Love & Lies: Marisol's Story (14 page)

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m allergic to animals.” She looked warily around the room as if the whole place was giving her hives.

Birdie jumped up. “I’ll lock them in my room,” he said. “Are you Olivia? You look just the way Marisol described you!”

When had I described her to Birdie? I might have said something about her hair, but . . .

I made introductions while Birdie scooted the animals out of the room.

“I guess you don’t need real animals when you’ve got a teacher’s pet,” Birdie said, sweetly.

“Marisol is more than teacher’s pet,” Olivia said, smiling at me. “She’s teacher’s teacher. My best students always are.”

I knew I was blushing and hoped Birdie wouldn’t call attention to it. “I’m sorry the place is such a sty. I wasn’t planning on having guests over,” I said.

“I think it’s charming,” she said.

“It
is
,” Birdie said as he cleared food trash off the cardboard-box coffee table. “A charming sty.” At least Birdie was making a little effort; Damon just sat there staring at Olivia with a goofy smile on his face.

Olivia turned to me. “You
should
live like this when you’re young and still searching for your inspirations. You aren’t caught up in superficialities yet. I envy you. You aren’t waiting for inspiration.
You’re going after it with a club.”

I was? Somehow, living in a small dirty apartment with two television addicts, one of whom was mute, hadn’t seemed all that inspirational to me. But if Olivia wanted to praise me, who was I to stop her? I excused myself to change clothes, wondering what on earth Birdie might say while I was gone. There was no time to waste.

The pants would have to do. In the back of my closet I found a long-sleeved black boat-neck jersey that tended to slip slyly off my shoulders—it was also long enough to cover up the tuna fish stain on my pants, so it would do nicely. There was no snazzy jacket to put over it; I’d just have to be cold if the temperature dropped. I put some mousse on my fingertips and picked at my hair until it stood out in little points—a look not everybody can get away with, but I can. Finally, I hung the amber pendant around my neck. I wasn’t going to look any better than that. At least my shirt didn’t have anything written on the back of it, like
POWER TO THE PUSSY.

As I came back into the living room, Birdie was saying, “Marisol hasn’t had a real girlfriend yet. There was this Kelly person who she went with for about two seconds. But Kelly traded her in for a guy, and Marisol was so—”

“Excuse me!” I interrupted him. “I can tell my own war stories, thank you.”

“I was just making conversation.”

“Well, make it about yourself next time.”

Olivia followed me to the door, and just as we were exiting, she leaned over and stage-whispered, “You look lovely. There’s fire in your eyes that matches the amber.”

Bless her, she knew Birdie would be listening.

*  *  *

Zócalo was packed, but it only took Olivia a few minutes to get us a table. I wasn’t sure if she actually knew the manager or if she could flirt that effortlessly with a complete stranger. Who cared? This incredible woman, whom everyone in the place was staring at, was here with me.

I have to admit, I was starting to wonder why. Not that I don’t have a high opinion of myself—I obviously do. But Olivia was in a class by herself; she could be with anyone she wanted, and yet here she was with me. Maybe everybody felt this way when they were falling in love—I didn’t know—but I kept thinking: How did this happen? I am the luckiest person in the world.

Olivia ordered herself a margarita while I settled for a ginger ale, but when she switched the glasses around on the table, no one noticed. We finished one margarita and she ordered two more while the soda remained barely touched. I didn’t usually drink alcohol, since circumventing the drinking age seemed like too much effort to put in to getting a little beer buzz, but margaritas were worth the trouble. Halfway through the second one my brain was squishy and my tongue was loose.

“You know, the coffee shop where I work might have to close down soon,” I said. “The Mug. They’ll probably tear it down and put in a stupid food court. ‘Food court.’ Who ever
came up with a dumb name like that, anyway? Like a tennis court with pizza slices. Or a basketball court with chicken wings. Or like the court of King George the something or other with . . . with cinnamon buns.” I seemed to have no idea what my mouth was saying.

“Maybe you can get a job at the food court,” Olivia suggested.

“How could I work at the food court? Warmed-over egg rolls! Bad sushi! Besides, it’s practically immoral to close the Mug! T. S. Eliot ate there!”

Olivia smiled. “So they say. Personally, I always thought the place looked a little too greasy for Mr. Eliot’s taste.”

“You think he’d have preferred Starbucks?” I said, a little bit accusingly. “I don’t think so!”

She laughed. “My little populist.”

Her
little populist? I was
hers
now? I grinned, and the fight went right out of me. The waiter brought our enchilada plates, and I dug in happily.

Olivia took tiny, patient bites of her meal, which I noticed only after I’d stuffed several huge forkfuls into my own mouth, severely burning my tongue. I gulped water and tried to pace myself, but I was more or less out of control.

“So, are you almost finished with your novel?” I asked. “Can you tell me that much?”

Her mouth turned down at the corners and she dabbed it with her napkin. “Soon, I think. The ending is difficult. I want to get every word right.”

“I know just what you mean! Sometimes I change a line so many times I can’t remember how it started out. I feel like
there’s an exact way to say what I want to say, but I haven’t found it yet.” We were so much alike, I thought. Maybe we
could
be “us.”

“Yes!” she said. “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between . . .” She paused a minute, and I knew she would come up with a perfect simile. “The difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

And it was funny, too! “Yes! Oh, you nailed it!”

We grinned at each other. She took another sip of her margarita and pushed it across the table to me. I drank the magic potion.

“You may be only eighteen, but you’re a writer already, Marisol,” Olivia said. “You understand the way in which words
can change their meanings right in front of you. The way they pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.”

There was something about the way she was staring at me that made me hold my breath. My insides began to feel like butter that had been
out
of the refrigerator for a long, long while. Butter in a pan, on a hot stove. I dropped my fork as she glided from her chair into the one next to me. She put one hand behind my head and brought my face close to hers. And kissed me. Kissed me hard. And every other thought went out of my head except
Olivia
.

After that it seemed like only a few minutes before we were at her apartment, in her bedroom, me drunkenly pulling at her sweater, her smoothly removing my clothes. Then, as I watched, she slipped off her skirt, pulled the sweater over her head, and pushed me backward onto the bed.

I seemed to be waiting an excruciatingly long time to feel her mouth again. And, in the meantime there was a moaning noise coming from my own mouth and a tremendous feeling of happiness or nervousness or a combination of both making my limbs tremble uncontrollably.

And then her mouth was on me again, on every part of me, and I knew I was dying of love.

T
HE MARGARITAS WERE BEGINNING
to wear off by midnight, when Olivia brought me a tall glass of water.

“Drink this, baby. So you don’t feel hung over tomorrow.” I sat up in her bed and watched as she pulled on a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt—even in those she looked fantastic. Why did there have to be a tomorrow? It certainly couldn’t be an improvement on tonight, in which I was Olivia’s “baby.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Where are
we
going, you mean. I’m taking you home.”

“Why?”

“Because I like to wake up in the morning by myself,” she said, as she slipped into her shoes. “Drink that now, and get dressed.”

I guess my feelings must have been splashed all over my face. Olivia looked up and laughed, gently. “Oh, Marisol, don’t be hurt. It’s just the way I am. Besides, we can’t arrive together at the class in the morning. If the other students got wind of this, they would think I favor you. Which I obviously do.” She came to the bedside and leaned over to kiss me again, except this time the kiss felt a little bit hurried and purposeful.

I drank the water and climbed out of bed to search for my scattered clothing.

“I’ll check my e-mail while you dress, but hurry, please, sweetheart,” she said. “I need to get some sleep tonight.”

Sweetheart. Baby.
That was
me
. I pretended to be drowsy on the ride back to my apartment so I wouldn’t have to say much. This had been the most amazing day and night of my life—my whole body was still quivery and vulnerable with emotion. I would have been ecstatic if only that grain or two of salt hadn’t found its way into my open wound of a heart. After the way Olivia had stroked and petted and
loved
me, how could she want me out of the way so she could go to sleep and wake up by herself? I wanted nothing more than to wake up next to her!

It occurred to me that I was probably not the first student who’d been in love with Olivia Frost. Of course we were all awed by her. Maybe she bought amber pendants by the truckload. And how in the hell were you supposed to know what the other person felt at a time like this? It was hard enough to decipher your own feelings!

But when the car pulled up at my building, Olivia pulled me close, and I could feel her heart beating as quickly as mine. She kissed me again, nipping softly at my lips, then pulled away. “Until tomorrow, love.”

I staggered up the stairway and put myself to bed once again. She’d called me love.
Love, love, love.
What did that mean? There was no chance in hell I was going to sleep a wink.

Which is why Google was invented, right? For insomniac stalkers who need more information immediately. I typed in
“Olivia Frost,” and there they were: 589 entries. None of them, or so it seemed,
my
Olivia Frost.

First a genealogy site came up, then an Olivia Frost who had spoken at the 2004 Tourism in Kansas conference, then Edith Olivia Frost, a renowned rose gardener. No, no, no. And not Olivia Frost the women’s ice hockey star at the University of Delaware, either. Not the wine exporter, the folk singer, or the vice-president of branding and marketing development for something called INSIG. God, who’d have thought there were so many Olivia Frosts in the world? There were several in the UK and one each in Sweden and Japan.

And then, finally, I got a hit: Olivia Frost, assistant editor,
Harvard Review
. Harvard—that had to be her. I clicked through to the site and scanned it until I found her name. I jumped in my seat just looking at it. Three years ago Olivia Frost had been the assistant editor of the magazine, but there was no more information than that. The
Harvard Review
was apparently a literary magazine, run by the university, which published writers whose names I mostly didn’t recognize. However, the names I did recognize, John Updike and Adrienne Rich, made me think it was probably a pretty prestigious publication.

Olivia would have already graduated from Harvard three years ago—they must have hired her for the staff. Because she was brilliant, obviously. What magazine wouldn’t want someone with her brains on its editorial staff? If only there were pictures on the website, I could go to see her whenever I wanted to! I read every bit of information on the website and then spent another hour on the genealogy pages.

At eight o’clock the next morning I was slumped over the
newspaper at the kitchen table, slugging down a bowl of black coffee, Peaches curled in my lap, when Birdie came through the front door with Noodles. As soon as he let her off the leash, she dashed into the kitchen and put her paws on my lap, begging to be allowed to slather my face with slime. I declined the invitation, but Peaches let her get in a few good slurps.

“Down, Noody,” I said. “Down, honey. Your claws need to be clipped.”

“You look like shit,” Birdie said, walking into the kitchen.

“Thank you, Tyra Banks.”

“What time did you get back last night? Did you go to
her
place?”

“I got back late,” I said, avoiding the second question. “You and the wife were already in bed.”

Birdie poured himself a cup of coffee and took a sip. “Lord, could this be any stronger?” He screwed up his face and tossed the liquid into the sink. “You might as well just eat the grounds out of the bag.”

“I needed it strong. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’d never sleep again, if I drank this crap every day.” He gave me a coy look. “So, what happened?”

“We went to Zócalo for dinner.”

“And . . .”

“We drank some margaritas.”

“And . . .”

“We went back to her place.”

Birdie put his hand on his hip. “Don’t make me beg you. I want details.”

I sighed. “Okay. I slept with her. But don’t make a big deal of—”

Birdie’s hug practically knocked my chair over. The animals scattered. “Oh, my God! Not only have you finally vanquished your virginity, but you did it with that totally hot chick!”

I laughed. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Well, let’s celebrate! Let’s eat something really bad for us!”

“I can’t. I have to take a shower and get to class,” I said.

Birdie drew in a long breath. “And you’ll see her again! And she’ll sneak little looks at you and you’ll have this great secret and no one else in the class will know! I’m loving it!”