Hating Olivia: A Love Story (21 page)

It was a date. Next time I’d concentrate on her fixed stars and the arcane symbols attaching to her personal and outer planets, the points that truly determined a person’s fate. And if she was interested, I’d leaven the mixture with a dash of Vedic astrology, which was so much more effective than Western methods when it came to the exact timing of events.

That Tuesday afternoon the brats were napping when I arrived. Shareen was barefoot and moving around in a clinging silk caftan. When I took my seat in the easy chair, she served me dainty appetizers from a silver tray and iced tea from a crystal decanter.

“You are like a bird of paradise in a gilded cage,” I began, consulting my notes. “You are in some danger of being held in restraint, and of being moved to different places at the will of others.”

“Yes,” she nodded vigorously, “absolutely true!”

“And, as a beautiful woman, you can’t help but be seduced by the reflection of your own image in the looking glass. This condition is indicated by the rising degree, which happens to be the ninth of Leo.”

Man, I was as full of shit as a Christmas turkey. But Shareen went along with everything.

“You know me too well, Max! Would you mind pointing it out to me?”

She got up from the sofa and stepped around to the back of my chair. A lock of her hair brushed against my cheek as she peered over my shoulder at the chart.

“There—right there…. See?”

When I turned my head, our mouths met. Even though I’d
suspected that something like this had been on the lady’s mind, no way I thought it would actually
happen.
Within seconds she was straddling me, and my hands were inside the sleeves of her caftan. She had hairy forearms, like most women from the Levant, but the rest of her was fucking incredible. My instinct, since I was in another man’s house, was to make it fast, but Shareen seemed oblivious to time and to whether her brats might wake up or whether someone else—who?—might walk in on us.

She leaned back and yanked on my belt. I ran my hands up under her garment.
No panties.
I worked my fingers into her slit, which felt like a bloody cut of steak. She began to moan and grind and caress my balls. By the time she worked her tongue into my ear, I couldn’t think straight.

When she went to her knees and tried to inhale my cock, I couldn’t think at all. I folded my hands behind my head and let her go for a while. I’d read somewhere that the renowned astrologer Sydney Omarr had to sleep with many of his women clients, but I had trouble believing it. Now I suspected that there was something to it. In fact, I thought raggedly as I watched Shareen’s comely head bob up and down on my glimmering pole, maybe this was why a guy became a fortune-teller in the first place.

When I could feel the tide rising, I pulled Shareen to her feet. Before I knew it, I was between the goal posts….

She took her sweet time. At every creak of the chair beneath me I twitched like a nervous animal, but she held me firmly in place.

“Don’t worry. My husband is performing open heart surgery this afternoon,” she whispered in my ear.
“Now I want you to forget all about him and concentrate on me. ”

I wanted to hold out for as long as possible, make her do all kinds of vile stuff to me, but that day I just didn’t have the control.

“Where do you want me to come …? ”
“Inside, inside … !”

Just before I pulled the trigger, I took her hand from around my neck and placed her fingers just behind my sack so she could feel my engine pumping all that semen into her.

When it was over, she slid off and disappeared into another room. Clean and hard and silent—just the way I liked it. She was gone for what seemed to be a long time, fifteen minutes, twenty. When she finally returned, it was to hand me a check, this time for more than my usual fee. I’d never made easier money in my life.

“Can you tell me more next Thursday?”

I cleared my throat. “Whatever you say…. Maybe next time we’ll tackle your secondary progressions…. Yes, I think so. Same time?”

“And I want you to chart my husband, too.”

“What?”

“His name is Habib, born April 7, 1935, Beirut, Lebanon, at six A.M.”

I jotted down the information. “You’re sure this is a good idea?” She smiled.

“Of course it is. He needs to know about himself, too.”

38.

I hadn’t meant to cheat on Livy, but the way I saw it afterward, nobody else with a straight dick in his pants would have been able to resist Shareen, either. Besides, what about
Fred?
What had Livy been up to with Fred on the nights she didn’t come home? They hadn’t been discussing trends in the restaurant industry, for sure.

My prize client jumped me as soon as I made it through the door that Thursday.

“Shareen, where are your kids?”

“The children are at my mother-in-law’s today! And Habib won’t be coming for his reading—he’s too busy in the operating room. So, Max, you and I will have all the time in the world…. ”

“You mean I did all that work on his horoscope for nothing?”

“Forget it, Max! You’ll just have to do the reading another time.”

Shareen was excited, but the situation had me feeling downright jumpy. The huge house was so cavernous—all balconies and alcoves and black doorways—that I couldn’t shake the creepy sensation that a body was going to pop out of nowhere like a jack-in-the-box at any second and catch us in the act. Making love to a beautiful woman was one thing, but doing her in her
husband’s living room was something else altogether—that was playing with fire. But I wasn’t about to argue with my hostess. One look at her and I was nothing but iron-hard tusk.

It was another hell of a fuck. I was lounging half asleep against the sofa pillows, the tail of my shirt peeking out from the top of my fly, when the front door burst open.

“Habib!”
cried Shareen, flying straight into his arms. “I didn’t expect you home so
early!
What a pleasant surprise!”

Lucky for me that my charts and ephemeris were scattered across the coffee table and Shareen was just entering from the kitchen with a tray of refreshments. Apart from the fact that I had my feet up like I owned the place, the scene at least had some little appearance of up-and-up business.

Still and all, I felt myself go red in the face. Habib was a small man who looked a bit lost inside his dark suit and tie. He seemed less interested in his wife than he did in me.

“This is Max…. Max, my husband, Habib.”

I jumped up and extended my hand. Habib’s was tiny, weak, and clammy—the deadly claw of the surgeon.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” I lied.

“Max was just finishing up the spiritual portion of my reading.” Shareen smiled with wifely deference. “He’s very good, you know.”

“Is that so?” sneered Habib. His pockmarked face flushed with anger.

“Oh, yes! In fact, since you’re home early, maybe you’d like to have your chart read. Max could do that—couldn’t you, Max? You are prepared to read Habib’s chart, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely and positively,” I stammered. “I’ve got everything I need right here…. ”

Habib waved his hand disdainfully.

“Please. Don’t insult me. I don’t believe in such tripe. Besides, who has time to waste listening to old wives’ tales?”

This response seemed to throw Shareen. “I will pay you for the preparation of my husband’s horoscope,” she said quietly before rushing off into another room.

“You have some nerve, coming into my house and stealing my hard-earned money,” Habib hissed like a viper when his wife was out of earshot.

“Well, your wife seems to think—”

“My wife is a child. Look at all I’ve given her, and still she needs toys to play with.”

At the word “toys” he tilted his head backward and looked down his nose at me.

“My advice to you is take your silly charts and stay away from this house!”

Shareen came back with a check for my services, which she handed over to me without a word. I felt a little ashamed taking it, until I glanced at the generous total and the slew of overdue bills back at the apartment crossed my mind.

I stuffed the slip of blue paper into the pocket of my jeans. Then I turned my back on the two of them and got out of there as fast as my feet would carry me.

39.

After that run-in with Habib, my counseling business inexplicably went south. Nobody, it seemed, wanted her fortune told anymore. As fast as it had come, it was gone. Screwing Shareen had turned out to be bad luck.

Until Livy came home one day with an order—her boss and his wife wanted their birth charts analyzed. While I was at it, would I mind accompanying her to their house for dinner some evening? Ned wouldn’t stop bugging her to set a date. It was hard to work for someone in close quarters when you were under that kind of pressure.

What the hell. My social calendar was empty. Besides, I was mildly curious about this Mister Sampras. The only information Livy let fly about him was that his personal habits were less than appealing—he liked to pare the nails of his beefy hands while they were having lunch, for instance. It made her want to throw up, but a job was a job.

I dashed off the horoscopes and we drove on over the following Wednesday. Ned’s place was the typical suburban deal—a split-level coated with fresh paint, nice backyard full of healthy grass, spacious two-car garage. Not quite in the same ballpark
as Habib’s spread, but the Samprases were doing okay for themselves. It must have been a good year for roofing supplies.

Bald, glasses, geeky—Ned could have passed for Habib’s brother or cousin. All these bourgeois stiffs looked pretty much alike, cut out of the same cookie mold that left them without a mark of distinction whatever their income level. The way I saw it most of the time, they were the real losers in life, desperate to fit in, frantic to “make it” in the eyes of society. For all my failings and weaknesses, at least I wasn’t
that.
And if I was a loser—and I had to admit that I
was
—I was a loser more or less on my own terms. Not that it mattered so much when all the marbles were counted. We’re all losers in the game of life; nobody gets out of it in one piece—or alive. Anyway, that was Ned. At first glance, there wasn’t much to say about him. He smiled, he was congenial, he made us feel right at home. The wife, Helen, was a middle-aged hausfrau with indistinct features who still carried the residue of an accent she’d brought over from Athens thirty years before. She was a hell of a cook, though, serving up one rich delicacy after another. By the time dinner was over, I was so stuffed with lamb, cabbage, tomatoes, and retsina, I could hardly push my chair away from the table.

We moved to the living room and huddled around the coffee table for the main event. I did a perfunctory reading of Ned first, then his wife. They oohed and aahed over my prognostications (for an upturn in business, mostly). Like most people, after the subject of themselves, their main interest is their money.

What could they possibly want with us—a bum and a girl thirty years their junior? I couldn’t make it out until Livy ducked into the powder room and Mrs. Sampras went to busy herself cleaning up in the kitchen.

I was in an easy chair and Ned was on the sofa. He was on his sixth or seventh glass of wine by then. There was a leer on his doughy face. He leaned over to me confidentially, his dentures flashing in the lamplight.

“She must be something, eh?”

“Huh?” What the hell was Poindexter getting at? I laughed, being a little kicked in the ass from the booze myself.

“Your girlfriend—Olivia. She’s so …
hot.
I have to admit—I often wonder what it must be like … well, you’re a guy
—you know what I mean.”

He gave a lecherous chuckle. Caspar Milquetoast had been transformed into one more guy on a barstool.
So that was it:
Ned had a thing for Livy, and it was probably driving him crazy. Why hadn’t I figured it out before? Lock any man in a two-by-four cell with Livy and he’d have to go nutters.

“You said it,” I agreed, deciding on the moment to taunt him. “She’s really something else, all right. Sometimes she won’t let me out of bed for days on end.” After all, Ned had to be as harmless as he looked, right?

Ned swallowed hard and blanched. He didn’t bring up the subject for the remainder of the evening.

Before we left, Ned slipped me a check for fifty bucks, twenty-five each for his and Helen’s astrological forecasts. On the way home I told Livy what happened when the women were out of the room.

She seemed annoyed to be let in on Ned’s dirty little secret. “So what do you want me to do about it anyway? Quit the job? I don’t see you bringing home any fat checks lately!”

And of course, I couldn’t argue with her…. A few days later I’m deep into
The Old Cossack
when the telephone rings. It’s Livy.

She’s standing on a street corner somewhere in Roseland. I can tell from her icy tone that she’s in high dudgeon. She needs for me to come out and pick her up—on the double.

“Where are you, again?”

“How the fuck should I know!”

“Well, how the fuck am I supposed to pick you up, then?” “Just find me, Max!”

She describes the area around the telephone booth. It sounds like a street corner near the Roseland post office. I jump into the car and within minutes Livy’s sitting beside me.

“What happened? Why aren’t you at work?”

“I quit, that’s why!”

“Why? What gives?”

“The stupid bastard made a move on me!” “You mean Ned?” I had to laugh. “Well, what’s so bad about that? He seems like an innocuous old fart.” “It was the way he did it!”

“What did he do?”

“He broke down and started bawling like a two-year-old!”

“He
what?
He didn’t try and grab your snatch or anything?”

“Oh, no!
That,
I might have been able to deal with. Instead, he sits his fat ass on my desk and confesses that he’s
in love
with me! That he’s been in love with me from the first day I walked into his life. That his wife knows all about it because he
told
her. That he doesn’t know what he’s going to do … that he can’t stop thinking about me, and that’s all he does, day and night—think about me. He can’t even sleep anymore.”