stash’s numerous relatives.  All greeting him with effusive hugs and kisses, speaking fluently the language that had truly been, all Greek to her.  The dance floor had been constantly packed, guests whirling by in circles, crisp green bills of high denominations pinned all over the finery of the new husband and wife until they’d resembled two walking Christmas trees.  And towering stacks of plates shattering noisily one-by-one on to the stone floor as a group of grey-haired men, joined by Stash and his father, performing a flawless, intricate-stepped dance, handkerchiefs held between them, legs kicking high in the air in syncopated rhythm.

But
why do they break the plates, Stash?

Val had asked
the question later, clinging close to Stash in the crowd of celebrants feeling no pain, shouts of
Opa!
ringing out all around them with the potent, milky Greek libation flowing freely, more plates flying left and right, leaving her thoroughly bewildered by the seemingly blasé destruction of perfectly fine crockery.

‘
It signifies how wonderful, how joyous it is to be alive
,
’ a gorgeously ruffled Stash with sweat dampening the curls on his forehead, pleated shirt unbuttoned at the collar, had leaned close to murmur the husky explanation in her ear so she’d hear him over the lively traditional Greek music.  ‘The breaking of the plates is a testament to the abundant gratitude we feel that we are all here together, that we are all family, that we are all –
Greek!
  We break the plates, Valentina, as a way to say –
there will always be another day to mend whatever has been broken.
’