Pieces of Hate (26 page)

Lolly got up and poured Della a cup of coffee as Brenda said, “So, how’s the family, Della?”

“Oh, the kids have been fine.” She checked her watch. “They’ll be getting out of school in an hour, so I’ll have to be there by then.”

“Oh, they’re old enough to take care of themselves,” Marilu said. “Hell, we’ve all got kids, right? You see us worryin’ about when they get home?” She waved a hand of dismissal toward Della as she turned to the television, where a news break was talking about one group’s persistence that the Constitution be amended so that church and state could once again be one and the same, just as forefathers had intended in the first damned place.

Della followed Marilu’s gaze and listened as the newscaster spoke, with footage of the group’s protest in front of the White House, then shook her head, grimaced and grumbled, “They’re so full of shit their hair stinks.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Marilu said as she chewed a cruller. “Look at the mess we’re in. You take a chance every time you go out your front door, you can’t even drive down the street in your car without the risk of some punk pointin’ a gun at you at a red light and takin’ the car away from you — or blowin’ your brains out. And how ‘bout the schools, huh? They all have metal detectors to make sure the kids aren’t bringin’ guns in with ’em!”

She took another bite of her cruller, turning her eyes to Della beneath raised brows. Marilu was thin and tall and shapely, but insisted on keeping her blond hair in a small beehive. She was originally from Louisiana and still had the accent . . . even in her eyes.

“Merging church and state won’t help anything,” Della said. “I mean, how could that possibly help? That’s what our forefathers came here to get away from in the first place, right?”

“Oh, would you two stop talking about all that serious stuff!” Lolly barked with a smile as she set a cup of coffee down before Della. “Ophilia’s about to come on! Today she’s talking about guys who don’t call after the first date.”

“Oh, God,” Della groaned, resting her head in her hand, covering her eyes. “Is that what we’re here for?”

“Well, you don’t have to watch if you don’t want to,” Lolly said with a wide-eyed, mocking grin as she brought more crullers to the table and took a seat. “What, you’ve suddenly got something against Ophilia?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She grabbed another cruller. “Not really, I guess. It’s just . . . the end of the show. I don’t really like that sort of thing. Besides, in spite of all the talk they do, they never really accomplish anything on that show . . . except all that ugliness.”

“They show an execution once a week on network television and you don’t like this?” Brenda asked, holding her coffee cup two inches from her mouth as she looked at Della with a frown. Brenda had full black hair that gathered on her shoulders, and eyebrows that were thin and dark and very expressive. She was short and thin, but had little figure to speak of.

Della shook her head slowly, took a sip of coffee and said, “I don’t like those either, okay?”

The others gave tittering laughs as the talk show began.

It started with Ophilia’s stern and frowning face. She was a fat, Latino woman with short, prematurely silver hair, bright red lipstick and red, tortoise-shell-framed glasses. She looked into the camera and said, “Today, we will be talking about the pain women feel when they date a man who does not have the decency to call back after the first date. You’ll have a chance to call in your opinion on our 900 line and . . . as always, our audience will give their opinion, too. Between the two, we’ll come to a decision. So, please join us — ” She grinned suddenly. “ — won’t you?”

Then the jazzy theme music began, mostly saxophone and piano, as the screen flashed stills of Ophilia in one position or another — first smiling, then serious, then laughing, then sad, all with her microphone held in her right hand — while the flashing gold title appeared before her: OPHILIA RAPHAELDO.

“That’s such nice music,” Brenda said.

“I wonder if it’s on CD,” Marilu said, tilting her head to one side.

“Yeah,” Lolly said, grabbing another cruller, “it’s sure nice music all right.”

Della just rolled her eyes, silently and privately, hiding it from the others.

During the commercial break, the others talked. They complained about their husbands, about their children, about the price of groceries and gas . . .

. . . then the show was back on and their eyes were riveted to the screen.

All except for Della, who couldn’t decide what was more interesting . . . the talk show, or the hypnotic gazes of the other three women at the table . . .

Ophilia made some opening remarks about the show’s topic, then introduced her guests.

“This is Thomas Fisher,” she said, waving toward the man in the middle of the stage, a thin, small, dark-haired man in a brown suit who appeared rather uncomfortable in front of the audience and looked, judging from his eyes, as if he had been recently surprised, or perhaps even dragged in off the street to appear on the show against his will. “This is the man who has not called back after the first date, a man who will not call back after the first date. And over here,” she said, pointing to stage right, “is Dr. Janine Carmody, a psychiatrist who specializes in relationships between men and women, and who is the author of Men and Women: Situation Hopeless?” Dr. Carmody was a somewhat lumpy woman with brown grey-streaked hair and no visible neck; she wore a green and black plaid shirt, a brown coat and corduroy tan pants with brown loafers. “Dr. Carmody is currently treating this woman — ” Ophilia gestured further to stage right, where an attractive, shapely blond woman sat in a chair with her long, shapely legs crossed attractively. “ — Lisa Curran, one of Thomas’s most recent dates. She thought everything had gone very well on the first date and had hoped to strike up a relationship with Thomas. Unfortunately, she never heard from him again. So. What do we make of all of this?”

There was a grumbling in the audience as a camera panned the faces — mostly women, ranging from their twenties to their sixties — to capture their disapproval.

Then a close-up of Ophilia’s face: “Remember, later in the show, you will be given the opportunity to call in on our 900 number to give us your opinion as to how this whole thing should be handled. But for now, let’s hear from Thomas.”

The camera focused on the small man whose eyes darted around as if he expected to learn this was all a joke.

“So, Thomas,” Ophilia said, moving toward him with her microphone held in her puffy fist, “what exactly do you have to say for yourself?”

“Say for myself?” he asked timidly. “Well, you know, I didn’t really mean any harm, but . . . well, for example, in Lisa’s case, I didn’t think there was any future. I mean, no future at all. The evening we spent together didn’t really go that well. In fact, it didn’t go well at all, we just didn’t get along, there was just no . . . spark, you know? And I thought she felt the same way. Besides, it was just a date, y’know what I mean?”

“Well, I’m not sure I do know what you mean, Mr. Fisher,” Ophilia said.

Lolly gave a hoot of laughter and cried, “Yeah, you tell the son-of-a-bitch, Ophilia!” Then she continued laughing, her round shoulders quaking, her large breasts jiggling above her belly.

“Lolly, for crying out loud,” Della said, “the man is telling us it was a bad evening, that they didn’t get along. How do you know he’s not telling the truth?”

“Oh, c’mon,” Lolly said, swiping a hand in Della’s direction, “if he were telling the truth, then why would this woman bother coming on the show to say otherwise? He’s just trying to cover himself is all!”

Another roll of the eyes from Della as everyone turned to the television again.

“I mean that it wasn’t a very good date, that’s all!” Thomas said. “Everybody’s had one of those at one time or other.”

“But you make a habit of not calling back after the first date, Thomas, isn’t that right?” Ophilia asked.

“No, no, no! That’s not right! It just so happens that I’ve had more bad dates than good ones, that’s all! I’m sure any woman you talked to would say the same of her experiences. I mean, if it’s a good date, if we get along and have things in common, I call back, of course I call back! But if it’s apparent to both of us — as it was with Miss Curran — that we didn’t enjoy one another’s company, then why bother calling back? I mean, what’s the point?”

Ophilia turned to Lisa Curran and said, “What do you have to say to that, Lisa?”

The young woman raised her brows and recrossed her legs with a sigh. “I think that what was apparent to Thomas was not apparent to me.” She leaned forward slightly to toss him a cold glance past Dr. Carmody. She continued looking at him as she spoke quietly, her voice level, her mouth hardly opening. “At the time — on that evening, I mean — he was a perfect gentleman. So kind. So different from all the others I’d dated. He opened doors for me, took my coat off for me . . . he even pulled out my chair at the table in the restaurant. We had — ”

“But I always do that!” Thomas interrupted. “I mean, that’s how I was raised, you know?”

Ophilia raised her pudgy left hand, which held a thin stack of rectangular blue cards, and said. “Please let her speak!”

Lisa continued: “We had a wonderful conversation over dinner. He was so polite and . . . complimentary. How could I know that — ”

“Well, now, that’s just not true!” Thomas blurted, slapping a knee with his hand. “You weren’t interested in my work, I wasn’t interested in — we didn’t even like the same music or movies, for crying out loud!”

“And what exactly is your work, Thomas?” Ophilia asked.

“I’m a novelist. I write thrillers.”

“What kind of thrillers?”

“Well . . . erotic . . . sort of Hitchcockian thrillers that — ”

“And what, exactly, didn’t Lisa like about them?”

He glanced at her. “She thought they were . . . sexist. Misogynistic.”

“And are they?”

“Well, I don’t think so! If I were a misogynist, why would I behave the way I did on our date? Why would I be so polite? Such a gentleman?”

“But isn’t it true that you’ve often been accused of misogyny in your writing, both by critics and by experts in the psychiatric field?”

His eyes widened as he stared at Ophilia and he spread his arms in exasperation. “Well, yes, but . . . they’re critics! They’re supposed to — ”

“Experts in the psychiatric field are not critics, Thomas,” Ophilia interrupted.

“Then why are they reviewing my work?”

As if he’d said nothing, Ophilia turned to Dr. Carmody and said, “Doctor, you wrote in your book that — ” She referred to her cards. “ — ‘relationships can often be tripped up by the unrealistic expectations created by mainstream films and literature such as the so-called erotic novels of Thomas Fisher’, did you not?”

“Yes, that’s right, I did,” Dr. Carmody said, nodding in a smooth way that seemed impossible with no neck.

“And why did you write that, Doctor?”

“Because Mr. Fisher’s novels rely on sex to sell them, and the sex is — ”

He turned toward her with a jerk. “That’s not true!”

She glared at him. “If you don’t mind, I am speaking, Mr. Fisher.” She turned to Ophilia again. “The sex is usually at the expense of the dignity of a female character. And his female characters usually end up as the victims of killers who somehow incorporate sex in their method of killing.”

Thomas turned his whole body in the chair so that he could face her. “Do you know how many men have been victims in my books? Do you even know what you’re talking about? I mean, how many of my books have you read, anyway?”

“Enough to know what I’m talking about, I assure you.”

“No, I mean which ones? Have you read — ”

Ophilia stepped toward the stage. “Thomas, you’re interrupting the doctor, and she’s — ”

Thomas held up a hand and waved it at Ophilia, leaning forward as he said, “No-no-no, I want to know what books you’ve read, Dr. Carmody. Please, tell me.”

“I’ve read The Neighbor and Deadly Seductions and, uh . . . I’ve read, uh . . .” She bowed her head, cleared her throat and said, “How many do you think I should read, Mr. Fisher?”

“More than two, I can tell you that! Those were my first two books! I’ve written fourteen novels! And half of those have been bestsellers! So I’m writing something that Americans want to read, which means it’s striking a chord with them, okay? If you’ve only read two, then you don’t know what you’re — ”

“Thomas!” Ophilia snapped. “You have interrupted Dr. Carmody, and I won’t have it.” Once Thomas was silent, his lips sucked angrily between his teeth, Ophilia turned to Dr. Carmody. “Doctor, you were saying?”

“Yes, I was saying that Mr. Fisher’s books depict unrealistic relationships between men and women, in which sex is the core of the relationship. But the sex is usually violent, unnatural and sadomasochistic. There is no love, no affection, only sweaty rutting and a lot of heartless, soulless, physical release so graphically depicted that — ”

Thomas clutched the ends of the chair’s armrests with white-knuckled hands and nearly stood as he shouted, “That is just not true! I’ve had villains with perverse tastes, of course, because villains are supposed to be despicable, but my protagonists have always been — ”