Hating Olivia: A Love Story by Mark Safranko Read Free Book Online Page B

now where Livy’s expensive tastes had their origin. Whoever had owned this spread must have been a millionaire a few times over.
    “I haven’t been back here in so long…. ” The mask hadcracked. Her eyes were glassy with tears. I reached out to touch her, but she pushed me away. The entire scene was depressing, forlorn. At that moment for some reason, I thought of her old man creeping around outside our door when we were making it. “Want to get out and walk around?”
    For a long time Livy was quiet. Then she shook her head violently, as if trying to clear it or throw off some horrific recollection.
    “No. Let’s get out of here.” “Whatever you say.”
    I swung the car around. Livy’s eyes changed from water to stone. When we were back on the main road, she wrapped her fingers around my prick.
    “Let’s go home, Max.”
    “Sure,” I agreed. “Let’s go home.”
    I ran my hand up under her skirt to the oven-warm crotch of her tights. It wasn’t a good time to ask questions about the old homestead.
    I stepped on it.
    D espite Livy’s weird emotional reaction, our little excursion turned into a ritual. Once every two or three weeks we had to climb into the car and drive out to the family “estate.” Then we’d sit there in the hard glare of the spring sun and stare at the abandoned buildings; it was as if we were waiting for someone to arrive or emerge from one of the houses, or maybe for something to happen. Always in silence, and in Livy’s eyes there was always that melancholic haze. I had no idea what the fuck it was all about.
    From time to time she would drop disconnected hints about her past out there—not that they amounted to an epiphany. Infact, most often they merely surprised me because they were something I hadn’t surmised or wouldn’t have expected. “My father was a carpenter…. ”
    “A carpenter? No shit. Now I wouldn’t have guessed that.” “Yes, he married into my mother’s money. He has a nose for a certain kind of woman.”
    Interesting. Or so I supposed.
    “And bet you didn’t know I have two sisters. Sherry lives in the city—she works on the sixty-fifth floor of the Empire State Building. Mary-Jo is somewhere in California. I haven’t talked to her in years.”
    “Really…. ”
    “My mother hated my father with a passion…. ” “Hmm…. ”
    “My grandfather who owned this place was called Gaetano. When I was in school everyone made fun of his name. He came to this country from Palermo. Once upon a time he was one of the biggest slumlords in Newark.”
    All news to me. And still, I wasn’t making a lick of sense out of what she was really saying, or trying to say, to me. She was dropping the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into my lap without a guide to the big picture.
    But I went along with it. What could it hurt, right? When you’re in love, you go soft. You do things she wants you to do, even if what she wants you to do is a little wacky.
    Sitting in the middle of a field staring at two gutted houses wasn’t all so bad. In my time I’d done a lot worse.

12.
    “Well, I did it!”
    Livy flounced into the apartment and began stripping off her clothes. I rested my guitar against the arm of the sofa.
    “What?”
    “Dropped out of my classes!”
    “Why? It’s just a matter of weeks before your finals.”
    “So what? I’m not interested in a degree anyway. I mean, I’m just withering on the vine in that place. A bunch of old windbags blowing hot air around, that’s all they are!”
    “You’ll get no argument from me on that score. It’s just that…. well, you came this far, it seems like maybe you should have just seen it through until the end of the semester at least. I mean, you did do some of the work, right?”
    “Are you kidding me, Max? I haven’t done an ounce of work! Have you seen me pick up Keats or Wharton any time in the past four months?”
    “Maybe you’d have used the degree some day. Like to get a job or something, if it came