Hating Olivia: A Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

were similar characterless, garden-variety apartment buildings. She’d moved in just recently, she said, while giving me the tour. The place had been freshly painted. Light and airy, it was a brilliant and startling contrast to my shithole. The predominant notes were white and cerulean. It was sparsely and tastefully furnished, with lots of wicker everywhere. A swag lamp with a basketball-sized frosty dome dangled from the ceiling in the breakfast nook, and a big peacock chair sat majestically in a corner of the small living room. There were framed reproductions of Impressionist paintings on the walls, including a large poster of The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. Fluffy throw rugs and miniature straw mats were strewn across the hardwood floors; the total effect was a pleasant admixture of the Oriental and the American Southwest.
    I wondered vaguely how she could afford such relatively upscale digs, but it was none of my business so I didn’t ask.
    She popped open a flask of Italian red and offered me a glass.
    “So—did you get in trouble with Edward on account of me?”
    No, it was okay, she thought she’d managed to straighten everything out. With drink in hand I watched while she deftly whipped up a heap of pasta, garlic bread, and sweet bay scallops. Then she ignited a pair of long brand-new tapers and we ate by candlelight. Very romantic. It was the best meal I’d had in months. I was beginning to feel like one of the living again.
    My cock revived, too. Livy—which was what she preferred tobe called—had legs straight out of a Vargas illustration. In sheer black stockings they were nothing short of magnificent. Her preference for dark clothing, rather than creating an impression of mournfulness, lent itself to a steely bohemian sexuality. I didn’t know what was hidden beneath her dress, but I could venture a good guess. My mouth watered at the thought.
    Livy pushed the dishes aside when we were through eating, and we went on working the red. Words flowed as easily as the booze, but we were still only feeling each other out. Beneath the sounds we made was an unstated question that held fast in the deep current like a big, powerful fish: How far were we willing to take this thing? Were we ready to throw in our lot with each other no matter what?
    I peeled open a second bottle. In a pleasant haze we moved to the small couch in the living room. She produced a joint from somewhere and I fired it up. I was drunk and ready for anything, ready to go anywhere the night took us. Even as it was happening, I realized it was one of life’s nonpareil moments—a man and a woman with a few drinks and good food in their bellies, locked away from the world, talking about the most important things under the sun. After dimming the light, I launched into a disquisition on literature, philosophy, religion, music, film, even love itself (as if I knew what I was talking about) … the entire gamut. For a twenty-three-year-old, she chipped in more than enough, too, but she also possessed the extraordinary ability of allowing me to fill the atmosphere with the din of my own ludicrous grandiloquence. That’s a great facility women have—they understand how important it is for a guy to hear himself blab.
    “Let me tell you about a very rare experience of pure revelation, Livy. Now don’t laugh, okay …? It was just a few years ago…. At the time I was working the assembly line of a breweryin a coal-mining town outside of Pittsburgh. I’d recently discovered Dostoyevsky, and at night after my shift I plowed straight through Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and I was maybe halfway through Demons. … Now on my day off I happened to be walking beneath the Gothic arches of an old Benedictine monastery in the hills nearby, where I sometimes went for peace and quiet from the infernal racket of bottles and cans dropping into cases, when all of a sudden— kaboom! Here! Now! This was it! The moment of moments! It comes to me in a