White Oleander - Janet Fitch [57]
I held the box out to her. “The UPS man left this.” One tooth on the comb, one tooth. She was perfect.
Olivia smiled and took the box. Her nails were short, white-tipped. She thanked me in an amused voice. I could tell she knew it was just a ploy, that I wanted to climb into her life. I tried to look past her but could only see a mirror and a small red-lacquered table.
Then she said the words I’d been dreaming of, hoping for. “Would you like to come in? I was just pouring some tea.”
Was there anything as elegant as Olivia’s house? In the living room, the walls were covered with a gold paper burnished to the quality of cork. She had a taupe velvet couch with a curved back and a leopard throw pillow, a tan leather armchair, and a carved daybed with a striped cotton cover. A wood table with smaller tables tucked underneath it held a dull green ceramic planter bearing a white spray of orchids like moths. Jazz music quickened the pace of the room, the kind the BMW man liked, complicated trumpet runs full of masculine yearning.
“What’s this music?” I asked her.
“Miles Davis,” she said. “‘Seven Steps to Heaven.’”
Seven steps, I thought, was that all it took?
Where we had sliding glass doors, Olivia had casements, open to the backyard. Instead of the air-conditioning, ceiling fans turned lazily. Upon closer examination, a big gilded birdcage held a fake parrot wearing a tiny sombrero, a cigar clamped in its beak. “That’s Charlie,” Olivia said. “Be careful, he bites.” She smiled. She had a slight overbite. I could understand how a man would want to kiss her.
We sat on the velvet couch and drank iced tea sweetened with honey and mint. Now that I was here, I was at a loss to begin. I’d had so many questions, but I couldn’t think of one. The decor bowled me over. Everywhere I looked, there was something more to see. Botanical prints, a cross section of pomegranates, a passionflower vine and its fruit. Stacks of thick books on art and design and a collection of glass paperweights filled the coffee table. It was enormously beautiful, a sensibility I’d never encountered anywhere, a relaxed luxury. I could feel my mother’s contemptuous gaze falling on the cluttered surfaces, but I was tired of three white flowers in a glass vase. There was more to life than that.
“How long have you been over there?” Olivia asked, stroking down the condensation on her glass with a manicured forefinger. Her profile was slightly dish-shaped, her forehead high and round.
“Not long. A couple months.” I nodded to the UPS package untouched on the coffee table. “What’d they send you?”
Olivia walked to a small secretary desk, opened it and found a letter opener. She slit the side of the box and lifted out two terracotta hearts. “They’re breadwarmers. You heat them and put them in the basket to keep the rolls warm.”
I was disappointed. I thought it would be something secret and sexual. Breadwarmers didn’t go with my fantasy of Olivia Johnstone.
She sat closer to me this time, arm across the back of the couch. I liked it though it made me nervous. She seemed to know exactly the effect she had on me. I couldn’t stop staring at her skin, which gleamed as if polished, exactly the color of the wallpaper, and I could smell Ma Griffe.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“Back east. New York, Washington,” she said. “A friend had business there.”
“The BMW?”
She smiled, her overbite winking at me. She had an impish quality up close, not so perfect, but better. “No, not the BMW. He’s very married. You don’t see this man here.”
I’d been afraid she would talk about breadwarmers, but here she was, telling me about the men, as if it was the weather. Encouraged, I pressed for more. “Don’t you worry they’re going to run into each other?”
She pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows. “I do try to avoid it.”
Maybe it was true. Maybe she was. But if she was, it was nothing like the girls on Van Nuys Boulevard in their hot pants and satin baseball jackets. Olivia was linen and champagne and terra-cotta, botanical prints