Olivia (13 page)

Olivia’s eyes widened in surprise. “No!”

“It’s called
The Happening
. My sister saw it last night and said it’s really good. Weird, but good.”

“Huh.” She and Mark had been seeing each other exclusively for three weeks, and he hadn’t bothered to mention it. Naughty boy.

“They’re showing it at the theater in the mall,” she said as she rang up Olivia’s purchase. “I think the next showing starts at eight.”

Olivia searched for a clock. “What time is it now?”

“Seven-forty-five.”

Olivia threw her money on the counter, grabbed her wine and made a beeline for her car. She flew across town as fast as she could—running a few red lights in the process—and shoved her dinner and her wine into the backpack she kept buried in the backseat for just such emergencies.

With ticket stub in hand, she made her way to the center of the theater as the lights were going down. She found a seat between a fat man sucking on an Icee and a young couple with their heads resting together, and settled in. She waited until the upcoming movie previews were over before unscrewing her wine and pulling out her dinner.

If Mark was beautiful on her thirty-two-inch television, he was nothing less than sheer perfection on the big screen. He was so real she could almost reach out and touch him. She lost herself in his voice, drowned in his eyes, and lusted after his body. She was so wrapped up in the wine and the food and Mark’s delectably-hot bod she wasn’t paying much attention to the movie itself—until the people fell off the roof.

“What the…?”

She watched the rest of the movie wide-eyed and terrified. Her wine forgotten, her food a distant memory, every ounce of her being was consumed by the horror on the big screen. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t scream or run away. She was totally and completely, one-hundred-percent glued to her seat in fright. She saw things no human being should ever be forced to see—and she had to
pay
to witness such atrocities. 

The couple next to her started making out, but she didn’t notice. The fat man farted and gassed out half of the theater, but she couldn’t smell it. A baby cried in the back row, but she didn’t hear it. All she knew was dead bodies everywhere, and her man running for his life.

“Run, baby! Run!” she whispered in vain. There was nothing she could do to save him. Mark Walberg was a goner.

Desperate to pluck him out of the horror of his nightmare and into the safety of her arms, she slid forward in her seat and reached for him. As she did, the bottle of wine slipped off her lap. It exploded when it hit the concrete floor, shattering into a million pieces. The people next to her screamed from the noise and she screamed from their screaming and once she started screaming she couldn’t stop.

People started yelling at her to shut up. They threw popcorn and candy and other not-so-blunt objects at her, and her screams turned into cries. Her throat and her lungs started to burn as she scrambled to collect her bag and her wits, but she was a basket-case, disoriented in the dark. If not for the two ushers who half-dragged, half-carried her out of the theater by her arms and legs, she would probably still be sitting there today, crying for her baby, popcorn and Jujubes stuck in her hair.

The ushers not only threw her out of the theater, they threw her out of the mall completely, and into a thunderstorm that had blown in while she was lost in the nightmare world directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The lightning flashed, the thunder cracked, and the rain came down in sheets as Olivia cowered on a bench outside the entrance to the mall.

Her car was parked what felt like miles away, and she knew for certain there was something in it that would bring about her untimely death. She didn’t dare run for it. There was something in the air and something in the rain and something crawling on her skin. She tried to brush it off, but she couldn’t. She jumped from the bench, slapping wildly at her arms and face, working herself up into full-blown panic mode, when a voice from behind sent her blood into a deep, paralyzing freeze.

“Hello, Olivia.”

Olivia slowly turned and came face-to-face with Mitch. She opened her mouth to scream, but she was all screamed out.

“How are you?” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at her feet.

“Go-o-od?” she stuttered out on her last, little breath of terror.

Mitch nodded and continued looking at her feet.

“How are you?” she asked cautiously while staring wide-eyed at him.

“I’m good,” he said with another little nod.

Time stretched and neither one of them said anything. As Olivia’s emotions bounced around, she opened and closed her mouth a few times attempting to continue the conversation, but she had nothing to say to him. Or maybe there was nothing she wanted to say to him. She wasn’t sure which. The pain he had inflicted was gone but not healed, and certainly not forgotten, but the love she felt for him was still real, still fresh, and still oh-so-confusing. She wanted to tell him off, to give him hell, to reduce him to rubble with her verbal assault, but really, what was the point? He knew what he did. No point in beating a dead horse.

Mitch continued to stand there, staring at her feet without saying a word. Olivia unfroze with a sigh of distain and started for the parking lot. 

“Olivia! Wait!” Mitch rushed into the pouring rain after her.

She stopped, and he stopped. They looked at each other as the rain came down upon them. She was soaked in an instant with her hair matted to her face and her dress clinging to her body. Her high heels filled with rain and her mascara ran down her cheeks in black rivers.

“
What
, Mitch?” she demanded. “What could you possibly want to say to me that I don’t already know?”

“I love you, Olivia,” he said, his face pained as he blinked rain-filled eyelashes. “I just want you to know that I love you.”

“I know you do. And I love you, too. But what good does it do either of us?”

He had no answer for her. She left him standing there in the rain and walked to her car without looking back.

*  *  *

“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but George lied to you. There’s no way he’s gay,” Izzie said with a sad shake of her head. She leaned over the bathroom counter, into the mirror, and plucked at a few stray eyebrow hairs with a pair of neon-purple tweezers that matched her neon-pink eyelash curler. “I have proof if you want to see it.”

Olivia pulled the shower curtain closed and sank further into the tub. Izzie’s announcement did nothing to improve her crappy mood. But, really, why would it? How could it possibly improve your mood to find out for certain that one of your dearest friends in the world lied to you about being gay in order to keep you at arm’s length when you were so obviously in love with them? Especially when everything else in your life was crappy?

Well, not everything.

Mandatory-Saturdays were over. That was good. And they ended in time for Juliette’s week-long Fourth of July celebrations, which Izzie was presently primping for. If she didn’t hurry up they wouldn’t get a good spot for their lawn chairs. They’d be stuck watching the fireworks from behind a tree or around a grain bin.

Everyone knew you had to get your chair on the lawn of Riverwalk Park before ten in the morning three days before the actual night of the fireworks if you wanted the best view. And the best view was exactly three-hundred paces north-northwest of the teeter-totter with the chairs placed at an exact forty-seven degree angle off a line between the little oak near the dock and the second cottonwood from the men’s cinderblock outhouse. It was one of the few things Eugene had ever taught Olivia that actually stuck, and it was a secret he guarded with his life. Why he had even told Olivia was a mystery to her.

The only other person who knew about the perfect spot was Alma Yetter, Juliette’s only known prostitute. She had also learned it from Eugene. Olivia was not exactly sure what compromising position Alma had put Eugene in to garner that particular bit of information, but Olivia was certain it wasn’t anything sexual. Eugene was the most asexual person in the world. He’s what God imagined when he came up with the idea of priests. Eugene would have made a good one, if not for the fact that he was an atheist. Eugene was so asexual it was a miracle Olivia was even alive. She was probably the nasty side-effect of the only ejaculation Eugene had ever experienced—and probably the reason he never felt the desire to experience another one.

Alma only did her prostitute gig at night. During the day, she was the drive-thru teller at Juliette Federal Credit Union. She went on her morning break at exactly nine-forty-five, which meant if Izzie didn’t hurry her ass up, Alma’s lawn chair would be in Eugene’s spot at exactly nine-fifty-two. Which would mean Eugene would skip the fireworks entirely because he refused to watch them from any other location. And if there was one thing in the world that Eugene loved more than his three C’s, it was fireworks. The only time Olivia ever got to see Eugene smile was when his face was lit by the chemical explosions in the sky, and she’d be damned if she would miss out on that rarity because of Alma’s insensitivity or Izzie’s vanity.

“What’s your proof?” Olivia pulled the tub stopper closed with her toes and then opened it again. Then closed it and opened it.

“Hang on, I’ll go get it.”

“No!” Olivia ripped the curtain open. “Hurry your ass up and let’s get going before Alma parks her fat ass in Eugene’s spot.”

“Ok, ok.” Izzie sighed and looked her face over one more time. She smoothed her hair with her hands. “Do I look ok?”

“Perfect,” Olivia assured her and hopped out of the tub.

“Are you sure?”

Olivia smoothed her hands over Izzie’s hair, retracing the exact path Izzie’s hands had just taken, and rested her forehead against Izzie’s. “Perfect.”

They stayed like that, staring at each other in silence, while Izzie built up her nerve. Finally, she picked up the little stick on the counter. She stared at it for a few, short seconds, and then closed her eyes, her lips pursed together as she worked through her disappointment. Every month it was getting harder and harder for Izzie to see the negative results on the EPT test, but she had yet to cry. Crying would mean there was no hope.

Words meant shit in situations like this, but Olivia tried anyway. “Next month for sure.”

Izzie nodded.

“Maybe you should listen to the doctor and do what he says,” Olivia said. She took the stick out of Izzie’s hand and tossed it into the trash.

“The guy got his license out of a Cracker Jack box,” Izzie dismissed with a disgusted wave of her hand. She swept out of the bathroom and continued through the house, headed toward the garage, and Olivia had to rush to keep up.

“What he says kinda makes sense though, if you think about it.”

“How can
not
having sex make a baby? That’s just stupid.”

“He didn’t say not to have sex. He said not to have so much sex,” Olivia said. “You’re over-working John’s sperm factory.”

“Whatever.”

Olivia rolled her eyes then helped Izzie load the folding lawn chairs into the trunk of Izzie’s car. Over the course of the past few months, Izzie and John had gone from having sex twice a day to having sex pretty much twenty-four-hours a day. They were always getting busy, to the point where it had turned into a chore. Get the mail, wash the dishes, have sex. Do the laundry, make the beds, have sex. Mow the lawn, etc, etc. They had sex in the morning, sex in the afternoon, and sex at night. Olivia didn’t say anything, but it’s no wonder they weren’t successful at baby-making. Who would want to be conceived under those circumstances?

No one, that’s who.

“So do you want to see my proof or not?” Izzie asked when they finally backed out of the driveway and headed for Riverwalk.

“Proof about what?”

“Proof that George is not now, nor has he ever been, gay,” Izzie said.

“Fine.” Olivia sighed. “Whatever. Just show me your proof and then shut the hell up about it forever.”

Izzie reached back into the backseat and lifted a four-inch thick, three-ring binder up from the floor. She plopped it onto Olivia’s lap, “Everything you ever wanted to know but were too afraid to ask about George Gregory Valish.”

The binder weighed close to ten pounds and was bulging at the seams, stuffed with notes, pictures, computer print-offs, restaurant napkins, newspaper clippings, legal documents and sports memorabilia. Olivia’s dear friend Izzie had turned stalker while she wasn’t paying attention.

Olivia sifted through the papers, trying to make sense of the mess. “Where in the world did you get all this stuff?”

“Oh, here and there,” Izzie said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Here and there?” Olivia asked. “You seriously expect me to believe you just happened across George’s ACT Prep test?”

“Uh…”

“Or his eighth-grade lunch card?”

“Um…”

“Or his passport? His actual passport?”

“I… uh…”

“Or his… holy shit, Iz! How the hell did you get his baby tooth?”

“Well… you see, Liv…” Izzie stuttered and stopped.

“Spill it!”

“His mom likes to talk—a lot! And she’s a bit of a pack rat, you see,” Izzie started, but Olivia cut her off again.

“You talked to his
mom?
”

“Among other people,” Izzie said.

“What other people?”

Izzie shrugged. “Just people.”

“Did you tell his mom
why
you were asking all of this?”

“Of course not!” Izzie gasped. “What do you take me for? An idiot? I didn’t out George to his mom! Jeez, Liv! Give me a little credit here!”

“Well, I’m sorry, but seriously, Iz, you’ve gone a little nutso here! What exactly did you say to her?”

“I told her I was a reporter for the
Juliette Gazette
and that we were doing a feature on him and Kitty’s as part of our ‘Out and About’ section of the paper,” Izzie said with another of her smug smiles. “And once I got her talking she just kept going. And going. And going… Seriously, Liv, I feel sorry for George. The woman’s a chatterbox. I can’t imagine having to sit through Thanksgiving dinner with her.”