Hating Olivia: A Love Story (18 page)

Livy landed a new gig, too, as hostess of a swanky eatery over in West Orange called La Portofino. Her hours were the exact opposite of mine; when I was nodding off to sleep in the evening,

she was reporting for duty. By the time she pulled in at three or four
A.M.,
I was ready to set out with my paper bundles.

Between the two of us we managed to begin another climb out of the black hole of debt. For a while, things were hunky-dory again. In the mornings when I got in after doing the route, I slid into bed beside her, jabbed my strong early-morning hard-on into the palm of her hand, and off we’d go. Afterward we’d sleep like babies, until it was time for lunch.

One morning, however, something different happened. Instead of heading straight for the rack after tossing the heavy Thursday editions, I sat down at Livy’s desk in the living room with my smokes and coffee, picked up a pencil and began to write…. Before realizing it, I’d filled up a page, then two, then three, with the voice of a Soviet gulag survivor, a guy I’d worked side by side with cleaning johns for the transit company some years back, way before Livy. Juxtaposing his harrowing account with a black-comic account of my own adventures at the time, I realized suddenly that I’d begun composing the novel that had been fermenting beneath the surface waters of my brain for a long time—months, maybe years, but whose structure and tone had always eluded me. On the other hand, maybe I’d just been
afraid
of writing the damned thing for some reason I didn’t understand. Or maybe I had simply no defenses left against the notes of my own song. Whatever—in a burst of pure inspiration I saw the finished book in my mind’s eye, understood how it was supposed to be laid down, and though I realized that I’d begun somewhere in the middle of things, I had the feeling that I’d be capable with this newfound certainty of working my way fore and aft to finish the job.

Miraculously, the cement block I’d lived with for so long was history. The hours vanished—I forgot to eat or piss or shit—as I
knocked off page after page with the unbridled joy of a kid with a new toy. At the end of the day I had a dozen pages. But more important, I’d discovered something about myself.

When I told Livy about it that evening over dinner, she was skeptical.

“What makes you think you’ll be able to pull it off? You’ve never been able to do anything before.”

“Shit, I don’t know—but this time I just have the feeling it’s going to be different.”

I couldn’t blame the girl for her lack of faith. I hadn’t done a damned thing since the day we met to justify her belief in me. And that belief went extinct long ago.

The next morning I was at
The Old Cossack
again, as I was the day after that and the day after that. Utter and complete desperation had spawned it, but I saw clearly now that my hopelessness had freed me at last to talk. If nobody ever saw the fruits of my creation, what did it matter? I held the lowest job on earth, that of overgrown delivery boy—I couldn’t really sink much lower, even in my own eyes. The important thing was that I’d found my tongue, even if I was only rapping to the four walls in a room somewhere in the barrens of America.

When I finally paused long enough to catch my breath, I checked out what I’d written.

The next day we boarded a train from Poland to God-knows-where. It wasn’t so awful as the train to Auschwitz, because now at least we had seats, even if they were only long slabs of bare wood. The journey was long, and the diet of weak tea and moldy bread didn’t make it any easier. It was terrible, but food is food. Anything is food when you’re starving. You can even learn to live without an appetite. Besides, I was in such a state that I didn’t know if I was dead or alive. It was a bad dream that never seemed to end.

Traveling across the endless expanse of Russia, I began to realize the enormity of what had happened to me and to the world. Everything was in chaos. The train seemed to have no schedule, and that fit right in. It would stop here and discharge some, arrive there and pick up others, all without rhyme or reason. Out the window from time to time you could see columns of the displaced—refugees, prisoners—marching with their heads down while the soldiers of the Red Army whipped them on. It occurred to me that it was strange that they didn’t ride in the train, too, since we were all bound for the same destination….

In the car, my fellow prisoners were ill with every kind of disease. I hoped that I’d contract one of them, a deadly strain, so that the end would come, and swiftly. A crazy way to live, no? But even that privilege was denied me.

It was like the Tower of Babel in there. Even though I spoke a dozen languages, there were dialects I couldn’t identify. As luck would have it, I knew Russian, which was becoming the common denominator in all conversations, especially when it came to taking orders. Those guards didn’t have an ounce of patience. You understood or you didn’t. And woe to you if you didn’t catch on! No one wanted to be out in the snow, and it was falling without letup. It was then I knew that the priests had lied. Hell wasn’t a fiery place; it was a never-ending blizzard! It got so it was impossible to see anything even an inch out the window. The flakes were as big as babies’ fists and hurtled out of the sky like millions of missiles. We all thought this way—if you didn’t watch your step, you might be out there. We were freezing inside, but still it was better not to complain. Nobody knew where we were going, but we all had our premonitions and forebodings….

I leaned back in my chair and looked out the window at the blue sky. Not half bad, really. Not half bad.

33.

During this rare interlude of peace I was able to pile chapter after chapter of
The Old Cossack
on top of the desk until I reached one hundred pages, then two hundred, then three hundred. Around that time I began to smell pay dirt—damn if I wasn’t actually going to
finish
a
novel.
It might be the worst book ever written in the English language, it might best be consigned immediately to the wastebasket, it might not ever have a single reader aside from its author—but at least it would be
finished.
Maybe that was more than most people could say for themselves. Maybe, too, it counted for something—I wasn’t sure what, exactly—but just maybe it did. And maybe my life was salvageable after all.

In the meantime, I’d taken my eye off Livy, which was something I should have been swift enough by now not to ever do. I hadn’t assigned any meaning whatsoever to the slinky dresses she wore when she left for work, not paid any attention to the later hours she kept (she was going out afterward for a drink or an early breakfast with some of the La Portofino waitresses), not noted any radical changes in behavior. But when she started talking about “Fred,” my ears pricked up.

Fred happened to be the manager of La Portofino. He was just
some guy, she explained, a dark-haired, nondescript fellow who wore glasses and talked with a peculiar accent. I’d like to meet him sometime, I said.

No need to do that. Why would you want to do something like that?

Don’t know. Sometimes I just like to meet people. No harm in that, is there?

After that, Livy grew elusive on the subject of Fred. But now and then details would trickle out. That accent of his was a Boston accent. He had an ex-wife and a handful of kids living somewhere in New England. He had to be forty, forty-five years old if he was a day.

Then this: Fred had done jail time.

For what?

For fraud or embezzlement, something along those lines, she didn’t know for sure. Anyway, what did it matter?

And how did she find all this out?

He’d told her. How else would she find out?

Oh. And when did he get around to dropping that bit of juicy information about being in stir?

After hours. When some of the La Portofino staff happened to be sitting around having a drink.

I see…. And how is it Fred was able to come by a job handling considerable sums of money if he has a felony record?

He has friends in Jersey. They helped him when he got out of the joint. The poor man needed a break.

Ah, friends. You seem to be awfully interested in Fred’s welfare.

She neither confirmed nor denied my accusation. What’s going on between you and Fred? I asked point-blank. No answer to that one, either.

Livy? What the fuck is going on?

The fact that I was writing on a daily basis—I’d returned to composing songs, too, in the afternoon hours—seemed to strain relations between us all over again, just when I was getting into a groove. Whenever Livy would see me hunched over the desk, a spiteful glint would appear in her eyes. “You and that novel,” she’d sniff. It never occurred to me that she might be jealous of my progress. After all, I was still right here with her, wasn’t I? And wasn’t she with me? From the very beginning we were in this thing together—weren’t we?

A day or two later a real humdinger breaks out between us when I’m clearing away the lunch dishes. What brings it on? It’s no longer easy to tell—not that it ever has been. Today it’s a range of little crimes, starting with the way my upper lip hangs over the lower, which she mimics mockingly. And that I never pay any attention to her. That I’ve freeloaded off her long enough. That she needs her freedom, which is stifled by my mere presence. That she can’t go on functioning as my sounding board for ideas on that piece-of-shit book I’m trying to write. And that old standby, that I’m a weakling. Nothing but a weakling.

I let the dirty dishes fall to the table with a crash. “Fuck you, then! I’ve had it! Wanna see how much of a weakling I am? I’m leaving! I’m getting the fuck out! Swallow that!”

“Go! Get the fuck out! See if I give a damn!”

Like rabid dogs we go at each other while I skulk through the apartment grabbing up my meager belongings. The altercation escalates as I make trip after trip with my shit down to my bomb. By now a crowd has begun to gather on the sidewalk to watch.

Just as I slam the trunk shut on my bags and boxes, Livy’s tune abruptly changes.

“I can’t believe that after two years you’re just going to walk away! How dare you! After all I’ve done for you! I took care of you! I stuck with you through thick and thin! You louse! You double-crosser!
You cold-blooded killer!”

The mommies with their prams, the neighbors, the pedestrians out for a walk in the sun, are all being treated to a good eyeful. There’s nothing so fascinating as misery, especially when it’s not your own….

As for me, I’m beyond humiliation, even when Livy cracks me over the head with my dog-eared copy of
The Brothers Karamazov.

“You motherfucking son of a bitch! I HATE YOU!”

“Good-bye, Liv. I hope you’re happy now. I hope your life will be a bed of roses
with Fred”

I jump in behind the wheel, jerk in the key, and turn it over. Just as I’m about to hit the gas, Livy flings herself across the windshield with a banshee wail.

“You can’t go, Max! I can’t live without you! I thought you loved me! Please! DON’T DO THIS TO ME!”

This is insane. She’s ripped open her blouse. Her naked, perfect tits are mashed like plums into the smudged glass.

“Livy, what the
fuck—”

When I roll up the window, she claws at the glass, foams at the mouth. By now the busybodies have drifted closer to suck in every sordid morsel.

“MAX, PLEASE!”

“We can’t keep going through this shit, Liv, I just can’t take any more…. ”

“PLEASE, MAX…. ”

Her hysteria is doing something to me, softening me up. But if I don’t make the break now, at this very moment, I’ll never have the balls to do it.

The car lurches into reverse, throwing Livy off the hood and onto her knees on the asphalt.

“IF YOU LEAVE ME, MAX, ILL KILL MYSELF! I SWEAR TO GOD—ILL KILL MYSELF!”

The throng waits to see what I’m going to do. Will I have mercy on the damsel in distress, or will I prove myself to be the demon from hell she accuses me of being? I extend the middle finger of my right fist toward the newsbags, but it’s not enough to chase them off.

“Liv, come on, don’t do this…. We’re making asses of ourselves…. Get up from there…. Do you want one of these jerks to call the cops?”

“I DON’T CARE! I DON’T CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME NOW!
I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF,
MAX!”

Oh, for fuck’s sake…. I switch off the ignition; what else can I do? Then I swing the door open, get out, and pull Livy to her feet.

“This is crazy, you realize that, don’t you? Completely fucking whacked!”

But it’s not the time for reasoning with Olivia Aphrodite. All right, I tell her, if it means that much to you, I’ll stay, but things have got to change. I put my arms around her, whisper in her ear, and that’s enough to break up the block party….

During the fallout, for some screwy reason, it’s me who ends up apologizing, me who swears that everything will be better if she just gives me one more chance. I know that I have no choice but to go back up to that apartment, I can feel its magnetic force like the undertow of the ocean, I realize that Livy and I are shackled together hand and foot and that whatever unknown power holds sway over our fates, we have to wait on its dictate, and its dictate alone…
.

U
nloading my crap from the car and lugging it back up five flights of stairs is like a journey down the Amazon—it always kills the better part of the day. Nothing is ever resolved or better between Livy and me after those drop-dead drag-outs, but we are condemned to repeat them time and again like junkies powerless to break the habit. When the war wears on into the wee hours, I’m little better than a zombie, bleary-eyed and hungover, as I go about my deliveries the next morning. I toss papers at the wrong houses, miss addresses altogether, even fall asleep at the wheel. When I come to, the car is rammed nose-first into the curb and the kids on their way to school are staring at me as if I just dropped in from outer space. Sometimes I can’t even drag myself out of bed until ten o’clock or later….