Tomcat in Love by Tim O’Brien Read Free Book Online

right? The S part? Which is totally cool.” Her lower lip quivered. “Revenge—I’ve been there. My ex-boyfriend, he was this motorcycle asshole, loved his hog more than me.”
    “And?”
    “And like—you know—I
know
.”
    Then she wept.
    Not only wept; the little pumpkin virtually fell into my arms. Spiked hair, dog collar, tongue pin—all irrelevant. She hugged me and shuddered and cried like a little girl. True, I shouldered the responsibility, yet at the same time I could not help wondering why it was that such odd, crippled creatures so often flit through my life. The maimed, the vulnerable, the emotionally disadvantaged.
    “There, there,” I said.
    She looked up. “You want to bite me?”
    “I do not.”
    “It’s okay. It’s
good
.”
    “No, indeed,” I told her sternly. “This motorcycle chap. You struck back, I gather?”
    Carla wiped her tears.
    “Well, sure, that’s what I’m
saying
. Hurt him bad. Leaky brakes.” She blinked, looked down at her handcuffs, then sniffled provocatively. “Listen, man, you’re not so bad. If you want, I can give you some tips, like helpful hints about—you know—how to really torture people.”
    I weighed my options.
    “Kind of you,” I said. “Over dinner, perhaps?”
    The girl frowned, then sighed heavily. “Okay, dinner. Biting. Nothing else. You’re way too old for me.”
    “Righto,” I said.
    “Promise?”
    “I do. How much for the leg irons?”
    Hours later, after a long and liquid supper, Carla and I exchanged reluctant goodbyes. (I am a flirt, yes. I am also Catholic. I do not freely copulate.)
    Exhausted, somewhat melancholy, I embarked on a wee-hour drive out to the southeastern suburbs, parked in front of Lorna Sue’s house, sat quietly for a moment, then walked up the driveway and carefully slipped the leg irons and purple undergarments beneath the front seat of the tycoon’s ostentatiously upscale Mercedes. (No problem. Unlocked.)
    My heart, I confess, was bubbling. Adrenaline was at work, and the aftershocks of young Carla, but beneath it all was a tremor of genuine sadness.
    For some twenty minutes I reclined on the front lawn, staring up at the house, barely holding myself together. Behind those darkened bedroom windows, so blind and brooding, the girl of my dreams slept the night away in the arms of her princely new husband. How, I wondered, does the human animal tolerate such torture? That icy self-control of hers. That female practicality. (Flatly, without emotion, Lorna Sue had once advised me against becoming an eighteen-year-old, as if sorrow and rage were the province of children, as if an on-off switch had been built into the deep freeze of her reptilian heart.)
    At one point I heard myself declaiming to the stars.
    At another point I wept like young Carla.
    And then later, on my hands and knees, I plucked a good many roses from their fertile new bed along the front steps. Whole bushes, in fact—yanking them out by the roots.
    I recall almost nothing of the drive back to the hotel. Napalm fantasies, I believe.
    Over the next forty-two hours I watched and waited. It was a ticklish period: close calls, dashed hopes. At times I feared my late-night handiwork would come to nothing. (For the experiment to succeed, it was vital that no one but Lorna Sue recover the incriminating articles.) The odds were essentially fifty-fifty, yet I felt the tension of a gambler riding a lifelong losing streak. Little has ever come easily for me. Over the years, through trial and error, I have discovered that monkey wrenches abound in this fluky, tricked-up world of ours. (Typos slip into my scholarship. Herbie retrieved fourteen phony checks from under my mattress, plus several other highly compromising documents.)
    “Poor unlucky Tommy,” Lorna Sue once said. “Born to lose.”
    To calm myself, I dined again one evening with the punkish young Carla, who had taken the standard shine to me. (No surprise. Why ask why?) Although the girl was