Happy Valentine's Day Oliver

by Livia Ellis

Aunt Maisie stuns him into silence with a look.

  Margaret takes over. She’s so absolutely totally thoroughly completely unabashedly wholeheartedly and overwhelmingly thrilled to the marrow of her bones and perhaps even down to the cellular level to meet Olga. It’s like they’re sisters or better. Best friends!

  Ditto for Olga. That they didn’t join hands and start skipping around was nothing short of stunning.

  I move on to Harry without waiting for the Olga/Margaret love fest to end.

  He sort of introduces me to his date. Good to see me. Blah blah blah. Nothing–and I mean absolutely nothing–is different about Harry. It’s as if we hadn’t gone without seeing each other since dad’s funeral. This is the magic of family. This ability to continue on as if nothing has interrupted our journey.

  Uncle Albert ends the reunion portion of the evening by clearing his throat and tapping his watch. We are ushered inside. There is some to-do about who has the tickets until Aunt Maisie produces them out of her pocketbook. We make our way to our seats and then there is more shuffling about until we are seated according to some plan that exists only in Aunt Maisie’s mind. There is a girl-boy-girl-boy order that must be adhered to.

  I’m seated between Olga and Cousin Margaret. The two talk over me until they are shushed.

  I lean over and whisper in Olga’s ear. We will be having a conversation about this.

  We switch positions. She loves me. Don’t I know this? How many times does she have to tell me this before I realize that we are meant to be together? Everything she does is to make my life easier. My life will be easier when it comes to attending Margaret’s wedding now that I’ve gotten over having to see Uncle Albert and Aunt Maisie for the first time since my father’s funeral.

  How do I respond to this? I don’t know. I really don’t.

  The music starts ending all conversation.

  She takes my hand and holds it.

  What is on the program? A series of love arias from well-known operas. A sampler of recognizable tunes for those who believe opera to be both romantic and classy, but either don’t really like it or have had no exposure to it. That said, I enjoyed it.

  During intermission we leave our seats and find a place in the champagne bar.

  How many people do I run into there? No less than twenty. If I don’t know them directly, they know Uncle Albert and Aunt Maisie. Everyone knows someone that knows me.

  What do I realize as I stand there holding on to Olga? No one gives a fuck about me anymore. Not a person I run into gives a fuck about my year old scandals. I’m such old news that the old news makes my news look ancient. The world has moved on to royal babies being brewed inside of rounding bellies and dip-shit princes that don’t have the common sense to keep their trousers on at house parties in Las Vegas.

  I’m free. The shackles of my indiscretions have been shaken off.

  I drink my champagne with my hand on Olga’s back as I attempt to make conversation with Uncle Albert. He needs to discuss my father with me. We need to do something about that Scottish chip shop owner that’s trying to take our family home and turn it into an amusement park. Or whatever it is he’s trying to do.

  He talks to Olga who lies smoothly. Or maybe not. I don’t really know where the truth ends and the lies begin with Olga.

  Maybe it’s a truth and maybe it’s a lie that she has a burning desire to go to university. I don’t care. Uncle Albert and Aunt Maisie believe her.

  Olga for once actually looks her age. I forget at times she’s just twenty-two. As she stands there next to me, she looks like what I wish she was. A very pretty young woman that has naught a care in the world and who adores me absolutely.

  To make my life wholly complete and in a very good way, my former fiancée appears with her date just long enough for me to see her and for her to see me. I don’t know the man.

  I can tell by the way Aunt Maisie (who is never quiet) suddenly goes silent, that I’m not the only one that has spotted my former fiancée.

  The Byron poem she had marked in my old schoolbook returns to my thoughts. In silence I grieve that they heart could forget, they spirit deceive. It really cuts to the heart of it.

  Never will I claim to be a man that understands the way women think and what motivates their actions. What happens next is one of those things I fear will haunt me.

  Olga turns and looks. There is a ripple in the air that travels between Olga and my former fiancée. As if the percussionist started to thrum out a low beat on a kettle drum. I could feel the tension in my bones. When she curls closer into my body then places her lips to my ear lasers shoot out of my former fiancée’s eyes and slam into me.

  What does Olga whisper? I don’t remember. It doesn’t really matter. What matters at that moment is that it is Valentine’s Day and the woman that I was going to marry who I never took out for what I called an idiotic commercial holiday for twats and fourteen year old girls has just spotted me with an extraordinarily beautiful woman fifteen years her junior.

  If she had a gun in her pocketbook, she would probably shoot me. A jury of women just like her would not only never convict her, they’d probably give her a medal and throw her a parade for the level of self-restraint she is exhibiting.

  Olga’s body language tells the world she has complete and total ownership of me. And she does at that moment.

  The balance of power has subtly shifted. My former fiancée is the one that exits. Immediately. These are my people in the room. Not hers. She’s the one, her and her chip shop owner father that are the intruders into this world of champagne drinking fading aristocracy.

  Margaret excuses herself quickly and follows the retreating back of my former fiancée. My former fiancée is her friend regardless what happened between the two of us. This has always been her stance. She will not take sides. This has been made clear to me and I’m certain to my former fiancée.

  Uncle Albert is back in my corner. Something must be done about that woman and her father. He’s ignored the issue too long. The fact that chip shop owner is going after Wold Hall is a bridge too far.

  Margaret comes back just as we are signalled to return to our seats.

  I’m given that look that tells me Margaret knows what I did that afternoon.

  I want to avoid all conversation with Margaret after this, but that will not be allowed. She corners me as Uncle Albert and Cousin Harry are sent to fetch the coats and Olga is in the ladies room with Aunt Maisie. I should have gone to the men’s room to hide. But that’s just weird.

  Before she starts, I stop her.

  It just happened.

  She knows. Shit happens. Whatever. If my former fiancée hadn’t been in Beijing it probably would have happened sooner. This is how relationships finally die. There is that one final screw just to get the residual feelings out and into the cosmos.

  Is that what my former fiancée said?

  Nope. She said she thinks I’ve been working out. Apparently I’m looking pretty good. I’m still an asshole, but one with amazing abs. Have I started waxing?

  Cousin Margaret gives me a visual once over.

  Stop it. I laugh loudly. She’s a very bad girl.

  Of course she is. On the plus side, all the potentially awkward encounters have been handled in advance of her wedding. Because, if we’re being totally honest, that’s all that really matters at the moment.

  I kiss her cheek. She’s my favouritecousin. Just don’t tell Harry.

  8 My Unconquerable Soul

  We return to the hotel. The room with it’s over abundance of flowers and chilled champagne. Because this is what makes Valentine’s Day special. Creating memories. Not just letting them happen. I’m getting this on an intellectual level.

  I can’t say that I wholly understand Olga and her motivations. I’m not certain she gets it either. But that’s not the point. Society and the media have invented Valentine’s Day just as much as Christmas, Halloween, and Saint Patrick’s Day are creations. That doesn’t make a
ny of these days any less worthy of marking on the calendar.

  I’ve enjoyed myself. I feel more romantically inclined towards Olga than I ever have before. More than sexually attracted–something deeper. Maybe it isn’t totally genuine; maybe these feelings are as manufactured as the candy hearts with the cloying messages. But I feel the romance. I don’t find the room with the petals on the bed and the fresh bottle of champagne chilling in the bucket as staged as I did previously.

  Maybe I didn’t do everything I could have done to romance my former fiancée, but I don’t recall her every pushing me to make this sort of effort. I may not have surprised her with wine and roses, but the reverse is also true. Never once did this woman who planned everything to the point there was no room for spontaneity to exist surprise me with a hotel room a stone’s throw from our apartment and a bed full of rose petals. She was just as capable as I was of making the first move. And she never did.

  As silly and superficial as Ravel on the stereo is, it is thoughtful. Olga put a lot of thought and planning into the evening. And as I do my part, that being opening the champagne, lighting the no less than thirty candles she’s scattered around the place, and in general waiting impatiently for her to make her appearance, I am touched. I’m also getting deeper and deeper into the spirit of what Valentine’s Day is supposed to mean rather than what it has become under the thumb of the greeting card industry. A day to be romantic and in love.

  And I am. In love. I won’t admit it out loud or to her, but I am in love. I know this as I’ve known it for a long time. Because I’m in love I let myself fall into the moment. Not even I can remain unmoved.

  The candlelight is gentle on my eyes. The music is just right. I find the strawberries dipped in chocolate a bit much, but the cinnamon hearts are nice. Add to that Olga looking positively adorable in a virginal white nighty that stays on her all of about two minutes and I’m a fan of Valentine’s Day.

  We roll around on the bed covered in rose petals. We make love like a couple in love. Kisses cover my torso as she inches down my body. My underwear is discarded over the side of the bed. Her mouth inches over my shaft as her tongue does that thing that it does so well.

  I’m allowed a few minutes of this before I reach for the condoms. That moment has arrived.

  She stops me. She's on birth control. We don't need to use condoms if I don't want to. It'll be like we're boyfriend and girlfriend. She won't get pregnant.

  My head understands that this is a bad decision to make when in bed with a woman that I'm about to enter. I know this is not the moment to make this decision. I make a feeble attempt to come to an understanding with her. I don't ask if she's having sex with anyone else. Dumb question. I do ask if she's having sex without condoms with anyone else.

  No one. She's as clean as I am. She was just at The Doctor a couple of days earlier for her monthly.

  I truly want to believe her. So I do.

  She doesn’t ask me if I’m having sex without condoms without anyone else. She makes this assumption about me that she shouldn’t. I haven’t had sex with anyone without using a condom except of course for my former fiancée just a few hours earlier. I don’t know if either of us thought about using a condom. We’d never used condoms after those first few days together.

  But to tell Olga this would be to tell her that I had sex with my former fiancée a few hours earlier. I am a bad man. I am an irresponsible bad man.

  So I tell her the truth. I never used condoms with my former fiancée.

  Did I have sex with my former fiancée that afternoon?

  Yes. It just happened. I think it was just one of those things that happen after people breakup.

  She sort of figured that happened based on the way we reacted when we saw each other. Is it over now?

  It’s really over now.

  We don’t have to use condoms as long as I’m done with my former fiancée.

  I’m done with her.

  Is this a stupid thing? Yes. Do I know it at the time? I do. Do I still have unprotected sex with Olga? Yes. Call what we do what I will, end of the day we're a couple of prostitutes. We have sex for money. Is this idiotic and dangerous? Absolutely. But I do it.

  Something else happens. Mentally. Emotionally. I'm not sure. I want to trust her. I need the intimacy. I need to have someone in my life that I trust implicitly with my body. Someone that can touch me and know me like no one else is allowed to. I understand what she wants from me and it’s what I want from her. Someone I can be me with down to the most basic level.

  When I'm done I kiss her. Deeply and slowly.

  Again she tells me she loves me.

  I kiss her rather than respond. I cannot say the words despite the fact I feel them. I need to hold something back.

  Do something romantic.

  What I just did and was pretty romantic.

  Do something really romantic.

  What counts in her mind as really romantic that will not involve me having to get out of bed?

  Poems are romantic.

  Fair enough. Poems are romantic.

  What poems do I know?

  Good question. Let’s see–how about this…

  When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

  I all alone beweep my outcast state

  And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

  And look upon myself and curse my fate,

  Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

  Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

  Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

  With what I most enjoy contented least…

  Stop! That’s awful!

  What’s wrong with that? It’s a poem. Actually it’s a sonnet, but I’m not going to pick nits.

  It’s not very romantic. It’s kind of depressing.

  It gets better.

  Am I sure?

  I’m sure.

  Okay.

  Where was I?

  Something something not being content.

  Right…

  With what I most enjoy contented least;

  Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

  Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

  Like to the lark at break of day arising

  From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

  For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

  She doesn’t get it. How is that supposed to be romantic?

  Okay–so the man is really unhappy because his life is shit. But then when he thinks of the woman he loves he remembers that despite it all he has everything because he has her love and he’d rather have that than the wealth of kings.

  This is more like it! This is what she’s been saying all along! Did I write that?

  No sweetheart. I didn’t write it. I learned it in school.

  Do I remember when she told my Uncle Albert and Aunt Maisie that she’d really like to go to university?

  I remember that.

  That wasn’t a lie. She’d like to do that. Would I like her more if she went to university?

  I like her just fine the way she is. (Yes–I would really like it if she had a bit more substance to go along with the beauty. Does this make me an asshole? Probably. There are just times I wish she got what I was saying and that I didn’t have to explain it. For certain I would appreciate her knowing I did not write Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXIX. The one thing I could never fault my former fiancée for was that fact that she was not only educated, but that she was well educated. I’m an asshole.)

  I could go to work for her father. She could go to university. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  Yes. But I’m not going to go work for her father. We’ve already discussed this.

  She thinks I should change my mind. Not everything her father does is illegal.

  I’m not going to go work for her father.

  She doesn’t want to talk about it.

&
nbsp; Good. Neither do I.

  Tell her another poem.

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

  I love thee to the level of everyday's

  Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

  I love thee with the passion put to use

  In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

  With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

  Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after death.

  That’s nice. Did I write that one?

  No sweetheart. That was Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  Do I know any without the thees and the thous?

  Uh sure.

  My love is like a red, red rose,

  That is newly sprung in June.

  My love is like the melody,

  That is sweetly played in tune.

  As fair are you, my lovely Olga,

  So deep in love am I,

  And I will love you still, my Dear,

  Till all the seas go dry.

  Till all the seas go dry, my Dear,

  And the rocks melt with the sun

  I will love you still, my Dear,

  While the sands of life shall run.

  And fare you well, my only Love,

  And fare you well a while!

  And I will come again, my Love,

  Although it were ten thousand mile!

  That’s much better.

  So pleased she approves.

  I didn’t write that one either?

  No. Robert Burns.

  Is he dead or alive?

  He’s quite dead.

  Do I know another?

  Yes. They’re practically engraved on my brain.

  Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

  Thou art more lovely and more temperate;