Olivia

by Genevieve McCluer

  She rises, walks around the table, and gives me a quick peck on the lips before taking her seat again. “Now’s just a terrible time for it.”

  “Personally, I’d rather have romance before I die than after. I guess.” That didn’t sound near nihilistic enough. Is my depressive episode ending early? Am I broken? I don’t like it.

  “Can we talk about it more tonight? I know it’s not like it used to be, but it still feels strange being so blatant in public.”

  “You’re the one who kissed me.”

  “Forgive an old fogey her occasional eccentricities.”

  “You better be really good in bed.”

  “I am.”

  My cheeks only slightly heat, and we make it through the rest of breakfast without any drama. Their bacon is as good as I remember, and the omelets and milkshake are absolutely perfect. I only have to make it through another day of work with Olivia staring over my shoulder the entire time before we can have that conversation. Wow. That sounds like hell.

  * * *

  I collapse onto my couch, letting Ollie carry my bag. Super-strong girlfriends are useful that way. Wait, I mean dates. She’s not my girlfriend. “Whose bright idea was it to put the centaur in the MRI machine?”

  “Yours.”

  “It would’ve been easy if he’d held still.”

  “Of course,” she says placatingly, setting my bag on the counter and giving some grapes and food mix to Harvey. “Did you miss us?”

  “Miss us,” he echoes, nuzzling her finger and grabbing a grape right out of her hand. “Grape!”

  “That’s right.” She sits next to me, her fingers tapping a slow beat on her thigh. “So,” she begins, cutting herself short to stare at her bird, then me again.

  “You’re rusty at this.”

  “Incredibly.”

  I smirk. It’s nice being the one more accustomed to relationships for once. It’s only been five years since my last serious one ended. “I’m enjoying dating you.”

  “I am as well. You’re a very interesting woman.”

  “I’m not sure I deserve that.” I lean back, staring at my fridge, willing a beer to come meet me. It doesn’t work. I guess I’ll have this conversation sober. I do my best to ignore the pills in my jacket pocket that could help with that. “I’m sorry we’re both so terrible at this,” I add with a wry chuckle.

  “I’m not sure I’d be able to handle being with someone who wasn’t.”

  And that’s what we need to talk about. We can work our way up to it. I hesitantly reach out to her, meeting her eyes, searching for an answer to my unasked question. She doesn’t give one, but she doesn’t stop me either, so I drape my arm across her shoulders. “Is this too much?” I ask.

  I can see how badly she wants to leap out of her skin, but she grabs my elbow before I can pull away and leans her head against me. I don’t pull her closer, and she doesn’t reach for any further contact, but it’s something. “I’m such a coward,” she says.

  “No. You’re not. You’ve just been through more than anyone should ever have to go through.”

  With a heavy sigh, she nods, and leans back against my arm, her eyes half-lidded. It’s not exactly comfortable, but it’s nice. It’s the most intentional prolonged physical contact we’ve ever had. It reminds me of how good a kisser she is, but I don’t want to push for more. I don’t know why some things are harder than others, and I have absolutely no idea how to predict what would be which.

  After long enough without her response, I say, “I don’t want to put any pressure on you.” This sounds ridiculous. I have no idea what I’m doing.

  “It’s not that,” she insists. “I do want this.”

  “Want what?”

  “You,” she whispers. She turns to me, her cheek resting against my bicep. We both swallow audibly.

  It’s not every day you hear a fiend wants you, and they don’t mean for dinner. “Like you want me in bed, or you want me…” I trail off, finding a lump in my throat. Just what is she asking?

  Hesitantly, she reaches toward me, her fingers trembling as they brush my other shoulder. With a slight case of whiplash, I find her eyes mere inches from my own. God, I’d forgotten how beautiful they are. Scratch that first word. I’m working on it, I swear.

  “Ollie—”

  Her kiss silences me, our fingers intertwining. We kiss for so long that if I don’t take in some air soon, I may suffocate, and she pulls away, her eyes locked on the floor, her fingers beating out an erratic rhythm on the back of my hand. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “I think you’re pretty good at it.”

  She rolls her eyes but forces them to meet mine again. “I’ve not courted anyone since my late wife. I felt that I didn’t have the right to. Not after what I’d done.”

  “That wasn’t your fault.”

  She shrugs. Maybe someday, she’ll believe me. “I know. But I still made vows to her, before God, to share my life with her.”

  “She died. Even the Bible is okay with people taking new wives after the previous one dies.” And a bunch of awful things, but I won’t get into any of the fun things I learned taking my cynical asshole courses. I know one story that would be a more relevant anecdote. “Take Job. He took a new wife after everything God put him through, and it was treated as a good thing. Hell, it was what he deserved. It was giving him a good life for all he’d gone through.” And there were so many issues there. “Do the same for yourself. You’ve more than earned it.” Wait, am I saying she should marry me? “But like, dating. I’m not ready to rush into anything just yet. I’m not the U-Haul type.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Right. I’m dating a lesbian from before cars were even a thing. “Do you know what a U-Haul is?”

  “It’s like a moving van, right? I think I’ve seen them before.”

  “Well, there’s a classic joke. What does a lesbian bring on a first date?”

  She chuckles. “Oh. I get it. That does go with what I’ve heard, and what I’ve experienced from the handful of women I’ve been willing to fool around with.”

  “You gotta cut ’em loose.” Are we horrible people?

  “For once, I don’t want that.”

  Swallowing a new lump in my throat, I yearn yet again for that beer. I’m almost desperate enough to go get it, but I’d have to stop looking into her eyes, and I’m not sure I could handle that right now. “Then what do you want? I mean me, you already said that, but like, what? I’m not running off to marry you before you sail off to war.” I may have downloaded Othello to read while I was waiting for its villain to come murder me.

  Biting her lip in an adorably bashful smile, she leans back. “I’m going about this all wrong. How about I order you dinner? Maybe it’ll be easier to talk over food.”

  Part of me desperately wants to fight her. I need to insist that I want the answer now, that we can have the conversation and figure out what we want to be to each other, but most of me is a coward with commitment issues who hasn’t had pizza in a week. “I have a menu on the counter from a local place. They’re really good, and they deliver here.” Maybe all of me is a pizza-loving coward, and that romantic part is only my imagination. It’s certainly never been there before. Maybe I just feel like it should happen, or perhaps it’s the adrenaline and fear from knowing that I could die at any moment.

  While watching the beautiful woman in my kitchen order a couple pizzas and some breadsticks, however, I can’t even pretend that that’s true. I’m not a lovestruck teenager or anything so saccharine, but I like her, and I want her to be my…my…

  “Should be here in twenty minutes,” she announces, returning to the couch with a beer for me and a mug of warmed blood for her. “I put the kettle on. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I stare at my beer, scratching into the thin blue label with my thumb. Fuck it. “Be my girlfriend.”

  Her eyes widen, and she coughs up some blood, trying to catch her breath. That should be more
of a turnoff than it is. “What?”

  “I like you. A lot. I might die any day now, so it’s not like some long commitment. I want to be with you. Be my girlfriend.”

  She rubs a speck of red liquid off my cheek. I am trying very hard not to think about what it is and instead concentrate on her eyes. She nods.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. I want it too, although I think girlfriend is an incredibly childish term.”

  “Womanfriend?”

  She glares. “Partner.”

  Right. I shiver. Why is that word so much scarier? It should be less scary. Girlfriend only has two meanings; partner has dozens. We could be a law firm or going on a crime spree. It shouldn’t sound that serious, but it does. I do my best to stop myself from clamming up and nod. She did it first, so it seems a sufficient response. I want this. I know I do. Why the hell is it this terrifying?

  * * *

  Sleepy, full of pizza, and with a beautiful woman in my bed, I’m beginning to think that being her partner isn’t as scary as I thought it’d be. It’s not like we have to go antiquing or anything. I sigh, staring at her hair a couple feet from me. She tried to cuddle, and we made it a while, but it was still too much for her to sleep like that. I can’t blame her. I toss and turn too much to want to sleep in someone’s arms anyway.

  Harvey squawks from the other room. “Shut up,” I mutter under my breath. I don’t want to wake up Olivia. He squawks again. Why are parrots such jerks?

  Groaning, I drag myself from bed, wearing comfy flannel pajamas, to check on the noisy bird. I snatch my phone from its charger to avoid turning on any lights. We didn’t lock him in his cage, so I’m not sure where he is, but it only takes a minute to locate him. He seems almost frantic, flapping, jumping, flying, squawking, and singing.

  “Harvey?” I ask. Because of course, the bird can tell me what he wants. He’s totally smart enough for that.

  “Pretty,” he replies. I guess that’s gonna be my name forever. Or until one of us dies. I wonder who’ll go first? Parrots tend to live fifty to seventy years, so he’s getting up there, but I have a psychopath after me and a drug problem, so I’m probably well past my life expectancy. “Othello.”

  “No. You know she doesn’t like that.”

  “Moor. Moor.”

  I roll my eyes. “Did you want something, or are you just feeling playful tonight?” I think Ollie would kill me if I gave him some oxy, but it’d calm him down.

  “Othello.”

  “Okay. How about food. Do you want food? Carrot?”

  “Carrot. No. Othello.”

  Whatever. I grab a couple of the remaining canned carrots from the fridge and drop them in his dish. “I’m going to bed. Some of us have work in the morning.” With a final glare, I turn back to my bedroom and see movement in the corner of my eye. Everything goes black.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He’s Back

  I flee. I can still feel her blood pouring through me, caking my mouth, staining my hands. Guilt gnaws at me as I search for anyone else to blame. What have I become? Why would I do that to her? Why did she smell like food?

  I shake my head, trying to still my mind. I expect to feel my heart beating in my chest but only feel this strange silent emptiness. It’s like there’s nothing there. How appropriate. Kill my love, and I kill my heart.

  I have to turn myself in. I’ll not have Desdemona’s murder left unsolved, nor pretend that she vanished into the night. She deserves better than that. She’s the best woman I’ve ever known, and I’ll face my penance, no matter the cost. I did this, and I have to pay. Perhaps the executioner is free on the morrow.

  I find myself outside, the dark night doing little to dampen my senses. There doesn’t seem to be a soul around. Of course, Hector isn’t making his rounds. I’ll see him…Right, I suppose that Iago or Cassio will be the ones to see to that now. It seems unlikely that I’ll keep command from my cell or the hangman’s noose.

  In vain, I attempt to compose myself. In a nearby pond, I check my reflection to find it lacking. Truly, it is queer to stare into a reflective surface and find myself not there. What am I? I’d thought I’d gone mad, but it must be something more. No human could simply not be there. Perhaps I truly am the son of the devil, as I’ve heard a few of the greener recruits insist when they believe I’m not listening. I splash some water on my face in the hope of ridding myself of her blood. It washes her scent away, and I find myself yearning for that familiar presence. It’s as if she’s died all over again.

  The tears fall for a long while. I know I don’t deserve them. After what I did, I have no right to mourn her, and yet I can’t keep myself from doing so. I miss her.

  Steeling myself, I search for Cassio’s post. He’s normally on watch at this time of night, but only halfway there do I remember that I’d stripped him of his charge at Iago’s recommendation.

  He had been insistent that Desdemona had committed adultery, almost as if he wanted it to be true. Now, I know, I did smell him on her, but it wasn’t…I don’t know how to describe it. The mere fact that I could identify a person by their smell brings me into a realm of language that I lack the words for. To put it crudely, she didn’t smell like sex. He’d been to talk to her, as he had many times since I had him stripped of his title. He only wanted her help because she’s the one person good enough to have believed him at his word, and for that crime, I murdered her.

  The connection between the events finally begins to dawn on me. Zounds, am I slow! I cross myself, my mind racing. It burns. I deserve this.

  But it isn’t all my fault. I dealt the killing blow, this is true. I’m no better than Brutus, but I shall take my Cassius with me. I shall turn myself in, I shall face the executioner—I believe it’s Marco of Venice, today—but I shall be Iago’s executioner first. I shall end him for the lies he spread and the tangled web he weaved. I’ll listen to no more of his words, for his mouth is that of a serpent, spreading nothing but lies. The time for discussion is well past. My blade is not at my side, but the armory is near, and none would dare stop their commander, even in my current state.

  Anon, I’m equipped for battle against whatever beast my dear friend may be. Perhaps he’s the monster he made me, or perhaps he’s simply a witch. I suspect that without his head, the difference shall be one of speculation rather than of any practicality.

  My fist thunders against his door. I shall have my satisfaction, and it will not wait for dawn. Emilia answers, uttering some cry of surprise and dismay as I shove past her, my weapon already drawn as I search for the merciless bastard who has taken everything from me.

  “Othello?” he asks, scrambling from his bed, wrapping a robe about himself. As if this fiend has any modesty left to preserve.

  “Iago,” I growl back.

  “What is this about?” he asks, his eyes locked behind me. He thinks he can protect Emilia from the truth. I’m afraid the truth comes for us all in time, and it is never sweet. I take a swing at his head, the blade moving faster than I thought possible. Perhaps this curse can be a gift in ending him. It’s not only my senses. I’m stronger. Faster. Yes, I can use this.

  A wicked smile flits across his face for the barest moment as he leaps away from me. “Emilia, get out of here!” he bellows. “I’ll see to it that this freak does you no harm.” I remember now. I remember him biting me. He did make me into this. Why? Now I recall that look of revulsion on his face. He’d come to call on me the previous night, and Desdemona had answered the door before I’d finished making myself decent. He found out my secret. He’d already found it agonizing being commanded by a Moor, but a Moorish woman living in sin with another woman? I suppose I should have no doubt as to why he’d attempt this treachery.

  “A freak, am I?” I ask, not even bothering to deepen my voice. He knows the truth, and I’ll soon hang. It hardly matters now. “What does that make you?” I ask, rage carrying my words with enough intensity that he recoils in fear. I was always the better fighter. I s
uspect that has not changed.

  “Your better,” he bellows back. He reaches for something behind him and comes out with a saber. “Oh, to think I groveled at your feet these past years. As if serving a blackamoor wasn’t enough, you kept this treachery from me? Was I not your dearest friend, Othello? Did I not serve you faithfully all these years, Othello? When was my turn? When was it my time to stop being at the heel of a roach and have the chance to prove myself?” He steps toward me, managing a lunge that would have taken off an ordinary man’s arm. I deflect it without the slightest effort as I circle around, putting the wall to my back and both Iago and Emilia before me. She didn’t run.

  “Thereby leaves any question I may have had. It’s because of you that Desdemona is dead! You will pay for it.”

  “Ms. Desdemona is dead?” Emilia cries, looking between our maddened eyes for any semblance of truth. “But how? She can’t be.”

  “Her freak of a husband—or is it wife—made sure of that.”

  “He deceived me for months and performed some dark magic on me. What have you done to me, Iago?” I told myself it didn’t matter, that I didn’t need to know, but it’s all so strange. I just want answers.

  “I’ve elevated you far beyond your station. Now, if you’ll serve me, we can go back to our proper places, provided that you remember yours.”

  “I do.”

  He smirks, straightening, his weapon lowering. He thinks so little of me? That I would join the man who did this? Who led me to kill the only woman I’ll ever love? I remember my place. The gallows. Right after him. I take one step toward him, lowering my own blade, and dash forward, bringing it up from belly to throat. It splits him open, covering us both in a shower of blood. I’ve done it. I’ve avenged you, Desdemona.

  He stares down in shock. Blood loss shall claim him soon, and Emilia will run and tell the constables. It’s better this way. “Basely done, Othello.” What? He steps away, sauntering slowly but purposefully to Emilia as she looks on in shock. “You really are no better than your animal nature. I don’t know why they thought you a suitable governor.” His mouth opens wide, fangs protruding from his gums as he sets upon his wife, holding her in place, blood pouring down, staining her dress. After a few weak whimpers, the only sound in the room is the greedy gulps of the wicked monster. We’re the same now, aren’t we? Wife killers. Monsters. Damned.