My Funny Valentina (6 page)

She
was also a natural comedian – like so many comics using laughter to dull the pain caused by an unhappy home life.  Valentina remembered cracking jokes to break up her friends and classmates from a young age.  It was better to
make
them laugh then have them laugh
at
you. She’d learnt that lesson the first time her mother had come to pick her up at school – hung-over, still in bathroom slippers, cigarette dangling from her lips. 
Keep them laughing, then they can’t hurt you.
It had become her mantra. 

And
Stash had laughed once too. 

Hard to believe looki
ng up at his icy countenance now, Valentina acknowledged. She’d
loved
hearing him laugh though, delighted at its rich masculine sound.  Even dragging him to a renowned Chicago comedy club soon after they’d met.  Valentina had secured them a table near the front with a waiter friend of hers then excused herself.  Telling Stash she had to run to the bathroom for a moment.  ‘I’ll be right back, don’t you go anywhere.’ 

There’d been
stunned surprise in his dark eyes when he’d glanced up from his drink and spotted her on stage for her turn doing stand-up at the open mike for the club’s Amateur Night.  The shock had deepened in his eyes as she’d started to recite her jokes, many of them at his expense! 

‘
Yes, I’m dating the hunk of Greek gorgeousness you see at the front table,’ she’d said pointing him out to raucous cheers and whistles from the appreciative women in the audience.  She’d watched with a wide smile spreading on her face as Stash had sank lower, then a little lower still, down in his chair. ‘And do you know the worst part about dating a Greek
God
, ladies?  All the time I have to spend
polishing
his pedestal!’ She’d delivered the zinging punch line to the audience’s shrieks of amusement. 

A
flush of embarrassment had risen on Stash’s sculpted cheekbones that had grown steadily darker as she’d reeled off one zinger after another at his expense.  Until after a bawdy monologue speculating how his male appendage held supernatural powers surpassing even those wielded by Zeus’s powerful thunderbolt, he’d been unable to hold back any longer.  Pumping his fist in the air, he’d cheered her on, roaring with laughter louder than anyone else’s in the club.

He’d
bustled her out of the club when she’d come off stage to loud applause, driven at warp speed to her gloomy garden level apartment in Skokie where they’d made love for the first time.  Valentina had admitted to him first, in a small, somewhat scared voice that she was still a virgin. 
I was a wild child in every aspect of my childhood – except for that one...
 

He’d
seemed a little shell shocked at first by her admission, but looking back she knew Stash had been the
perfect
first lover.  What every girl should have.  So tender at first, taking things nice and slow.   Showing her things about her body, she’d never known.  Letting her learn his body also as though teaching her Braille – the taut feel of his muscles clenching, shuddering under her fingers...the hoarsening of his voice as he muttered encouragement...listening to the changing tenor of his groans...

T
hen his tight control had unraveled – and it had all gotten even better! 

A
wild, unbridled coming together with Stash’s mouth and tongue creating powerful magic between her thighs before he’d slid on protection with shaky hands, then driven his hard, pulsating length into her, bringing her to a shivering orgasm while she’d still been gasping, reeling and quivering from their first shared release. 

I
n the sultry afterglow, Stash had nuzzled her neck with that magical, talented mouth of his whispering, ‘I think I’ve gone and fallen for you, my funny Valentina.’ 

Valentina had
moved her things into his luxurious Gold Coast apartment in a soaring building off ultra-exclusive Michigan Avenue a few wonderful weeks late, the lake the city was famous for, shimmering in shifting blues and grays outside the walls of plate glass windows.  Things had just gotten better and better between them until the day almost a year later, when they’d been lying in bed – done in by another bout of their rollicking lovemaking, Val splayed out on top of him with a muscled chest serving as her bulked-up pillow.

‘
Valentina,’ Stash had whispered into the darkness, a hand gliding through the tangled coppery waves of her hair.

‘
Hmmm,’ she’d murmured dreamily, still afloat in the lingering sweet percussions of pleasure, her cheek brushing across the whorls of dark hair grazing his chest.

‘
I want you to know,’ lifting her face to his with a thumb he’d placed beneath her chin, ‘that you...’ he’d allowed a dramatic pause at her expectant look, ‘
complete
me...’

They’d
stared at each other for a moment, simultaneously bursting into a fit of loud laughter after his utterance of the clichéd movie line.  Not to be outdone, Valentina had countered with her best Julia Roberts. ‘But I’m just a girl, lying here on a boy,’ she’d blinked down at him with a cloying gaze, making her mouth wide and mobile as possible, ‘asking him to...
schtup
... her!’

S
norting a laugh, Stash had volleyed, ‘Valentina, silly, Valentina – don’t you know love means never having to say you’re horny?’ 

Valentina
had given a few hoots of
high-lar-ious
hilarity.  Loving their game, loving the witty, brilliant,
beautiful
man she played it with.   She’d come roaring back, Scarlett O’Hara style. ‘As God is my witness, I’ll never be horny again. 
Never!’
She’d declared shaking her fist in the air with all the overwrought passion of a starving southern belle.

Stash had broken out a passable Bogart next, tilting back an imaginary fedora on his head of jet curls, ‘look here,
schweethart
, I’m not good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans while I’m lying here with a raging hard-on.’

That
one had sent Valentina nearly over the top, clutching at her stomach with hysterical laughter.  But she’d rallied for the win.  Channeling her comedic heroine and fellow Brooklyn home girl,
La Streisand
, she’d brushed an imaginary lock of blond hair from his forehead and lifting the bed sheets she’d glanced down, chirping, ‘Your penis is ...
lovely,
Hubbell
.
’

Stash had
had to gasp for breath after his gusty guffaws, but then he’d grown quiet, seemed pensive.  Finally, he’d spoken again, his voice sounding endearingly solemn. ‘The first time I saw you I fell for you – and I knew I wanted to always provide a soft place for you to fall as well.  To be your strength when you feel weak, your warm refuge whenever the world turns cold.  To have the sound of your laughter in my ears every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to sleep.’

Valentina had lifted her head
from his chest to stare down at him.  Had given a nervous, unsure laugh at what she seen on his face.  ‘Boy, that...’ her deep swallow had been audible, ‘that one was ‘Pure D’ cornball! But I don’t recognize it...who...who said that?’ she’d whispered.

‘
Stash Karas, circa right now,’ Stash had answered with a smile in his voice, sliding a plain gold band on her shaking finger.  ‘Will you marry me, Valentina Vincetti?’

‘
Oh, Stash! 
Stash
,’ she’d begun to cry, her face mashed against his shoulder.

‘
Hey there!’ he’d stroked the back of her head, ‘hey – is that a yes?’

Val had lifted her head, happy tears
trickling down her cheeks, ‘does a bear shit in the woods?’

Stash had laughed for long minutes before
pulling her forehead down to his, murmuring against her lips, ‘My funny Valentina, I love you
.
I can’t imagine my life without you!’

I
n between bouts of tender lovemaking, she’d confided to him that night that she didn’t want a big wedding. 
It would just highlight all the people in my life who are no longer there
, she’d explained.

‘Whatever you want is fine with me, Valentina.  I’ve already broken with tradition anyway.  I should have given you that ring in front of my family according to Greek custom.  But I couldn’t wait to put it on your finger.  I want you as my wife,
agapi mou
– I don’t care how we do it, I just want it done as soon as possible,’ Stash had so sweetly agreed with her wishes between kisses. 

C
ompletely on a spontaneous whim, with no advance notice, they’d gone to the courthouse over one of Stash’s rushed lunch hours a few weeks after his proposal.  He’d taken a rare break from his firm – still in its first proving years back then, and whisked her from snowy February Chicago to Bora Bora with its absurdly beautiful scenery for a two-week hotter than hot honeymoon – not to mention the great warm weather! Enjoying a joyous carefree holiday, the overwhelming majority of it spent in their hotel bed, before they’d returned to start their lives together in the house Stash had secretly had built soon after they’d met. 

I knew you were the one right away, Valentina.  I had
this house designed in my head for years just waiting for the right woman to come along to share it with me.
 

T
he house of his dreams and hers.  Where the laughter had died, and happily ever after had crumbled to dust in the space of just two painfully short years.

~~~

‘
I will, of course, be taking Zoey home with me tonight – until we can make the proper arrangements on custody.’

‘
Home with you?’  Valentina repeated absently, her thoughts still trapped in the past. 

‘
Yes,’ Stash bit out, ‘to my apartment.  You can come too, or I can drop you off at your hotel if you’ve booked one.  I can’t believe you would raise any objections, Valentina, not when I have
three
months’ time I have to try to make up for with her!’ His tone was a raw, pulsing indictment.

‘
Fine,’ she agreed in a faint voice, ‘you can take her home but I…I would like to come too.’

Stash gave a terse nod.
  ‘Evelyn’s ordered a crib and everything else needed for a baby to be delivered to my apartment this afternoon.  By the time, we get back to the office she should also have had an appropriate car seat installed to fit my SUV.  I believe it is time for me to officially retire the Porsche – now that I have a child.’

I have a child
.

Valentina heard the possessive
tone in his voice and it caused a chilled trembling of trepidation to run through her.  Also reminding her, she was clad still in only the skimpy cover up over the miniscule bikini.  ‘What…’ her fingers fussed in nervous agitation with the belt of the wrap, ‘what apartment?  You mean – you’re not living at the house anymore?’

‘
I sold the house six months ago.  I’m back at my old apartment that I had been renting out.’

He’d
sold the house. 

The house he had so
lovingly designed. 
Her
house.  The house she’d adored because everything in it showed his love and thoughtfulness. Showed the attention he’d paid to her every word.  Her every wish and desire.  Extra tall sinks she’d once said she longed for with her five-ten frame so she didn’t have to bend down so low.  And
two
sinks in the master bathroom – since he knew how much she loved to chat with him and watch him shave each morning, the stubbly black bristles whirling down the drain in a circle leaving his chiseled jaw line rasp-free when she leaned over from brushing her teeth and trailed her fingers caressingly over it.

Smooth as
a baby’s bottom!
She would playfully tease sending his lips curving upwards.

A
round skylight Stash had installed right over their bed in the spacious master suite because she’d talked about how she’d never seen the stars at night growing up in the concrete jungle of Brooklyn.  All that was gone now.  Someone else living her life in her house.  Her dreams sold off to the highest bidder. 

Well of
course he’d sold it, dummy!
Valentina chided herself, daring the tears to well again.  What else had she expected?  That he’d keep it as some sort of shrine – a brick and mortar Taj Mahal symbolizing their dead marriage?  He wouldn’t have wanted to stay in that ten thousand lonely square feet all by himself, reason stated.  Although, while they’d lived there together it had rarely been empty.

Maybe if we’d just had time all to ourselves, things would have turned out differently for us.

Valentina
’s chin wobbled as she tried to rein in the inevitable ‘what-might-have-beens’.