Hating Olivia: A Love Story (23 page)
“I want bot’ a you outta here! You got a problem wit one ‘nother, you take it out back to the parkin’ lot!” What the fuck was going down here?
I was completely in the dark as to what it might be, but as low as I was, I wasn’t about to let some two-bit barfly make a fool
of me in public. Being humiliated by Livy was one thing. This was something else altogether—a man-to-man thing, all testosterone. So we took it on out there, winging at each other like a pair of common drunks while the staff and some of the customers shouted encouragement at both of us—but mostly him, it seemed to me.
“Knock him on his ass, Siffuzzi!” “Squash the motherfucker!”
“Don’t let that bastard get the best of you, Sifooze!”
Despite the fact that I’d let myself go over the past few years, I was always something of an athlete. I’d played baseball, hoops, diddled around in the squared circle. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on me. No way this Neanderthal dildo was going to get the best of me. All my pent-up rage was like raw electricity in my arms and legs. I was out of my mind with fury.
I tried to find fast openings for my fists since I figured I was the less drunk of the two of us. Here and there I landed—near the liver, on the top of Siffuzzi’s rock of a skull, on the bridge of his nose. Although he was taller than I was, he was softer and punched like a cunt, wild and undisciplined, with his thumbs tucked into his fists. But no matter what I threw at him, he kept coming at me like an enraged pit bull.
“I’m gonna kill you, asshole!”
“Fuck you! You fight like a little girl!”
I grabbed Siffuzzi and slammed him into the rear fender of a Cadillac. Somehow he managed to trip me on the rebound and I went sprawling face-first onto the black asphalt. He jumped me down there and we rolled under a Dumpster, whaling away until someone cried, “A siren! Somebody called the cops!”
The whole thing was ridiculous and absurd. Why did this thug hate me?
And by the way—where the fuck was Livy?
I don’t
know how, but I managed to jump into the car and beat it before the pigs arrived on the scene and started asking questions….
I couldn’t even remember driving back to the apartment. When I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I shuddered. I was a wreck—torn clothes, two black eyes, jagged cuts and ugly bruises and abrasions everywhere. Both my hands felt broken. All my limbs were swollen to distortion. I stumbled into the shower and stayed there for an hour. Livy must have gotten a lift home from one of her little friends. She tried to fix me up with hydrogen peroxide and Band-Aids. When I lowered myself gingerly to the sofa, I thought I’d never move again. My only consolation was knowing I got the best of my adversary. If I felt like a cut of flank steak, Siffuzzi had to feel like ground shit.
“Where the hell were you when all this was going on?” I mumbled to Livy through puffy lips and a sore jaw.
“I have a job to tend to, or did you forget about that? I don’t have the leisure to camp out in the parking lot and watch you act like a child.”
Livy’s lack of sympathy puzzled me. It didn’t dawn on me until early in the morning when I lay wide awake on that sofa like a giant throbbing wound that there was probably a good reason for it—she was either about to have a thing going—or already
had
a thing going—with that third-rate Mafioso wannabe. What other explanation could there be for the ambush? It had never even occurred to me that Siffuzzi was her
type,
with his pudgy belly and short hair.
Then I thought of Michael Goldfarb, and realized I should have known better.
With bandages on my hands and a bottle of Advil at my side I put the finishing touches on
The Old Cossack.
When the completed 350-page manuscript of my first novel was sitting on the desk in front of me, I sat back and treated myself to a victory cigarette and can of beer. For the first time in years I felt a sense of real accomplishment. And for better or worse, success or failure aside—and I really had no clue which I was drinking to—I couldn’t believe that I’d actually pulled it off. Frankly, I was amazed at myself. When I started writing I’d had no idea what I was doing. I scribbled, scratched, and typed, I’d found my way from the dead center of the book to its outer reaches, then back to the beginning in a loopy trajectory, but still, despite everything, including daily strife with the person I slept with and the bill collector at the door, I’d
done
it, and I’d done it without encouragement or hope. And if nothing else, that was more than most of the world’s losers could say for themselves. For those few moments on an autumn afternoon, the world looked pretty good again, and it held out some kind of promise.
The next morning I marched up to the stand where I bought my Marlboros and newspapers every day and laid out a buck fifty for one of the monthly magazines devoted to writers. In the classifieds
was a list of literary agents. The Vroom Agency in Sarasota, Florida, took on all sorts of properties and at no fee to the writer. A representative list of titles sold over the past few years revealed some books I’d actually heard of, including one that had gone on to become a major Hollywood motion picture. Next I had the original manuscript of the novel Xeroxed at an office supply store, where I also picked up a pair of envelopes large enough to accommodate my bundle to and back from the Sunshine State. Then I sat down and wrote a letter introducing my masterpiece To Whom It May Concern, dropped it into the mail, and forgot all about it for the time being.
Livy didn’t have a single word to say about my accomplishment. Furthermore, she had no desire whatsoever to look at
The Old Cossack.
“I’m too exhausted to read after the restaurant” was her excuse. It was as if the novel I’d slaved over didn’t exist. When I told her that I’d packaged it off to an agent, she shrugged. Just as well. Since she hadn’t been able to complete so much as a single story in the years we’d been together, there wasn’t much point in rubbing it in. Besides, it probably wouldn’t matter one way or another, because there wasn’t the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell I’d be able to sell the stack of paper anyway.
T
hanks to you, I’m getting laid off,” Livy snarled when she got into the car. “Goddamn you, Max!”
It was two thirty in the morning. I’d roused myself out of a deep sleep to pick her up from the restaurant. My head ached. My mouth was full of cotton from the two packs of cigarettes I’d smoked that day. I felt like one of the undead.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m getting the boot, that’s what!
They tried to sell me that
business is slow, but it’s a crock! I know why this happened: it’s because of that stupid brawl you had with Siffuzzi!”
The mist in my brain was beginning to lift.
“Fuck.
… Yeah, but that was weeks ago. And it wasn’t my fault, remember.”
“People talk, you jerk! Jimbo the bartender complained about you to the owner! You had no right picking a fight with anybody at my place of business, Max!
You cost me my fucking job!
And you know what that means!”
“I’ll kill that motherfucker,” I growled through gritted teeth as I drove, swerving to avoid the black trunk of a tree that had appeared out of nowhere.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going or you’ll kill the both of
us!”
“And besides,” I went on, ignoring her and arguing my case, “Siffuzzi was the one who started it!”
“Who gives a fuck who started it, Max! I’m losing my job on account of you!
Don’t you fucking get it?
In a matter of a couple of weeks, we’re going to be out of money again!”
I got it all right. I knew what the implications were.
When we reached the apartment we went straight to sleep, me on my side of the bed and Livy on hers. Lately we weren’t making it so much; after all we’d been through, the thrill was finally gone. The fact was we rarely went near each other anymore. Sometimes late at night I would hide in the bathroom and jerk off to get myself whipped enough to sleep. I had the feeling Livy was doing the very same thing at the very same moment in the bedroom….
When I would finally lay my weary head on the pillow, a single thought coursed obsessively through my brain like the ticking of a manic metronome:
I have to get out of here. Monahan wasn’t
kidding. I have to get out of here: somehow, some way. Before one or both of us crack. Before there’s mayhem and murder. But how?
A
fter getting the ax at Gennaro’s, Livy flatly refused to budge from the bed. If I thought the two of us had hit rock bottom before, I was sadly off the mark. Now we were under the rocks. Now, in addition to her dope and her booze, she kept herself barricaded in the bedroom with the telephone. She held marathon secret conversations in there, and the muffled quality of her voice as well as the fact that there wasn’t an extension to eavesdrop by kept me from making a good guess who she might be talking to.
Mitchell Jeremy? Michael Goldfarb? Fred?
For all I knew, it was the dude she was with when we first met—Edward.
Maybe she was talking to herself.
We never went anywhere or did anything anymore, not even so much as venture out to the movies like we used to in the early days. Nobody, including the bill collectors, ever stopped by for any reason. It was as if we’d fallen off the face of the earth, as if we’d made ourselves into pariahs. Nothing seemed to matter anymore to either of us.
The rows that broke out between us now were downright terrifying. A glance, a single word, everything, anything could set off World War III. Livy would pick up whatever was at hand—bottle, book, lamp—rear back, and aim straight for my head. From that point on, at all hours of day and night there were shouts, curses, the din of smashing glass and crockery emanating from unit 5C. It was like a madhouse in there. Sometimes the neighbors called the police, who arrived in a matter of minutes, banged on the door, and demanded to know what the trouble was.
“Why, nothing at all, officer! What would give you such an idea?” Livy would respond, all honey and sugar, after pulling herself together for the performance.
“We got a summons about a disturbance in this apartment,” one of the uniforms would explain.
“Oh, no, we’re fine here …
aren’t we, Max?
Maybe you should try at the other end of the hall. We’ve heard some strange noises coming from that vicinity…. ”
After the squad car pulled away, we’d pick up where we left off. One night Livy pulled a carving knife on me and threatened to use it.
“Go on! Put me out of my misery, I dare you!”
Without blinking an eye she took me up on the challenge and lunged, slicing and slashing like a fiend. She succeeded in gouging my palm and inflicting a few superficial cuts on my arms before I could tackle her and wrest the weapon away. I tossed it over my shoulder, grabbed her with both hands around the neck in a choke hold, and shook her like a rag doll.
“You crazy fucking bitch! You’ve gone over the edge! I’m going to call the state hospital! They’ll bring the straitjacket and wrap you in it so tight you’ll never get out! Do you hear me? DO YOU?”
I cocked my fist to let her have it square in the face, but at the last second I woke up. Instead I left her on the floor and fled the premises before I lost all control and committed the capital crime. After hours of trudging the streets, my nerves still jangling like live wires, I jumped an eastbound bus and found myself on the doorstep of Bernie Monahan’s pad in Montfleur.
“Sorry to wake you, man, but I’m out of places to go, and wouldn’t you know, it just started raining…. ”
I hadn’t seen Monahan in months. He looked me up and down and decided not to ask questions.
“You can have the sofa,” he whispered, “but don’t wake Gloria.” He offered me a beer, but I was too wrung out to even drink. Without taking off my clothes, I collapsed and passed out. My last hope before tumbling into oblivion was that I wouldn’t open my eyes again—ever.
In the early morning, when I was on my way into the bathroom to take a leak, I ran smack into Bernie’s naked girlfriend, who was toweling off after stepping out of the shower. Gloria blushed as I took in her big, naked brown breasts.
“Max! I had no idea you were here! …”
The sight of her was a shock. I never knew Bernie’s woman was put together so well. On another day it would have made a dent. But not today. I turned around, went back out to the sofa, and lit a smoke.
Now what was I going to do? I was blown out. Depleted. And I didn’t have more than a buck or two to my name.
For a long time I sat there chewing it over. Some say that life is a beautiful thing, but for me the magic was out of it. Maybe the magic was out of it for good. The solution was action. All right, I decided: I’ll go back to Roseland Avenue. But I’m going to get out of this thing with Livy once and for all. I don’t know how, but I’m going to get myself free.
I pulled on my clothes and slipped out to the street. Then I walked up to the corner and waited for the bus that would take me back to Caldwell.
T
HE
V
ROOM
L
ITERARY
A
GENCY
S
ARASOTA
, F
LORIDA
O
CTOBER
8, 1979
Dear Mister Zajack:
We like your manuscript THE OLD COSSACK, and wish to offer it to market. Enclosed are two copies of our agency representation contract. When you return the signed first copy to us, we will send your work out to seek a publisher…. We here at the Vroom Agency feel that you are a writer of exceptional promise and look forward to working with you.
Sincerely,
Henry Barr