Hating Olivia: A Love Story (7 page)

“Didn’t you already wear that thing to work?” I asked as I watched her tossing a silky violet pullover into its packaging.

“It’s not right on me,” she snapped. As if I was a complete dolt not to have noticed.

“I don’t know—I thought it looked pretty damned sexy myself.”

On that point she ignored me. “Are you coming with me or not?”

From the no-nonsense set of her jaw, I could see that my beauty was in an unusually determined frame of mind that Saturday morning. The mall parking lot was swarming with vehicles cruising for empty spots. Mall-crawling is the great suburban diversion, and you can’t blame people—what else is there to do in the wasteland? Finally we landed something along the outer rim, which meant we’d have to lug our load damned near a quarter mile to the entrance.

The queue at Macy’s was long; all bored housewives and tired career girls taking their sweet old time on the weekend. Every fucking transaction took forever. When we finally reached the register, Livy’s resolve had given way to a brittle, unexplained disdain for the surroundings.

The twenty-something model wannabe with the nameplate identifying her as Giselle seemed bored and weary.

“I’d like a refund for this dress,” Livy declared, pulling a diaphanous gown out of a bag.

With the tip of her tongue Giselle discreetly shifted the wad of chewing gum from the inside of her right cheek to her left.

“What’s the problem?”

Giselle’s voice was slightly nasal, annoying. Livy flipped the garment upside down.

“It’s torn. Right here. You can see.”

She pointed to a tear in the inseam at least three inches long.

“Was it this way when you bought it?”

Livy snorted. “Would I bring it back if it
wasn’t?”

Giselle looked from Livy’s face to mine. Some uniquely feminine misgiving had appeared in her moss-green eyes. She pushed back a bang of pomaded hair and blew a stream of air through thin, lavender-coated lips.

“This hasn’t been
worn,
has it?” Livy glared.

“Because store policy states that if a garment has been worn even once—”

“I don’t give a damn about store policy! I demand to see the manager!” Livy huffed.

“Look, there’s really no need to—”

“I demand to see the manager now!
This minute!
Can’t you understand English?”

Giselle glanced at me again. She was really quite attractive in her languid, indifferent, skinny fashion, a look that had never particularly appealed to me. Her expression was filled with a new skepticism, even fear of a confrontation. Maybe, too, she hoped that I would step in and intervene, slipping her off the hook of this embarrassing situation. After all, I was a man, wasn’t I?

Moans and groans in the line behind us. “Make up your minds already!” someone muttered. I turned around. The queue had grown to a dozen customers. There were rolling eyes and nasty frowns. “Oh, for God’s sake! This is the last time I ever come here on Saturday!” bitched another. “And only one cashier!” a third chimed in.

Giselle hoisted a telephone receiver from beneath the counter.

“Seven-one-one to women’s wear. Seven-one-one to women’s wear, please.” The cashier was broadcasting our problem in code all over the store via the loudspeaker.

More griping behind us. The lousiest place in the civilized world to kick up a stink is in a long customer line in a ladies’ wear department. Giselle leaned on her elbow and waited. Livy glowered, refusing to give an inch. When I tried to touch her, she flinched. Some of the customers behind us fell out of line and
scattered. One middle-aged patron dumped her garments—pants suit and hosiery—into a bin brimming with brassieres on special sale and stormed off with a curse.

Seven-one-one appeared. She was a carbon copy of Giselle but forty years older. Her glasses sat primly on the tip of her nose and were attached to her neck by a black cord. She stared at Livy and me over the tortoiseshell frames.

“What seems to be the problem here?”

“This dress was flawed and I didn’t notice until I got it home,” fumed Livy.

Seven-one-one handled the dress with an adroitness born of years of experience.

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Let me just have a look—”

“There’s no need to look, lady,” Livy shot back. “I just want my money back!”

Amazing. I never realized clothes could cause such a vile disturbance.

Seven-one-one ignored her. Evidently she’d heard it all before. “The tags have been cut…. ”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! I cut them because I thought the dress was in one fucking piece!”

Seven-one-one froze, then pointed. “This garment is stained. It’s obviously been worn. This store would never sell a worn garment!”

Giselle’s eyeballs twitched toward me again. Livy slammed the counter with her palm. “Are you accusing me of
lying?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, miss. I’m only saying that it appears this dress has been worn, and our policy is not to refund or exchange worn garments under any circumstance.”

Livy’s cheeks flushed a deeper shade of crimson.

“I demand to see your superior!”

“Liv, come on,” I said, grabbing her arm. “Why don’t we just forget it—”

“Forget
it! And let them get away with this! No way! This is highway robbery! I want satisfaction, and I’ll get it!”

It was bizarre. I’d never seen Livy like this before. I couldn’t understand what had gotten into her. Worse, I hadn’t noticed that tear in the dress during the modeling session, and if my memory served me well, I’d seen her walk out of the apartment wearing it one night for her shift at the Turtle.

Seven-one-one was immovable. A faint smile had begun to pull at Giselle’s cheap purple lips. I felt like smashing her with a straight right, then crawling underneath one of the clothing racks.

“I’m sorry, Miss Tanga,” said the manager.

“Oh, give it up already!” called a voice in the line behind us.

“Let’s beat it, Liv,” I tried again. “Who gives a fuck about their dress? I’ll buy you a new one.”

She turned on me like a cornered animal.
“Aren’t you going to defend me?”

“But Liv, I—”

“MAX!”

Motherfucker.
I didn’t give a damn for these salesgirls, either, but on the other hand, Livy
was
trying to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge—even I could see that. But the last thing I wanted to admit to myself was that Livy had put me in a bind.

I began to nudge her away from the counter. “Why don’t we just chalk it up to experience…. ”

“Because I don’t
want
to chalk it up to experience! I want my goddamn money back! Or I’ll never shop in this trash heap again!”

“Liv, it’s not worth it! Let’s just take your dress and get the hell out of here…. ”

Giselle and Seven-one-one watched triumphantly as I swung Livy, spitting and smoldering, away from the counter.

“Can you believe some people!” sniffed the biddy next in line. “Choke on it, bitch,” I told her.

“Oh, go to hell, you too!” Livy barked as a parting shot.

I don’t know how I managed to force her out of that place, but I did. Like a tornado she whirled through the mall and parking lot, dropping merchandise in her wake, and by the time I caught up with her she was already in the car.

I got in and drove. For a long time she refused to look at me or talk. No way I dared bring up her attempt to swindle the department store. Didn’t I owe her the benefit of the doubt? Besides, even if she’d tried to take Macy’s for a ride, who was I to judge? Mrs. London’s phone calls to me had gone unanswered, hadn’t they? What made me any better than Livy?

“You’re supposed to be on my side, no matter what, Max,” she hissed as we neared Roseland Avenue.

“I
am
on your side, Livy…. ”

“Then why didn’t you stand up for me—why?”

“Well, I—”

“If you love somebody, you’re supposed to believe in them!” “I do, baby, you have to see that I do—”

“But you didn’t say a fucking word! You just stood there and let them humiliate me, Max!”

“I didn’t! I mean, I didn’t
mean
to—”

“Do you love me, Max?”

“Of course! God, yes! You know I do!”

“Then you have to promise you’re with me forever, no matter what! You have to
promise!”
“I’m with you!” “Promise?”

“Promise!”
“Oh, Max…. ”

It was a plaintive wail, like the cry of a wounded bird, and it came from a place much darker and deeper and sadder than the urge to fraud or kleptomania.

“Yes, Liv?”

She didn’t finish what she was about to say. I pulled her over to me, hard. I grabbed her hand and guided it to my cock. Her fingers coiled like snakes around my stick. I slid my hand up her skirt and inside the band of her bikini panties.

She was wet in there. Very, very wet.

13.

The Macy’s debacle was the only black cloud that passed over our idyll. It was a momentary aberration, nothing more. But as with any storm, there was fallout. Sometimes, lying naked on the bedroom floor, Livy would snare me in a debate of extravagant speculations.

“If I were asleep on the twentieth floor of a burning building, would you rush in and save me, even if you’d probably die in the process?”

“Jesus, Livy, that’s insane.”

“Would you, Max? I have to know!”

I’d tell her “Of course I would,” just to soothe her peculiar anxieties.

“Are you sure? Do you swear?” “I swear!”

“Now … what if you came upon me as I was being raped by a gang of six thugs, and you didn’t have a weapon, and it probably meant your getting seriously injured trying to help me—what would you do then?”

“Whew, sweetheart, you sure can dream them up…. ”

“I have to know, Max!”

“I’d do whatever it took to free you.”

“Do you swear, Max?”

“Yes, I swear.”

“That’s the right answer.”

“Well, I’m glad…. Why are we going through all this, anyway?”

“Because I have to
know.
It means everything to me.” Pause.

“Why didn’t you defend me that day in Macy’s, Max?”

“Oh, shit, Liv. How many times have I explained it to you? That was completely different! You weren’t under attack. I was just trying to save you the trouble of fighting a battle you obviously weren’t going to win.”

“I could have won it if I stayed there and battled it out.”

“Whatever. But if you saw it my way, you’d understand that I was actually defending you, Liv…. ”

You can’t really ever win an argument with a woman, but most of the time I could at least half convince Olivia Aphrodite of my intentions. Other times it wasn’t so easy, and the row would drag on into the wee hours, until I’d find myself crawling off to bed well after Carson and Tom Snyder put the lid on another day of disappointment for America, wondering about the point of it all….

Meanwhile, as the balmy days coasted by in a slow train of circus balloons, I had the eerie sensation of tumbling headlong into a sort of cotton-headed limbo. I’d wake up to the lazy symphony of the birds and the tranquil spectacle of the sun’s golden rays pouring through the window, and I had to question where in the world I was headed…. Livy, too. Because I knew we couldn’t go on like this—completely without direction—forever. Since I
had little to do during the days but read my books and newspapers and magazines, it couldn’t escape me that people younger than myself had already achieved worldwide recognition for their achievements. That the illustrious careers of some were already long over by the time they reached my age. That such towering figures as Mozart and Alexander the Great had already brought the world—or at least some portion of it—to its knees in homage. What had I done, by contrast? Nothing. Not the crappiest little thing. Dreams and plans and resolutions added up to less than zero. Worse, I had no idea
what
to do, or even what I was
capable
of doing—if I was capable of doing anything at all. Where in the world had I come by the idea that I possessed some sort of illustrious future as an artist in the first place—me, a product of the ethnic ghetto, the offspring of blue-collar drones who’d had to struggle for their daily bread from the cradle straight on through to the grave? What gall! What stupid audacity! What ludicrous castles built in the air! The fact was that I
had
no discernible talent. Through all the years of school and shit jobs, no one had ever given me the slightest encouragement of my abilities, let alone genius, except for a handful of club owners who needed cheap background music for their patrons and bosses who took on Neanderthals to stuff their trucks….

Then I’d look at Livy, asleep there beside me, and I’d slowly drag my fingers over her perfect tits to the heavy black down between her legs, and all my anguish seemed completely ridiculous.

After all, what were a few million words more or less on this earth? Why fret over posterity when the sun, as I’d read somewhere, is certain to run out of hydrogen and commence dying in one billion, one hundred million years? On that day, who was going to remember the purveyors of measly words?

In life, you can’t ask for the moon and the planets. It’s definitely
best to learn to be content with the small things, if you can. Only a few lucky ones—the Rockefellers and Gettys and Mellons—hold winning lottery tickets.

No, none of it was worth taking too seriously. Hadn’t I realized the deep uselessness of existence a long time ago? Most definitely I had, when I was just a little kid and first took notice of what was going on all around me. I decided to live with that essential truth in mind.

Until the next attachment Livy decided to jettison—her job at the Purple Turtle.

That night she came home in a high snit.
What happened?
I wanted to know.

“I’m not going into it! I just decided I’ve had enough. I don’t want to spend my life waiting tables for jerks and fools. Anything wrong with that?”

“Not a thing. I’m the last one to blame you for wanting your freedom. So what are we going to do now?”