Chapter Three

The Secret Sister
Chapter Three
Sam
December 1989


He didn’t know where else to go. So he stayed. He found a studio apartment near downtown and a job cooking in a casino coffee shop. He ducked around Reno in his old, grey hooded sweatshirt, expecting any second to run into someone he knew from town, from high school, from somewhere. It was a city, sure, but not a big city. And he never knew who might stop him in the street, push him to talk, make him explain what made him up and leave the way he did. So he snuck around like a criminal, studied his surroundings, avoided the people he crossed paths with, and stayed away from the University where a few of his old high school classmates lived in dorms. And so far more than a month had passed, and Sam remained invisible.
He’d found a female kitten maybe five or six months old at the most, one day on a walk just a week or two since he’d found himself here. She’d purred for his attention, rubbed her thin body against his legs as he tried his best to walk quickly away, tripping him up as if on purpose. They met in broad daylight, after a graveyard shift he’d covered. She came at him from under an old beat up Chevy pickup sitting on two flat back tires in front of an old brick house. She stared up at him, narrowing her eyes and blinking sweetly, the way cats do, confident in her choice.
“What a pretty thing you are,” Sam said, finally kneeling to her and extending his palm. She nudged it, rubbing herself with it down the curve of her back, purring at him easily. She had to be the palest orange tabby he had ever seen, beige almost, barely striped, eyes green-rimmed but yellow inside. So very thin. Her meow sounded like the baaing of a lamb, but higher pitched, more delicate. Her chin quivered like a newborn baby’s.
Sam decided he would hate to leave her there, so trusting of people who could pretty much do whatever they wanted to her, so he called for the kitten to follow him up the street and away from the car she’d come out from under. She let him pick her up (incredibly light she was) and tuck her into his jacket. There she sat calm and quiet until he could sneak her into his studio apartment. The manager was adamant about not allowing pets on the premises. “Too many strays. People just leave them here when they take off.” she had said as he sat down to sign the paperwork to move in.
But Sam didn’t care about what he’d promised when he’d needed a place, a cheap place, quickly. He’d figure something out when it came down to this cat. Find another apartment or something if it came down to it. He was already attached. Already bonded to the lump of warmth tucked deep away under his arm.
In the small kitchen area, consisting mainly of an old refrigerator, small stove and one long, narrow burnt orange formica counter top with a couple of oak veneer cabinets tucked underneath it, he opened a can of tuna for her to eat while she roamed around, slinking under the unmade sofa bed in the center of the room and appearing only when he called her. Stella. Like it had always been her name.
Dependably silent except for a steady purr, she seemed to know she could not be found, almost the way he knew he should not be found. He filled a small bowl, one of the two he actually owned, with water in the bathroom sink (the only sink he had in the place…what kind of apartment with a kitchen doesn’t have a kitchen sink?) and set it next to the tuna can that she had pushed herself into face first, nudging it against the wall in her hurry to eat all she could. As if it could be taken from her any second.

That morning, two weeks after he found her, he left her curled up in the mess of blankets on the hide-a-bed mattress he never bothered to fold back into the mouth of the old green plaid sofa. He scratched the top of her head, and she stretched and yawned in the lazy, drowsy way he’d become accustomed to. And in the two weeks since he brought her home with him, he had yet to hear her let out even the slightest hint of the baaing meow she had given that first morning. Nothing came from her that remotely resembled that one burst of communication to let him know Stella had decided Sam was hers. He had not much choice in the matter. It was the way it was.
Stella remained on his mind throughout the day as he worked, broiling steaks, frying hash browns, and grilling pancakes even as late as three o’clock in the afternoon, which Sam just thought absurd. Pancakes were for breakfast. Or maybe even dinner. But lunch? A late lunch? On Christmas Eve? Then he remembered Stella needed cat food. The small bag he’d bought her a couple weeks ago had all but disappeared. He’d stop off somewhere after work. Take a ride. Get out somewhere beside here, the casino he saw day in and day out. And home. The place he saw every time else.
This brought Sam to where he sat that Christmas Eve. Waiting on a bench for a woman he did not know. Slouched over, legs spread open with his hands folded together between his knees, he did not turn around to face the entrance of Savon Drug because he did not want her to catch him look to see if she was coming.
He’d stopped off the only place he’d thought would be open, a store he’d seen near the university but never really paid much attention to before tonight. It had taken him a half hour to find it again, driving up and down hilly streets deserted in the way they always are when there’s a holiday. He’d probably only passed a handful of cars the entire time and that realization simply made him sad. Nothing more than that. Just that same heaviness pressing down deep in his chest. The same thing he always noticed when he felt alone. And then, he was most definitely alone.
Now? Not so much. All due to a random sequence of circumstances: if he hadn’t picked up a graveyard shift, if he hadn’t brought Stella home, he’d have never stopped here for cat food and that silly hot pink collar he found hanging on a hook right there eye level—something he would never thought to buy (with four dollars he did not have to spare), but a touch of sentimentality made him think it might be nice to give Stella a small gift for Christmas. She was Stella after all, a cat he’d found somewhere along the way who wanted very much, it seemed, to remain with him. She deserved a collar at the very least.
And if he never stopped here at this Savon Drug with its tall windows bright with blinding fluorescent light and its dated exterior jutting upward with sharp angles and wood beams circa something like the 1950’s, he’d never have met Olivia at her cash register, standing with one foot propped up on a stack of hand baskets, arms crossed in front of her chest, looking nearly bored to tears.
“You alone for Christmas Eve? I mean, except for the cat of course?” She asked, dangling the collar between her thumb and forefinger.
“I am.” Sam shrugged, smiling at her because she was smiling at him.
“Really.” She hit the total button on the cash register and motioned to the total displayed in bright red numbers. “I happen to alone too. Not even a cat to keep me company.”
Somewhere in the brief chit-chat that followed, she’d ask him to wait for her to get off work so they could get a drink.
Even when he told her he was only nineteen and couldn’t go to a bar she shrugged like it didn’t matter.
“We’ll work something out. We don’t need a bar to get a drink.”
Just like that.
“Give me an hour,” she handed back his change, let her hand linger. He crumpled the bills around the pennies she had set on top of them and stuffed everything in his front jean pocket.
So he had agreed to wait.
Written in her own hand on the plastic nametag adorning her navy smock, curly and sloppy, big circles dotting the i’s. Olivia.
Olivia.
He could say, and would say later when he spoke of her, that she was pretty in a very non-decorative way: not a lot of makeup, a little heavy, with dry brown hair pulled back in a long braid. Older than he was for sure, probably mid-thirties, but he liked women that way, (though he hadn’t known many by this point) because they seemed shaped with experience, both good and bad. They were women he could learn from.
Olivia.
The few words she had spoken to him by then made her voice seem simple, flat, and nearly monotone. But her eyes. They made up for all that borderline dullness because they jumped with light and glittered as if dancing to music. As if her voice had its own fast, frantic beat.
Not to mention an infinite amount of time seemed to go by whenever she blinked. Sam played this over and over in his mind as he sat there waiting for Olivia. A full lifetime could pass by before her eyelids closed and opened again, like her thick dark lashes were weighing her lids down against their will. She reminded Sam of the way a horse would blink.
Something that simple had made Sam fall almost instantly and absolutely in love.
* * *
The parking lot grew empty as he waited, except for the few randomly scattered cars that sat like they had been abandoned. His old yellow station wagon also remained, parked closest to the automatic doors under the pale yellow fluorescent lights humming above him, leaving halos in the cold winter air. From the bench he could see down to where the bulk of Reno spread out far and wide in a blanket of light. The city had settled down into a calm quiet. Being Christmas Eve and all, people were most likely home cooking dinner and eating with their families or whatever else people did on nights like this. And Sam sat on a bench waiting for a woman he’d just met. Someone who really had no intention of being alone, if she could help it, it seemed. Sam was okay with that. He understood the feeling completely.

He didn’t hear her walk up behind him and had no idea of her presence until she touched his shoulder softly, leaving her fingers to settle near his jacket collar, as if she had always known him and their personal space had been established long ago. There was no formality between them, she seemed to say. He jumped a little, surprised because she had been so quiet walking up. He wondered if she had done it on purpose, like she wanted him to startle.
She wore a thick brown coat too long in the sleeves that made her appear as if she had no hands. She sat with him on the bench, closer than what would be comfortable for strangers. Sam inhaled. She smelled fresh and clean, like laundry soap. His bag of cat food rested in between them. He picked it up and cradled it in his lap like he would a child, so as to have less space between them. She brazenly closed the space with the edge of her full hip.
“So,” Sam said, turning toward her. He smiled slightly. “Where are we going to have that drink?”
“My apartment. It’s about a block that way.” She motioned down the street with her chin. “Is that all right with you?”
He looked down the street where a block of brown apartments stood. “Those there?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“No big plans then. I have you for a while?”
“You have me as long as you want.”
She stood up and stuffed her hands in her pockets. Her nose shone a deep red against her otherwise pale face. “You coming then? You can live your car here. No one will bother it. Is that it there?”
”Yes, the yellow one.” he said then stood up. He had to be over a head taller than her. He could see the pale, stretched part right down the middle of her scalp. She breathed evenly, a little heavily even, her lips parted so the air she exhaled turned a deep white in the cold, so deep he almost couldn’t see her face through it. She turned and walked away from him, not another word spoken. Sam liked women he didn’t have to say a lot to. He liked the ones that knew what they wanted, and what they wanted from him. This was Olivia. She asked him to walk with her to her apartment to have a drink. She wanted him. She didn’t make much of a fuss about it.
Sam followed her through the nearly empty parking lot toward the street, lagging back a ways, dragging his feet, because as much as he didn’t want to admit it, walking next to her felt awkward. He didn’t know her and felt that giving her polite space was appropriate. She didn’t seem to mind at all. She might have even welcomed it through her own body language. Her braid whipped back and forth across her shoulders as her body jerked with the impact of her light, quick steps. She walked the way a child would if it were happy. When they stepped through the shrubbery outlining the parking lot and onto the sidewalk that would lead them up to her apartment, he turned back toward his car, suddenly realizing he was still carrying his cat food. There would be time for figuring all that out later. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin the rhythm of all this.
* * *
Like a full, sagging, breast. That’s what her belly resembled, stretched down and swollen like that. When he thought about it, and he tried very hard not to think about it at all, nothing else came to mind except a giant blob of something hanging off his sister, dragging her down with its round, solid weight. He couldn’t have known she was in there. If he had known she was… well, obviously he’d have waited until she was out. And he never would have seen her that way. Not ever. He’d probably still be there in that house, being hid from. A fool to the end.
But her bedroom door had been closed and yellow light from her desk lamp filtered through to the hall from under its bottom. Even if the bathroom was empty, the door was always closed. Always. They had to lock the door in order to not get walked in on. It had been that way. But Katie had been walked in on.
He’d just wanted to take a piss.
He slammed the door shut again so hard his hand tingled itself numb. Was there just a giant tit hanging off Katie? He remembered thinking exactly that. Such an absurd thought! He almost wanted to open the door again because he could believe more that his sister was growing a huge breast on her trunk rather than comprehend she was nearly ready to give birth. She just about had to be with a belly like that.
What a fool he had been.
Sam stood out on the front walk a long time, debating what to do next, kicking at the rocks his invisible father had set in concrete before he was born. Though not able to see them exactly except for in certain angles where the moonlight hit them just right, he did his best. And in a small way it was just satisfying enough just to think he might be stirring one up out of its concrete hive, knocking it loose from the place it’d been all this time.
“Stupid girl.” He muttered over and over. “Stupid fucking dumb girl.”
He saw her then in the long full coat she had been wearing for months, when it wasn’t nearly cold enough to wear it. The way she held big heavy things up against her stomach, like schoolbooks or grocery bags, was so obvious now, though minutes ago he would have barely given it a passing thought. Her body had recently grown fuller and rounder, he knew that much. She had suddenly grown hips and breasts in place of her stick thin figure, becoming a woman instead of a girl.
In that he felt a loss almost like a death. Like she had turned away from him and made another choice. He would remember Katie’s pregnant stomach forever, much like he would remember Sophie’s bright red lipstick when he found her hanging dead in her garage. Those types of things you just don’t forget. Just like you don’t forget those moments that suddenly and forever identify a person you thought to be someone totally different. Or moments that make you feel so terribly insignificant and unconsidered.
The tips of his fingers grazed the sidewalk underneath him as his body finally grew limp. Only then he realized he’d sunk down onto his knees. He let his fingers wander in order to feel the contrast of the grainy concrete against the smooth polish of the stones it surrounded, the rocks cut and polished so their faces lay flat upward, displaying their different colors and inner textures to the world.
That was when he stood, walked to his car, got in and drove.
He didn’t know where he was going. He drove up and down each street in town, looking at the houses as he passed them. He instinctively knew which house came next, who lived in them, who had died in them. He drove by Sophie’s little pink house, still empty and dark. He passed by the courthouse, the library. He drove up the road to the dumps nestled high in the mountainside. He killed the engine, looked out at town, placing himself outside it as much as he could without disappearing from its peripheral.
“I’m done here.” He started the car finally. “I’m done.”
Much later, when he walked back into his house for the last time, he listened for movement in Katie’s or his mother’s rooms. Nothing. How could Katie possibly sleep? How dare it be so easy? He pressed his ear to her door. He felt he had to literally swallow back the instant surge of anger fighting its way upward, so instead of kicking the door down and screaming at her, he closed himself up in his bedroom and paced. He thought he might never sleep again. He was that keyed up.
It took him more than just a while to settle, to sink down cross-legged on the worn carpet at the end of his bed. The beginning of dawn was just barely making its way through the slits in his aluminum blinds. His closet sat open and gaping there in front of him, clothes hung neatly inside it on wire hangers. Then, in a sudden, swift movement, he stood and he pulled as many of his shirts and pants, hangers and all, off the closet rod and threw the whole mess on his bed. Shoes, ties, old pairs of jeans he didn’t even wear anymore followed that. A monopoly game even. All scattered across his twin size bed in a large soft mound.
He threw socks and underwear from his dresser drawers on top of the pile. All he pretty much owned lay right there in front of him. Not much more than that anywhere else, except for a toothbrush in the bathroom he never wanted to see again. Soap maybe? Who cared? That stuff he could get later, somewhere else.
He took the edges of his bed sheets and folded them over the top of the mound as best he could, dragging it down off the bed with a soft thud as it hit his floor. He dragged it out the door and down the hallway, leaving his urine stained, sunken mattress exposed and the dull bulb hanging naked from his ceiling light. As quietly as he could, and he figured he wasn’t really all that quiet, he dragged everything out to his car and stuffed it all in the back, slamming the door closed on it, peering through the window almost astonished at what he was doing, but more certain it was necessary than anything he ever felt was necessary in his whole life.
That was the night he left without the slightest idea that was what he was indeed doing. Late fall, mid-November. He passed the lake, sped past it, did not look toward it once. Just kept his eyes focused ahead. He wanted to keep going until he absolutely had to stop. Then finally he did, in Reno, two hours away when bright sunlight blinded him through the passenger side window and he could barely stay awake, hypnotized by the empty desert highway that led him wherever it was he was going.
He pulled off the freeway and tried to sleep in his backseat at the far end of a casino parking lot. He curled up in his clothes and sheets but couldn’t keep his eyes shut. He just stared at the ceiling of the station wagon, the old, stained butter yellow vinyl, grey with fingerprints and smudges. He’d never really noticed them before and found himself trying to figure out who’s were Katie’s, who’s were his, and somewhere in there, just which one’s were Sophie’s.
* * *
As soon as they walked in her apartment, Olivia began shedding her clothes. First she unzipped her coat, flinging it onto the small kitchen table nestled into a small nook off the kitchen and near the front door. Then, still walking, she kicked her shoes off by the couch then hopped along, removing her socks and tossing them behind her shoulder as she walked up the narrow dark hallway toward her bedroom door. Just before she closed it behind her she slipped out of her shirt, letting her long braid snap back and forth against her small bare back held straight and strong by the curve of her narrow waist. Sam felt fairly certain she was showing off, or at least showing him just a taste of what might come. And it had worked. He struggled against the erection taking form, trying to think of just about anything else but Olivia’s curvy, milky-white back.
A Christmas tree sat in one corner of the living room, a small one, hip high with an angel on top. Its lights blinked furiously, providing most of the light in the otherwise dark room. Pictures littered the white walls of Olivia’s small apartment. They were of the same girl, her daughter, Sam assumed. Sam examined each while he waited. The pictures seemed to be arranged in an order, taken youngest to oldest. He found the first of the series near the front door, a picture of the girl only hours old encased in a solid pink frame. She had that puffy look of a just born baby. A small white bow had been tied into her black hair and one dark eye squinted half open. Her hands closed tight into fists that she held close to her swollen, red face. The next picture, she was just a few months old, plump and smiling. He could see she was mixed, a half black-half white baby. The pictures went on and on, in matching pink frames, up the hallway and back down into the living room, hung in a zig-zag pattern. Up and down they went, showing the girl through the years.
Finally the last picture stopped in the middle of one of the living room walls. The daughter appeared to be about nine or ten. This one was a school picture, the ones taken at the end of the school year, right before summer, where the backgrounds are brighter and the photographer gets a bit more creative. It had a white background splashed in pink, orange, blue and green neon colors. The photographer staged large paint cans as props and the girl sat on one, smiling so big her eyes were half closed. Her hair had been pulled up into a side ponytail that directly above one ear. It puffed out, a pretty caramel brown, long and wild. Sam wondered where the most recent picture might be. It was December now, Christmas Eve, and fall photos were surely taken already, and probably handed out. Where was that one?
Olivia walked back out dressed in jeans and a clingy black sweater. Her brown hair had been let loose from its braid and brushed shiny. She had applied bright red lipstick. She seemed different now, softer. A mother? Not like the supermarket cashier that had walked in a few minutes before who seemed a bit hardened and maybe even slightly cold. (Not that Sam had minded before. He, and he hated to admit it, liked this softer Olivia better though. He couldn’t help it.) She picked up what she had taken off, went out of sight, and came back empty handed. She walked practically tip-toed into the kitchen, maneuvering herself around the corners of walls and furniture without looking at them. She watched him instead. He stood in the living room with his arms limp at his sides. He didn’t know where else to put them.
“My daughter,” Olivia said from the kitchen. Sam nodded. He felt he knew a little bit more about her now, more of her history. He added it to the memory of the way she blinked and he loved her more. She had a daughter. She was a mother. He imagined her holding the little girl baby when she was born. She imagined her feeding the baby, then feeding the girl, getting her dressed for school, fighting with her about what clothes to wear. He smiled. He felt like he had been there as well, watching everything from above, like he was fastened to their ceiling.
Olivia pushed a red plastic cup of wine into Sam’s hands and sat on the old worn couch, rubbing her hand against its blue and green flowered pattern. She pulled her legs up and tucked her bare feet underneath them. She smiled softly, welcoming him to her. Light from the kitchen doorway spilled into the edge of the living room carpet, leaving an amber colored patch in the shape of a triangle. Sam stepped into it. Olivia sipped wine from the cup, holding onto it with graceful fingers, as if she were caressing something dear to her. Her lips went to the cup like she was kissing it and broke apart from it the way she might break apart from the lips of an acquaintance. Not a lover. It was colder, more formal, nothing lingered. Another memory of her forever in his brain.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
“No,” Sam replied, taking a larger drink from his cup than he had meant to. The wine, thick like blood when he swished it in the cup, was dry and bitter. Deep red drops clung to the sides. He wasn’t uncomfortable. He had been telling the truth. He loved standing here in this small cramped apartment because here was the place Olivia slept and ate and bathed, where she had lived her life before he knew her. These were the couches and chairs that she had picked out at some point, selected because she had liked them. Things she had to make a definite choice about and this was the decision she had made.
Everything in her apartment was lined up and orderly, even her videotapes were alphabetized. He thought because he had seen all this that night he had somehow altered his life as well as hers just by being where she lived and understanding how she lived. He felt neither of them would be the same ever again. They would be forever imprinted with each other, just because of this moment. It made him feel high and giddy, almost like he was on an intense drug.
This may have been why it was so hard to move out of that triangular patch of light. He was overwhelmed.
“Come sit,” she instructed. She patted the cushion next to her, smiled. So he did. And she leaned forward and kissed him. Just like that. Her breath had that bitter wine taste to it, but it didn’t matter. He grabbed her face with his hand, bringing her closer, kissed her fiercely.
The feeling he had then was either one he had never had before, or one he had all the time. He just couldn’t be sure. He knew though that he wanted to consume her, somehow kiss her until he came to know her inside and out. And he felt at that moment anything was possible. They broke apart. She did actually, maybe taken aback by his aggressiveness, he wasn’t sure. His hand still held her chin, however, but he loosened his grip, kissed her in a bit more tender way. He wanted to memorize her features and know all her memories. He wanted to hear what her parents were like, where she had lost her virginity and how old she had been. When her birthday was.
She blinked in her horse-like way. He wanted to ask if her daughter blinked the way she did. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to get enough. Finally, after seemed like years of them staring at each other, she leaned over, opened one of the drawers of her coffee table, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Then she let them sit on the table, unopened and unlit.
“Where’s your daughter?”
“With her dad.”
“Your ex-husband?”
“I never have been nor ever will be someone’s wife.” She reached for the pack again, like she had decided something, and pulled a cigarette out. Then another.
“Your ex, then?”
Olivia laughed. “Something like that.” She lit the two at once and put one of them in between Sam’s lips.
He loved her laugh because it came from a light place just beyond the opening of her mouth. It had a high pitch like she had at some point rehearsed it, trying to get it to sound a certain way. Maybe that was in order to get it to sound like something different than the way her laugh was naturally. Maybe she had done this when she was young, a teenager perhaps, and after months of conditioning, it had finally stuck. Sam loved this about her because no matter what, Olivia was not a pure element. She was not completely natural. Her laugh was just a soft sweet hint of that fact. He felt himself being immersed in her.
In Olivia.
Later on, when the wine was in his head and she had straddled him on the couch, kissed his neck and ears, and rubbed herself against his crotch in a way he had never had a woman do before, he leaned in and whispered to her.
“You’re beautiful.”
She turned away from him like she was shy then put her hand up to her face to hide a smile. Her cheeks flushed and she would not look at him. It had meant something to her, he decided, to hear what someone thought of her. It excited him to see her vulnerable because she had never seemed vulnerable to him. It was a contradiction. A multitude. A layer.
“The way you look at me makes me feel studied,” she replied finally.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No,” she said, seeming to consider it a moment. “It’s not a bad thing.”
She stopped, sat there as still as she could. He studied her. Lifted her arms to study her fingers and hands, slid her shirt up over her head to examine her soft stomach, saggy with excess skin and a few stretch marks. She watched him do it, never once let her eyes close. He felt just born, like his first experience ever on Earth was sitting in Olivia’s apartment and sinking all of what she was into himself.
This was the woman he loved. He’d loved others, he imagined. But not like this. When he thought of the others, no matter if it were now or any other time, he categorized them. Put them in columns so he could differentiate between those he loved and those he thought he loved once.
Olivia was in the column of love. The only one.
The rest were on the other side now, moving there the moment Olivia touched his shoulder outside the supermarket. Christine. Amy. Michelle. Brenda. Kim. Linda. Camille. Sarah. Others he couldn’t remember the names of anymore. Olivia put them there, set them apart.
He finally reached out and cupped her breast in the black satin bra encapsulating it. She let him, closed her eyes even, bit her lip. He touched her hair to feel its texture. Dry yet smooth, just as he imagined. Olivia set her hips in motion again, reaching her hands up his shirt, running her fingers down his sides with a touch so delicate he could barely feel it. She unbuttoned his jeans.
San decided he would be by her house every day to take her and her daughter to the park. He would call her before he went to sleep at night then marry her and have ten more children with her. He would convince her to be with him. He would convince her to be his wife.
She stood up, pulled her shirt down and took the empty bottle of wine to the kitchen with her, leaving him alone on the couch. He felt the air shift and move in the space around him empty now without her. The connection broken. He wanted her back. When she walked back into the living room she lit a couple of candles then turned off the Christmas tree lights. The living room glowed orange and the shadows were deep and black. It made her look different, like another person had walked into the room. He wanted to study this one as well.
“You got family around or what?” She asked as she sat back down on the couch again, leaving him hard with his pants still unbuttoned. She lit another cigarette.
“Not here,” Sam said.
“You’re not going to see them for Christmas?”
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “I’m Jewish.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“They moved to North Carolina this past summer. We’ll have Christmas in March. That’s when I fly out to see them.”
Olivia seemed to consider what he had just told her. He looked away from her quickly, scratched his nose. Sniffed. The lie came out so quickly he couldn’t take it back. He couldn’t even alter it to become more truthful. And he didn’t want to.
“Okay,” she said finally.
“Okay what?”
“I’m ready to fuck.”
“I love you,” Sam said. “I know it.”
“I’m not in high school sweetie,” Olivia said, standing up and towering over him. Looking away. “Don’t say that shit to me.”
She took his hand and led him to her bedroom. He stood over a head taller than she did. He would remember long after that night that the top of her head smelled like apricots when he pulled her closer to him, wrapping his long arms around her shoulders from behind, nosing his face into her long shiny hair.
And that was all it took. She was naked before they reached her bedroom, and she pushed him through the doorway while he backpedaled, cupping both her breasts in his hands and biting gently into her neck.
He thought he might love her forever.
Her room smelled like cinnamon. What glimpse he got of it before she pushed him down on the bed and straddled him was that it was neat, tidy, everything in place. Books lined up in a small bookcase near her door, largest to smallest. Her bedclothes smelled freshly washed. He imagined that if he pulled open her dresser drawers he would find that her clothes would be organized as well, folded and piled in distinct rows. He loved these details, embraced them in the split second it took to notice them.
Olivia screamed like she was being killed from the second he entered her. He liked it at first, got off on it, really. Eventually though, he had to cover her mouth with his hand because he was losing focus.
But she bit it. Hard. Made him groan.
The nightstand lamp stayed on, the bulb in it so hot and bright the room seemed bleached white. Sam had never had sex in the light before. Maybe the closest he ever got was moonlight filtering in through blinds or spilling into car windows. Most times though it was fumbling sex in pitch black dark. But Olivia never reached over to turn the lamp off. Most girls liked the darkness, the shadows, shy with their bodies, or ashamed of its soft spots and dimples. Not Olivia.
In fact, she watched their reflection in the mirror that ran the length of one wall. She wouldn’t let him turn her any other way. Watched her reflection like she was fucking herself. How can I fuck you, Sam thought. If you won’t let me?
This was not the woman he loved.
He closed his eyes then, imagined a pitch black car and a shy faceless girl and came.
Quiet. He crumpled up on her, let her claw at his shoulders as he grew soft inside her.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered. Then crying replaced the screaming. Sam opened his eyes and there she was under him, bawling her eyes out.
“Why are you crying?” He asked. He shouldn’t have. But he did.
She pushed him off her, bent over and grabbed the underside of her knees and rocked. He put his hand on her back and rubbed it because he felt like he should. Finally, after what seemed like hours of rubbing her back, afraid to stop and bring forth the next set of events, she turned around and curled up into his chest like a small child.
I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “So sorry.”
After falling asleep, she held his hand, clutched at it, and kept it enclosed in both of hers, tight enough to hurt. They faced each other all night while she held their hands together as if praying. Praying for him almost. The light from her bedside lamp was blinding.
Each time he tried to move his hands away, she held them tighter. He wanted to sneak out but he was stuck there. Connected to her. Afraid she would wake up. So he finally gave up and let it be. Let her sleep so softly he could barely hear her breathe.
She slept like a stone in that bright white room. Even when he buried his face beneath the blankets he could see the bright red of his closed eyelids. There were times throughout that endless night where he wondered if she was dead because he couldn’t hear her breathe without leaning close to listen. He thought the tight clutch she had on his hand might be some sort of rigor mortis and that made him nervous. But whatever he did, he could not get her to release that grip. So instead he had to watch her most of the night, eyelids heavy with wine and lack of sleep. Had to watch her sleep like a child.
And he grew sick of her.
He was still awake early the next morning when she moved close to him and kissed his neck with sour wine breath. He did not love her. Her lips were dry and sticky and they clung to his neck a long time before she moved back. She stood and pulled a silky pink bathrobe over her naked body. It hung over her full hips and made a swishing sound when she moved around the bedroom and hallway picking up their clothes, crumpling them together in her hands.
He stood and took the pile from her, sorted his jeans out, pulled them on.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered close to his ear. She smiled and looked at him for a long time. Her eyes still seemed drowsy but they were deep and wet. Kind of glistening. She seemed happy. He smiled back quickly and pulled on his shirt. She walked away from him, rubbing her hand across his stomach as she went.
“Merry Christmas,” he replied, his voice flat.
“You want some coffee?” She pulled her hair back into a ponytail, her reflection bouncing back from the large mirrored closet doors she couldn’t stop watching herself in the night before. She rubbed her fingers underneath her eyes and pursed her lips at herself, turned her head side to side.
Quit watching yourself like that.
“Uh, you know, I should probably get going soon. I mean, I could stay for a cup but after that I should go.”
She focused on him while still facing the mirror. He saw her both sides of her face because of the angle he had: One side a reflection. The other, real. Her eyebrow twitched just a little. She turned and walked out, leaving him alone in her room. He could hear her slide open the balcony door. He tied his shoes. Took his time.
He found her smoking a cigarette in the cold air. Her apartment faced the mountains, blue and speckled with spots of snow. Coffee brewed in an old worn pot.
He sat across from her, took a cigarette since she didn’t offer. They didn’t speak. Olivia looked toward the mountains, squinting out at the bright blue sky, letting her robe flutter open, her white legs exposed. A naked plastic doll sat on the table between them with one eye open and one eye shut. Its course yellow hair was a mess, all tangled up and ratty. The doll stood out in her place, and seemed strange surrounded by neatness and order.
“You done?” Olivia stood and flicked her cigarette over the edge. She didn’t wait for an answer. She took the ashtray and walked inside. He followed her again, holding out his half-smoked cigarette like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it.
He felt like he was chasing her.
She walked to her front door and opened it. She held out the bag of cat food for him to take. “I had a nice time, Sam,” she said. She did not look at him when she spoke. She looked past his shoulder. Her face was hard and her nostrils flared slightly. “Take care of yourself.”
She was a mess of contradiction. He remembered the way she bit him. His hand still stung. It still had a red mark in the shape of her teeth. A perfect crescent moon. She had cried. She wouldn’t let go of him while she slept. Now as she stood at her door, cold and mean.
He reached out to hug her because he felt he should. She turned her head to refuse him. Then she closed the door. She hadn’t even waited for him to make his way down the stairs. He bit his lip. Bit it until it stung, standing at her door for a minute, looking down at her welcome mat. He wondered if she might be on the other side watching him through the peephole. He hoped she would open the door again and he waited for it. But she didn’t.
Finally he walked down the metal steps that led to her door and made his way up the street toward the supermarket where they had met. He glanced back to her apartment building a couple of times and once he even stopped. He would come around again, he decided. He would walk by one day soon. He would try to love her again, even though she cried and bit him. Even though she screamed and couldn’t stop watching herself in the mirror. He might even go up to her door again. He didn’t think she would mind, but then he reconsidered when he remembered when he’d stepped out her door. Her focus had traveled past him, over his shoulder. Distant.
He sat in his car and started it. It shook alive then died. He started it again. The same. Then he tried again and it ran. He let it warm up and he turned the heater on as high as it would go but it just blew cold air. He held his hands in front of his face, the same hands she had held tightly all night. He touched the parts of his body where her body had been, where her hands had touched him, his legs, his arms, his stomach. He felt her all over him. Now it was done. Olivia had let him go. It seemed like such an easy thing for her to do. It seemed so easy for anyone to do. It was like he only mattered for a moment.
* * *
He couldn’t say what led him back a week later in the pitch black, starless night. A cold, dry wind blew east, howling through the bare branches of the trees that lined the perimeter of Olivia’s apartment complex. It wasn’t hard to find her balcony because it was the only one in the complex crowded with people, flush-faced, smoking cigarettes, with New Years hats pulled tight on their heads. Their bodies pressed together, their voices melded together in a dull roar and in the middle of it all was Olivia. She wore her hair sprayed stiff, ratted high, and her lips dark with red lipstick. Probably the same shade she’d worn for him just days before.
Sam slowed the car when he saw her. She pressed forward to the rail of the balcony, her eyes locked with his. Her eyes sparkled under the heavy makeup that had been applied to them, the black eyeliner, the thick mascara. Still alive and dancing after all that bullshit put on them. Sam smiled, hopeful, stopped where he was so his brake lights lit up the entire parking lot. Olivia leaned up against the rail, pitching the top of her body over the top, balancing herself with the core of her body, leaning out to him. Then out of nowhere she pitched the wine glass she’d been holding toward his car and it shattered against the roof into a million tiny pieces that glittered in his headlights.
“Fuck you!” She screamed, flipping him off with both hands. “You stupid asshole. You piece of shit!” The crowd around her had quieted, turned toward him. A girl helped her keep her balance.
“Who do you think you are coming back like this!” He heard her scream one last time as he pulled away quickly, breathless, never feeling more stupid and alone his entire life.
Stella didn’t meow once when he put her in the car with the rest of his things the following morning. She just curled up into the seat beside him, purred patiently and let him decide where she would be taken.
He scratched her head, let her lean into him. Then he started the car packed up with the things he’d brought from home, just as they had been a month before when he’d taken his first steps outward.
“And then I’m gone.”