Olivia

by Donna Sturgeon

  No one, that’s who.

  “So do you want to see my proof or not?” Izzie asked when they finally backed out of the driveway and headed for Riverwalk.

  “Proof about what?”

  “Proof that George is not now, nor has he ever been, gay,” Izzie said.

  “Fine.” Olivia sighed. “Whatever. Just show me your proof and then shut the hell up about it forever.”

  Izzie reached back into the backseat and lifted a four-inch thick, three-ring binder up from the floor. She plopped it onto Olivia’s lap, “Everything you ever wanted to know but were too afraid to ask about George Gregory Valish.”

  The binder weighed close to ten pounds and was bulging at the seams, stuffed with notes, pictures, computer print-offs, restaurant napkins, newspaper clippings, legal documents and sports memorabilia. Olivia’s dear friend Izzie had turned stalker while she wasn’t paying attention.

  Olivia sifted through the papers, trying to make sense of the mess. “Where in the world did you get all this stuff?”

  “Oh, here and there,” Izzie said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  “Here and there?” Olivia asked. “You seriously expect me to believe you just happened across George’s ACT Prep test?”

  “Uh…”

  “Or his eighth-grade lunch card?”

  “Um…”

  “Or his passport? His actual passport?”

  “I… uh…”

  “Or his… holy shit, Iz! How the hell did you get his baby tooth?”

  “Well… you see, Liv…” Izzie stuttered and stopped.

  “Spill it!”

  “His mom likes to talk—a lot! And she’s a bit of a pack rat, you see,” Izzie started, but Olivia cut her off again.

  “You talked to his mom?”

  “Among other people,” Izzie said.

  “What other people?”

  Izzie shrugged. “Just people.”

  “Did you tell his mom why you were asking all of this?”

  “Of course not!” Izzie gasped. “What do you take me for? An idiot? I didn’t out George to his mom! Jeez, Liv! Give me a little credit here!”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but seriously, Iz, you’ve gone a little nutso here! What exactly did you say to her?”

  “I told her I was a reporter for the Juliette Gazette and that we were doing a feature on him and Kitty’s as part of our ‘Out and About’ section of the paper,” Izzie said with another of her smug smiles. “And once I got her talking she just kept going. And going. And going… Seriously, Liv, I feel sorry for George. The woman’s a chatterbox. I can’t imagine having to sit through Thanksgiving dinner with her.”

  “You’re not a reporter.”

  “No, but I should be. I think I missed my true calling. I’m really, really good at this. I should be a private investigator. Ooh! Or a bounty hunter! Then I could carry a gun. Could you imagine—”

  “Just tell me what you know,” Olivia said in disgust, and then gagged in real disgust when she happened across a doctor’s report on George’s stool sample. Olivia hoped it wasn’t recent—or one that Izzie had collected by herself. Eww!

  “George Gregory Valish was born twenty-seven years ago, at eight-‘o-four on a snowy, December morning,” Izzie began.

  Olivia held up her hand and immediately cut her off. “Give me the condensed version, Iz.”

  “Ok, fine. George has only dated girls since his first official date in seventh grade with Tracy Morris. He was serious with a girl named Lisa Taylor all through junior and senior year until they broke up when she went out-of-state for college and he stayed in Omaha. He went to UNO and dated off and on, but no one seriously, until his junior year again when he hooked up with Mia Easton. They were very serious, and even got engaged. He graduated college with high honors and a degree in business something-or-other… I don’t remember what exactly. You’ll have to look… It’s in there somewhere…”

  “Iz,” Olivia protested.

  “Any-who, he got a job with Mutual of Omaha and worked his way up the corporate ladder really fast. He was their rising star according to his performance reviews. And then, according to Mia’s former roommate, George caught Mia cheating on him with his best friend, Jason, and it destroyed him. He broke up with her and kinda laid low for awhile, and when this whole thing with Kitty’s came up he jumped at the chance to make a new life for himself. And now he’s with Yvette. So, you see, not gay.”

  Olivia flipped through the binder as Izzie drove through Juliette toward the park. There were pictures of George as a baby, and George as a young boy, and George as a young man, and in every picture he was always George, the George she knew and loved. He was always good looking. He always had an easy smile and honest and open eyes that made you feel comfortable with him.

  She missed George. Really missed him. She missed his friendship and his laugh, his easy-going way, and the way she felt when she was around him.

  Olivia closed the binder and clutched it to her chest. “Why do you think he lied to me?”

  “I don’t know, Liv… Maybe you came on too strong?”

  Olivia snorted out a laugh. Of course she came on too strong. She always came on too strong. It was the only way she knew how to come on. A life of subtlety was for people without passion—and if there was one thing Olivia was not, it was passionless.

  Izzie pulled into the park and immediately slammed on her breaks. “Oh, shit!”

  “What?” Olivia cried out in automatic, unassigned panic.

  Izzie pointed out the windshield, and Olivia followed her finger to where Alma was making a break for it across the lawn of Riverwalk in the direction of the teeter-totters and Eugene’s perfect spot.

  “Shit!” The binder went flying out of her hands. She wrestled with the door handle, but Izzie had the damn child-lock engaged. “Let me out! We don’t have time to park.”

  Izzie unlocked the door and Olivia hopped out. She banged her hand on the trunk, and as soon as Izzie popped it open Olivia grabbed the top lawn chair, hurtled the parking lot ropes and ran like hell.

  Her smoker-lungs started to burn after twenty yards, but she pushed on. She shoved old ladies and little kids out of her way. She jumped over little dogs and ducked under Frisbees, around trees and through spider webs. She had a cramp in her ass, and her boobs hurt from the relentless, unsupported, out-of-synch bouncing, but she ignored it all, and ran!

  Alma saw Olivia coming across the grassy knoll and started to move her fat, little legs faster. Her more cushion-for-the-pushin’ ass jiggled, and a determined sneer set on her face as she pumped her arms and cut around the sandbox. Olivia growled in determination and tucked her lawn chair tighter under her arm as the soundtrack of her crazy, real-life movie cranked out Molly Hatchet and a little “Flirtin’ with Disaster,” kicking her into high-gear.

  As she came upon the bike trail, a man on roller-blades was shuffling his iPod, not paying attention, and barreling down fast on the right. Olivia didn’t have the luxury of slowing down or changing direction, so she went for it, running across the trail with her eyes squeezed tight and her body braced for impact. She cleared the trail without injury, but the roller-blader was startled by her sudden appearance. His arms started to pinwheel in a desperate fight to keep his balance. She kept running even as she heard the crash of athlete against blacktop and the shout of pain when the poor guy lost his battle for balance and landed in a hard tumble.

  “Sorry!” she cried out over her shoulder in apology but kept going.

  Alma was chugging on empty but closing in on the prize. She was almost to the outer edge of the bank of teeter-totters when Olivia caught up and tried to pass her. Alma threw a surprise hip-check, sending Olivia sprawling. Alma laughed and kept going.

  “Bitch,” Olivia muttered, to both Alma and karma, and scooped up her lawn chair as she sprang to her feet.

  Alma was rounding the north-northwest corner and just starting to count out paces, but Olivia had it in the bag. She’d reser
ved Eugene’s perfect spot every year since she was ten and she could tightrope-step-count like a mad woman. She rammed her left heel into the landscape timber to mark the starting point, slammed her right heel into her left toes, and called out, “One!”

  “… twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine…,” Alma counted to herself as she glanced over her shoulder to check Olivia’s progress. She heel-to-toed faster as her eyes glazed over in a crazed panic.

  “… fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…,” Olivia counted as loud as she could to try to throw Alma off her count. It wouldn’t be easy. Alma was a professional counter, after all. She counted money all day and minutes all night.

  “… seventy-two, seventy-three…” Alma huffed.

  “… sixty-eight, sixty-nine…” Olivia puffed.

  Olivia was catching up and breathing down Alma’s neck. Alma spread her arms out to keep Olivia from passing. Olivia counted louder, and Alma transferred her count to her head, mouthing the words. And then Olivia was right on Alma’s heels and pressing into her squishy body.

  “… one-o-four, one-o-five… give it up bitch…. One-ten…,” Olivia counted right in Alma’s ear. She was breathing heavy from the effort, but she was determined to win this year.

  Alma flipped her off and kept heel-to-toeing. Olivia watched Alma’s feet for thirty paces or so as she calculated speed and distance, and then she made her move. She leapt wide to the right, leapt forward and leapt wide left and passed the fat cow without even losing count. Ha!

  Olivia picked up the pace and left Alma in the dust.

  Another twenty steps or so later, Olivia finally looked away from her feet to scope out her destination. What she saw made her stop dead in her tracks. She panted and tried to catch her breath and… Oh, for crying out loud! Seriously?

  A heartbeat later, Alma slammed into Olivia with an audible oof!, sending Olivia sprawling face-first into the grass.

  Eugene stood up from his lawn chair—the one perched square in the center of his perfect spot—and shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked over to see what the commotion was. A Camel dangled from his lips, Chester snoozed at his feet. He watched Olivia get to her feet and collect her lawn chair, then pushed his glasses up his boney nose with his boney finger, and sat his boney ass back down. His hand dipped into his bag of Cheez Doodles and Olivia let out a long, woeful wail of frustration. She pushed Alma out of her way and stomped over to Eugene.

  “You could have called me, you know!” She slammed her lawn chair down next to his. For fifteen years she had been doing this for him—fifteen years—and fighting Alma for the spot for the past thirteen. It was tradition, damn it!

  “Oh,” was all he said between crunches.

  Olivia ground her teeth together, bit back a sarcastic retort, turned on her heel, and stormed off in search of Izzie and a gun to shoot herself with.

  Chapter Seven

  Three days later, at sunset, Olivia returned to her lawn chair next to Eugene. He was in the exact same position he had been when she’d left him, smoking a Camel, eating a Cheez Doodle, with Chester sleeping at his feet. Olivia had to look at him twice to make sure he had changed clothes and hadn’t been sitting there the entire three days. He hadn’t, but she wouldn’t have put it past him. Eugene could sit and wait better than anyone Olivia knew. She grew fidgety after ten minutes, but Eugene… Eugene loved to sit and wait. He had nothing better to do.

  Whereas Olivia was perpetually late, Eugene was notoriously early for everything, even when he didn’t have an appointment. When Olivia was a child, the Sack ‘n Save grocery store on Vancouver would close overnight from eleven p.m. until five a.m. Eugene would leave Olivia sleeping in her bed and show up at four a.m. to sit on the bench outside the front doors and wait for it to open. Rain or shine, wind or hail, Eugene was their first customer, every single day. The day the grocery store switched their hours to twenty-four/seven Eugene started doing his grocery shopping at two in the afternoon.

  If he did have an appointment, he got there really early. If, for instance, Olivia had a doctor’s appointment at three in the afternoon, Eugene would take her to the office as soon as they opened. Same with the dentist or the hairdresser, or pretty much anywhere, and he declined their offers to fit him in earlier, which, starting at around the age of three, royally pissed off Olivia. It was probably why she harbored so much rage. At the ripe old age of eight, she got so irate after sitting in a waiting room for seven hours she exerted her independence and refused to allow Eugene to accompany her anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances, ever again. It was the very last time Olivia was on time for anything in her life.

  “How long have you been here?” Olivia sat her cooler of beer next to Eugene’s cooler of Coke and lit up a Marlboro.

  “Awhile,” he answered, his boney knee bouncing away. The vibration of his body knocked the long ash off his Camel. He took the last drag then pinched the cigarette out between his thumb and forefinger with a tight roll, and stuck the butt into the pocket of his grey one-pocket tee. He immediately lit another cigarette and kept it dangling from his lips.

  They sat side-by-side and drank and smoked and waited for the fireworks. Eugene ate his Cheez Doodles and Olivia chewed on cold, soggy fries she had picked up from McDonald’s earlier in the day and forgot to eat. Occasionally people stopped and said hello as they made their way across the park to their own personal perfect spots, and Olivia returned the greetings. Eugene didn’t, but no one seemed to mind. Everyone knew Eugene said hello in his own way.

  Izzie and John showed up ten minutes before the start of the fireworks, and Chester awoke from his slumber to sniff Izzie’s crotch. For as long as Chester had been alive, he had been obsessed with the smell of Izzie’s crotch. It annoyed Izzie to no end. Like always, she shooed him away gently a few times, then not so gently, then she forcibly shoved him away, but he kept coming back. Eventually, his persistence won out. She gave up and watched the fireworks with the dog’s snout wedged firmly between her legs.

  As soon as the explosions started, Eugene, Izzie, and John kept their eyes to the sky, but Olivia didn’t watch the fireworks. She watched Eugene. His face was like a statue as he took in the sights and sounds and the smell of sulfur. The lawn was full of ooh’s and aah’s from the crowd and cries of delight from the youngest ones.

  The VFW put on the display every year. It used to be a real dud, in Olivia’s opinion, until they acquired their newest and youngest member, Leon Felts. Leon had more than just a pyrotechnics license. He had vision. And an affinity for blowing shit up. Ever since he became the mastermind behind the display, the show was choreographed with music and the fireworks went off in time to the song, like in the bigger cities with more money. Sometimes they went up one at a time, sometimes in sets of three or four, sometimes the ground rattled with explosions, sometimes only the sky.

  Leon stretched the VFW’s measly budget like a rubber band, and came up with some truly amazing displays, but Olivia didn’t watch any of it. Through it all, Olivia watched the colors dance across Eugene’s face and the light reflect in his glasses, and she waited. Finally, sandwiched between Lee Greenwood and Tchaikovsky, Leon played Death Cab for Cutie’s “The New Year.” Even though it was the wrong holiday, it was the perfect song for fireworks, and Olivia finally got what she had been waiting for.

  Eugene smiled.

  Right after the second round of heavy, solid beats dictated the need for ear-numbing, retina-blinding, ground explosions, the calm melody that followed filled the sky with a gentle rain of sparks, and the corner’s of Eugene’s mouth curved up. Olivia waited for it and watched and, as anticipated, when the heavy solid beats exploded in light again, Eugene’s face lit up in a thousand-watt smile. Olivia’s heart soared and her own face smiled as she watched her father truly, fully and completely enjoy that single moment in time.

  It was over as quickly as it came, but that one smile was all Olivia needed to know Eugene was happy—happy with her, happy with his life, happ
y with himself, happy with whatever crap came their way. As long as Eugene smiled, everything would be ok. After the smile, Olivia watched the rest of the fireworks show. There would only ever be the one smile. Watching for another one would be greedy.

  As soon as the fireworks were over, Eugene folded up his chair, picked up his cooler, whistled for Chester to remove his snout from Izzie’s crotch, and headed for home. He didn’t say goodbye to Olivia and she didn’t say goodbye to him. She’d see him later. He’d probably be sitting on her porch, smoking a Camel and waiting for her when she got home. She’d say goodnight then.

  Izzie wiped at the puddle of dog slobber soaking her jeans. “Fork in the Road is playing in the beer garden tonight. You want to head over there with me and John?”

  “Isn’t there anything else going on tonight?” Olivia asked.

  “No,” Izzie and John answered as one, and then laughed.

  Olivia crooked her eyebrow. “You guys need to spend some time apart.”

  “But why would I want to?” Izzie slipped up onto her tiptoes and nuzzled John’s nose. “He’s my widdle snuggy wuggy.”

  John nuzzled Izzie back and Olivia gagged. Their words and their actions were enough to initiate the upchuck reflex, but imagine the stereotypical, cookie-cutter blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty pageant princess nuzzling noses with the equally stereotypical Harley-riding, tattoo-loving, bald-headed, goatee-to-his-knees-wearing garbage collector, and you’d gag too. Either that or piss your pants laughing.

  Their nose nuzzling turned to kissing, which, in turn, turned to groping. It wouldn’t be long before they were making out on the teeter-totters, so Olivia wandered over to the beer garden by herself. They’d catch up eventually, if they didn’t get arrested for fornicating in public.

  A good-size crowd had already gathered in the chain-linked, concrete pen that had always reminded Olivia more of an over-sized dog kennel than a garden. Her dormant, loner-genes kicked in as she looked over the throng of sweaty people, and she was about to turn around and head for home when she caught sight of George.