Hating Olivia: A Love Story (17 page)

Sometimes, after forcing myself to hike around the block for a breath of air, I’ll walk in on her while she’s dancing with her shadow to the strains of some sappy tune. Her favorite is “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” by Streisand and Diamond. God, how I
detest that glob of pure syrup…. I could kill the bitch for doing this to me, because I’ve given her everything, all I have to give, all the fuel that’s in the tank. If I could, I’d lay the world at her feet. But I can’t. Not that it’s not inside me, it’s just that the world won’t allow someone like me to subdue it. It’s not that I don’t have the desire to be a great artist, it’s just that I haven’t found that being inside me yet. When we started, Livy thought I was capable of becoming something, but I haven’t become anything, I’ve gone backward, I’ve deteriorated into an insect. So maybe the solution is to off myself, which is what you do to bugs … and before that, her. Yeah, what I’ll do is, I’ll slice her splendid throat from ear to ear some night when she’s sleeping….

Watching her sway to the cornball music is heartbreaking, in some way that defies words. Maybe I don’t murder her because I’ve already done it, and she’s nothing but a ghost.

This is what we do to each other.

W
hatever arrives in the mail is bad. And it’s always the same thing—countless demands for money.
Why is it they never let one of those monthly statements slip by?
The telephone calls have started up again, too: Your rent money is late…. You’re delinquent on your electricity bill…. An invoice for such and such is still outstanding after repeated notices, and we have to ask you to make good
as soon as possible;
if not, the matter will be turned over to the appropriate agency….

Finally comes the ominous knock on the door…. Livy and I have trained ourselves to be as quiet as mice, to do without shoes, to tiptoe over the floorboards as if they were hot coals. On the other side of the peephole stands a burly man in a rumpled sack of a suit, his tie knotted tight despite the heat and humidity. The
rat’s eyes in his blubbery face are mean, lifeless, devoid of fear, as if his bounty hunter’s trade has drained him of any last residue of human sentiment.

He raises his fist to knock again. I step back and motion Livy to flatten herself against the floor, where I drop down silently and join her.

“This here’s Bob Smith, from the Travis Collection Agency…. You know what I’m here for. And I know you’re in there, so you may as well open up. I got all night to wait.”

Ape-man has a voice to match his mug. Like soldiers in a foxhole under bombardment, Livy and I hold our positions. We stare into each other’s eyes in the gathering darkness. I’m dying for a cigarette but don’t dare risk lighting up. Fifteen minutes pass, a half hour. My heart’s racing like a motherfucker. Once in a while, just to remind us he’s still out there, Mister Smith raps hard on the door. Occasionally he spits out a curse—a gross, filthy epithet that shivers us. After night falls decisively we hear the heavy bang of his footfalls down the five flights to the street. A note slipped beneath the door informs us that we’d better cough up
or else.
…

We’ve won this battle, but he’ll be back again, and we know it. We are fated to lose the war.

The scenario is played out once, maybe twice, even three times a week. Sometimes the goons from the collection agency threaten to break down the door. Unless we make good on the double, our credit is on the verge of being shot forever, they want us to know. Next they’ll have the utilities shut off.

Since most of the debt is in Livy’s name, she decides she has only a single recourse at this point—to declare personal bankruptcy, a subject she’s been boning up on during the long, idle days.

It’s as close as a wet straitjacket the morning in August when we have our appointment at the Caldwell law office of Samuel Richter.
Mister Richter was
so
nice to me on the phone,
Livy tells me more than once—she’s quite taken with his bedside manner. I insist on tagging along since two minds are better than one when it comes to deciphering legalese. She’s reluctant, but I insist. She pours herself into a scarlet cocktail dress that makes her look more than a little like a high-priced streetwalker. The strategy—seducing the fellow—is dubious at best, but I decide not to voice my opinion. Whatever works.

She prances into Richter’s office like the queen of the hive.

“Olivia Tanga,” she announces to the receptionist.

The girl doesn’t look up from her typewriter. “I’ll let him know you’re here.” She pushes the intercom button.

“Miss Tanga to see you.”

“I’m on a long distance call,” answers the unctuous voice at the other end. “Tell her I’ll be with her in a few.”

The cocksucker makes us wait in the anteroom for the better part of an hour. “Miss Tanga,” he says, extending his hand when he finally deigns to make an appearance. “—And this is?”

“Max.”

“Olivia, Max—why don’t you two come on in and have a seat.”

He’s disappointed. It’s obvious he hasn’t bargained on seeing a guy—me—in tow. Guess Livy didn’t tell him about yours truly. We drop into a pair of vinyl-covered chairs that immediately stick to our sweaty bodies.

“Now what did you have in mind again? Something about declaring Chapter Eleven, was it?”

The lawyer’s grayish-pink tongue flicks like a lizard’s over his neatly trimmed mustache. His framed credentials hang on the
wall directly above his head: Haverford College. The University of Pennsylvania School of Law. Very impressive, and he can’t be much older than me. Probably has a lovely piece for a wife, too. No wonder he’s so goddamned cocksure.

Richter adjusts his glasses and looks us over from head to toe. He isn’t very impressed. Not at all. And since I showed up, any thought he might have had in the back of his mind of hosing Livy has to go by the wayside. I know what he’s thinking:
I’ll wait forever for these two losers to pay me for my services. Whatever they want me to do for them ain’t worth the time.

“Let me tell the two of you something right up front,” he barks, rocking back and forth in his swivel chair. “Declaring Chapter Eleven is no laughing matter. You do that and you’re courting a plague of troubles. Like, for instance, your credit is a distant memory for years to come. Like anything and everything you have in your possession is up for grabs. Like you have no financial identity whatsoever. Are you prepared to accept what all that signifies? It means that without a wad of cold, hard cash on hand at all times you won’t be able to buy your next meal.”

Out of the corner of my eye I watch Livy deflate like a tired balloon. All of her dolling up for this meeting has been for naught. “But I thought—”

Richter stares hard, first at me, then at Livy. “Want a piece of free advice, you two?”

This isn’t what we had in mind, but the lawyer is going to pontificate anyway.

“You look like you’re capable of a healthy day’s work, both of you. Why don’t you just go out and hustle up a couple of decent jobs? The classifieds are full of them. You’ll save yourselves a hell of a lot of anguish in the long run, take it from me. The kind of debt you’re showing here"—he taps with his manicured finger on
Livy’s papers—"shouldn’t be overwhelming if you’re willing to apply nose to grindstone.”

By now my sweetheart is boiling. Her nostrils flare and her cheeks are beet-red. I can guess what’s going through her brain—that she’s been had by this crummy shyster after he promised her help over the telephone.

“So you mean you’re not going to
help
me?” Livy demands.

Richter shakes his head no. “Not worth the time I’d put into it.”

“So this is how you sucker girls into your office! YOU SNEAKY SON OF A BITCH!”

She leaps out of her chair and goes flying across Richter’s desk, fingernails raking the air, fangs bared to strike. All of the lawyer’s shit goes airborne—paperweights, pens, files, law books. The smug look on his face suddenly vanishes—he’s so petrified with fear, he just might crap his pants! It’s comical, but I’m not laughing…. While I wouldn’t mind seeing my wildcat rip this jerk-off’s gullet out, there would be consequences. Nasty consequences, such as an assault charge we could ill afford. Like a linebacker I tackle Livy before she makes it to Richter’s body, grab her by the scruff of the neck, drag her spitting and screaming toward the door.

I beam a phony smile over my shoulder as Livy struggles to escape my stranglehold. “Nothing happened here, man…. ”

The attorney’s hair was standing on end. “SHE’S FUCKING CRAZY! GET HER OUT OF HERE BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE!”

“Thanks for your help!”

“THE INVOICE WILL BE IN THE MAIL, DON’T WORRY!”

Livy breaks free and makes a run for the street. At that moment
I don’t know whether to punch Richter out or blow him a kiss.

“Want some better advice, pal?” he says, his sharklike eyes darting back and forth in their sockets.

“Yeah?”

“Run.”

I couldn’t quite figure out how Richter knew, but he was on to us, all right. What would have been hard to explain was that it was tough enough for me to make it out of doors on any given day, let alone take a job. He wouldn’t have gotten it at all.

I
was having trouble sleeping at night. There’s no worse torture in life than not being able to rest in peace. No sooner would I crush out my cigarette and shut my eyes than the nightmares would begin their demented march through my brain. Hideous creatures—half man, half beast—with drooling jowls chased after me, pinning me like a cornered rat into cul-de-sacs…. Mobs of cannibals accosted me in the street, wrestling me to the ground, then tried to eat me alive…. After scaling the facade of a skyscraper for some crazy reason, I’d look straight down and freeze with terror….

In the morning I write this down:

At any moment World War III is going to break out. I’m standing on the windswept, arid apex of a mountain in the Atlas range overlooking the vast Sahara. How the hell did I get here? I can’t say exactly what I’m waiting for, but from the maniac thrashing of my heart I understand dimly that there is about to be a cataclysm of unparalleled proportions. The blood pushes itself like an untamed river through my veins…. those fugitive gusts swirl all around me, snake their way through my cranium…. Suddenly, out of nothing more than a flashing pinprick of light, a hydrogen bomb detonates on the floor of the great sand valley below. Rising up like a gargantuan mushroom, the desert shudders, the planet itself rocks, the blue sky takes on a full panoply of flaring color.

The mushroom unfolds, enveloping the entire universe. Even in my frenzy of panic, I realize with complete lucidity that there’s no chance, no chance whatsoever for me….

I’m jolted awake by dread. Lying in a pool of cold sweat. The world around me is utterly quiet, except for the faint wheeze of Livy’s breathing. I reach for the cigarette pack, light up, drag deep to soothe my quaking nerve endings.

I pinch myself. Have I already crossed over to another dimension without knowing it?

Am I real? Am I sane? Have I ever been sane?

32.

The single job I was able to land was newspaper delivery boy. Every morning at five I reported to a street corner in Verona to pick up my stacks of the
New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Daily News, New York Post,
and
Star-Ledger,
which I then loaded into the car and tossed into the driveways of the suburban homes all around the tree-shaded neighborhoods off Bloomfield Avenue. The truth was, throwing rags was the only job I
could
handle given my extremely fragile state of mind—by the time the sun was fully ascendant, my chores were through for the day and I could retreat to the safety of my cave without having to be seen by or interact with other human beings.

There was nothing like being alone in the world before even the birds awoke, nothing like the cool mornings of late summer, when you could cruise with the windows rolled down and the breeze blowing through your hair. For once in your life, you could say you had it all to yourself, including the streets. My first stop was Dunkin’ Donuts, where I’d grab a tall java and treat myself to a gooey donut or two. A few of the regulars were already on hand—nut-jobs released from the nearby state hospital, a toothless bum who always sat in the last counter seat near the ladies’ restroom hoping for a glimpse inside, an off-duty whore or
two, early-morning delivery guys like myself. Some of us even got onto a first-name basis.

But I never lingered. The objective was to get rid of my cargo, and pronto. If I was through by eight, it was a good day; any later and the complaint calls poured into the boss’s office. Tom Lopato took those calls very seriously, since he had a wife and brats to support. He certainly viewed me with a jaundiced eye—never before had he had an underling who wanted to quit early in the morning so he could spend the rest of the day working on his novel.

If he knew that I wasn’t actually doing any
writing,
he would have considered me certifiable. After a brief apprenticeship served under Vinny Salerno, who was giving up the route to go into the office-cleaning business, I was on my own, wending my way through the lanes of the wealthy, where the professionals, corporate execs, and Wall Street marauders and kingpins were ensconced with their attractive families, their Beemers and Volvos and Audis, and their built-in swimming pools. From where I sat, the world seemed full of riches that I neither coveted nor could conceive of.
Where does all that money come from?
That question often bugged me as I gazed on the stately Tudors and Victorians and Georgians that bloomed more commonly than flowers, so commonly in fact that the outsider was in danger of taking them for granted. More than once, in a cracked, magical fantasy of putting an end to my misery, I plotted a knockover of the finest of them, slashing the throats of their owners, and splitting town with my pockets fat. Why didn’t I act on it? With my luck, I’d never have made it as far as the state line….