But he insisted on seeing her and she said she “might” be able to meet him for a drink at a taverna near the beach the next afternoon.
Of course she showed. The following night they went out to dinner. At the end of the night he gave her a peck on the cheek goodnight and asked her when he might have the pleasure of seeing her again. She didn’t sleep with him until the fourth date – okay, the third, but who’s counting? Still, it had to be some kind of record.
And then one night, not long after, he uttered the lure, the never-fail, hook-’em-every-time words and, even more damning, in Greek: “Sagapoh.” I love you.
In any language and especially in that British accent, she was signed, sealed and kebabed. It was beautiful, lyrical, her beau had finally arrived. He was even talking about taking her to England for a weekend to meet his Mum and Dad. Yeah, she was seriously getting into the idea of marrying Sebastian, settling down, becoming British. Her grandfather, the Brit-hating bastard, would probably turn in his grave, but who gave a shite? She’d be like Madonna. She was already refining her accent and when they got married maybe she’d adopt an African child or, hell, steal one.
She felt like her life was finally starting to get on track. She was still young, just thirty-three. Maybe twenty or thirty years from now she’d be happily married to Sebastian, their kids off at University, and she’d laugh at some of the “mistakes” she’d made early on in her life.
One tiny little glitch hardly worth mentioning, but one night, they were dining at a posh restaurant overlooking the seas when the waiter returned with Seb’s Visa card, saying it had been refused. But it was no biggie. As he put it, “Nothing to get your knickers in a twist about, love.”
Angela paid in cash, tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed a glint in Seb’s eyes, no, surely a trick of the Greek light. And okay, so she seemed to be picking up the tab more often, and Seb, the handsome rogue, holding his cig exactly like she’d seen in all those movies, saying, “Darling, slight hitch with the old trust fund, they want to increase my allowance but I damn well refused, I’m writing an opus to make Lawrence Durrell want to weep, so I say damn their impertinence, I’ll pay my own way or go down like Khartoum, blazing but bloody defiant.”
The fuck was he talking about? She didn’t care, she loved it because of the accent. And she loved he was an artist, a real writer, not like her old boyfriends, Dillon with his poetry and Slide with the fucking screenplay he kept talking about. So what if she never actually saw Sebastian, um, write? Once she wondered, Wouldn’t, like, a laptop have helped? But she refused to give in to those negative waves. She figured he was literary, kept it all in his head. This was love, the real thing; so what if there were a few inconsistencies? As her mick exes used to say, “Damn the begrudgers.”
Then one evening she was at her villa, showering, when she heard a noise in the other room. She figured it was Sebastian, as she’d given him a key to her place.
“Come in, Sebs, darling, I’m feeling quite horny at the moment and a bit of a screw in the shower would be lovely indeed.”
Yeah, the Madonna accent was coming along well.
She parted the curtain, smiling, expecting to see Sebs, and then gasped when she saw Georgios, her landlord. His squat body, the clumps of hair from out of his dirty wife-beater, that scowling look – he was like some kind of deranged animal. And, fookin A, was that a meat cleaver in his hand?
He growled in Greek, spraying saliva, ending with, “you dirty cunt,” and came after her. She managed to duck to her left just in time, the cleaver slicing through the curtain. Naked and wet, she darted out of the bathroom, screaming, but he tackled her from behind. He had the cleaver to her throat.
She closed her eyes, waiting to die and to be with her mother and father again – she just hoped to God there wouldn’t be spoons and bodhrans in heaven.
But he wasn’t going to kill her, not yet anyway. She should’ve known.
When he was through, his sweat was dripping, no pouring, off his body, onto the back of her neck, and he leaned closer to her, said, “You be my wife, okay? You drive taxi, okay?”
Then she heard, “By God, love, are you all right?”
Sebastian, the useless bastard. He sees her lying on the floor underneath a mad Greek rapist and he asks if she’s all right? She was tempted to say, Yes, I’m doing wonderful, darling. Why don’t you put the kettle on and come join us?
But she noticed that Georgios was momentarily distracted and she seized the opportunity and went for the cleaver. The bastard wouldn’t let go of it, so she had to bite on his ear, as hard as she could, tasting the sweat and blood. Meanwhile, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Sebastian was just standing there with a curious expression, like he was watching a fookin’ snooker match. These Brits, unless they were shooting boyos they were feckin’ useless.
Angela didn’t stop biting on the Greek’s ear. Finally, after she’d kneed him in the balls a couple of times, the cleaver clanged to the floor and she grabbed it. She started hacking into his chest, slashing and swiping. It seemed like all of the past few years were welling up, fueled by the smell of this fooking animal. And she let him have it, all right. Never fook with a woman who has the Greek-Irish gene.
She was kneeling over her victim, gasping, her hands covered in blood. Then she raised the cleaver again and Sebastian went, “Darling, it’s not necessary, the bugger’s already done for.”
Through her pain and rage, the Brit accent gave her a moment of joy. Then she heard the word bugger. By fuck, bugger.
Georgios, somehow still alive, was coming round, muttering, “Mallakas, menu…?”
She’d give him mallakas, thinking of all the ferocity she’d learned from the micks in her bedraggled life, all the shite from one Max Fisher who’d once said, “Gonna put the meat to you, bitch.”
She’d let the bitch part slide, but meat? All three inches of his top sirloin?
She raised the cleaver and Sebastian, in that beautiful accent pleaded, “Darling… don’t.”
She grabbed Georgios by his hair, gave him one ferocious slash across the neck, nearly decapitating the bastard, then said, “Word to the wise, darling, don’t ever fuck with me.”
Then she and Sebastian were on the floor, going at it like animals. The power surge, as she saw the majestic Brit underneath her, her using him, and saw – was it fear? – in his eyes. Probably had a little to do with the cleaver still grasped in her right hand. What you might term a power ride.
He whimpered, “Darling, this is all quite nice, but is the, um, weapon necessary?”
And she began to laugh, laugh and come, swung the cleaver across the room and it landed with a pleasing thump against the wall.
Later, when she came round, Sebastian had cleaned up, the Brits, a tidy race. Georgios was neatly wrapped in a roll of plastic sheeting and the blood splatter had been washed clean. She wrapped a flokati rug around her and Sebastian, looking like death warmed up, gave her a cup of the thick sweet Greek coffee, and said, “Precious, we might be, um, in a spot of, um, bother.”
She nearly started laughing again, said, “Bother. Trust me, lover, bother is my forte.”
She drank the coffee, handed him the cup, demanded, not asked, “More.” Then ordered, “Put some of that Metaxi in it, I need to focus.”
Making it very clear who had the balls in this relationship.
By dawn’s early light, they’d used Sebastian’s tiny scooter and driven precariously to the cliff on the other side of the island. All the time, Sebastian expecting the cops to stop them at any moment, and them carrying a literal dead weight between them, on a bicycle built for two, as that awful song goes. Angela behind, a new Angela to him, urging, “Get a fooking move on, people will be moving soon.”
Lord above, she scared the daylights out of him. He’d thought he’d scored himself a rich American dumb blonde and instead had the Greek version of Fatal Attraction, with a cleaver no less. Oh lordy, how had he gotten it so wrong?
She was screaming, “What kind of bike is this for a man? You ever hear of a Harley? Like, a man’s machinery?”
He was too scared to answer, the demented creature had probably still got the cleaver somewhere. She had seemed awfully attached to it and if he lived to be a hundred, scratch that, if he got to see noon, he’d never forget the way she’d hacked the poor Greek bastard to ribbons. And yes, he hadn’t been the most useful person in her predicament, seeing the randy chap, um, having his way with her. Gosh, it had been almost exciting. And to say she’d overreacted, I mean really. Didn’t she know those Med types were hot blooded? It wasn’t like the gell (pronounced thus) hadn’t been down the M1 before. And then, oh lordy, the cleaver. She was like some bloody Irish
