Olivia (29 page)

“My microwave’s on the fritz. Think he’d be willing to fix it for me?”

“Yeah, probably,” Olivia agreed. “I’ll bring him out your way tomorrow to pick it up.”

“He can come over whenever. The key’s under the pink frog next to the porch. Just be sure to lock up when you leave, and don’t let anyone see you take the key. There’s some punk-ass kid living next door who’s a little sketchy. I don’t want him breaking in and making off with my plasma TV and DVR and hocking ‘em for drug money.”

Carla’s luck ran out. She tossed the losing tickets into the trash and returned to the counter to pick up her boxes of wine.

“You wanna come to bingo at the senior center with me?” Carla offered.

Hell no
. “Eh, I think I’ll pass.”

They left the convenience store together and parted ways in the parking lot.

Olivia told Eugene about Carla’s microwave and he wanted to head straight over to her house to pick it up. Olivia had no clue where he planned to do the repairs, seeing how he still didn’t have a place to live, but she told George to drive. It would give her more time to think.

They found the frog, and found the key, and Eugene wandered aimlessly about the house while George hauled the microwave out to the truck. When Eugene discovered Carla’s stash of broken garage sale and thrift store finds stuffed in her garage, his eyes lit up and he smiled a firework smile so brilliant in joy the heavens opened up and a choir of angels sang down to rejoice. He refused to leave, so George returned the microwave to the kitchen, and he and Olivia headed for home.

With Eugene taken care of, Olivia focused on her own life, starting with her deplorable financial situation. She bugged Reggie morning, noon and night, demanding to know where her settlement check was. She knew the money for the trailer would all go to the bank to pay off her stupid mortgage, but her poor kitty cat clock and Mr. Mark Wahlberg should’ve been worth at least a few bucks apiece. And her Buick may have been a piece of crap, but it was paid for and fully-insured, which made it good for at least a hundred dollars. And she really needed those hundred dollars.

After a week of Olivia’s relentless hounding, Reggie disappeared off the face of the earth. Every single time Olivia called or stopped by the office, according to his bitch of a secretary, Reggie had just stepped away from his desk. After the fourteenth consecutive ‘just stepped away’ in half as many days, Olivia lost her temper. The secretary tried to placate the tantrum-throwing Olivia with an assurance that Reggie was working closely with the home office to settle the matter as quickly as possible. When Olivia demanded to know exactly what she meant by “matter,” the secretary refused to elaborate and forcibly showed her to the door. When Olivia returned to the office bright and early the next morning, the building was void of not only Reggie, but also Reggie’s secretary and every scrap of furniture that had been in the place.

Reggie, you motherfucker…

Without the insurance money to buy a new ride, Olivia was forced to rely on George to get her from point A to point B. In the beginning, George had been generous with his truck and had let her use it whenever she needed it—until the day she backed it into a parked car (in Reggie’s parking lot, of all places!) From that point forward, whenever she had asked if she could borrow it he had claimed he couldn’t find his keys. She tried offering sexual favors, but even though they were loads of fun, they didn’t improve his memory. She was stuck walking everywhere she went, which was fine… for about a day. After that she became desperate for her own wheels, and called Kenny to hook her up.

Kenny’s cousin, Abel, was the owner of Honest Abel’s Used Cars on Hickory, a few blocks south of Valley View. It wasn’t a real car lot, just a side business Abel ran out of his front yard, but he promised all the cars were legit, and had titles and everything. Kenny picked up Olivia early on a Saturday morning and by four o’clock that afternoon she and the George Gregory Valish Savings and Loan were the proud owners of a 1989 Ford Escort. It rattled and smoked and had plywood floorboards, but it could go in both forward and reverse, and was the cheapest car in the yard, so she snatched it up.

She took it for a cruise around Juliette to enjoy the taste of freedom that only owning a car can provide, and then parked it in front of Kitty’s to show it to George. He was busy with the Husker football crowd and said he’d look at it later and handed her a beer. At half-past ten that night, smoke came pouring into the bar. When she ran outside, her Escort was up in flames.

“
Fuck you, Mitch!
” Olivia screamed into the night sky as the crowd gathered to watch her life burn away—again!

This time she didn’t feel like dancing. She felt like committing murder.

“Well, look on the bright side,” George said as the fire department doused the flames. “At least you didn’t back into anything with it.”

Clete came to investigate and he and the fire chief determined the cause of the fire was spontaneous combustion, not Mitch. Olivia marched straight down the block to Abel’s house, pulled him outside by his ear, and demanded a replacement car. He laughed and was in the process of telling her where she could file her customer complaint—when he looked up and saw George, Kenny and Batman had her back.

At exactly midnight, Olivia rolled off the lot with a 1994 Ford Mustang convertible with leather seats and serious hail damage. It didn’t smoke, it didn’t sputter, and it had less than 200,000 miles on it. It was by far the nicest car Olivia had ever owed, and she thanked the George Gregory Valish Savings and Loan profusely as soon as they got home.

Since her Escort died of natural causes and not by the hands of her psycho ex, Olivia got a false sense of security and, against both Clete’s and George’s adamant objections, the following Monday she went back to work.

Two other things pointed Olivia back to Garretson besides Mitch’s apparent lack of interest in killing her. For one thing, George and Clete’s bro-mance had started heating up. Ever since the night Olivia had tried to teach Clete to dance, he had become a fixture in their lives. Almost every night, Clete stopped by Kitty’s on his way home from the station. He’d sit at the bar, drink a beer or two, and chat up George. Sometimes he’d go home alone after his beer, sometimes George would invite him over for dinner. Sometimes Clete brought Allie. When he did, she and Olivia would play board games or watch Nickelodeon in the living room while George and Clete talked in the kitchen. On the nights when Allie was at her mother’s, Olivia found something else to do to give the boys time alone.

She didn’t want to make it obvious she knew they were into each other, but she was fascinated by the two of them together. While they talked, she would organize the silverware drawer or hang out on the balcony smoking and sipping on her Dr. Pepper and pretend she wasn’t interested in what they were doing, but she listened and watched.

Neither of them was overt about their attraction to the other. They didn’t “accidentally” brush hands or sneak glances or steal kisses, but they both laughed more and smiled more and seemed more relaxed about life in general whenever they were together. And the sex between George and Olivia was always hotter on the nights Clete came over.

It made Olivia a little sad to know she was living on borrowed time with George. She knew one day soon he would be making Clete scream out his name instead of her, but she was over-the-moon happy that George had finally found that one thing he had been missing, and happy to know she had played a part in helping him find it.

The other reason she went back to work was simply because she was broke. Dead. Flat. Broke. Reggie remained MIA and her visions of collecting insurance money were turning into nightmares of delinquency and debt collectors and bankruptcy. She felt guilty for having to rely on George so heavily and kept a notebook full of every penny she borrowed from him to pay her Visa bill, her lot rent, or her insurance premiums (damn you, Reggie!) She kept track of every pack of cigarettes he bought her, every bowl of cereal she ate, even all the condoms he graciously financed. Although, technically, he was the one wearing them, she still felt as though she should pay him a little something back for all the pleasure the use of them afforded her.

The notations in her notebook grew longer and longer every day. At the rate she was blowing through his money, she would owe George half of her paycheck every week for the rest of her life. He didn’t care, but she did. She cared a lot. So, she went back to work.

George and Clete accompanied her the first day back. Sam raised a bit of a stink about giving Olivia’s timecard back to her, but when she opened her mouth to sing a rousing rendition of
Annie’s
“Tomorrow,” he relented. George gave Sam the dirty details of her Mitch-troubles while Clete inspected Garretson’s security system for weaknesses. He locked doors that hadn’t been locked in years, boarded up a broken window, replaced loose door knobs and cheap dead bolts. He found and secured so many easy access points Olivia was amazed Old Man Garretson hadn’t been robbed high and dry years earlier. Of course, Garretson was a 24/7 factory so there was always someone on the premises, and there was nothing worth stealing unless a person was in desperate need for a pallet full of stamped-metal outlet boxes, but still, it was unsettling.

While Clete was busy doing what the old man should have done years earlier and on a regular basis, George donned a smock and sat on a little stool next to Olivia, watching over her while she worked. Sounded like fun, but it wasn’t. His presence made her nervous. It made the other girls nervous. And it made Sam angry. It was a guy-ego thing.

Sam was a brick of a man in possession of more muscle than Olivia could ever possibly need to keep Mitch away from her, but George thought she needed more. He rationalized that Sam couldn’t do his job and watch Olivia at the same time, but what George didn’t realize was that Sam didn’t really
have
a job—unless you counted shuffling paper from one stack to another and boning Yvette a job.

And, speaking of Yvette, if she and Sam
were
boning each other like Carla said Izzie said they were then Yvette was a helluva lot more discreet about it than Stephie had been, so Olivia didn’t think it was true. Besides, the instant Yvette’s eyes bored into the side of Olivia’s head like high-intensity laser beams, Olivia knew for a fact that Yvette was
not
over George. Not one little bit.

That first night while George and Clete were babysitting Olivia, Yvette kept her distance. But the next night, when the two men decided Olivia was safe from Mitch during her ten-hour shift and dropped her off in the parking lot with strict instructions not to go outside for anything, not even a smoke break, without Sam by her side, well, that was a whole different story.

Yvette glared at Olivia from the moment she clocked in and continued to glare at her for the rest of the night. She glowered while Olivia put on her smock and settled onto her stool next to Izzie. Her eyes bored into Olivia’s head while Olivia listened to Izzie and Melanie discuss their plans for taking the kids trick-or-treating, debating which Northside neighborhood would net the best candy. She furrowed her brows and stared at Olivia while she and Sam went outside for Olivia’s first smoke break of the night, and she shot poisoned daggers out of her eyes while Olivia ate the leftover beef stroganoff and oatmeal cookies George had packed her for lunch.

When Sam took her out for her second smoke break of the night and Olivia felt Yvette’s steely eyes carving out a hole in the back of her skull while she sucked on her cancer stick, Olivia finally cracked and asked him, “Why is Yvette so pissed at me for stealing George if you two have been bumpin’ uglies the whole time anyways?”

Sam choked on his mouthful of Mountain Dew and Olivia had to beat him on the back to help him breathe. “What?” he finally gasped.

“Why is—” Olivia began to repeat herself but Sam stopped her.

“I heard you the first time,” he said around chokes and coughs.

“Well?”

“I’m not sleeping with Yvette.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, Carla said that Izzie said that—”

“You girls and all your yappin’! With all the gossiping you do, you’d think you’d get something right at least once in awhile,” Sam grumbled.

“So, you’re not sleeping with Yvette?” Olivia asked.

“No.”

“Well, is Stephie sleeping with Roy?” She crushed out her first cigarette and immediately lit up another one. Sam didn’t answer her, but his face frowned and he crossed his arms over his barrel chest. At first she thought it was because she was smoking two instead of one, but when he wouldn’t meet her eye she realized that little bit of gossip was true. “Oh…”

“Yeah.” He uttered the word in such a low voice Olivia almost didn’t hear it over the noise of the air compressors behind them.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Olivia said.

“It’s… whatever.”

“You really liked her, didn’t you?”

He shrugged and rubbed his nose and grumbled, “Are you done yet?”

Olivia looked at her barely-smoked, second cigarette. “Almost.”

“Well, hurry it up. I don’t got all night here.”

Olivia puffed faster and tossed the hot butt into the ashtray. They went inside and Sam immediately locked himself in his office. Yvette glared at Olivia from across the room as Olivia huddled the other girls together and told them she had confirmation on the Stephie-Roy affair but it was a no-go on the Yvette and Sam thing. Izzie was crushed. As the girls broke huddle, she looked at Sam’s shut door for a long moment with a sad, contemplative look on her face.

Sam didn’t come back out of his office the rest of the night. Izzie cleaned up her work station fifteen minutes early then knocked on his door. When she went in, she shut the door behind her, and when Olivia clocked out at midnight, Izzie was still inside. She wanted to wait around and hear the dirt Izzie managed to dig up, but Clete was waiting for her in the parking lot. She knew he’d be impatient to get to George, so she left.